When I think back on different moments that have shaped who I am, there are a few that stand out.

In the first, I was a fourth grader in my hometown of Pensacola, Florida. Near the end of the school year, my teacher, Mrs. Hazelip, pulled me aside to say she’d like me to be captain of the crossing guards in the fall. I was dumbfounded. I was small for my size, in terms of both height and muscle, not one of the popular kids, and a decent student and athlete but not a star. When I asked her why, she said, “I think there’s something special in you and you’d be a good leader for the team.” That stuck with me for a long time: Mrs. Hazelip identified a quality in me that I hadn’t seen myself, that I had the potential to be a leader.

Another moment happened years later, when I was an army company commander deployed in Kosovo in the aftermath of the Kosovo War. We were a combat construction unit, which meant we were a team of about 140 people who could fight if necessary, but we usually built things—in this case, a NATO basecamp. Typically, we got about a half-day off each week, and the company and I decided we wanted to do something to help the locals. So we went into a town called Ferizaj and visited schools to see if they needed help getting started again after years of conflict. We found a mostly empty high school with roof damage, and started talking to a man who was inside. The school’s former principal, he explained that Serbs didn’t allow Muslim students to attend during the war—and he himself was Muslim. Later, the school became a refugee shelter and had been dilapidated ever since. When I asked if he would allow Serbian students to attend the school, he responded, “I must. Otherwise, what are we doing? It’s my duty to do so.” So we helped fix the roof. After the terrible things that happened to people on both sides of the conflict, his forgiveness and willingness to welcome the children of his former adversaries made a big impression on me. The principal reinforced the importance of being a forgiving and inclusive leader.

A third moment took place when I was working in the US Department of the Treasury’s TARP program after the 2008 financial crisis. Assistant Secretary Herb Allison oversaw the program, and one day he said to me, “I’ve been watching you. You’re in the room, but you’re also up in the air, taking everything in and figuring out where we should go. I want you to keep doing that.” What he said encouraged me to think about what it means to look at things more strategically. In some ways, I think it even contributed to my decision to apply to the doctoral program so I could develop that understanding and share it with others. Secretary Allison reinforced the importance of being a strategic leader.

Over time, I’ve had the opportunity to reflect a little more on what those moments have meant. In the case of Mrs. Hazelip, I think the realization was that we have to recognize and enable the leadership potential in others who may not see it in themselves. With my experience in Kosovo, I learned that with potential comes the responsibility to be both inclusive and serve others. And in the last instance, I fully understood the importance of applying that same potential toward being strategic. It was a progressive understanding that I came to because different people reached out to me along the way, and I was receptive to what they said. Though I am still a work in progress, the potential power of our interactions with others is something I always try to remember. We never know when or how we might get the opportunity, with just a word, to catalyze others so that they can see their potential to be inclusive leaders for our world.

Colonel Everett Spain is a professor and head of the department of leadership and behavioral sciences at West Point. He has served on four combat deployments and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Soldier’s Medal, Purple Heart, and Bronze Star.

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