you got this section in the book that talks about what you're talking about
right now the leadership Factory right so here I'm gonna go to the book all the
academic classes in the world will never teach anyone to be a leader the Academy
recognized that long ago and while we had to take courses on the subject we
learned by doing the Academy is structured to provide leadership
opportunities in a wide variety of places and levels from the very first
day you start as plebs and this is emphasizing what you just said and
discipline is something that I talk about all the time and I know what's
great as you know as I was talking to on the way over here you know I do I do all
these I read these leadership or not leadership books they're not book it's
about leadership they're about combat right but combat is about leadership so
all these books all of them every single one of them whether it's an ancient
Roman military leader or a marine in Vietnam or an Army soldier in World War
two they all there is one common thing that's discipline discipline discipline
it's always there back to the book discipline forms the cornerstone of any
military team and of course punishment serves as one of the means to maintain
discipline during my junior year I learned not to be afraid to mete out
punishment at the same time doing so requires a balance of appropriateness
and understanding so that's why you just talked about right there and this again
goes to something that I talk about a lot which is which is the dichotomy of
leadership which is in leadership there's there's opposing forces that are
pulling you into different directions and both of them are right they're both
right it's right to be hard on your guys and maintain strict discipline and it's
right to love your guys and take care of them you have to balance those two and
that's what you're talking about right there that's where you were talking
about when you were talking about they need to understand why they're being
punishment punished back to the book bad officers try to be
buddies with their Marines there's a fine line between getting to know your
know getting to know the men under your command and
hunting with them as friends it is all too easy to make that mistake
at the same time here's the balance at the same time if a young second
lieutenant doesn't make an effort to know his men his aloofness becomes a
drag and will hinder his ability to command in several ways
first he won't understand the strengths and weaknesses of his squads more
important he won't have the respect or the connection needed to motivate and
lead in the worst of circumstances men will follow other men into the worst
possible circumstances if they respect and believe in their leadership like all
other aspects of command it is a delicate balance
so you're just everything you just said you say it in the book and that's why
we're talking about the leadership Factory but it's interesting this is
stuff that I'm sure they touched on it in the classes but that's the stuff that
you learn you learn it from senior enlisted people you learn it from other
officers you learn it yourself you work for people and you go man this guy's
aloof this guy's not talking to us so stuff that we learned ourselves too I'm
gonna finish this section up I concluded the proper balance here depended on the
officers ability to listen and accept input while still making it clear that
he was the ultimate decision-maker that was the key a second lieutenant couldn't
be afraid to engage in frank and productive dialogue with his key leaders
a platoon becomes the reflection of its commander he sets the example and this
is from what you just said if his uniform is jacked up his men won't care
about their own this leads to disciplinary issues and becomes a very
slippery slope the only way a second lieutenant can have the moral authority
to set a high standard is to set a high standard for conditioning and appearance
is to speed the example himself without conditioning a platoon cannot achieve
its potential in the field aggressiveness suffers appearance breeds
pride and reinforces discipline and esprit de corps so those that's the
leadership factory that you're talking about and clearly those things that you
brought from the football field and from the
you apply them right directly into your folks in combat they helped and you know
the Marine Corps has a really unique circumstance where they have the basic
school or every single officer goes there and that's huge
this is this huge standard then we go a step further where when we go to
infantry officer course that course was 13 weeks long one of the very hardest if
not the hardest in the Marine Corps mentally physically everything you don't
know anything that's coming everything's a surprise but I felt that my
instructors during our course were phenomenal and they were getting all the
real-time intelligence from the battlefield
all the training was realistic but in terms of how you relate to your Marines
from your junior enlisted to your middle rank to your senior enlisted how you
relate to the senior enlisted from the battalion who work directly for the
battalion staff how you manage those relationships to maximize the
effectiveness of your platoon to make sure that you can get exactly what they
need they did such a good job of that then you take it one step further when I
reported 3rd battalion 2nd Marines I'd be remiss if I didn't give credit to a
guy by the name of Gabe Diana who is a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps
now I believe but he taught me he was a true student of leadership and military
history he would tell me all the time his craft is his hobby there's nothing
else he cared about it's what he was he loved being a Marine loved being an
officer and he taught me a lot about decentralized leadership how to not
micromanage how to empower your junior leaders that they start to think like
you and you could achieve tempo on the battlefield and and you could
immediately see examples of Marines I call it and I see it all the time in the
business world I call it JV leadership where I'm a
great leader if my people love me and and they're the same leaders that
will tell their people all right guys today we've got to save 30 minutes
longer because headquarters said so look I disagree with it I think it's
ridiculous but we have to do it so let's just sit here together now none of their
people are actually gonna work motivated there's me no discipline there's gonna
be no standard that they're trying to achieve because of that
leadership they're angry at headquarters absolutely they're there their bat mad
at the chain of command exactly they did JV leadership and I'm constantly trying
to talk to people about that a JV leadership the first thing of it is you
think you have to be loved to be an effective leader if you are an effective
leader over the long term you will be loved but there's gonna be intermittent
parts where they can't stand you they don't understand things all the
time or they're gonna be mad at you in there because because they're emotional
but over long term they're gonna understand that what you did was best
the other the second major part that JV leadership is thinking hey I'm in charge
therefore I come up with all the great ideas and I'm gonna make every single
decision without your input and I'm gonna I'm gonna really try hard to make
sure buddy knows I am in charge that's ridiculous
it is not your job to come up with all the great ideas some of the best ideas I
receive or from 19 year olds you have 21 year olds who had already been dialogues
had a great sir I got a great idea well I want to hear all about it's it's
it's our job as leaders to decide which are the best ideas to invest energy time
and resources in and that's not just I get all this stuff all the time when I
talk to different groups and companies well military leadership is different
than corporate leadership why what am I saying here that does doesn't apply well
it's too extreme it is not you're taking us too literal with with with our
warrior mentalities here you know that you do not need to be an insecure the
best leaders are not insecure they're secure they know that they're there and
ultimately gonna make the final decision but it empowers your people and you
could achieve tempo when you're decentralized enough that they feel good
about coming up with ideas sending them up to you to get back up for it and get
resources behind it but also knowing that they can make the appropriate
decisions at their level because they know it your final intent is here's the
outcome I want achieved you get us there you're the expert at that's why I hired
you I didn't tell my machine gunners how to work their T&E system and how to cite
in their machine guns right I just told them what I wanted them to hit they're
better than that at me taking the time to spend it with my Marines in their
different functions and aspects and talk to them about how they're there the
expert and complement them like that it made
them feel great it does wonders for a leader to go to their level see what
they do every day and and see that expert work because they don't expect
you to be an expert in all of that they know that right
your job is different your responsibilities are different you need
to have greater perspective but when you go to their level in respect what they
do and show them respect for what they do and how they do it man it's a
powerful thing that that kid that could make a group of people so much better
collectively than they ever would have been individually and when it happens
right when it finally when you finally get there and can achieve that it is it
is awesome it's the most rewarding experience you could ever have and it's
hard for people to understand because most people that well the most rewarding
experience you guys know they have is killing people no it's so much different
than that so much different there's so much more to it than that yeah yeah it's
interesting to that by the way what you're saying right now is basically the
entire book that my buddy laughs babbling there's a chapter in there
called decentralized command everything you're saying so but it and that's why
you know you've come up in a completely different you know in the Marine Corps I
was in the in the in the Navy and yet you know you and I have both I can tell
right now basically completely aligned leadership principles isn't it
interesting though that some guys don't get it they don't get it and you could
explain it to them and you'd say listen man hey you don't need to make every
decision and in fact when you get out in the firefight you won't be able to make
every decision you're gonna have to let your leaders lead and you're gonna let
the afterlife and the and they would listen to you and you could see it going
right through your head it's wild you wonder what psych
psychologically is going on in there makes you want to repel and a lot of
times it's hey they got a bad review from this officer so this is their way
of saying you know hey you know go fly a kite you know that this is their way of
rebelling and I noticed that with some officers and in some of the you know I
had I had a fire lieutenant during my second deployment and and he had this
problem you know he kept feeling he had to be best friends at this Marines he
spent we too much time with him talking about
a lot of personal stuff they'd be out on patrol and nobody would listen to him I
mean it was almost straight mutiny and everyone I had to fire and and here was
the thing is I tell him look you're a really good person and you are most
likely going to be very successful in whatever you choose to do so please
please remember that it's hard to hear that now this is a very unique job and
we are in a very dangerous scenario already in Iraq and we were in a
dangerous area at the time and things were about to go south and I had to
remove this kid now before things got worse and it was hard from the
understandthe but you can be a phenomenal human being a great person
but just not meant to lead especially in in those circumstances but it's it's
some people and I think obviously if they have so many years growing up in a
household where it was so different from what they're being taught that I think
sometimes is the route for them to push back against this type of leadership no
you know I've been taught differently for years and years it's kinda like well
how did you just block it all out for the you know year and a half you've been
in school before you got here with guys with all this combat experience and not
to mention the hundreds of years of history yes of combat experience saying
look this is the best way to do it yes and saying no I'm gonna do it
differently I mean the military is a business it is
a business it's run like a business and the leadership there it's about
maximizing the potential of all the human beings that you have on your team
and how do you do that yes it involves tactics and what we do is different but
the the personal the small unit down to the large unit leadership is all the
same Hahnemann it's all the same and you go around and you talk to different
executives who are having trouble well you know this you know it's the
Millennials and what they do and what they do and this do and we were talking
about on the ride here people the experts always want to blame some kind
of process I think your processing your information flow is wrong and the way
that you have your workflow set up in the office space that's causing this
issue in communication no it's not you saying that because you are afraid to
have the heart conversations with the leaders who are failing of which by the
way you're one of the leaders yes when you're failing as a business and you got
these issues yeah its Bree you're gonna be one of the problems and you might
need help squaring that away and that's okay that's okay well you know another
thing I noticed in business world is a lot of people in the business world they
have no leadership training so they've figured it out they've been lucky and
successful and they've gotten by with good people and then they get to a
certain point where all the sudden they're going wait a second I can't
handle this anymore that you know if you grow from six people that you know
pretty well that you trust and all of a sudden you've got a staff of a hundred
people if you don't start learning how to lead you're gonna have significant
problems and it's gonna blow up and that happens from a hundred people to three
hundred people then from three hundred people do a thousand people it will
happen every time and you got to train those leaders throughout the chain of
command that all have the same understanding of the fundamental
principles of combat leadership which is leadership you have to throw combat in
there because that was my old job you know it's funny you bring that up
there's a great example Dan Quinn is the current head coach of the Atlanta
Falcons he was a defensive coordinator at Seattle hires a head coach in Atlanta
and threw his he's a very good friend of Jay Glazer who's obviously very involved
in mixed martial arts and does a lot of the Fox broadcasts and I've worked with
him in gotten close with him and so Jay introduced me to Dan dan was looking to
make the team tougher and here's a guy who has achieved the highest level of
leadership and coaching just like you talked about he was a great coordinator
now he's a head coach and he had the humility to seek out experts from all I
mean he went to different sports talk to their head coaches he went to the
military he went all over with humility to ask and get advice and glean
experience from other people's time and leadership to include I couldn't believe
it but Here I am having breakfast at the man here him in his office or I'm in
there and you know they're little cafeteria there were just talking
leadership and he's talking about some his individual guys and he's actually
listening to my opinion wanted to hear what I went through my opinion on this
guy or that guy is he brought me in to do some martial arts drills to make the
team tougher but I gained so much respect that here's a man who's achieved
the highest he knows he's in charge he's not out to
prove anything his guys know he's in charge and when
they don't meet the standard there's a consequence but at the same time he
shows them the same kind of humility as he seeks out advice to get better every
day because he wants then hey Julio Jones I
know you think you're the best wide receiver in football but there's ways
you can get better and you need to be humble enough to find them and guess
what Julio goes first in every drill the
dudes that that I've watched him who works as hard as any human being I've
seen in the football field always looking to get better Matt Ryan the same
and look at the position the team's at now but he has continually done that he
turned to Navy SEALs last summer brought seals and to work with his team to work
with him on leadership on accountability and all this combat but leadership's
leadership and bring it into that locker room and create this cohesive unit that
has had a tremendous turnaround from the 2015 season to now 2016 yeah yeah now a
championship again for you reciting my book which have to do is we have we a
chapter there it's called check your ego and you know my point is the number one
the number one characteristic that a leader has to have is humility and if
you don't have that all those things that you just talked about you won't do
any of them you won't ever get better you won't listen anybody else you won't
take any advice you can't that's it's a horrible thing