Liminal Leadership^® was conceived in the early 2000s. Liminnal Leadership, LLC was formally registered in 2006 to provide consulting services to government, not-for-profit organizations, and commercial companies.

Limiinal Leadership was registered as a trademarked term for leadership and organizational development and training in the USA in 2008 (renewed 2025) and in the EU (WIPO Madrid) in 2018. 

Dr. Robert Tomes

Dr. Tomes provides consulting and training services to clients across emerging technology, Fortune 100, government, and higher education domains. He is currently an adjunct lecturer in the Deparment of Homeland Security and Crimiinal Justice at UT Southern and serves on the board of the Anna Sobol Levy Foundation. He previously held adjunct positions at Georgetown University and the George Washiington University. His unpaid nonprofit service included service on the board of the Council for Emerging National Security Affairs (CENSA) and as President of the Mapstory Foundation. He has consulted for the World Bank, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, intelligence agencies, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Homeland Security. He has also consulted for companies in the AI, defense, intelligence, OSINT, remote sensing, strategy, and organiational development domains.

Tomes is currently a consultant to government, nonprofit organizations, and commercial companies.

His previous experience includes serving as a senior manager at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, as Vice President for Research and Programs at Innovative Analytics and Training, as a defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, and as an executive at BAE Systems, INC.

Dr. Tomes is the author of the first book on the Cold War Offset Strategy, "US Defense Strategy from Vietnam to Operation Iraqi Freedom" (Routledge) and co-editor of four other books on US defense strategy and international security. (See Publications page.)  His work has assigned as required readiing in war colleges and national security programs in the U.S., Canada, and the UK. Dr. Tomes has also provided lectures and presentations on a diverse range of technical intelligence and cybersecurity topics.

On Liminal Leadership®

Leadership is instrumental behavior involving the channeling, directing, enabling, and empowering of individuals or groups to achieve something they could not achieve absent the leader's presence and influence. Leadership works among and between people more than it works on them. 

Followership and teamwork are social behaviors. Flat and networked organizations have more "seams" and differnt types of hierarchy than traditional stovepipe organizations. They have boundary issues and integration challenegs that impel leaders to master the betwixt and between of organizational life.

Leadership doesn't sit inside one person. It lives in the relationship between a leader and the people they lead, in the space between them. A title gives someone a position, but leadership only happens when the group actually responds to that person, trusts them, and follows. In that sense, all leadership is liminal, a word that means "in between." Liminal Leadership is defined by what happens in the threshold that is betwixt and between the leader and the led.

Most leadership thinking looks inside the leader — traits, style, title. Liminal Leadership starts somewhere else. Leadership belongs to neither the leader nor the led. It exists only in what passes between them, and in that sense all leadership is liminal.

A title gives someone a position. Leadership happens only when a group responds, trusts, and follows, and that response is never the leader's alone or the group's alone. Organizations are full of seams: between teams, between levels, between the way things were and the way they are becoming. Leaders who understand the space between themselves and those they lead work those seams well.

Liminal Leadership is about developing that understanding.

Dr. Robert R. Tomes developed the concept of Liminal Leadership and coined the term in the early 2000s while working large-scale organizational transformation initiatives in government and as a consultant.

The full theory is set out in a book in progress and journal articles under review.