One of the key habits in Stephen Covey’s bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is “Practice Synergy.” That is, true greatness occurs when people work together and the sum is greater than the individual parts. One of the finest examples of synergy in the Civil War that I know of was that of Lee and Jackson. Both were brilliant generals and strategists on their own, but when they worked together in 1862-1863, they created a string of brilliant victories for the South including Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. Their victories are all the more remarkable when one realizes they faced Union forces two to four times their size, not to mention the preponderance of Union weapons, resources, and practically everything else. In two of the greatest “What If’s?” of the Civil War, what if Jackson had been given the 10,000 men he asked for right after the Battle of First Manassas. Might he have taken Washington and won the war--and independence--for the South in the first months of the war? And in 1863, had he been alive to work with Lee at Gettysburg, might the South have won there too? It’s mind-boggling to ponder! Take a listen and judge for yourself Have a question or feedback? Maybe a topic you’d like to hear in a future episode? Please email Scott at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe, write a review, and share them on social media and by word of mouth! Those are GREAT ways to help more people find our podcasts. Please also visit us at www.DreyerCoaching.com; check out the blog posts at the bottom of the page for more information about life in the USA and the crazy English language.

On April 9, 1865, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Gen. U.S. Grant and his Army of the Potomac, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the Civil War. So, it is appropriate that this podcast episode is posting on April 9, the 153rd anniversary of Lee’s surrender.While the North was blessed with more successful political leadership in the Civil War, the South was endowed with more successful military leadership, and probably no one was more successful than the wily Robert E. Lee. When the Civil War began in 1861, the South was vastly outnumbered by the North in almost every category except for tobacco and cotton, neither of which a person can eat. So, in retrospect it is almost unbelievable that the South could stand for four years against the Northern onslaughts, and Lee was a huge factor in this. Take a listen to find out more about this man who was the son of a famous Revolutionary War general, who married a great-granddaughter of George Washington’s wife, who is the only person in world history to have been offered a generalship on OPPOSING sides of the same conflict, and who how has a university named after him: Robert E. Lee. Have a question or feedback? Maybe a topic you’d like to hear in a future episode? Please email Scott at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe, write a review, and share them on social media and by word of mouth! Those are GREAT ways to help more people find our podcasts. Please also visit us at www.DreyerCoaching.com; check out the blog posts at the bottom of the page for more information about life in the USA and the crazy English language.

Abraham Lincoln. The name is an icon; the man, a legend. As our podcast pivots to positive leadership examples from the Civil War, Lincoln ranks among the greatest. Frankly, in many ways, the Union’s survival is arguably due more to him than any other single person. Despite the Union’s overwhelming superiority in terms of men, material, and overall resources in 1861, the North was plagued by poor--sometimes terrible--military leadership, especially in the early years. In many ways, Lincoln held the country together. Take a listen to find out more of what made Lincoln successful, especially his humor, religious faith, powerful communication skills, sense of mercy. This episode closes with some famous Lincoln quotations.Have a question or feedback? Maybe a topic you’d like to hear in a future episode? Please email Scott at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe, write a review, and share them on social media and by word of mouth! Those are GREAT ways to help more people find our podcasts. Please also visit us at www.DreyerCoaching.com; check out the blog posts at the bottom of the page for more information about life in the USA and the crazy English language.

After hearing about five examples of failed leadership in previous episodes, now we get to pivot to some SUCCESSFUL leadership from the US Civil War, and a chief name is General Grant. Grant was responsible for the turning point campaign in the Western theater of War, at Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 4, 1863, and in 1864 Lincoln promoted him to fight in Virginia where he took on the masterful General Robert E. Lee. Though brilliant, Lee could not replace his fallen men, but Grant could, so Grant used the “terrible math” to basically bleed the South white and win the war at Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9, 1865. Grant later became a two-term US president and now appears on the $50 bill. Take a listen to see what lessons we can learn from his life and example!Have a question or feedback? Maybe a topic you’d like to hear in a future episode? Please email Scott at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe, write a review, and share them on social media and by word of mouth! Those are GREAT ways to help more people find our podcasts. Please also visit us at www.DreyerCoaching.com; check out the blog posts at the bottom of the page for more information about life in the USA and the crazy English language.

This episode continues our Civil War series of what NOT to do. Our goal is not to share dry stories from long-ago history, but to make it real and teach valuable life lessons that can help us today. Episodes 26-29 were about a specific person who failed as a leader; in this episode, we look at a particular battle in the Civil War, one of the most bizarre stories of that conflict. In this story, a bunch of Pennsylvania soldiers who had been coal miners hatched a plot to dig a tunnel and blow up a huge part of the Southern defenses around Petersburg, Virginia. It almost succeeded, and may have ended the war a year early! However, poor leadership and a lack of FOLLOW-THROUGH helped the North snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Take a listen and find out more! Have a question or feedback? Maybe a topic you’d like to hear in a future episode? Please email Scott at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe, write a review, and share them on social media and by word of mouth! Those are GREAT ways to help more people find our podcasts. Please also visit us at www.DreyerCoaching.com; check out the blog posts at the bottom of the page for more information about life in the USA and the crazy English language.

For our 10th episodes, we like to switch up our topics a bit and invite a guest speaker to join us. In our 30th episode, Pastor Chad Forte shares three remarkable stories from his early life, where he believes he was visited by someone from “the other side.” This is a Life App Podcast “first,” to talk about supernatural tales and visitations, but stories like these should encourage us all to ponder, “is there more to this life than meets the eye, at the surface? Take a listen and be challenged and encouraged! Have a question or feedback? Maybe a topic you’d like to hear in a future episode? Please email Scott at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe, write a review, and share them on social media and by word of mouth! Those are GREAT ways to help more people find our podcasts. Please also visit us at www.DreyerCoaching.com; check out the blog posts at the bottom of the page for more information about life in the USA and the crazy English language.

In Episode 27 we learned there is an old English saying from the Bible (Proverbs 16:18), “Pride goeth before a fall.” That was certainly the case with Union General George McClellan, but also with General Joseph Hooker. Many times in 1862, the Northern armies greatly outnumbered their Southern foes, but the Rebel armies under the brilliant leadership of Lee, Jackson, and others, continually beat back the Yankee armies. When Lincoln named Hooker lead general of the Northern Army of the Potomac, Hooker boasted: “My plans are perfect, and when I start to carry them out may God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none.”That boast reminds me of another old English saying: Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched. In Hooker’s case, he should have had more humility and less conceit when taking on the wily Lee, even though Hooker’s men outnumbered Lee’s by about two to one! Despite those lopsided odds, Hooker managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and led the Northern army to another horrific loss at the Battle of Chancellorsville.Lee’s stunning victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863 then gave him the confidence to invade the North, which led to the titanic struggle at Gettysburg in July. Had things at Gettysburg gone differently, Lee’s army might have invaded Washington, taken Lincoln prisoner, won the Civil War, and been independent! Truly an amazing “what if?” to think about. Word of the Day: conceited (adj.) overly prideful; arrogantQuestion of the Day: Where is the “fine line” between healthy self-confidence and conceit? Can one be confident, yet still humble? If so, how?Have a question or feedback? Maybe a topic you’d like to hear in a future episode? Please email Scott at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe, write a review, and share them on social media and by word of mouth! Those are GREAT ways to help more people find our podcasts. Please also visit us at www.DreyerCoaching.com; check out the blog posts at the bottom of the page for more information about life in the USA and the crazy English language.

An old English saying that comes from Proverbs 16:18 in the Bible says, “Pride goeth before a fall.” And that was certainly true in the case of Union General George McClellan. McClellan was brilliant and successful in some ways, which probably led to his huge arrogance. However, that conceit--coupled with his overcaution--caused him to get fired by Lincoln, not just once, but twice! Listen to this episode to find out why the men in his army loved him, Lincoln was furious with him, TWICE he could have won the war for the North three years early, and he ALMOST became president and would have let the South remain independent! Word of the Day: cautious (adj.) marked by extreme carefulnessQuestion of the Day: What is the “fine line” between healthy caution and paralyzing fear? Have a question or feedback? Maybe a topic you’d like to hear in a future episode? Please email Scott at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe, write a review, and share them on social media and by word of mouth! Those are GREAT ways to help more people find our podcasts. Please also visit us at www.DreyerCoaching.com; check out the blog posts at the bottom of the page for more information about life in the USA and the crazy English language.

Have you ever been in a class where the teacher really does remind you of Charlie Brown’s teacher?Like this?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss2hULhXf04&feature=youtu.beI have been a licensed history teacher since 1987, and I cannot remember how many times someone has told me, basically, “I used to hate history when I was in school, but now that I’m an adult, it fascinates me and I can’t get enough of it.”In my opinion, this may be because a lot of our history is taught badly, or we teachers just try to get our students to memorize dry facts and dates, but history has a STORY in it! The longer I live, the more I try to teach story and attach LIFE LESSONS to the examples, so our lives today can be richer and more successful. So that leads us to this episode. At the 2017 Dreyer Academy LLC Christmas Party, our podcast producer Todd Holloway told me he remembered a project I assigned his honors US history class when he had been in 11th grade and said it had taught him valuable life lessons. I assigned the class certain US Civil War leaders, both from the North and South, and the students were to research them and identify if they are seen as successful or failed leaders, and what made them successful or not. I was grateful Todd recalled that project and found it helpful, and the fact that he had remembered it six or seven years later, I found remarkable. So, he and I decided we needed to revisit some of those “life lessons” in our podcasts, so here is the first one! In this episode, we look at the life of Union (Northern) General Ambrose Burnside. He was the classic “middle manager” who generally succeeded as a general under a higher command, but he failed utterly when Lincoln put him in charge of the Army of the Potomac. Burnside outnumbered Lee’s army by 120,000 to 80,000 men, but at the bloody Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, he lost an unbelievable 13,000 men in ONE DAY while the South lost less than 5,000. This episode will examine some of Burnside’s flaws and seek to help us avoid those errors today, in particular, “tunnel vision.”Learn more about General Burnside and the Battle of Fredericksburg below:http://www.history.com/news/remembering-the-battle-of-fredericksburg-150-years-later Factoid: After the Civil War, Burnside became the first president of the National Rifle Association (NRA):https://home.nra.org/about-the-nra/Word of the Day: sideburns (noun). A strip of hair grown by men down the side of their face in front of their earsQuestion of the Day: What is the “fine line” between FOCUS and TUNNEL VISION? How are they different? How can a person retain focus, yet be open to new ways of thinking and seeing matters?Have a question or feedback? Maybe a topic you’d like to hear in a future episode? Please email Scott at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you! If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe, write a review, and share them on social media and by word of mouth! Those are GREAT ways to help more people find our podcasts. Please also visit us at www.DreyerCoaching.com; check out the blog posts at the bottom of the page for more information about life in the USA and the crazy English language.