IDL28 Season 1: Warrior Toughness with Stephen Drum
Which leadership lessons can you learn from a navy seal? What lessons can you bring into civilian life from military life? How do vulnerability and humility make the greatest leaders?
Stephen Drum is a combat-tested retired Navy SEAL Master Chief with 27 years of experience leading teams and executing mission-critical performance strategies when success or failure hangs in the balance. Today, he consults with business executives who want to develop high-performance leadership programs that empower teams to achieve exceptional results when the pressure is most intense.
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.
In this episode we discuss:
Engaging a supportive system
What is going to best serve this person?
Humility
ENGAGING A SUPPORTIVE SYSTEM
“It’s my duty, it’s my responsibility to give them the highest quality of instruction which means giving them the exact right tool that they need for that moment, for that context, for that situation. ”
Yelling as a method of communication is not suited to all environments. If you are training a navy seal and yelling, it will simulate the level of stress that they need to cope with, then yelling can be an effective tool in that environment.
However, this does not mean that you can take the same tool and apply it to a completely different context, such as yelling at your kid for making a small mistake. The tool and the context need to fit together.
“Be thoughtful, be intentional and be purposeful when you are using different tools because it may work on this person right now but if you overuse it, it’s not going to work. At the end of the day, we’re not going to coddle them, we’re going to give them hard training, but we need to make sure that they’re adapting and that learning is taking place, so that’s on us to make sure that we don’t default to the emotional reaction when they’re not doing what we want them to do. ”
WHAT IS GOING TO BEST SERVE THIS PERSON?
Encouragement, training, and coaching is not to make everyone fit the same mold, it is to help that person become the strongest, most resilient and capable version of themself.
Forcing tactics and tools on them and on every other person is not going to work because you cannot treat each person like the next one. An aspect of leadership is to get on each person’s level, realize what they need, and provide that to them instead of copy-pasting the same approach to everyone.
Taking a pause is vital because it allows you to detach from the situation, stop and think about the environment before deciding how to react. This is better, instead of reacting automatically without taking the situation into account. Acting without self-reflection is where damage can come from.
“Read the situation like “alright, what is going to best serve this person, this person, and that person? What is going to serve the situation?” And I think when you are able to stop and take that moment and detach emotionally a little bit then you’re going to be much more effective as a leader.”
HUMILITY
Being a leader means guiding those around you to become the best versions of themselves, however, you cannot lead them if you do not speak to them and find out what they require.
No leader is a mind reader, and it makes you more influential and approachable when you ask your clients or employees for their opinions, instead of insisting on going with your own.
Leaders can build strength into their people by being vulnerable with them, getting on their level, and speaking to them as individuals.
“When we do that as leaders and help others to say “hey, you’ve already crossed the line but don’t worry about that, you are part of our team and part of our organization. I need you to be 100% here and part of being 100% here is being honest and vulnerable with me so that way I can help all of us get to where we’re going”. ”
Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:
Visit Stephen’s website and connect on LinkedIn.
The Impact Driven Leader YouTube Channel
Join the Impact Driven Leader Community
Connect with Tyler on Instagram and LinkedIn
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.
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HUMILITY COMES FROM BEING CANDID WITH THE FACT THAT YOU DON’T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS, YOU DON’T HAVE IT ALL FIGURED OUT. AND WHAT BETTER OPPORTUNITY FOR ME TO DEMONSTRATE THAT BY SOLICITING THE IDEAS AND INPUT FROM SOME OF MY MORE JUNIOR PEOPLE.
Stephen Drum
Podcast Transcription
[TYLER:
As you know, as you've heard, part of this podcast is also doing the Impact Driven Leader round table. I want you to listen to this quick message, this is an invitation. I want you to come sit at our table. You're going to learn, you're going to grow and you can't help, but have a great time with us. And I invite you. You're listening. There's a seat for you with your name on it. Come join us.
[MOLLY:
Hey, this is Molly Sloan. The Impact Driven Leader book club and round table have been transformational for me. I've been involved for the past six months and it's taken me on a journey to be a better leader and a better person at work, at home, and really in every interaction with people. Tyler's done a great job of guiding us through the books. They're current, thought-provoking and they apply to all of us. The weekly round table has become an accountability team. I've done lots of leadership trainings in the past where you feel on top of the world, the week after the event, but ultimately it wears off over time. This group is better. We're on a leadership journey with each other through frequent, ongoing discussions and continual growth. I strongly recommend this group to anyone aiming to continually develop as a leader.
[TYLER:
Welcome back to the impact driven leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. I hope you guys are having a great day. Wherever you're listening to this, however, you're listening to it, whether you're subscribed or somebody shared this with you, thank you for being a listener. We have a real treat today. I mean, it's not very often that I get to sit down and chat with a guy who is really kind of be on the forefront of one, leading our nation's defense and training people and helping train warriors and officers and soldiers. That's what it is. That's the word I'm looking for. I don't try to add these things. You can get what you get. Soldiers and resilience. And we talk a lot about resilience as a leader. We talk a lot about Steve's experience, 27 years as a Navy Seal.
So today's guest Steve Drum was a Navy Seal for 27 years, served in the Navy as an officer, and I just love the story that he shares and really kind of this pivot from working in service as a soldier into now, what do I do after? But then all those lessons that I get to learn from many of my friends that have been in active service and retired and then realize the great value they have in their experience in military, and then convert that into civilian life. So I'm excited for you to listen to this episode with Steve. Steve's a crackup. Steve is a character. I'm so grateful to get to know him over the last several months on Clubhouse. That's how we've gotten to meet. That's how we built a relationship. So it was fun for me to kind of talk to him more.
So I hope you get value out of this. I know you're going to. Check out more about Steve, all that he's doing and his website, that'll be in the show notes. As well to get value out of this. Share with someone. I'd love to have a rating, a review, subscribe, do all those things to let me know how we're doing. At that same point, look more into the Impact Driven Leader community. We have a book club, we have a round table. My effort and desire is to serve leaders. My purpose in life is to help other leaders get healthy too. Steve talked about some of that growth as a leader throughout him serving in the Navy, with the Navy Seals. So I encourage you to pick up those points. And at the same point, there are ways to link arms with those around you in order that you can propel forward and be the best leader that you can be. Enjoy this episode. I'll catch you at the end.
All right, Steve, we are alive. Hey man. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for being on the podcast. It's been a joy to get to know you virtually. This is the first time I've actually been in a situation looking face to face, but I feel like I'm just one of your buds and I know you so well. So thanks for taking time to actually like formally chat rather than just hang out on Clubhouse.
[STEVE DRUM:
Yes, that's right. And I appreciate it. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I know we've had them, actually, we've had a bunch of conversations, so I definitely feel like I already know you. For those of us don't know what we're talking about is Clubhouse. So it's audio only, but it's been good. Usually I'm walking around my neighborhood and when you and I talked on your the awesome room that you run, but yes, so this'll be a continuation of that. I think will be fun.
[TYLER:
I'm excited to one, this is a podcast for leaders. That's what I want to talk about. You're obviously really jumping into that space in a big way, which is exciting to see. I mean, I'm going to jump off here. I didn't expect to jump off here, but one of the things that, and having some friends over the last, I would say really developed the last 10 years or so professionally that are veterans as well. You served in Navy Seal for 27 years and a lot of veterans find themselves afterwards, like how do I take and do what I did in the military and go perform that in civilian life? I have a friend that retired as a major in the Marine Corps and he was artillery and he's like, "Yes, I can go shoot artillery and I can hit a duck, but it's really hard to do that in civilian life.”
So when I look at yourself and a lot of the other guys that have gotten to be friends with, male and female that are veterans, especially Navy Seal, special operators, I see what you guys are doing and taking what you learned over those years of developing teams and really catering this formal leadership and saying, "Hey, I can help apply this in everyday life." And dude, I admire it, but it's also what helped you bridge that gap?
[STEVE:
Well, I think you're exactly right. You refer to your major friend from the Marine Corps. And I think if you look like when I came up in the nineties, when guys were getting out of the military and to a certain extent early on when we were in Afghanistan and Iraq and guys would separate and really you're looking like quite literally, how can I transfer or translate my experiences? But if you start to kind of push back and think more broadly, think more generally about how you solve problems, about how you overcame the obstacles, that's such an overused term, but if you look at that and you look at how you inspire and persuade across multi-cultures, because so much that we do in special operations is working with people all over the world that have different values, different cultures than we do and bridging those gaps. And when you realize that you can do that effectively in austere conditions under fire, then you realize, "Hey, I can take these certain skills and I can apply these to the business world." And I think when we saw people ahead of it, ahead of me being able to do that, being able to say, "Hey, generally, this is what you know," you may not think that you know this in this context, but it applies.
And I've become a real student. And I would say it's a passion of mine to take all the things I learned and specifically I'm the perform under pressure guy, the mental toughness, resilience, but fundamentally perform under pressure. And I've taken it, the most extreme examples of being shot at, or in combat situations and translating it to the other areas in everybody's life, where they need to perform under that pressure, whether it's as a parent, whether as an entrepreneur, a business leader. So really it's understanding that we're more connected in these different areas than we might initially think.
[TYLER:
This analogy is going to be seem very strange, but it's reality. Our brain does not know the difference of a toy being thrown at us in a high stress situation or bullet coming at 3000 feet per second. It doesn't. So when you're talking about that as like there's parents every day that are dealing with stresses that our brain equates to the same as quite literally a life or death situation. So I look at that to say someone that's been trained in that environment. Like you have to help give people the tools, for leadership perspective. It's great and at sometimes, and I'd love to know how you've seen this as, when you can take your extent and what you did as a Navy Seal, and then go and talk to someone who's leading an organization of, let's say they're construction workers, construction operation, kind of different, but yet say, "Hey, there are people. They've the same problems. It just shows up differently. They're wearing different costumes." How have you seen that really play out in the stuff that you've done now the last year and a half since you retired?
[STEVE:
Well, I really think what's big is just making that connection to say, like it's, when one of us takes the stage and talks about a combat story and people are like, "Yes, that's cool, that's entertaining," well, what the hell does that have to do with me? And it's my job to say that's good, because I wanted to entertain you. You're going to bring me in to talk to your organization? Got it. I'm going to entertain you, but let's unpack this a little bit and let me show you how this is exactly like what you experience. Not to get out too big of a rabbit hole, but for me, when we came up in the teams, right, when I came up in the early, the late nineties, those of us that were successful in making it through training and having lengthy careers, to a large extent, we were able to intuitively learn certain mental strategies to be ready, to be fluid, to be flexible, to be light on our feet, to be mentally focused and engaged, but we're only having half the picture.
So for me, where I really fell short was in my inability to translate the things that I could do in a military combat context and reapply them as a leader in my home as a parent, as a husband. And I fell short there and my relationship suffered. So then what happens? I have issues at home. Now I start to take them back to work and now that undermines my ability to be effective leader and the workplace. So now it's just starts to spiral out of control. Once I was asked to be a part of a this program called Warrior Toughness for the Navy. I helped build that program and it became an aha, I realized my aha moment. And then even before that, when I realized that, hey, when I could more consistently apply certain skills and attribute development across the entire area of my life, when it comes to dealing with stressful situations, dealing with trek challenge, I became better in all those areas.
So I always go back to, hey, you may not be getting shot at. But believe me, to this day, I'm getting on a sales call with a client or a customer, and all of a sudden my computer resets, and I'm afraid of looking bad. Believe me, just like you described, I'm not saying, oh my God, I'm not being shot at in Afghanistan or Iraq. No, I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to look stupid in front of this client. I'm going to look like I don't have my stuff together. And if I don't manage that properly, I can start to go down. It'll degrade my performance and my engagement.
[TYLER:
To me, it's exciting because to take a parallel in our world, and I know you guys see this because you guys talked to me about this, is, there's the military service community that is tried and true, and we'll get through the process of that. But we look at our everyday life, the best way that we have to prepare people for that, otherwise is sports and activities. I look at this and as you're talking about is as parents, what are we doing to encourage our kids to go through some of that adversity and develop their mental toughness? And I look at the stuff you've done. It's like, even if I'm sitting here and I know you worked with a lot of new recruits coming in and it's like, all right, who were the ones that played athletes? Who were the ones that played athletes at a high level? Who had an injury that they had to get through? Who had some type of adversity? I want you to come up front because I already know you've tempered that.
We'll get into warrior toughness. This is maybe, I find myself, we get to chat a lot at least once or twice a week. And I love hearing from you and our buddy, Matt. And I have this like kindred spirit, I never served in the military, but yet, as you guys describe everything you go through, I stop and I think about, I grew up on a farm. There was no stop. There was like, there's a situation. It needs to be fixed. It doesn't matter how tired it is. It doesn't matter how cold it is. Doesn't matter what's broken. You have to finish that job. And there's almost that relationship to where I kind of feel like I can appreciate what you guys went through from growing up on a farm and having to go through a lot of that adversity. So that comes through is how are we helping people that maybe have never had those circumstances develop it?
[STEVE:
No, no, no, no, no. That's perfect. That's exactly right. You go back to, and you mentioned like sports, and that's why a lot of like, I'll work with pharmaceutical sales or medical devices and they love to hire athletes out of college as their new employees. And a lot of that's because they are very competitive, but competitive in the context of working within the team, which is very, very important when you're on a sales team. So they really like that. So I go back to something else that a good friend of mine, who's a professor at Vanderbilt University, he always describes how you get these young adults that are students and they were the big fish in a small pond. And their parents in many cases, either they may have been completely high level of talent and they never really were challenged and now you couple that with, so often we have parents now that are used to be helicopter parent.
Now it's bulldozing. You have parents driving down to help their kids study for exams, to do their homework for them. And all of a sudden when they face, whether it's in college or whether it's when they take their first job, they've never had that level of adversity. They've never been challenged. Things have been easy. They have no idea now how to cope with that. When I look at someone like my son who struggles a little bit in school, he's been cut from so many different hockey teams, and yet he keeps driving forward. And I feel like he's pretty well set up. Whereas my daughter school comes really, really easy to her so far. So I've got to go out of my way to give her some tastes to challenge her enough, to where she's getting some failure.
And again, the jury is still out on my parenting skills, but these fundamentals, I know to be true, that you've got to make sure that you are challenging yourself. You've got to make sure that your children are feeling or getting some of that setback that failure that adversity, because it's better to experience now with the reps and sets and to help coach them through it than when they're thrust into it for the first time in the real world or at school a couple of hundred miles away.
Well, it comes back to, and I know you've helped develop the Warrior Toughness Program that is used by the Navy. And really part of that and what I hear from you here is like, man, if we're not giving kids that before they're 18, for whatever way, and all of a sudden they're dumped into a military program, any of the branches, because I know that as programs kind of emulate throughout it, it's like we have to build that somehow some way because they have to get there. So I want to talk a little bit about your own journey. As you talked about it, it's like, hey, I developed these mental skills to be the best Seal I could be. But then at home, dude, it was all held in a hand basket. How did you create that alignment and then how does that tie into what you develop for Warrior Toughness?
[STEVE:
Well, and I said, I made a lot of the discoveries and warrior tufts, and really it was before that. There was one pivotal, tell you this look really quick story. After so many deployments, I remember, when both of my kids were young, they're still kind of young, but they were young, and I remember I'm sitting there like in the front yard and they were doing something and I just kind of lost my mind. And then my wife is telling me to calm down. So then I snap at her. Meanwhile, my mother-in-law is like hanging out over there. And my mother-in-law is somebody that I'm very close with and I have a tremendous amount of love and respect for, and she pulls me aside and she's like, "What do you think you're teaching your kids right now? Is this really how you want them to learn? Is this how you want them to think of you?"
It was a kind of a conversation that was entirely coming from a loving and helpful place. And I took that on board. And I remember going up to this place called the NICoE, (National Intrepid Center of Excellence), anything like from the neck up, whether it's PTS, traumatic brain injury. It's just a special program in Bethesda Hospital up near DC. And I remember when I got there, it was amazing place where again, from the neck up gets you through the door but once you get in there, it's about like every and anything in terms of we did art therapy, we did yoga acupuncture. And then of course, all of the other stuff psychology, family psychology, psychiatry, all that kind of stuff. And when I was in that program, I just realized that, man, I've got to tying all these things together. If I can perform better here, I can take those certain skills and attributes and reapply it over here because if I don't like, I'm never going to be successful across my whole life.
So that's really when it kind of started. So when I started this program called the warrior toughest, which we can get into, it was very like, it was very important to me that I brought that element in. We want our young warriors, our young officers to be able to focus in extreme stress in combat, but we need them to be able to do that in the other areas of their Navy life and their personal life, because otherwise they're going to break in some way, shape or form and we won't be able to use them on the battlefield, if not.
[TYLER:
Well, I mean, to me professionally, it doesn't matter if it's on the battlefield. It doesn't matter if it's in a C-suite, it doesn't matter if you're a personal entrepreneur and you're working with people. Again, people in the attributes and the mental health is, you know systemic across everything. One of the things that I picked up at one point, getting ready for this, and you mention, I want to ask, you mentioned this a little bit earlier, when you first started into your Navy career, it was kind of a very aggressive style nature. And one of the things that, you know a lot of yelling and screaming, that's how we motivate people, and one of the things I picked up and you said this, and if I'm wrong, please correct me, it seems like at some point military, specifically realized that wasn't most effective. It was causing as many problems as it was motivating and actually went to it like, "Hmm, how can we actually engage, motivate and create a system that is more embracive of mental preparedness that is not trying to tear someone down from a self-esteem point of view?" Am I picking that up that there was some strategic shift in there. And if so, I mean, what brought that about?
[STEVE:
Well, I can't really comment on that in terms of a sea change for how the military uses it. I can only look at it from my experiences. When I was a, I was an instructor for what we call assault training, which is close quarter combat, which is the room clearance is kicking the doors in and then taking and going from there to going to these mock urban cities and doing it like full-scale. And I remember when I was taught, it was a lot of yelling and humiliation, but the real reason for that was it to replicate the stresses because you wouldn't have people shooting at you.
So you make the slice mistake and you have people who are just on you because you are so afraid of taking an injury to your reputation, of looking bad in front of your teammates. But that adds a hell of a lot of stress. And I remember one time when I was in the instructor role and I'm yelling at this kid, who's not getting it and then I just remember this crystal clear, this look on his face was like sheer overwhelm. An aha moment for me in that moment was like, "Hey, the tools you're using are not working." Now, we get rid of people all the time that can't work fast enough, safely enough and we need to move them on to different occupations, even after they make it all through the training. But in this case, it's my duty. It's my responsibility to give them the highest quality of instruction, which means giving them the exact tool that they need for that moment, for that context, for that situation.
So fast forward, years later when I was helping to develop this program at bootcamp. So I helped develop this program to teach the drill instructors. We call them recruit division commanders, like in the army would be the smokey, the bear hats. And what we really told them to do is it's okay to yell, but use it as a tool. Be thoughtful, be intentional, be purposeful with when you're using the different tools, because it may work on this person right now but if you overuse it, it's not going to work. It may work on this person. It may not work on that person .at the end of the day, we're not going to coddle them. We're going to give them hard training, we're going to stress them out, but we need to make sure that they're adapting and learning is taking place. So that's on us to make sure that we don't default to the emotional reaction when they're not doing what we want them to do. So just be intentional. And if that's yelling, that's yelling.
[TYLER:
Yes. Well, I mean, what I pick up there is, we have this like a movement in our society. I was sitting down with a couple of friends yesterday and we were breaking this down as if we look at some of the most effective coaches, because it's hard to look at the military in total because it's behind a closed door. Sports, we can look at it all day long. And if we try to use these examples in leadership, and again, I'm enthralled by yourself and guys that I know that are taking their experience in leadership and these high pressure situations and helping those of us in civilian leadership roles that our life is like a, we can study sport and we look at some of the examples that were so highly effective and they had tremendous amount of candor. They had tremendous amount of high expectation, but they also did it with a ton of positive reinforcement.
I think of the epitome as a coach of John Wooden. And then you have the example of a Bobby Knight. Who's a Bobby Knight, a yeller and a screamer and throwing chairs. And every single kid that ever played from was scared to death. And none of them look back and said, "Oh my goodness, he made me the man I am today," whereas every single player that played for John. Wooden did that. So I'm constantly enthralled by this as where did we get this off base? How did we miss the mark per se? And to me, what you're showing a little bit, and we're talking about this, just conversation is, there's almost, you recognize this as like, "Oh man, I got to yell. I got to show passion," but it's out of using the tool properly as an encouragement to say, you can do this. I know you can do better and however, forceful enough, but yet not tearing them down so bad that now you have a bigger mental problem to try to fix that is going to be lifelong rather than just in that moment.
[STEVE:
Well, it also comes back to the moments that you described. Maybe it's the big game in athletics. It's a professional setting and you deliver an intervention of some kind. A collection of some kind as a leader. Is it about you or is it about helping them? All right, is it about your, is it about advancing the narrative, advancing the goal? Because oftentimes, you've heard me talk about this a bunch, Tyler, but it's probably the number one theme from my time in the Seal Team that I embrace is respond versus react. I talk about that all the time. So in a leadership situation, in a coaching situation, if your team's down and you're losing and things aren't going well, there's some mistakes made and you start flipping out and screaming, are you doing it because it's like the [inaudible 00:24:49] in the miracle where he decides?
And that's a perfect example. Like he turns the table over and then he turns to his assistant coach, "Hey, you think that'll get them gone?" You're right. It was totally pre-planned and intentional versus your reaction to like, if this loss is on me to coach, we're not meeting our numbers. And I'm the sales team manager. It's on me. So now I start reacting by now doing things ,by being, lashing out to my subordinates because they're not meeting the numbers. So then it becomes about me and I lose the ability to positively shape the situation and moving that ball forward.
And I think that's the number one thing is when you look into things in terms of responding, sometimes you'll get that pregnant pause where you can stop something coming out of your mouth. It's not helpful, or that you'll regret. You take a moment, you take a breath, take a beat, you read the situation and you're like, all right, what is going to best serve this person, this person, and that person? What's going to serve the situation? I think when you're able to stop and just take that moment and detach emotionally a little bit, then you're going to be much better, much more effective, and it's going to much better serve the situation.
To me, as you described that situation, are you acting as an insecure leader where you're letting your emotions take you over, or are you a secure leader that understands, "Hey, this is when I need to bring in a pin hammer. This is when I need to use a screwdriver. This is when I need to bring in a sledge." Because each of those tools, they have a purpose where they can be utilized. It's saying, am I using this at the proper place and not allowing my own fears and insecurity overwhelm me and I'm going to turn on everyone else and I'm going to lash out? A lot of leadership has displayed over the years, as opposed to say that doesn't work, you're drive more people away as opposed to bringing people in so you can move together.
[STEVE:
And ask me how I know all this stuff. It's because I've been a victim of my own poor leadership style at times. I've been that guy who's like taking the fact that the guys that work for me aren't doing what I need them to do in this moment, how I'm telling them to do it. And I take that as an affront. So then I treat that situation with a level of aggression. That's not helpful because I'm not appealing to their sense of motivation to get done. I can't get their buy-in on what needs to happen. Instead it just becomes about us too. It just becomes about an aggressive exchange. And that doesn't help anyone. So I think the one thing, and I'll say this is, the one thing I have going to me and for me, despite my leadership mistakes was being able to really spend some time with it, not right in that moment necessarily, but spend some time with it, whether it's an hour, a day.
Maybe it's weeks, maybe it's not six months and I come back and I say, "This is how I'm going to do it differently. Let's remove some of the negative baggage, whether it's theirs or mine and just say, what's the value and how do I use that to perform better and improve the situation the next time I go in." And it's all about really being able to stop and really try to get a bird's eye view or a balcony view of whatever problem you have, because only then are you going to have the level of clarity that it takes to make the right decision and the right choice.
[TYLER:
Well, to me that journey that you talked about, "Hey, I'm a victim of this thing," my purpose is to help other leaders get healthy too because I had to get healthy. I was broken. I was all of those things, I was hard. I was an a-hole, I was callous. And that doesn't work. And that was burned out a lot of my own insecurities, as you mentioned about. And the thing that I had to really embrace was humility. And then beyond that to connect with others was empathy. And to me, as you go through that, and I think those are two wildly misunderstood elements in our society, especially as leaders, humility and empathy. And I'd love to hear just your context on that. You've heard me talk before about those things, but I'd love to hear you in this context, like how do you see that playing into the world that you worked in for so long and also how you try to translate that as you help others now?
[STEVE:
That's exactly right. There's so many elements and opinions that go into kind of how everybody looks at leadership. But there's two things you described there, very critical elements on it. When it comes to empathy, how do you get people to buy in? Because we work for the perfect organization, we love our boss, but at a certain point in time, things are going to go bad for us. And we can't always control what happens in the culture of an organization. But what we can affect is to the people that we do it with, the people right within our little sphere of influence. We can positively shape that and we can make it so where everybody wants to come to work. Everybody wants to see the people that they like, even if they are somewhat disconnected from kind of the direction or the vision of the organization. So you don't have that unless you have leadership that demonstrates that they're going to care for you.
In the military we have this term, we call it intrusive leadership, which can be looked at very negatively. And sadly, it's not something we can really replicate in a lot of the civilian world, but it's my job to get, borrow in sometimes to people's personal lives to see what's going on at home and how that's negatively impacting their work. If they have a personal problem, maybe their wife just had a miscarriage. I need to be there. But that's expected. So when I'm there and I'm intrusive about it, they know that right behind that is going to be a level of support. It's going to be like, "All right, what resources do you need? What kind of time off do you need?" I'm intrusive because ultimately I'm going to help them. Sometimes that also means you're giving people the help that they don't want. You're giving them some tough love sometime as well, but that's a very critical part of it.
Now, humility, as I see humility, so often people, if they lack confidence in a situation, they try to fake it, that terrible expression, fake it till you make it. Humility, now, if you're in a position of leadership, there's no two ways about it. At a certain point in time, you got to make a decision. You got to be decisive, but the humility comes from being candid with the fact that you don't have all the answers. You don't have it all figured out. And what better opportunity than for me to demonstrate that by soliciting the ideas and the input from some of my more junior people? Now they have to understand that just because they have an idea doesn't mean I'm going to use it, but I want the reputation to be known as, "Hey, you're building this plane with me. You're building this plane and we're going to get this thing off the ground together and I can't do without your help." And I think that goes a long way, because then they apply and then they're going to get on that train with you.
[TYLER:
Yes. As you described that situation of being in that situation and going to those people that are maybe junior than you, or under your rank in the military, it reminds me of my friend was telling me about this again, the major that when he was a first fresh officer, just out of officer school and he goes in and he's like, I'm trying to make the decision on this stuff that I've never done before. And I look over my senior enlisted who has done this and knows that like the back of his hand could do it with his eyes closed. And he's like, how would you do this? And he said, in what he did, he had to make the decision, make the call. But it's like, when I enlisted, the senior enlisted, all of a sudden they knew that I realized, and I was humble enough to say, I don't know what I'm doing here, but someone has to make the decision.
And I think that's the element that you described of being humble enough to say, I don't know the answers, but the people in this room do, and we collectively are going to get this problem solved, but I have to be the one to take us that next step. And I'm going to do that but I can only do that with everyone else around me, as opposed to having this air of, I know it all follow me. And if you don't like it too bad, you're out. That doesn't get you anywhere. That just gets you in trouble.
[STEVE:
Well, and then you've got to also like nobody, how do you, I see, and especially in corporate organizations, how often do you see people say, hey the leadership is so afraid to admit that they maybe made a mistake. They can't ever model the behavior that says, "Hey, we got this wrong. You guys did your part, but we as leaders, we probably got this wrong." Like I never see that. I never hear that. And I think that's an important element of humility, because what happens when you do that, is I'm trying to remember the guy's name, is it Malawi? Yes. At Ford. He had these meetings and the sole purpose was to draw out some of that, "Hey, I made a mistake. I need some help with this." And as soon as people like stepped over that threshold and he embraced that, then everybody else started doing that and as soon as everybody else started doing that, that became the culture of, "Hey, just get it out there. Be candid with where you're making mistakes, where your challenges are, and then we can start moving forward." But until you do that, until you model that as part of your culture, you're always going to have people that are going to be always kind of protecting their own security. They're not going to admit any kind of mistakes because they're afraid they're going to get their head chopped off.
[TYLER:
To me that's embracing vulnerability. And I know that's something that you talked about earlier as an intrusive leader is that's being vulnerable and encourage vulnerability. And to get that trust, you have to be vulnerable enough to know that, "Hey, I've been in this spirit, I needed to get help." I'm here to help you because I care. When you're talking about a guy who maybe whose wife had a miscarriage, like I care, and I'm going to get through this with you because I know if you know that I'm walking through this with you vulnerably, then the slate is clean. If you screwed up and you didn't have your equipment clean and right, but yet I'm carrying here, you know that I was holding you accountable for your safety. It isn't that I don't like you because I'm here saying I care about you. And I think as you described that in corporate culture is having that vulnerability to say, as a leader, "Hey, I screwed this up. You guys played your part. I made the wrong decision. Let's wipe the slate clean, let's move forward in this different direction. I'm going to own it."
What I've seen in those situations is people like, "Okay, I'm with you." They bind together. "How do we get this done?" as opposed to this almost separation, which I would imagine you saw in some units where there wasn't that vulnerability. It was almost this separation that got toxic. I'm guessing you had to have seen that at some point.
[STEVE:
Well, you see that like as a young frogman. You see that a lot. You're afraid to be vulnerable because it's all about the machismo that comes from the, you just made it out of training and you're so afraid to show any kind of weakness. So as you get more experienced, your level of confidence is higher but you're also, you've also now accrued a level of wisdom where you realize that some of these behaviors, they hold you back. So you really start to try to implore the younger guys to be a little bit more forthcoming, be a little bit more vulnerable. And I've tried to shape that. A lot of it is just that what comes from youth, where it comes from like an alpha male bunch of wolves environment. But when you have a level of confidence it's a lot easier to show some humility too.
[STEVE:
Well, and I think that comes back, coming full circle to when the leader can help build belief into that young frogman. If you're like, "Dude, you're here. You made it. You don't have to compete anymore. Just be here to be the best you are here and compete there. That's going to help us." And as that guy, and I imagine that officer that builds that into his crew, I don't know what you call this, what is it?
[STEVE:
Platoons.
[TYLER:
Yes. If you built that in all of a sudden that vulnerability starts to bubble out, because then that confidence is like, oh, okay, I am one of the group. I can be here. Now I have a responsibility. And I look at that in other groups and other places and other fashions of leadership. When we do that as leaders and we help others to say, "Hey, you already crossed the line, but don't worry about that. You're part of our team. You're part of our organization. I need you to be a hundred percent here and part of being a hundred percent here is being honest and vulnerable with me so that way I can help all of us get to where we're going." Because if there's hidden stuff in the weeds, if you're dealing with stuff outside, you can't have this work hat, personal hat, it's all one head. How do we work at that together?
[STEVE:
That's exactly right. And that goes back to the consistency piece. You've got to, again, yes, being vulnerable, being candid with mistakes, kind of maybe two different kind of things, but people that can't do that. And if you don't see that in your organization or why is, you know it's easy to say, like when you're talking about a bunch of, you could say the same thing a bunch of young frogman, young Seals, young military folks. It's probably the same as like a bunch of athletes make it to the big leagues and how vulnerable they going to be as soon as they step into the clubhouse. Well, probably not too much, but if you're in a business organization and you're looking for that radical candor, you're looking for a sense of vulnerability, everybody putting their cards on the table and you're not getting it, well it's because leadership is not modeling that. Most likely leadership is not setting the table for that to take place, is what we be the first place I would look.
[TYLER:
Where they're stuck in their own insecurities of like, "Hey, am I here for long? Am I in this position just because I filled in for the last guy that got axed or whatever else?" That cultural piece, which to me, I look back to all of this and seeing you as a part of this, developing this warrior toughness, it's saying our culture is about toughness, but it is about humility. It is about vulnerability because that's, what's going to yield us to be most successful. And we have to really make sure that that's part of our culture.
[STEVE:
Well, and I think, switching gears a little bit, I'd say that a lot of this comes down to when you put somebody in that defined role as a leader, as a manager, how developed are they for that role? In many cases it's, this is the cliché. Now at this point, I talk about it often because it's true. We identify somebody who's a good technician, they are good, maybe they're good back in tech, whatever that is. They're a good sales rep, but we haven't given them any tools. So all of a sudden we thrust them into a leadership role or position and they flail a little bit and then all of a sudden, they're accused of, well, they're low in queue. They don't have any queue. Well, because they're stressed out and they don't have the tools. They don't have the personal management and the self leadership skills as well as how to deal with different people, situational leadership tactics, because you haven't prepared them. So a lot of it comes down to put the person in the job after they've had a little bit of training and mentorship.
So if you have people, when they're in a lot of cases, the end of the day, what are their motives. If they really don't care about people, if they really are like, let me just step on as many heads as possible to get to the next wrong well, that's still leadership development. And part of leadership development sometimes is that filter to get people out of those positions if they're not suitable because, hey, they're not going to be the people that serve your organization long term. So it's about identifying exactly ---
[TYLER:
They'll do more harm. And to me, it's part of this whole process. It's like it's a transformation process to develop into a leader. And I believe everyone can do it. And it's through our brokenness at times that holds us back from it but if we commit to and we have the tools, we have those mentors, we have those individuals that are willing to help us develop, dude, we can become that. And because I believe everyone can one, they have to lead themselves, but has that ability if they allow that transformation to occur and that means work, that everyone's got different work to do.
[STEVE:
Well, and I worked for a master chief and he always constantly would say, he would ask the question, "What are you doing to train your replacement today?" And it says kind of very cheesy. The bottom line is it's like, you got to start looking at people where they are right now and preparing them to be where you are. And that's a big, and a lot of cases, that's a lot of years. One of the areas that I fell short was when I was a senior, more senior enlisted leader or mid grade, I would look at young officers that came in and I was like, "Shut up, sir. I don't care what your opinion is. You'd better figure out how to do some basic Seal shit." But when I started to get a little better, when I realized that I was not serving them, because the end of the day, one day, not all of them, but a couple of them are going to be senior executive level leaders in our organization. And what is their view on senior enlisted people going to be, is it going to be somebody that they're going to trust? Are they going to value the input from their senior enlisted leaders?
So I really had to stay and it became really important to me in my later years was like, look, man, we've got to start looking at those people as the future leaders and giving them the skills, treating them accordingly. So I'd asked that same question to organizations, what are you doing to groom those people? Now don't become fixated with the fact that a large portion of them won't even beat your organization. Don't even take that into account. Be the organization, be the person that trains up those people, regardless of how long they stay in your company.
[TYLER:
Well, it's kind of a, something that my mentors have taught me is like, if you look at people just to burn them up, you're an incinerator. But if you look at, hey, I'm going to grow them up, you're an incubator. And the best problem to have is growing people to where they grow outside of your organization. Because what doesn't work is holding people static and expecting those people to just grow. It's like, hey, grow them out of your organization, grow them to some more different, grow them to say, hey, this is no longer the place for me. But because of your growing people, then you're moving. If you're just saying, how can I burn them up? How can I just use them until they're done, well, you're never going to progress.
[STEVE:
Well, and that's a hundred percent. There's always the conversations about like the different workplace generations. We always talk about the millennials and then there'll be Gen Zs. But a lot of them were like the entitled generation or this and that. But the ones that I talk to, the things that I hear the most often because a lot of it, they're become synonymous with workplace hopping. They are like, and I mean, you look at like a resume and in five years they've been 10, 15 different organizations. Because the number one thing I hear is because I'm going to stay with this organization until I stop learning and developing. That's what I hear the most. And that just plays to your point. You want to keep them happy? You want to keep good people? Pour back into them. Find out what they really want. In many cases, it's something to serve, something a little bit larger than themselves. But in many cases, it's they want to learn, they want to be developed. So give them what they need.
[TYLER:
Good. I love that. That's something I've heard from another guest too, and I think it's spot on. It's hey, if people leave it's because they're not getting what they're looking for. And it's part of a leader's job to say, "Hey, what are you looking for? And maybe this isn't the place for you. How can I help you go find that other place? But if you're looking for it and I can provide it to you and I'm not, well, that's on me. That's a failure of me," and being vulnerable enough to say, "Hey, I messed up. How do I fix this? Let's go."
[STEVE:
Well, and it's how you frame it too, because I talk to a lot of people my age, who are in the opposite side of that coin. And they're like, it is the cliché you hear about, like the young workers come in and be like, "Am I going to be VP next week?" And it's like, okay, well, yes, this conversation needs to take place in terms of expectation management, but it's like, all right, well, you may not have the title, but I'm going to do this, this and this to further develop you to give you the skills you need to progress long term. I'm looking at you, not just as somebody that can help me out today, tomorrow, but I'm actually going to develop you with an eye towards your future 10, 15 years from now.
[TYLER:
Steve, this has been great, man. I appreciate the time. It's always fun talking to you and getting your perspective and what you've seen and how you've gone through that process. And I look at this, I'm growing and learning as a leader. And the time I get to spend with you is absolutely a big part of that. So thank you for the time, man and until next time.
[STEVE:
Until next time. So thanks. This is a fast pace and fun discussion. So I appreciate being invited on. Thank you, Tyler.
[TYLER:
Absolutely. Man.
One of the great items that I really feel like Steve really led us to is understand it doesn't matter what you train to. It's how competent you are when stuff hits the fan. Let's be honest. We all have times and situations in life where it just all of a sudden becomes more pressure. What do you do? How do you perform? One of the biggest things that I've learned in my life is when you do it together with others, man, that's when you're strong. As Steve and my good friend, Matt Myers have shared with me, the Navy Seals really, and I alluded to this earlier is when they're strong it's when they link arms with each other, when they realize I can't do this alone. Leaders, we can't do this alone. We need everyone in our organization linking arms. We need other leaders to link arms with us, to expose our blind spots, to challenge us to get better.
That's what the Impact Driven Leader round table's about. It is linking arms with other leaders. It is saying, how can we be stronger? What can we learn? How can we learn what challenges we're going through as leaders that sometimes it's hard to talk to the people that you lead about the challenges you're going through? That I have the round table. That's what I do, what we do. And I'm so thankful to be able to serve people like that. You've heard from Josh, Molly, and others. So I encourage you and invite you into joining the Impact Driven Leader round table. Find that information at tylerdickerhoof.com.
We'll also make sure there's a link here in the show notes. Thanks for being here. Would love to have a review, a rating. Let me know how we're doing, please. That's what helps other people find this show? That's how I can give more value to others, because it's not about me. It's how can I be the river with the lessons I've learned from the people I've learned like Steve? He's got great value to add to the world and I want to be a part of that and help be a river for his message. Please help me in that as well. Thanks again. And I'll see you next time.
