IDL102 Season 3: Life On The X with Stephen Drum

Where does “X” mark the spot in your personal and professional life? Why should you be careful not to get caught up in the outcome? Do you make and hold space for reflective vulnerability?

I’m so excited to share this episode with my friend Stephen Drum. He is the author of the book, Life On The X, about his experiences as a Navy SEAL, which releases on March 7. Although we recorded this episode late in 2022 and when he had already finished his book, we’re only able to release it this year because Stephen first had to clear the information in his book through the Department of Defense. We hope that the wait was worth it!

Meet Stephen Drum

Stephen Drum is a retired Navy SEAL Master Chief.

During his 27 years of service, he has developed and led high-performance teams in combat at every level and in the most challenging and extreme environments.

He was a principle architect and co-creator of the US Navy’s Warrior Toughness Program.

As a speaker, trainer, and coach, he helps leaders and teams optimize their performance and execution in the most challenging and high-pressure situation.

Visit his website, check out his new book, and connect on LinkedIn.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• What’s the X? - 03:25

• Don’t get caught up on the outcome - 09:24

• The value of values - 21:16

• The power of reflection - 32:31

What’s the X?

The metaphor of Stephen’s “X” is that it essentially defines the moment of true fear or stress, because that is a moment where you have to be clear on your intentions and where opportunity exists.

Which skills, attributes, and mindsets do you need to develop to be able to put your best foot forward when the opportunity presents itself?

Don’t get caught up on the outcome

You might prepare and execute everything perfectly when it comes to a plan, an idea, or a situation, but what if the outcome is different? Do you throw all that work away? No.

The preparation, the development, and the action are all separate pieces that are linked to the outcome, but they are just as valuable on their own.

The value of values

When you are at the forefront of your life during a tense moment, whether it’s at work, at home, in your marriage, or on the battlefield, you have to know what’s truly important to you and draw on that for strength and direction.

How do you want to show up? How do you want to be seen? How do you want to support those around you?

Values and beliefs are one thing, but principles and how you embody them are another. You have to live out your belief because then it becomes a guiding principle.

The power of reflection

A leader needs to set the example.

You need to make it clear that questioning or asking for clarification and being vulnerable are welcomed and wanted. If you shun people for asking or reflecting on information, no one will ask questions, and all progress will come to a stop.

Creativity needs vulnerability and effective vulnerability needs to be supported. As the leader, you create and set the example for the quality of support that is offered to your people.

Use this skill to also improve your interpersonal relationships.

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

BOOK | Stephen Drum – Life on the X: Learn How to Meet Any Challenge with Courage, Confidence, and Readiness!

Visit his website, check out his new book, and connect on LinkedIn.

Listen to the previous episode with Stephen Drum!

Sign up for the roundtable at: hello@theimpactdrivenleader.com

Check out the Practice Of the Practice

www.tylerdickerhoof.com

Visit theimpactdrivenleader.com and sign up for the workshop!

About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast

The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.

Rate, review and subscribe here on Apple Podcasts or subscribe on Stitcher and Spotify.

All we [can] control is what we do.

Stephen Drum

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. Excited to be with you here today, share this conversation with my friend Stephen Drum. Stephen is the author of the book Life on the Acts. You've maybe heard from him before. He's been a guest before. I'm excited to bring him back when we talk about the book, Life On The X. It releases on March 7th. Go to wherever you buy books, go to Amazon, reserve that book right now. You can also go to lifeonthexbook.com or stephendrum.com/book-page. You can find it there. You can find out more information about the book. I'm excited to have this conversation with Stephen as we dive into this a little bit deeper. In previous podcast, we talked about life on the x, his experiences as a Navy SEAL, but now even more, why is this book pertinent? Why is it pertinent here in 2023? We actually recorded this episode back in 2022, and a reason why it's a little bit delayed in release is there's a lot of information that Stephen had to share with the Department of Defense if he could even share it. That can be a lengthy process. It's been actually cleared. He got it cleared before he thought he was going to, and now it is releasing March 7th, 2023. I'm excited to share this conversation. I'll catch up at the end, recap and I'll share one message that Stephen shared with me that really surprised me, that really had me thinking, man, I need to really apply that my life. Maybe you caught it too. [TYLER] Stephen, man, I'm excited to see you, excited for you to be another guest, repeat guest, that's wat I meant, a repeat guest again. That means I didn't screw up so much the first time that you're like, dude, I'm never doing that again. But I'm glad to be here with you, excited for your book, Life On The X to be released October of 2022, coming up shortly after this episode releases. Dude, I'm excited for you to share that. I'm excited for you to talk a little bit more with the audience about that and people maybe that had not heard the first episode, get to learn a little bit more about you. Dude, it's good to see you. [STEPHEN DRUM] You as well. Thanks again for having me on. If I remember correctly, I was fortunate enough to get in on the ground floor, wasn't I? It was still early on. I was less than, I'm trying to remember what it was, was it was like, I was like number 18 or something, wasn't I? [TYLER] Yeah, I'd have to look. I didn't look exactly. I should know that right off the top of my head. I mean, no, yes, you were early on, which thankful that you gave me your time [STEPHEN] A lot of fun. It was easy, when they're easy conversations, it's a good way to spend an hour, in my opinion. So I'm grateful to get to do it again with you. [TYLER] So let's, one, the impetus of this episode, as part of my podcast is sharing great books, sharing books from a maybe a different perspective that I think we've had conversations the past. I love the view that you have from your military service and what you did at writing the Warrior Toughness and from the SEAL perspective and it gave me a lot of perspective in life from a business point of view. That's where I'm excited for you to share your stories and your experiences and in Life On The X. But for the audience that's just listening, that they're like, dude, what's this X about? Tell me what this X about. Is that Xing out the calendar. What's the X? Would you bring them up to speed what the X is? [STEPHEN] Thank you. That is the perfect question because when you're writing a title, whether it's a movie, whether it's a book, there's a fine line between creating a curiosity gap and being like, well, what the heck is this? Why do I even care? Maybe I'll just put that down. So I love that you asked me that question, but yeah, the X is actually, a military doctrine term, we'll use it in the military. Especially, we use it in the SEAL teams. You think about X as X-box the sport, of an objective, it's a center point. So for us, if we are assaulting a building, if we're faster dropping out of the helicopter onto the rooftop of that building, we refer to that as landing on the X. Or if we drive up to the front door, that's the X. But probably even more, we use that term as if we're patrolling down the street and we get ambushed by the enemy, and they have us in that kill zone, or it's that fatal cone of fire, we refer to that as the X. In that case, it's all about getting off that x, getting out of that kill zone. So the metaphor here in the broader sense is that X essentially defines that moment where it can be scary, it can be stressful, but it also is that area where opportunity exists if you are deliberate, if you are intentional with setting the table effectively and able to bring your A game to that moment, to that situation, to maybe that slightly more extended period of time. That's business and that's personal relationships, that's personal lives. It's all of that. It's being able to be intentional in preparing and recognizing what skills, what attributes that you need to develop to put your best foot forward. [TYLER] Okay, so let me take that, and I'm going to ask you to make an analogy, your son's a hockey player. Where's the X for the hockey player? Where's the X on the ice? Where's the X in their sports performance? [STEPHEN] I would even say, I mean, you could, you can scale it. You could say, X is, if he's a center and he's taking a face off, that's the X. But it's also just, but it's that whole period in time. It can be that entire game. And hockey's shifts are often no more than 60 seconds. You go out there and it's like, all right, I either did really well and I want to repeat what I've just done, and that's what I'm thinking about when I get off the ice and back on the bench. Or I had a not-so-great shift. What did I learn? What did I process and how can I effectively flush away all the garbage, all the baggage from when went wrong, which leaves me only with the value of that experience, and to intentionally put that in the next time I get back on the ice, or the next time I get back into another game. [TYLER] Well, and I mean, I love that, again, that additional perspective because again I relate to a lot life and sports. That's why I'm engaged, my kids playing sports, love being around sports but I also know that the further that we can draw those parallels, we can get closer to our real life as parents, as leaders, as corporate executives, as salespeople. So one of the jobs that I know you do a lot of is you do leadership speaking, you do speaking, keynote events, doing those things. When you're talking to that audience, much like this audience that's listening in, how are you relating the X that an operator has. The guy that's fast roping down from a helicopter onto a building, they're in the X. They see the X, they're in that position. Where is that for the modern-day leader? [STEPHEN] I often say, I tell these stories, and I think we discussed this thing on your last episode, and I said, hey, as a speaker, you're going to bring me in. You're going to bring in a former Navy SEAL to come in. There's got to be an element of entertainment in the storytelling. No doubt. Otherwise, I failed. But that story has to be relatable in some way. You have to be able to get the audience to see themselves in that situation. So I'll tell the story, one of the stories I tell is about my first time getting shot at, my first big gunfight, grenades thrown at me, heavy fire and me just like, oh man, what do I do now? Then I pivot to saying, hey, well, just like the rest of you, nobody shoots at me anymore today, but like, I walk out in front of an audience, a thousand plus people, I am absolutely stepping onto that X because again, what if my slides aren't working? What if the power goes out? What if I get stuck and just suddenly lock up and forget what I'm going to say next and I'm like you know what, how do I know that? Because all of those things have happened to me. In that moment, I promise I'm not thinking about getting shot at in Afghanistan. Because in that moment, and you discussed this in the last episode two, there's not a huge difference between that actual fear of life or death and what's critically and vitally important for you in that moment when it comes to your job, your relationship, your reputation. So it really is the same. [TYLER] One of the other factors, and I remember now talking about that and where that came from is our body can't, our mind can't differentiate that. What I think is interesting is previewing your book, getting through that the four elements that are part of this being under the gun in the X is the performance mindset, is there's four elements there. But one of the things that I think happens in so many leadership positions that people focus so much on the outcome that everything is about the outcome they almost lose sight of the preparation, the process. Well, what did we actually execute? If we executed perfectly, it's like coming back to sports. But I would imagine for you in an operation, like we executed absolutely everything to a t, and yet we did not get the outcome we wanted. Does that mean that we throw everything, blow it all up and start over again or we understand the circumstances why we did not get the outcome in knowing that our process, our preparation or execution was actually perfect? It was just, there was a caveat to it that did not work out. So we have to keep that in mind as opposed to getting so ahead of ourselves. I tell by your body language that you're shaking your head, you're like, yeah, I get that. I'd love for you to talk more about it, [STEPHEN] Man, i's like a Lay's potato chip. I got to just pick one thing, because it's like, there's so much there. [TYLER] I talked about a lot there [STEPHEN] No, I love it. I get so excited, I get so excited to talk about this stuff, but okay, with the sports metaphor, we don't control what our teammates do. We don't control the level of performance or game that the opposition brings to the field that day. All we control is what we do. If we become too fixated on the outcome, we become like that dog chasing its tail. If we're looking at the scoreboard, we have no attention to the things that we control, our own performance within that game. This is critical because that's when it comes to assessment. You hit the nail on the head is I executed the perfect game plan, or did I? I got to be able to know the difference. It's like as an example, like when I was training for public speaking, the guy was like, and it's the same thing, you go out onto a stage. Sometimes you could give the exact same speech and it may land with one audience, and it may not for another. The assessment that you make in that point was, did I deliver the speech that I rehearsed or did I make a mistake? Did I deliver the perfect speech maybe to the wrong audience or did I fail to perform what I rehearsed? Does that make sense? So it's the same thing. I got to know the difference because I need to know whether I need to change my plan and come up with a new plan, or if I need to do a better job of performing that plan as designed. Those are two very different things. [TYLER] As you're talking about that, I'm trying to, in my mind, again, we could talk about it from a speaking point of view, but I think in the position of a leader, so I'm a corporate executive, I'm a CEO, I'm a COO, it doesn't matter. I'm a HR director and I am in charge of leading others, sharing with them the mission, the vision, the values, everything that you mentioned that are core to what you guys did as Navy SEAL operators, but as well as involved in every organization. One of the things that I've learned is as a leader you know all the information, or you should. If you don't, that's a different situation. Just as a speaker, if you and I are speaking and we're speaking about content, you know the content, I know the content. However, the ability to connect to the audience is the difference in how that, really the execution of it. To me, that's where it is, the, alright, we have the execution. We know everything, but how do we adjust to the variables? I'd love for you to walk us through the process as SEAL operators and yourself creating this warrior toughness. Everything you've done in your training is like, how do you navigate through each of those positions to make sure, oh, like you just talked about, I could deliver the perfect performance, but if it's to the wrong people at the wrong time, it doesn't work. [STEPHEN] I think one of the things that always has to start with the end in mind when it comes to, and what I'm talking about here specifically, is when you talk about steel training, when you talk about combat operations, you have to have a very crystal-clear view of that desired end state. Once you're finished in operation a campaign, you have to have certain effects that you want to have accomplished. Whether it's limiting enemy freedom of movement, whether it's kill caption of a specific personality, whatever that is, you have to be crystal clear on what success of that mission looks like. Not only that, probably at the more seasoned leadership level, you have to know how accomplishing that mission fits into the overarching theater strategy, the national military objectives for that specific country, like, say Afghanistan. From there, you build it backwards. So between that desired and state in mind, you then start with the task at hand, you start with the guidance that a commander gives to his troops, his or her troops to develop the combat plan. You provide them limitations and constraints. Within that you're like, here's what it needs to look like when you're finished. Here are your limitation constraints in terms of like, these are what you have available in terms of supporting assets, helicopters, vehicles, other friendly forces. Here are the things that you can't do. You're not going to go into a mosque, you're not going to search women without women doing that for you. So those things, you've got to operate within that, but the commander's not going to dictate how you do all that because you want to leverage creativity in that moment. You want to say, all right, well, if we're on the field, if we're in combat and all of a sudden, we get thrown a curve ball, we've got to be able to pivot. We've got to be able to adjust. We can't be hemmed in too tightly on operational planning and constraints. We need that latitude. We need that flexibility. It's like anything we do, you come up with a solid plan. This is what the desired end state is. Okay, what skills, knowledge, attribute, study, practice, rehearsal, do I need to feel confident walking into that situation? Because if I feel confident, I'm going to perform at a high level but that confidence, it has to be earned and it will not be earned unless, you will not be, you may prepare, but you won't be ready unless you've really put the work in and thorough. [TYLER] Well, and I think that's a, as you're describing that, one of the keys that I think is so important, and you alluded to this when we've chatted before, is the essence of empowerment. If people aren't empowered to, as you describe, to be creative in their solution, then they're not going to be able to go into a circumstance that maybe they've never experienced before and say, oh, I can pick off of these four or five maybe similar type experiences and discern from that a path or action that may work. For example, right now as we're talking about this, we're on the, well, I'd say the foothills of the, or on the edge of the cliff as people want to describe it too, recession. We have businesses that are doing different things all the time to figure out how do we navigate forward, what does that look like? For some people professionally have been through that, we talked about that. I professionally went through that back in 2007, 2008. I have friends and people that I've talked to that have been in business almost as long, and they've said, oh, we've never had to deal with it. We've never had to deal with what that looks like. I think that's the leadership challenge that comes up is when do those circumstances outside of your control, could it be a logistics issue, could it be a financing issue, could be any of those factors to say, okay, maybe I haven't experienced this, but what training have I had that I can utilize to be creative? If I am so locked down where I can only think through whatever I was told, man, you're not going to be successful. As I would imagine the operator who maybe didn't have the confidence in himself to say, hey I need to look at my superior officer for every single directive, all of a sudden, they're in trouble. They're second guessing everything. There isn't that inherent confidence. [STEPHEN] Well, and I think if you're looking at a corporate model, or I'm sorry, any organizational model where you are developing, that's one of the big things, is you have to be intentional with how you set the table for success in your organization. You do that by training your replacement. You've got to have the mind of training the people, the future leaders in your organization. Part of doing that requires the situational leadership model to give the type of people leadership interventions that they need in their respective journey. In the military we're very intrusive in our leadership and our management style with the young people. We need to, it's the training wheels but eventually, we want to make it clear that we're going to graduate to where we are empowering your execution. We are minimizing those constraints. We're minimizing that because we want you to feel empowered to leverage whatever creative process you have to solve the problem. In that case, that situational leadership model looks more like a bulldozer that is now providing resources. You're driving that train as that operator and I am just, you're pushing up to me, I'm not managing every facet of your day-to-day, but what I am is I'm constantly in touch with you to say, okay, what resources do you need? How can I help better support you as a leader? Those are the key. Those are the key things but there has to be that very thoughtful application, like a throttle input with the leadership interventions that you provide people just depending on where they are. [TYLER] Well, so one of the things that I saw that you wrote about, and I would concur, as I've experienced, especially over the last year, that since we last recorded an episode is the absolute necessity and what you just talked about in commonly held values. You talk about that in your book, having the values, developing from the values, the principles, having that foundation, because if you have that, then those secondary decisions are all based upon those value set. If we can agree upon those, we may not be at the same level, but if we can agree upon what is important to this time, this mission, this where we're going, man, we're going to be able to make more unified decisions that lead us to the outcome as opposed to coming into a situation with total empowerment and you look at someone, you're like, oh, why did you make that decision? If you've ever asked that question, then to me, the values and principles weren't established to where at least there's some semblance of coherence. [STEPHEN] Well, and one of the things, and I fundamentally, there's a couple different paths, and I'll try to keep this succinct. It's not always my strength, Tyler, but I talk for a living, what do you want? But first off is, alright, where were we? Give me a --- [TYLER] Well, about the values. [STEPHEN] Values. Well, first off, I'm sorry about that, first off, it's like, if you want to do hard stuff, if you really want to bring your A game when things go sideways, fundamentally you got to really know who you are. You got to dip into that character piece. You got to say, when things are bad, whether it's in front of me, if it's me leading in my home, if it's me leading X, navigating change in the workplace, whatever stressful situations, how do I want to show up? How do I want to be seen? How do I show up in the most important situations? How do I show up to the people that matter most? You got to nail that down. But it's not important. It's not enough to say, these are my values, because values and beliefs are one thing, and they're essential. But how do you live that? That's where it comes to the principles. So often you see organizations, they're like, these are our organizational values. Okay, what are your organizational principles? Because that's what's often missing because we talk about values, but as organizational leaders, how are you intentionally and routinely injecting those into your meetings, into your training? Like they should rear their head at every possible turn to make sure that you're actually living the values that you say you represent. [TYLER] Well, then when that, the absence of that being done, then people are lost. There's total uncertainty. If those principles are adhered to from the value set, man, that's when people from an empowerment, my experience, are making positive decisions forward and the organization is navigating whatever that tenuous situation may be, with the best-case scenario. To me, one of the questions I want to ask, and again, this comes back to the four elements of performance mindset, you have it laid out in the book, it's the warrior and the commit piece, preparation, execution, and reflection. What I'd love to know from your experience, before we talk about leaders, what you've seen from your experience as an operator from sitting on top of that rooftop and you're trying to deal with insurgent or enemy fire coming at you got grenades coming at you, or you're trying to build a program to prepare people for that circumstance, where did it break down usually? Which one of those four saw the most common breakdown? [STEPHEN] I'll tell you a story, and I don't always tell stories, but people like stories. I show up as a brand-new guy SEAL Team Two, and had my, you finished, but back then in the 90s, you finish Navy SEAL training and you go to Fort Benning where you go through three weeks of jump school, that should take three days because, but it's the army. You're sitting there, you learn how to jump out of planes, you get your five static line parachute jumps, then you show up to the team, brand new guy at a team. I haven't even, it's my first water jump. Water that adds its own element of difficulty because you got to get out of the plane, you got to make sure you got your swim fins on, you got to make sure you release your parachute and you swim, all that stuff. It's not overly hard, but we get to go do this. It's our, one of the first training blocks with my new SEAL platoon, I'm a brand-new guy just trying to make sure that I don't bring too much heat down on myself, we're getting ready to do this. One of the parachutes back then, the senior guys, the parachute riggers were the guys that packed all the parachutes and if you get dragged along a runway, you land or you get dragged through the water, there's these things called Cape Wells. I don't remember what the technical term is, but you pop these things and it releases your parachute from your harness. But they're a huge pain in the butt to reassemble. So the riggers are looking at all this new guys like, "Hey, don't let your panes pull your Cape Wells because you're getting dragged through the water." So we're getting ready to load this plane, and I mean, you, the clouds, foreboding clouds, and stormy and I'm like, it doesn't look like it's safe to, because there's limitations. You're not supposed to drop people if the wind's on the drop zone are at a certain point. I'm looking at my team leader and I go, I'm like, "Hey man, this doesn't look good, are we, is this safe to jump?" He goes, "Let me tell you something." He goes, "That guy over there, the guy running the jump, there's about two people in the SEAL teams that'll throw you out of an aircraft no matter what and that's one of them." So we go up there and we end up doing this jump, and I land in the water. You're supposed to, like, if you're not, you're supposed to basically under your chest strap, your waist strap and your belly band then your leg straps are last, and you go free and clear of the parachute. I hit the water and the winds are howling that my chute never even touches the water. I start getting dragged. In my mind, I could have released the Cape Wells because it's part of our emergency procedures, but after hearing that conversation, I had eliminated that off the menu of possibilities. So I become tunnel-visioned trying to get my leg straps undone. But they're tiny little things that you got to grasp with your fingers and so much force that I couldn't release them. So I end up getting dragged face down and I start to black out. There's nobody around me, and I'm getting dragged through the water and I'm about to pass out and drown and I finally get one last effort. I kick with my, got my swim things on, which was good and I end up on my back. I finally get gasp some air, and I'm able to release one leg strapped in the other. I get back and I'm like all proud of myself. I didn't pull my Cape Wells and I survived and I'm telling the guy, the rigger the story, and he is like, well, he goes, "Hey, dumbass, I didn't mean if you were about to drown." So I'm like, yeah. The point I'm going with that is sometimes we feel like we do the things that we prepare. We're like, oh, I generally know my stuff. I know my package insert for whatever the thing I'm selling. Yeah, I got it. I know it. But like, do you know it with such an intimate amount of detail that when you get thrown that curve ball, that you know your material so well, that you're so confident that you can easily pivot and stay agile and handle that curve ball in the face of a stressful situation? That's the thing and that's why so often people wing it. Really, you got to practice, you got to study, you got to add skill. If it matters, if it really matters that you succeed, then those are the things you have to do. [TYLER] So as you share that story, and I think about how many times has a young, and this podcast is for leaders that are either just now into leadership, they're in that bridge, that have had years of the sales experience, that are aren't like you, that green SEAL member that's with their platoon for the first time that's dealing with that. We've been there. We've made those mistakes, like yeah, what he was saying is. Have you ever repacked those? That sucks, but yet, dude, like, if you're about to die, that's why they're there. Yet what I take from that is the little things that we can say as leaders that have a major impact and we don't even realize that. Just like as a parent, we can sometimes say things to our kids, we're just offhanded like, oh, and they like SEAL that away as this major thing. I think what I hear in that story, and I love you sharing that and appreciate it, is how important through the process of preparation that as leaders that we're navigating people through that so they can build their temp and understand here's the execution process? It it's like this, oh in a sales environment you're like, well, the customer's always right. It's like, well, yes, but when they're doing something that's going to challenge your organization or that they're essentially, you're looking out for your fulfillment team, say for example, you're selling a product and you have a team that is building that product and the customer's not happy with it, and you know that it has to go back into production and they have to work overnight, they have to work weekends when knowing that actually all you need is a minor tweak to that product that saves face on every side. Knowing that as an experienced leader can help that salesperson through it, as opposed to, oh, there was a minor defect in the paint job and we need to redo the whole thing. It's like, no, we can actually sand down that little spot. We can spray paint it on the side with a highly effective solution and everyone's needs are met. However, if we look at that, that the customer's always right, we have a hundred percent guarantee we've actually hurt all sorts of people in the chain not realizing what our words say. We can lead people through that. That's what, as another example, I got out of your story in that essence of the preparation to execution, how much opportunity there is in leadership in that, in that little small piece that maybe goes on set. [STEPHEN] I think with, you asked me initially, you're like, where do you see those breakdowns? That's it, it's not being able to connect every element of your training for that finite moment. It's like, all right, I know the skills. Alright, but can I take those skills? Can I integrate them in a team setting? All right, well, when I'm in the team setting, can I handle those curve balls? Can I handle when things don't go well? Do I know how to process mistakes? Do I know how to process failure? That's why it's like, okay, well everybody seems to latch onto these one little things, like, oh, we're just going to focus on building trust. You're like, okay, well that's important. All right, well we're going to focus on, I'm going to do meditation, mindfulness. Okay, that's important, but let's put it all together. Let's make sure that we have something that's truly comprehensive that takes, that goes from soup to nuts, that considers here's how we start in concept and here's how we reflect and assess after we finish this thing. Because you know what, guess what, we're going to have to probably turn around and do this thing tomorrow, so let's make sure that we are doing everything we can to focus on what's next. [TYLER] You mentioned that piece of reflection, and I think that's the, that other component you shared, you come back and you're all proud like, I didn't pull the Cape Wells. You guys should be happy with me. He is like, dummy. At that point. That's a point of reflection to say, and I'm not putting on him, just talking about this sequence, had he sitting there like, oh shoot, I nearly got this guy killed. I didn't mean to, but reflecting and saying, oh, okay, what I meant was truthful so he could understand that not just to willy-nilly pull it when oh, that's the easy way out so I don't have to undo all the other rigging, but it's like, oh man, I almost, I had a piece in the execution of what he did. I got to think about how I tell people that the next time. And that power of reflection, talk a little bit more about that, how powerful it was for you or as you see that situation? [STEPHEN] Well, I mean, that situation, it's funny because I never even, it's funny that you brought that out. I never really considered it like, I never really considered, it's like, hey, that should be a, because I'm sure he didn't even probably miss a beat. I'm sure in his mind he wasn't thinking, oh, well I should have been more thorough. I mean, he wasn't really the one running the brief but that's something that should have been probably discussed. It's like, look these are the procedures. These are procedures generally during Comm Cs. You just, you pull out of your leg straps. But we often take for granted. In that case, we give marching orders to people and they're often afraid to ask questions. They're afraid to show that maybe they don't know. They're afraid to say that, "Hey, I made a mistake." I think that's a huge cultural piece. Wherever, as a leader, you can be an architect for creating a culture where people can step forward and be like I'm not super clear on that, where people aren't afraid to look stupid in asking a question. You see that a lot in the military. Know a bunch of alpha males in the culture I grew up in, nobody's afraid, everybody's afraid to ask a question and look stupid. Best case scenario, they'll pull somebody aside and say, hey I'm not exactly, that's what you hope happens. But I've always tried to, for my part, I've always tried to say, hey, has everybody got this? Are we tight on this? Is there any more questions? Pull, like, let's talk offline if you're not clear. I think that happens all too often. People take for granted that everyone understands their role and what exactly they're supposed to execute and maybe that's not the case. [TYLER] Yeah, and to me that's a leadership reaction. If somebody asks a question and you scoff at it, you're like, really, we got to go through this again, no one's got to ask another question. But if someone asks a question, you're like, man, I'm so glad you asked that because I wasn't clear there, I'm glad you asked that because someone could have gotten hurt or whatever it may be, how you process that back as a leader frames in how everyone else responds. This leads me to the last thought I had along this whole topic of life on the acts and you've brought up before and I know you're students of it. That's mental, the mental capacity, the mental piece. One of the things that I've seen from you, example, I believe you're right about as well, is that the mental is so much more powerful than the physical because the physical without the mental won't get you through budges training. [STEPHEN] That's right. [TYLER] I mean the, and I've thought about that long since our conversations and other friends as you guys expressed to me, hey, the guys that get through it, the women that get through it, the people that get through it are the ones that aren't afraid of their vulnerabilities, but rather they bind closer with everyone around them to be stronger. To me that's a mental aspect. The more that we can do that as leaders, that's really key. So I'd love for you to expand on that a little bit more. [STEPHEN] Well, there's two main pieces and I break it down. And I'll use an example from SEAL training. Many people, SEAL training, it's called BUDS, stands for Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL training. It's that six-months assessment and selection process, probably the most famous or infamous. Part of that, if you have, anybody has any inside knowledge, they watch Discovery Channel or anything like that, they've likely heard of Hell Week. Hell Week is famous because of its sheer brutality and because it's also responsible for the largest part of attrition in any one SEAL training class, for the uninformed. It's a five-day plus fun fest of almost no sleep, constant physical activity and frequent immersion into really cold, well, you're cold, wet, tired that whole week. That is really the main test of your character, your mental fortitude and toughness in that respect. When your body says no, can you push past those preconceived limits? Can you go further? Are you willing to put the needs of your swim buddy, of the boat crew above your own personal suffering? If you can answer those two questions, you move on to the next phase of training. The next phase of training is where you go from that toughness, that mental fortitude to now its performance under pressure in an acute sense. Because now you're tested on scuba diving procedures in a nine-foot swimming pool. The evolution or test is called pull competency. That's like, it's a culmination of a five-day pool week where you start off Monday in a nine-foot swimming pool. You go through basic scuba diving procedures, and then they progress into emergency procedures. So when Friday comes along, you're under the water and the instructor rips your mask off, rips your fins off, and start to give you increasing more difficult challenges to your cut, your air source off, ties your scuba, pulls your regulator out, ties your scuba hoses in knots. You have to calmly and cooley problem-solve that. You're holding your breath and it gets really, really uncomfortable. So they were having such a hard time getting guys through this training that when they finally discovered that they could apply mental skills to that training, that they found that their success rate went up by a large percentage. Some of those fundamental skills, they call energy management, being able to control that arousal. But you get scared enough, amped up, you panic, you get into that flight or freeze. Being able to lower that by rehearsal processes, by being able to use controlled breathing, there's visualization, rehearsal, just like athletes do. They put themselves in that moment well in advance of that situation. Then there's also the self-talk, creating performance statements to keep us on task at present. A lot of that comes with what we taught in Warrior Toughness was we did mindfulness training. We taught the recruits how to do very basic mindfulness or meditation exercises to sharpen that focus and help regulate their emotions. [TYLER] As we're in a world, and we were chatting earlier about this before we got started, just where our world is today in 2022, and the impact of community and this social, all of it, everything we've experienced in the last few years from the pandemic to all of the social pieces and parts, that the response for a lot of people is lost hope. That happens for a lot of people, the end up drug use, it could be suicide, it could be whatever else. To me, that centers around this loss of hope, which is a, to me, a response under that pressure of how you respond as opposed to maybe utilizing some of the tools you're talking about. It's how can we calm down? How can we see the bigger picture? How can we compartmentalize what's really there as opposed to what we feel is overwhelming us? To me, it doesn't matter who you are, where you are, it doesn't matter what we've entered into economically, the more suited that we can be to take a deep breath, compartmentalize, understand what's really going on, as opposed to the swirl that is in our head, man, we're going to be better apt to handle anything that comes at us. [STEPHEN] Well, and that's where all this stuff, and that's a great point, that's where all the things start to come together and they create that patchwork of, on the one hand you have the mindfulness training. Because you have to, when you start getting in a position where you're feeling that pressure, you're feeling that stress, if you are able to be mindful and stop, take that beat and almost like envision yourself as a cartoon character in a comic strip, what would that little thought bubble above you be saying? What thoughts would you be having right now? Are they thoughts that serve you or are they thoughts that start to take you down that spiral of negativity, they start to negatively impact your emotions, and not only that, but your actions, the things that you do? That's when you have the ability to be more mindful, to be able to stop and say, okay, let me take an element of stoicism here from the Greeks and the Romans and say, okay, well first of all, we already discussed this, what can I control? All right, I can't control what the economy's doing right now. I can't control, for me it was a couple years back launching a business during Covid. I can't control those elements but here's what I can't control. What I can control is I have things that I can offer of value. I can give these things and get some sense of purpose with doing things to help other people. In another business, okay, here's what I can't do. Now I can focus all day long on the things that I can't do. I can ring my hands about how badly things sucks, or I can be able to say, no matter how bad things get, there always exists an opportunity. That's difficult for people to reconcile. You lose a, you have a loss in relationship or a loved one or you lose your job. Okay, well, what's the opportunity? Because there's always an opportunity, and sometimes that opportunity is to lean into other relationships. Sometimes that opportunity is to demonstrate grace. It's to demonstrate adaptability, flexibility, it's demonstrating leadership to your children. There's always something there you can do. As we say in the SEAL Teams, you can always do something to further improve your fighting position. [TYLER] Yep. Oh, I love that. As you're sharing that, I'm thinking about different circumstances of my life where I can pour into people and bring that consideration in. One of the things that just hits me with is sometimes the best way to navigate through some of those pressures is to make a quicker action. In other words, make a quicker reaction so therefore, in what action can I make that's going to positively improve this as opposed to hunker down and sit and wait and wait, and wait and wait? It's like, what initial action can I make that's actually going to make this situation better? As I think about that and process through that circumstance, it then brings on this cascade of more improved situations. it's like, I would imagine if you're in a tank, nine-foot deep, your mask is off, all of the hoses are tied in knots, what's the first thing that you can do that's going to improve it? Probably just slow down, slow your breathing, slow your heart rate, slow down. Well, I don't know, beyond that, you start going whatever the next protocol step is, but it's in a cascade that each one is probably going to get a little bit easier towards the final solution. To me, if we think about that, it's like, what initial action can I make that moves me in the right direction? [STEPHEN] Well, and I think it's in the language, sometimes we use certain things interchangeably. We say react versus respond. I try to be, and I try to be intentional and I say, hey I can talk about all the stuff that I talk about in the book, but fundamentally, if you read my book and I can better teach you how to respond versus react, then I've given you something that you can use. When I say that, let's think about this, if I've never played a sport in my life, if I just spent my whole-time playing video games as a kid, I don't know if I just did nothing like that, I'm really good at reading or whatever, and you were to throw a ball at me, that's going to be a reaction. It's going to hit me in the face, I'm going to flail, I'm going to duck away. Now, if I'm an athlete. If I'm a baseball player, I'm a basketball player and you throw that ball at me, my reaction is going to be more of a response because of the fact that I've been there before, that I'm trained for that. So when we find ourselves in a situation where things go sideways, and I find this in my own life, when I start to lose my cool and I have to quickly say, all right, let check your thoughts, which is a little mantra I have. Check your thoughts. When I check my thoughts, I ask myself, am I reacting or am I responding? Because if I say that to myself, it means I take a beat, I take a pause, and I say, okay, what can I do to improve my position? Just like you were describing, Tyler, if I react, I give into emotion, I do what automatically comes out of me. A lot of case, that's yelling at my kids saying, snapping at the wife. But if I respond, I take that beat, I take that pause, and I say, all right, what do I do now that betters my fighting position? What do I do now that better, it gives an effect to this situation, to this relationship to improve it? [STEPHEN] I love it. Thank you for that clarification, because again, it is, I just wrote down as you were talking about that, the response is, my action. Reaction is my basis someone else's action and we always have the choice to respond rather than react. To that point is like, how can we respond? How can we use the mindfulness? How can we use all of our training, preparation, execution, and the ability to reflect, to put us in a better spot? That's responding as opposed to reacting is like, oh, well, I'm just trying to navigate however I can through this, but I'm not being positive towards the outcome. That's what I took from that. [TYLER] No, that's exactly right. I would say, like, to use the, I just simply want people to be more deliberate. When I say that, I mean, that's both like in my relationships, but also like as I'm getting ready, like, I would never do certain things that matter without preparing. I'm always astonished when people are stressed out. I'm like, well, what did you do? Like, I get it. Your car breaks down in the middle. There's certain things that you just, it's not realistic for you to put a lot of time in preparation but if it's your main job, which is, like in your profession or if it's your main job as a parent, what are you preparing? And there's times when, like my kid does something stupid and I got to be like, all right, I want to yell, I want to lash out. I want to like throttle him, but what really is the best intervention? So if I'm intentional, I can take a moment and I'm like, all right, what do I need to do? I need be firm, but I need to generally change behavior because just yelling and getting upset, that's not going to cause that. That's not going to create the behavioral change that I want. [TYLER] That's not going to bring a response, that'll bring a reaction. Stephen, thanks so much for your time, dude. Great man being with you. I'm excited. [TYLER] I feel like we've been talking for 15 minutes. [STEPHEN] Dude, yeah, it's been great. Thank you so much. Excited for your book to be out. Thanks for joining me again, dude. Love spending time with you and appreciate your perspective and the conversations we have that just get really full. When I say full, it means it's a lot of valuable information. So thanks a lot, man. [TYLER] Thanks so much for having me on. Tyler. [STEPHEN] I think the key that I took away from this conversation with Stephen, why, to me, this idea of training, training through life, training through some of the experiences that we have, really leads us to a point of being prepared. He shared the idea of respond versus react. If we're responding, we've already had those thoughts. If we react, then it's the first time. It's just a quick reaction. If we respond to a challenge, something that's been difficult, our ability to positively infect is much, much higher. It's my action basis, someone or someone else's actions. If we start to minimize those, I guess, instances where it's out of our control, because we've responded, because based upon our training, how we've prepared ourselves, well, where does this fit in? Being an impact driven leader, it's the five Rs of mindset. It is having a routine, it's having proper rest, it's choosing to remember. It's having a reset and it's doing it all over again, it's repeating it. That mindset is, I very much applied to what Stephen shared here is what sets a leader up to being the best they can be. Again, in this month of January, I invite you to learn more about the Impact Driven Leader community. I'm excited here in February, as we kick off the round table to walk through the three segments of being an impact driven leader, it's awaken, it's grow, and it's lead. As we break those down throughout the year, I know we're going to find ways that, man, where does the routine fit in? It really fits in and part of that grow process. Are you creating a routine to grow? Here we are to the second week of January. I share about Stephen's book that comes out in a couple months. But what are you doing now to learn and grow? Maybe you're reading the book right back here, Becoming a Changemaker as part of our book club. Or maybe you're trying to learn and you're trying to grow. I want to make it easier for you. I want to help walk you through the process. That's what we do with the Impact Driven Leader, and I'd love to have you a part of it. Go to theimpactdrivenleader.com to learn more. You'll learn more about the round table, how to be part of the community and grow with others for yourself. So you got to do the process yourself, but knowing it's going to lead you to being a better leader, to you make an impact. Thanks for being here today. As always, thanks for subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts. Or if you're watching on YouTube, hit subscribe as well. You're going to get a whole lot of other information as I share my thought of the day, video series, coffee chat that I do live every day Monday through Friday. Thanks for being here, and in until next time, have a good one.