By COL Ron Sprang
Nearly three decades in the Army has taught me how to prepare for uncertainty. I trained for combat, deployed to war, commanded organizations, and learned to make decisions when lives and missions—not profits or promotions—were at stake. Like many leaders, I believed I understood resilience because I had experienced hardship.
Then I heard the word “cancer.”
Within weeks, life accelerated into a blur. I was removed from deployment and command, underwent major surgery, received a 1 in 2,000,000 diagnosis of a rare and aggressive cancer, and learned that it had already spread to my lymph nodes. Eight rounds of chemotherapy followed over the next seven months, on a two-weeks-on, one-week-off rotation, with an additional break between the fourth and fifth rounds due to extreme side effects. Every carefully crafted career plan suddenly became uncertain.
For the first time in my professional life, I could not solve the problem through hard work, longer hours, or stronger leadership.
I simply had to trust God, my medical team, and endure.
Looking back, cancer became one of the greatest leadership courses I have ever attended—not because I would ever choose it, but because suffering has a remarkable way of stripping away illusions. It reveals what truly matters. It exposes weaknesses we didn’t know existed and strengths we didn’t know God had been developing.
These are five leadership lessons I learned while walking through the fire.
1. Leaders are not defined by control but by trust
Military leaders spend their careers reducing uncertainty and mitigating risk. We build plans, conduct rehearsals, identify risks, and prepare contingencies. We pride ourselves on controlling as many variables as possible.
Cancer ignored every one of those instincts. No amount of planning could guarantee pathology reports. No contingency plan could eliminate side effects. No checklist could promise another year of life. Eventually I realized that leadership is not about controlling every outcome. It is about choosing faithfulness when outcomes remain uncertain.
Organizations often experience their own periods of uncertainty: budget cuts, reorganizations, failed initiatives, unexpected crises, or missions that change overnight. During those moments, teams rarely expect leaders to have every answer.
They expect leaders to remain steady. Confidence and calm are contagious. So is panic. The leader who accepts uncertainty without surrendering purpose creates psychological stability for everyone else. That realization changed how I think about command. The best leaders are not the ones who control everything. They are the ones who inspire trust when no one else can see the path ahead. Even when the odds are stacked against you, leaders must stand strong and forge the path forward.
2. Vulnerability creates stronger teams than perfection
For much of my career, I believed leaders needed to project confidence at all times. Confidence remains essential, but I eventually learned that authenticity creates a different kind of strength.
Cancer forced me to admit limitations. There were days I was exhausted. There were days my body simply refused to cooperate. And days when I needed help from my family, my medical team, friends, and fellow Soldiers. That dependence was uncomfortable. It also reminded me that leadership has never been an individual sport.
My oncologists coordinated with surgeons and oncologists across multiple hospital networks. Experts from around the world collaborated and contributed to treatment recommendations at my tumor boards. Nurses anticipated needs before I voiced them. Family members carried burdens I could not. Friends prayed when I lacked words. Each person contributed something I could never provide alone.
The experience reminded me that healthy organizations operate the same way. Leaders who pretend to be invincible often unintentionally communicate that everyone else should hide weakness too. Problems remain hidden. Mistakes go unreported. Innovation slows because people fear failure. Conversely, leaders who acknowledge limitations give others permission to contribute their strengths. Vulnerability does not diminish authority. It multiplies trust.
3. Presence matters more than perfect words
One of the greatest surprises during treatment was discovering how little people remembered what was said but how vividly they remembered who showed up. People from around the world prayed regularly. Some friends and family called regularly. Others sent short text messages, Facebook messages, and lots of cards. My wife, my best friend, sat beside me at every appointment, was there before and after every surgery, and held my hand through all the setbacks and disappointments. None of them solved cancer. All of them made carrying it easier.
Leadership works the same way. When organizations encounter tragedy or uncertainty, leaders often search for the perfect speech. They worry about saying exactly the right thing. Most people aren’t looking for eloquence. They’re looking for presence.
Employees remember the supervisor who checked in after a difficult loss. Soldiers remember the commander who visited the hospital. Families remember the leader who simply listened. Presence communicates value long before words communicate solutions. The most influential leaders are often those who consistently show up.
4. Your identity must be bigger than your position
For years my identity had been closely connected to serving as an Army officer. Then cancer interrupted everything. Assignments changed. Plans changed. The future became uncertain and still is today. The experience forced me to ask an uncomfortable question: Who am I if I can no longer do the job I love?
Many leaders eventually face similar questions. Retirement. Promotion delays. Unexpected career changes. Medical issues. Corporate restructuring. Children leaving home. If identity depends entirely on a title, every transition feels like losing yourself. Cancer reminded me that positions are temporary. Character is permanent. Titles eventually disappear. Influence remains.
Whether someone leads a squad, a brigade, a company, or a community organization, their greatest contribution is rarely their position. It is the character they demonstrate while holding it.
Leadership begins long before command and continues long after command ends. We have the ability to shape our legacy through our character in action and the lives we are able to impact. We must remain focused on our character over a specific outcome. We can’t control outcomes. When I was first diagnosed and then staged as High-Risk Stage III following surgery, the outcome was unknown and the statistics were not in my favor. I was powerless. However, I resolved and prayed that regardless of the outcome, I would not dishonor God, my family, and the Army.
5. Hope is a leadership responsibility
Hope is often misunderstood as optimism. Optimism believes things will probably work out. Hope chooses purpose even when they might not. Those are very different ideas.
During treatment, I learned that hope is sustained by purpose, relationships, and faith rather than circumstances. Every appointment became another opportunity to encourage someone else. Every difficult day became another reminder that others were watching how I responded. Every setback became another chance to choose faith and courage over despair.
Leaders constantly transfer hope—or hopelessness—to those around them. Teams borrow emotional strength from their leaders. When leaders become cynical, organizations often follow. When leaders continue moving forward despite uncertainty, others discover they can do the same. Hope is not wishful thinking. It is disciplined perseverance. It is choosing to believe that today’s hardship does not have the final word.
The Most Important Leadership Lesson
Today, my scans show no evidence of disease. I remain under long-term surveillance because cancer is part of my story and there is very little known about my type of cancer. But it no longer defines the story.
Looking back, I don’t primarily remember chemotherapy. I remember kindness. I don’t primarily remember fear. I remember faith. I don’t primarily remember uncertainty. I remember the people who carried burdens with me.
The Army often talks about leading from the front. Cancer taught me another dimension of leadership. Sometimes leading from the front means walking into uncertainty first so others know they don’t have to walk alone. Sometimes it means admitting weakness so others discover the courage to be honest. Sometimes it means remaining faithful when no one knows how the story will end.
Cancer also changed the way I think about leadership itself. Facing my own mortality forced me to reassess my purpose and ask a question every leader should eventually confront: If my time and energy are limited, where will they have the greatest impact? The answer was not accomplishing more myself—it was investing more deeply in others. I became more intentional about developing leaders who could think independently, make sound decisions, and carry the mission forward long after I am gone. Leadership became less about being indispensable and more about making others indispensable. I learned to focus my attention on the decisions only I could make and the responsibilities only I could fulfill, while empowering, coaching, and trusting others with everything else. By surrendering control, I became a more effective leader.
I began to see leadership less as a marathon I needed to finish alone and more as the first leg of a relay. My responsibility is not simply to run my portion of the race well but to hand the baton to the next runner with every possible advantage. That means removing obstacles, sharing hard-earned lessons, creating growth opportunities, and building systems that allow others to succeed beyond my own time in service. Whether my race is longer or shorter than I once imagined is ultimately not my decision. My responsibility is to run faithfully, finish well, and ensure those running behind me are stronger, wiser, and better prepared to accomplish the mission than they would have been without me. In the end, that is the legacy every leader should hope to leave.
Every leader will eventually enter a furnace. It may be failure, grief, betrayal, financial hardship, family struggle, or a mission that seems impossible. What matters is who we become while walking through it. The greatest leadership legacy is not that we avoided the fire, but that we emerged from it with greater compassion, deeper humility, stronger character, and a renewed commitment to serve others. The furnace will change every leader. The only question is whether it will leave us harder—or wiser.
COL Ron Sprang is a career infantry officer, with over 27 years of active service, currently serving as the Chief, Joint Effects Division at the Mission Command Training Program. He has led and commanded through the battalion level and his most recent assignment was as the PACOM J35 Contingencies Branch Chief. He was commissioned through the United States Military Academy in 2002 and holds three Master’s Degrees.
