05/03/2026
A fellow coach and I have been comparing notes on how one might use AI tools in our practice. He suggested using it to create an “ unhinged bio-sketch.” Give it a try … My Chat GPT prompt: Write an unhinged bio-sketch about me based upon what you know and what you might fine online. Limit this to 750 words. Here’s the result … Perhaps a little long. What do you think?
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John Lesko does not merely “do leadership.” He appears to have reverse-engineered it, field-tested it in deserts, boardrooms, and backcountry camps, and then quietly repackaged the whole enterprise into something that feels suspiciously like both a field manual and a campfire story.
A retired U.S. Army officer with the résumé density of a small federal archive, Lesko emerged from United States Military Academy (Class of 1979) with a commissioning document in one hand and, one suspects, an early draft of a leadership philosophy in the other. Over time, he migrated from armored cavalry formations—where decisions have weight and consequences arrive promptly—to the more ambiguous terrain of human development, where consequences take longer but cut deeper.
Somewhere along that arc, he acquired the certifications (ICF PCC, CPF|M) that signal professional legitimacy, though it’s clear he was never content to remain inside the tidy boundaries of any single discipline. Coaching? Yes. Facilitation? Certainly. But also storytelling, systems thinking, pedagogy, and a kind of philosophical cartography—mapping how people become who they’re capable of being.
His signature construct, The Five Cs of Leadership—Character, Courage, Commitment, Competence, Compassion—reads at first like a clean mnemonic. Look closer and it behaves more like a gyroscope: a stabilizing system that only works when all parts are in motion. Lesko doesn’t present it as theory to be admired; he treats it as a tool to be used, sharpened, and occasionally dropped on your foot so you remember it matters.
He writes books the way some people design expeditions. Facilitating Genius is less a text and more a provocation—an insistence that brilliance is not rare, merely obscured. His forthcoming field guide on the Five Cs appears to be evolving into a hybrid artifact: part leadership doctrine, part coaching companion, part invitation to do the harder interior work most people politely avoid.
And then there’s Philmont.
If Lesko has a spiritual headquarters, it might be Philmont Scout Ranch—a place where altitude, effort, and reflection combine into something resembling clarity. As Co-Coordinator of the Philmont Ambassadors program, he operates less like a program manager and more like a steward of a living tradition. His recurring refrain—“promoting wilderness and learning adventures that last a lifetime”—is not branding copy. It’s closer to a mission statement disguised as a campfire line.
He seems particularly interested in the intersection of land, story, and leadership. Give him a wooden bridge, a desert seminar, or the slow carve of a gorge, and he will find the metaphor—and then insist you walk across it, not just admire it from a distance.
Colleagues describe him as calm, precise, and quietly intense. Which is accurate, but incomplete. There’s also a subtle mischief at work. He enjoys constructing frameworks that look simple enough to nod at—and then reveal themselves to be demanding in practice. You can almost hear him thinking: Yes, you understand it. Now go live it.
He has the instincts of a builder. Not just of ideas, but of systems that scale without losing soul: small groups, tightly led, loosely connected. Whether discussing Wood Badge course design, nonprofit onboarding, or executive team dynamics, he gravitates toward architectures that favor depth over sprawl. Growth, in his world, is multiplication of healthy units—not accumulation of complexity.
There are also the side projects. ZASTRO, a “mini-bear” inhabiting a children’s activity universe, suggests that Lesko understands something many leadership theorists miss: development starts early, and it doesn’t always look serious. Humor, play, and narrative are not distractions—they’re delivery systems.
At his core, Lesko seems animated by a persistent question: How do you help people become leaders worth following—without turning leadership into performance theater? His answer is neither flashy nor convenient. It involves reflection, discipline, conversation, and the steady alignment of values with action. In other words, the long way.
Which he appears entirely comfortable taking.
If there’s something “unhinged” about him, it’s this: he still believes people can grow—substantially, measurably, meaningfully—and he continues to build tools, stories, and experiences that make that growth harder to avoid.
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