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E73: Followership - The Other Half of the Equation · The Junto Podcast

• 0:10
  Hello, America. Welcome to the Junto podcast, where we promote the practical
• 0:14
  applications of critical thinking and bold creativity.
• 0:18
  I'm your host, Edgar Mills. Thank you for joining us.
• 0:31
  Thank you very much for staying with me. So I'm trying a new thing,
• 0:34
  trying the Yeti microphone here. We'll see. Instead of the headphones.
• 0:39
  It seemed like there was some echo going on. I'm no sound engineer,
• 0:44
  so I've turned the gain all the way down. We'll see what happens.
• 0:48
  At any rate. So this episode, you know, the past few episodes have been dark.
• 0:55
  Talked a lot about resentment, family and marital resentment,
• 0:58
  and just all kind of, you know, psychological things that are painful to fight through.
• 1:06
  I feel compelled to do those things, though.
• 1:09
  But we're changing gears. We're changing gears.
• 1:13
  One of the things we do here at OSS is we do, yeah, firearms training for sure.
• 1:21
  We do the Gento podcast for sure.
• 1:24
  And we do what two team guys and but that's i think we're merging everything
• 1:31
  i think everything's going to become everything's going to be on one central
• 1:35
  hub on on the website and you'll be able to get to all these different things,
• 1:40
  but two team guys the the whole thing is leadership and team building.
• 1:46
  So why am I qualified to train people on that?
• 1:52
  Well, besides experience, 25 years of military experience, and I'll stand by this folks all day.
• 2:01
  If you've spent 25 years in the military.
• 2:06
  I've led other people since 1998 as a leader, a junior leader.
• 2:14
  And then you just progress up from there. So you get a lot of trial and error experience.
• 2:23
  And you interact with so many different personalities.
• 2:27
  And when you're a junior leader and you're the low man on the leadership spectrum,
• 2:32
  and you're dealing with all the personalities from above, you learn things,
• 2:37
  and you pick up things from good leaders and you pick up things from bad leaders and you learn a lot.
• 2:44
  And then, you know, tragically, after I retired, I started reading,
• 2:51
  more because I felt like I had a little more time to do some,
• 2:55
  some study and research that I didn't feel like I had when I active duty button.
• 3:02
  I don't know who coined the term followership. I don't even know that that's
• 3:06
  a real word, followership, but that's the other half of the equation.
• 3:13
  You've got leadership and leadership gets all the juice, right?
• 3:19
  Leadership gets all the books and all the conferences and all the high paid
• 3:23
  speakers and all the headlines and the news and all the things.
• 3:27
  Leadership, leadership, leadership.
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  You go to leadership courses. In the military, it's, I can't remember what they
• 3:35
  call it. It used to be primary leadership development. Now I think it's just
• 3:38
  basic leadership, vast leadership, senior leadership courses.
• 3:44
  That so at any rate what about followership that's followership is kind of the
• 3:51
  the unsung underappreciated force,
• 3:57
  that determines whether or not anything works you can be a great leader with
• 4:02
  great vision if your followers aren't aren't in tune it's not going anywhere.
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  And don't mistake that for me sounding communist there.
• 4:16
  It takes great leaders and great followers.
• 4:20
  So it's an equally important element in the business team dynamic, especially.
• 4:29
  Military team dynamic, yeah, especially. And so anyway, what qualifies me,
• 4:35
  I asked. Well, besides the, you know, I have no formal certifications.
• 4:41
  I have no formal certifications on, on any of these things, but one of the,
• 4:47
  one of my primary sources to go to for leadership, I got, well,
• 4:51
  I've got a few, but one of my primary sources is John C. Maxwell.
• 4:55
  And I've talked about this before in, in great detail about the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership.
• 5:03
  And then my other, another go-to I have is a man named Chris Schmidt of Asmuth
• 5:09
  Consulting, Asmuth Consulting Group.
• 5:14
  He's a retired special forces officer and a fellow Green Beret,
• 5:18
  and just so happens that he was a former commander of mine.
• 5:24
  And now, since he's retired, well, I don't, when did he retire?
• 5:28
  I'm not sure, several years ago. So he coaches, leadership coaches,
• 5:34
  like these high-end teams like Google and Starbucks, Meta, Uber.
• 5:42
  Yeah, he's coaching those executives.
• 5:45
  And he is formally trained in these things. And education matters.
• 5:52
  A lot of times, poopoo on academics being overrated as far as,
• 5:59
  well, promoting faux intellectualism, but it does matter to a degree, well, to a large degree.
• 6:09
  But one of Chris's message, Chris Schmidt's core messages is that,
• 6:16
  The uncertain, ambiguous,
• 6:22
  sometimes gray environments that we encountered doing special operations.
• 6:31
  That translates directly to business. And that no matter what the environment
• 6:35
  is, that excellence only happens when everybody's working together.
• 6:41
  That's leaders and followers.
• 6:44
  And that's we you know as you're saying things like this out loud you're like
• 6:49
  yeah it's obvious well it's not obvious to some people,
• 6:54
  it's not obvious to teams that are struggling with personality conflicts and
• 6:58
  and motivation and all kind of things,
• 7:03
  so we're gonna so and then And for my own piece of this, now I'm going to be
• 7:08
  quoting Maxwell and Schmidt a lot here,
• 7:12
  but I've got to add my own piece to it.
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  And for me, I believe that there are three things that have to be present,
• 7:23
  for success and a team success. And I'm not talking about competence and that
• 7:29
  kind of thing. Those are givens, right?
• 7:34
  Those are just baseline. But I'm talking about things that sometimes get missed.
• 7:43
  And one of those things is trust. Yeah. And some people are very greedy with their trust.
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  And then another thing is individual accountability. There are humans out there that will not.
• 7:58
  Will not take accountability for their own actions. They will blame everybody
• 8:03
  and their brother before they take responsibility for a thing.
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  So that's two. And then third is mission buy-in.
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  Everybody has to be on board with the mission. And there's a lot of implications
• 8:21
  to that, and we'll get to that.
• 8:24
  So this episode it doesn't matter if you're an entry-level worker or a mid-level
• 8:31
  you know small business entrepreneur or a mid-manager or a,
• 8:36
  top executive with a major corporation like meta or google this episode's for
• 8:43
  you with this there's going to be something here for you,
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  so let's get to it.
• 8:52
  John c maxwell you should read john c maxwell if you don't if you're if you're
• 8:58
  in any kind of leadership role whatsoever,
• 9:02
  he's very clear on leadership and he and it's very simplistic and it leadership
• 9:07
  is influence nothing more nothing less and one of the laws is the law of influence,
• 9:14
  But influence only works if people choose to follow.
• 9:20
  It's not influence if people don't follow.
• 9:25
  One of the ways I define leadership is, well, the military definition,
• 9:28
  but the ability to influence others to want to accomplish a mission.
• 9:36
  Not just to influence others to accomplish a mission.
• 9:39
  You may be able to force that. You may be able to do that with coercion,
• 9:44
  but to make people want to accomplish the mission.
• 9:48
  There's your trick. That's your trick and your magic trick right there.
• 9:56
  And he also said, so I'm going to mention these laws a lot, but the law of solid
• 9:59
  ground is one of those. And he said from that law, it says that,
• 10:05
  well, trust is the foundation of leadership for sure.
• 10:08
  But what builds trust? Well, character, good character, competence.
• 10:15
  Yeah, those things build trust.
• 10:18
  Well, it's more or as important to know what kills trust.
• 10:24
  Inconsistency will kill trust or unpredictability.
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  Like I don't know what my teammate is going to do at any given moment.
• 10:33
  I don't know how my boss is going to react at any given moment.
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  Those things will kill trust because there's uncertainty there.
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  You don't, you don't know what to expect.
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  So you can't give into it.
• 10:46
  So all the strategy in the world and all of your, your vision goes nowhere without trust.
• 10:56
  And furthermore, it may potentially even cause resistance.
• 11:01
  If your followers do not trust you, they may be actively undermining you.
• 11:07
  Maybe subversively, you might not notice it straight away.
• 11:12
  So trust is important. Yeah, leadership requires trust.
• 11:17
  And when I say it requires trust, I'm talking about both ways, up and down.
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  The leader has to be able to trust his followers to do the things they need to do.
• 11:28
  And the followers need to be able to trust the leader that the leader has their
• 11:32
  back. The leader gives them clear guidance, clear direction.
• 11:37
  And there's open space for communication.
• 11:41
  So I like Chris's unique special forces perspective on all this because clearly
• 11:48
  I, well, I agree with nearly,
• 11:54
  I agree with Chris's philosophy wholeheartedly.
• 11:58
  And so at Asmuth Consulting, which is his business, and I'll put a link to it,
• 12:03
  in the show notes, he talks about and emphasizes that in high stakes environments,
• 12:08
  you know, and like I said, ambiguous and kind of gray environments.
• 12:11
  It doesn't matter if you're on a mountain or having some kind of corporate boardroom crisis.
• 12:17
  Teams succeed through being reliable, individually reliable,
• 12:22
  so that the team is collectively reliable.
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  And the team needs to have a bias for action.
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  That don't mean jump without having all the information necessarily,
• 12:36
  but what it means is lean toward action versus inaction.
• 12:41
  And then just have a commitment to the mission and have mutual trust among your
• 12:45
  teammates. All those things are important things.
• 12:48
  But I like his take on bias for action.
• 12:52
  I have a bias for action. I believe in making things happen,
• 12:57
  and I happen to trust my decision-making process. So I will, I will make a decision.
• 13:04
  My wife gets on, on my case all the time.
• 13:07
  Well, you just make snap decisions.
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  I don't make snap decisions. I just make well thought out decisions quick because
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  I have a process, right? That's the way it works.
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  You develop your process over time.
• 13:22
  And again, I believe now you've heard this on multiple episodes.
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  I believe that you should, you follow your gut.
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  Our gut is oftentimes correct.
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  Have a bias for action as a team and as a leader.
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  And like I said,
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  Chris was a former commander of mine. And so I know this next thing to be true.
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  He says that kindness was one of the most effective tools in his tool bag as a leader.
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  Kindness. Now, I did not have this philosophy as a young leader.
• 14:03
  And perhaps I should have. My personality is more rough, more, less polished.
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  But think about that for a second. Yeah. And not disingenuous,
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  right? Real, real kindness.
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  And he's a genuinely kind human.
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  But that is effective as a leader too, though, right? It's not just a personality trait.
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  It's an effective leadership tool.
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  And, well, special operators especially, but everyone, excels when everyone
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  at every level understands the mission,
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  and everyone at every level owns their piece of that mission,
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  whatever the mission is.
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  Everyone's critical. And this is a thing in special operation.
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  And in fact, back in the 90s and the early 2000s, you know, special operations,
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  special forces had four, there were four pillars of special forces,
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  and then they add a fifth.
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  Years later, they added a fifth. And the fifth was most special operations can't,
• 15:10
  require enabler support in order to be successful.
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  And if you don't know what an enabler is, that's the, you know,
• 15:19
  you got the trigger pullers and the unconventional warriors,
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  but then you have the communications guy, or even the intelligence guy,
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  or the EOD guy, or the SOT-A guy.
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  Or the combat controller guy.
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  He's an enabler for ODA or whatever.
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  So you got all these other attachments that help to make mission success.
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  It works the same in the corporate world. It works the same in the small startup business.
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  You need other people. You need vendors.
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  You need that support, especially if you're a small business,
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  because you can only do so much with what you have.
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  You rely on other people.
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  And that requires trust.
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  And I'll say this, and don't take it out, don't misconstrue what I'm saying, but listen to this.
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  Leadership and followership are not strictly hierarchical.
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  Yes, there is a hierarchy.
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  You have a boss. Yes.
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  But in the context of mission, in the context of solving problems,
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  they are not strictly hierarchical.
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  They are interdependent. One depends on the other.
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  And how much one depends on the other is constantly shifting based on the mission.
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  They depend on each other. So don't get the I'm the boss, you're the employee
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  mindset if you're a boss.
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  And don't get the, as an employee, don't get the us against them mentality. I used to have that.
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  I'm not saying it was correct. I'm saying that's the way, when I was an E5,
• 17:16
  you know, a buck sergeant fire team leader, I kind of looked at, it was my fire team.
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  It was us against them, which was normally like the company,
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  right? But especially the battalion.
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  It wasn't right necessarily, but what it did was motivate.
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  So you guys may not know this about me, right?
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  I'm, I was never really a like, highly likable guy, but especially when I was
• 17:48
  an infantry man, I was always a fire team leader or squad leader for like the bad news bear squad.
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  Yeah. And they would give me dudes that were sort of discipline issues or something.
• 18:05
  And not because they thought I was a great leader. But what turned out happening
• 18:11
  was these guys would perform.
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  And I think it's because I treated them like regular human beings and not like lowers.
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  And then I did cultivate a mentality of, hey, it's us against them. F those guys.
• 18:26
  We will do what we're supposed to do in spite of them.
• 18:31
  Hey, is it right, wrong or otherwise? I had discipline cases that would perform. So,
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  I thought it was, I thought it was, it's a technique. It worked at the time,
• 18:45
  in, in, in specific cases.
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  It's not necessarily the right way. And in a business world, no, definitely not.
• 18:55
  If you feel like it's, it's me against the, the, the bosses,
• 18:59
  you need to go find another job.
• 19:02
  So I'm going to say it again. Leadership and followership are interdependent.
• 19:05
  One depends on the other. It's not strictly hierarchical.
• 19:10
  Everyone listening will do well to remember that and put it in perspective to your environment.
• 19:18
  Being a good follower, followership, it's not blind, passive obedience.
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  I'm not telling you to be a lemming.
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  It's not simply doing what you're told. Anybody can do what they're told.
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  I got a five-year-old grandson that can do what he's told.
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  That's not what followership good followership looks like,
• 19:44
  it's it's an active role it's a proactive role even even even if you think it's
• 19:49
  underappreciated it may be,
• 19:52
  but it may be silently appreciated which is also another you know we we can
• 19:57
  look at different techniques of motivating people and things but,
• 20:03
  even if it is underappreciated That doesn't change who you are,
• 20:07
  right? You do the best you can do.
• 20:10
  And it's active, like I said, and even proactive. Support the leader.
• 20:15
  Now, we're not getting into crazy hypotheticals about, well,
• 20:19
  what if they're wrong? What if this one? No.
• 20:21
  Just on a general daily operations, right? Support your leader, whoever that leader is.
• 20:30
  Offer constructive input when appropriate, not when your next line supervisor
• 20:38
  is getting chewed out by his boss and then you decide to jump in with some,
• 20:44
  input. That's not the time. Everything you do, whatever your job is,
• 20:50
  do it with a little bit of initiative. Do it with a little bit of pride in your
• 20:53
  work and then hold yourself accountable.
• 20:59
  Hold yourself accountable so that you and the whole team can move at speed,
• 21:07
  unimpeded yeah unimpeded by personal stuff,
• 21:11
  all right so i said those three things or in the opening i said those three
• 21:14
  things that i think are there trust accountability and mission by end so let's
• 21:18
  look at those for a minute i think those things are absolutely critical absolutely critical,
• 21:24
  And of course, Maxwell has a law, the law of solid ground.
• 21:28
  That's built on trust, consistent character.
• 21:33
  All the things I talk about on all the podcasts I talk about,
• 21:37
  you guys, you probably be able to pick up that there's a few words that are
• 21:44
  laced throughout everything I talk about.
• 21:47
  One of those key words is consistency.
• 21:50
  Yeah, it doesn't matter if we're talking about training with firearms or talking
• 21:56
  about developing young leaders.
• 21:59
  It does not matter. It doesn't matter if we're talking about philosophy.
• 22:03
  Consistency matters. Competence, trust is built by demonstrating confidence.
• 22:11
  And you can probably think about one of these just right now.
• 22:14
  Like, you know, the guy who does everything well.
• 22:17
  So you trust that guy to do things. Yeah, that's it.
• 22:22
  And then what's another, now, as far as leadership goes, those two are very
• 22:27
  important. Consistency in the way you, in your character, being predictable
• 22:31
  as a teammate and being competent in your job. Yes. But what's another one?
• 22:37
  Connection, right? Being able
• 22:39
  to connect on a human level that builds trust. Is it relevant to work?
• 22:45
  Well, in the sense that it builds trust, it is.
• 22:48
  You don't have to be best friends with everybody at work, but you have to connect somehow.
• 22:55
  And then chris schmidt stresses that,
• 23:00
  trust is built directly from reliability and that you be the person that other
• 23:09
  people can rely on that they know that they can trust you to do a thing,
• 23:14
  without any oversight and without supervision but that goes back to competence
• 23:19
  and it goes back to consistent character.
• 23:22
  So they support each other. Chris's definition or philosophy on how trust is
• 23:27
  built and Maxwell's philosophy, they support each other. What does that tell you?
• 23:36
  Right. They support each other. So the fact that I think trust is one of the
• 23:41
  number one things that you need in a leadership dynamic, followership dynamic,
• 23:46
  team dynamic, I think it's backed up here.
• 23:52
  And yeah, Chris goes on to explain things like in Special Forces,
• 23:57
  trust can be a life or death endeavor.
• 24:01
  Yeah, it can be.
• 24:05
  And if any one single teammate fails to deliver on that trust,
• 24:09
  well, it puts the mission at risk and lives at risk.
• 24:14
  I'm going to tell a story now. I didn't plan to tell this story,
• 24:17
  but it occurs to me as I'm reading my notes here, it occurs to me.
• 24:24
  We were on an operation,
• 24:28
  and on this particular operation, we had a support by fire position,
• 24:33
  which had a machine gun in it and it had a sniper in it.
• 24:40
  Well, machine gun team had a little
• 24:42
  infantry. We had attack infantry attachments and my ODA, we were the,
• 24:51
  we were, this was our mission. We developed it and planned it,
• 24:55
  excuse me, and executed it.
• 24:59
  A teammate, the sniper in that position, also the senior man in that position,
• 25:07
  so therefore in charge of that position,
• 25:14
  As the main effort was moving through the compounds there, and this,
• 25:20
  we had Afghan commandos with us, and so we had a group of Afghan commandos leading the way.
• 25:29
  The ODA was kind of, well, we were split up, but following behind,
• 25:33
  and we were clearing compounds as we went.
• 25:36
  And, of course, we all were on comms with each other. So I heard a conversation.
• 25:42
  I'm listening to this as we're moving doing our thing that,
• 25:49
  the team leader sitting in the mission support site right where the little headquarters
• 25:54
  was holed up and the sniper on that on that position on that support by fire position,
• 26:02
  he was he was saying hey i see xyz what he was looking for permission to shoot,
• 26:10
  what he thought was a bad guy.
• 26:14
  There was a miscommunication and I, I was only partially listening because I'm
• 26:20
  actively clearing rooms.
• 26:24
  So we come out of a compound and we were in the, the buildings were numbered, right?
• 26:31
  The buildings were numbered and we all had our GRG, our little,
• 26:35
  our little iPhone doodad, our Samsung, you know, whatever phone do that ATAC system.
• 26:42
  No reason to be off. Everybody should have been on the same sheet of music.
• 26:47
  Well, this sniper being very, trying to find the right words,
• 26:55
  very, a nervous type guy.
• 26:57
  I don't, I don't know how to say that. A nervous type of guy.
• 27:02
  He had built up in his mind a scenario where bad guys were, I guess,
• 27:07
  closing in on our position. I don't know.
• 27:11
  Turns out there was zero evidence to support this. But as we come out of this
• 27:15
  compound and begin to move from one to the other in the sort of almost in the open,
• 27:21
  I heard that the team later said, if you can positively identify,
• 27:27
  you know, take the shot. Well.
• 27:33
  Turns out a shot was fired from his sniper rifle.
• 27:40
  He missed, thank Christ. And immediately, the 240 opened up a machine gun. Well, guess what?
• 27:50
  It opened up on us.
• 27:53
  And the millisecond I heard that gunfire go off,
• 28:00
  there was incoming rounds. and our whole element started dancing around and
• 28:04
  jumping behind walls and and all kind of stuff and it was a very very very close call,
• 28:13
  and it would have been a fratricide incident,
• 28:17
  I immediately started yelling ceasefire over the radio ceasefire ceasefire ceasefire
• 28:22
  while literally mid-air jumping over a wall,
• 28:26
  and and my whole cell we were all laid over there all up on each other and it
• 28:31
  was one of those stupid moments to where it was such a close call and you did,
• 28:37
  you pulled that stupid face you know like oh and then it was one of those and
• 28:44
  it all happened so fast and we looked at each other and everybody was okay and
• 28:49
  we started laughing it was that stupid.
• 28:53
  Had very little trust in that guy to begin with, the guy on the sniper rifle.
• 29:01
  I put him in a position to where I thought, okay, he can do very little harm here.
• 29:07
  And then that just solidified after that. Now, I'm not going to go into the
• 29:13
  follow-up on all of it, but there was already little trust in this guy.
• 29:19
  And he had already been fired from a team.
• 29:23
  And because I'm a,
• 29:26
  whoever thinks I'm a hard guy, that's fine. But I gave this guy a chance because
• 29:30
  I thought, okay, well, maybe it was a personality thing. Maybe whatever we can fix him.
• 29:35
  And then he, he, he'd done a few stupid things prior to that deployment.
• 29:38
  But I was like, you know what? He has redeeming qualities.
• 29:42
  The guy's very organized. He's like OCD, autistic with, you know,
• 29:47
  he's even got his little pushpins in his drawer, color lined up by color pencils
• 29:52
  and his pens and his notepads and paperclips.
• 29:56
  It's all, everything's perfectly ordered.
• 29:59
  The arms room or the books, the, the, the mall, the master arms list, immaculate.
• 30:07
  Put the guy in a tactical situation, loses his mind.
• 30:11
  Lack of trust I no longer trusted him Furthermore, I was very upset With him for a good while after.
• 30:23
  Was miscommunication in that situation. There was, when we say PID,
• 30:29
  right, if you can positively identify, he did not positively.
• 30:33
  And thank God, like I said, he took a sniper shot and he, and the guy he shot
• 30:38
  at is a guy we'd been training with for the whole two weeks prior,
• 30:43
  come leading up to this mission,
• 30:45
  wearing the same frigging track suit jacket and camouflage pants that he'd been
• 30:50
  wearing all the last two weeks and he was just,
• 30:56
  was he an nds guy we had commandos was that an nds mish or commando mish we
• 31:02
  might have had both on that anyway this it was the guy we we knew the guy it was,
• 31:12
  and thank god he did that he missed thank god he missed god almighty if he would
• 31:18
  have shot that dude i mean the sniper shot never mind thank god the machine
• 31:22
  gun missed the whole friggin team,
• 31:26
  thank god the sniper shot did not hit intended target.
• 31:31
  And i'm not saying that to belittle
• 31:32
  sf at all that's that highly trained professionals there's all this but,
• 31:40
  you know some guys man this guy he didn't do well under pressure he didn't do well under pressure,
• 31:48
  is that partly my fault is that partly the the prior leadership's fault is that
• 31:54
  part is that personality flaw like he's just got some character flaw,
• 31:59
  he just has an inability to to hold it together yeah who knows what man who
• 32:05
  knows what i'm damn i'm rambling on about that yeah we very nearly got smoked
• 32:10
  by our own guy all right what i'm talking about.
• 32:16
  So back to leadership as organizational. On an ODA specifically, but on a mission, right?
• 32:22
  But even from a corporate perspective, what's important, there's a catchphrase
• 32:27
  in the military, commander's intent, commander's intent.
• 32:32
  With a clear commander's intent, unambiguous, like it's very crystal clear,
• 32:38
  that allows small teams to adapt to circumstances on the ground.
• 32:47
  Providing that trust exists. So if the commander gives the intent,
• 32:51
  trusts the team to stick to the intent,
• 32:55
  and that intent, it gives you elbow room to maneuver to solve complex problems,
• 33:02
  as long as you're staying within the commander's intent.
• 33:05
  So if that trust is going down, the team has some autonomy.
• 33:11
  The team can violate that trust if they go outside the commander's intent.
• 33:17
  But with a clear and concise commander's intent, soldiers know the purpose of
• 33:23
  the MISH. They know what they're doing.
• 33:25
  They know what the end state is supposed to look like.
• 33:27
  Here is the end result. By the time we've done whatever we do,
• 33:32
  this should be the result.
• 33:34
  And if they stay within the commander's intent, the leadership normally will
• 33:38
  back them on whatever, whatever happens.
• 33:42
  And that's the way that's supposed to work.
• 33:44
  Now, how does that shape out, the trust shape out in a negative way?
• 33:51
  There are many units out there in the conventional army. I remember there was
• 33:55
  a time period, I think it was Fort Hood, that was just gangs and just people
• 34:00
  going to jail and all kind of stuff.
• 34:03
  Units with very low esprit de corps.
• 34:07
  It correlates directly to a lack of trust from, from the leadership or in the
• 34:12
  leadership or whatever, up and down the chain.
• 34:17
  And, you know, you got junior leaders covering dudes for doing messed up things
• 34:24
  and they don't want to let the senior, and then you got senior leaders out there
• 34:27
  doing messed up things and they don't, they try to cover it.
• 34:30
  So that, and you get these barriers of silence and communicating it like nobody's talking.
• 34:38
  No, no trust is happening there. No trust is happening there.
• 34:42
  And that that's happened in Iraq and in Afghanistan. That's happens in the garrison.
• 34:48
  And that, that kills, kills any, let's bring the core, any cohesion.
• 34:56
  And without those things, there is zero effectiveness happening.
• 35:01
  There isn't a, It don't matter as an individual, it don't matter what a stud
• 35:05
  you are, as a young captain or a mid-level leader, it doesn't matter how brilliant you are.
• 35:13
  If these things are happening, the mission is not a success.
• 35:18
  And from a corporate perspective, so for a while there, not so much in the past,
• 35:24
  two or three years, but Southwest Airlines, I read a little bit about this.
• 35:31
  They were known for having a culture, well, of trust and appreciation and putting people first.
• 35:41
  And that worked well for Southwest Airlines. They were very notably successful.
• 35:49
  They had a good reputation.
• 35:54
  They had, well, explicit sort of like ethos that was that here,
• 36:01
  this is what we do. This is who we are.
• 36:03
  And one of those was the warrior spirit. Now, I know you, I'm talking about
• 36:06
  civilian companies saying warrior spirit. It applies.
• 36:10
  They wanted everyone to have the same warrior spirit and to push forward and
• 36:17
  to strive for excellence.
• 36:21
  A servant's heart every great leader is also a great servant and every great
• 36:27
  follower is clearly a great servant,
• 36:30
  so have a servant's heart put others needs ahead of your own convenience if
• 36:36
  it's 459 and somebody walks through the door and you're like man i gotta get
• 36:42
  out of here Oh, man, that's not it.
• 36:47
  Put others first. Use the golden rule. Does anybody speak of the golden rule
• 36:52
  anymore in society? I don't know, man.
• 36:58
  And then this was in their ethos, right? Have a fun-loving attitude.
• 37:06
  Don't take yourself too seriously. I'm all on board with that. I'm all on board with it.
• 37:11
  I took myself too seriously for too long and I didn't know what,
• 37:15
  you know, I, yeah, I had fun. I did things, but there's plenty of people out
• 37:19
  there that I see who take themselves way too seriously.
• 37:23
  And it's just, it's a put off, you know, you can have a little bit of personality at work.
• 37:28
  Like you can be playful and still maintain the line. Like, you know,
• 37:33
  that don't mean if I show a little playfulness at work that we devolve into
• 37:38
  the orgy of incompetence yeah you can be a little bit playful,
• 37:46
  And it was their sort of company promise that they treated employees with the
• 37:49
  same respect that they treat their customers with.
• 37:54
  Yeah, man. Treat the employees with the same respect that you treat your customers with.
• 38:00
  You're not going to have a customer walk in with questions and you go in and
• 38:02
  chew them out for being incompetent.
• 38:07
  Yeah. Yeah, and they empowered their ground-level tactical people,
• 38:12
  the ground-level people, the customer, the face.
• 38:17
  They empowered them to solve problems, man. They gave them a little bit of autonomy.
• 38:22
  They gave them, here's the commander's intent.
• 38:25
  Here's the end state. They had two-way communication.
• 38:32
  Yeah. They had recognition programs. Somebody's doing good. Let them know.
• 38:37
  A little bit of a, you know, hey man, I know trophies are superficial.
• 38:46
  A little coin, a little trophy, a little free lunch.
• 38:50
  Yeah, man. It was like a family atmosphere. And for a big company,
• 38:56
  I mean, I imagine that's pretty hard to achieve for a big company.
• 38:59
  I think Southwest is a pretty big company. It's not epic. You know, it's not Delta.
• 39:04
  But I would I'd be interested to see the contrast between the delta and the
• 39:09
  southwest sort of day to day you know what I mean in the not in the on the ground
• 39:15
  level I mean like in the mid-level offices,
• 39:18
  in the head shed I'd like to see the contrast of the day to day but.
• 39:24
  Delta, that's the behemoth, I think.
• 39:28
  I don't know if that's the biggest airline in the world or not,
• 39:31
  but I know the headquarters in Atlanta, which is the busiest airport in the world.
• 39:36
  So I think Delta might be the biggest airline. Probably should have researched that a little bit.
• 39:43
  Yeah, man, anyway, you can build a culture like that, but it takes a little
• 39:50
  work and you have to commit to it because it ain't going to happen just instantly.
• 39:55
  And not everybody's going to immediately come out of their shell because some
• 39:58
  people are going to skeptical. I'm skeptical.
• 40:01
  If I see you one day acting like this and the next day trying to throw some
• 40:06
  jokes at me, I'm going to be like, what's this guy's angle?
• 40:10
  But you can build a culture over time. Consistency over time builds trust.
• 40:17
  All right, that's enough of trust, man.
• 40:20
  It's important. I think everybody knows it. It's important in relationships.
• 40:24
  It's important in everything. Trust is important.
• 40:28
  Our next thing that I think is one of these top three most important things
• 40:33
  in the leadership dynamic or our team dynamic is individual accountability.
• 40:40
  A good follower, solid follower. You don't wait to be held accountable.
• 40:45
  All right. You hold yourself accountable.
• 40:49
  You don't accept if the company has a standard of performance,
• 40:54
  whatever it is, take that in and then try to exceed it.
• 41:00
  And if you don't exceed it, you're like, ah, man, I missed the mark on it.
• 41:05
  Even if the boss looks at you, this is good.
• 41:09
  And you're like, but I missed the mark.
• 41:13
  Another Maxwell law is the law of victory, and that is building that culture of success.
• 41:24
  So we talked about trust building a sort of a culture of almost family,
• 41:29
  but now we're talking about a culture of success.
• 41:32
  Not only am I treating people well, but now I'm performing well,
• 41:37
  and I'm enabling everybody else to perform well. them.
• 41:41
  And yeah, you got to have sort of a unified vision there for sure.
• 41:44
  And that's where good leadership comes in.
• 41:47
  But a good leader understands that amongst his people, the many people,
• 41:52
  there's a broad diversity of skill sets and strengths and weaknesses.
• 41:57
  And so everybody needs to for sure play to your strengths, do what you're good
• 42:05
  at, and also develop what you're not.
• 42:10
  Own. Don't wait for somebody to tell you, look, you do this well,
• 42:14
  but we're looking to get you over here. We're looking to move because if you
• 42:18
  just do what you're good at, you may never progress and you may never want to
• 42:22
  progress. And I don't know.
• 42:26
  Own your own results, man, whatever, good or bad, own them. And if they're bad,
• 42:29
  own them first, get up there and say, look, I have this up.
• 42:33
  Here's here's what and and what chris chris schmidt's sort of philosophy supports this in a way that,
• 42:43
  well he emphasizes commitment like individual commitment and individual bias
• 42:48
  for action right making it happen be committed to the mish make it happen,
• 42:55
  take the next step even if You can be nervous. You can be like, I'm not sure.
• 43:01
  But if you have a good decision-making process, act on it.
• 43:05
  Deliver the goods and then own the outcome. Yeah.
• 43:10
  Deliver the goods and own the outcome. And if that wasn't, you know,
• 43:16
  if you came up at an 80% solution and the boss is like, this is an 80% solution.
• 43:24
  Hey, right on. I'm going to get back to it. You know, and ask good questions
• 43:29
  like, oh, you don't got to ask your boss how to do your job, right? But.
• 43:37
  Can I get a little clarity on this commander's intent, on this end state?
• 43:42
  Own the outcomes, man. Own the outcomes. And a part of this, a part of this,
• 43:51
  and some of these companies, so some of these companies that Chris works with,
• 43:55
  they're mega companies.
• 43:57
  They're a mega company. Google and Meta are insane, insane.
• 44:06
  And you might, and I don't know the culture of these companies.
• 44:09
  This is, that's, that's leagues away from me.
• 44:16
  I can take any leader from any company, but as far as the culture goes,
• 44:21
  I just can't imagine being inside that environment.
• 44:25
  I can imagine it. I don't like it.
• 44:29
  That's what I'm trying to say.
• 44:32
  People in any business though, in any company can own their outcomes.
• 44:37
  If there is a psychological environment, right?
• 44:42
  Where you can, where you feel safe to own your, your failures,
• 44:49
  or you feel safe to take a problem to your next level leader without.
• 44:56
  So that's, there's trust there as well.
• 44:59
  Part of the reason people don't communicate well with each other is they don't trust each other.
• 45:04
  If I go say this to this dude, he's going to blow up, or he's going to act irrationally,
• 45:07
  or he's going to fire me, or he's going to do this, whatever.
• 45:11
  There's a trust issue there.
• 45:13
  So in order to have that individual accountability, there has to be the trust
• 45:18
  in order to have that open communication. You need that.
• 45:23
  Because as a junior leader, you have to be able to report honestly upward.
• 45:29
  Yeah. Not just.
• 45:34
  As a doctrinal, yeah, we need to give a good report. It needs to be an honest
• 45:41
  assessment, not just facts.
• 45:44
  You can deliver facts all day long, but if you're not giving the honest assessment
• 45:48
  around those facts, they're not getting the whole picture.
• 45:53
  We want to deliver the whole picture with our assessment of how and why.
• 45:58
  Now, they may discard that assessment or they may take it into consideration.
• 46:03
  Good leaders will take it into consideration.
• 46:06
  And what's the flip side of that? Okay, we trust. We can honestly report.
• 46:11
  We can give our feedback without fear of repercussion.
• 46:16
  Side of the individual accountability. Yeah, the culture, and you see this in
• 46:21
  a lot of governmental roles, not my job.
• 46:32
  I hate it. I hate it.
• 46:35
  In the Army, you may do just any number of things that are not your job.
• 46:46
  Everything's your job if the job needs to be done and you're the one there.
• 46:53
  How many infantry officers get stuck in as the s4 you know the the logistics right,
• 47:02
  not my job yeah it's your damn job now that's staff functions all officers know
• 47:07
  they got to do stuff everybody knows that right but,
• 47:11
  yeah and the military is a good is a good the proving ground for that,
• 47:17
  where you will do things that are not your job.
• 47:20
  Do you do them half-assed?
• 47:23
  No, no, you still do it. A hundred percent.
• 47:28
  That not my job thought, man, that burns me up, man.
• 47:32
  And then, and then the blame game, you know, pointing finger.
• 47:35
  Well, he, he dropped the ball.
• 47:37
  If you drop a dime on another dude, you're, you're either trying to build yourself
• 47:42
  up or you're, you're hiding some insecurity.
• 47:45
  It might be the other dude's fault, but let that come out in a more formal process.
• 47:53
  Don't drop dimes on dudes because then you're breaking trust with them.
• 47:57
  Unless there's some illegal shit going on. You know what I'm saying?
• 48:01
  Or after you launch a product or something and it falls flat,
• 48:05
  and now you're like, well, really, so-and-so didn't do this or didn't do that.
• 48:09
  If he would have supported me more, you know, whatever.
• 48:13
  That stuff kills trust. It'll kill your momentum. Now, I'm not talking about
• 48:18
  this, but there's the law of the big momentum also.
• 48:24
  Kind of not my job, finger pointing stuff, that, that'll kill momentum.
• 48:28
  And that'll, that creates just,
• 48:33
  slog in the mission. And then you just get nothing done, making no money.
• 48:39
  You're not growing. No progress is happening.
• 48:42
  Then there's got to be a change. What's the change that happens?
• 48:47
  Hey, we're, we're changing.
• 48:49
  Now I want to say, is it Maxwell? I think Maxwell even, now I could be wrong
• 48:55
  on who said this, but it was some notable consultant.
• 48:59
  So when he goes into a place where the culture is bad and the productivity is
• 49:04
  low, the first people he fires is not the line workers.
• 49:10
  It's the leadership. Beat it.
• 49:13
  That's probably not the norm, because not every company has a consultant, right?
• 49:19
  If your company is dragging on, the boss man is going to start firing people,
• 49:24
  whoever he thinks is based on personality, based on whatever.
• 49:30
  Could be based on just performance metrics alone.
• 49:33
  Yeah. Probably there's some personality stuff in there too, though. Probably one.
• 49:41
  All right. And then a third thing. Mission buy-in.
• 49:47
  Mission buy-in. And that's the law of buy-in. Maxwell has it.
• 49:52
  But in the law of buy-in, Maxwell says that people buy into the leader first,
• 49:58
  the human, the person, and then the vision.
• 50:04
  Well, that implies that you're one. well influential if not charming compelling yeah,
• 50:14
  you've got to get their attention they got to pull you you know you got to they
• 50:18
  got to look at you and go yeah man i could follow this guy and then you deliver
• 50:22
  the vision to to lock it in,
• 50:26
  but if they think you're an a-hole you can deliver the greatest vision on the
• 50:30
  planet and they might agree with it and be like yeah that's pretty good vision, but I'm,
• 50:36
  not following you in there. Yeah, that's it.
• 50:40
  And that's, is it good, bad, or otherwise? I don't know. But people buy into
• 50:45
  the leader first and then the vision.
• 50:49
  So says John C. Maxwell, and I agree with it. People have to buy into the vision
• 50:54
  though, the why, or to use the corporate buzzword of the day.
• 51:00
  What is your why? Well, People have to buy into that Otherwise You know Execution
• 51:06
  is just kind of half-hearted We don't You can't have it Everybody's got to be 100% On board.
• 51:15
  Says, know your azimuth. And I like that. Know your true north.
• 51:21
  You have your, well, your moral compass, your professional compass.
• 51:29
  And then you align your actions with the vision in accordance with,
• 51:35
  and if you start to get too far off your azimuth, well, time to find another job.
• 51:41
  But know your azimuth. And within the context of the company,
• 51:45
  know your asthma. Some other people might say, stay in your lane.
• 51:52
  But again, back to the military terminology, man, commander's intent delivers
• 51:57
  in that intent and purpose.
• 51:59
  Why? Why are we doing that? That's the why.
• 52:02
  The key tasks that need to happen to make it happen. And I mean,
• 52:06
  key tasks, not 8 million sub-taps. No need to micromanage as a leader, good people.
• 52:12
  And then the end state. Yeah, what does success look like On the other end of
• 52:17
  this And that should be stated so clearly Ha ha.
• 52:24
  People two levels down can clearly understand it and adapt to it without any constant supervision.
• 52:35
  Yeah, you can be a big brain intellectual and deliver this mission statement
• 52:39
  that's worthy of literature.
• 52:43
  If people two levels down do not understand it and you haven't articulated it, you fail as a leader.
• 52:52
  They didn't fail to understand it you failed to make it understandable and i'll stand by it.
• 53:00
  Commander's intent understanding the end state understanding the purpose i'll
• 53:03
  give you the perfect example from military history world war ii d-day,
• 53:13
  there's a thing in the military called lgops lgop,
• 53:18
  little groups of paratroopers well that was the biggest airborne operation in
• 53:22
  history and drop zones were scattered about dudes got,
• 53:29
  birds were taking anti-aircraft they were getting off track they were whatever,
• 53:34
  there were paratroopers landing all over the place,
• 53:38
  And a good movie example of that is Saving Private Ryan Yeah Dudes are just
• 53:44
  linking up together Hey man 82nd Whatever,
• 53:51
  Roll They band together Roll Kill Germans And head toward That's it man.
• 54:02
  Commander's intent, man. They
• 54:03
  knew, hey, man, we're here. We'll kill Germans. We're moving that way.
• 54:09
  So clear the two levels down, understand. Understand. Not that they just hear it.
• 54:16
  Don't get up in your big conference all-call and be like, okay,
• 54:19
  gentlemen, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All right, guys, let's get to work.
• 54:25
  They need to understand it.
• 54:28
  And then an example where that fails is that you have whatever complex mission
• 54:33
  statement or commander's intent,
• 54:36
  but instead of articulating, right, then you just micromanage and then you just
• 54:42
  bark orders down, down the chain, do this, do that, do this, do that.
• 54:46
  And I keep saying micromanage.
• 54:50
  If you're micromanaging, then you're not doing bigger stuff.
• 54:55
  It's mid-level managers to work down to a little supervision and to take it
• 55:00
  in from above to translate right,
• 55:04
  if you're micromanaging you're
• 55:05
  not getting all this and if you're up here micromanaging you're not out,
• 55:12
  helping it the enterprise so micromanagement is bad on all levels,
• 55:19
  yeah, all levels,
• 55:21
  enable your people,
• 55:24
  ensure they have buy-in, make it so crystal clear that they not only understand
• 55:30
  it, not only agree with it, but are motivated to run with it, yeah,
• 55:40
  yep, yep, yep.
• 55:45
  Say this on the buy-in and move on. If you work for someone or,
• 55:51
  you know, if you're a low-ranking, mid-ranking dude or whatever, if you're an employee,
• 56:00
  your boss's mission is your mission.
• 56:03
  That's it. If you have ulterior motives or you're trying to undermine or you
• 56:09
  don't think things are running the way that you think they ought to be running, go get another job.
• 56:15
  Go be a DJ. Start your own business.
• 56:19
  Chase your own entrepreneurial efforts.
• 56:22
  Otherwise, give your boss 100%. Yeah, that's my advice to everyone out there.
• 56:29
  If you work for someone, their mission is your mission. If it is not your mission, move on.
• 56:36
  Find a mission that you can get on board with. That's how you will be value
• 56:40
  added And that's how trust Will be developed,
• 56:46
  All right As always, I love to give Practical Advice I hate to call it advice.
• 56:57
  How can we Function this in our everyday life How can we action this In our everyday life Well,
• 57:05
  So if you're just starting out If you're a young person just coming out of college
• 57:09
  or just coming out of military or you trade school or,
• 57:16
  you you've been working with your dad's business every summer for your whole
• 57:19
  life and now you're getting ready to take whatever it is entry level first real job,
• 57:26
  or even if you're an early early entrepreneur with no employees just you and
• 57:30
  maybe your wife or just someone,
• 57:35
  Here are my thoughts on how you can become a high-value follower,
• 57:41
  an asset, and not a liability.
• 57:47
  Reliability, right? Be reliable. One of the things I love to say is undersell over deliver.
• 57:55
  Yeah. Deliver the goods. Do what you say. When you say it, you'll do it.
• 58:01
  And that, and that builds trust and hold that line.
• 58:06
  Do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it.
• 58:12
  And that's supported by Maxwell's law of solid ground, right?
• 58:20
  I'm going to say seek to understand. Now listen to this.
• 58:25
  When I got married almost 30 years ago, September will be 30 years,
• 58:30
  one of our wedding vows, well, one of the things that the preacher said to us was,
• 58:38
  you must seek to understand each other completely.
• 58:47
  Yes, that's true. That's been a running joke with me and my wife for 30 years,
• 58:53
  because we do, even now, we don't understand each other completely.
• 59:00
  Seek to understand the mission.
• 59:05
  Seek to understand the vision and don't don't default to what's in it for me
• 59:14
  right i'll tell you what's in it for you a job a paycheck.
• 59:22
  Learning opportunity and a growing opportunity. And then even depending on the
• 59:27
  company, a potential to, to progress through the ranks.
• 59:31
  If it's a corporate sort of thing.
• 59:35
  So don't be wrapped up. What's in it for me. That's a problem.
• 59:39
  And that's a problem. All right.
• 59:42
  That level of selfishness is no bueno in any environment.
• 59:47
  Ask the boss, man, ask your next level supervisor, What does success look like and how do I add to it?
• 59:58
  How does my role, because you may not understand your role completely.
• 1:00:04
  You're learning on the go. Hey, what does success look like?
• 1:00:09
  How does my role contribute to that?
• 1:00:12
  Next, hold yourself accountable. We talked about it, accountability.
• 1:00:18
  Hold yourself accountable openly.
• 1:00:23
  Let your teammates see that you're being accountable as well.
• 1:00:27
  If something's wrong and it's your fault, own it.
• 1:00:29
  Or if you took part in it, own it and then propose a fix.
• 1:00:35
  Well, we did this F it up, but I think here's how we can correct it in accordance
• 1:00:41
  with, well, commander's intent. Okay.
• 1:00:46
  Own it publicly. I don't, don't, it's not a performative superficial thing.
• 1:00:50
  So you can look humble. That's not what I'm saying.
• 1:00:55
  Like legitimately on it.
• 1:00:59
  Cause it's not a, look, if you F something up, it doesn't have to be an emotional event.
• 1:01:05
  It's, Hey, it's a learning opportunity. I messed this up. Here's what happened.
• 1:01:12
  And if it wasn't catastrophic, all right it didn't cost the company millions
• 1:01:16
  of dollars like they're they're gonna look at it not as an emotional event they're
• 1:01:21
  gonna look at it as a well it's a glitch you know what you did wrong or here's what you did wrong fix it,
• 1:01:28
  don't get all emotional about it and and then the same sort of frame as that,
• 1:01:35
  support your boss publicly or openly and all right but then you give the,
• 1:01:42
  feedback, the constructive criticism or constructive feedback,
• 1:01:47
  you do that privately when it's appropriate.
• 1:01:50
  Yeah. And then you speak honestly up and down the chain about your assessment on things.
• 1:01:57
  Boss thinks one thing's great. Everybody knows it's not. And you go,
• 1:02:01
  yeah, that's great. And meanwhile, you're losing money or whatever.
• 1:02:06
  Don't lose money over a fear of going, hey, boss, this is not going over well.
• 1:02:13
  Yeah, be honest. Be honest about it.
• 1:02:21
  And,
• 1:02:23
  from Chris Schmidt, this goes even for low-level dudes. Develop bias for action. Take action.
• 1:02:31
  Now, as a young man, you're still developing your decision-making process.
• 1:02:36
  But don't get bogged down to where nothing is happening.
• 1:02:41
  Because at some point, if nothing's happening, at some point,
• 1:02:44
  it's going to start moving in reverse. We can't have it.
• 1:02:48
  Have a bias for action come up with a couple courses of action run them by your boss be like hey,
• 1:02:55
  if i do this i think this will happen if i do that i think this will happen
• 1:02:58
  what do you think and then action it do it bias for action,
• 1:03:04
  don't wait for perfect perfect full complete information it ain't ever going
• 1:03:11
  to come it ain't ever going to come you guys have heard the perfect is the enemy of the good.
• 1:03:18
  I don't know who coined that phrase, but, and then you guys have also heard,
• 1:03:22
  and I want to say, was it Patton?
• 1:03:27
  Executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.
• 1:03:31
  Yeah. I mean, that's not saying flippantly run off just to be doing action, right?
• 1:03:38
  But you can make things happen and build momentum, build momentum through action,
• 1:03:44
  develop a bias for action, take the next reasonable step based on a good decision-making process.
• 1:03:53
  And if it went south, hey man, learn from it, put that in a little mental,
• 1:03:59
  the little data banks there. Like, all right, this was not, not good.
• 1:04:03
  In this situation, this did not work.
• 1:04:06
  Develop a bias for action. All right. And then I know this sounds a little weird,
• 1:04:12
  right? But study your leaders.
• 1:04:16
  That doesn't necessarily mean emulate your leaders. Some of them might be crappy leaders,
• 1:04:22
  but find good leaders that you think are good leaders and observe and what they
• 1:04:29
  do, what works for them and what doesn't.
• 1:04:32
  And then you need to begin at some point to seek out some solid mentorship and
• 1:04:38
  a good leader will pick up on that sort of a flowy sort of thing.
• 1:04:44
  You don't get assigned a mentor. I don't know, some places you may, but you can't.
• 1:04:49
  Mentors are just naturally sort of developed, I think.
• 1:04:54
  To find somebody to latch on to, sort of, but somebody who you think in your
• 1:05:02
  mind, you're like, that's a good leader.
• 1:05:04
  Yeah, follow them, see what they do.
• 1:05:08
  That's good followership right there. And that is the best training to be a good leader.
• 1:05:14
  So as a young, that was my young man, entry level, right? Those are not difficult
• 1:05:19
  things. Make habits out of all those things. you can do that.
• 1:05:23
  Don't, don't be performative. Don't, don't be flashy in the way you're trying,
• 1:05:28
  to execute these things either.
• 1:05:30
  But if you do these things as habit, all these things I just said,
• 1:05:34
  any organization will recognize you as a value.
• 1:05:38
  They'll see you as being a rock solid value. Doesn't matter what the organization is.
• 1:05:43
  All right. And next is for the mid-level dudes, the mid-level leaders.
• 1:05:49
  That's the toughest spot in the business. You're in the middle of the high ups and the low downs.
• 1:05:57
  You got to balance. You got to lead while following.
• 1:06:02
  The balance is the skill. It's the art. You've got to translate higher ups vision,
• 1:06:08
  to the ground level dudes so that it's within the commander's intent.
• 1:06:15
  And I don't want to say understandable. Ground level dudes aren't ignorant.
• 1:06:20
  They understand things, but you've got to translate it to specifically,
• 1:06:25
  especially for multifaceted companies, take this broader vision and narrow it
• 1:06:31
  down to what this piece, how that looks.
• 1:06:35
  You got to translate the vision. You restate the purpose and the key tasks that
• 1:06:41
  apply to your crew and then you get in the end state and you got to do that
• 1:06:46
  in language that your crew understands language that they own,
• 1:06:51
  that that's commander's intent in action that's you translating that and turning it into action,
• 1:07:00
  the followership that you expect out of your people, which means how you expect
• 1:07:06
  them to act toward you is how you act toward your boss. Yeah.
• 1:07:14
  I wasn't the best of that. Every time I do something on leadership,
• 1:07:18
  I say, I would love to get feedback from dudes that I led in the past to get
• 1:07:25
  there, you know, in retrospect.
• 1:07:27
  Yeah. A lot of guys are probably going to say I'm an a-hole.
• 1:07:33
  I was not incompetent. I was just probably, well, an a-hole.
• 1:07:39
  Model the followership that you want out of your people. Demonstrate trust to your leaders.
• 1:07:47
  Demonstrate individual accountability to your leaders and followers.
• 1:07:52
  You demonstrate buy-in to the mission, to the vision, and your team will see
• 1:07:59
  that you're upholding that standard.
• 1:08:02
  And then they too will uphold that standard. Maxwell has a law for this.
• 1:08:06
  Of course he does. It's called law of the picture.
• 1:08:10
  People will do what they see. Yeah.
• 1:08:14
  And then as a mid-level leader, you have to create space for both ground level and executive level.
• 1:08:25
  You have to empower your people to do the job. You don't micromanage.
• 1:08:31
  Now, if you're getting micromanaged, chances are you're going to micromanage.
• 1:08:34
  And that's bad. And this applies. Well, we'll get to that.
• 1:08:39
  But Maxwell has the law of empowerment. Empower your people.
• 1:08:43
  Secure leaders, secure, confident leaders give power away.
• 1:08:47
  They don't try to hoard it, hold on to it, and use it as a weapon or a manipulation tool.
• 1:08:56
  You can give away power, which means you can empower your people to act autonomously,
• 1:09:04
  while still being a reliable supervisor.
• 1:09:10
  Spot check, check on them, make sure everything's on, azimuth is going in the right direction.
• 1:09:21
  Two-way trust, up and down. Trust goes up and down.
• 1:09:25
  Can't expect them to trust you if you don't trust them. Same for the bosses.
• 1:09:30
  Give your team the autonomy that matches their level of competence.
• 1:09:34
  I'm not going to give an entry-level guy some executive-level task, right?
• 1:09:40
  That's a leadership skill in itself is putting the right people in the right job.
• 1:09:46
  And then you accurately report upward, and that builds trust.
• 1:09:49
  When you, you don't, you don't throw feel good filters on your reports upward. Nice.
• 1:10:02
  Sorry about that. Try a new thing here. Normally I would have just heard that in my earphones.
• 1:10:09
  Anyway, back to it. The feel good filter. Don't, don't filter information going
• 1:10:13
  up to your body. They need to know what's really going on so that they can make,
• 1:10:17
  well, strategic level decisions as needed, pass that strategic level decision
• 1:10:22
  down to the operational level.
• 1:10:24
  You translate that to the tactical level and they execute the vision from the strategy.
• 1:10:31
  That's it. Trust.
• 1:10:35
  As a mid-level leader, you individually practice thinking two levels up.
• 1:10:43
  All right here's my job here's what I got to do what is what is my boss how's
• 1:10:49
  how's how's this all look to him how's his boss how does it all look to them and,
• 1:10:58
  on a higher level. And that'll probably help translate how you or clarify how
• 1:11:05
  you translate the lower level of guidance.
• 1:11:10
  And make attempts. Now, you can't read minds, right? But try to anticipate your
• 1:11:14
  boss's needs and the company needs and try to at least prep the environment to meet those needs.
• 1:11:23
  You might not be able to fully satisfy that need, right?
• 1:11:28
  But prep the environment to be able to answer those needs and then action as needed. Yeah.
• 1:11:37
  And then accountability again. This is a common thread as well. Accountability.
• 1:11:43
  Be accountable in the middle because that affects up and down.
• 1:11:49
  And to your, like, Recognize your people, celebrate your people,
• 1:11:55
  and hold them accountable.
• 1:11:58
  And if they, like we talked about earlier, you take accountability first before it's thrust upon you.
• 1:12:06
  You know, acknowledge that. Be like, look, man, thanks for coming out with this
• 1:12:11
  immediately because you probably saved us a lot of heartburn.
• 1:12:14
  If you would have sat on it for a week, it would have probably been a monster. Yeah, man.
• 1:12:21
  When you do all those things, then the whole, the team's kind of moving in the
• 1:12:25
  same direction, same time, right?
• 1:12:28
  We're all jumped on the same train.
• 1:12:31
  We didn't leave anybody behind to catch the next train.
• 1:12:35
  All right. Now, I'm going to address senior leaders and executives.
• 1:12:41
  I was only an ever, I was only ever a master sergeant. I retired.
• 1:12:44
  I was a ODA team sergeant, also known as operations sergeant. Thank you.
• 1:12:53
  This. The senior and executive levels is where either most of the damage can
• 1:13:00
  happen or most of the leverage can happen.
• 1:13:04
  Here's this word again, trust. Senior leaders must trust their mid-level managers
• 1:13:11
  and their ground-level teams.
• 1:13:14
  If you can't trust them, examine why you can't trust them.
• 1:13:19
  Is that a personality flaw on you that you just don't trust people,
• 1:13:25
  or is it because they've demonstrated incompetence if it's on you then well
• 1:13:31
  i'm gonna say fix yourself if it's on them hey give them a warning you you,
• 1:13:40
  possibly two warnings and then make changes,
• 1:13:45
  if the trust if the mistrust, distrust is founded,
• 1:13:49
  make the changes that you need or, or train them better one or the other.
• 1:13:56
  But if it's on you, if it's just some flaw on you that you just refuse to trust
• 1:14:00
  people, you know, get, get past that.
• 1:14:03
  Now you're executive level person. That's probably not the case.
• 1:14:07
  But it could be. I've seen it.
• 1:14:09
  In action. A lot.
• 1:14:13
  Micromanagement it.
• 1:14:17
  Micromanagement is an indicator of a weakness in your leadership. Yeah.
• 1:14:23
  Yeah. If you don't believe in your team's competence and you're micromanaging,
• 1:14:29
  why not just make them more competent?
• 1:14:31
  Not by doing their job or telling them how to do their job, but by training
• 1:14:35
  them better or educating them better or being more clear in your guidance.
• 1:14:41
  And I'm going to go back to Maxwell's law of empowerment there.
• 1:14:44
  Secure leaders Give power away Yes Next I just said it Issue clear Commander's intent,
• 1:14:56
  Don't just issue tasks out To be completed,
• 1:15:00
  They need to know Why those tasks matter If they If you just give One little
• 1:15:05
  task at a time And you're up there Trying to put the pieces Of the puzzle together,
• 1:15:10
  You're slipping As an executive You're slipping that's what your mid-level people are for,
• 1:15:16
  they need to know why all these things matter that they're doing they need to
• 1:15:21
  know what the outcomes should look like and what the like non-negotiable like this is the end state,
• 1:15:32
  and if there's some key things that must happen in that let this has to happen. This has to happen.
• 1:15:40
  And the end state should be this. Put it all together.
• 1:15:45
  And then take a step back. Let your team adapt to the guidance and let them go.
• 1:15:52
  Chris Schmidt draws the parallel with special operations, of course, just like I do often.
• 1:15:59
  But it's an exact parallel, right?
• 1:16:06
  In the fog of war, clear intent and trust equals speed and initiative. That's it.
• 1:16:14
  You can still keep moving. Bias for action.
• 1:16:18
  I have the intent. Was he going to like the way I did this thing? Maybe not.
• 1:16:24
  But does it accomplish? Yeah, as long as we're within legal guidelines,
• 1:16:28
  right? Now, don't take that and run with it.
• 1:16:32
  But the boss, you as an executive, you don't always have to like the way a thing
• 1:16:37
  happened if it is within the intent and achieves the desired outcome.
• 1:16:45
  Different people do different things based on different personalities,
• 1:16:49
  based on different training, based on different schooling, just all sorts of different reasons.
• 1:16:56
  Let them run with it. Yeah, spot check once in a while. Do an azimuth check
• 1:17:02
  once in a while, but don't micromanage.
• 1:17:05
  Issue clear commander's intent. All right, next.
• 1:17:13
  Your mission relentlessly. Translate it that everyone understands.
• 1:17:19
  Do not assume anybody gets it.
• 1:17:23
  Sometimes I have a problem with that when I'm delivering instruction.
• 1:17:27
  I'll say a catch phrase or something that I've said a million times.
• 1:17:33
  Because I've said it a million times, I assume everybody understands what I'm saying.
• 1:17:38
  And it bears a little more going into. Well, Don't assume people get it. Clarify.
• 1:17:47
  Deliver your intent or your mission statement in plain language.
• 1:17:53
  And then connect every initiative, every event, or connect it all to that mission.
• 1:18:03
  Make it make sense. And then confirm that they understand.
• 1:18:09
  Two levels down. Yeah. Not just that your next guy down understands,
• 1:18:15
  but that the next next guy down understands.
• 1:18:19
  And as long as that overlap, man, it don't matter how big your structure is.
• 1:18:23
  As long as that rule is maintained, the understanding will get to the bottom.
• 1:18:29
  The lowest guy, the guy pushing the mop.
• 1:18:32
  And even the guy pushing the mop, if he understands the organizational mission.
• 1:18:40
  He might be up there sitting in your seat one day. if he buys into it and understands it.
• 1:18:46
  Yeah. Ensuring that understanding, good people, is not beneath you as an executive.
• 1:18:52
  That is exactly your job. Yeah.
• 1:18:57
  Your job. Okay, next thing, model, just like the mid-level guy,
• 1:19:02
  model the accountability that you expect out of your people.
• 1:19:06
  You can't be up there embezzling money from the corporation,
• 1:19:10
  but expect absolute loyalty from your people.
• 1:19:16
  Model the behavior you want to see on your decisions publicly even as an executive you can admit,
• 1:19:23
  a mistake to your low-level people you can admit that what will that do to you will make you look weak,
• 1:19:30
  no it will humanize you man it won't make you look weak it'll make you look
• 1:19:34
  like that this is a relatable human he makes mistakes like we all do,
• 1:19:41
  yeah man be able to do that publicly If you dodge responsibility or you point
• 1:19:48
  fingers, blame, blame, blame,
• 1:19:51
  dodge, dodge, dodge, Gavin Newsom style.
• 1:19:56
  The distrust is going to collapse your entire empire.
• 1:20:01
  You, as an executive, create the culture.
• 1:20:06
  Create conditions for healthy change if change is needed. And challenge.
• 1:20:14
  If everything's going all smooth and you reach a baseline, you know, challenge your people.
• 1:20:20
  Let's do something. Let's be bold.
• 1:20:23
  Create an environment for that so new initiatives can come out of even the bottom.
• 1:20:28
  There might be some frigging genius sitting down there pushing a broom,
• 1:20:35
  and he might have the next big thing in his brain, open it up,
• 1:20:40
  make the environment such that that is discoverable.
• 1:20:44
  Don't ignore that guy Invite constructive feedback Invite constructive dissent even,
• 1:20:53
  It doesn't have to be ugly When there's like I disagree with you You're the
• 1:20:58
  boss I'm going to do what you say,
• 1:21:01
  I think it's wrong because of this That might change your perspective a little
• 1:21:05
  bit Maybe you hadn't considered his perspective.
• 1:21:11
  Constructive criticism. Don't. Welcome it.
• 1:21:16
  What you should punish is the lack of courage to come forward,
• 1:21:22
  and speak up if something is wrong or if there is some criticism that needs to be delivered.
• 1:21:31
  Yeah, do punish if there's toxic dissent, right?
• 1:21:36
  If you're actively being undermined, yeah time to make change,
• 1:21:43
  and then finally measure what matters it's not only the numbers of course the
• 1:21:50
  numbers matter that's why you're in business to turn those numbers to make them larger.
• 1:21:58
  The output.
• 1:22:01
  Try to measure trust. And I'm not saying put a number on it.
• 1:22:06
  I'm just saying have a metric for it.
• 1:22:09
  Ownership, try to have some metric for that and reward that.
• 1:22:14
  Reward the followers who make the leaders look good.
• 1:22:20
  Good followers make leaders look good.
• 1:22:23
  And not superficially, but I mean by like making a mission happen.
• 1:22:28
  Yeah. Reward that. Reward it. It doesn't have to be crazy, but a little recognition
• 1:22:34
  goes a long way, folks. Oh my God.
• 1:22:37
  A little recognition goes a long way.
• 1:22:40
  That is a human sort of need. Well, desire. Everybody likes to feel good, to be wanted and needed.
• 1:22:48
  And so even a small business owner, if you're the boss man though, right?
• 1:22:53
  If you're a corporate executive, big, you have thousands of employees underneath.
• 1:22:59
  Or if you're a small business guy and it's just you and one other dude,
• 1:23:03
  maybe, or maybe just you, you face the same, the same choice, right?
• 1:23:10
  You can have absolute control over everything,
• 1:23:14
  and that will channel all movement into one tight space and then it bottlenecks
• 1:23:22
  and it bogs down because you're the...
• 1:23:26
  There. Or you can trust your people, you can guide your people,
• 1:23:33
  and you can scale all that to your business through trusted people.
• 1:23:39
  Even as a small business guy, and it's just you, for instance,
• 1:23:43
  you may have to put trust in your vendors. Yeah.
• 1:23:49
  Or whatever facility you're occupying or renting. You might have to trust other people.
• 1:23:54
  You might have to trust some rando IT guy to keep you running.
• 1:23:59
  So it's not necessarily just for employees, right? But don't be the choke point.
• 1:24:05
  Don't be the choke point in your organization. Open that up.
• 1:24:10
  Yeah. Think of it like high blood pressure if you need to, right?
• 1:24:12
  Those arteries get clogged.
• 1:24:15
  Yeah. Open those things up. Let the blood flow. Let the oxygen flow. Let the new ideas flow.
• 1:24:22
  All right. We're going to wrap this up here.
• 1:24:26
  I'll say this, and you can quote me on it.
• 1:24:31
  Leadership without strong followership is non-existent.
• 1:24:37
  You can't be a leader without a follower. That's it.
• 1:24:41
  So Maxwell's laws, they all, well, influence is important, right?
• 1:24:47
  And you can be an influential person That doesn't make you a leader, necessarily.
• 1:24:54
  There's a lot of other things that go into it.
• 1:24:59
  Laws that Maxwell points out, the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership,
• 1:25:04
  shows us that we can take that influence and turn it into rock-solid leadership and success.
• 1:25:11
  And Chris Schmidt sort of shakes it out that, well, the real world is uncertain, right?
• 1:25:20
  And in this uncertainty, Whether it's a frigging beastly ridgeline up in the
• 1:25:27
  Alps that you're trying to negotiate with your team, or whether it's just a
• 1:25:33
  hyper-competitive market that you're in.
• 1:25:39
  When everyone owns the mission, when everyone trusts one another,
• 1:25:45
  and when everyone holds themselves accountable, that's where success is.
• 1:25:51
  It doesn't matter the environment.
• 1:25:53
  With those things, any environment, any environment.
• 1:25:59
  And like I said, those things I just said perfectly align with the things I
• 1:26:03
  think are important, right? Trust, individual accountability, and mission buy-in.
• 1:26:10
  All right, so whether you're just now getting into the workforce or whether
• 1:26:15
  you're managing a 12-man team,
• 1:26:19
  running your own little small basement startup, whatever, or whether you are
• 1:26:26
  leading a global enterprise, my challenge to all of you is the exact same.
• 1:26:33
  I challenge you to become an excellent follower and an excellent leader because one feeds the other.
• 1:26:43
  They need each other. All right, folks, I'm open to your feedback.
• 1:26:49
  If there's something you would like me to clarify, If there is something,
• 1:26:56
  you know, you got who knows what, if you're a mid-level manager and you're hiring
• 1:27:01
  new people or there's a lot of turnover and you're trying to figure it out.
• 1:27:08
  Up your team, if you're trying to instill some confidence, you know,
• 1:27:13
  we do those things, folks.
• 1:27:15
  I didn't do this episode to push my leadership and team building specifically,
• 1:27:22
  but there's a lot to be learned when a team is put together in an austere environment.
• 1:27:29
  We can get through, we can, the personalities emerge and we can work through
• 1:27:33
  those to learn how to solve problems, despite our personality, flaws, defects, etc.
• 1:27:44
  So do reach out. Do reach out if you have questions like that that have to do
• 1:27:49
  with leadership or team building.
• 1:27:53
  Those are the same but separate.
• 1:27:56
  There's nuances there.
• 1:28:01
  Thanks for listening. Please continue to follow and please share.
• 1:28:05
  If you see value here, please share. I do appreciate every one of my listeners
• 1:28:10
  and we're growing incrementally, very slowly and incrementally.
• 1:28:15
  All right. That's what I got for you, folks. That's what I had today.
• 1:28:19
  I wanted to go with a positive, something more positive than all this frigging
• 1:28:25
  resentment and stuff that I was talking about in the past few episodes.
• 1:28:30
  All right. So OspreyShootingSolutions.com. You're going to be looking at this next time.
• 1:28:34
  So we have a armed self-defense force on force course in September.
• 1:28:41
  Please check it out. we have a i'm doing a separate thing i'm doing a different
• 1:28:45
  thing now i have separated wild card day from the blackjack 33 challenge drill,
• 1:28:54
  the the challenge coin sort of drill so september i want to say fifth we are
• 1:28:59
  going to do a blackjack 33 day,
• 1:29:02
  and that's going to be a little bit of instruction up front several warm-up
• 1:29:06
  drills and then we're all and everybody's going to run the blackjack 33 drill,
• 1:29:11
  to attempt to earn a coin.
• 1:29:14
  One human being owns this coin so far.
• 1:29:19
  My friend Alan, and he worked very hard to get that coin. It's tough, but it's doable.
• 1:29:26
  Anyway, that's in September. Blackjack 33 and Armed Self-Defense,
• 1:29:32
  which is a scenario-based course.
• 1:29:34
  Let's see, September, October. There's a lot of stuff in October.
• 1:29:37
  Please go to the website and check it out.
• 1:29:41
  The security consulting stuff I've been working very hard on.
• 1:29:44
  I've got several clients on board so far.
• 1:29:48
  I think, well, one, I deliver very thorough threat vulnerability assessment.
• 1:29:55
  That's almost the crux of it is the threat vulnerability assessment.
• 1:29:58
  And then the SOP development, again, very thorough, very detailed.
• 1:30:03
  I hate to say this, but there are people out there that don't necessarily want
• 1:30:07
  a highly detailed SOP because they want to be able to flex according to their feelings.
• 1:30:13
  Well, security and safety matters aren't to be left to feelings.
• 1:30:19
  It's best to leave those to fact and professional analysis of most likely and
• 1:30:25
  most dangerous outcomes of various things.
• 1:30:29
  So the SOP development is another big thing there.
• 1:30:32
  And then, of course, we have the newly developed SAFE program,
• 1:30:36
  Security Awareness in Foreign Environments.
• 1:30:39
  And that is targeted for humanitarian nonprofits, missionaries,
• 1:30:45
  international salespeople, international independent journalists,
• 1:30:50
  people who go to third world countries often,
• 1:30:54
  who maybe do not have the training organizationally, right? Your company don't pay for training.
• 1:31:02
  They may or may not have some kind of hostage, kidnap, and ransom insurance,
• 1:31:07
  and you're just going over on faith.
• 1:31:14
  Well, I'm a man of faith, but much like the saying goes, hope is not a course
• 1:31:19
  of action, neither is faith. Yeah.
• 1:31:25
  Foundation of training, folks. Excuse me. Have a solid foundation of training.
• 1:31:32
  Have an understanding of where you're going, what the potential threats are.
• 1:31:38
  Not just the obvious ones, but the subtle ones. Yeah, it's all out there.
• 1:31:43
  And that's all on the website as well. And then, of course, the leadership and
• 1:31:47
  team building things via two team guys.
• 1:31:51
  Land navigation, long range evasion, situational awareness, search and rescue mountaineer.
• 1:31:59
  Very good one. Very good one for team building and leadership for that matter.
• 1:32:05
  Small, small unit mission. Yeah. Very good one. Surviving captivity is still there.
• 1:32:14
  Excellent leadership and team building courses. So look into them.
• 1:32:20
  And then we have, of course, please, if you're a charitable person,
• 1:32:23
  give to gifsengo.com backslash help a homie fund.
• 1:32:29
  And that is our efforts. I've not been strong on that lately. I'm trying to be.
• 1:32:36
  We normally have a little bit of money in the account and I normally,
• 1:32:40
  I don't let it consolidate and build so I can go do a big thing.
• 1:32:44
  I try to help people as I see them.
• 1:32:47
  So yeah, it's small change, but it's helpful folks. It helps individually.
• 1:32:53
  I don't just go hand cash to homeless people, right? But I do buy food or literally
• 1:33:01
  shoes and socks and things like that. So please consider that.
• 1:33:06
  That's going to be to be developed folks.
• 1:33:08
  I'm going to develop that out into a proper non-profit.
• 1:33:13
  Coming soon, coming soon. And then the next sort of big thing that's happening
• 1:33:18
  change-wise is ultimately what I'm going to do is consolidate.
• 1:33:26
  The firearms training, the leadership and team development, the consulting into
• 1:33:34
  one website, all under OspreyShoesSolutions.com.
• 1:33:38
  But the main page is going to look like something like the OSS Hub.
• 1:33:42
  And then there's going to be sort of three big categories. You can click into
• 1:33:46
  that to get to the various categories.
• 1:33:49
  I'm going to get rid of a couple of websites that I'm paying and four that I have.
• 1:33:53
  I think two team guys as, as a name is probably going to go away, probably.
• 1:33:59
  And it's just going to be under OSS as, as leadership development and team building.
• 1:34:06
  I think more people will be able to find it that way.
• 1:34:11
  So that's happening. It's not happening right now. I will definitely announce
• 1:34:14
  it. I'll put out an email to all the folks on the, on the, the,
• 1:34:19
  the roster and, and, and everybody will know when it happens.
• 1:34:23
  I will certainly announce before I just take two team guys off,
• 1:34:26
  off the, the internet completely.
• 1:34:30
  So that's what's going on folks. There it is. This has been a pretty long one.
• 1:34:35
  I apologize for going so long, but, but leadership and followership,
• 1:34:39
  very important stuff. I think, especially for, Oh, it's very important.
• 1:34:44
  The world runs on business.
• 1:34:46
  There are very few people out there just off grid, walking, walking the earth,
• 1:34:50
  doing good deeds. Everybody has a job.
• 1:34:53
  You're either a follower or mid-level leader or a leader. That's the way it is.
• 1:34:58
  So I feel like this topic was necessary at this time. Good people.
• 1:35:02
  Thank you so much. I appreciate each and every one of you listening.
• 1:35:06
  I appreciate your feedback. I love you guys.