What We Believe
At Thayer Leadership, we span the gap between knowing about leadership in theory and acting like a leader when it counts. Everyone can be a leader or become a better leader. Leadership starts with knowing yourself and your values.
We are with you every step of the way as your learning partners for life. We help you and your team to know your strengths and areas of opportunity and translate these into actionable behaviors to be a whole leader for your organization.
Leadership is a choice. To elevate your game and effectively support the mission, it’s essential to first understand your own strengths and opportunities through introspective reflection, mentorship, and validated assessments.
Grounding teams in mutual trust, shared values, and understanding fosters open idea exchange, commitment to decisions, accountability, and a focus on collective results—all of which drive success and help future leaders.
Through an ongoing process of self-study, formal learning, practice, and stepping outside your comfort zones, you can achieve the courage to evolve, the adaptability to learn continuously, and the commitment to build resilient teams and organizations.
Thayer Leadership Model™ and Thayer Leadership Inventory™
We believe that truly effective leaders embody six key dimensions, with character as the foundation of all great leadership. When these dimensions are strengthened through knowledge and real-world application, they unlock the full potential of both the leader and those they inspire.
This leadership approach is rooted in the U.S. Army’s proven philosophy of “Be, Know, Do”—a guiding principle refined over more than 200 years of practice.
To help leaders grow in these six dimensions, we use the Thayer Leadership Model™ (TLM) and the Thayer Leadership Inventory™ (TLI)—powerful frameworks designed to develop leaders of character who drive meaningful impact.
Thayer Leadership Model™
We believe that truly effective leaders embody six key dimensions, with character as the foundation of all great leadership.
Leader of Character
Epitomizes values-based, ethical leadership; displays self-awareness, personal courage and humility; and builds cohesive and inclusive teams.
Leader of Competence
Displays technical, conceptual, social, and political forms of expertise when leading.
Leader of Commitment
Role models personal commitment and self-drive while providing purpose and shared vision to others to inspire excellence.
Mission-First Focus
Prioritizes mission success through effective planning and decision-making, resourcing, performance monitoring, clear guidance, and creating mutual accountability.
People-Always Approach
Builds empowered teams, coaches and develops, leverages talents, and motivates others through praise, rewards, and recognition.
Thrives in VUCA
Thrives in challenging environments by demonstrating resilience, adaptability, and composure, while creating flexible plans and systems, and an agile team culture.
Thayer Leadership Inventory™
Our proprietary and validated assessment that evaluates leader capabilities across the six core dimensions of the Thayer Leadership Model™.
The TLI was developed and validated by Thayer faculty member Colonel (Ret.) Sean Hannah, Ph.D.