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Thomas Kolditz      

Behavioral Psychologist, Leadership Development Coach, Retired Military General & Professor at Yale School of Management

Dr. Tom Kolditz is the founding Executive Director of the Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University and a retired Brigadier General with over 35 years of experience in leadership roles across four continents. He has been consistently ranked by Global Gurus in London from #6 to #13 globally as a professional leadership coach since 2016. Kolditz limits his coaching clients to just a few at a time, offering 24/7/365 availability, leveraging his extensive background in education, leadership, and coaching.

He has authored the book "In Extremis Leadership: Leading As If Your Life Depended On It," based on his research and interviews conducted during combat operations in Iraq. His publications include more than 75 articles across various academic and leadership trade journals. He also serves on the editorial and advisory boards of several of these journals. In 2006, Kolditz co-edited and was the lead author in a special issue of the Leader to Leader journal, which won the APEX Publishing Award for best magazine or journal in the United States. He is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association.

His expertise focuses on crisis management, leadership in high-risk situations, and innovation leadership in legacy organizations. Holding three Master’s degrees and a PhD in psychology, his academic contributions and practical insights help leaders enhance their effectiveness in various demanding contexts.

Speech Topics

In Extremis Leadership, Leading As If Your Life Depended On It

The contemporary operating environments for both government and business is characterized by volatility, complexity, and uncertainty—perfect conditions for crises to emerge. Brigadier Gen. Tom Kolditz shows how extreme life-and-death situations can offer profound lessons for leaders in any setting. Gen. Kolditz’s research reveals that the leadership skills and principles evident in dangerous settings also apply to leading in business and everyday life, making this program applicable to both personal and professional success.

Dodging Bullets: How to Avoid Crisis

Few people want to be put into a position of being crisis managers, so how can leaders prepare organizations to avoid crises before they occur? Gen. Kolditz will take the audience through specific processes and techniques to help leaders anticipate and prevent crises and have a more effective, more empowered workforce every day.

Lessons from Sky Diving and High Risk Activities

Gen. Kolditz has lead thousands of civilian sky diving jumps and leads West Point’s elite Black Knights. Through heart-stopping real-life stories of leaders in these extreme situations, Dr. Kolditz insists that leaders at all levels can improve their effectiveness. In this program he share his knowledge about leading with influence, and communicating with purpose. He also has a variety of additional high-risk situations he shares that are ideal settings to seek and find great leaders, assess how they might be different, and gleans valuable insights for extraordinary leadership in everyday lives.

Bringing Innovation Leadership to a Legacy Organization

Learn best practices, tools and processes for effective organization design, identify key steps for mobilizing your desired organizational structure. Learn how to lead change in organizations, especially those that are tradition-bound and extraordinarily resistant to change. Tom Kolditz draws on first hand experience and multiple cases of innovation and change in organizations using a unique indirect strategy that was successful when more common change management strategies had failed.

Leading Through Tragedy

Tragedy eventually overcomes all organizations in the form of the death or serious injury of one or more members. Learn what to do to prevent tragedy from disrupting organizational effectiveness, harmony and leadership effectiveness. Lessons include concepts about succession planning, and proven leadership behavior during times of chaos.

Leaders Developing Leaders

One of a leader’s most powerful legacies is to develop those who work with them and for them. Leadership development programs in business have too often been relegated solely to talent managers and HR directors. Tom Kolditz illustrates how, in an evidence based way, each leader can personally and directly develop their people, increasing the performance and retention of employees and building a solid foundation for the future.

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