#1 Joshua McMillion - My Why & Who I Am

 Episode 1 is an anchor point in our journey toward transformational leadership. The goal of this episode is to do two things. First, review how this podcast will be structured and the vision for the future. Second, I want to define who I am as a leader. 

👉🏽Blog Article: https://www.mcmillionleadershipcoaching.com/blog/whoiam 

🫡 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.

👉🏽Leadership Resources: https://linktr.ee/talesofleadership

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Together, we will impact 1 MILLION lives!!!

Every day is a gift, don't waste yours!
- Joshua K. McMillion

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 out. Join me on our journey together towards transformational leadership. Welcome to Tells a Leadership. I am your host, Josh McMillian, CEO of McMillian Leadership Coaching, an active duty service member with over 15 years of leadership experience and on a mission to create more purposeful and accountable leaders. My mission is to help leaders achieve their full potential, allowing leaders to multiply value throughout their organization and personal lives. My vision is to impact 1 million lives in the next 10 years by adding value to leaders, regardless of position or title. Before we start this episode, I want to go over what this episode is about. This is our very first episode that we are going to be starting as a team towards transformational leadership. There's going to be two parts to this podcast. First is I'm going to be going over quickly some of the housekeeping notes, how this podcast is going to be structured, the frequency, and some of the tools that are available to you, the listener. The second part of this podcast is going to be going over quickly who I am as a leader and what some of the key events that shaped me in the leader that you see today. So let's begin. So let's go ahead and begin with housekeeping. So what will the podcast structure be? Tells a leadership it'll be broken up into three different phases. The first phase will be setting the foundation of what leadership is in my eyes. I'll be going over and defining leadership, defining what a purposeful, accountable leader is, and defining the different phases of leadership through my lens. Once we've set that foundation, I'll start bringing on transformational leaders and interviewing them. And my goal is to pull wisdom from those leaders and share them with our listeners to shorten your learning curve to transformational leadership. And the final phase is once we start bringing on individuals through interviews, I'm going to be asking our purposeful accountable leaders private Facebook group to pose questions. And I'll be doing individual episodes just answering individual questions from our Facebook community site. What will the frequency be of Tells the Leadership? My goal is to do a podcast every Monday at 5 a.m. Central Standard Time. But you also have to know I am an active duty Army officer, and sometimes the mission is too demanding. There may be some weeks that I can't publish my podcast every week, but I'm going to do my best to make sure that I have enough content out there ahead of time and that I can publish a podcast every single week. I think having morning routines is critical. And the reason that I want to do this at 5 a.m. is I would love to be part of your morning routine and starting your day and your week off with a win. So what are some of the tools that will be provided to you? The first tool is a blog. Anytime I go over a leadership topic, for example, this podcast, there'll be a blog series already written on that topic. All you have to do is to go to McMillian Leadership Coaching dot com and click on the top right corner blogs, and it will take you to every single blog that I have written. I release one blog every month, and it's designed to be on either a series that we're going to be discussing or a specific leadership topic. Next tool that's available to you guys is social media. I am very active on LinkedIn, very active on TikTok, very active on Instagram, but most importantly, uh Facebook group. So Purposeful Accountable Leaders Private Facebook group. If you would like to join a community of like-minded individuals, all you have to do is search Purposeful Accountable Leaders and then join our group. All I ask is that you adhere to the bylaws and what this group's purpose is, is to ask questions, celebrate wins, and share lessons learned. I'll also have a link in the show notes to that group so it'll be very easy for you guys to find it. The last resource available to you guys is McMillian Leadership Coaching Services. Most leaders will hit a point where they're overwhelmed or unsure of their leadership abilities, and they're going to need a coach to help. You get a coach to lose weight, you get a coach to help you with your homework. Well, you're going to need a coach to help you with leadership. With over 15 years of leadership experience through the military, I can help you through one-on-one coaching achieve personal and professional success and become the leader your team deserves. If you're interested in set up a free call, go to McMillian Leadership Coaching.com and click on the call to action. Schedule a free call today. And finally, is this podcast. This podcast can be found on any major platform. And my goal is to make it as convenient as possible for you to be able to listen to this podcast episode, regardless of whatever your preference is for the main website. So, kind of recapping quickly on the housekeeping notes, the podcast structure is going to involve, but I'm going to set the foundation of what leadership is. Then we'll be bringing on guests, and then ultimately I'll be able to answer questions from our private Facebook group community. This podcast will be uploaded every Monday at 5 a.m. Central Standard Time. And there's additional resources and tools at your disposal. The blog, every one of these can be found at McMillian Leadership Coaching.com to include every one of our podcasts that we release. I also provide additional resources on social media, but more importantly, we would love for you to be part of our purposeful accountable leaders private Facebook group page. And if you are looking for leadership coaching service, all you have to do is go to our one-stop shop, McMillian Leadership Coaching.com, and schedule your free call today. Next, we're going to transition into the second part of this blog, and that is defining who I am before we begin defining what leadership is. All right, we're going to take a quick break from the podcast, and I want to share with you a message. If you can see the value in this podcast, especially where this podcast is going to be going, do me a favor, leave a review and share this podcast with someone who is starting out in their leadership journey. My goal is to add value to leaders. And if I can find leaders who are just starting out, that will help affect the most change, not only in their lives, but the organization that they will be working for. Thank you. Back to the podcast. So let's go over who I am and what are some of the major life experiences that have created the leader that I am today. First and foremost, that I'm a passionate father, a husband, a servant leader that comes from a very rural part of West Virginia, but I have a profound purpose in life, and that is to build better leaders. Starting back where I'm from rural West Virginia in 1986, Finwick, West Virginia, to be more specific, I was born in a coal mining family. And in my family, you've done one of two things. You either chose to join the military or you chose to go into the coal mines. I chose to go in the military. But before I did that, I was not a natural-born leader. When I was in grade school and junior high, and most of my high school career, I was overweight, extremely overweight. And it got to the point when I was in grade school that I had to go see a doctor, and the doctor essentially said that I couldn't go to my grandparents. So to say that leaders are born is an absolute lie. Leaders are not born, they are forged by life experiences. And what really turned my confidence around was sports. I began to play sports in high school, and through those sports, it caused me to build confidence and instill confidence inside of myself. And eventually, over time, I continued to do well at those sports. I started to get selected for positions of leadership within the team. And then my confidence continued to build. The next step in my journey was to be a pathfinder. I was the first person in my immediate family to try and pursue a bachelor's degree. No one in my family's done this before. And I was the very first one. And it was a very hard choice for me because I had to push outside of my comfort zone and I had to figure out a way how to get into college. A lot of people have parents that have walked that path before them, but with me, I did not. I had no idea that you had to take a standardized test. I had no idea that you had to apply for a room and board. I just thought that you went to college and you did it. And that was a learning experience within itself. And because of the investment that my dad gave me, I would have never been able to attend Marshall University where I ultimately got my bachelor's degree and commissioned in ROTC in 2007 through the National Guard part of the simultaneous membership program. And what I learned at that point in my career and reflecting back is that an investment in someone isn't just a momentary blip, it will affect their entire lives. And as a leader, you have to be willing to pour yourself into others. And because of my dad's selfless act, I am the leader that you guys see before you today. So my college career continued to build my toolkit as a leader. I joined the National Guard in 2007. I went to several different leadership schools, and I ultimately won the George C. Marshall Leadership Award for Marshall University and got my branch of choice as an infantry officer, eager to lead, shipping off to Fort Benning, Georgia. But before I did that, I also met the love of my life and got married in 2011 to Sophia McMillian. And part of our marriage starting off was tested because it was one thing after another. First was ranger school. So I went to Ibullock and between my infantry officer basic horse eyeblock and ranger school, I had the grand idea that I was going to get married. I had two days to do it. We got married for two days, and my wife was planning to drop her nursing degree in honey or drop her nursing job in Huntington, West Virginia, and come move out to us at Fort Benning, Georgia in Phoenix City, Alabama. But lo and behold, life got a vote, and I ended up being in ranger school for an additional cycle. And that was really the first time in my life I learned what it meant to fail, and fell on my face. Um ranger school was a very tough experience, but really what it was is it allowed me to learn how to lead myself well and learn how to embrace failure and then turn that failure into a strength and continue to move forward and overcome it. Ranger School is the Army's leadership, premier leadership school. But in those countless nights and um with limited food, the one thing that I really learned was how to lead others when they are physically and mentally beyond their capability. Eventually I ended up graduating. I completed some other schools, and then we shipped off to Fort Lewis, Washington, where I was part of the 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment. And within a month of me showing up to Fort Lewis, Washington, just right outside of Seattle, I went on a 10-month combat tour to Afghanistan. And during that deployment, I truly learned what it meant to be a service leader and the definition of selfless service. So I was humbled to take over my platoon, first platoon Erico Company, after a devastating chain of events. First is the platoon sergeant and several key members were hit by an IED blast. And then two weeks before I took over the platoon, Sergeant Jose Rodriguez lost his life in an ambush in Kandahar Province. The first time that I met my platoon was at his memorial, and that was about two weeks before I took over. Before that moment, I was eager to lead, a hard charger. I wanted to prove myself, but that moment humbled me, and it continues to humble me to this day. I realized that I was not going in with the mindset that I was adding the value to my team. I was going in from the mindset of what can this position do for me. Being at that memorial service, seeing the emotions from my platoon, I realized what value can I add to my platoon? And I went in with that mindset, and my goal was to get every single man and woman back safely. And that's what I did for the rest of that deployment. So fast forward to my company command time, but before I got my company command, I had to go to Fort Polk, Louisiana for four years. If you are in the military, I think you understand the stigma around Fort Polk, but I'm going to tell you, I absolutely loved Fort Polk. For the season of life that I was in with my family, Fort Polk was an amazing experience. The first two years that I was there, I was part of the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, that trains command teams to go through these crucible events, ultimately grading them and then confirming that they can deploy overseas into combat operations. I was blessed to have the opportunity to be a platoon senior, but then also move up to be a company senior. And in that job, I was able to witness over 18 different rotations of company commanders, some good, some bad, and just some ugly experiences. But all of those I was able to observe, I was able to coach, and I was able to train those individuals to become better, but learn from those mistakes, and I could take them into my first command. And that's exactly what I did. I took my first company command right before the brigade was deploying to Iraq and parts of the brigade in Syria. Because of the position that I was going in, my platoon was labeled the Be Prepared to Deploy Company. The rest of the brigade was deploying, but our company, our company was on a 24-hour standby notice for CENTCOM, being prepared to deploy anywhere in CENTCOM theater. The stress at that moment in our family's life was too much for my wife, and she ended up going into preterm labor with my son, Maddox. So I was managing being a company commander of at the time the most people and authority and responsibility that I had, 150 soldiers and including their families, and millions of dollars a gear, but also going through this very uh hard time with our family, being my wife being hospitalized. But we were able to overcome that, and then I was faced with two other challenges, and they were both extremely emotionally challenging. First was the death of Alex Rhodes, a young man from rural Hurricane West Virginia, and then a second death in my company from Jacob Malcolm, another soldier from rural West Virginia. And if you have ever been in the military, I think you understand that there's not a lot of individuals from West Virginia. Me being from rural West Virginia and having that, it really shook me of how fragile life is, and then also a feeling that I was cursed. For a long time, I felt that I was cursed, and I really reflected on what those two situations meant for me. And I spent a lot of time just deliberately thinking about that, and then I learned that in that moment it taught me the true definition of being grateful and having faith. I was grateful for the opportunity to lead that company through a potential deployment that never came, but we were ready for over 10 months. And I was prepared, I was grateful for being there for the parents of Alex and Jacob. I think that I was the right person for the job to get the company and those families through that situation. And both of those accidents will forever be with me and a part of who I am as a leader. And I have faith going forward that the positions that I am placed in, I'm placed in them for a reason. Second, I took over my second company, um, headquarters and headquarters company, affectionately known as Hawk Company, for the same battalion. Up to this point, I learned that I loved being a coach from my joint readiness training center time as a coach, and I loved to serve. My passion was being a servant leader. So I knew what those two things were, but I couldn't connect them yet. In this job, it allowed me to connect them because I started to lead individuals that I was not directly in charge of. I had no supervisoral authority of, but I had to get them to do things to make sure that the company effectively ran. And in doing that, I added more tools to my toolkit, but I also was able to be selected for a very prestigious award that is absolutely humbling. I was selected to be nominated, starting off as the 10th Mountain Infantry Division nominee for the General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award. And that was based on both of my command times and the job that I did. Up to that point, if you would have asked me, I didn't deserve it because I thought one, I was doing my job, and two, I thought that I was not doing a great job. But having that recognition reconfirm that I have what it takes to be a leader, but more importantly, I have more in the tank and that I can affect change. And that was the spark when I was nominated for that award. It was the spark with inside of me that became a decisive point. I realized that my passion was being a servant leader, but my purpose is to build leaders. That's why I'm put on this earth. That's why I pursue growing every single day about leadership. And then eventually I ended up winning that award. And only 12 active duty army captains every year out of over 29,000 get selected for that. That award. And it is still today my decisive point in my leadership career and extremely humbling. Next, I had a pivot point in my life. I still wanted to serve my country, but I had several knee surgeries up to that point. I broke my back. Physically, I got to the point where I could not ask the men and women that I served to physically do things that I sometimes could not do. So I made a decision to switch from infantry that I spent the last 10 years doing to the Army Acquisition Corps. And Army Acquisition Corps, the best way to describe it is that I am a product manager that handles cost, schedule, and performance. I applied to do a voluntary transfer or what we call a VTIP and I was selected. I shipped off to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where I got my master's degree in systems engineering management. And up to that point, I never thought I was going to get a master's degree. I never thought I was going to get a bachelor's degree because in high school and in grade school, I had teachers consistently tell me that one, you were dyslexic, two, you're never going to be able to break through those types of labels. And I'm here to tell you that whatever labels people place upon you, especially in your youth, you are here to have a sledgehammer mindset and to break through those labels. Labels do not define who you are, they are labels that someone else put on you. And I was able to graduate with a 3.9 GPA, but that was with a lot of hard work and several thousand dollars in tutoring for some of the advanced mathematics that I had to have, but I did it. I achieved my master's in systems engineering management, and then I started my job. Army acquisitions is a different beast than the infantry. I'm not working with 200 soldiers directly in charge of a company, a million dollars worth of equipment. I'm in charge of a very small team, usually six to ten people, but those six to ten people are retired first sergeants, retired colonels, have over 25 years of service to this nation and are experts in their profilies. Most of them have PhDs. And by the way, I do not have any supervisor authority over them. So the lessons that I learned as an HHC company commander continued into Army Acquisitions Corps of where I'm at now, and I absolutely love the job and I love the leadership challenge. But I was missing something. I was missing a spark in my life because I was so involved with my soldiers all the way back from 2010 when I first commissioned as an infantry officer up till 2019. I was missing that interaction. And I realized what my passion was, I realized what my purpose was, but I needed to figure out a way how to achieve that. So I started looking at coaching programs, and it was almost divine intervention that the Army launched the Army Coaching Pilot Program of where they train Army officers to go through leadership coaching, and the only requirement is to give back. So if you're listening to this podcast and you are an active duty army officer or a non-commissioned officer, guess what? I provide free leadership coaching to you. That's part of one of the services that I want to continue to go forward with. But just know that is based on availability. But I was able to complete that training. I started my own leadership coaching business called McMillian Leadership Coaching. And this is where I am today on my journey. Where I want to go is I spend one hour every single day journaling and reading about leadership. My goal is to build better leaders. I want to share my wisdom, share my experience, and then share others' experience to ultimately shorten the learning curve for other individuals out there. And I want to leave you guys with this. If you are just starting out on your leadership career, regardless if you're an entrepreneur, if you're an executive, if you're in the military, a first responder, it doesn't matter. You're a leader. If you are just starting out, or if you know someone who is starting out, share this podcast with them. Also, please leave me a review and like this podcast with leaving a comment. That would mean the world to me, and it helps me continue to amplify my mission and my vision. In the next podcast episode, we are going to define what leadership is. Remember, every day is a gift. Don't waste yours. I'll see you next time.