
Intentional Leader with Cal Walters
Let's be honest. The hardest person you will ever have to lead is the person you look at in the mirror everyday.
Self-leadership is the most important thing we do as leaders, but it's hard.
And it hasn't gotten any easier in a world of smart phone addiction, social media comparison, global pandemics, and information overload (just to name a few obstacles).
That's why Intentional Leader exists.
We help leaders take the guesswork out of self-leadership, fight a reactionary lifestyle, accelerate their personal growth, and achieve their God-given potential at home, at work, and in their communities.
This is why we get out of bed each morning. We love helping leaders on their personal growth journey! Because we know when the leader gets better everyone benefits. Organizations, communities, and families all thrive when the leader is thriving.
We are a team of ordinary people with an extraordinary passion for personal growth and helping leaders thrive.
Join this community to pursue personal growth and leadership excellence, to inspire others, and make a lasting impact on the world. Life is short, so let's make it count by living an intentional life.
On this podcast, Cal Walters — a follower of Jesus, a husband, father, West Point graduate, former Infantry Officer, Army Ranger, combat veteran, lawyer, and Army JAG — passionately explores ways to live intentionally, make each day count, and lead with greater influence and impact.
Cal firmly believes leadership matters, and this podcast will help you lead yourself and inspire others. Cal believes we each have a unique contribution to make to the world, and he wants to help you make yours!
For show notes, visit https://www.calwalters.me/
Disclaimer: The views expressed on this podcast are those of the author and guests and do not reflect the official policy, position, or endorsement of the US Army JAG Corps, US Army, DoD, or the US Government.
Latest episodes

Jul 28, 2022 • 1h 5min
92: Stephen Drum — Getting through Navy SEAL Training and How to Perform under Intense Pressure
Would you like to partner with us at Intentional Leader? Consider becoming a monthly supporter on Patreon. Sign up here! If you’re interested in growing in your leadership practice and being inspired to think differently and unlock greater personal potential, we want to give you a gift. Just click the link below and tell us where to send you 12 Ideas That Will Make You A Better Leader In 2022. Stephen Drum is a combat-tested Retired Navy SEAL Master Chief with 27 years of experience leading and developing high-performance teams. He recently co-developed and taught “Warrior Toughness” training for The U.S. Navy, which fundamentally changed the culture of the Navy in how it trains and prepares young sailors and officers. An in-demand speaker and consultant, who helps individuals and organizations develop leadership and performance strategies, so they can plan, prepare, and execute at the highest levels when it matters most. He has trained and led U.S. and foreign partner special operations forces on high-risk and strategically vital missions across the globe, including combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. During his Navy career, Stephen has personally trained thousands of elite military soldiers and Navy SEAL candidates, helping them succeed in severe training courses and overseas combat operations.

Jul 8, 2022 • 54min
91: Sabrina Dalton — Leadership as a Mom & The MMoment II (An Event with Military Mentors)
Sign up here to attend the MMoment II on July 23, 2022 in Alexandria, VA! The MMoment is an intentional, purposeful investment in you by us, your team at Military Mentors, or MM for short (the spelling of the MMoment is a play on our name). Our version of an immersive experience, it is an intense, 1-day experience twice a year for ~50 national security professionals, both civilian and military. The MMoment is not just a conference or set of TED talks, but rather a reflective and interactive experience to inspire transformative leadership. Sabrina Dalton is the Director of Programs for Military Mentors. Military Mentors mission is to elevate, educate and facilitate mentorship for the military and beyond. In her capacity as the Director of Programs, she oversees the eMMissary Program, a leader development fellowship, and the MMoment, a one-day, intensive leadership conference in the DC area. Sabrina is a graduate of the University of Colorado, Denver and is currently pursuing a Legal Assistant certificate through the University of Oklahoma Law Center. Most importantly, Sabrina is a military spouse, homeschooler and a mother. She is married to Tyler, a US Space Force Officer, and together they have 3 children that bring light and joy to their lives. On this episode, we discuss: the MMoment II the backstory to her joining Military Mentors the inspirational leadership of Dr. Chevy Cook (the Executive Director of Military Mentors) her decision to be a stay at home mom some of the tough (and controversial decisions) that carry guilt and shame as a mom some of her key principles for success as a mom If you want to learn more about Command Sergeant Major (Retired) Bill Thetford (mentioned during this episode), you can read his bio here. If you’re interested in growing in your leadership practice and being inspired to think differently and unlock greater personal potential, we want to give you a gift. Just click the link below and tell us where to send you 12 Ideas That Will Make You A Better Leader In 2022.

Jun 24, 2022 • 1h 2min
[REPLAY] 49: Patrick Lencioni — Building Trust, Embracing Conflict, and the 6 Types of Working Genius
This episode with Patrick Lencioni is a great segue from the article released by Wes Cochrane last week titled, "Does Your Team Suck at Workplace Conflict?" Read that article here. Patrick Lencioni is one of the founders and president of The Table Group, a firm dedicated to providing organizations with ideas, products and services that improve teamwork, clarity and employee engagement. Patrick’s passion for organizations and teams is reflected in his writing, speaking and executive consulting. He is the author of 11 best-selling books, which have sold over 6 million copies and been translated more than 30 languages. His capstone book, The Advantage, is the pre-eminent source on organizational health. After sixteen years in print, his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, remains a weekly fixture on national best-seller lists. Released in 2016, The Ideal Team Player is a much-anticipated follow-up to his team book and also a Wall Street Journal best-seller. The wide-spread appeal of Lencioni’s leadership models have yielded a diverse base of speaking and consulting clients, including a mix of Fortune 500 companies, professional sports organizations, the military, non-profits, schools and churches. Pat addresses thousands of leaders each year at world-class organizations and national conferences. Consistently the top rated keynote speaker at major events, Pat shares his insights and inspires his audiences through his accessibility, humor and story-telling. The Wall Street Journal said he is "one of the most in-demand business speakers." Named in Fortune magazine as one of the ‘ten new gurus you should know,’ Pat and his work have been featured in USA TODAY, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Harvard Business Review, to name a few. Prior to founding his firm, he worked as a corporate executive for Sybase, Oracle and Bain & Company. Pat lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and four sons. Pat is really excited about a brand new concept he and his team are launching this week called the 6 Types of Working Genius. This is an incredible tool that helps you and I identify what we are really good at and those parts of work that make us most frustrated. Pat had me take the assessment and we discuss my results and his results. We also dive into the organizational health movement, how to create what he calls “vulnerability-based trust” on your team, why the right kind of conflict on a team is a sign of health, and much more. To do The 6 Types of Working Genius Assessment, click here

Jun 24, 2022 • 2min
BRB - I'm Moving!
Hello my friend! I wanted to share a very short message today… As many of you know, I’m a lawyer in the Army. And part of being in the Army (at least for what I do), means we move every few years. During the month of June, my family and I will be moving from the area around Fort Bragg, NC to Charlottesville, VA where I’ll be teaching at the Army JAG School. I’m really excited to get to work the teaching muscle and hopefully be a positive influence on the many Army leaders that flow through the JAG School. So, if you have any must-do recommendations for Charlottesville or anywhere in Virginia, please let me know! You can shoot me an email to cal@calwalters.me. At least for the next episode (and perhaps more), I’ll be re-airing some of this show’s most popular episodes starting with my interview with Patrick Lencioni. This episode with Patrick Lencioni is a great segue from the article released by Wes Cochrane last week titled, "Does Your Team Suck at Workplace Conflict?" Read that article here. Thanks for your patience while we’re packing up and then unpacking, getting utilities setup, and settling into our new community. Thanks for supporting this show, and I’ll be back with some new episodes very soon.

Jun 10, 2022 • 1h 19min
90: Joe Byerly — What's in His Green Notebook and How to Capture Life Lessons
If you’re interested in growing in your leadership practice and being inspired to think differently and unlock greater personal potential, we want to give you a gift. Just click the link below and tell us where to send you 12 Ideas That Will Make You A Better Leader In 2022. Sign up to attend the MMoment II! It will take place on Saturday, July 23, 2022 from 8am-3pm at ALX Community Waterfront, Alexandria, VA Join us for this intentional, purposeful investment in YOU; an intense and immersive, 1-day experience for ~50 national security professionals, both civilian and military. The MMoment is not just a conference or set of TED talks, but rather a reflective and interactive experience to inspire transformative leadership. Sign up here! In 2013, Joe Byerly thought something was missing in his journey to become a better leader. He wanted to create a place where leaders could share their hard-won lessons and help each other along the journey. He started looking in the place where he captured his own lessons, quotes from books, and ideas for the future –his green notebook. Today, From the Green Notebook is run by a team of passionate professionals who want to help others lead with the best version of themselves. Get a copy of Joe's new book, My Green Notebook: Know Thyself Before Changing Jobs.

May 25, 2022 • 1h 16min
89: Cal Walters — Reflections on 3 Years of Podcasting, Setbacks, and Self-Leadership
We're celebrating 3 years of podcasting! Thank you to all of you that listen to and support this show! I want to specifically thank two groups of supporters, our Patreon members and those that have left a rating/review on Apple Pocasts or Spotify. Your support goes a long way! Want to become a Patron of Intentional Leader? You can support the podcast by donating $1, $2, $5 (or whatever you like!) on Patreon. Sign up here! Want to help us continue to get great guests and grow this community? Please leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts here or on Spotify here. Today I get the mic flipped on me by my good friend Wes Cochrane. Wes joined me on Episode 84 when we interviewed his brother, Graham Cochrane, and as you’ll hear during this conversation, Wes was part of the reason I started this show in the first place. So why am I doing this unique format today? Well, three main reasons. First, I’ve had many of you ask when I was going to get behind the mic like I did the first 20+ episodes and share what I’ve been learning. Second, this is a natural point of transition for me as my family and I are packing up to move in the next month and I’ll be changing jobs. It’s a natural moment of reflection. And, third, we’re approaching the 3 year anniversary of this podcast starting, and it seemed appropriate to take a moment to celebrate and discuss highlights from the past 3 years. On this episode, I get a bit vulnerable about some of my struggles over the past few years, some key lessons I’ve learned interviewing 65 or so leaders from all walks of life, I try to define what self-leadership means to me and how it’s different than self-help, I answer some listener questions at the end, and much more. I hope you enjoy this. Let me know what you think please! And whether you want more episodes in this format.

May 11, 2022 • 1h 1min
88: Gino Wickman — How to Find Out if You’re an Entrepreneur, Create a Personal Vision, and Get Over Rejection
If you’re interested in growing in your leadership practice and being inspired to think differently and unlock greater personal potential, we want to give you a gift. Just click the link below and tell us where to send you 12 Ideas That Will Make You A Better Leader In 2022. I'm really excited to have Gino Wickman on the show today! An entrepreneur since the age of 21, Gino has had an obsession for learning what makes businesses and entrepreneurs thrive. At 25 he took over the family business, which was deeply in debt and in need of help. After turning the company around and running it for seven years, he and his partners successfully sold the company. Gino then set out to help entrepreneurs and leaders get what they want from their businesses. Based on his years of real-world experience, he created the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), a practical method for helping companies achieve greatness. He has personally delivered more than 1,900 full-day sessions for more than 135 companies, helping them implement EOS. He is also the author of the award-winning, best-selling book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, which has sold over 1 million copies, as well as five other books in the Traction Library that have sold almost 2 million copies. Gino is the founder of EOS Worldwide, an organization that helps tens of thousands of businesses implement EOS with the aid of an international team of over 450 professional and certified EOS Implementers and online support. There are over 130,000 companies using the EOS tools worldwide. Gino is now devoting time and energy toward helping entrepreneurs-in-the-making get a huge jump-start on taking their entrepreneurial leap, which is why he created Entrepreneurial Leap. The mission of Entrepreneurial Leap is to find all of the entrepreneurs-in-the-making, at any age, wherever they are—to help them realize their purpose and live the life they were born to live. Entrepreneurial Leap: Do You Have What It Takes to Become an Entrepreneur? is available for purchase through all major retailers. - Visit e-leap.com to Take the Free Entrepreneur-in-the-Making Assessment - Subscribe to the Entrepreneurial Leap YouTube Channel Other items discussed during the interview: 10 Lessons Gino Learned from His Dad 10 Disciplines to Maximize Your Energy

Apr 27, 2022 • 50min
87: Whitney Johnson — The Benefits of Disrupting Yourself and Smart Growth
If you’re interested in growing in your leadership practice and being inspired to think differently and unlock greater personal potential, we want to give you a gift. Just click the link below and tell us where to send you 12 Ideas That Will Make You A Better Leader In 2022. Whitney Johnson is CEO of the tech-enabled talent development company Disruption Advisors, an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing private company in America (2020). One of the top ten business thinkers in the world as named by Thinkers50, Whitney is an expert at smart growth leadership. Whitney has worked at FORTUNE 100 companies, and as an award-winning equity analyst on Wall Street. She co-founded the Disruptive Innovation Fund with Harvard Business School’s late Clayton Christensen. She has coached alongside the renowned Marshall Goldsmith, selected by Goldsmith in 2017 as a Top 15 Coach out of a pool of more than 17,000 candidates. Whitney understands how companies work, how investors think, and how the best coaches coach. An award-winning author, Johnson teaches the S Curve of Learning to managers and companies as both a keynote speaker and a frequent lecturer for Harvard Business School’s Corporate Learning. She is a LinkedIn Top Voice (2020) with 1.8 million followers. Her course Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship has been viewed more than 1 million times. An innovation and disruption theorist, Whitney is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. Author of the bestselling Build an A Team (a Financial Times Book of the Month), Disrupt Yourself (fittingly described by Publisher’s Weekly as “Savvy . . . often counterintuitive . . . superb”), and Smart Growth. She hosts the weekly Disrupt Yourself podcast with guests including Brené Brown, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and General Stanley McChrystal. Whitney was co-founder of the Disruptive Innovation Fund with Clayton Christensen. Her role included fund formation, strategy, and capital raising. They invested and led the $8 million seed round for South Korea’s Coupang ecommerce platform, currently valued at $50 billion.

Apr 13, 2022 • 1h 5min
86: Chris Fussell — Leading Out of a Crisis, Navy SEAL Training, and Advice for New Leaders
If you’re interested in growing in your leadership practice and being inspired to think differently and unlock greater personal potential, we want to give you a gift. Just click the link below and tell us where to send you 12 Ideas That Will Make You A Better Leader In 2022. Chris Fussell is the President of McChrystal Group, a leadership consulting firm based in Alexandria, Virginia and London, England. He became President in 2018 after joining the firm as Partner in 2012. He left the US Navy in 2012 after serving 15-years as a Navy SEAL Officer. Chris is the author of 2017 WSJ Best Seller "One Mission: How Leaders Build a Team of Teams", and co-author of 2015 NYT Best Seller "Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World". He is a Senior Fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, a Senior Fellow at New America, a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the board of trustees with the Naval Postgraduate School Foundation. Chris co-hosts the weekly podcast "No Turning Back" with Stan McChrystal where they interview the world's most consequential leaders. I mentioned this episode of the Craig Groeschel Leadership podcast about Leading Out of a Crisis.

Mar 30, 2022 • 1h 2min
85: Dr. Tim Elmore — On Generational Diversity & The 8 Paradoxes of Great Leadership
If you’re interested in growing in your leadership practice and being inspired to think differently and unlock greater personal potential, we want to give you a gift. Just click the link below and tell us where to send you 12 Ideas That Will Make You A Better Leader In 2022. Dr. Tim Elmore is founder and CEO of Growing Leaders (www.growingleaders.com), an Atlanta‐based non‐profit organization created to develop emerging leaders. Since founding Growing Leaders in 2003, Elmore has spoken to over 500,000 leaders in businesses, universities, athletic teams and non-profit organizations, including The Home Depot, Coca-Cola Bottling Company Consolidated, American Eagle and Chick-Fil-A as well as the San Francisco Giants, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Ohio State University, Stanford University and the University of Alabama athletics. His work grew out of twenty years serving alongside Dr. John C. Maxwell where he focused on leadership for the emerging generations. Elmore has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, USA Today, Psychology Today and he’s been featured on CNN’s Headline News and Fox and Friends to talk about leading multiple generations in the marketplace. Tim was listed in the top 100 leadership speakers in America by Inc. magazine. He has written more than 35 books, including the best-selling Habitudes: Images That Form Leadership Habits and Attitudes. Tim and his wife, Pam, have two adult children, Bethany and Jonathan. He and Pam live outside of Atlanta. You can also find his work at: TimElmore.com
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