John Scheidt Email & Phone Number

I arrived on the Japanese Island of Okinawa with five other freshly minted Marines. The section’s primary function was to instruct and inspect. There was one primary instructor position available and everyone else would be support. The competition lasted about a month, and it came down to Patrick and myself. Patrick won the position but I won the competition, they hadn’t expected we would have done that well. I was give the assistant position teaching Control Center, a three day course that they had never let a boot (freshly out of bootcamp) teach. Within the first five minutes of my first class, everyone in the class was lost, including myself. I put everyone on break, and looked for help, there was none. After ten minutes, I brought everyone back in and said “Let’s start again.” I restarted the class, followed the outline and within fifteen minutes, I hit my stride. In instructing adults, I had found my first great love. Intuitively, I knew to be a great teacher, I had to first be a great student, so I studied. I studied learning, speaking, people, anything I could get my hands on to better understand people; I have never stopped. As my reputation grew, I was transferred to the Headquarters for Marine Forces Reserve in New Orleans. I had always said that if I were in charge, I would do things differently. There was an enormous learning curve going from managing a local account with a few hundred people to a national account with over 36,000. How much have I learned along the way? I have learned so much that I fully realize how much I still don’t know and how much I may never know. Over the years, I have learned three very important things:1) How to find the question. So often we jump at the answer when we don’t fully understand the question. Your manager says they need everyone to be faster at their processes and make less mistakes. After asking the right questions, what you want is a way to increase everyone’s ownership in the process so they now ask themselves, how can I improve, not just myself but the process as well. Look up the 5 Whys method.2) There is always a way. When you correctly identify the root of the issue, there is always a way to make it better.3) People are important. As leaders, we are responsible for improving the lives of those who follow us. If we take care of the people, they will take care of the mission better than we could have ever done on our own. Yes, there will always be situations when you must manage, but always look for that opportunity to lead.

Listed skills include Instructor Led Training, Leadership, Training Delivery, Instructional Systems Development, and 18 others.