Sep 21, 2026 · 28 min · 10 segments
Dr. James Walsh is an Air Force veteran, retired Department of Defense civilian, educator, and author with more than four decades of leadership experience. Drawing from his military career, academic…
James WalshGuest
Richard SchusterHost
Okay, well, in my book, I talk about effective communication and listening more than talking because the end goal is to gain trust.
To gain trust, you really need to understand folks around you because leaders are really only as good as the people who work with them and for them.
And since you have the responsibility of being the leader, It's incumbent upon you to understand what's going on with them.
And so team building and collaborative team building results from effective communication and listening.
and ensuring with emotional intelligence that people really know that you're listening to them, you're understanding them, you're considering what they're contributing.
You may or may not agree with it, but the ultimate goal is for the good of the organization.
You know, you're there for productivity for the organization and you also communicate to the team that We all need to work together to get it done.
So you mentioned emotional intelligence as a piece of this, and I know that's chapter four, so we'll dig into that a little deeper as we go.
But one of the things that I hear a lot from people is trepidation that a lot of these soft skills have.
that people used to have those younger people in the workforce don't have anymore.
And communication is one of the things that I hear the most come up is, hey, you know, people can't communicate effectively anymore.
And if there's criticism, people can't handle that as well as people used to handle that.
the leaders generally have to uh first of all that same conclusion came out of my dissertation and one of my research essentially said yeah air force captains need what you just said need the soft skills you know they're technically very proficient at what they do but they need to have more effective communication skills more interpersonal skills if you will to include what I have in the book as far as collaboration, team building, and emotional intelligence as well, and then situational leadership, because they're leaders as soon as they become officers.
I said, why do we need this leadership and management stuff? You know, and I says, well, you know, once you put on your your butter bar, your second lieutenant, you know, the Air Force expects you to be a leader.
They may assign you as a commander like they assigned me as a commander with 500 people all of a sudden, you know, because they look at you as a leader.
Okay, well, in my book, I talk about effective communication and listening more than talking because the end goal is to gain trust.
To gain trust, you really need to understand folks around you because leaders are really only as good as the people who work with them and for them.
And since you have the responsibility of being the leader, It's incumbent upon you to understand what's going on with them.
And so team building and collaborative team building results from effective communication and listening.
and ensuring with emotional intelligence that people really know that you're listening to them, you're understanding them, you're considering what they're contributing.
You may or may not agree with it, but the ultimate goal is for the good of the organization.
You know, you're there for productivity for the organization and you also communicate to the team that We all need to work together to get it done.
So you mentioned emotional intelligence as a piece of this, and I know that's chapter four, so we'll dig into that a little deeper as we go.
But one of the things that I hear a lot from people is trepidation that a lot of these soft skills have.
that people used to have those younger people in the workforce don't have anymore.
And communication is one of the things that I hear the most come up is, hey, you know, people can't communicate effectively anymore.
And if there's criticism, people can't handle that as well as people used to handle that.
the leaders generally have to uh first of all that same conclusion came out of my dissertation and one of my research essentially said yeah air force captains need what you just said need the soft skills you know they're technically very proficient at what they do but they need to have more effective communication skills more interpersonal skills if you will to include what I have in the book as far as collaboration, team building, and emotional intelligence as well, and then situational leadership, because they're leaders as soon as they become officers.
I said, why do we need this leadership and management stuff? You know, and I says, well, you know, once you put on your your butter bar, your second lieutenant, you know, the Air Force expects you to be a leader.
They may assign you as a commander like they assigned me as a commander with 500 people all of a sudden, you know, because they look at you as a leader.
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