I'm a pretty consistent person. By that, I mean that I'm fairly stable in my demeanor and life as far as my emotions and actions go. I don't get overly happy or upset on a regular basis. I go through my days pretty much the same with some ups here and downs there.

When I was an every day leader, I felt that was expected of me. The last thing employees want to deal with is someone who comes in every day as a different person. How does it feel being on pins and needles wondering if the person you report to is going to be in a good mood or a bad mood?

I was conscious of this very early in my leadership life. I learned from my dad, the master sargeant, that you can get along with others but that they need to at least feel they know where they stand with your mood every day to work consistently themselves. One could say I was practiced at it, as I always knew my responsibilities to the team.

When it comes to work, even now, I can be pretty creative when I need to be. Resolving issues is strangely fun because I get to stretch my mind. Where the job is concerned, no matter which job it is, I have ideas and goals and work on getting things done.

In my personal life, I'm so consistent that it can be boring. In 12 years my office has only changed once. The master bedroom has hardly changed at all.

But every other room in the house, even the dining room, has gone through multiple iterations. My wife is one of those creative people that gets tired of the "routine" and likes to shake things up. Even the kitchen, which has to remain pretty stable, has gone through multiple color changes and image changes.

I look at my music and realize that I know very little about today's music. Most of the acts I've never heard of, or at least I don't remember the names if I have heard of them. I couldn't tell you a single Justin Bieber song; I only learned of Adele a couple of months ago. Katy Perry... okay, she kind of stands out, along with Lady Gaga; it's hard to miss them.

Something that many of us think about as we get older is whether we're getting passed by or not, whether we're still relevant. I always thought I was the coolest grown up in the world because I didn't have kids and knew what was going on in pop culture; that was so 15 years ago by now. Sometimes I feel out of touch; other times I'm comforted because there was so much from my history that I enjoyed, and that I continue to enjoy.

But when it comes to people, if you're going to be a real leader you can't rely on all the things that happened in the past and hope that those things still work. For instance, in health care, any leader who still believes that introducing a new computer system to their hospital means they'll be able to eventually reduce staff is living dinosaur dreams because it's not the reality anymore. In education, any leaders who still believe that the only way to address their financial issues is to increase class sizes and reduce the number of teachers across the board faces worsening grades and teacher dissatisfaction for those who remain.

All of us, including independent consultants, have to continue learning about our craft. That's what makes us valuable. Never throw out what you've learned in the past, but learn how to incorporate it into what you learn now. That's true growth, and it makes us all better rounded to do the best job possible, for ourselves and others.