Col (Ret.) Scureman believes a primary cause of this problem is ill-equipped people with little or no training on what it takes to be an effective supervisor being placed in leadership positions.  He should know.  Over half of his active duty time was spent in command positions.  He has graduated from every officer leadership school the Army has. He has a MBA.  He has served on staffs of many outstanding leaders including General Colin Powell.  And since retiring from the Army in 1992, he has conducted leadership seminars in 46 states, Canada, and Europe.

Col (Ret.) Scureman believes effective leadership is not a function of personality or style.  Instead, it is a function of properly using skills that have been taught in training and perfected through practice.

Leading is a job, and like any other job, it requires mastery of many competencies to be effective.  It is his belief people in supervisory positions must be skilled at leading and managing and the two are very different from each other.  Each is skill based with its own set of competencies and at times leading and managing can be at odds with each other.

He has worked with many companies that are interested in developing their leadership team.  His clients include Fortune 500 companies such as Lucent Technologies, United Airlines, Wal-Mart, and AT&T as well as organizations as diverse as Underwriters Laboratories, the Internal Revenue Service, the National Park Service, state and local government and more.  He can be contacted directly at (502) 815-2611.

Col. (Ret.) Scureman is the author of The Boss’s Challenge: Manage Well, Lead Well, Listen.

The core message of The Boss’s Challenge is that when you become a Boss, at whatever level, you must become proficient at a range of complex skills that fortunately can be defined, learned, and continually practiced. The book describes fifteen fundamental differences between being a manager and a leader, delineates the skills required in both skill-based disciplines (managing and leading), discusses how they can be learned and continually practiced, and gives frequent anecdotal examples on how they should be applied.