BATTLE-TESTED LEADERSHIP STRATEGIES FOR EXECUTIVES: LESSONS FROM THE ARMY AND WEST POINT

General Kearney is a 1976 graduate (BS) of the United States Military Academy and a 1985 graduate (MEd) of the University of South Carolina. He is a graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College as well as the United States Army War College. He has served in operational and command assignments at every level with combat tours in Grenada, Panama, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. General Kearney’s most recent assignments at the strategic and operational level focused on Special Operations and Counter-Terrorism. He planned and participated in the opening campaigns of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq and commanded all Theater Special Operations forces in the middle-east including OIF and OEF from March 2005 to June 2007. General Kearney also served as the Deputy Combatant Commander for United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) from 2007-2010 and insured that the 62.000 operators of this command were properly trained and equipped for their global special operation’s missions. General Kearney oversaw the SOCOM requirements process, the execution of a 9 billion dollar budget and led the SOCOM Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) team for the 2010 QDR.

Part of the TLDG faculty since its inception, COL (Ret.) Hannah holds a prestigious Endowed Chair and Full Professorship of Management at the Wake Forest University School of Business. He has conducted over 500 executive education and consulting engagements in the US, Europe and Asia; and has coached dozens of senior executives, to include CEOs and TMT members. He served in the Army for 26 years, including the founding Director of the Center for the Army Profession and Ethic (CAPE), the Army-wide center for character-based leadership; the Director of Leadership and Management Programs at West Point; and an Infantryman in Europe, Cuba, Panama, Southwest Asia, and US. He served in combat with the lead unit of 3d Armored Division in Desert Storm, where his unit received the Valorous Unit Award; and Operation Sea Signal (Panama and Cuba), and coordination cell for Joint Task Force Los Angeles (LA Riots). He was in the Pentagon on 9/11 and after the attack was assigned as the Budget Director of Resource Services-Washington, the organization that sustained the highest casualty rate in the attack, and led the reconstitution of that organization. He has served from tactical to strategic levels, having worked in the offices of two Chiefs of Staff of the Army and an Assistant Secretary of the Army.

Dr. Patrick Sweeney is an experienced senior leader-practitioner and scholar whose research interests focus on character and identity development, trust, and building teams. For the past two years, he has served as the Director of Leadership, Character, and Business Ethics Initiatives at the School of Business, Wake Forest University. Prior to this position, he served over 29 years in the United States Army and retired as a Colonel. During his military career, he served in leadership assignments both in the United States and abroad to include: Deputy and Acting Head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership, at the United States Military Academy at West Point for five years; Director, Eisenhower Leader Development Graduate Education Program, a joint venture with Columbia University, for five years at West Point; Liaison Officer for the Commanding General of the 101st Airborne Division during Operation Iraqi Freedom I; Commander of a 450-person artillery unit and Chief of Staff of a 1600-person organization in the 101st Airborne Division at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. He also served as the Executive Officer and Researcher for West Point’s Center for Leadership and Organization Research supervising the execution of several major projects to include: the study of tacit knowledge for military leadership with Yale University and a longitudinal study of cadets’ leader and character development.