EAGLE-VAIL — Leadership is a skill set you can acquire and improve, says a former West Point professor who has been teaching it his entire adult life.

Stephen Ingalls is conducting Leadership Excellence Boot Camp, a one-day version of LGL Leadership's weeklong session.

"When people see themselves as capable leaders they behave differently, and all the people working with them begin to behave differently and see themselves differently," Ingalls said.

LGL Leadership's boot camp is sponsored by the Boy Scouts' Western Colorado Council. Sessions are scheduled for Sept. 6 in Eagle-Vail, and Sept. 7 in Aspen. Retired Lt. Col. Ingalls will lead the sessions in Eagle-Vail and Aspen.

LGL Leadership Inc. was founded and is operated by West Point graduates and former U.S. military officers, most with combat experience. Their target markets are business and community leaders, or emerging leaders in Eagle, Pitkin, Summit and Garfield counties, said Chris John, president of the Boy Scouts of America's Western Colorado Council.

"We're in the leadership development business," John said.

A bit about Boot Camp

Leadership Excellence Boot Camp is a start, where participants work with LGL Leadership instructors to understand leaders and leadership and to get to know themselves as leaders, Ingalls said.

"They are inspired to train themselves, and that's what we're after," Ingalls said. "We're working on culture change. For the ones who are serious about it and say they want more, we have more."

The program is an adaptation of the West Point Developmental Process, and it's based on LGL's core tenets of character, empathy, trust and accountability.

"They will be introduced to methods that can be employed immediately to look inside both themselves and their organizations," Ingalls said. "They will also begin to appreciate that leadership truly is a team sport."

About the instructor

Ingalls has been developing leaders for more than 30 years. He was an assistant professor at West Point and an Instructor at the Army Command and General Staff College.

Ingalls was the first U.S. Army Aviation officer to help lead a 4,400 combat brigade to a major training deployment at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California.

He is a 1982 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and has served as LGL Leadership's president since 2011 and its president and CEO since early 2015.

Ingalls led and directed operations ranging from climate research in Antarctica and Greenland to attack helicopter deployments throughout the United States, Europe and Korea. He earned a master's degree in engineering management from the University of Kansas, a Master of Military Art and Science from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth and a Master of Science in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is a former instructor and assistant professor of aerospace engineering at West Point and an instructor of tactics at the Command and General Staff College.