#36 (Ret) General David H. Petraeus - A Masters Class in Strategic Leadership

General David H. Petraeus (US Army, Ret.) is a Partner in the global investment firm KKR and Chairman of the KKR Global Institute, which he established in mid-2013. He is also a member of the boards of Optiv and OneStream, a Strategic Advisor for Semperis, the Chairman of the International Advisory Board for Advanced Navigation, a personal venture investor, engaged in various academic endeavors, and co-author with British historian and biographer Andrew Roberts of the forthcoming book, Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine. 

Prior to joining KKR, General Petraeus served over 37 years in the U.S. military, culminating his career with six consecutive commands as a general officer, five of which were in combat, including command of the Surge in Iraq, command of U.S. Central Command, and command of Coalition Forces in Afghanistan.  Following retirement from the military, and after confirmation by the Senate in a vote of 94-0, he served as the Director of the CIA during a period of significant achievements in the war on terror.

 
🫡 My Why: I’ve seen the cost of poor leadership — how it can destroy morale, break trust, and in the worst cases, lead to lives lost, including through suicide. That’s why I’ve committed my life to helping others lead with purpose. Through Tales of Leadership, I share real stories and actionable insights on how to overcome adversity and become the kind of leader people remember for the right reasons.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

You're listening to the Tells a Leadership Podcast. This podcast is for leaders at any phase on their leadership journey to become a more purposeful and accountable leader. What I like to call how. Join me on our journey together towards transformational leadership. Welcome back to the Tells a Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Josh McMillian, an active duty army officer and the founder of McMillian Leadership Coaching. And I am on a mission to create a better leader, what I like to call a purposeful, accountable leader. And my vision is to end toxic transitional leadership and positively affect one million lives in the next 10 years. And I plan to do that by sharing transformational stories and skills. On today's episode, I am going to be sharing a transformational leader story with you in the form of General David Retired Petraeus. He has spent 37 years in the U.S. military, culminating his career with six consecutive commands as a general officer, five of which were in combat, including the command insurgent in Iraq, command of U.S. Central Command, and Command of Coalition Forces in Afghanistan. Following retirement from the military and after confirmation by the Senate, when a vote 94 to zero, he served as the director of the CIA during a period of significant achievement in the war on terror. He also, in the past two decades, has been named one of America's top 25 best leaders by U.S. News and World Report and was a runner-up for Time magazine's person of the year. Please help me bring on David Petraeus. Sir, welcome to the Tales of Leadership Podcast. It is a privilege and honor to have you on, and I'm really excited to kind of dig into your leadership journey and share it with the listeners of this podcast. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Doing great thanks. Privileged to be with you, Josh.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

I I think a great place to start is that you you have such a tremendous experience level. Could you take the time to provide, you know, who is David Petraeus just up front?

SPEAKER_01 2:13

A kid who grew up 50 miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley, seven miles around the mountain from West Point, where I obviously went to college, the U.S. Military Academy, was a cadet there for four years, met my wife and got married there, and then had a series of uh infantry assignments with occasional uh excursions into academia uh and then a variety of what might be termed vantage point jobs, which were hugely valuable over the years, especially later on, uh, because I got to see very up close and personal uh senior leaders of our military. So a speech writer for the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, uh aide for a couple of years, and assistant executive officer for the chief of staff of the Army, including during the operation in Panama and then Desert Shield and Desert Storm, executive officer for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for two years when we were carrying out a variety of different operations, including the air campaign in Kosovo, strikes on Osama bin Laden, strikes against Saddam Hussein, and a variety of other uh activities. And then again, this academic uh diversion or excursion, uh, a couple of years at Princeton, uh, where I did a master's and a PhD in accommodation of international relations and economics, taught both those subjects uh at West Point for a couple of years, uh, served in a temporary duty basis uh as a special assistant to the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Southern Command, as the term was then, and got to see the operation, the counterinsurgency campaign in El Salvador, uh, the operation ongoing in Nicaragua, Colombia, and so forth. Uh, I was the chief of operations for the United Nations Force in 80, so not dual-headed, not a U.S. and UN officer, but strictly the UN chief of operations when we stood up that mission. Um, a year in Bosnia, uh, where I was dual-headed. I was the Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations uh for the NATO Stabilization Force in Bosnia, but also the deputy commander of a clandestine joint task force that was doing the war criminal hunt with special mission units, and then shifted to conduct the first counterterrorism operations after 9-11 as well. The first was not actually in Afghanistan, it was in Sarajevo, and we carried out a number of others over the course of the subsequent uh 10 months or so that was left in my tour there. And then, of course, just a series of commands. Uh, the rest of my career uh was six consecutive commands as a general officer, starting with the 101st Airborne Division uh during the invasion of Iraq in the first year there, was brought back shortly after returning home to do an assessment for Secretary Rumsfeld, delivered that assessment, he sent me back to Iraq uh shortly after that, and another 15 and a half month tour, establishing the Multinational Security Transition Command, Iraq, and also the NATO training mission, uh Iraq dual had it again. Uh, then Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for about 15 months. Um, and uh during that time we drafted the counterinsurgency field manual uh start to finish in less than a year, published it. That became the intellectual foundation for what we did uh in my subsequent three commands, uh, commanding the surge in Iraq for 19 and a half months, uh commanding U.S. Central Command for roughly the same amount of time, and then commanding uh the NATO uh International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan and U.S. forces in Afghanistan before becoming the director of the CIA. And then for the last 10 years, uh I've been with one of the world's largest investment firms, uh KKR. I'm a partner in the firm. Um we own over 120 companies around the world. We have minority investments in another hundred or more. And I chair our global institute, which I established uh a decade ago, which does a geopolitical risk assessment, uh, integrates the macroeconomic analysis and environmental social governance issues analysis when we are in the process of diligence, in other words, examining a potential investment with a deal team. Very stimulating work uh on two of the boards of companies that we own, strategic advisor for another two of those, invested in 25 startups, many of them personally, many of them uh more than once. Uh, and I've always had a variety of academic uh endeavors as well in my post-government life, including at the City University, New York Honors College, Harvard as a fellow for six years, uh, University of Southern California as a chair that was a one-week a semester uh activity, and now a lecturer and uh fellow at Yale's Jackson School of uh Global Affairs.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

That is an inspiring background. It truly is. Where I'm at still at the very tactical level, seeing that level of success is inspiring to me. Um, one question that I have to ask.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Well, again, life is not full of high-five moments. I mean, there are been plenty of moments along the way uh which included setbacks, mistakes, shortcomings, uh, whether by individuals and organizations I was privileged to lead or on my part. And uh, you know, one of the points I think for your listeners clearly is that um the the real measure of a leader is not how he or she responds to success, it's how he or she responds to setbacks. Um, and you know what you've got to do is seek to learn from what happened, identify what happened, acknowledge it, learn from it, and then dust yourself off, get back on your feet, pick up the rucksack, and start putting one foot in front of the other again.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Yes, sir. I I completely agree. Is that I I think that we are defined as leaders of how we react and are resilient in those moments that we get challenged. And I I always kind of go back to um it's almost like a seals halt in a way where you stop, look, listen, and smell, but you're just getting acclimated to the environment. But I call it stop. Uh silence your mind, take a tactical pause, observe, and then pursue with purpose. So you understand what happened, and then you can go take decisive action because you learn from your mistake.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Very much so. As you know, our our particular service embraces what might be termed the after-action review culture, the AAR culture. It's inculcated in us at our training centers and all of the training events that we do and in our operations as well. Uh, after every major operations, we would conduct an after-action review. Um, and of course, in a sense, in quotes, the the the more you beat yourself up, the bloodier the after-action review is, the better. Uh, the more you acknowledge uh the shortcomings, the more you learn from the after-action review. So, I mean, that's part of something that's very important, I think, in an organization, which is to have, as part of an organizational culture, there has to be a focus on learning. Uh, in the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, we explicitly put uh in one of the uh prefaces uh that the side that learns the fastest typically prevails in this kind of endeavor. And we then uh, in when I was privileged to lead these big operations, uh particularly the surge in Iraq, uh also Afghanistan, we had in my battle rhythm uh a series of events that were action-forcing mechanisms that were designed to force us to identify how we needed to make changes, refine the big ideas, and so forth. In fact, let me back up here and offer an intellectual construct that we used during these uh endeavors when I was privileged to be the strategic leader. In other words, the leader at the top of something very significant, because you have to get four tasks right in these types of uh uh assignments. Now, you have to do this in any leadership assignment, but it's only at the very top where you have the uh the freedom of action, if you will, the latitude, the requirement to actually get the overarching big ideas right, the big strategy. Everybody else down the line still has to perform these four tasks, but does it within the confines, the right and left limits that the strategic leader establishes. So a company commander, when you were a company commander, you had to get these the big ideas right for your company, but your battalion commander had had established his big ideas, the brigade commander, the division, and all the way on up the line, so that the latitude that you have was understandably and rightly constrained. When you're at the very top, you you've got not only the latitude, you have the requirement to nail down what are the big ideas. And that's the first task of a strategic leader. It's something that's best done normally. It usually in an iterative process, it should be open, transparent. Everybody should feel that they're inside the tent because you know what people do. If they're outside the tent, they're all contributing, you're welcoming that. But at the end of the day, it's the strategic leader who has to decide, okay, as we did in the surge in Iraq, we're going to reverse what we've been doing 180 degrees. Change leadership is doesn't get any more profound than that. Uh, we are instead of continuing to consolidate on big bases and hand off to the Iraqi security forces, we're going back into the neighborhoods. We're going to take back the responsibility security. This operationalized itself in Baghdad with 77 additional locations just in that greater Baghdad area. We had to fight for many of those, but that was the right thing to do. That was the right approach, the right big idea, because we had to secure the people and serve the people. This is, and in fact, I put out counterinsurgency guidance that was a series of admonitions that explained the big ideas and a variety of other ideas as well. And the very first one was secure and serve the people. You can only do this by living with the people. Therefore, we're going back downtown. We also promoted reconciliation broadly throughout the entire theater for the first time as well, because of the big idea that we recognized we could not kill or capture our way out of an industrial strength insurgency. But, oh, by the way, we're going to intensify the pursuit of the irreconcilables. We're going to kill or capture those individuals using our special mission units and a variety of other organizations and elements. So again, you've got to get the big ideas right. You have to communicate them effectively throughout the breadth and depth of the organization and out and up into counterparts, Iraqi counterparts, coalition partners, uh, our political and congressional leaders, all of the different stakeholders. And of course, we started in the surge. It started the very first week. I changed the mission statement. Then we started working on the base campaign plan. Then we worked on all of the annexes. And of course, it was a continuous process, but you got it going. And then you have to oversee the implementation of the big ideas. That's the third task. That's what we normally think of as leadership. This is providing the example, energy, inspiration. It's attracting great people, keeping them, developing them. It's allowing those that aren't measuring up to move on, uh, again, generally without a public execution. Uh, it's how you spend your time, your battle rhythm. Uh, it's the metrics that you use and rigorously uh defining and observing those uh to determine whether you're making progress or not and what you need to do uh to improve. And then that fourth task, which is really what started me into this, which is the importance of identifying how you need to refine the big ideas so that you can do it all again and again and again. Think of, for example, Kodak, which failed in that fourth task. They had over 2,000 patents on digital photography, but they failed to change their big idea from film photography, in which they were the leader, to digital photography rapidly enough to be the leader in that as well, and they've never been what they were before. And again, I can illustrate this not just with the surge or uh, say Afghanistan or other uh military endeavors, but also Netflix, uh Amazon, uh Alibaba, you name it, uh, because each of those organizations had great, has great strategic leaders who have performed these four tasks invariably very impressively. And again, we'll keep coming back to this, I'm sure, throughout the course of this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

That is an excellent point, and and I love how it can see the trickle-down effect from the strategic operational down to the tactical level, and uh, and I think at the lowest tactical level, the company commander is that I don't create a vision, I execute the battalion commander's vision, but I implement that within the left and the right boundary that I have set. So I have a little bit of latitude, but I have a clear destination, and and I love the whole concept of of mission command, and I think that that that is the the key attribute that makes the United States military great because we have layers of leadership. If if and I was thinking about this this week while I was at Fort Benning, at the team level, there's an NCO, at the squad levels, there's an NCO, at the platoon level, there's an NCO. So we have leadership ingrained all the way down to the individual soldier level of where we can make rapid decisions, but it all feeds back up to someone like you, sir, who creates that strategic level vision, vision, strategy, execution, and then the matrix, the metrics to make sure that you're doing what you need to do, and just a feedback loop into that. I never saw the correlation.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

When I was a battalion commander, I think if you ask the members of the Great Iron Rockassan Battalion, third of the 187th Infantry, and the Great 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, they'll still get the big five right. You know, we were very clear on day one. I went in and said this these five areas will be our collective focus. Here's how we're going to operationalize them. These aren't just, again, words. There are real programmatics around all of this. And so physical fitness was one of these. By the way, it was holistic physical fitness, not just PT, it was all aspects of physical fitness. But, you know, I said we're going to do PT for 90 minutes a day. Uh, and to facilitate that, we're going to change the mess hall hours. We still thankfully controlled had a battalion mess hall in those days, a little more difficult with brigade defects now. But and then it was enormous detail about how we were going to do this. Um, I'm going to certify all the leaders. We're, you know, that there was every aspect of this uh had a lot of detail around it. And then it was about execution, and that made this an incredibly physically fit organization. Rangering was a big emphasis. That was another one of them. So were small unit live fires and drills, so were air assault tactics and techniques, and so was discipline. And again, we just didn't say discipline in this amorphous term. We had standards of discipline. You know, this is how a soldier stands when he talks to a non-commissioned officer, to a commissioned officer. This is how our equipment is rigged, this is how we wear camouflage, this is how, again, on and on and on. Then we adhered to it. We actually enforced it. So, I mean, early on, I did equipment inspections of every company. I'd start with a company commander. And believe it or not, the company commanders usually didn't actually adhere to the standards that we had established. I'd say, no problem. I'd come to the first error deficiency, and I'd say, no problem, Captain. You know, I'll be back. And so his soldiers are all grousing. And you know, I said, give me a call when you've brought yourself up to standard and I'll return. Uh and the word went out very quickly, and folks got very serious about that stuff. So again, it's about all of that. When it came to rangering, um, we immediately established there was no pre-ranger program in the division at the time at all, in the entire division. We established a battalion pre-ranger program. We started snapping up every ranger slot that the division was given, actually, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, as an installation. Um, and because of the rigor of our pre-ranger program, we believe it or not, had well over a 90% completion rate. Wow. And as we established our reputation with the ranger training brigade at Fort Benning, um, I could get an exception. I would call the RTB, uh, actually the 4th Battalion commander uh and said, Look, I have a PV-2, believe it or not, my my RTO who is ready for ranger school, and you told me I could have an exception if I called you directly when I went through the pre-command course, I'm asking for an exception. And he made it first time through. PFC Medic made it. So at the end of my two years of command, we had 50 enlisted rangers who had completed ranger school during that two-year period, as in addition to commissioned officers and others. Um, and it transformed the entire unit along with the other uh elements of these areas of focus that we had. So again, there was considerable latitude for me. Occasionally we exceeded it, such as when the brigade commander asked me whether I had a unit in Panama that I hadn't mentioned. I said, Oh yeah, actually I do. You know, it was the you know, the Ranger Battalion commander that my buddy called and asked if we wanted to send a unit to be the opposing force at the jungle school when the Ranger Battalion went through training there, and I jumped on it because they were funding it and lots of live ammunition and so forth. And I said, I guess I probably should have briefed you about that. But again, he was tolerant, um, supportive, uh, and said, Hey, you know, great initiative, terrific. What a wonderful opportunity uh for your soldiers. And there were a whole bunch of those kinds of deals and other things. I mean, we had a fifth group sergeant first class that we had not assigned formally, but he was actually, we brought him to the unit to be a platoon leader uh and treated him like a lieutenant, so that when he went to OCS, which he already had a slot for, he was quite a hero on the battlefield. Uh, his group commander was my neighbor. And when he went to OCS, he was then eligible to go directly to the Ranger Regiment, which which he had served before, because he had already served as a platoon leader in the third of the 17th Infantry. So again, it's this kind of there's a lot of scope for initiative. Um, occasionally you're called in again by your boss to explain why it is that you've exercised that initiative. But if you've been doing well in other respects, and if you have money in the bank with your boss, uh you can make a few withdrawals every now and then.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

I think that's the key, sir, is the rep reputation is that you have to develop a reputation, and that takes such a long and hard time to do. Uh as a as an infantry officer now in an aviation unit, it it took me, I think, several years to kind of build a strong reputation within the organization of where I can make decisions without other people's direct guidance because they believe that uh what I'm going to do makes makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

How to gain confidence. You have to have to gain, you have to earn the confidence of those above you. And when you do, then you and this you know would continue much in much more significant ways in subsequent years, such as you know, the commander of the 101st Airborne Division during the fight to Baghdad when we made some decisions empowered by the Corps commander. Uh instead of containing Najif, a city of 500,000 people, the holiest city in Shia Islam, I called my boss and I said, Look, I intend to take Najif. Said, fine, okay. Um let me know how it works out. And it worked out just fine. Uh then later on, when we moved north to Mosul, um the coalition provisional authority uh Ambassador gave us special exemptions to policies that he had actually unwisely implemented and decided upon. So we were the only unit empowered to conduct reconciliation back in the beginning after they very unwisely carried out debathification, in other words, fired all of the members of Saddam's party all the way down to the level of bureaucrats, which is what we actually needed to run the country. So give you an example of the impact, just in mostly university alone, which we were trying to re-establish and repair and rebuild, 30,000 students, so not a small endeavor. But there were 110 professors thrown out of their positions because of debathification without an agreed reconciliation process, which he allowed me to conduct solely in the North, and which enabled us to really keep things going very, very well much longer than in the rest of the country. But again, it's because we had the confidence, uh, would built up again a degree of a reputation, uh, and uh my bosses were supportive of what it was we did. And occasionally when we got out ahead of folks, such as reopening the international border, uh, without telling the State Department. Um, Secretary of State Powell, an old mentor of mine from Uniform Days for him, uh, accused me of having my own foreign policy, although we did it in accordance with all the UN Security Council resolutions on governing trade with Iraq, but you could get away with that kind of thing. Um, and I did tell my boss. I mean, it wasn't as if we did it just uh without alerting anyone.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

There's a there's a theme that I'm seeing, sir, like I think early on till till that point, the story you just shared is that you've continuously had such a strong reputation up to that point that your leaders would allow you uh the latitude to kind of make those level decisions because they trusted you. And that it kind of goes back to a quote that I've always lived my life by from Aristotle is we are what we repetitively do. Excellence then isn't an act, it's a habit. And it just comes back down to I think three things routine accountability and discipline. So I create that acronym RAD if you want to be a RAD leader, and I I truly believe this. It's not it's not rocket scientists. If you have routines, if you can remain accountable and you're disciplined enough to do things, especially when it's not convenient to do it, you will continue to get results and you'll continue to have an amazing reputation. And then that will just be able to create major changes with within the organization. And I heard General Rainey talking at um A USA this week in Huntsville, and he was talking about the Army of 2030 and the Army of 2040, and he threw out this um basically this mathematical equation to kind of get results is that if we have the capability, capacity, and we're in the right position, then we can have results. But if we don't have those three things, I think, working together, then we're never going to be able to get results. So it's just another interesting perspective, kind of going back to that whole discipline and then having routines that build your reputation.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Well, it's also about getting results. Um, it's about demonstrating good operational judgment, uh, it's about achieving results. Um, and in the end of the day, nothing succeeds like success. Uh and so, you know, by the time several years after that first year, by the time we arrive at the surge, a fairly desperate moment for Iraq, the country was in a civil war between Sunni and Shia, um, the level of responsibility was enormous, but also so was the level of authority that was provided to me by President Bush and the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen, um and empowerment um as well as enabling. You know, remember the president after I was confirmed uh for a fourth star in that command, I went over to the Oval Office to see him and he said, Well, General, we're doubling down in Iraq. I said, Mr. President, your military is going all in, um, and we need the rest of government to go all in with us. And he said, I'll ensure that that happens. And he started a video conference with us every Monday morning at 7:30 a.m., which is ungodly and you know, unheard of in Washington. Um, it started precisely on time. The whole national security team around the situation room table lasted an hour, went immediately out to the ambassador and to me. Uh, and again, what that enabled us to do was extraordinary. Um, it was the ultimate uh vote of confidence because we're communicating directly to the president. If there's somebody between us and him who's not supportive, um, this is our chance to let that be known. Everyone else knew that. We were not hesitant at times, respectfully, to offer views on certain topics, um, even when they weren't necessarily supported by, say, the Joint Chiefs or others. But both of us thought this was probably our last job in government. And uh we were we were out to try to turn around a desperate situation and not try not out to lose gracefully or uh just be sort of easy subordinates.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

That is a that is a critical, uh, an absolutely critical piece of leadership advice there, sir. And it kind of goes to being unreasonable, but doing it in a way where you're not um being unprofessional. I was at a force comp competition for the the Douglas MacArthur Award, and General Milley at the time threw out a term, and to me it was illuminating. Disciplined disobedience. In the army of the future, you you have to be unreasonable in certain things if you know that it's ethically, morally, or just not the right direction, but to be able to do it in a way that comes off as a pro as professional. If you ever read the book, Sir Kim by Kim Scott, Radical Candor, of being able to be candid with someone, but in a way to where it's not a personal attack, but trying to steer the ship in the right direction. How how do you do that at such a high level? How did you do that at such a high level?

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Well, you generally try to be unemotional. Um, you be you try to be respectful, uh, you try to be professional. Now, I should should acknowledge or confess that there were a couple of times where uh I was not actually. Again, this is a serious endeavor. America's sons and daughters were dying for this effort. And if I felt that there was someone above us who was not as supportive as he should have been, I was pretty clear with that individual. And I did call my boss at the time on a couple of occasions. You know, I mean remember one time I said, Look, I can take no for an answer, boss, but I can't take no answer. Um, you need to act on this. If you're hesitant about acting on it, I'll be happy to raise it with the president on Monday morning. And that got action, obviously. But again, um, generally, uh it is about, again, you know, with great respect, Admiral or General, um, you know, if I might offer perhaps a slightly different viewpoint, um, and then very dispassionately laying out as compelling a case as you can possibly make, that's the approach to take. Um but aga occasionally, again, especially uh in combat, um where the stakes are so high uh and where the responsibility was so considerable, um there were again a couple of occasions where I did not adhere to that. But in some cases, by the way, sometimes it was act also acting. Um when I would interact with the prime minister of Iraq in particular, the ambassador and I would go over together uh with my interpreter, because he was the one that would sit between the prime minister and me, if it was my meeting with the ambassador or with the uh the prime minister, and then sometimes we'd actually ship sheet seats, and the ambassador would then take over the meeting. Um, but I wanted my interpreter to know that I was going to show the full range of emotions as we would term it. And I would say, you just keep translating and don't don't caution me unless you think I'm actually losing it, because you could actually start out acting and you can actually end up pretty emotional, because again, this is the this is about truly about life and death. Um, and soldiers are being killed uh because of the actions that they're undertaking. And you know, I was gonna be darned if if our partner, the one that we're helping, uh might be at times uh an obstacle or a problem in that regard. So um again, generally, if if you are showing the full range of emotions, you should have thought it through and you should be trying to be acting rather than actually truly emotional. Because you if you get overly emotional, you can have a you know what we call a non-biodegradable event. Uh you can have an exchange that is so harsh that it never goes away and it does damage. And I think you have to be very sensitive to that. And I, you know, came close to that once or twice. I actually did very dispassionately actually threaten to quit in the first couple of days in Iraq, where the Iraqi National Security Advisor, uh, whom I knew well because I'd worked closely with him, I'd literally drafted with him the Iraqi national security strategy when I was there as a three-star. We were really friends as well as um counterparts and so forth. But he was essentially confronting me together with the then ambassador, this is before Ambassador Crocker actually arrived, um, and he said, these are the demands of the prime minister as you assume your new position, General. Um, and it was the exact opposite of what we intended to do. It was to hand off faster to the Iraqi security forces, get out of the neighborhoods instead of going back into them. A whole variety of tasks, again, that were 180 degrees different from what we intended to do, and what I was convinced we had to do to pull the country out of the Sunni Shia civil war into which it was descending. And I could literally feel this is one of those occasions where your blood begins to boil inside your body as it's termed. I mean, you're you're flushing, you are and when he finally stopped, um, I said, Well, Doctor, um, thank you very much for conveying the Prime Minister's demands. Um, if you would convey to him in return that he should know uh that if he intends truly uh to embark on this course of action, that he is going to do it without me, because I'm gonna be on the next plane to Washington, and I intend to take the policy with me right after he conveys it to the president of the United States tomorrow in the regularly scheduled video conference, which I was going to attend for the first time as the new commander. And so, and and again, there that was a pretty pivotal moment. Didn't sleep that night, needless to say, went to the video conference the next day, never heard mention of it again, and we got on with what it was that we intended to do, which was going back into the neighborhoods, living with the people, conducting reconciliation, um, pursuing the irreconcilables even more intensely, reforming how we did detainee operations, not trivial, 27,000 detainees uh at the height of the surge, uh, and a whole variety of other tasks that we undertook. Again, a number of which were contrary to what it was that he wanted us to do at the beginning, but over time came to see the wisdom in the strategy that we were pursuing. Those were the right big ideas. That's the first task of a strategic leader. I'd argue that we got those right. The results proved it, validated it. We drove violence down by over 85, nearly 90% during the course of the 18 months of the surge. It stayed down for the next three and a half years until tragically we left and he undid uh a number of our particular actions.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Team, I want to take a quick break from this episode and personally invite you to join our tribe. Are you looking for a community of leaders? If you are a leader at any level, join our purposeful accountable leaders private Facebook or LinkedIn group. We would love to have you in the team. My mission is to create a community that allows leaders to ask questions, celebrate wins, and share lessons learn. All I ask is that you follow the B rule. Be respectful, be humble, be present, and add value to the community. You can find the link in the show notes to either join the Facebook or LinkedIn group or simply just search purposeful accountable leaders. Back to the podcast. Yeah. I share that kind of at a tactical level. There's been one or two moments, especially when I was in Afghanistan and embedded with our Afghan partners, um, especially like Platoon and Platoon. We were like Shona Boshona, Pashtu, shoulder to shoulder together on these in these missions. And you know, life and death situations require a level of unreasonableness I don't think that people truly understand. And and I can one understand those situations, uh, not at the magnitude and depth of of what you what you went through, of sons and daughters of America going in and losing their lives, but at a tactical level, understanding what it means to lose a soldier in combat, and that feeling that you get, just an instant fury of no, I don't want to hear it. Um, this is what we're going to do, and this is why we're going to do it. And if you want me to be on the team, this is this is the direction that we're going to take. Um, I can I can totally sympathize with that, sir. Kind of moving forward into the 37 years that you've spent in the army. I would really love to know that spark, that moment in time that you decided, hey, this is what I was destined to do, and I'm going to continue to go as far as I possibly can.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

Well, I think it accumulates over the years. Um, you know, I had some moments when I was at West Point still where I actually thought about whether I really wanted to continue. Um, I think that's natural. Uh, actually, you know, the experience at West Point is actually something you look back on increasingly fondly as the years uh grow since you saw it in your rear view mirror the last time. Uh, but at the time there was a lot of nonsensical stuff, frankly, about what was done there. Uh, the leadership styles that were practiced uh, you know, would have gotten you killed in the real army if you actually practiced them. They were, you know, the leaders ate first instead of the other way. I mean, it was really quite a and they've corrected all of this in subsequent decades. They did some real serious soul searching about uh how what was the leadership model practice there, you know, what is the value or the dysfunction of hazing and so forth, even though theoretically they didn't do it anymore. Happily I was able to avoid a lot of that because I played three uh seasons of intercollegiate athletics and you got to stay outside some of that stuff. But um, but there was a period at West Point all of a sudden where I discovered that you know I loved, I enjoyed leadership. Um, I enjoyed the physical aspect of soldiering very, very much. And uh I enjoyed the academic pursuits and and I started to recognize that I was actually pretty good at all these. Yeah. And then there becomes a competitive spark. I think competition, a competitive spirit is in all great leaders. Many sh mask it better than others. Um, I wasn't always successful in subduing that um because again, it was pretty fierce. Uh I remember my aide told some writer one time, you know, this is the most competitive guy on the face of the earth. I don't know if that's quite true, but you know, again, I'd be pretty competitive for that particular description. Um, and and I enjoyed that. Uh I enjoyed competing to be not just the best, but also the best team player. And the same could be said about the units that I was privileged to lead. Uh, again, as I mentioned, that battalion of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. You know, we won virtually every competition that was out there. You know, both years, both years, football, all the running events, that was a given. Softball one year, we didn't quite the other year. Uh, you know, again, it didn't matter what it was. Heck, the AUSA membership trophy. Um, you know, and we'd have people like General Keene sort of challenging me. He knew how to, he had my number. He could sort of needle me and say, Oh, you think you can win that, Dave? And you're darn right we will. Um, in fact, we had more AUSA members, it turned out, than we had soldiers in the unit. Don't ask me how we did that. You know, this is sort of like the Mayor Daly School of Voting in Chicago, you know, there are probably some tombstones. But um, but again, the idea that you are trying to be all that you can be, truly. I mean, I'm not just joking about it, but really seriously focused and committed to that, and to trying to develop yourself as much as you can professionally. Uh, that's crucial. And again, competing not just to be the best individual or the best unit, but to be the best team players uh as well. And, you know, there's a saying that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. I was lucky over the years. Timing was fortunate at various moments. But the question is, what do you do with that opportunity? Are you prepared for it? And I really had tried throughout my entire life, physically, uh, in terms of leadership development, in terms of uh really even academic knowledge of our profession when it came to counterinsurgency and so forth, um, so that when those moments arose, I was quite well prepared for those. At least I felt that I was. And along the way, there were some events that were fairly significant. So, you know, again, ranger school, I prepared very assiduously for it. I I wouldn't just do the ranger PT test one time and ensure that I can max it. I was doing it back to back one time. I did it three times in a row on a Saturday, um, and maxed it each time. So that you know, there's no way, I don't care how they're counting the push-ups, I don't care how many times they make me repeat it, I'm gonna be able to max the PT test. Um, and and actually won every single award. In those days, there were three awards that a commissioned officer could get the number one in the class, then the Darby, which they gave periodically, but not always, and then the Mirrell's Marauder Award, which was a combination of peer ratings in your land navigation scores. And that was particularly important because, again, it's not easy to be the number one overall and also to get good peer ratings. And that showed that you know you did a pretty good job as a ranger buddy. So these kinds of events sort of reinforced the idea that, you know what, again, you're not bad at this, you're pretty good at it, and maybe you should keep doing this. And then I found that I really enjoyed it. And because of this somewhat non-standard career where I'd do pretty intense infantry stuff, over time it was 101st or 82nd back and forth. Um, and then uh academic stuff, which I also enjoyed and found stimulating. Yeah, um, and that combination is really not possible, I don't think, anywhere else. So a real premium on physical fitness, a real premium on academic uh expertise and knowledge and so forth, and obviously a premium on leadership. So that's sort of what kept me uh in uniform. And then the opportunities really start to arrive one after the other. Again, I I there may have been others who have had six consecutive commands as a general officer, but I don't think any that had five combat commands uh as a general officer. So a pretty unique and pretty extraordinary set of opportunities over the years. And then obviously to be the director of the CIA was just extraordinary as well. And frankly, I'm still privileged. Um, you know, the position that I have with, again, one of the biggest global investment firms is absolutely stimulating, rewarding, um, and frankly, great fun.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

When I was going through Ranger School, I I had the same mindset as you. And I remember getting complete with eyebolic. I would go do land navigation because that was the thing that I was so scared about. I was like, I'm gonna go do land navigation every single week for five days straight, and there's no way that they're going to fail me. And I finished the navigation in 45 minutes. I was the first person back.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

So was I, and I did the same thing. In fact, I had a Ranger buddy who was one of my West Point classmates because it was a class that had a large West Point population in it. The timing of it in the fall was that we'd just gone through uh, again, in those days, the interops are basic course, similar to Ibolic. Uh, and and I'd practice that repeatedly as well. And for the final night course, uh, we'd been the first to finish every single time up until that point. And I said, Look, I'm gonna put a rope on you. You just stay with me, I'll be paceman and compass man. And we ran the course and came in first. Because again, then you get to sleep. Yeah, that means on the first truck. And by the way, I didn't have I never did laundry at all during Ranger School, except during the breaks, because I I went out and bought, I don't know, 20 sets of BDUs or whatever and stuck them in my car. Uh, and I just pull them out instead of sitting waiting for a washing machine and a dryer every night. So, you know, you have to really prepare for this again.

SPEAKER_00 44:03

There was another thing that you said in there, sir, and I'm seeing kind of a theme is how you develop yourself. How how do you I know academically, physically, probably spiritually, there there's a routine there, maybe a morning routine. Could you could you share that?

SPEAKER_01 44:19

Well, yeah, I mean, again, the morning routine for many, many decades obviously involved um, you know, first a couple of cups of coffee, but then you know, pretty rigorous physical fitness. And again, the units in which I was privileged to serve embraced this fully. Uh and definitely, especially since I was the commander. But I mean, we would do so. When I was a commander of an a brigade in the grade 82nd Airborne Division, 1st Brigade, 504th Parachuting through Regiment Devils in Baggy Pants, the there were majors on post that all were trying to get to these brigades so that they could do their branch qualifying position. And I'd say, sure, come on down for an interview, you know, show up in PT gear at 6 a.m. or whatever it was we started PT out by the sign of 1st Brigade. And I'll meet you there and we'll do it while we do PT. And we'd have a great workout. Um, and I would I would go we had a standard in those days, I believe it was four miles and 34 minutes. The division standard was four and thirty-six, I think. Um, and I'd never go slower than four and thirty-four. By the way, we had half, we had quarter miles painted on the road, uh, so we knew where we were. This wasn't guests, this wasn't, you know, you go out to the tree and turn around. This was precise. Uh and we emphasize that real standards. And but if they wanted to go faster, let's let's do this. Um, and again, we had standards for everything, and uh they got acquainted with those standards. And probably at least a third, if not more, um, when I was asked if they still wanted to come to the Devils in Baggy Pants, they said, well, perhaps they needed to do a little bit more preparation. Oh, wow. Uh before they came to Arden Street. Yeah, no, we had this is this was a formative experience for a number of individuals. So again, that was always the first uh item. But then the other preparation was again, we just took this stuff perhaps more seriously, maybe in some cases than others. I mean, we rehearsed everything. We I took very seriously the commander's guidance. You know, a commander during the military decision-making process, the MDMP, is supposed to provide quite detailed guidance on a number of different subjects at the brigade level in particular, because there you have all of the enablers. Um, you know, you're supposed to tell the air defenders and which direction should be the priority. Should it be high, low, narrow, wide? Again, we got into this in very considerable detail, every one of these. And we did templates for every different type of mission that we might be called on to do, whether it was an offensive mission, a defensive mission, a movement to contact, you name it. And I had those literally again as templates so that you could essentially fill in the blanks to a considerable degree, adapt to the context. And that's the kind of preparation. So the value of this wasn't just that I had these templates, it was that I went through the intellectual exercise or effort to develop them and then would work them back and forth with the staff. I'd say, okay, what do you think, staff? I get, you know, the air defenders, what do you think? Engineers, what do you think? Artillery, am I providing you what you need? Uh, again, chemical, all of the different elements, military, police, uh, and so forth, as well as, of course, the infantry battalion. So it was quite an interactive process. We didn't, and we didn't screw around. We were serious about this. When it came to live fire exercises, our live fires were so aggressive at battalion-brigade level. As you may know, I got shot in one of these things. And, you know, that was great battlefield realism for our medics. Um, thankfully, uh Medevac and some great surgeons uh made sure that I was able to continue my career. But as a brigade commander, I said, we're not doing this canned combined arms live fire exercise, Calfex, you know, where they give the script to a company commander, and the unit just sort of like robots sort of walks through the script, and you know, he crosses his phase line, which is already pre-designated for him, and he calls target alpha zero zero zero one because that's what he says on the script. We didn't do that. We actually let the troops stay home. Uh, we just had the command posts for the company commander, his RTOs, his fire support uh team, and then the platoon leaders with their RTOs and uh forward observers. Um, and we would, it was very spontaneous. We didn't know what the scenario was, so therefore they didn't know what it was. What we had was a range of options, and we'd come over the hill on range 42, I think, or OP 13 is actually what it was at at Fort Bragg, and we'd cleared all the way into the impact area for at least a kilometer and a half so that we could go all the way inside and shoot all around us. And again, you just have a lot of hulks out there, and they don't know. We don't know. And then I'd make up my mind, okay, here's what's going to happen. And we had lieutenant colonels with every one of the platoons, everybody was certified because this is highly dangerous. And we had 60 and 81 millimeter mortars and 105 and 155 millimeter howitzers all supporting in various ways. They didn't have priority of all these fires, needless to say, and they had to do all the radio shifting and everything else. But prior to that, we would in a big gymnasium do what we called fire support Olympics. It was an entire day of just working through all of the technical details of calls for fire, how you do it, of the radio nets that you have to shift to, uh, what priority a fire means, what a priority target means, shifting priorities of targets, how do you how do you set up your graphics so that it forces you at this phase line when you call it the priority target shifts to another location, determining the fastest way to get fire uh onto a particular target, the different fuse settings, the different uh again characteristics of the different rounds of the different systems and all the rest of that. And it was very, very demanding. But it prepared our forces amazingly well for what it was that we were called on to do, especially during the fight to Baghdad. I remember, in fact, linking up with one of our really great uh battalion commanders as we were doing the first big battle, the battle of Najev. Uh Lieutenant Colonel Bill Hickman later chosen to be the G3. He had three more combat tours with me: brigade commander, executive officer at CENTCOM, and then executive officer in in uh Afghanistan. And I remember what we so we walked with him, all his RTOs and forward observers and all the uh even the early liaison teams and everything else, literally down this major highway. And you could see the companies out on either side of this highway, you can see the fighting, there's attack helicopters, close air support, artillery, everything else. And I said, Well, how's it going? Um, and he said, Sir, just like the walk and shoot. And the walk and shoot was what it was we did. Uh what I've just described. Um, and that's again, you got it. So luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. And we were pretty determined and pretty focused uh and pretty rigorous about the preparation that we undertook collectively, and frankly, that I undertook uh personally as well.

SPEAKER_00 51:40

Great organizations set the standard above the bar. And and I had a leader on before that kind of explained that is that there's a standard, but that's the bare minimum. As a leader, you're you're expected to be above the bar. At the bare minimum, you you are not successful. I and I truly believe that.

SPEAKER_01 51:58

You gotta lead, it's hard, hard, hard to lead from the rear of the formation. And so, again, to come back to the physical stuff, we always had a competition. The first was the iron rockasson, then it was the iron devils, then it was iron eagle, then it was iron major, when even at the staff college. And by the way, I would compete every single time personally. Um, at the battalion level and all the way at the brigade level, I still was the grader. So there was a common standard, which meant that I had to participate every time, which and I therefore competed every time as well and had to qualify. And it was tough, very, very tough. So this is maybe something that we had seven or eight who earned the Iron Rockassan title in that battalion. So that's obviously less than well under 1%. In the brigade, brigade combat team of probably 4,000-ish, uh, I think we had uh maybe 60 over the course of two years. Uh, but when I became a division commander, I couldn't grade everyone anymore. Uh, so what I did is I actually certified all of the uh non-commissioned officers who were in there were a certain rank they had to be. And uh again, they were all airborne air assault rangers uh and they ensured the standards. But again, I still competed even then. And again, the standard here, so I mentioned that as a battalion brigade commander, our standard for an infantry unit was four miles and 34 minutes, which is actually a lot faster than people think when you're in formation. It's pretty easy as an individual on a road. But when you're, you know, the accordion effect and call and cadence and all the rest of that, it's a it's a more challenging standard than people realize. But the standard for Iron Eagle was that you had to do a minimum of four miles and 28 minutes. And it and you actually had to get in the five events that we had uh push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, dips, and the four-mile, and it was a hilly course. Um, you had to actually do better, you just didn't couldn't meet the standard for each event and get the points needed to be an Iron Eagle. You had to actually uh do better than the standard and accumulate additional points. So it was again very, very challenging. Um, and had a lot of fun with those over the years.

SPEAKER_00 54:14

I will never forget the time that I first took over my my rifle company uh and all my lieutenants that were trying to judge me were getting ready to go do an APFT before they moved to an ACFT. Like, are you a fast runner, sir? I was like, I'm average. Um, just you know, I'm gonna try to keep up with you guys. We start the two-mile run. There's only one person in my company that beat me. I smoked my lieutenants probably like like two and a half minutes, and I'm like, hey guys, like this is the standard. Like, try to beat me. And I love that. I love that mentality.

SPEAKER_01 54:47

Yep. You've got to be you've got to work at that. And again, it's and it's not just sort of going out and and you know, loping around. Um, I did interval sprints at least once a week, serious ones, again, 440s and 880s, and and had the standards. And I mean, we're talking, I knew to the second what I needed to do. I'd actually carry, and then I would do a time two-mile run uh in a variety of different the positions that I had, usually on Saturdays. And I I had a card with me, so I knew what I wanted to hit the quarter mile splits at. So again, you're really pushing yourself. This is again, this is serious stuff. This is why we painted quarter miles on the street so that we actually had precision uh and standards. Uh otherwise, people are just sort of finger drilling uh and not really serious about what it is that they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 55:39

So, one of the reasons I absolutely love podcasts because I get to ask David Petraeus advice for field grade officers. So, and I'm a field grade officer right now. So, what piece of advice would you give a field grade officer? And how would that differ from a junior officer, too? Someone just starting out in their leadership journey, what advice would you give them? And then at a field grade officer, where that's a pivotal point of now you're no longer a company grade officer, you're now you're now at a different standard and a different level of expectation in your career as a field grade officer. How would that differ from the advice that you would give?

SPEAKER_01 56:14

Well, I think the the general advice about just progression uh is that you have to adapt your leadership style to the position that you have. Uh and so the style that is appropriate for when you were an infantry platoon leader, let's say, which is very much a follow me, do as I do, it's a very physical, it's a you know, there's a bit of cheerleading that has to take place. Um, let's do this thing again, uh, all of that. That probably that still applies, say an infantry company, uh, but you know, you get a little bit further, or you get a different combat arm, or um as that evolves, I think you have to ensure that the style is still that which will bring out the best in each of those who report to you directly and to the organization collectively. It's at the field grade level that you start to actually have to make that that change. And you know, people ask me, tell me what's your leadership style is, and I say, I'm not sure I can do that. And let me explain why. I'll I'll tell you what my leadership style is if you tell me what the style is that is required or appropriate to bring out the best in each individual who reports to me directly. Because again, we're all different. Um, you may need a pat on the back once a year, I might need one once a week, others might need a once an hour, um, or even an application of a boot somewhere. So, you know, again, everyone is is somewhat different, and it's about understanding that individual uh and what will enable that individual, lead that individual to being the best that she or he can be. Um, and then it's the same about an organization collectively or sometimes even elements within it. In fact, last night I did an event for the Texas AM Bush School in DC, uh, and there were a lot of former uh comrades from the intelligence community and particularly the the CIA, and it reminded me, in fact, the director of analysis was there, but also the former head director of operations, uh a great comrade of mine over much more than a decade, starting at the Battle of Nash, if I might add. Um, but it reminded me that, you know, the style that was required to bring the best out in those who are in the analytical community is different from the style that you employ to bring out the best in those who are in the National Clandestine Service, the operators, the spies, if you will, and the special activities folks. And there's a different style also for the techies and for the support and the big data, you know, all these, and I think that's what you have to be conscious of. And it's at the field grade levels that you start to have to make this degree uh of transition. I mean, it's the same as when you go from just leading soldiers to now you're leading marines and airmen and sailors. Um, the first time you lead aviators, that's a, you know, again, sometimes a challenge, special operators. Um, in some of these different walks of life, there's a degree of ego management that has to be provided. So it's about understanding again the organization and the individuals who report to you uh and how to bring out the best in each.

SPEAKER_00 59:56

That's amazing, sir. Amazing advice. Last question before we get to our final show segment. And I would love to hear this from you because you have such an amazing experience level. How has your definition of leadership changed over the years? And and what is it now? How how do you define leadership?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:15

Well, this is why I mentioned up front the intellectual construct that that we distilled actually for strategic leadership, but it applies to all levels of leadership, and I still define it the same way. It's the performance of these four duties properly, these four tasks properly to bring out the best uh possible outcome uh for the endeavor uh in which you're leading. So you've got to get the big ideas right, you've got to communicate them effectively, you have to oversee the implementation, and you have to determine how you need to refine the big ideas and do it again and again and again. Um, and so, and for what it's worth for the listeners, this is actually uh distilled in a website at the Belfur Center at Harvard. Uh, if you go to BelfurCenter.org and then search for Petraeus on strategic leadership, this particular website will pop up. There is a team largely of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans I was I was privileged to lead back in uniform who were at the Kennedy School at Harvard at that time and and all joined together uh to help me capture all this and to display it uh in a website and uh with a series of videos uh as I explain again these four tasks and also, by the way, a number of uh tactics, techniques, and procedures the TTP uh of leadership, such as affirmative leadership. And that's not affirmative action, this is positive leadership. In other words, you know, I look I look forward to seeing that report on my desk on Monday. I'm gonna be so excited. I'm hearing you troops are saying it's gonna be great, as opposed to you better have that report on my desk by Monday at noon, or I'll have a piece of your backside. Again, there's a variety of these kinds of techniques that I explain uh as well uh as the four tasks uh that I highlight.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:07

It's time for our final show segment that I like to call the killer bees. These are the same four questions that I ask every guest on the Tales of Leadership podcast. Be brief, be brilliant, be present, and be gone. Question one. What do you believe separates a good leader from an extraordinary leader?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:29

Depends on the level, uh, but at the very top it's judgment.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:34

So, question two. What is one resource that you can recommend to our listeners? It could be a book, podcast, a news article, it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:42

Again, depends on what the leader is engaged in. Uh, in my current world, the podcast, The Economist Intelligence, is one with which I start every single morning, ideally while walking the dog, which is one of life's great joys.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:57

That is the best answer to that question. It depends on where you are in the season of life of what you should be reading. Question three. If you could give your younger self a piece of advice when you just started back as a West Point cadet, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:11

Um, I think I would have embraced even earlier that life is a competitive endeavor. You don't get a trophy just for showing up. Troops don't want to be led by somebody who's proud to be average. They want to be led by somebody who's serious about what it is that he or she is doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:24

I love that. So, final question, sir, is how can our listeners find you and add value to your current mission?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:30

LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:32

Yeah, and and I I can attest to that is that I sent you a message and you responded directly within, I think within five minutes, and I was humbled, and I truly am humbled. This has been an amazing experience over the past hour to pick your brain kind of on leadership and your journey, your lessons learned, and I know it's going to impact someone. So thank you, sir, for being intentional with me.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:53

Thanks for the invitation, Josh, and thanks for what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:57

Yeah, have a great day.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:58

You too.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:02

All right, team. It's time for our after-action review. That was General Petraeus, and this has been a humbling experience. That's why I love podcasting. I can reach out to someone who has such a huge level of success and be very intimate with them for about an hour, asking them questions on what I'm passionate about, which is leadership. So, what are the top three takeaways for this after action review you should be able to pull with you? The first one is setting the standard. A theme that I've saw throughout General Petraeus' entire career, just listening to him in the hour, was that he always set the standard within the organization. He communicated that standard clearly and he emulated that standard and he constantly refined it. And we'll get to that with the third key takeaway. But remember, when you set the standard in the organization, you have to embody it. If you don't embody that standard, then no one else will. And one of the key things that he really pointed out, and I heard it when he was talking about some of the majors or the O4s that were trying to work for him, is that he would go out personally and do these levels of events, but he would push himself to the standard that is above it. So remember, when you set the standard, that's just the bare minimum of in the organization. You have to be above the bar if you want to be a purposeful, accountable leader. Just being at the standard as a leader is unsat. You have to be above the bar if you want to truly inspire people, and that is the definition of leadership. And I want to make sure I go over this because you may not know if you're not in the military when we say what a field grade officer is. And this gets into the second key takeaway adapting your leadership. I asked him the question what is the one advice you would give to a brand new field grade officer? A field grade officer is the transition. In the military from an 03 to an 04, a captain in the army to a major. And that is where they have significantly more responsibility and they're much more accountable. More is expected of them. His one piece of advice would be adapt your leadership based on where you are or the season of life that you're in. If you have individuals on your team like I have right now, engineers, logisticians, individuals who are skilled within business, you have to be able to understand how to communicate to them. I asked him a question of what his leadership philosophy was. And it was simple. He does not have one until he knows what job he is going to be going into. And then he adapts his skills that he's developed over time to help inform a leadership philosophy that makes him successful within any organization that he leads. And I think that is a huge nugget for you guys. Don't be so rigid with yourself about the leadership style that you have adopted. That is going to continue to evolve and grow. Think of it as a toolkit. You have all these different tools in your rucksack. You pull those out when you get ready to take over a new position and you do it so that you can help get results quicker. And make no mistake, that's what we do as a leader. We help get results. And you don't have to be so rigid with your leadership philosophy. Make sure your philosophy is getting the results and it's communicating, it's collaborating, and it's effective within the season of life or the leadership position you're in. And the final key takeaway, and this was when I asked General Petraeus of what his definition of leadership was, is four key points. As a leader, and he used the example of when he was a strategic level leader. You set the vision, the big idea. What are we trying to do? That's number one. Number two is communicate that vision. We set the big idea. I see it. Do you see it? I want to communicate it to you so you can begin to visualize it with me. Number three, emulate it. So you've communicated it now. Now you're beginning to emulate it. They're starting to have more buy-in. It's more emotional to them. They're starting to do it themselves. They're getting the hands involved. And now you're creating alignment between head, hat and heart. I call it the 3H rule. They're able to see it, head, they're able to feel it, heart, and they're actually doing it. They're emulating it. They're seeing you do it as a leader. So they become more accountable. They feel that they're more bought into whatever you're trying to do, regardless of the leadership position. And the final one is refine, just a continuous loop. You have an idea, you communicate that idea, you emulate that idea, and then you refine it. You continue to go back until you get it to the sweet spot and you're getting the results that you want, but it's never ending. It's a continuous process. Hey guys, do me a favor. If you've gotten any value out of this episode, make sure that you share and subscribe to this podcast. It would mean the world to me if you shared this podcast with someone who is just starting out on their leadership journey. And give me feedback. Let me know how I'm doing. Let me know what kind of value I can continue to add to you guys and make you a better leader, a more purposeful, accountable leader. As always, I'm your host, Josh with millions saying every day is a gift. Don't waste yours. I'll see you next time.