About this episode

Col. Fred Reynolds shares his leadership lessons learned from a lifetime of unique experiences.

What does it look like when a lifetime of unlikely adventures—escorting the Secretary of Defense on a Turkish ferry, commanding a geotechnical lab full of PhDs, playing cello to reset your soul—actually teaches you how to lead? Colonel Fred Reynolds is back for Part 2, and this time we get to the heart of it: the leadership maxims he's earned the hard way. Highlights Col. Reynolds escorted a sitting U.S. Secretary of Defense through Turkey for four days—as a lieutenant colonel assigned essentially by accident When the Secretary wanted to cruise the harbor, Reynolds negotiated use of a docked passenger ferry—there was nothing else available His post-military career at Black and Veatch took him back to Turkey to manage a massive hydropower program on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—until the Turkish Lira collapsed and the deal fell apart A Muslim Turkish engineer, a Catholic priest, and a Protestant American Army colonel all crawled under a church together to fix its floor—and the engineer refused to charge because "it's all for the same God, isn't it?" Reynolds earned his PhD in earthquake engineering while working at Black and Veatch—and used it to design earthquake-resistant…

People in this episode

Guest: Col. Fred Reynolds

Topics covered

• leadership
• legacy
• personal experiences
• engineering
• cultural collaboration

Keywords

• leadership maxims
• Secretary of Defense
• Turkey
• PhD in earthquake engineering
• cello therapy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Black and Veatch

Places: Turkey, Mississippi and Missouri Rivers

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