In 1999, on a late summer evening in St. Louis, Missouri, I was duped into attending a recruiting meeting for a pyramid scheme company. Though I lamented how I got there, the discussion during the presentation awoke something inside me. As the group discussed the ills of their current jobs, my heart and mind became fixed on a simple question:

“Why is being an employee generally a terrible experience?”

I decided that the answer to that question resided within a group of 10 letters for which nearly every person in the world has a different understanding: “leadership.”

Since that night in St. Louis my quest and passion has been to understand the sometimes-simple, sometime-complex world of leadership and all of its possible permutations and applications. The journey has literally taken me thousands upon thousands of miles. I’ve interviewed successful leaders from healthcare to construction, from athletics to academics, from business to non-profits. I’ve read and listened to volume after volume of books, articles, and blog entries about leadership. I’ve consulted to companies, coached senior executives and field leaders, and delivered addresses on the subject. Over time the doors of opportunity opened and I found myself in a lead role in a leadership and organizational development consulting practice. Eventually, my journey found me accepting a position as the manager of leadership development for the North American division of a global manufacturing company. And yet with all of these experiences, I still feel like I’m just now beginning my true calling, the work I was created to do, the work that has inspired the creation of The Tim Spiker Company.

The Tim Spiker Company exists for one reason:

That all within the company’s influence would understand and experience the joy, benefits, challenges, and exhilaration of truly exceptional leadership.

That’s an exciting and daunting reason to exist especially given the myriad of definitions of ‘leadership’ out in the world.

Thank you for visiting The Tim Spiker Company. Please join our on-going conversation about leadership at our company blog: www.whonotwhat.com.

And if you’d like to discuss how leadership (or lack there of as is often the case) is impacting you or your organization, don’t hesitate to contact me personally at tim.spiker@thetimespikercompany.com.