IDL95 Season 2: A Legacy of Leadership with Oakland McCulloch

Why should you always get your own cup of coffee? What is the creative power that lies behind organized chaos? Can you build an “idea cake”?  

I’m so excited to bring this conversation with Lieutenant Colonel Oakland McCulloch to you. LTC McCulloch is a retired U.S. Army officer, and together we dig into the origins of modern-day emotional leadership. We trace its origins to military styled leadership, and reflect on how that has come to characterize modern day leadership philosophy. We also consider why the modern military has made a switch towards emotionally intelligent leadership, and why it is that the corporate world has not seen a shift to the same degree.

Meet Oakland McCulloch

In his 23 year career in the Army Oakland McCulloch held numerous leadership positions in the Infantry and Armor branches. He received thirty-one military service awards including the Bronze Star, eight Meritorious Service Medals and the Humanitarian Service Medal.

His operational deployments include Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia and Iraq as a Generals Aide-de-Camp, the Congressional Liaison Officer in support of operations in Bosnia, and the Operations Officer during a Peace Keeping deployment to Kosovo.

LTC McCulloch retired from the Army in September 2009 with over 23 years of active service and joined the staff at the Bay Area Food Bank as the Associate Director.

LTC McCulloch left the food bank in December 2010 to become the Senior Military Science Instructor and recruiter for the Army ROTC program at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. In his 9 years at Stetson, the program grew from 15 Cadets to over 100.

McCulloch published his first book in February 2021 – “Your Leadership Legacy: Becoming the Leader You Were Meant to Be”.

Visit Oakland McCulloch’s website and connect with Oakland McCulloch on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, SPN, and LinkedIn.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Fearful leaders are ineffective leaders - 06:56

• The power of chaos - 08:34

• Building trust in your organization - 14:28

• Include people in decision-making - 24:55

Fearful leaders are ineffective leaders

Leaders that seek to create action and build traction with fear will fail. Fear is a powerful driving force, but it demolishes a sense of true community and genuine will to create something great.

If you want despondent and anxious employees, use fear. If you want confident and proactive employees, use compassion.

The power of chaos

If you want to nurture true progress within your business and the personal development of your employees, you need to get as close to chaos as you can:

-        Provide support for your employees

-        Give them the training where necessary

-        Provide the finances and materials

-        Then get out of the way!

Give your people the authority to get things done in the way that best suits them and works to the advantage of their abilities.

Instead of forcing everyone to do something the same way, encourage their individual processes, and in this way you create a space where organized chaos breeds productivity and progress.

Building trust in your organization

People have to trust you to let you lead them, and it is a privilege to earn and work with that trust.

Oakland trust-building tip: lead from walking around, and do not lead from behind your desk because it’s not going to work. People want to see you where they are because it shows them that you care.

Every day, find out something new about the people that you lead.

A quick way to do this is to get your own cup of coffee and chat with the people that you bump into along the way.

It shows them that you don’t see yourself above them and that you are interested in who they are and not just what they do for you.

Include people in decision-making

Invite people to the table, present the scope of the problem and the constraints, and let them come up with ideas. This is a powerful tool as a leader because it allows you to:

-        Get a sense of how much people understand the goals and mission of the company

-        Build trust with people

-        Create a solution that incorporates a little bit of everybody’s input

In a way, you’re baking an idea cake: a little bit from everybody that creates something new, together.

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

BOOK | Oakland McCulloch - Your Leadership Legacy: Becoming the Leader You Were Meant to Be

Visit Oakland McCulloch’s website and connect with Oakland McCulloch on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, SPN, and LinkedIn.

Read Gerald Sewell’s article, Emotional Intelligence and the US Army

Email Tyler: tyler@tylerdickerhoof.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.

Train people so that they can leave but treat them so [well] that they never want to leave.

Oakland McCulloch

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] Hey there. Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. Man, I'm excited to bring this episode to you with Lieutenant Colonel Oakland McCulloch. Lieutenant Colonel Oakland McCulloch, a retired army officer. He and I have this great discussion where we dig into the origins of modern day emotional leadership. If you've listened to the episode where I broke down the eight paradoxes of leadership, you heard about this poet gardener. To me, it's this modern leadership that we see in our world, and it came from a lot of these military leaders that evolved and grew to be poet gardener leaders. You heard about that again in the eight paradoxes you're going to hear about that in this conversation with Lieutenant Colonel McCulloch. One of the pieces that we break down is when did that switch? When did that switch in the American military and it switched much earlier than the modern corporate world has either switched or seen itself? There's an article written in 2009 by Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Sewell, and he mentioned in there the value of emotional intelligence in military leadership. I've heard that from my friends. I've expressed that as people expressed to me the value of incorporating a lot of people. This episode with Lieutenant Colonel McCulloch, we've come up with this idea of an idea cake. I can't wait to unpack it for you as you listen to this episode, as watch, maybe on YouTube. You can go and search at the Impact Driven Leader YouTube channel and watch the full episode there. Again, thanks for being here, for subscribing, for commenting, to share what you, what value you gained from these episodes. I love hearing that, love being able to share it with our guests. Again get ready to take some great notes when I sit down with Lieutenant Colonel Oakland McCulloch. Hope you enjoy this. [TYLER] Oh, welcome to the podcast. So good to sit with you and looking forward to have this conversation. [LTC OAKLAND MCCULLOCH] Yes, I have too, Tyler. I'm glad you have me on the program and I'm looking forward to it. Always like to talk about leadership. [TYLER] So I want to do this, the audience have already listened to the introduction, know that your long tenure within the Army Lieutenant Colonel but one of the things that I picked up and, you start your book with this, the definition of leadership from the Army perspective. You go through it, like there's a lot of definitions of leadership. There's a lot of experts. But the Army definition, when I heard that, I was like, that's very interesting. So I'd love for you to recount that and then we'll just start digging from there. [LTC MCCULLOCH] Yes. I think if you look at the Army definition, it isn't any different really. I think the wording might be a little bit different, but the whole idea is not much different than I think a Fortune 500 company would have. It talks about, it's a process of influencing people because leadership is about people. There's a concept for you. Any leader who doesn't believe it's about people, I got a question whether or not they're ever going to be a good leader, but it's about people. It's about influencing them, motivating them, giving them a direction to accomplish a task, something that you want done, a mission, we call it a mission, but a task, a job, whatever it is you want. To improve the organization, that's what a good leader is trying to do. For me, it's really simple because it has the who, what, when, why, where. It's those very simple things that even a dumb farm boy can understand. [TYLER] Oh, well you and me both, you and me both. I want to take from that, that army definition. This has been one of the things that, as I have really taken a step back and try to analyze leadership from how it was derived for me as a Midwestern farm boy, growing up with a dad whose father was a US Army Calvary, I guess veteran to growing up in the fifties and sixties, and it was very dictatorial. He had his football experience and that was a little bit my life. As I've now evolved and seen so many different styles of leadership, that's one. That's one that almost seems like it was embraced by society, thinking that's the only way for a small segment. I would use, again, this is another army veteran Bobby Knight, was often the depiction of, oh, this is leadership. What I found, and this is what's so interesting in my research and discovery, and you talk about it, you talked about it just a second ago. I'm going to give the audience a little bit more clue, and again, I'm putting in a lot of layers here. There is a question, so there's a lot of layers to this, is when you took your command at South Alabama, you went in and your first directive, as you noted in your book, was, we're going to care about people. [LTC MCCULLOCH] Yes, absolutely. [TYLER] That's how you grew the program. That's what you did. But this is what I want to know, how did the military, and if I'm drawing this on, for those of you who are watching, we have this timeline, the military was moving along, and again, that coming out of World War II into the baby boomer generation and it seems like to me that corporate America went this way with their leadership style, and then the military went this way, meaning up into the right for the corporate America down into the left for the military world. As I've sat down with my friends that are Navy Seals in the Navy, yourself in the Army and anyone else that I've talked to Marine Corps, to Air Force, and they're all like, the most important thing is caring for people. Yet we have so many corporations, especially as we just went through the pandemic, that seem to like, well, that's not real leadership. They cite like this dictatorial, this hard facing, imagine like this tough as nails drill sergeant that's in your face. That's the form of leadership they want to model. So I've laid that stage and that's what I'm excited, you can see it, I'm excited. I can see the smile on your face. You're excited to talk about this. Why did those go so differently? [LTC MCCULLOCH] I'm not exactly sure why they went differently, but I can tell you the result is that you don't motivate people by being that type of a leader. You lead them by fear. They're afraid of it and that's not the way to get things done. So I had a boss and I firmly believe in servant leadership. It's all about people, taking care of people, making sure that they become the best version of themselves. It's about them in the organization. It's not about you. When we commissioned brand new Lieutenants, because in my day job, I do the recruiting for ROTC, this year we commissioned 62 Lieutenants. I walked up every one of them and I said, celebrate today because today is all about you. You're getting to do something that very few people get to do. You're commissioning as an officer in the United States Army. After we pin those bars on your shoulder, after you're done celebrating tonight, tomorrow morning when you wake up, it will never be about you ever again. It's about the people in your organization. It's about the mission, it's about the army, it's about the country. Then if we have time, we might talk about you maybe. So here's, I had a boss who retired a 4-Star General, and he said, "Oak, this is very simple." He said, "Leadership is on a scale and on this end of the scale, you have micromanaging, authoritarian, do it as I tell you people and nobody wants to work for them." We've all worked for that person. I know I have. It's not fun. You hate going to work every day. Then he said on the other end, on this end, you have a till of the hunt in chaos. He said, and you want to be as close to chaos as you can get and he said here's the reason why, because that's where creativity happens. [TYLER] I love that [LTC MCCULLOCH] What you have done is you've trained the people that you have working for you. So you trust them to be able to do what you ask them to do. You give them a task, then you give them what they need to accomplish that task. You give them the resources, you give them the time, the money, the people, whatever it is that you need them to do and then you give them the authority to make it happen, then you get out of their way and you let them do it however they want to do it. So you get the creativity. It's no longer, they're not just doing it the way you want to do it with your knowledge and your experience and your skills. They're using their knowledge, their experience, their skills, and everybody else on the team that they're using to make that happen. You'll be absolutely shocked at what you get. [TYLER] I'm just going to say that, I wonder how many of your generation of leaders, the leaders that were leading in that we'll say up into and then just beyond the desert storm, all of that stuff, when you were in the thick of it and beyond as as an early officer, where did that switch flip? [LTC MCCULLOCH] When I first came in 19, on active duty in 1986, my first battalion commander was a very people person. My second one was not. My second one was one of those authoritarian, do as I tell you, I'm going to micromanage because if you screw up, you're going to mess up my career. Somewhere around there is where it started to switch. I always use this guy as an example. When I first met him, he was Major Martz and I was a Senior First Lieutenant and he eventually became Lieutenant General Martz, great man, one of the best leaders I ever worked for. I didn't work for him for a long time, but absolutely one of the best leaders I ever worked for. We were in this, again, we were in the second battalion commander, the micromanager type guy and we all used to work until seven, eight o'clock at night doing silly stuff mainly. But whatever we had to do, we were in there in the office because as long as the boss was in the office, you had to be in the office, which is what a horrible idea that is. First day, Major Martz walks in, he's the new operations officer. I'm working in the S3 shop. and I'm in my office at 5:05 and I'm working on an operations order. He sticks his head in the office and he says, "Oak, what are you doing?" I said, "Boss, I'm working on an operations order." He said, "Is it due tomorrow morning at 8:00 o'clock?" I said, "No sir." He said, "Then go home." I said, "What?" That stuck in my mind. When I became an S3 a few years, many years later as a Major, the first thing I did was I called all my people and I said, "Look, there are going to be times when I have to work till 8:00 o'clock at night. Unless I specifically tell you that I need you to be here, at 5:00 o'clock, go home. There could be times when I need you and I'm going to tell you you have to be here but if I don't tell you that, then go home." You should have seen the morale lift. I mean I could just see it in their faces. It's probably the same thing that Major Martz saw on my face when he told me to go home. So I think somewhere in that 1980, 85 to 90 is when people started figuring out some people in the army and I think that that a lot more officers in the Army, and it surprises people because a lot of people associate the army with the authoritarian, they think that's the only leadership there is in there, it's not. The best leaders are the servant leaders that take care of their people. [TYLER] To me, again I mentioned it doesn't matter which branch. I think each branch has their little different nuance to how they get there. A good friend of mine, Navy Seal, he talked about the day they became their group, he said all of a sudden the ranks were out the door. He goes, I need all those guys to care for me as much as I care for them. There can't be a hierarchy. You think about that from that leadership perspective, how special that is because that's the reality. I may be your leader, but I'm not better than you. I don't stand at a higher place above you and look down on you and maybe just every once in a while, grace you with my presence. We're in this together. Now, your responsibilities may be different than mine. I may need to take a step back so I can see a different perspective, but I'm not stepping away from you. I'm stepping to a different vantage point. That's again, my friends that were Corpsman that again, share that stuff, that's like the effective leader is the one that learns how to practice what I call empathy. It's put your arm around someone and walk with them. In the preparation for this, I also found an article, and it would probably be released today and be like, cutting-edge. You might know this gentleman, he's another Lieutenant Colonel of the US Army, retired Gerald Se. He wrote an article back in 2009 and it was talking about emotional intelligence in the US Army. I don't know if you're familiar with the article. I don't know if you know him. It surprised me again that that's something that today leaders are like, oh, we need to focus on emotional intelligence. You have a lot of authors over the years, Daniel Goldman, so forth and so on but yet now it's becoming, oh, that's the path forward. [LTC MCCULLOCH] Well, here's the why that is so important, Tyler, because leadership is about trust. It's about people and people have to trust you if they're going to let you lead them and they let you lead them. Let's be honest. It's a privilege to be able to lead people, but they have to trust you. So you have to start building that trust and the only way you can build that trust is, like you said, to be with them, to be part of them. If you are standoffish then it's never going to happen. This is the advice I give young men and women when I send them out there, this is how I tell them to start building trust. The first thing I tell them is lead by walking around. Do not try to lead from behind your desk. Not going to work. People want to see you where they're at, not in your office. They don't want to come in here and talk to you in their office. You need to go down to the assembly line. You need to go down to the motor pool. You need to go down to wherever it is you work to where the people are working and talk to them there and get to know them there. First of all, you learn what they're doing, which is huge as a leader. Now you can actually figure out if they're doing something, if there's a better way to do it or if you need to give them more resources or whatever. The second thing is they see you outside their office and they see you as human, like you said. So I tell them the best way to do that, there's a couple ways to do that, I say, number one, your goal every day as a leader, as a young leader, I tell them, is to go out and find one person in your organization every day and find out one new thing about them. Not about work, something personal. Go find out the wife, their spouse's name, their kids' names, what sports do their kids play? What hobbies do they have? What do they like, don't like? Something new about one person every day in your organization. The second way I tell people to do that is this, and a boss of mine told me this one day. He retired a 3-Star General. He said to me, "Oak never ever, ever turn down a chance to go get your own cup of coffee. No matter how high up in the organization you get, go get your own cup of coffee." He said, two things happen when you do that, number one, they see you as human. Somebody doesn't have to wait on you. You can actually go get your own cup of coffee. He said number two, if you're lucky, you got two or three different ways to get to the coffee pot and back to your office because along the way stop and talk to everybody along the way. Ask them how they're doing today. That's something that good leaders do is that they stop and listen to people. I had a boss who, another boss who retired a 3-Star General, who for whatever reason decided to be a mentor of mine and I was a captain and he was a Lieutenant Colonel. Just to make, this is when I learned the power of listening and getting to know people. I always thought about it and I tried to do it, but I never really understood it until then Colonel Phil, who was Lieutenant General Phil at the end, I was walking by him. He was brand new to the organization. I was brand new, I was walking by him in the hallway and he stopped and said, "Hey, Oak, how are you doing today?" I said, I'm fine. I kept walking and he said, no, no, no, no, no, come here. How are you doing, face to face looking me in the eye, in the hallway, just talking just like this. I stopped and I was telling him, and he says, "Isn't your wife's name Kelly?" I said, "Yes sir." He goes, "How's she doing? What is she up to? What's, tell me a little bit about her.y You got two kids? They're playing on soccer because I got a kid that's playing in soccer too. Did they win this weekend?" Busy man. Never once during our time talking there, we probably only talk for about three or four minutes, maybe five. Never, not once did I see him look at his watch like he had somewhere better to be. I thought I'm pretty special until, I don't know, about a week later I look out the door and he is doing it the same thing to another captain. But it doesn't matter who he was talking to at that moment. You were the most important thing going on in his life and it stuck in my head. So I make sure, and my wife who is, was an army nurse and who is a nurse really stuck this to me even more. I'm sold on it but she even took it one step further. We live in a condo and we always leave, I'm always early, both of us, army people were always early for everything we go to. But she even starts leaving five minutes earlier than we would've normally left. I said, why are we leaving so early? She said, in case we run into somebody in the elevator or in the garage and they want to talk, it's our opportunity. It's our duty to stop and listen to them. I thought, wow, that's it. That's what it's about. That's people on people because because that's the most important thing, people. [TYLER] I enjoyed going through, getting through parts of your book and there was one thing that you mentioned then there. Again, I grew up on a farm. You talk about that. I've worked in a lot of different industries to where I'm at now. At some point I thought, well, it's pretty hard to get outside of that industry because it's so different, the nuances of knowing the particulars. Then I quickly learned, and I heard you know this as well, it doesn't matter what industry you're in, people are people. As long as you have the the willingness to be curious, to learn about it and learn what barriers people have and help them get through that you can have success wherever. I appreciate that so much because so often I think whether it's organizations, boards different executives, they think, oh Oak, you're not qualified. You have not worked in this industry and know the ins and outs. My experience, I'm guessing from as you shared, that your experience as well actually you're more qualified because you don't see the abnormal as normal. [LTC MCCULLOCH] That's right. I always tell people, the great thing about bringing somebody from the outside in is that they, if they're good leaders, that they take the time to learn and they're learning from the people who are doing it. When I was growing up, my dad's best friend worked in Chrysler, worked in a Chrysler plant that produced cars. For 38 years, this man put fenders on cars. That's what he did. Whatever vehicle was being built in that plant, he put the fenders on it. So if you were taking over that plant, if I was taking over that plant and I knew nothing about anything, who would I go talk to about fenders? You better go talk to the guy who's been doing it for 38 years. So when I take over an organization, and I did it when I took over the food bank, but I also did it in the army, every time I took over a new organization, I just took about a month and just learned the organization and the people and the process of what was going on. When I took over the food bank, I just walked out into the, out into the warehouse. I just walked up to a person said, why are you doing that? Why do we do it that way? They would tell me, and I say, okay, so is there a better way? Do you think there's a better way? Is there something else we can give you a tool, a process, something that would help you do it better? You'd be surprised. I mean, they probably wanted to tell somebody that all along. Nobody would ever stop and listen to them. And I actually got that from, I was talking to a guy who worked in Walmart for years and years and years. He said that Walton, was it Joe Walton, Sam Walton used to just show up at Walmart, anywhere in the country. He just never, he'd just be shocked and he wouldn't come through the front and he wouldn't announce that he was coming. He'd come through the back, he'd come through the receiving dock and he'd just talk to people and say, how's things going? Is there something we can do to make things better for you? Is there an easier way to do this? So I learned that and it stuck in my mind. So every time I take over an organization now, I try to get out and I try to talk to everybody who's doing a job, their job and trying to figure out if there's a better way we can do it and what I can do to help them. Because that's my job as the leader, is to make it easy for them. I always tell people, if you're the leader and you think, one of the most important things a leader does is come up with a vision and a plan of where they want to go but you're not going to get them there. The people who work for you are going to get you there and if you don't engage them, then you're never going to get where you want to be. I've been pretty successful in my career of being successful because I include the people who are going to get me there. [TYLER] I think there's a point to that. You talk about going to the food bank or if they were going to the Chrysler plant and talking to your dad's friend, it's like, hey, tell me about this. What works well, what doesn't? The thing that struck me and strikes me is that should be a plan for everyone, is that's rapport building. Because so often there's a new leader that comes in an organization, you get newly appointed to a different position, you have to go and you have to build the trust of that organization. They're like, oh, okay, here comes Lieutenant McCulloch. He's got it all figured out. This is different here and he doesn't understand us and our working environment, but he's going to come in and he's going to put in all these changes and oh, it's his way. But when you talk about going the other way, it's like you walk in, it's like, I have no plan. I may have some ideas, but I have no plan. You come and I just want to learn why you do what you do. Is there a better way? That trust building, I think in any leadership position is essential. You mentioned it, I had a gentleman just mention it the other day. By doing that, you start to unlock all the restrictions people have on themselves and the creativity grows and all of a sudden those different ideas, maybe that person in the food bank say, hey, they had a better idea. Well, maybe, maybe not that idea works but you combine that with three or four people and all of a sudden all those collective ideas do bring in some type of innovative changes. It's like, why did we never do this before? That's genius. [LTC MCCULLOCH] Well, one of the things I talk about is decision making. That's exactly what I talk about is if, what my philosophy has always been, if I got the time and it, and most people do, then you pull in all the people who are in your organization, the junior leaders and your subordinate leaders, whatever and you say, okay, here's the task we have. This is the mission we have. This is the problem we have. Give me some ideas. How do we fix this? How do we come up with an idea that's going to work? What you'll find out when you do that is a couple things. Number one, somebody that you think is your superstar is going to give you some dumb idea and somebody that you think is one of your weakest links is going to come up with a great idea. You never know. I had a boss who said, Oak, a great idea is a great idea whether it comes from a Private or a General and a dumb idea and a dumb idea, whether it comes from a Private or a General. He said, and you're the leader. You're the one that's got to figure that out what's good and what isn't and what to use. But if you do that, then the other thing that happens is people start, that trust thing happens. They say, well, he asked my opinion, even if you didn't use it, that person's opinion this time you might next time, but at least you asked. The third thing that happens is this. This is powerful and tis is absolutely the key is that you'll end up taking a little bit of that person's idea, a little bit of that person's idea, a little bit of that person's, a little bit of my idea and we'll put it together. That's our solution and that's the key. It's no longer Colonel McCulloch's solution. It's our solution. We got skin in the game. We actually had a say in what we're going to do and now I'm going to work extra hard to make sure it works, because it's my solution as well. You'll be shocked at what happens when you do that. [TYLER] I just thought of something brand new, I've never heard of this. Bake an idea cake. What you did is you just baked an idea cake and instead of it being your dish that you're serving, that everyone else has to eat, we're like, I'm going to take a a little bit from everyone, all these ingredients from different people and this is ours. This is our collectively not yours and that idea cake and all of a sudden people can embrace that. [LTC MCCULLOCH] That's a good way to put it actually. [TYLER] Just hit me. Good stuff. Look at that. I wanted to circle back, I mentioned this a little bit earlier, you took a command at South Alabama, you were given the commission there. It was a program that was by the words that you've used, described really struggling, had been below numbers for many years. You made a decision that there was one thing that could be done to really help improve cadet morale and grow the program. You said that, we talked about earlier was care. What, in your process of getting there at that position, looking through things made you realize that was the thing that was missing, that was the lever that was going to make the big difference? [LTC MCCULLOCH] I was lucky. I actually got to go to that program because I was stationed in Australia before and there's some, and my replacement got to the country a little bit early. Australia has a law that only so many officers, foreign officers can be in the country at the same time or whatever. So I had to leave. They didn't have a choice. So could I come in, let me move there, and I got to be in charge of, not in charge, but I got to be at that program for about two and a half to three months before I actually took over. So I had the advantage of watching and seeing how things were done and the guy I was taking over for was a great guy and nothing against what he was doing, but to me, things needed to be changed. I noticed that the emphasis was not on the cadets. It was not on the people who were, you were trying to bring in it and produce as leaders. So I made the decision even before I went to my three week course where they teach you how to do what you got to do and so I made the decision that that was the number one thing. The two things I had to do was take care of cadets. I had to, we as the cadre had to set the example every day for what those cadets wanted to be, an officer in the United States Army, a soldier. So I just made it very clear the first meeting, once I took over the first meeting that I had, that we would take care of cadets and we would set the example. If either one of those things did not happen, you would not work for me anymore. [TYLER] Again digging that in, because I think this is universally true, that's what every employee, that's what every team member wants. They want to be cared for. I believe that most leaders recognize that's important, but what I do see and understand is very few leaders executing in that. They get caught up in the, oh, we have to do our work. You get like, it's so often, and I imagine you experienced this, is don't bog me down with the touchy-feely or the emotional things I need to do when I need to go out and I actually need to make sure that gear is ready, that equipment is ready, and all those important things. [LTC MCCULLOCH] Here's what I say. Yes, go ahead. [TYLER] Go ahead. No please [LTC MCCULLOCH] Here's what I would say to that person. I'm sure that at some point I might have been that person as well. I tried not to be, but this is what I would tell them, if you take care of that person, then they will work that extra hard to make sure that whatever happened needs to happen. When I was a Lieutenant, I made sure that if I had a Sergeant who needed to go to a school to get his promotion, that I don't care what we were, had going on, we could have an inspection going on, we could be getting ready to do a major field program, didn't matter. That person was going to go to that school. I actually had a Lieutenant who worked with me who I actually one day said, I'm not sending that guy because I've got, we got the NTC rotation coming up and he'll go afterwards. I said, you're taking money out of that man's family's mouth or out of their pocket and food out of their mouths because you're preventing him from being promoted. He can't get promoted until you send him to that school. So every month you put it off is another month he's not promoted. I said, where's the, that person will never trust you again because you are in this for you. If you prove to them that you're not in it for you, that you're in it for the organization and them, you're still going to get your promotion because they're going to do work extra hard to make sure that they're doing what you ask them to, because you're taking care of them and they trust you. In the end, if you really do care about people and you can't fake it, they will figure it out if you're faking it, if you really do care about people and they honestly believe that you are going, they're going to do whatever they can do to make you successful. Then you're going to get your promotion for the right reasons because you did a good job and took care of people and the organization is better not because you were selfish and wanted your promotion. I've worked for people, you've worked for people like that before that you can tell all they care about is their next promotion. They could care less about you or the organization. [TYLER] Yes [LTC MCCULLOCH] You're not very motivated to work for that person. [TYLER] Well, especially not very long. You may at first, that may seem like, okay, that's my job and maybe you have some success and all of a sudden it goes along and then all of a sudden you come to a point and you realize they don't care about me. All I am is a number. All I'm am is a productive unit. In the moment that happens, to your point about trust, you lose every benefit of the doubt. As a leader when, when someone in your organization that is working with you, for you however, when they no longer give you the benefit of the doubt, then all of a sudden you've gone the wrong way and it's going to be really, really hard to come back. [LTC MCCULLOCH] Branson has the greatest quote about that. He said train people so that they can leave, but treat them so that they never want to leave. I don't know if that's the exact quote, but that's basically what he said and he believed in it and he's obviously pretty successful man. [TYLER] Yes. In your experience, leading and so much of I've recognized, and I see this and appreciate this, your job and command was coaching and guiding people, what did you find, you talk about that Lieutenant that served with you or even your superior officer that really had things where it was all about them. You've probably had different soldiers that you've worked with that they think that's the way. What did you recognize was the barrier for them? How did you help them get through those barriers to actually lead more effectively and show more care for those in their command? [LTC MCCULLOCH] I think one, you set the example, so I'll just give you a couple examples. When I was a company commander, my first company command was a basic training company command. So I had, we were shooting gunnery and my philosophy as a leader, as much as I can, I want to be out where my soldiers are, where my people are now. I get it, as a leader, sometimes you got to be behind a desk and do something, but whenever possible you should be out. So we were out gunnering and these three privates were, five, four privates were sitting up on top of a tank eating. I walked by, I was out there with them, I walked by, I got up on the tank, I ate with them and I was just talking to them and just saying, okay, what's your goal in life? What do you want to do? Yes, you're enlisted. Do you want to make a career enlisted? Do you want to go do your minimum time, get out and go do something in the civilian world? Do you want to go to be an officer? What do you want to do? We walked through those things and that was just, I did that all the time and about, I don't know, about four or five years ago, I got a call from a guy and he said, "You don't remember me, but I was one of those guys on top of the tank that day that you talked to about what you wanted to do in life." He said, "After my enlistment time, I said I want to go be an officer. I left and I went, did ROTC." He did a career in ROTC, retired a Lieutenant Colonel and how he runs a business. But he said, I remember that conversation and you taking the time to be there with us, privates, you were company commander, captain, you were sitting there eating lunch with a bunch of privates. That's the thing that they remember. When I was at South Alabama, I made sure that the cadets understood that that's what is expected of an officer. My cadre remind me of this all the time, because I still stay in touch with a lot of them that were in my cadre there. They said, remember that time at Ranger Challenge when it was like 32 degrees and all the cadets were sleeping on the ground and we all had a cabin that we could have gone to and you said, I'm sleeping right here with the cadets? Not one of the cadre went to the cabin. We all slept there on the ground with the cadets. We froze to death that night. But he said, "I have, I stay in touch with some of the cadets that were there, they all talk about it till today." That set the example. That's how you change the perception of what it is that is acceptable. I always use this example, if you're the leader and you're walking down the hallway and there's a piece of paper there and you don't bend down and pick it up, why should anybody else pick it up? [TYLER] Yep, yes. [LTC MCCULLOCH] I mean, you got to set the example of what is acceptable to be what you expect and what is acceptable. Then you have to hold people to standards. There's a concept for you. People want to be held to the concepts, they want to be held to standard. [TYLER] Well, I believe that, and I think it ties into this next thing I want to ask you a little bit, where does grace fit in there? [LTC MCCULLOCH] Well, I am a Christian. I absolutely unashamedly, I talk about it all the time. I think that that's, I mean, that is what it's about. It's about taking care of the good, the Good Samaritan. That was just the sermon in the Catholic church, about a couple weeks ago that the Good Samaritan didn't know this guy from Adam, but he was hurting, he helped him, even took money out of his own pocket to help him get better. That's what it's about. I mean, if that isn't what it's about, if being on this earth is not about helping other people, well why are we here? I believe that [TYLER] Well, and I think here's where I think it goes so difficult, then going back to how we very started where the challenges come where all of a sudden one direction of leadership style looks like very authoritative and it has to be very, very rigid. Then there's another style that realize none of us can walk that and we can have those desires. We can want to walk that path, but understand we're going to stray at times and have that grace and care and just understand and ask why. To me that's a condensed version of what you've explained has gone on in the military for different reasons. I see that in the world that we live in and it's by expressing that grace, that those accountability restrictions actually have foundation because without it comes back to it's like, well why is it so hard? It's hard because that's the better way that if we all keep accountable to that, we're going to stay safer. Are there going to be days that we step sideways wondering? Yes. Is there going to be accountability for that and consequences? Yes. There needs to be that but at the same point, I have to appreciate and understand why because if I don't in that circumstance, then all of a sudden I don't care. [LTC MCCULLOCH] Well, I had a boss who told me Oak, if you didn't make a mistake today, you probably didn't do anything. He said, I don't care. This is my philosophy. When you told me this, I immediately took it and I run with it, and it's always been my philosophy. I don't care if you made a mistake. What I care about is what did you do after you made the mistake? Did you try to hide it? Did you blame somebody else? Or did you walk up to me and say, "Hey boss, I messed up and here's how we're going to fix it." Let's go fix it. Because we're all going to make mistakes. Nobody is perfect. I keep trying to convince my wife that I am, but she's not lying. None of us are perfect. We are all going to make mistakes and that's okay, as long as it's an honest mistake. There's a difference between a mistake and a decision to make, that you make a decision to do something that you know is wrong. That's not a mistake. That's a different story. I know that has to be dealt with differently, but mistakes are going to happen. I guarantee it. There's nothing, no way to get around it. [TYLER] Oak, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for sharing this. I appreciate the the candor, the care of the heart and to me, it is been this great journey to appreciate, as much as I am learning and growing to appreciate how much the American service organizations have learned and grown and figured out what I would call healthy leadership. Not within their own, still have their own issues, every organization does, but, man, as my experience with yourself and so many other individuals that I appreciate and get to spend time with, it is a model of leadership that every corporation in the United States would be well suited to look into and understand, hey, that's a really good way to do it. So, [LTC MCCULLOCH] Well, that is my passion at this point in my life is to get out and talk to as many people as I can. I was just talking to a company in New Orleans in September, and I went to an HR conference last month. I'm going to a first responder conference in January in Dallas. That's is, well, I want to get out there and tell people because, that is the way to be get better. It really is. I mean, you're not going to get your organization better by being an authoritarian leader. It's not going to happen [TYLER] Yes. Oak, thank you so much [LTC MCCULLOCH] Thank you, Tyler. I appreciate you having me on this show. [TYLER] I really enjoyed this idea, coming up with the idea cake where everyone's got to put in their own personal ingredient. If, as an organization, as a leader, you go to people and you ask for their input, you ask for them to share an idea, the cake you build, man, it turns out to be so much better. Just imagine, if you build a cake and it was all chocolate, or if it was all flour, or if it was all eggs, it wouldn't be a cake and it wouldn't taste near as good. That's the same as this idea cake that we came up with. The other thing that I really, two different pieces that I got from Lieutenant Colonel McCulloch is one, setting the example. Now that's so paramount, that's so important in any leader. We can't forget that. The example we set where there's a parent, where there's just, we're setting the example to ourselves, that's the example from which everything else comes from. I shared a few weeks ago a lesson that I learned about as part of my thought of the day. You can access that on my YouTube channels or on several of the social media channels each day. Its character is the foundation in the ability to lead. Your character is a set by the example that you share it with others. The other piece that Lieutenant Colonel and I talked about, and I want to leave with this one, as I read my notes, be as close to chaos as possible. That's when creativity comes. I ask you, as you're walking away from this episode and hopefully reviewing your notes, is your leadership style embracing and allowing chaos in your organization? Meaning, are you allowing for maybe some uncontrolled elements? You think about the US Military. They're pretty organized. They're structured, there's a lot of structure. But as Lieutenant Colonel McCulloch said, the great leaders are right on that edge where it's just the amount of chaos needed for tremendous amounts of creativity. That creativity, that innovation is what allows an organization to thrive. It's, can you in your leadership style, be comfortable enough, be safe enough, be secure enough where you allow that chaos to be a part of the organization so that way you do have creativity in innovation? I hope you got value from today's episode. I sure did in our conversation. Love the interaction I get to have with each of the guests. I would love for you to share this with someone. If it could bring value to someone in your organization, please share it with them. Give Lieutenant Colonel Oakland McCulloch a little nod for what he shared today. Thanks again for being here. Until next time, have a good one.