It's a fair question for you to ask us how we teach. We are glad to reply.

We believe the human mind is the most complicated thing there is. Accordingly, you need to be wary of any easy formulas that claim to be nearly universal in their effectiveness. Because the human mind is so intricate, so nuanced, it takes its owner in countless directions. People learn in many different ways; we try to be mindful of several.

We do some lecturing. We have a core of experience-based main ideas that provide good answers to leadership questions. They're not perfect (another of our points) but they are time-tested and real-world proven. We will be honest with you about risks and why sometimes our ideas might not work.

These main ideas are not purely logical syllogisms where we expect you to listen and then come to our conclusion. While the ideas follow an organized line of thought that allows deduction, they are also laced with anecdotes, stories, asides, and visual images you can build as you listen. You can also use inductive reasoning to learn from the examples. We know from experience you will have some "light bulb" moments when one of our examples clicks with your life experiences.

We leave an appropriate amount of time for gathering YOUR input and having productive interaction with you.

We are not advocates of a pure Socratic method. This is not law school where the professor continues to bounce ideas around the room until, he hopes, the main idea finally emerges. We put ourselves somewhere in the middle of all-lecture and all-Socrates. As one of our friends in the consulting business says, "My customers did not pay me to waste their time fumbling around with wrong answers. I want to give them what our experience tells us are the best answers and then give them an abundant chance to press us." We agree.

We are not PowerPoint puppets. We see slides as a tool for reinforcing main ideas, concepts, or quotes. They are not a script for us to read from during the seminar. We don't care if the computer dies and the projector's bulb burns out.

As all of us learn, some of us tend to be more intuitive while others are more experiential. We try to accommodate both. Some of you will be more introverted and others more extroverted. We encourage the extroverts to speak up but may sometimes apply a governor. We will wait patiently for the introverts to soak it all up and THEN speak, as they tend to do, and will listen very carefully when they do.

Finding the optimal mix between theory and real-world experience is especially important. We have studied the literature of leadership, ethics, management techniques, and the related disciplines. We incorporate ideas from theory to provide a strong skeleton for our lessons, but we avoid excessive theory. We know about the potential client who says, "Please don't let them send me another academic who just can't get real with my people!"

Although many of us have spent time in academia, we've learned you will get the greatest value when appropriate theory is combined with the reality of the workplace. The school of hard knocks is a real place.

Our associates have several decades of experience with their sleeves rolled up, leading people. Our lessons are real, never made up. Identities are protected and confidences kept, but the lessons are real. Some present ambiguous situations, because leading people puts you in ambiguous situations. You may disagree with what we say. That's realistic too. We do not generate lists of "Ah ha!" solutions. Instead, we send you home with several dozen realistic examples demonstrating things done well...or not so well.

We understand that learning is continuous. "Final answers" are elusive. We want you to leave our seminar with some new skills for thinking critically as you continue to learn from your own experiences. Likewise, we want to learn from our experiences, so you'll see us asking you, at the end of a meeting, for a candid evaluation. We read them; we learn from them.

Who are we? How have we spent our several decades of leading people?

• We have held executive jobs and front-line worker bee jobs...
• In big corporations and small privately-held firms...
• In the civilian world, in the military services, and in academia.
• We have led other managers as well as front-line people.
• We have worked in the private sector and the public sector.
• We have lived in long-established corporations and in startups.
• We have seen the workplace from the perspective of the follower, the middle manager, and the person at the top.
• We have been in companies growing rapidly and bursting with enthusiasm and we have seen the downsized firms struggling to enliven markets.
• We are a mix of 60-something veterans, 50-somethings, 40-somethings, and 30-somethings. We know perspectives vary with age and life experiences.