A colleague recently directed Forrest to a passage in Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great. Summarized here, the passage describes The Stockdale Paradox, which is named after Admiral Jim Stockdale and suggests a necessary balance between “the faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.”

Our team members Forrest Alton and Cayci Banks have recently been featured on The Jinks Perspective, a YouTube channel where Patrick Jinks, leadership and strategy coach, dives into issues facing the nonprofit sector.

I wanted to write a deeply reflective blog about leadership timed just right for Leadership Week at the University of South Carolina. I thought this was THE PERFECT time for me to lay out my thoughts on leadership and especially on my current experiences with leadership transition.

From nonprofit CEO… to board member… to board chair… and now as co-owner of a consulting firm that focuses on issues related to organizational efficiency, growth, development, and change, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time in board rooms.

In 2014 when Forrest Alton was serving as the CEO of the South Carolina Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, he gave an inspiring TedTalk in Columbia, SC where he encouraged the audience to be bold, be concerned, and be available to the young people in their lives.

More than 20 years ago, in the early 1990s, conversations were taking place among a few committed citizens in South Carolina - all concerned with the high teen birth rate in the state. As the stories have been told to me, this was a small group.