how did the naval academy prepare you to lead
well first of all i i love my experience at the naval academy and for me that was
all about the the people that i i served
with you know and the folks that i met and uh and the things that we went
through together i got in a lot of trouble at naval academy
i struggled my grades something we talked about previously i got i had a
big conduct record um because i still did some of those
knucklehead teenage things and rebelled against authority
but frankly uh you know look there's great people there you know there's
great people on the staff i've got a very close friend there's a battalion
officer now and it's awesome to have good people
there that are passing lessons on to you know to those young midshipmen as
they graduate and for every academy or rtc unit you know uh
for that matter i saw you know because you have such a wide swath of officers
from all different uh um you know from all different um uh
navy marine corps i mean every every kind of different branch of
within those services uh as well and uh and also you have a
a midshipman uh leadership hierarchy right so you've got someone who because
they made good grades or had a good kind of whatever got
got promoted into this kind of make-believe did you see that right
there yeah a little bit a little bit of uh
you know a little bit of anger about that one right there just because they
got good grades they didn't have a good content they really have seen conduct
records they're gonna be in charge of me listen
they're they're some resentful this is a new life i just met a new life
resentful life i'm actually not at all resentful i i uh
i could tell you i had some i had some good friends who were in those positions
and it was great for them you know good good for them
um it's it's kind of it's just it's funny looking back now because it's
completely meaningless right when you're do you have a regimental commander there
yeah is that guy in charge of all the students yeah there's there's
you know there's regiment brigade you know battalion
ocs they have it too that that when i was at ocs
i was the man i was called i knew the regiment i was regcon
so no wonder he's a little sensitive to this he's a little sensitive
coming in hot oh they also called the five bar because you're the only person
with five bars on your little uniform did they did they call you captain big
time no they called me all presidente i was the president of my class too i
had a good time at ocs so so now now we see the sensitivity
there yeah listen i you know great maybe you should have studied hard
like i meet some kids now or i hear from i get i get
correspondence from people at the naval academy
and like i can see that they're in the game i can see that they're like oh this
is going on and i'm gonna i'm gonna like you know what i'm saying like you
think you could have been you could have had that no question
about it yeah now would it have mattered at the time i don't know you know
failure as we say is often the the best teacher look i made
i made great grades in high school and did well on my sats and acts without
with almost no study uh i got super um uh i i didn't have the discipline that
was in place uh once i got to the naval cabin that
structure it was it was difficult for me it was very hard for me as i went into a
system engineering program and and those sort of things so i struggled
with that so that could have helped me if somebody had
if i had to learn this one equals freedom at a young age and recognize
the power in that i'd be way way more ahead you know in life
wouldn't we all for sure what about playing the game yep and playing the
game as well right that i'm going to buck authority of like you know what
actually it's going to be a lot worse for you
if you just you know even from a just personal perspective not only works for
you but for your squad or for your you know
these folks that you care about if you just
build a better relationship with the folks above you instead of being the
the you know hard-hitted argumentative guy for sure it would be way better for
me i don't know when i figured that out i mean it was definitely it was
definitely in my enlisted time i started figuring out that oh i'm working for a
guy but and i can either make my life i can either tell him he sucks and then
my life is going to suck or i can figure out how to work with him
and that's going to make my life better and by the way it's
going to make my life better it's going to make us do a better job as a team
so it's interesting when you pick up on that in life and obviously if i would
have been going to the naval academy at 18
you know i was a knucklehead you know i would have been in the same boat of like
oh i'm going to stick it to the man right i mean i'm still listening to
tenacious d at age whatever and we're still sticking it to the man well i'll
tell you the people that i really like like my upperclassmen i really like we
have some that are you know still serving the seal teams and
and uh great guys that helped influence me and and
i expected when i showed up there i wanted to be a seal yeah i wanted to
go to war that's what i wanted to do and i it was very hard for me to
recognize that like not everybody wanted to do that it was exactly like me it was
so it was you know some people were a little more academic or wanted to be on
the intelligence side or wanted to be you know they
wanted to drive a ship or they wanted to be on a submarine or that you know they
those things that uh you know fly a plane i mean top gun had come out
you know we had a whole bunch of people that wanted to be you know pilots that
had gone to school so it was it was interesting people were
a lot different than i expected and and uh some folks didn't quite have
the the warlock mentality that uh that i expected everyone might have um you know
going into that environment but there's no question that uh
if i had done a better job of you know you caught playing
playing the game just seeing that you know detaching and seeing like hey
listen thinking strategically yeah thank you strategically we want to see if we
don't want to say play the game because that sounds too yeah to build
i want to build relationships devious that is good
i didn't recognize that it was not in my benefit
or the benefit of the people around me to to create antagonistic relationships
and that so rather than de-escalate those situations
i rebelled against them and pushed against them and it was a struggle for
me yeah and it took me a long time to figure
that out that that being said though there you know there's it the naval cast
is no different than anywhere else there was great leaders there who mentor
people and and trained people and represented
you know folks well that were both officers on the staff and and enlisted
on the staff as well as uh you know is midshipman so
uh but i think what what was a lesson for me and looking back on it now that i
recognize it's great to identify who you don't
want to be and if someone does something that's
looking out for themselves or throws people under the bus or you know those
those leaders that you start losing respect for
it's great to actually identify that yeah and that's a good lesson to learn
to say okay good i want to make sure i don't be that
that way but what what i have learned is that i can't be
we talk to leaders about this all the time and i get people like what do you
do you know with your boss it just isn't a
good leader you're like guess what the seal teams is one of the
most highly screened organizations in the world
what's uh what's the percentage of senior leaders that i work for that i
had respect for that i'd go and work for again
you know that's maybe maybe 20 maybe 20 percent of the people i work for during
my time and guess that's about average as you
talk to people you know it's about average in the business world it's
better it's certainly at the naval camp any of those places
so if you're expecting that there's most of the world out there
is not going to be a good leader they're not going to be a leader and that
doesn't matter that shouldn't affect your performance you should be
able to do you know something that i learned from you which has probably been
the most helpful thing that you ever taught me
was that i should try to have the same relationship with
with every boss you know whether i had deep respect and aberration for them or
whether i'd despise them and thought they were
you know egomaniac who you know or a coward who
you know could mitigate risk so and that is it's in my benefit and my team's
benefit to build that relationship with with my team
and that was that was a lesson that i i had not learned then
um so yeah those negative those negative lessons learned were were good for me
and also i would have less negative lessons learned if i'd
figured this out earlier