Getting cut from my high school baseball team redirected me into swimming and martial arts. Thirty years later, I still train BJJ four days a week. That redirection didn’t break me. It forged my warrior ethos and a discipline that underpins everything I do today. Nobody handed me a leadership manual. But people invested in me. A coach who called me tenacious. Commanders who held me accountable. Mentors who spoke truth. An commitment as a West Point graduate to commit a lifetime of service to the nation.

That investment compounded over decades.

I think about that every time a CEO tells me they need to “accelerate” their leadership pipeline. There is no shortcut to developing leaders of character. No hacks for forging excellence.

Life is like martial arts. Three million people start Brazilian Jiu‑Jitsu. Ninety percent never make it past white belt to blue belt. Less than one percent earn a black belt. The separator is disciplined obedience. Purposeful practice that overcomes self‑limiting beliefs over ten to twelve years of relentless commitment. A white belt mentality of continual growth regardless of what belt you wear. At black belt, lifelong practitioners still practice a white belt mentality pursuing virtues of integrity, honor, integrity, discipline, self-control, and sacrifice.

Today’s emerging leaders are watching closely. Gen Y and Z are aggressively seeking out leadership development and coaching from transparent and authentic leaders they can trust. They’re watching to see if your organization develops people or depletes them. They are looking for agility to be creative and curious, and if they trust you they will stay, if not they are gone. They are looking for an ethos greater than resilience in a mental and behavioral health crisis. They are seeking anti-fragility, how to learn from adversity, failure, trauma, and get better as a result. They are looking for pragmatic immediate principles they can practice not a text book that can be summed up by an AI chatbot.

We see it across the marketplace with organizations who bleed talent or move to fast. Limited talented contributors get promoted into leadership, but nobody equips them with the skills to lead. Their agility becomes restricted, their resilience isn’t enough to bounce back, and they lack the skills to lead at the next level. What made them successful individually requires new actionable skills to lead people.

That’s why I believe as I heard Tim Tiryaki once say, “Leadership development without coaching is just entertainment.” Organizations that sustain excellence combine leadership development and ongoing coaching. Transactional leadership development is necessary, ie daily operations, internal systems, administration, policy and procedure. However, transformational leadership development combined with coaching accelerates an organization and promotes excellence as leaders gain a greater understanding of who they are, how they think, and how they lead.

Forging means coaching emerging leaders into defining and living out their virtues that drive values, and belief. Building their capacity to think critically and develop how they think morally and ethically at the tactical, operational, and strategic level. Finally, developing their emotional intelligence attributes of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management to lead teams.

Nassim Taleb calls this forging process of thriving in adversity, anti‑fragile. I call it practicing excellence. Emerging leaders today need experience and education. More importantly they need a trusted leader of character to verbalize the virtues they see within them. Coaches who will challenge them, and mentors who will walk alongside them, draw out their potential, and hold the standard even when it’s uncomfortable.

The next generation is highly capable. Here’s my question. How much are the current older generations willing to invest?

One evening during my first training deployment, fellow officers invited me into a card game. They asked if I “played cards.” I answered honestly. They didn’t ask if I was a “card player.” Three hours of nickel, dime, quarter poker later, I walked out with $840.

I broke their banks. And I broke their trust. I took what I wanted and lost what I needed.

The next morning, our battalion commander addressed all of us. He admonished the group of young officers for trying to take advantage of the new guy. Then he addressed me with six words I’ve never forgotten: “Lieutenant Randall, that’s not what we do.” One statement. One leader. Resetting the moral and ethical compass of an entire unit. He went on to become a four‑star general and Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. One of the highest character, high trust leaders I’ve ever known. He knew how to coach teams and individuals. He was adamant about regular one on one sessions, asking powerful questions, and creating an environment for self-reflection.

The stakes are high. What price will you pay for broken trust? Trust is the most powerful and most fragile currency in leadership. You invest in it or you gamble it away. There is no third option. In today’s environment, where uncertainty is constant and information moves faster than judgment, leaders who lack ethical grounding lose credibility.

Leaders must recognize assessment is an ongoing process. They lose people, culture, and the competitive advantage no technology can replace. Assessing, selecting, developing, and retaining talent is no different. You can hire leaders of character and build a winning culture, or you can hire a bunch of characters who will destroy your culture. One of the strongest leadership tools organizations can use to assess, select, develop, and retain leaders is coaching.

The ICF’s research on culture coaching identified a critical gap: executives understand culture matters but are not equipped to lead on it. They are not equipped to lead on it because they do not know how to coach or model it. When Coaching is embedded in every leader’s job description, then it’s implied every leader should learn and practice basic coaching principles. When coaching is embedded into HR teams it is implied they will or have built an internal certified and credentialed bench of coaches.

We teach leaders to coach excellence by drawing potential out of people through asking powerful questions. Coaching is not consulting. The coach does not provide the answers. It is not counseling. The coach does not provide a therapeutic or clinical solution. It is not mentoring. The coach doesn’t share stories of how they did it. The coach pursues curiosity within the individual over their own need to share how competent they are on a topic. They explore the who of the leader rather than the explaining the what of the solution.

Transparency means making decisions your people can trace back to a clear set of values. It means owning your mistakes publicly and correcting course with the same conviction you had when you set the direction. That general officer’s son was a young Army Lieutenant in my ethics class 20 years later. The general told me to keep telling the story. And I have.

Twenty-five years after that poker game, one of those lieutenants is a retired colonel, corporate executive, and I’ve been his executive coach, and my company provided a multi-year leadership and coaching contract for his company. Today, we play golf together every two weeks for fun. I’d lose a lot of money if we played for cash. He’s really good.

Today, we have a trusted lifelong friendship too valuable to risk every gambling away.

What relationships are you gambling with that could cost you everything? What trusted relationships are you investing in that you will protect at all costs?

I share that metaphor in my Practicing Excellence keynote. The core of who you are, how you think, and how you lead is the same for teams. Your teammates are the molecular bonds. Your values are the nylon strands. What your customers trust is the anti-fragile sheath encompassing what is inside. Cut the cord, remove the nylon strands, and the sheath is worthless. It loses all tensile strength.

How does that metaphor describe your physical office and your organization’s culture? Post-COVID marketplace leaders know bringing people together in work environments improves culture, competence, and commitment. There is a time and place for remote and hybrid work, but if you are building a culture you need a room, and more importantly, the right people in it.

When I was a young officer leading paratroopers, presence was everything. You did everything together. You built trust through shared hardship and being physically in the arena. Leadership is a contact sport. Now I coach executives leading teams they see in person every day or maybe only once a quarter. The question I hear most is: How do I sustain culture with people scattered across time zones?

Hybrid and remote work didn’t create a new leadership problem. It exposed organizations that mistook proximity for connection. A culture of a building masquerading as a culture of character. When the office disappeared, so did the illusion. Right now, the best talent in your organization is evaluating whether your culture is worth staying for from their cubicle to their home office.

The ICF’s research on coaching cultures found that strong coaching cultures, those meeting five of six key components, withstand organizational disruption, including distributed work. When leaders adopt a coaching culture, mindset, and language, they build connection and accountability that transcends geography. Nothing replaces a powerful coaching conversation being in the right room with the right person. However, learning how to coach people virtually is a powerful culture building tool when your culture transcends outside the brick and mortar.

We transform leaders, coach excellence, and build winning cultures, whether the team sits in the same building or spans continents. When organizations implement an intentional coaching process from the c-suite to the front-line supervisor, culture grows exponentially.

One of the greatest employee engagement survey comments I ever heard from a F500 customer call center was increased commitment to the team because “my boss now coaches me rather telling me what to do.” That process leads to morally and ethically aligned autonomous leaders making decisions because they’ve been empowered how to think not waiting around to be told what to think.

Culture lives in habits, rituals, and relationships leaders cultivate daily. The hybrid and remote environment simply demand more disciplined leadership. More accountability and ownership. More trusted leaders of character.

I’ve watched military teams execute world‑class missions across global time zones because trust and shared purpose were so deeply embedded that distance was irrelevant at the point of execution. However, that culture of trust was built upon thousands of hours of being physically together, in a building, on an aircraft, around a meal, so when the mission called for autonomy, distance, and scale, a wining culture of teammates delivered.

What molecular bonds are forming your talent? How does that talent form and practice under tension your organizational values? What does your customer trust they will receive? Find the character. Forge the culture. Finish the mission.

That’s where purpose driven leadership begins. Someone investing in who you’re becoming. Every leader I’ve ever coached who transformed their organization did so because they led from identity first. They knew who they were. They practiced what they believed. Their people felt it. They drew the true potential of those they led.

I have observed my fair share of commander philosophy in-briefs and CEO all-hands addresses. Slides polished. Messaging tight. Strategy sound. But no one leaned forward. No one believed it, because the plan was disconnected from anything they could feel. I’ve also seen my fair share of briefs and addresses where the leader connects first with their audience from basic psychological needs, to organizational needs, to growth needs.

Here’s what’s at stake. When vision lacks passion, when strategy lacks purpose, and when execution lacks precision your best people disengage. They leave. They take institutional knowledge, client relationships, and culture with them. The ICF Thought Leadership Institute confirms it: purpose in the workplace directly improves engagement and retention. When people connect what they do to why it matters, they don’t just stay. They perform. When leaders build trust with a passionate vision and create strategic space for agility and curiosity, people will commit to focused execution.

This isn’t soft. This is strategic.

From special operations team room to the board room the environments look different, but the principle holds: people follow leaders they trust. Trust among peers, subordinates, and superiors.

Human centered leadership starts with answering the 3 Qs of Who I write about in Practicing Excellence: Who am I as a trusted leader of character? How do I think morally and ethically? How do I lead with emotional intelligence? When leaders answer those questions with conviction, everything downstream follows. Culture. Engagement. Performance. Retention.

We transform leaders, forge excellence, and build winning cultures. Our five step Vanguard Coaching Model: Engage, Elevate, Expand, Refine, Forge, is built on this conviction. We draw out potential and improve performance by investing in human capital. We coach the person, not the problem which transforms organizations problem solving capability.

The ICF’s research confirms what we see in every engagement: 73% of HR leaders report enhanced leadership development from coaching, and 72% see a direct link between coaching and employee engagement. Those are measured outcomes of leading with purpose.

Practicing Excellence aligns passion, purpose, and precision. That cannot be delegated to HR or printed on a poster. It’s lived in the daily decisions of leaders who show up with trust, adaptability, and commitment with moral clarity. I believe we face a leadership crisis of character in the public square causing a loss of civility and pursuit of human flourishing. The antidote is faithful and trusted leaders of character who courageously lead in the public square aligning their passion, purpose, and precision. Leaders who practice a more excellent way.

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A decade later, AI is rewriting the stage of business and leadership. Leaders who continue to own the stage will empower AI as a guide on the side. Critical leadership in the marketplace will not be replaced with AI. However, leaders who refuse or fall behind in utilizing AI will be replaced with leaders who make the leap. One thing has not changed.

The character of the leader still wins. A leader’s autonomous moral reasoning and ethical frameworks are still critical in “how” to think, in a world that is told “what to think.” Leaders entirely human capability to develop and grow relationships is what will build winning cultures. Speed is no longer an advantage; speed is the norm. Knowledge is no longer a limitation; everyone has an agentic AI PhD at their fingertips. Curiosity, adaptability, and focus will separate the confused and overwhelmed from those who show up, play up, and finish.

We learn to ask better questions the more we work with agentic AI chatbots. Better questions draw out better answers. One question a leader must ask themselves is: Who am I becoming as a leader in the age of artificial intelligence? How does my character hold up when the speed of technology outpaces the speed of my personal morals or my organizations ethics? Those are the questions I challenge every leader to answer: Who am I? How do I think? How do I lead?

Here’s what’s at stake. Organizations that treat AI as a technology initiative rather than a leadership capability will automate their processes while hollowing out their culture. They’ll lay off too much talent, find themselves without the talent they need, and hire back old or new talent at a huge economic and cultural cost. They’ll gain initial efficiency and lose institutional trust. And lost trust doesn’t reboot on a software update.

That’s not an exaggeration. That’s a real-life scenario from a chief AI data scientist executive who recently sat next to me on a flight. They learned the hard lesson that AI builds capability and people build character. Putting on my coaching hat, I asked him what he is most passionate about as a leader in the AI space. He told me teaching people how to use AI as a capability. I asked him if he like to practice his teaching skills. He energetically leaned in and I received a ninety-minute tutorial on how to maximize my team’s workspace on Claude. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. AI builds capability. How are you being curious and tapping into building people’s character?

We influence influential leaders. That’s who we are at Vanguard XXI. Across nearly three decades of developing trusted leaders of character, from special operations team rooms to MLB dugouts to Fortune 500 C‑suites, I’ve learned this: technology is not the separator. Character is. The ability to look a teammate in the eye and make the right call under pressure and then partner with them to commit and do it. That’s what distinguishes a transformational leader of character from a transactional agent who provides an answer, artifact, skill, or program.

AI amplifies the effective leaders who adapt.

The ICF’s research with HCI found that organizations with strong coaching cultures withstand disruption, including the disruption of emerging technology. When leaders are coached to think critically, lead with emotional intelligence, and make morally grounded decisions, they don’t get displaced, they become valued. They leverage the tool to lead people.

We transform leaders, forge excellence, and build winning cultures. In the AI era, that means developing AI fluency. True fluency. The moral capacity to evaluate ethical implications, protect human dignity in automated systems, and maintain trust when decisions are data driven. It means asking harder questions: What biases live in this algorithm? Who benefits? Who’s left out? Who’s accountable?

I offer this paradigm shift to every executive I coach: AI builds capability. People build character. AI cannot replace the trust built between a leader and a team. It will never replace the courage to speak truth to power. It will never replace disciplined obedience to do the right thing when no one is watching.

We’ve taught, trained, and coached over 17,000 leaders. The pattern is consistent: the organizations that thrive through disruption are led by anti‑fragile leaders of character who get better with every disruption. They trust their values, adapt with conviction, and execute with commitment.

So yes. Assess how AI serves as a guide on the side as you lead as a sage on the stage. Adopt tools that empower your talent. Invest in your talent to build their fluency. Streamline your talent retaining those with a growth mindset. Start with the soul of the leader. Yourself. Practicing excellence in an AI driven world still begins with who you are, how you think, and how you lead, not what you automate.

I could do this alone. Let me be honest about that. A lot of solo entrepreneurs do very well in the leadership and coaching industry. I’m fortunate to have credentials, a platform, real-world experience, and a trusted network to operate as a solo practitioner and do just fine. But that is not why I built Vanguard XXI.I built this company because I believe in something bigger. I believe a team of leaders of character, who are trusted practitioners, will transform the public square and foster civility and human flourishing. You cannot do that alone. For me, this holy season is a vivid reminder of that truth. The most powerful acts of leadership in human history have not been acts of self-preservation. They have been acts of sacrifice. Putting someone else’s flourishing ahead of your own survival. Risking everything for the lost one, not the found 99, who the rest of the world may have written off entirely. If you have read Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary or seen the new film, you know exactly what I mean without me saying another word.

Spoiler alert. I’m a huge Ryan Gosling fan, from Remember the Titans to The Fall Guy, (I wanted to be a stuntman as a kid). Gosling plays an unlikely action hero, one whose character arc development always comes through for team ahead of self. You’ll have to read the book or watch the movie to discover his character, Ryland Grace.Here is the tension for many leaders: how do they accomplish the mission and preserve themselves at the same time? That happens. It is real, and it is real good. But what happens when you complete the initial mission, preserve self, and then face a new conundrum? The mission shifts. The stakes escalate. People and organizations’ ability to thrive are on the line.

What was once self-preservation now becomes a choice between comfort and calling. The new mission in front of you, the one that demands more than the last one, the one that could cost you everything, is the one with the greatest potential for human flourishing. That is not a tactical or transactional decision. That is a character forming transformational decision. Here is the space where leaders are truly forged.A vision lacking passion will also lack trust. A vision lacking passion cannot support an adaptable strategy. But when you hold that vision out in front of you with everything you have, build an adaptable strategy to pursue it, and apply precision to execute under pressure, and then you do all of that for something greater than yourself, at your own cost? That is a more excellent way. That is transformational leadership.

Jesus taught in a parable that he is concerned less with the ninety-nine who are safe. He goes after the one who is lost. That takes courage, character, commitment, and conviction in a truth, hope, faith, and love captured in grace. Grace. Sometimes the most courageous leadership decision you will ever make is to go after the one. Whether intentional or not, Gosling’s character’s last name, Grace, serves as a powerful antidote to the self-centered, self-preserving, self-promoting marketplace that consumes leaders today.

That is why we do what we do at Vanguard XXI. Service above self. Accomplish the mission, and optimize human potential.We are leaders who transform leaders, coach excellence, and build winning cultures. It’s our Project Hail Mary.

- Anthony