General Vinny Boles

Major General Vincent Boles USA (Ret.) was commissioned from the ARMY ROTC program at Niagara University as a Distinguished Military Graduate in 1976.He has served in a variety of assignments over a 33 year career, to include Command at every possible level and a number of combat deployments.

His final Army assignment was as the Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff, G4 on the Army Staff in the Pentagon, where he oversaw Logistics Operations and Readiness for the 1.1 million Soldier force to include the surges into Iraq and Afghanistan.

Retiring in 2009 to Madison, Alabama, he established Vincent E. Boles, Inc., a leadership and logistics consulting practice. He’s been speaking and working with corporate and association groups around the nation and overseas, coaching them on the subject of teams’ “Best Getting Better”. His audiences have included: Deloitte, Fidelity, USAA, Ernst and Young, AIG, The United States Secret Service, The Boy Scouts of America and The American College.

He is the author of “4-3-2-1 Leadership…What America’s Sons and Daughters Taught Me on the Road from 2d Lieutenant to 2 Star General.” Now in its 3rd printing, a recent reviewer commented:

“He didn’t write this book exclusively for the military audience and he does us all a great service by putting these leadership lessons into one volume and sharing them.”

In 2011 he was inducted in the US Army Ordnance Corps and Niagara University ROTC Halls of Fame. He serves as an adjunct professor of Leadership and Logistics at the University of Alabama Huntsville and the Defense Acquisition University – South.

Speech Topics

Leadership – That Tool That Lies Between Juggling and Magic

Juggling is a verb defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as: to keep several objects in motion in the air at the same time by repeatedly throwing and catching them.

Magic is a noun meaning: a power that allows people to do impossible things by saying special words or performing special actions.

Leadership is that topic that, alphabetically, finds itself between these two, and often is confused with them. As evidenced by these questions and replies often asked of, and heard from, leaders: “What are you doing? I’m just keeping balls in the air” or “How did we make that happen? Magic.”

Bringing his 40 years of military and business expertise to groups around the globe ranging from 40 to 4,000, Major General Vincent “Vinny” Boles provides a lens to view your (and your team’s) leadership practices, processes and actions. He works to create a structure to ensure they are consciously and proactively providing the maximum value added to your organization’s most precious resource: its human capital.

You’ll learn:

• The five things to ensure your team learns upfront and early, including:
  • What your job isn’t
  • Spot checks vs inspections
  • Management doesn’t equal leadership
  • When to (and when not to micromanage); and
  • Understanding the challenge of change.
• How to really help those you lead. Specifically:
  • When do you smile?
  • Coaching and counseling in 15 minutes
  • Handling news (good and bad) to ensure your “best gets better”
  • The two aspects critical in every job interview; and
  • Feedback – giving it as a gift, receiving it as a present.
• How to really help yourself be a better leader, including:
  • Four things you have to do every day (and what happens when you don’t)
  • Don’t learn from experience
  • The model to manage your meetings
  • Work life balance is an equation (balance is a function of how you use your 24 hours – on important or urgent tasks); and
  • The most important thing a leader can do.

You and your team will leave with reality-based, battle-tested tools to ensure they aren’t wondering if they are “juggling” or “magically” having things happen. Instead, they’ll be making the best things happen and in the process being the best they can be for themselves and your organization.

4-3-2-1 Leadership….Tools You Can Use Now!

Leaders today don’t require the kind of help that sounds good in a PowerPoint presentation but fades under the heat and pressure of reality. They need tools that hold up when the stakes are high, so that they can be better practitioners of their leadership craft. Using his 33 years of experience in leading America’s sons and daughters and providing the right support in the toughest conditions, Major General Boles delivers time tested tools you can begin using right now. Items like:

• 4 expectations teams have of leaders
• 3 critical questions leaders need to ask AND answer
• 2 reasons for stress in teams
• 1 truth to never forget when leading

Leveraging The Links In Your Supply Chain

Drawing on his 3 decades as a career soldier and logistician at every level, Major General Boles will walk through the links in the world’s largest and most complex supply chain from the port to the Pentagon and highlight 4 critical issues that will snag/kink your supply chain:

• Standards you use
• Systems you put in place to attain those standards
• Who is in charge of the critical points of intersection?
• Metrics: Leading, Lagging . . .what and how you measure

Providing real world examples of what worked, what didn’t, and why Major General Boles will lay out a real-world depiction of a supply chain in motion. You and your team will have “news you can use” to better optimize your supply chain, whether across town or around the globe.