Photo By Scott Sturkol | Retired Army Col. Chris Kolenda gives a presentation during a “lunch and learn”...... read more read more
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Retired Army Col. Chris Kolenda held a “lunch and learn” event at Fort McCoy on Jan. 21 at McCoy’s Community Center that focused on leadership.
The event focused on the topic of leadership at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels in a blended (military and civilian) organization. Headquarters and Headquarters Company, U.S. Army Garrison-Fort McCoy, helped organize the event.
According to the webpage https://chriskolenda.com/consulting-masters/chris-kolenda, it describes who Kolenda is.
“Chris is both warrior and diplomat, combining assertiveness and statesmanship to gain dramatic wins,” the webpage states.” A West Point graduate, internationally renowned combat leader, and retired Army colonel, he defied conventional wisdom in Afghanistan by developing an innovative strategy that motivated a large insurgent group to switch sides, the only example of such success in the 20-year history of the war.
“Unsatisfied with the complacency, Chris inspired change in the military’s strategy and got Pentagon officials on board to push for new diplomatic initiatives,” the webpage further states. “As a trusted adviser to three four-star generals and two Secretaries of Defense, Chris became the first American to have both fought the Taliban as a commander in combat and negotiated with them in peace talks.”
During his presentation, Kolenda discussed completing a 1,700-mile bicycle trip. Kolenda started the trip in September 2022. He cycled from Spalding, Neb., to Arlington National Cemetery, Va. Along the way he stopped to visit six gravesites of troops who died and served under his command in Afghanistan.
“I set up … that bike ride and raised enough money to set up the Saber 6 Foundation,” said Kolenda, a Nebraska native who now resides in Milwaukee. “And what we do in Saber 6 is we help veterans turn (with) post-combat stress.
“Now, when you’re riding 1,700 miles … it took me 24 days of pedaling … I had a couple of break days so 27 days total, you have some time to think,” Kolenda said. “I think I averaged 74 miles a day, which is about somewhere between six to eight hours a day. And so, you just pedal. And since I do leadership a lot, I was like, I bet there’s some leadership lessons I could derive from this bike ride. And one of the first ones is that just like you have to fit the bike to the rider, you should fit the role to the person.”
Leading up to the big ride, Kolenda said he had been active on a bike on probably 20 years.
“So it was like April 2021, and I was like, I’m going to do this in September 2022,” Kolenda said. “I need to get my life in shape. And it would help if I bought a bicycle. So, I bought a nice road bike to give me some incentive to ride it.”
Kolenda said he eventually got to the stage where he could do 25 miles “without feeling like I was going to keel over and die.”
“And then I was like, all right, I know I can do this. I need to get a coach to really help me make this happen,” he said. “And so I hired a guy named Chuck Kyle, fellow veteran. And the first thing Chuck says is, okay, have you gotten a bike fit? I said, well, I lowered the seat, you know, so my feet touch the ground. Is that good? And he says, ‘tell me how you feel.’”
Kolenda said he admitted to his coach he was having pain in his neck, shoulders, and knees — and other places.
“And he said, okay, so you haven't gotten a professional bike fit. And I said, no, I just lowered the seat so my feet don't touch,” Kolenda said. “Here's what I want you to do. I want you to get a professional bike fit because these bikes nowadays, unlike your old Schwinn and Huffy, these bikes are adjustable to the bottom. So, you can move the seat forward and back.
“You can angle it different ways. Of course, you can lift it up and down. You can angle and raise and lower the handlebars,” he said. “You can do stuff with the pedals. And all of that is designed to make sure that the bike fits the rider.”
Kolenda said he did get the fit done. He also learned later on that a 1-millimeter adjustment to his bike seat had made all the difference in decreasing pain from long rides.
Kolenda also explained how being outside one’s comfort zone, like maybe he was getting ready for this big bicycle trip, can improve leadership capability.
“George Patton was another great example,” Kolenda said. “In Sicily, he was actually outside of his comfort zone. He was the senior U.S. commander, so he had to deal with allies, he had to deal with political figures, all of this kind of stuff that Patton wasn't naturally very good at.
“And he broke down in Sicily, and he assaulted several of his privates for exhibiting what today we would call post-traumatic stress disorder,” Kolenda said. “Eisenhower relieved him, rightly so, and what Eisenhower did was he put Patton in charge of the Third Army after Normandy.
“So he had a boss, he had top cover, he didn't have to worry about dealing with allies and politicians. All he had to worry about was going forward and Patton absolutely threw up because he was such a genius in the Third Army,” Kolenda said. “So, imagine the power of each of our organizations if we matched the role to the person and didn’t try to frame the person? Second thing I learned is that oftentimes the 1-millimeter change to a vital matter is your most effective response.”
Kolenda said he crossed the Missouri River from Nebraska into Iowa on his ride and “all hell started breaking loose.” He encountered road rage for the first time.
“People were like honking at me, giving me the finger, running me off the road,” Kolenda said. “Somebody passed me on the right, on the shoulder. It was madness. Scared the daylights out of me.” He also talked about riding into the wind and losing speed, and more.
From all that, Kolenda said he learned more about reacting.
“One of the things that jumped out at me about this was we tend to react to things,” Kolenda said. “And react is always backward looking. React comes from Latin, which means to relive. So, while I was whining about the fact that the wind was in my face now, and I’d lost about five miles an hour. It wasn’t doing me any good. I was just reliving being upset. What leaders do is they respond. … And ultimately that’s what we want leaders to do, is to respond to situations and make them better. To swap out the bike if you need to, so you can reduce your silhouette.
“You can’t fix the wind, but you can change your silhouette,” Kolenda said. “Now what makes people act? What makes people respond effectively? It’s a combination of logic and emotion. Logic makes people think, emotion makes them act.”
Kolenda also later talked about “game buy-in” for leaders, particularly for change.
“A lot of times, military leaders get complacent because they can issue orders and people do what they say,” Kolenda said. “And that's part of the reason why civilian leadership is much harder in the Army, because you actually have to game buy-in. You just can't order people around. And even in the Army, if you just try to order people around, eventually people are just going to lose their patience with you, and they’re going to think they’re in a toxic work environment.”
He said the “buy-in” requires three elements.
“The first one is clarity,” Kolenda said. “People have to know what you want them to buy into, what change you want them to buy into.”
The second element is enlightened self-interest, he said.
“In other words, people have to believe that they are better off by buying in,” Kolenda said.
And the third element is confidence. “People have to believe that the idea is going to work,” he said.
“So, if people know what you want them to buy into, and they believe they’re going to be better off, but they have no confidence that it’s going to work, then they are just going to go through the motions,” Kolenda said.
He added, “When it's buy-in, people are contributing, and they’re doing it joyfully.”
Throughout his presentation, he offered more leadership pointers and support for the dozens in attendance. It’s safe to say many who attended went on a leadership ride with Kolenda and learned something in the process.
Fort McCoy’s motto is to be the “Total Force Training Center.” Located in the heart of the upper Midwest, Fort McCoy is the only U.S. Army installation in Wisconsin.
The installation has provided support and facilities for the field and classroom training of more than 100,000 military personnel from all services nearly every year since 1984.
Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/fortmccoywi, on X (formerly Twitter) by searching “usagmccoy,” on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/fortmccoywi, and on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@fortmccoy.
Also try downloading the My Army Post app to your smartphone and set “Fort McCoy” or another installation as your preferred base. Fort McCoy is also part of Army’s Installation Management Command where “We Are The Army’s Home.”
| Date Taken: | 02.04.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 02.04.2025 18:24 |
| Story ID: | 490111 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 65 |
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