Anyone Can Be a Good Leader: Interview with Royal Canadian Air Force Major General Scott Clancy

I recently went one on one with Major General (ret) Scott Clancy. Major General (ret) Clancy served in multiple squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) in the Canadian Armed Forces as a tactical helicopter pilot over the course of his 37 year military career and recently authored the book Developing Coaching Leaders.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth? 

Scott: I was, for most of my military career, an energetic, inspired, self-starting, yet somewhat brash and tactless individual. I cared deeply for the people serving alongside me. In my mind, this approach was an extension of my personal character. The idea of harnessing self-awareness, alongside a dose of humility, in order to be a better leader only came later.

In the last stages of my 37-year military career, I began really studying leadership and people, in order to teach and mentor my teams. Much of my career had been spent honing crucial skills to lead at the tactical and executive levels, but almost all of it was trial and error. My studying led me to books and podcasts, like your fantastic Thirty Minute Mentors, all filling a hole in my professional development.

Simultaneously, I had been coaching my two sons and their basketball teams. I loved coaching and the positive character-building crucible that sport can be. But the more I coached, the more I saw I was leading my teams and developing leadership in the athletes. And the more I led in the military, the more I saw I was mentoring and coaching my teams to maximize their performance. 

I knew that many of my personal errors and thereafter learned skills could help others stumbling through this same void. I had experienced many mentors and wanted to learn how to develop skills to foster better leaders and coaches.  

Adam: What do you hope readers take away from your new book? 

Scott: The number one thing that I hope readers connect with, is that anyone can be a good leader and coach. That the mere self-awareness of trying to improve your skills in leading and coaching teams better will improve the quality of your leadership. Finally, I hope that as a community of leaders and coaches, we can elevate the relationship we have with our people above the daily performance-based transactions. 

Adam: What are the best leadership lessons you learned from your time in the military? 

Scott: The three things I learned from my time in the military that can really help leaders, are how essential the bond of trust is, mentor and coach your team always, and “leadership by walking about.” 

The military instills the obvious yet essential bond of trust that must exist in order to accomplish the mission, and take the risks that going into harm's way necessitates. However, my military experience also showed that if you are not constantly mentoring and coaching individuals, and the whole team, on how to develop themselves, that trust will be short-lived. Finally, a dear friend and mentor Lieutenant General Rick Findley taught me the long-lasting benefits of spending time out amongst the people that you are responsible for, listening to them, and sharing in their deprivations.

I think these lessons universally apply in all areas of work and life where there are human interactions.

Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader? 

Scott: I think that leaders come in a myriad of qualities and skills developed at different levels and useful in different ways. I am a firm believer that leading and coaching are learned skills taught through self-reflection, coaching and practice. At the fundamental level, all leaders must have an ability to establish and maintain trust with their team, while being a trustworthy follower within the larger team. I also believe that all leaders need the ability to establish and translate the vision for accomplishing the goals set out for the team. To enable this, all leaders and coaches must develop communication skills (especially good listening skills) that iteratively build a bridge between leader and team. There are many other qualities that I believe good leaders and coaches require to be effective, but I think you can see that these three are underpinned with a deep caring for the people of the team. 

Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level? 

Scott: The two best things that leaders can do right now to improve their skills is to embark upon a path of self-reflection and to always be learning or honing a new leadership skill. For those already deep into looking at their own leadership skills, seeking new and innovative feedback loops, or engaging personal coaches beyond thinking deeply about past interactions and how to be a better leader are some ideas. But everyone in the leadership space should be striving to learn and master new and better leadership skills. Reading, listening and pragmatically applying new techniques is key.

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams? 

Scott: Elevate the relationship that you have with the members of your team above the binary day-to-day performance-based interactions. By placing the relationship you have with these people above whatever issue you are dealing with, you will open the door to meaningful engagements that dive to the root of issues, and enable you to coach your teams individually, and collectively, to better success. In fact, by not always focusing on the business of the day, but rather upon their personal development and the maximization of their potential, the end result will be extraordinary.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to emerging leaders and to senior leaders? 

Scott: The best tip I would have for emerging leaders is to begin right now on being self-reflective about your leadership and therefore mindful of the example you set. Start journaling your leadership journey to learn from the mistakes that we all inevitably make. It's not avoiding the mistakes that is key, it's learning from them. 

The single most common thing that I hear from both emerging leaders and senior leaders is the lack of time. For emerging leaders, they are often thrust into a leadership or management position with little or no formal training and told to execute that function on top of an already crippling workload. For senior leaders, the high-pressure demands of directing large and often complex organizations leaves little time to spend on developing their teams. Both examples need to match the desire to focus on people with setting intentions and pragmatically linking the scheduling and prioritization functions of their personal and organizational business together. I go into much more detail on how to lead through this chaos in the “Tactics, Techniques and Procedures” section of my book.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received? 

Scott: In one of my lowest moments where I had made a monumental error that I thought was career-ending, my wife asked me, “Did you apologize?” I answered no. But this haunted me. Although I knew I had made a huge mistake in the way that I handled this relationship with a very senior officer, I was not going to follow what I considered to be an unethical and ergo unlawful order. So, at the first occasion, I apologized. To no effect. When I expressed to my wife my disappointment with the result, she looked puzzled. She told me the act of apologizing and learning from this event, even using it to teach others, while remaining true to yourself, that is real, that is authentic, and that is all you can do. Best advice, ever!


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally-recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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