What Makes a Great Leader?

Since the beginning of time, humans have loved the story of the underdog. From Cinderella to Erin Brockovich to the 1980 U.S. Men’s Olympic Hockey Team (dubbed the Miracle on Ice), the idea of a person rising from nothing to conquer his or her way to the top has a timeless appeal.

What history doesn’t always remember, however, are the great leaders supporting these illustrious come-from-behind heroes. Cinderella had her fairy godmother and a team of mice, Erin Brockovich had Edward Louis Masry, and the Olympic hockey team had Herb Brooks, who famously told his team, "You're meant to be here. This moment is yours. You're meant to be here at this time."

Great Leaders Build and Leverage Great Communities

The question of what makes a great leader has long been a focus of PFD Group’s coaching and strategic planning services, but it has also become a topic of discussion after the recent release of the Los Angeles Times piece, Is the World’s Richest Person the World’s Worst Boss? 

The article chronicles the leadership style of one individual, who heads some of the world’s most innovative companies. According to the Times piece, this person is known for “the out-of-nowhere firings, the threats and the bluster, the pubescent jocularity, the day-to-day uncertainty and the urgent demands to work through the night.”

This is no way to build a sustainable community. 

Community is a Two-Way Street

Why is community important? Because, among other things, a great community can help leaders learn more about themselves, which can help them build and grow better businesses. The process is cyclical, because as individuals become better leaders, they in turn build better communities. 

Inc. Magazine calls this the “weird, paradoxical part of starting a community.” The article, entitled 10 Ways Great Leaders Build Amazing Communities, says you're building a community “to solve a problem in your own career or life, but to get members, you need to be concerned first with their needs, not yours. A great leader focuses on helping other people solve their problems and achieve their goals. Otherwise, why will people follow you?”

Changing the World

Importantly, great communities have the power to change the world. This power to change the world through great communities is something we emphasize on a regular basis, but the sentiment is spotlighted and put into action at our annual 2022 Stewardship Summit in Alaska.” 

Before summit attendees land in Alaska, we spend significant time meeting with caterers and event planners to build a production team that aligns with our core values. We regularly recommend our clients utilize creativity in their own business building, so it is imperative to us that the people we work with to support our events are instilled with the same passion for creativity that we recommend for others. 

Leadership Styles Matter

When it comes to building great communities, the best leaders understand that leadership is about backing up your words with actions. 

“A leader’s words matter, but actions ultimately do more to reinforce or undermine the implementation of a team of teams. Instead of exploiting technology to monitor employee performance at levels that would have warmed Frederick Taylor’s heart, the leader must allow team members to monitor him. More than directing, leaders must exhibit personal transparency. This is the new ideal.”

― Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

Obviously, there are many leaders exemplifying greatness, but for this article, we’d like to offer the antidote to the Times’ “world’s worst boss.” 

That is Kenneth Morris, a U.S. Navy Veteran and Executive Director of the Aviation Community Foundation (ACF). At the foundation, Kenneth helps build a quality talent pipeline for the aviation industry by assisting high school graduates in finding internships, jobs, mentors, and other industry contacts. (Note: PFD Group’s CEO Ethan Martin is the founder and serves in an advisory capacity to ACF.) 

Kenneth and Ethan.

In 2020, Kenneth was selected by the Department of Transportation as one of 11 U.S. military veterans in Texas (and the only African American) to fly in the Forces to Flyers initiative, which prepared him to become the first commercial pilot in his family’s history.

Want to see Kenneth achieve true weightlessness? Check out this YouTube video of his flight with the Blue Angels, as part of their key influencer program. 

If you’re looking to build your own great community, we would love to talk with you about your why and your vision for your company. For more information on our strategic business coaching services, please contact us to schedule a call. 

The Story Behind Our Company Name

“It is not the risk I enjoy, and I don’t like the feeling of adrenaline, resulting from perceived danger. Rather, what drives me is my desire to accomplish noble missions while helping my team coolly and mindfully face the hazards and control the risk with operating precision.” 

–Jim Wetherbee, test pilot and astronaut. He is the only person to command five Space Shuttle missions. 

Every day tens of thousands of flights ferry passengers from one place to another. A quick look at the FlightRadar24 live air traffic map will show American skies blanketed with aircraft at any given moment. 

These aircraft deliver more than 100 million passengers to some 200 commercial, and domestic airports, and countless more private airports annually. So important are these aircraft and the passengers they carry, that the greeter aviation industry supports nearly 5 percent of the entire American Gross Domestic Product. 

It’s an awesome responsibility for flight crew and air traffic control alike, to ensure these aircraft and their passengers reach their destinations safely and on schedule. 

Fortunately, thanks to modern technology, pilots and air traffic control are supported by the Primary Flight Device (PFD), which the Federal Aviation Administration defines as:

“A single physical unit that always provides the primary display of all the following: altitude, airspeed, aircraft heading and attitude located directly in front of the pilot.”

Guiding Clients As We Would Aircraft

Clearly, the entire team at PFD Group are avid fans of aviation and travel. So much so that we named our business after these in-flight displays. 

PFD Group CEO Ethan Martin is even a certified flight instructor. He has spent so much time in the skies that he takes the lessons he has learned from the in-aircraft PFD and applies them to the leadership coaching his team at PFD Group provide

“The PFD is a critical instrument for awareness. We provide similar awareness education for entrepreneurs and CEOs who want to better define where they are, where they are going, and where they are tracking on that course.” 

–Ehtan Martin, CEO, PFD Group 

Not A Personal Floatation Device

Yes, we get asked if PFD Group stands for personal flotation device. A lot. 

And no, that isn’t what we do. We provide so much more education than just how to keep your company afloat in times of emergency. 

What We Do

Just like the primary flight display, we guide you and display the key information you need to help you make informed decisions to get you where you want to go. 

In brief, we 

• Utilize our proven 3HAG processes, to help you gain confidence and clarity in your growth strategy. 

• Help you build an incredible team of leaders that support your vision, so you can spend more time on the important tasks that will make your business thrive. 

• Work with you to create strategies that will help you scale effectively, so you and your leadership team feel equipped to confidently execute your differentiated strategy. 

• Provide coaching, strategic planning, and entrepreneurship guidance to companies realizing $5M to $500M in revenue each year. 

“After one year of working with PFD Group, we reached and exceeded goals that we didn’t think were possible at the beginning of the year.”

— Cory Prellwitz, Co-owner of Hometrends LLC

Our Process

• First we talk–about your goals, your business needs, and your core values.

• Then we determine if we are a good fit for your growth needs.

• Next, we build a Thrive Plan in which we determine the strengths of your leadership team and create strategies to emphasize those strengths.

• Ultimately, we help you move the needle and continuously evolve as an organization. 

• Among our many tools, we help you 

  • Pinpoint opportunities for growth

  • Become a better and more efficient leader 

  • Balance your life, so your personal life does not take a back seat to your professional life

Why We Do What We do

When you build a thriving business and life, you have the chance to transform the lives of your employees and of the people in your community. In doing so, you can also create more time for yourself, so you can spend time on what matters in your life most. 

Or in airline speak, we help you determine when to take off, increase elevation, maintain cruising speed, look for blind spots, or land. And then just like the PFD for which we were named, we help guide you to realize your goals. 

Leader Spotlight: Kenneth Morris, Aviation Community Foundation

Mr. Kenneth Morris

As a pilot, I am always quite attuned to the weather, so I would be remiss if I did not speak to the dark cloud that has settled over this country and our business community. We live in incredibly turbulent times. We as a nation are experiencing loss resulting from Covid-19, and we are also experiencing great racial turmoil. At PFD, we are most certainly grieving the losses of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, who are some of the most recent victims in a long list of men, women, and children to wrongly suffer terrible deaths. Much like a dark cloud, these events are obscuring a way forward, and they cast a shadow over the landscape of America. Given the circumstances, each of us are wondering how we can help create positive, lasting change. In the midst of this dark cloud, we would like to celebrate a leader that works tirelessly every day to create this change: Mr. Kenneth Morris.

What is important to remember is that the tragedies and acts of violence we witnessed this week don’t exist in silos, they exist within complex social and economic systems of which we are all a part. One dimension of this social system that I will highlight is poverty, which disproportionately affects people of color. In 2017, 25.4% of Native Americans and Alaska Natives, 21.2% of African Americans, 18.3% of Latinxs, and 10% of Asians experienced poverty compared with 8.7% non-Hispanic Whites. This sort of hardship was exacerbated among women of color, as in 2017, women were 38% more likely to experience poverty than men, with Black, Native American and Alaska Native, and Latinx women experiencing double the rates of poverty as non-Hispanic White women. Further, studies in the United States have found that employers respond more favorably to white candidates than their African American and Latinx counterparts. In recent months, this situation has gotten worse, as the economic and health impacts of Covid-19 also disproportionately affect communities of color. Further, as another result of Covid-19, nonprofits that aim to provide services and resources to these underserved communities have seen their revenue streams dry up, which means less support is being delivered at a time when these communities need it most.

It is easy to get discouraged when we look at these complex social systems, as so many factors that exist are out of our control. Even if we have relatively little control over the acts of violence, Covid-19, and large-scale poverty, as leaders, we must ask ourselves, “what can we influence? What is something we can do to make a positive impact in our communities?” We all have spheres of influence and areas of passion, and we must leverage our opportunities to the people within our communities that we can support.

At PFD, we are passionate about using our business to contribute upward mobility, aviation, and helping great leaders to make an exceptional impact on their communities. Inspired by General Stanley McChrystal’s Team of Teams model, we have decided to identify and support strong leaders to collaborate and support the greater good. We are dealing with increasingly complex situations, and because of this no one person can do it alone - we have to collaborate. We are better together.

In keeping with these passions, we are highlighting a great leader who has dedicated his life to making an exceptional impact on his community: Kenneth Morris.

Kenneth is using his passion for aviation to create incredible opportunities for upward mobility for diverse students.

Kenneth Morris speaking after receiving the Educate Our Educators Grant

Kenneth Morris grew up in Houston’s fifth ward, which, during the time of his childhood, was notorious for being one of the poorest and most dangerous places to live in Texas. Three weeks after high school, Kenneth enrolled in the Navy, where he joined the aviation field as a Naval Aircrewman. He viewed aviation as a challenge, working diligently to better himself, and quickly rising to the top of his class. Kenneth made rank in three years, an accomplishment that normally takes seven years to complete. As a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom, Kenneth is a recipient of the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, NATO Medal, Kosovo Air Campaign Medal, Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, Sea Service Deployment Medal and more. Further, Kenneth has a degree in Computer Information Systems from Seward County College. In 2018, Kenneth was selected as one of 11 U.S. military veterans and the only African American selected by the Department of Transportation to fly in the Forces to Flyers initiative. Upon completion, Kenneth will be a Certified Flight Instructor.

Kenneth’s impressive accomplishments don’t fully capture what an incredible human being he is. He is a humble leader who has the incredible gift to truly connect and mentor students from underserved communities to transform their lives. He has an empowering vision for a much better future – one of diversity, inclusion, and upward mobility - and he inspires students to see the same future for themselves.  These students can see themselves in him, and they are inspired by being exposed to opportunities that they never thought were possible.

Jet Blue & ACF 2017 New York Student Aviation Expedition Video, Featuring Kenneth Morris and the impact aviation education can have on students.

Within the next twenty years, there is expected to be large workforce shortages for pilots, maintainers, and cabin crew. While this is undoubtedly worrying to industry leaders, Kenneth’s love for and experience in the aviation industry has led him to see incredible opportunity. He knows how aviation has transformed his own life – and he engages students with little opportunity elsewhere to pursue careers in an industry where there is incredible opportunity for growth. Kenneth knows that many of his students don’t even realize that these opportunities are available to them, and he connects with them, mentors them, and provides additional means of support to them so that they can pursue these careers and break the cycle of poverty themselves. In fact, Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology was recognized as the #1 College for upward mobility in the nation, demonstrating how these careers in aviation can be transformational in the lives of students from underserved communities. He also connects with leaders of other great aviation programs, so they can share best practices and scale their impact. It is quite rare for a leader to be able to both have an incredible and futuristic vision that takes into account nation-wide trends but also be able to connect on an authentic and personal level with the students he is serving

Kenneth is making a real, tangible, and incredible difference in the lives of the students that he serves. In a world where poverty and lack of opportunity disproportionately affect people of color, leaders like Kenneth are making incredible strides to make lasting, structural changes that bring real, meaningful opportunities to students in underserved communities. Not only that, but Kenneth can truly connect with and mentor these students authentically and genuinely. To make lasting change and to provide opportunities to students and communities who need it most, we need to support and collaborate with amazing leaders like Kenneth Morris. We are incredibly humbled to be serving such an incredible leader.

If you want to support Kenneth in his mission of serving students, donate here: