Only Human – News, Analysis, and Insights from the World of Human Performance · Dr. Tony Kern

Confronting the Future of Leadership (ft. Special Guest, author Tom Casey)

·47 min·3 clips

Tony and Tom say the Signal app story exposes four separate failures: security, vetting, classified sharing, and hacking risk.

1. Only Human opens with Tony revising “This Week in Safety Land” into “This Week in Leadership Land” and citing three military firings in Virginia Beach, South Carolina, and Air Force Special Operations Command. 2. The guest is Tom Casey, author of seven leadership books and founder and managing principal of Discussion Partner Collaborative, which has more than 200 advisors in 21 global locations. 3. The episode asks why so many senior leaders are being relieved for “loss of confidence” and what employees now expect from people in charge. 4. Tony cites Commander Brett Robley and Command Master Chief Felix Phillips at Maritime Expeditionary Security Squadron 4 and Colonel Mark D. Bortnum at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort as examples of opaque military dismissals. 5. Tom says the military and commercial sectors both show a “purge” around DEI, competence, and accusations of being “too woke.” 6. He references a 2022 book built from over 2,000 participants and a newer book from November built from another 2,000 unduplicated contributors. 7. The first study found that people wanted empathy, transparency, and accountability from leaders after COVID. 8. The newer research found that people did not want hypocrisy, bias, intolerance, expediency, or aggression. 9. Tony and Tom connect those findings to the Signal app story involving four ex-military users and an unintended participant from The Atlantic. 10. Tom says the incident had four failures: unsecured communication, poor vetting, sharing classified attack plans, and using the wrong medium in a hacking-prone environment. 11. Tom argues that leaders are people who are trusted, who protect others’ best interests, and who are good at their jobs. 12. He says the current environment creates a vacuum because some people who are fulfilling their oath are being criticized or removed for “really stupid reasons.” 13. Tony raises Jack Welch, GE, and Boeing to ask whether organizations are selecting leaders for short-term gain or expediency. 14. Tom responds that GE had a development strategy and a succession strategy, but even a strong process can still choose the wrong person. 15. He says younger successors often struggle in four areas: global experience, writing, face-to-face collaboration, and intellectual curiosity. 16. Tom connects weak writing to weak thinking by describing his own early career and a boss who said better writing would determine whether he kept his job. 17. Tony describes rereading Steven Pressfield’s The Warrior Ethos and says repeated reading reveals nuance, argument, and lessons that headlines miss. 18. Tom says he now asks high-potentials to produce white papers on the future of their business, globalization, and their product because the exercise forces sustained writing. 19. The conversation sounds like a long-form interview with back-and-forth examples, military references, and a steady move from news headlines to personal practice. 20. People interested in leadership, military culture, and executive development will get the most from it, while listeners wanting light entertainment or a quick news recap may skip it.

As heard by us

A plainspoken case for leadership as accountability, not status.

Only Human treats leadership as something that has to be proved, not claimed. A Navy firing and a whistleblower story give the discussion its shape, and the episode keeps returning to the same point: accountability matters most when pressure is on.

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Why you'd press play

When leadership slips, you hear the accountability test instead of the slogan.

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