Leadership the FBI Way

Kathleen McChesney “is the only female special agent to be named the Bureau’s executive assistant director. After a thirty-year career in law enforcement, she held leadership positions at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Walt Disney Company, and since 2007 she has consulted with businesses and non-profit organizations. She lives in Los Angeles.” Kathleen McChesney is the co-author of Pick Up Your Own Brass: Leadership the FBI Way.

William Gavin “is a twenty-eight-year veteran of the FBI who attained the agency’s highest rank of assistant director in charge. He has held executive positions in the health care industry and for a security services provider, and has been a commentator for MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN. He currently serves as a business consultant. He lives in Boston. William Gavin is the co-author of Pick Up Your Own Brass: Leadership the FBI Way.

According to the book description of Pick Up Your Own Brass: Leadership the FBI Way, “In FBI terms, leaders who pick up their own brass casings at the firing range are more effective than those who expect someone else to do it for them. To those at the bureau, this small action speaks louder than words and is largely indicative of a person’s overall management style. Through a host of real-life FBI stories, from the streets to the corner offices, Pick Up Your Own Brass: Leadership the FBI Way reveals the leadership qualities that have enabled the bureau to successfully navigate through a century of war, espionage, organized crime, terrorism, fraud, and corruption. Offering fifty essential leadership lessons based on challenges that FBI officials have faced over the course of their careers, this book can help anyone—established leaders, aspiring leaders, minority leaders, and even “accidental executives” who find themselves managing more than they imagined—build a culture of leadership.”

One reader of Pick Up Your Own Brass: Leadership the FBI Way said, “Pick Up Your Own Brass, with its fascinating human-interest stories of the FBI, and valuable insights into human behavior, is far more than a guidance book to effective leadership in a topnotch organization. Each chapter is thoughtfully laid out to teach valuable lessons by setting down memorable examples of the decision making process, and reinforcing the major points raised at the end of each anecdote. In doing so, this book is effectively instructional, but flows seamlessly like a fast-paced novel. In gaining the 'inside scoop' on leadership from the managers who worked at the highest level of the FBI organization, Kathy McChesney and Bill Gavin lay out the leadership traits necessary for an effective, cohesive unit in any organization, paralleling many of the traits that our founding fathers adhered to in governing: integrity, measured forethought, well-planned out action, prideful humbleness, healthy pliable ego, true love of leadership, cooperative spirit, calculated articulateness, and above all surrendering one's personal gain, acclaim, and hubris for the good of the whole. This book is not only for law enforcement institutions and business managers, but also for anyone who wants advice on how to lead effectively in any area of life--how to take direct charge when it's called for, but to reverentially step back and lead indirectly through capable and talented subordinates at other times; and, most importantly, to give credit where credit is due. The leadership examples set forth in this book, the basis of FBI success since the early 1900s, have been shown by vast experience to be effective strategies in keeping this country safe from criminal and terrorist elements. The authors should be commended for creating an eloquent and structured work comprising some very personal inside experiences of the FBI, both pros and cons, so that others may learn how to effectively lead.”