Tales of Leadership
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Tales of Leadership
#112 Dave Rosenberg - How Leaders Remove Obstacles and Create Success
Dave Rosenberg, a former F-14 naval officer and founder of Locked on Leadership, is a top authority on radical accountability. As the premier expert in this field, he equips military-minded leaders with tactical strategies to build high-performance teams that exceed expectations. His approach goes beyond transforming individuals into self-directed achievers; it fosters a culture of excellence that remains mission-ready long after motivation fades.
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🫡 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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So we got to get strong at wherever our weakness is, and that's the second phase. And then you hit that, and now you start performing to your point Okay, well, you get really good at that. And then right, you start to reap the rewards at it. But now you're just, you're sort of in that groove. Well, in life, you're either growing or you're dying. There is no steady state in life. So if you stop growing, you stop challenging yourself. The next phase is just dying.
Speaker 1:I don't care how old you are, if you stop pushing yourself, you're rolling down that slope and at some point you're going to come to the end, right, because second law of thermodynamics, everything goes to entropy, even us. Without adding energy to a system, everything degrades to chaos, to entropy, to dust, right. But if, however, you have that mindset, now you reap the rewards of whatever this new thing is, and then you sit there and you go, okay, what's my next evolution, what's my next challenge? Now you're back in that winter season again, where you're letting those seeds germinate and go like, okay, what's next for me? And then the whole thing starts again.
Speaker 2:You're listening to the Tells the 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 a pal. Join me on our journey together towards transformational leadership.
Speaker 3:All right team. Welcome back to the Tales of Leadership podcast. I am your host, josh McMillian. I'm an army leadership coach and the founder of McMillian Leadership Coaching and your host for the Tales of Leadership podcast, and I'm on a mission. I want to become the best possible leader that I can, and I will do that by bringing on what I like to call purposeful, accountable leaders, on those who lead with intention, integrity and impact. I also grow through self-study, learning leadership habits and journaling through my experience, and I'm going to share all of that through the lens of my leadership, and my goal is to impact one million lives in the next 10 years by sharing their passion and their purpose and sharing my stories. And I do all of that a hundred percent free, as charged. So before we begin, I want to remind you some free tools that you have at your disposal. Number one is McMillianLeadershipCoachingcom slash Tales of Leadership. You can find every podcast episode, every leadership article to include summarized key points. If you want to listen to the podcast, you can go to talesofleadershipbuzzsproutcom and you'll be able to find every one of my episodes there to include your preferred method. And then make sure you subscribe to McMillian Leadership Coaching. You subscribe to McMillian Leadership Coaching. You'll be notified when new podcast articles get released, but specifically you'll be notified when new leadership articles are released once a month.
Speaker 3:But today I'm super excited because I am bringing on someone that is very inspiring. We had a very good conversation that lasted for almost an hour and 40 minutes, and that's always the barometer of a good podcast episode. For me is how long it goes. The longer they are, the more inquisitive I become. I'm quickly learning that I'm becoming like a little mini Joe Rogan.
Speaker 3:But on this episode we're bringing on Dave Rosenberg. He is a dynamic speaker and author and a podcast host known for his expertise in radical accountability. He has over 30 years of practical leadership experience and has led four major organizations and worked within over 100 companies across various industries. Dave's leadership journey began in the Navy, where he learned the power of inspiring others under pressure. He combines his military discipline and martial arts training to help businesses build strong, accountable teams. His book Locked on Leadership provides practical advice on creating a culture of consistency, courage and caring. Dave's engaging keynote presentations motivate and empower teams to reach their full potential and, as always, team stay to the very end, and I'm going to provide you what my top three takeaways are Dave, welcome to the Tales of Leadership podcast. Brother, how are you doing?
Speaker 1:Good Joshua, Thanks for digging that intro music. It just gets you in that mood.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I do that every time and I think it catches some of the guests off center. But the reason I do that is it reframes me, it puts me in the center of mind, like, hey, this next hour, or however long it's going to take, I'm having an intentional conversation with a pal which I like to call like a purposeful, accountable leader, and you got me for the next hour, so I get in my mindset right.
Speaker 1:I mean that is solid performance right. Nlp, neuro-linguistic programming and you see ballplayers, high-level ballplayers do that all the time where they have a routine, because it gets the mind in that space, and so that's just great performance right there yeah, that's so.
Speaker 3:That's a great point of like just kicking it off right there. Could you? I don't think I've ever heard of that before, could you? Could you do a deeper dive on that?
Speaker 1:yeah, and I'm no expert on this, but the neuroscience of performance tells us that you know it's about habits and you think about the things we do on a better, on a really well, it's when you get in that zone where you are a hundred percent present, right. So I'm sure, I'm sure you've been an athlete in your career, right? Yeah what was your sport?
Speaker 1:uh, so football and wrestling were my top two sports so when you're wrestling and wrestling is a great example of this print, because martial arts you think about this. People talk about martial arts. They say it reduces stress, but the reality is, and you're in the business right now martial arts is about not dying and killing the other guy, right, I mean that's. You know, at the end of the day, we're not talking about sport, we're talking about reality. And so how can that reduce stress?
Speaker 1:Well, to successful fighting, you have to be in the flow in that zone, which means you are a hundred percent present, right, you're not worried about like, oh, what's he going to do? You might be reacting to it, but you're not worried about it. Or, like, I blew that move, you're just, you're there, a hundred percent there, and there's no stress in the present. And so the way we get our minds there is by going through routines which help us disengage our prefrontal cortex, which is where we think and process stuff, because we don't want to be thinking, we want to be reacting and just being. And so when you get into a routine, as my understanding, you start tap like showering. Think about when you shower, right, you do the same thing every time and then freeze the mind up and then you have all these really wonderful insights drop in.
Speaker 3:It's kind of the same science here. I I love that. Um, it's funny like I've I've just picked up on that throughout my military career, like I have routines and habits that I've done to kind of set the conditions before I go and act. But I've never kind of looked at it from like a neuroscience point of view is that there's things I'm probably doing subconsciously that is helping me be more present in the moment of whatever I'm about to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I was flying right, we'd go through pre-flight routines and it was all rote and to take, take off, we would probably man up 45 minutes ahead of time. So 45 minutes to get the aircraft started. Now, on deployment, we're on alert five. We. That means we have five minutes, and usually it's about three minutes from engine start to booming off the front end because something's going on. And so how do you take 45 minutes and compress it into into three? Well, you do it because you do some things ahead of time. But then it's the routine. You're like boom, boom and all of a sudden spidey sense goes off because something's off. And it's because you're in that routine that you're able to receive that. You're like, oh crap, I missed something or oh right, so then you. Then you start analyzing what's wrong, you learn to listen and tune into those senses and I suspect you know combat deployment.
Speaker 3:You probably have very similar things going on yeah, I still find myself doing things that I've learned that's probably not good habits that I developed in afghanistan, just with, like different ids and things like that and hearing like sounds, the specific sounds that always kind of like puts my head back on a swivel, and, yeah, that there's things that I've developed, probably not necessarily for the best, but that I've learned through the military. I'd love to kind of just start, dave, kind of setting the, the parameter, if you will barometer, if you will, of like, what leadership means to you, because I've had people across the board within the DOD, coast Guard, navy and the Marine Corps and within the civilian side, and I love starting off with just you defining leadership in your terms of how you've learned it throughout your life in your terms of how you've learned it throughout your life.
Speaker 1:Sure, and I mean, give a little backstory on this, because you know, my military career was roughly seven years as an officer and then 30 years in civilian leadership, and what I've come to realize is that leadership is about really simple. It's about developing people to be their best and highest self period done. What I say in my book, for example, is that our leadership strategy, our strategic objective, is to allow people to become self-actualized, using Maslow's hierarchy as a framework. Right, so people get to work doing what they were born to do, and then it's iterative to get them to improve, help them improve, set up the conditions so they are constantly growing and improving. That's all leadership is.
Speaker 3:I love the concept because I use it all the time within my current profession and acquisitions. I work a lot with engineers and we always look at development of a hardware or software system in this agile methodology and really what it is is it's iterative development, continuing to iterate on something until you improve it. But if you look at it like how you just talked about, leadership is that as a self which I think that's where leadership starts is at ourselves. We're never going to fully master that, so we're always iterating on that and we're improving and as we improve our leadership skills, the science of being a great leader and the art of being a great leader just improves over time and we were talking about before we even kicked this off. That's one of the reasons I love doing podcasts is I have conversations with people who are very like minded, but I always leave with nuggets of wisdom that I actively go out and I employ in my military job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it was Hippocletus who said no man ever steps in the same river twice, because the river is not the same, nor is the man. And if you think about that from this iterative process you're talking about, so we get to experience sometimes the same thing multiple times in our lives. Right, it's a cyclical thing where we hit these sort of same points, but every time we hit them, the circumstances themselves, the external circumstances are different and we're different, so we get to take them on and it helps us grow to that next level.
Speaker 3:And we're different so we get to take them on and it helps us grow to that next level. So, bringing it back to the beginning of your leadership journey, I think, like maybe before you even joined the Navy, where did you see yourself really kind of growing and becoming that like mindset of radical accountability that you're developed now, that locked on leadership that you developed now as a child? Like where did that start to formulate?
Speaker 1:it, you know, obviously, as a child, though if you had said to me your radical accountability, you know I wouldn't have had a clue what you're talking about. But I think it started with self-leadership to your point where it's just I've always, for whatever reason and I couldn't tell you where this began or why but always just wanted to do my best. It was always about doing my best. It was just and not let me be clear here not being the best, okay, although I'm competitive. It was always about what was I doing my best? Was I giving everything? You know, it was almost a contractual thing where you've asked me to do something or I've said you know, even in school I sat in school. It's sort of like I'm here in school, I have to do my best, right, I have to give all, even teachers I hated. I remember third and fourth grade, two years in a row, two terrible teachers, you know, and I was terrible at arithmetic and spelling, and even though I was not motivated by them, it was like, damn it, I'm going to get good at this. And you know, I think the spelling not so much, but I got really strong at arithmetic. I mean, you know where numbers in my head, you know, led on to becoming an engineer, where I fell in love with it. So it started there. But I never, I didn't really have an identity as a kid. You know, if you had to, who are you? What do you want to be? Those were meaningless questions to me, you know. I just was. I thought they were stupid questions. I just am. I am what I am, you know, popeye sort of thing. But I really think it started in the Navy when I was assigned to be a legal officer and this is actually my signature keynote around this story, and it's a true story I had a sailor get written up for dereliction of duty and, as you and many listeners know, that just means he wasn't doing his job right, you know, and the chiefs weren't happy and he was pretty new to the squadron right out of a school.
Speaker 1:So you know, a third class petty officer is an electronic technician working in the first lieutenant's division, which non-Navy types out there. That's the janitor. That's what we call the janitor. I'm sure what I'm about to say is the same in every branch, which is, of course, the newbies join the squadron of command and they rarely get assigned to whatever their actual assigned rating is or MOS is. They get assigned doing something necessary while the chief's trying to figure out who they are, because we needed people to clean. And who are you going to assign to do cleaning? The guys were proven. No, they were either dirtbags who are in trouble or the newbie who are unknown, right so.
Speaker 1:So he was all disgruntled about that and I had to figure out how to get him motivated. You know was? It was his first offense. He wasn't going to article 13 captain's mess, anything like that. It was just a conversation. The chief, the chiefs tried. They couldn't do it.
Speaker 1:So it was my turn as a, you know, as a Lieutenant, and I talked to him about how we were in in workups, so getting ready for deployment, how important it was to have the squadron spaces clean because of morale we're working 18 hour days, you know, getting ready to deploy and how he can directly affect the morale of his shipmates and I forgot about the. So I had this conversation and I forget about it and I wouldn't remember this. This is 35 years ago. I wouldn't remember this story except for about nine, 10 months later we're on our way back from deployment and in the Navy they do this thing called Tiger Cruise, where friends and family meet you in Pearl Harbor and get to ride the ship with you back to your home port. And my dad oh, it was amazing, so cool, and my dad flew out there.
Speaker 1:So my second deployment he didn't make the first oh, he was on first time and I was so excited because we were really close and I used to go to work with him and now he was getting to come to work with me and when I go to pick him up at the airport I was running late because it was our first day back in US territory, in Hawaii after you know, six month deployment, and I was up all night, the night before you know, having fun. And so I'm late and I drive to the airport to pick him up and he's standing there with just two other people and this sailor who I knew from around the squadron but I didn't know he never worked directly for me and his father who was his tiger. And as I say hi to my dad and say hi to the sailor, I put my dad in a Jeep and we're driving away in my rented car and my dad looks at me and he goes. That sailor has a lot of respect for you.
Speaker 1:And I remember looking at him and going, confused, going what are you talking about? I barely know the guy, looking at him and going, confused, going. What are you talking about? I barely know the guy. I know him to say hello in the squadron, but you know. And then he told me the story about how I counseled him from the seller's perspective, followed by these words he credits you with saving his career. So, 31 year old lieutenant, and I'm like, floored. I'm like. I just had a conversation with the guy. It it had so much impact on him and was virtually meaningless to me until this moment. But that's when I recognize how, as leaders, we have this disproportionate impact on people by what we say and what we do. And that started the real journey.
Speaker 3:That's a huge lesson that I wish I would have learned earlier in my career when I was just starting out. I think I'm interested to get your perspective on this of how, like a brand new officer, like a lieutenant type, levels of responsibility versus the Navy and the Army, like a Lieutenant type, levels of responsibility versus the Navy and the army, and I'll kind of just paint the picture of mine. But I a hundred percent agree, Like I was. You know, go to ranger school, airborne school, all those things you have to do to be a combat arms platoon leader. I go to my unit, I take over my platoon in Afghanistan after they lost like 14 or 15 people. So I met my platoon at my memorial and that kind of helped me shift my mindset of kind of where I'm at now. Cause before I always joked, if you ever watched um, we were soldiers of all those different lieutenants and there's that one lieutenant that's just trying to run up the hill to get. That was me, um, before that moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was, that was the platoon that got that, got lost. It got separated and got lost. That moment yeah.
Speaker 3:That was, that was the platoon that got. That got lost, it got separated and got lost. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. Like I was very I was very selfish, I would say up to that point. And then when I saw like the, the platoon, and then the company commander and the platoon leaders, and then the squad leaders and the team leaders, and just the level of raw emotion I realized, like in that moment it stuck with me ever since then is that, hey, I'm not the leader that this organization needs right now. I need to really look at myself and I had some time to reflect and then I pulled it together. But I remember the level of impact that I had directly with soldiers as a second lieutenant and a first lieutenant and up to being a company commander that I've lost. That as now being as a second lieutenant and a first lieutenant and up to being a company commander, that I've lost. That is now being a as a major Um, but it's disproportionate.
Speaker 3:When you first start your career, that is the most important time of where you can actually begin to shape directly other people's lives. Uh, because then you grow and rank and title and you gain more influence and more authority. And what does that mean? You get pulled away from your people and that's just the the nature of the beast, at least in the army. I would love like how? How is that within the navy? Is that similar? I?
Speaker 1:think it's a little different, because so when I say my navy lieutenant is o3, so we're, I learned a lesson that a captain um in the navy is not equal to a captain in the army.
Speaker 3:I'll tell you a funny story if you want to know that yeah, no, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I've heard many. I'm navy captain so, and so you hear that all the time, because I want to make sure oh six is coming out loud and clear yep, yeah, yeah but my point here is so you know as a, as a captain in the army or the marine corps, you know as as a company commander you got what a hundred some odd bodies.
Speaker 3:You know souls you're responsible for um 120, something like that yeah, I think my first command was 150 and second command was hhc, so it was different, but it was a little over 200 yeah, versus a navy lieutenant who is going to be a division officer or, yeah, division officer at that point, maybe four branches, probably has the same number of bodies, but it's different.
Speaker 1:The chiefs, they really run the show at that point. You know, and one of the lessons we learned I learned, I should say I was taught very specifically is my job is not to tell people what to do. My job was to remove the barriers preventing them from doing it and what that meant most. And that was a really important lesson for my entire civilian career, because what it meant most of the time had nothing to do with work. It was the distractions outside of work that I had to help them with. So I I think we get a little different perspective now. When I was a branch officer, you know, because by the time you get through flight training and you make it to the fleet, I'm a jg, so I'm a first lieutenant. You know o2 at that point. So you don't get that experience as an ensign, in aviation at least. It may be different as a ship driver, you know, because they are on the boat as ensigns, butter bars, so it's a little different for us. So you know, I learned the lesson. You know heard the lesson and I did. You know I listened to it. Listen to your chiefs, you know they're going to know what the hell they're doing. I'm sure you get the same thing in the Army. Listen to your chiefs, you know. You know they're going to know what the hell they're doing. I'm sure you get the same thing in the army. Listen to your sergeant, but by the time you're actually leading men.
Speaker 1:You know it's been a year and a half, it's been a couple of years, and you know I was always very you know what do I do. So you know, I mean I was at the shop. I was asking the guys, you know, show me what you. And so they enjoyed me taking an interest in what they did, cause a lot of the guys didn't do that, you know. So I'd go, I'd go out there on the flight line with them and see, watch them and actually try to do their job as best I can.
Speaker 1:And that went a long way cause it showed an interest. So that's really informed a lot what I do, because one of the things I preach about all the time to my clients is have those one-to-ones with people not to discover what's going on in the shop, what's going on in the company, to discover what's going on in them. What are they want out of life? What are they looking to do? How do I help them achieve and sometimes that's helping them achieve things meaning leaving the company at some point because their dream is to be a chef or something like that. So I try and bring those resources, but that goes a long way with everybody.
Speaker 3:Have you ever heard the term? So I'm reading a new book right now and I'm trying to like really deep dive into the concept of burnout, like what leads to burnout, and there was an interesting concept that came out. It's called hygiene theory. Have you ever heard of that?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:So, as leaders, there's two different types of things that we would want to create in an organization. And, like as you're talking, like I. I think that what you're providing is like that psychological safety. Um, so purpose of like hey, you have something to do in this company, your strength is being aligned to a task but then also the secondary things that we don't need to worry about, like am I going to get paid on time, will I work in a positive environment and a climate and it was interesting when it came up as a hygiene theory, because my mind was totally on another topic. But what you just said, I think, is, is a huge, powerful tool that anyone can use right now to go be a more purposeful leader, just actually have genuine conversations and learn about your people in your organization. And when you started doing that, did you notice that you would stand out from your peers?
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah. So let me give you a real story. I was running a moving company and when I was hired as VP and there was a gentleman who was a move coordinator, who grew up in a bad part of San Diego County he is former gangbanger sixth grade education, okay, total ghetto, patois, the whole nine yards, you know word, what it is. And we were a high-end moving company, like we moved tony robbins ex-wife, you know. We had another. We had another move where somebody had a collection of 15th century russian icon paintings that we brought in right, so really high dollar stuff. He's on the phone with some of these people, you know, speaking ghetto, and I first I remember just thinking, oh my god, you know, I can't believe we're letting this happen. And as I got to know him I realized he's a really smart guy, just not educated, and he really cared it. Just, it was the way he was brought up and he was initially very resistant to any changes I was putting in place as we were improving.
Speaker 1:And so he was the guy I knew. I had to get him on board and the rest of the team would follow, otherwise I'd have this negative Nelly constantly undermining whatever efforts they were. And we slowly got to respect each other, as I learned to and I say we slowly, the reality is, as I learned to respect him, he started respecting me, and I think that's an important lesson there. First right. So his affect changed and he became easier to work with. But then one day he shows up at a meeting and he's like back to his old self and I remember thinking, oh crap, he's backslid. I don't know what's going on, but he's got a crappy attitude. So we finished the meeting it was a company-wide meeting and I asked him to stick around and pulled a lesson from one of my chiefs who taught me never talk about attitudes, always talk about behaviors, because behaviors are observable. Right, you can't argue about what I observed. Never counsel anybody about their attitudes, only talk about their behaviors, because they're irrefutable. But you don't know what's going on in somebody's mind. And this is a spot on case, because had had I not known that, I'd have said, I'd have said rock was his nickname, by the way, I, he knows this story We've. You know this is nothing like if he hears this podcast at all. He'd go yeah, I've heard Dave sell this. What I, what I would have said had I not heard this, is rock man, you got a crappy attitude again. What's going on? Right to which he might have and you'll understand why he may or may not have responded well to that. Instead I said rock, what's going on? You're not smiling, observable, like you. You're not joking around like you normally do, right, you're looking at what's going on. What's happened turned out his daughter had just been diagnosed with lupus. The guy's making $15 an hour, has six kids, four by his wife, two by another that he's supporting. He didn't participate in our insurance program because at $15 an hour he couldn't afford that. So he thought now he's faced with all these medical bills. And so I looked at him. I said Now he's faced with all these medical bills. And so I looked at him. I said look, first of all we got your back. So if you're worried because you have to deal with this and you got medical you got to take her to doctors, stuff like that We've got your back. Just tell me what you need. You got our support. And then I asked him I said are you on the insurance? And he said no, so meeting ends. I could see his weight off his shoulders, sort of you know, come off a little bit. Just when I said we got your back, we'll get you a time we'll work with you, don't sweat it, you're important here. That alone was big. Then I went to our insurance broker and long story a little bit shorter I got it arranged so if he wanted to get on the insurance before the next open enrollment, which was like six, eight months away, he could do it. And he took me up on it and from then he went from my you know the person I had to convince to the person I never had to convince, right, because all of a sudden he knew I had his back and so now he had mine. There was a trust level built.
Speaker 1:So you know you had mentioned we were soldiers once and you talked about you know you were the one platoon leader. Well, there was the other guy who had him checking the socks and check everybody's feet, and what's his name? Sam, the company first sergeant or whatever. You said yeah, yeah, sam got great actor. Anyway he says no, that's a born leader. Right, that was the sort of I'm not saying I was a born leader, but that was the response I got, though, because I and it went so far beyond him, it from him to everybody else realizing that that this and this is what I mean by taking away the things that prevent people from doing their job, because this was nothing but a distraction for him. I mean, obviously, with some stuff he had to deal with at home, and it was a huge distraction at work, and I was able to just relieve that pressure.
Speaker 3:That's leadership I always kind of go back to like this mindset of like a sledgehammer and again, my leadership was forged in combat arms, so it's a little bit more blunt. I guess I would say that as I've worked with great men and women. But lives are on the line. You have to make quick decisions. It's a different environment and one thing that I always like would frame around as a leader, you have to have a sledgehammer mentality.
Speaker 3:Your job as a leader you have to have a sledgehammer mentality. Your job as a leader is to remove obstacles. There's four types. They can block, turn, fix or disrupt an individual or an organization. Your job as a leader is to find those points of friction and then smash that obstacle so your team can continue to move. And I love how it's either an obstacle within the organization or it's an obstacle that an individual is kind of going through exactly what you just shared with that individual having an actual life obstacle that he had to overcome, and respect is given. But trust is earned when you do stuff purposefully to help an individual. That ripples throughout an organization and it only bolster or boosts up the culture and the climate. So what you just did probably set the trajectory for like the next three years within that organization because you were caring about individuals, so that's awesome, man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so my last XO. We were on deployment. It was a Southern Watch deployment, so a standard Navy deployment, six months at sea and one of the guys was having marital problems, which is not uncommon. I got, I was engaged for my first deployment and separated on the second deployment. You know, that's just the nature of the beast. You know that same, I'm sure, especially nowadays, or you?
Speaker 1:know your time Well, you know when we're over in a sandbox and whatnot. You know your time well, you know when we're over in the sandbox and whatnot. And the XO at the time arranged for this pilot to go home early on deployment deal with that stuff and I'll be frank, I was livid. It was like we had to put up with this. You know why does he get to go. At the time I didn't think he was doing the right thing. In hindsight, not only did he do the right thing, but that leadership, that XO his name is Sandy Winnefeld and he's now retired. Vice Admiral Sandy Winnefeld he was the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was his last billet. So the man knew leadership. He understood that's the little things go a long way.
Speaker 3:Those types of stories inspire me especially, like nowadays, is that the individuals who have that level of identity and continuously make those hard decisions I always kind of like do an asthma check here is that, like being a good leader is very draining, if that makes sense, because you always have to be switched on, you're always looking for other people's problems and you're embracing them, you're kind of taking them on, and to do that like consistently throughout your job, like that's that's very hard.
Speaker 3:And then for an individual like that to make that all the way up to the very top, like the level of purpose and just continuing to do the right thing, like that's inspiring. That's some something that I try to do every single day, but I also know that like I have to like pour into myself first, um, or I can't pour into other people, like there's a level of selfishness. I think that I'm learning to have, uh, when it comes to leadership, and what I mean by that is like, hey, taking care of yourself, because you're always taking care of other people how, how did you learn that balance between how does Dave take care of himself and how does Dave go lead his his people, both either in civilian or in the Navy?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know, in the Navy, unfortunately, I didn't know that there's one of the reasons my Navy career was cut short where it was the beginning of my leadership journey. It certainly wasn't the peak of it, by any stretch of the imagination. I was Lieutenant Rosenberg was a bit of a knucklehead, you know so, but that's okay, it really is. You know, we all have to learn our lessons in our own way, in our own time, and I've come to realize that everything happens to us exactly perfectly. So I needed those experiences to be the person I am today. I would be somebody completely different if I had different experiences, and that just makes sense, right, and I'm happy with where I am.
Speaker 1:So taking care of myself was a lesson I've learned later on in life, because you just burn out right, and so we have to be balanced mind, body, spirit. And I think the other piece of this is recognizing that it's not about how long you work or how hard you work. It's about how effectively you work. You know, and you know the parable of stopping and sharpening the saw. If we're giving all the time, we're emptying our cup. We need to be able to receive right, and so you know how did I learn it. I'm 63 years old. It's probably really in the last 10 years that I've learned that, so you're ahead of the game.
Speaker 3:From my perspective it's interesting. Like, as I'm going through this, I'm forced to do it and if you've, there's a book I think it's called the alpha team, if I remember right but there's an, an illustration of a graph and it just looks like an S curve and whenever we started something new we hit resistance. But then we'll begin to learn and learning curve efficiency strikes, we see exponential. At some point we begin to burn out and I think that that is because of just all the different like stress that you're putting on yourself to continue to push yourself to become better but not take on like new obstacles. So I guess really what I mean by that is that if we're not pushing ourselves to take on new things and continuously growing, then we're always going to be stuck at like this level of a plateau and we're never really going to take care of ourselves.
Speaker 3:And with me, what I've learned is that the more things that I take on that's new, I have to force to take care of myself. So, like running this podcast, I get up in the morning and I take a four o'clock ice bath. That is the first thing I do every day and I kind of jumped on that trend, but a portion of it is. I had nerve damage in my neck, so I had to figure out a way how I can physically show up in myself every morning, put myself in a more stressful environment and then start the day off with a win. And really I think that's what it is is just starting your day off with a win and then continuously try to improve yourself over that period.
Speaker 1:You know that's so. I'm not. I'm not. Burnout is not resonating with me in this, in this context, let me explain why. This is a realization that I've had. I mean when I say recently, recently we're talking within the last several months that I've sort of put this all together on my mind. So my coach, a woman by the name of michelle villalobos, amazing woman, so she has this mindset around the cycles of nature and how we really revolve in around cycles of nature. So, first of all, nature's a cycle. So there's no starting point, but I'm going to start in the winter time.
Speaker 1:In wintertime, seeds are planted right, leaves have fallen off. In the end of fall, right, the seeds have fallen off and they're planted and literally they sit there in the ground and they, they nurture, they sit there, they, they huddle their energy right and then, as the earth warms up a little bit, they start to feel that extra energy. Then they bloom and they sprout through the ground, starting to grow, and now they have to fight weeds, insects, mites, all these things that are coming at them for them to blossom into be whatever plant they are, and then, if they make it through that, they burst through their summertime, they're in full bloom, right, and they're like come to me, come to me, come to me, and then fall, hits them, and now they reap the rewards of this, or the earth does, right, all their goodies fall to the ground. Then the cycle starts again. What's that have to do with us, leadership and self-improvement? Well, we take on something new. So we get this idea this is the winter phase, right, something drops in for us. We're going to do something, whatever it might be. We chew on it for a bit, we think about it. At some point we just start to take action, and what's the first thing that happens? We hit resistance. So we're learning something new. And right, because we have a new idea. We're actually learning something new. We're becoming something. We're not because we're doing something we haven't done before, and so we hit this resistance.
Speaker 1:Okay, and this is all really initiations into stepping, into being this new person we want to be, and it's tests that were given by the universe. God, if you're so inclined, the universe, the divine, whatever you want to call it, I don't really care, because this is just the way that works, and it's how badly do we want to step into this thing, and the things that hit us are those things where we're weak because we're hit with tests for things we're good at but we just don't notice them. Right, if you know how to hit a fastball and somebody pitcher throws you a fastball, you just hit it. But if you're not good at a slider inside slow slider and they're throwing at you, you struggle and you struggle until you get improved to the point.
Speaker 1:I once heard tony gwynn say you know, yeah, he said um, he said if you, if, if you like them high in a way, you got to learn to hit them in and tight. Right, you know low and tight, because that's what they're going to throw you, because they know your tendencies. When you can hit that, then I'm going to start going high and away and then you're going to really love it, right? So we got to get strong at wherever our weakness is, and that's that's the second phase. And then you hit that and now you start performing to your point.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, you get really good at that and then, right, you start to reap the rewards at it. But now you're just. You're sort of in that groove. Well, in life you're either growing or you're dying. There is no steady state in life. So if you stop growing, you stop challenging yourself, the next phase is just dying, right? I don't care how old you are, right, if you stop pushing yourself, you're just, you're rolling down that slope and at some point you're going to come to the end, right? Because second law of thermodynamics everything goes to entropy, even us. Without adding energy to a system, everything degrades to chaos, to entropy, to dust, right so. But if, however, you have that mindset, now you reap the rewards of whatever this new thing is. And then you sit there and you go, okay, what's my next evolution, what's my next challenge? Now you're back in that winter season again, where you're letting those seeds germinate and go like, okay, what's next for me? And then the whole thing starts again.
Speaker 3:What I'm really interested in is like, okay, what's next for me? And then the whole thing starts again. What I'm really interested in is like where does that mindset come from? Like with me, I think a portion of it comes from like where I was raised in, like rural West Virginia. So my father was a coal miner. I grew up in a very like a blue collar family. Wakes up early in the morning he still does. He's 65 years old. He wakes up at three in the morning to go to work and drive an hour. So like a level of just hard work and grit that is hard to explain to someone unless you go to like Appalachia like a different kind of like living. And I think with you too, like knowing your background, you martial arts I think that there's a form of martial arts that that, at least mentally, that kind of prepares you. Did that help you build that mindset or was that just something that you've always had?
Speaker 1:I've always wanted to give. For me. It started with integrity in the sense, right, that if somebody's paying me to do something, they're going to get it from me because that's the contract I made, period. So it started with that. But this is not about hard work, this is about purpose. And I suspect if you talk to your dad, it'd be the same thing, because if you say 65, like it's old, I'm going to be 64 in boom. So just chill, dude. Okay, 65 is not old. Uh, and 65 today is not as old as 65 was for my dad either, right, but I I suspect if you talk to your dad it comes down to purpose. Like what would he do?
Speaker 1:Like you know my wife's retired we're the same age. She's been retired jesus, seven, eight years now. She doesn't have enough time in a day. She gets fulfillment out of doing things around the house. She took up a hobby she loved, right, all these things that she never runs out of things to do. I'm not a potter around the house. It's not that I can't do it. I do it when I have to, but like I'd have no purpose in life if I didn't continue to work.
Speaker 1:For me, being able to help other people is a reason to get up every morning, and so it's not about the idea of working hard, it's about living for something, and you know I you mentioned radical accountability. I've got three tenants to radical accountability, three elements that must be present mechanics it's mechanics mindset and model. We're talking about mindset here. Why do you exist? So you talk about hiring people for civilian listeners out there, people in the private sector. You hire people who are going to get lit up by your company's purpose. Every company exists because they bring a need to other people. They fulfill a need that is much needed. There's a value proposition, an economic value proposition, in every exchange. I sell you a service or product that is worth more to you than the money you're paying me for it, and it's worth less to me than the money I'm receiving. So everybody wins. I'm helping you achieve something. That's the economic model there.
Speaker 1:For example, plumbers what's the value plumbers bring to the world? Plumbers are responsible for civilization. Nothing short of that. Without irrigation and sanitation, we could not exist in cities. We would be hunter-gatherers. Still, plumbers are responsible for civilization. If I'm a plumber and I'm hiring plumbers, I want people to get excited by that concept. It's about health. It's about keeping people healthy right. It's about allowing people to congregate in cities and towns safely. That's huge. Now, if you get excited about that at 20, 25, when you become a journeyman plumber, or 30, when you become a master plumber, aren't you still excited at 60, 65, 70? Now, maybe you don't want to go out there and turn a wrench anymore. Maybe you're mentoring other people, maybe you're doing other things, but why would you give that up if that's what excites you?
Speaker 3:I think purpose definitely evolves over time.
Speaker 3:When I was in I call toes tactical, operational or strategic levels of leadership, like where you fall within an organization. When I was at the tactical edge of being a platoon leader or a company commander, I found purpose in solving individuals' problems like actively working with soldiers or teams to get that. And then now where I find myself or find more purposes, I still move to that point of friction but I look for bigger problems, bigger problems that I could actively solve and that's where I really find purpose and fulfillment and joy at work. If you put me in a job that was just a standard nine to five and even if you paid me like a very good salary, I would probably be unhappy because I thrive in kind of chaotic type situations and I love hard problems. That's just something that I've learned about myself and I love trying to help other people kind of frame that and continue to move forward. But I've learned that my purpose like has changed over time, where I used to be very tactical and now it's like looking bigger picture.
Speaker 1:I would submit that your purpose hasn't changed. It's just how you fulfill that purpose, right? Why did you join the army? Why do you serve this country? What is it that gets you excited about putting on the uniform every single day?
Speaker 3:I think for me, one of the reasons that I really wanted to join the military is have a sense of duty bigger than myself. I wanted to be a part of something bigger than just myself. I think that's one of the reasons, too, that I just throw myself in every position I've ever been in, because I want to create a positive impact. And now, having fought being a father of a beautiful daughter and a son, I want to help build other leaders that have that same level of purpose, because one day my son or daughter may choose to wear a uniform or go work in a company. I know that's going to happen. I want them to have good leaders that lead them through challenges, and the world's not getting easier, that's for sure. We're getting more complex problems every day.
Speaker 1:You know, I suspect our world is no more difficult than it was 2 000 years ago. Right, it's faster. Right, because you know, for the roman legions to march to britain, you know how long was that track. You know life was very uncertain back then. You know, hordes of you know I mean combat was you'd be civilian, and you know I mean combat was you'd be civilian, and you know. And next thing, you know, there's somebody you're being raided by, whomever. Right, I don't know that life's more complicated. It changes all the time. I mean, the older I get, the more I realize really it's the same stuff day in, day out. It happens faster, happens broader. Right, we're closer to, connected together.
Speaker 1:Right, you know, I mean, 200 years ago, to do something you know across the world was a commitment. I mean, while it's still a commitment, it doesn't take much to say, hey, let's go move this battle group over here. Or you know, I was. I was Desert Shield, desert Storm. I was. I was at sea on August 2nd, a day I'll never forget 1990, you know, which was the day Kuwait got invaded and we moved really, really quickly. We were first on station at Ghanza Station and next thing, you know, we got acid flying into Saudi Arabia like nobody's business. You know, it happened really quickly, a matter of a couple of months before that whole thing jumped off, but the reality is, I think the stress for everybody, at whatever level it is, it's the same.
Speaker 1:I don't I don't know that I agree with with that, but I what I what I'm hearing from you, though, is that you want to serve something bigger than you. I think everybody does. I think that's human nature, which is why I say for companies go for what is? What is your purpose? Why, what is it that's that that you serve? It's interesting when you read Built to Last and Good to Great. The Seminole Works there, those companies that outperformed the market over a 15-year period, greatly outperformed the market.
Speaker 1:All had that purpose, and I suspect, when you finally retire hopefully it's a long time from now when you finally retire, though, and you go to work in the private sector, you're going to continue to do the same thing, and what you'll find it's not that you, it's not, I suspect, it's not so much that you thrive in chaos is that you're comfortable in chaos, and you love to take chaos and turn it into whatever. The opposite of chaos is order. You love taking chaos and turning it into order, and great leaders know how to do that. Because that's what it's all about. It's about creating those processes, smoothing things out and iterating that process constantly, as we talked about earlier, so that people can develop and thrive, and what it's really about is getting other people to do that so they can step into their leadership.
Speaker 3:So where did this mindset come from? So working for three, seven years in the military, transitioning to 30 years, uh in the civilian sector and then wanting to start your own company, I guess where? What inspired you to start your own coaching company and then begin to like build leaders through that way?
Speaker 1:so I started building we. So my leadership journey. So I get out of the navy and started my first company. My leadership journey. So I get out of the Navy and started my first company, which it's not part of really part of the story, because the need got fulfilled by bigger, deeper pockets before we ever got off the ground. But so, from that though, it launched me into telecommunications and I was hired as a sales manager, having never sold anything before but helped this guy build his company sales department, and the first year I spent just proving that I could sell. But once I did that and I started building the sales force, I hired my first sales guy and I realized that I had no way of teaching him. He came from sales, so he nominally knew how to sell, although I discovered not really, and he knew nothing about the technology we were selling. So I had to train him. So I'm going to throw this in your. So what would you do? You know you've been in the army how many years now 17.
Speaker 1:Okay, so 10 years longer than I was in the Navy. What would you do under those circumstances? You have nothing in place to help teach this guy how to do his job.
Speaker 3:You have nothing in place to help teach this guy how to do his job. First thing I would do is I would try to do an initial counseling of like hey, this is what I believe expectations and management would be of your position. What do you think your expectations of management would be? So we kind of at least set the standard and then try to find the right tools to give them so they can actually go out and do good things. It would probably be the first two things that I would start with.
Speaker 1:I created a manual. I wrote a manual. I had a feel that would resonate right, because that's right, everything in the military there's a manual for it. Here I am as a civilian. I'm like damn it, there's no manuals. Okay, I'm going to create a manual. And so I wrote a training manual. So I wrote a training manual and I wrote training manual. I trained him and he learned how to sell and I left that job and I went to another job. I became VP of operations and there was no manual. So then I wrote a whole operation and training standards manual.
Speaker 1:I took NA TOPS, took the NA out and just created a TOPS manual training, operation procedures and standards manual. Because there was nothing in writing. So there was no way to teach people consistently how to do their job because there was nothing in writing, nothing to follow, no syllabus, no procedures, no policy. So I wrote it and guess what? People started doing their job better, people started enjoying their job. Oh, people started realizing that I had their back because I was teaching them how to do their job right so they wouldn't get in trouble for not doing it right, because they and me might have had different ideas of what right was. Now they knew what right was, at least by my definition. So from there, I started my second business, which was a telecom business, because now I knew how to sell it, I knew how to run the backend as operations I may as well do it for myself and, of course, I started a manual. It was just me, by the way, and I still started a manual because I knew I was going to hire somebody and grew that business, sold that business, and then I got hired as president of a company and guess what? There was no manual. Well right, well right. So you, this is a story until finally, um, I got hired as a vp for a moving company in 2011, a year later, I got promoted to president creating manuals, by the way, the whole way.
Speaker 1:That's where the the story I told earlier, you know, came from thought I had the last job I was ever going to have, and then the owner went through a divorce and decided to sell the business. Because it was, it was community property, it was easier for him to sell it and then to deal with the messiness of the divorce and figuring out how to deal with that with the soon to be ex-wife. So I was looking for work and the IT company that supported us. I had known this guy. We used to be competitors when I had my telecom business and I brought him in as a vendor. He was a small IT support company.
Speaker 1:I know him pretty well at this point and he said hey, dave, can you come work for me? I'm like you can't afford me. He goes can you at least consult with me and my wife? So that you know, we've been stock plateaued for a number of years at this size company. We'd like to grow it and I thought, sure, why not do something while I'm looking for work?
Speaker 1:And so I started consulting with them, coaching them, and it occurred to me shortly thereafter I'm like you know I could get a job as a GM president someplace else In three or four years. Down the road something's going to change and I'm going to find myself looking for work again. So, no matter how good a job I do, no matter how successful I am In fact, like the moving company got sold in part because of my success it sold 20% above what I was willing to pay for it, because I was looking to buy it, you know, because we were doing so well. So I'm happy for him. Don't get me wrong. I'm happy for the guy who sold it, but I'm like I don't want to be in the boat again. I'm like let me just start coaching other businesses.
Speaker 1:And so I started business coaching and then a buddy of mine who I had met while I was in the moving company, who is a retired Air Force light colonel. He's a Hall of Fame speaker, so we had stayed in contact and he was encouraging me to speak and to talk about leadership and my experiences, and so that led to me writing my book and doing, speaking and turning, and from there my sort of what I call tactical leadership this is sort of broad leadership thing got narrowly focused, to your point earlier about your groupings getting tighter. Tactical leadership this is sort of broad leadership thing has got narrowly focused, to your point earlier, about your groupings getting tighter to accountability, creating a culture of accountability, redefining accountability to what I call radical accountability, which is a culture where people willingly do what they need to do when they need to do it with accuracy, and I think when that happens everyone goes home happy.
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Speaker 3:I've commanded two organizations in the 10th Mountain and both of which are very deeply impactful to me. This is a company that I stand behind and if you're looking for a great bottle of bourbon, look no further at 10th Mountain Whiskey and Spirit Company. Back to the show. I think accountability is definitely something that people I don't know potentially struggle with nowadays within leadership. That people I would I don't know like potentially struggle with nowadays within leadership. What is one way that you teach that people can go actively, employ that like radical accountability within their organization, like what is the first step to help build an accountable team or an organization that you've learned.
Speaker 1:Well, as I mentioned before, there's three things required. The first is mechanics. The mechanics are the policies, procedures, training, the methodologies, how people do things, making sure that it's memorialized in writing. So the policies are the boundaries. This is what's acceptable to us, this is what's not acceptable, and these are what will happen should you work outside these policies in writing really important, it's crystal clear to everybody. Then the procedures, which then begets the training right, so you create the procedures and you train to procedures, and training needs to be formal, written, with testing. This way, people know what they need to do and that they know how to do it. And you have metrics along with that so that testing is yes, you could produce whatever is required within the amount of time that's required to be produced. So people have the confidence to go yes, I know how to do that. Right, and it's nothing. You do the same thing in the army and every branch of the service, right?
Speaker 3:we don't just say here's, here's your m4, go fire it yeah, the crawl, walk run is like the methodology that the army uses.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So martial arts, you know the school I went to, the guy is brilliant this way. Right, we talk about that. It's in alphabets. You teach basics first. Basics are how do you throw a punch? Right One thing how do you throw a punch? How do you do a front kick? How do you do a front kick? How do you do a side kick? How do you do a hand sword? Or what a palm heel strike? Okay, well, that's great, but that doesn't mean you can fight right.
Speaker 1:Then you put them together in forms where you're now dancing by yourself, moving in such a way, getting the body to move in right. Then you start sparring with somebody. That's a controlled fight. And then we did what we called self defense, which was uncontrolled fight, whereas now you know we're just coming at you and right. So we're constantly increasing the level of difficulty.
Speaker 1:The Navy, and I'm sure the Army, does the same thing in workups. Right, you go out there getting ready to deploy. The first thing that happens is you put planes on the aircraft carrier and they practice moving the airplanes around. We'll do a few takeoffs and landings so they can practice doing that, but we're not doing that heavy duty. But then you start doing heavier ops and you bring in the battle group so that you're working in conjunction with the small boys, and you bring in other battle groups so you're working in a bigger picture, right? So you slowly work bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, right, crawl, walk, run. I love that. That's a great, great analogy.
Speaker 1:So you do the same thing in your business. You train people. What are the basics, just to get started on the job. Don't teach them what somebody who's been in the job five years has to know. What is it they need to know day one to get them through six months down the road and then you have next training and next training and it builds on itself. That's number one.
Speaker 1:Then mindset I talked about that making sure everyone understands two things One, why you exist as an organization, but, more importantly, how their actions fit in to the global whole, how, by them doing their job, it affects everybody else and how, by them not doing their job, it affects everybody else. And honestly, I got this by reading stories of just about everybody I could who's received any sort of Medal of Valor, especially Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. Think about this. I know, you know these people. What do they have in common? What does every one of them say when you talk to them about their receiving that award? I don't deserve this. I didn't do anything special. I didn't do anything that anybody else in my unit standing where I was standing at that moment wouldn't have done, because if I didn't do it, other people would have been injured, killed, etc.
Speaker 1:It's about thinking about others. We don't want to let others down, and if we're willing to put our lives on the line to keep other people from dying you said it before lives are at stake. Well, when only livelihoods are at stake, how much easier is it, when you think about others, for you to step up to their plate? If you tell people why to do things for them, they could let themselves off the hook. That's not important to me, but I'm going to disappoint you. It's human nature and I could go deep into this but it's anthropologically in our souls, because we are pack animals, not to let the pack down Mindset. Inculcate that mindset in people. Make sure they understand how they are contributing, even the janitors. There are no unimportant jobs, not a one. If it's not important, you wouldn't do it. You wouldn't pay somebody to do it if it was unimportant.
Speaker 3:That's absolutely critical and it puts me back in my mindset of when I was a lieutenant in Afghanistan and we had to do clearing for IEDs. One of the most thankless jobs and patrols that we would always go do was just lock patrol. We would make sure that the roads were open, that logistics could get in and out, because where we were we were landlocked. Most of our supplies kind of came in from ground assault convoys that would come in maybe like once every two weeks. But I would always get that question why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? If I knew what I knew now, I'd give a way better answer. But it goes back to that point is like if we didn't do this, we wouldn't get the sustainment that we need to actually continue to do the combat missions that are getting marked results.
Speaker 3:And you being an expert in that mindhound or that gizmo and that Thor and operating with proficiency is saving people's lives so we don't step on other IEDs. And that goes down from a very specific military example to the janitor that you talked about. When you walk into a building and the building is clean, you have this sense of just like it's a good day. I feel like I'm going to go straight and get to work, because I'm operating in like a psychologically safe environment. The building's clean. Leadership's going to take care of me. Let's go do the work. Let's get it done.
Speaker 1:If the janitor is not willing to do his job, why should I be willing to do mine? Nobody actually thinks that, but it's there, it's in the back of their head. It's subliminal, the last thing that you want to put in place. This is the most important, and I know you're going to put a smile on your face. You got to walk the talk. People will only behave as well. They will emulate your behaviors. And so again, civilian story about this.
Speaker 1:The gentleman I was talking about, who got me started on this career. This is some years later. We're still friends to this day. We've been friends, actually, God, for a long, long time. It was 10 years ago when I started consulting with him. Not too long ago, he called me up and he said I got this one guy who is habitually late. He's a good worker, but he's just always coming in late. We talk to him all the time about how this impacts things and what our expectations are, but he always has an excuse. And I said to him I said let me ask you a question Do you always start your meetings on time?
Speaker 1:He said he says most of the time. I said most of it, but not all the time. You know one of the big jokes we used to have in the Navy squadron was what time does the 8 o'clock all officers meeting start? You know, because you had those COs who would you know. It starts when I get there, right, Even though it's called for 8 o'clock, Because most of the time, not all of it. Do you ever have impromptu meetings about something that's not critical, instead of scheduling them with somebody? Well, sure I do. I need to find something out. Okay, do you always show up when you say you're going to show up? Well, not always. Sometimes things come up, so you don't respect other people's times because they will emulate you.
Speaker 3:So you have to model the behaviors you want I had a um, we were doing a live fire. I was feeling sorry for my platoon at the time. This was when I was a company commander and I was going to give them the grace to get in the military. We call it recock Start back at the beginning, go through the lane again, but to give them the time off and we're going to start the next day. And I had the battalion commander walk up to me. It was a sister battalion commander, it wasn't ours, it was a sister battalion commander. It wasn't ours, it was a different one. He's like Josh, you got a good platoon, you got a good company Deeds, not words.
Speaker 3:And he just walked off and it just resonated with me and I'm like, okay, if I'm expecting myself to do hard things, I expect my men to do hard things, then we need to embrace that mindset. And that started another shift in me is like, hey, words are great as a leader, but deeds go way further. Are your actions aligned with your purpose, with your words, with what you're saying? And what you just said is hits a nail on the head, because I see that so much of where senior leaders expect you to be 10 to 15 minutes early to their meeting, but they may get in 10, 15 minutes late. Hey, sorry it went over time. It doesn't matter how high a rank you are. You have to be cognizant about people's time. That's a nugget right there, dave. I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know I'm trying to think there's a. Colin Powell had a quote along these lines and something along the lines of you know, a soldier doesn't care what you say, but they will look long and hard at what you do Something along those lines, yeah, when you're seeing a consistent behavioral pattern in your team that you don't like, first look at yourself. Where is that showing up in my life? And it comes down to integrity, and most people don't truly know what integrity is. I'm curious. I know it's your podcast, you're interviewing me, but give me your definition of integrity.
Speaker 3:Integrity for me comes down to doing what I say I'm going to do. Integrity for me is not lying, cheating and stealing. It's being above a moral standard that I've set for myself, which is a very high bar. But at the end of the day, if I tell you, Dave, I'm going to do something, I have the intestinal fortitude to follow through with it. That's what integrity means to me.
Speaker 1:And that absolutely is an aspect of integrity, and you did better than most I got to be honest, most people that come back to me go integrity is doing the right thing, even when nobody's watching that trite meme that's out there. And really, what's the right thing in that question? So, if you think about it, we all have values, okay, and values are our beliefs, in hierarchical order. So whatever we believe the most strongest, that's our number one value. For me, and something I discovered with the pandemic a few years back, it's personal sovereignty, and I will come back to integrity in a second. But I think it's important that people understand how values work so we can understand what integrity truly is right.
Speaker 1:So when they were talking about vaccine passports, I thought, because I'm not vaccinated Early on, I'm like no, I'm not messing around with my genes, mrna, that's gene therapy. I don't care what they say ain't happening, right? I'm picturing the fly and all these other things. So I didn't get vaccinated and I was never going to get vaccinated and I never will with that particular vaccine. And now they're talking about vaccine passports and I'm like, wow, okay, and so I was prepared to forge a vaccine passport.
Speaker 1:But what went through my mind as I'm thinking about this, and I was accepting, and it really wasn't a there was no turmoil for me whatsoever about that, other than I went I don't lie and I'm willing to lie. Huh, there must be a value above honesty in my hierarchy that is superseded because I'm willing to lie. So something is superseding that because we always behave I believe we always behave in a line with our true values, right, and so for me, I came to the realization that personal sovereignty nobody's telling me what I can and can't do with my body that's the most important thing. And so I'm willing to lie because that supersedes it. Okay, so if we always behave in accordance with our true values, we can never behave other than what our values dictate then where does integrity come in?
Speaker 1:Integrity is when we say our values are one thing, but that's not true, so we're not acting as an integral whole right. It really comes from the Latin word integritatum, right, which is to be complete, as in a vessel with no holes in it, right, and so I think of that as our character. We are a good character when our stated values, the values we profess to the world, are actually our true values. When they are not, then we have holes in our character, we have a bad character, right, because we say one thing and we do another. Now we're out of integrity.
Speaker 3:I'm stealing that for the rest of my career. I want to use that definition of how you just bounded down. Integrity tied to character and behaviors is beautiful. I've never heard it like that before.
Speaker 1:You're welcome to you. Don't have to steal it. I will give it to you willingly.
Speaker 3:I appreciate it, dave. I want to definitely get a chance to talk about your book that you wrote, locked On Leadership, and then kind of talk about what you're doing now and growing within that space, within your coaching company. But what inspired you to write Locked On Leadership?
Speaker 1:Well, the truth is I wanted a book so I could have some credibility, trying to get speaking gigs as I was starting my speaking career, the. But like so many things I said earlier, everything I think, please happens perfectly. And this was so perfect because what it enabled me to do was the beginning of synthesizing my leadership philosophy and what has really become a doctrine for leadership now, which is what radical accountability is. So at first I'm like God, how am I going to do this? And at the time I was thinking about having the manual and what I now call mechanics in place really is fulfilling Maslow's second hierarchy of needs. So I'm sure you're familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Maslow said there are five basic needs that we have that we must meet in hierarchical order. So the higher level needs aren't even we don't even become aware of them until our lower level needs are substantially met. The first, of course, is physiological needs. You need to live right. So, if you think about it, if you're out in the middle of nowhere and you need water right, You've been to Sears school, right, you get three days maximum without water and then you're dead right. And if there is a cache of water on a limb over a gorge that's 5,000 feet deep right, and that limb is shaky and it's that or nothing. You're climbing out on that limb to get that water, because the alternative is death. So who cares if you fall and die anyway? But if you're successful, you're at least going to live, right? Well, once you've established a source of water so you find a stream or something like that then all of a sudden you notice all the animal prints around the stream and you realize that I'm out here alone and there's some big ass animals. You become aware of your next level needs safety and security. And so you fashion weapons or whatnot to protect yourself from them. And then what? Now, all of a sudden, you're like crap, I'm lonely, Because men, when I say men, humans, we're social creatures, right? So you think Tom Hanks in Castaway, after he established his camp, what's he doing? He makes Wilson because he's lonely, right. So you then start seeking out other human beings. He has this need for love and belonging, right. Be part of a group. Each subsequent level supports the one below it, right? So when we create safety and security, create weapons and if we're not injured, we're better able to meet our physiological needs when we find a group, love and belonging, become part of a pack that are able to be safe and secure and meet our physiological needs. So now we're in this pack, we want to stay there.
Speaker 1:We now become aware of the need for esteem, not self-esteem. It's not how do I feel about me. It's how do you feel about me as a pack member, Because if I'm not contributing and you don't recognize my contribution, you're going to kick me out of the pack. And now I've moved down the level. My safety and security is less secure. So I want to stay part of the pack. So I'm looking for that esteem.
Speaker 1:And what Matt and I have said is the only time we're going to become self-actualized, or at least have the opportunity to be self-actualized, is once our esteem needs are met. Then we start going what is it we feel like we're meant to do? And if what we're meant to do supports the pack, we'll do it. And now you're working in what you love to do, what you were born to do, in your flame. Very few people actually get to do that. So it's thinking about how.
Speaker 1:Initially, how writing manuals, because I shared with you earlier leadership for me started off with how writing manuals, because I shared with you earlier. Leadership for me started off with just writing manuals. Really is meeting that safety and security level of needs, because you're telling people what is expected of them, how much of it is expected of them right, and how to do it. Now they're feeling safe and secure in their job. Then it occurred to me well, wait a second. We want to recognize people, we want to recognize the behaviors we want repeated. Well, isn't that really just meeting esteem needs? And so I started speaking about this.
Speaker 1:So this became my book and I break all this out in my book and I started speaking. My first early keynote was really just my book in keynote form. You know I would just take people through it, and the piece that would resonate all the time when I was done was when I talked about accountability. And I talk about accountability from holding people accountable, which is a tool of accountability. It's not all of accountability, but it's it's, it's the. When people hear accountability, they think about how do I hold people accountable? They don't fully understand the big picture of it. And then I realized this is where the real need is, is creating a culture where people hold themselves accountable, and so that's where. That's how radical accountability came to be is from there what, uh, what response have you gotten from that book?
Speaker 3:have you gotten any feedback from that book of things that have, like, inspired people or organizations? I'm sure you have. Like you had a successful coaching company for a very long time and I always love being a leader, like hearing stories from like fellow soldiers that come back like, hey, you did this and that caused that. What level of impact have you got feedback from your book?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you know one again. The gentleman I talked about with the IT company who also had the problem with time. You know he had a huge turnover rate with technicians. You know where people are coming and going revolving door, and that's one of the reasons he was struggling to grow his business. Because even if he was adding new clients, you's a retainer-based business. So if you maintain your clients and then just add one or two a year, the business will naturally grow. But when you have a huge turnover, then you get poor results for your clients, and so he had attrition in his clients and he's focusing on hiring replacement people instead of getting new clients Right. So that's where the stagnation came in.
Speaker 1:Now, you know he's got a technician, has been with him for decades or more Well, a decade, because it was 10 years since we started working together and his client attrition has gone to virtually nothing. You know there's always little things that happen. He's spending more time, more time, almost all his time on strategic initiatives instead of putting out fires, because that's what we're talking about is shifting leaders from being firefighters to being fire marshals, because when you're not in the thick of it day to day, you can then look ahead and anticipate problems ahead of time, and so instead of waiting for those problems to manifest and then putting the fire out, which is exciting and adrenaline pumping and at the end of the day, you just keep doing it over and over again.
Speaker 3:I think like the highest need of an organization and I think through that lens of me as a leader and I understand that there's. I have bosses that are above me or leaders that are above me, and I have people who work with me and then people that work under me. I always look from this aspect of an aerial perspective. As a leader, you should be on the highest piece of terrain. Why is that the most advantageous for a battlefield? It's always been the most advantageous for a battlefield because you see the whole picture. When you see the whole picture, I kind of go back to, like my lieutenant days of like a symphony of chaos, megadeth if you're a Megadeth deaf fan of just being able to orchestrate the team, to help them, coach them along the way, and accountability is a huge piece of that not helping them, not rescuing them when they run into issues, but coaching them along the way so they can continue to make those 50 meter targets and knock down those 50 meter targets. But you, as a leader, you're looking at the whole picture and you understand the entire battlefield and you should be working on those next hundred meter, 200 meter, 300 meter targets because you know they're going to be major obstacles and your goal is to mitigate those obstacles.
Speaker 3:So when it's time to actually act and it gets to your people, you've already smashed it and I love that kind of methodology that you lay out in your book. And I want to be candid, don't hate me. I haven't got a chance to read your book yet, but I am going to a hundred percent dive into that book next, next month. That's on my goal. I have very I'm very strict with the books that I read. So as soon as I get done with this next one, your, your book is on my short list to do.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that and, trust me, I don't hate you, Josh, Not at all, but I do want to. So you said something really interesting there and I want to drop this in there as well, because people conflate accountability with counseling, correcting behaviors. Accountability is nothing more than the ability to account, meaning go through a process. Right, the word account is from the root Latin. Computer is nothing more than how do we go, how do we follow a process, and so the culture of accountability is one where everybody follows the process the way it's supposed to be done, and the reason for that is that allows you to iterate, Because, you know, one of the tools I talk about in the book is what I call a quality board, which comes from my military. You know, when you know we would do as a legal officer, you know I would do these boards for, oh, what was it called? It was a form of general discharge, but other than other than honorable.
Speaker 1:I was right, we have to use other honorable board discharges right For people. And you think about what happens during a board like that is you sit down and you go through okay, what did you? How did we get here? Step-by-step-by-step, right. And so what happened with the moving company is we would start to get these claims where people whether it was an actual claim or just somebody said, hey, this move took too long or the guys were late. I should get money back Anytime. Somebody wanted money back, you know we would give that to them.
Speaker 1:But then we would examine how we got there and I'd bring in the moving crew without telling them what to complain or the reason was, and I would sit there. It was me, my ops manager and my another manager, and we would sit there and say, okay, from the night before when you first called in to get your schedule, because we had phone calls back then, walk us through everything you did procedurally. Somebody was responsible for checking the truck in the morning, somebody responsible for calling the client, all these processes, procedures that we had in place, that the had to get done, who did it? What did they say? What happened? And the result was we would find one of two things. One there was a systemic problem, meaning they followed the procedure and the failure was because there was a hole in the procedure. That's a home run. That's a phenomenal outcome, because what's that tell us to do? How do we iterate this procedure to prevent that in the future? Right, and that's how you get better and better and better.
Speaker 1:The second outcome was a personnel issue. Ie, they didn't follow the procedure. Now we got to explore how come, where's the mindset mechanics, mindset, you know. Does that uncover an area where maybe we were modeling something wrong as leaders? Or was their mindset wrong? And if their mindset was wrong, what was that all about? Was it something we can mitigate? Or maybe it was something where they needed to be working someplace else and it gave us the tools to do that? And so what happened was the team upgrades, as those people who didn't have the right mindset were elevated to work elsewhere, or the processes were iterated and got better because we were improving them and setting people up for success more and more.
Speaker 3:At the end of the day, you're just providing a better service, Regardless of the outcome, you're providing a better service. I love the way you break down accountability of like looking at it from a root cause. Analysis essentially is like why did we fail? Then identify was it a person or was it a process or a policy and then continuing to improve upon that. I don't think that I've ever really looked at accountability from that macro lens. I always look at it. I think everyone always looks at it from like a very micro lens of like hey, this is the standard in the organization. You did not meet that standard, You're done Versus. Maybe we need to look at that standard, Maybe the standard needs to change and maybe it's outdated. Or maybe we need to provide an additional resource to help people achieve that standard. Or maybe we're hiring the wrong people. And if we're hiring the wrong people, how can we improve upon that? That's a deep topic and a very, very deep way to think through accountability.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you think about that. So now we get to make little, tiny, incremental improvements every single day. And how powerful is that? This is small ball. I was on Joel Goldberg. He's an announcer for Kansas City Royals, he's one of their radio announcers and he has a podcast called Rounding the Bases and he always asks you what's small ball?
Speaker 1:To you this is small ball, right, because if you're making 1% improvement a day, how long does it take to improve 100%? Nope, 70. Compounding, okay Now, but that's not the magic. So let's just assume we're starting our baseline and we're just going to call it a random 100. Okay. So 70 days later you're at 100, you go to 200. 70 days later, where are you? 400. 400. Because it's 200, that was your baseline. 70 days later, it goes to 400. 70 days later, where are you 800. 70 days later, where are you 1600. So in 280 days? So in 280 days, 1,600% improvement. If it's 1% a day, small ball, huge impact. I see these numbers with my clients all the time in their bottom line P&Ls financials. You see those improvements Not necessarily 1,600% improvement, right, because I mean that's but you see disproportion. You'll see sales grow by 20%, but you'll see net operating profits grow by 250%.
Speaker 3:I think that's a great place to kind of like transition within your coaching company right now. What are you actively doing? Any new projects that you are working on right now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks for asking. There are a lot of companies out there that do these leadership retreats or bootcamps, those sort of things, but there's nothing like learning from history. Leadership hasn't changed in the 300,000 years of human evolution. Homo sapiens have been around for 300,000 years and we've chosen our leaders for one and only one reason for that entire time they're the ones who give us the highest chance of survival. How we execute it has changed in the sense of, you know, from a cultural perspective, but the basic root of all of that is the same Napoleon, alexander, the Great. Right the elements are all there. Recognize people, create up, set them up for success by giving them the training they need right. Recognize the rewards right. Napoleon's the one who said give the man a little piece of ribbon and he'll fight forever for you, or something like that. Right the elements are all there. So my newest project is called Command Expedition Leadership Lessons from Iconic Battlefields. Once or twice a year, we're going to travel with a small select group no more than 10 leaders to various battlefields around the world and dig into the leadership lessons from those places. So I'm starting with the Battle of Britain.
Speaker 1:This is I don't have a firm date. It's looking like June 6th will be the first day of 2026, but I'm still waiting on final dates on that. We're going to go to England Six amazing days there. We're going to start off with dinner at the Savoy Grill, which was Churchill's favorite restaurant. Then, before it opens to the public, we're going to have a private tour of the Churchill War Room Museum, this war room. So take it a step farther though, right, because we're actually going to have historian led. It's not going to be a docent, and you probably know this, but Churchill. First of all, at the time when Churchill came into office as prime minister, england was torn on what to do. Right, there was another Chamberlain. You know, let's capitulate, let's make peace. Blah, blah, blah. Churchill was dead set against that.
Speaker 3:Because Dunkirk was happening too and, it's important to note, he was under the gun. 300,000 English soldiers were stranded on the beach at Dunkirk, surrounded by the Nazi force Yep, and they could have been wiped out, right, and they got a huge percentage.
Speaker 1:I don't remember how many, but, yeah, the vast majority of them they were able to extricate safely, which was huge. So he was able to convince all of England to buy into his vision. Imagine, as a leader, getting your team to buy into your vision. So we're going to dig into how he was able to do that his oration, his power, what he talked about, how he talked about it. But he was also a master of time management. He didn't get out of bed till 1130 every day. Still got more work done than any other two people.
Speaker 1:Then we go down to the Goodwood Estates, which is across from RAF Tagmir, which was a Spitfire base. You want to learn about making decisions under pressure. We're going to go up in T-67 Firefly fighter trainers and we're going to do air combat and you're going to learn how to make split second decisions at 400 miles an hour against your fellow expedition member. Yeah, that's going to be so cool. Then the Southwick House, which was, as you know, supreme Allied headquarters for Eisenhower, where he was planning D-Day Once again Eisenhower, when he did Operation Torch the landing in Africa.
Speaker 1:He talks about this in his writings. Right, it was horrible, right, he underemphasized logistics, almost lost the war, um and what? Instead of blaming others, he took past failures and turned them into future successes. So, by the time d-day came around, and obviously we got better with sicily and, you know, palermo, etc. But by the time d-day came around, five divisions from three different countries, the largest amphibious landing in the history of mankind. Well, it didn't go off without a hitch, it certainly went well, or we'd be having this conversation in German, yeah, so we'll dig into how he did that and how you can learn from your past mistakes.
Speaker 1:And then, finally, over to Guernsey, the Channel Islands, which were under occupation. Now, I didn't know that, I don't know if you were aware, but it became an open city and the Brits ceded that to Germans in 1940 without a fight, and so, yeah. So imagine what are the lessons in resilience that you could uncheck from being instantly under occupation, not being supported by, of course, any of the trade from England, and of course the Germans didn't really have a lot of resources, and those they had went to the German occupying forces, not to the local people. And then we're going to close with a wrap up and integration dinner at Raffles Old War Room before we go home. It's going to be an amazing 10, highly pan selected.
Speaker 1:For me there's an application process. Just to make sure we get the right 10 people, what I would say is go to my website, lockedonleadershipcom, see Command Expedition in the top right corner, select on that and just hit Apply. Now you won't be obligated to anything. It'll just schedule an appointment with me. We'll talk about it and then we'll finalize things once I have the dates in place.
Speaker 3:It's funny, in the military we do these staff rides, I'm assuming like the Navy does something similar, but in the army, like we live and die by this, especially in combat arms.
Speaker 3:And DC is like a wealth of battlefields in the Virginia area and I would do this several times and I've did it, I think three throughout my career Vicksburg, the battle of New Orleans and there was one more I just can't think of off the top of my head right now. But you walk these battlefields with a staff, your team, and you go through the historical lessons learned and you do really a root cause analysis. You're seeing this terrain, the individual, what they saw, these were the decisions they made, hindsight being 2020, right, but how would you have thought through that problem? And then, how can we distill those lessons learned that were hard fought on the battlefield into today? Like maybe that's your civilian job, it doesn't matter, it can still help. And I think you putting people in stressful situations outside of their comfort zone is going to expand their horizon and give them way more confidence. I want to jump in one of those planes and have a dogfight with someone, just because it sounds like it's an awesome time.
Speaker 1:It is an awesome time and, yeah, there's a little selfishness on my part in setting that up, but because it's, I mean I love that stuff. But it's going to be more than just that from an experiential piece. Like, without giving away too many secrets, what I can tell you is that the leaders attending this this will be hands-on leadership. They will be asked to do things and to lead and to learn from that. So, yeah, this is experiential. It's funny. You talk about the staff. A good buddy of mine is a retired Colonel, chris Kalenda. He was a COO of Team Sabre over there. I don't know if you guys cross paths or not, but air cab guy. And now he has his own coaching program and now I know where he got that from, but he does a similar program where he takes it to uh, antietam and then gettysburg.
Speaker 3:This is civilians and he walks antietam.
Speaker 1:That was the other battlefield that I got a chance to walk and I couldn't remember the name of it, yeah. So I mean, yeah it's, I've been to gettysburg, I've done uh, obviously I didn't do it with the military, um, and the navy probably does something like that at, uh, you know, command school, but you know I didn't do it with the military and the Navy probably does something like that at a command school, but I was a lieutenant so I didn't have that opportunity.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 3:Question one what do you believe separates a good leader from an extraordinary leader?
Speaker 1:I think an extraordinary leader is somebody who understands it's about the win, win, win when they're setting their people up for success. That means the company wins, their clients win, they win, everybody wins.
Speaker 3:I'm going to quote Michael Scott, the regional manager for Dunder Mifflin. Have you ever watched the Office? Have you ever seen the Office by chance?
Speaker 1:I'm aware of the show, but I've never watched it.
Speaker 3:I use that quote what you just said countless times throughout the week, because you're 100% spot on If you win right, it's sustainable, but if you win wrong, it's short-lived.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not a zero-sum game. If you're thinking it's a zero-sum game, you're missing the boat.
Speaker 3:So question two can you recommend one book or resource or tool that has had a huge impact on your leadership journey?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did a blog some time ago before, but then if somebody said pick one book, it would be Chet Holmes, the Ultimate Sales Machine.
Speaker 3:Okay, I want to write that one down. So question three for someone just stepping into their first leadership role. What should they focus on first?
Speaker 1:Removing the obstacles that keep people from doing their job.
Speaker 3:And the last one, dave, is probably going to be the hardest one when can our listeners connect with you? How can they find you? And then, how can they add to your mission that you're actively on?
Speaker 1:Sure, so connect with me on my webpage, lockedonleadershipcom L-O-C-K-E-D-O-N leadership. I won't spell that. That's the easy one. Com Sign up for my newsletter. It comes out right now, twice a month. It is always insightful tips on leadership and there'll be some resources available to you if you'd like them. So I have a 20 page white paper on radical accountability. So that's my book. Might that'll be.
Speaker 1:My next book is radical accountability, but it sort of gives you some basic. So the concepts it's the extension of my current book, locked On Leadership. They'll be able to. There's some other resources there that you can schedule some time with me. You can buy my book from there as well, and I just recently put up what I call my LORAT Locked On Radical Accountability Tactics Guide. So these are 10 frameworks of tactics that you can employ every day that I recommend you employ every day in your business, for everything from how to communicate clearly, how to have the accountability, what I call counseling sessions, how to have those one-on-one conversations. There's 10 different frameworks within that that you can use to help improve your business.
Speaker 3:Dave. That's powerful. I appreciate the time, brother. It's been an absolute honor and a privilege to get to spend the last hour and a half with you and talk about something that I'm passionate about leadership and is clearly evident in what you're doing and you're living every single day. So you inspire me to continue to do more, become more, learn more. So thank you for everything you do.
Speaker 1:Thank you, joshua, for everything you do.
Speaker 3:You're out there on the tip of the spear right now, so you know it's a precarious place and we need men and women like you out there willing to do it, or we wouldn't be able to do the things we do. I appreciate it, brother. Have a great weekend you too. Phenomenal episode. I have a lot of key takeaways from this one, but for this after action review, we're going to focus on the three that I was able to distill down some of these.
Speaker 3:It's funny, as I continue to film podcast episodes, I'm not really learning necessarily anything new or groundbreaking in this episode. I did, but I'm starting to definitely notice themes, and I talked about this before of a sledgehammer mindset. I've even wrote articles about this, and it's something that I have always embraced as a leader, and that's the first key takeaway. So, a sledgehammer mindset what does that mean? And if you were looking at this in real time, I have a sledgehammer in my. What does that mean? And if you were looking at this in real time, I have a sledgehammer in my background, if you've ever noticed that.
Speaker 3:But what does a sledgehammer do? It is a blunt force for change. It can block, it can break, it can chip, it can rust, it doesn't matter. It serves its basic purpose, which is to destroy what's ever in its way, and that's what leaders do. There's four types of obstacles that the army defines. They can block, they can turn, they can fix or disrupt Every obstacle you face in your life, either in yourself or within an organization. You're going to encounter one of those obstacles, but as a leader of an organization, your job is to have a sledgehammer mentality. If your team cannot overcome those obstacles, break down that barrier, smash those goals so your team can continue to move forward. And Dave summarizes that beautifully in how he talks about overcoming obstacles.
Speaker 3:Number two is accountability, and I mean that's really what Dave is known for, and his definition of accountability, from my perspective, is one of the most refreshing and one that I've never really heard of before. Because when I thought accountability, I always thought of like, there's a standard within the organization, there's a bar, and if you're above that bar, you're above the standard in the organization. If you're below the bar, you will be held accountable. That's a very black and white way of thinking about it, but how Dave thinks about it is it's really an evolved way of pulling it back into a much macro level, or, sorry, a micro level way of defining accountability, breaking it in between the mechanics, the mindset and the models. Those are really the policies, the tools, and having the confidence to go out and that was a theme that I've noticed with Dave is that every job he had, he always embraced difficult challenges and paved the path of what right looks like, and accountability is really finding the root cause. So if we go out and we do a mission right and, for whatever reason, we did not meet our target goals, we get back, we do an after action review, like we're doing right now, or we do a hot wash. Why do we do those things? So we can learn, why do we want to learn? So we can iteratively approve and even if it was successful, you should still do an after action review or a hot wash so you can make those 1% improvements exactly what Dave talked about. But accountability is looking at those processes and procedures and finding that key point of why it failed and asking the question why did we fail? Looking back, was it a policy issue? Was it mechanics issue? Was it not a proper resourcing issue? Was it a people issue? All of those things have consequences and that is where you should apply the leverage.
Speaker 3:When it comes to holding people accountable isn't black and white. It's really identifying the root cause of why people fail or why organizations fail and helping them move forward. And maybe it's not in that same job. But that's the whole reason that you are a leader. Leadership is not a popularity contest, and I had a Sergeant Majors tell me this before. Leadership is not likership. Sometimes you have to make hard decisions and people are put within an organization. They may not be the right fit for specific roles, that's okay. But you have to identify the root cause of why people or missions fail.
Speaker 3:Those five levels of needs and I think that that was something that's very impactful, especially from a leader, to understand and I may butcher these, just know that I'm not looking at this in front, I'm just solely recalling this from memory, from the conversation that I had with Dave. But number one is it's all about psychological needs. It kind of goes back to the hygiene theory. As a leader, you have to make sure that you're setting the conditions and that's the environment for your team to be successful. Psychological needs are just am I in a safe operating space? Number two is security. Do I have the security around me to continue to move forward and do my job? Number three am I cared for and do I belong? Am I intrinsically motivated to do those things. Number four esteem or status within a company. And number five you're doing what you're meant to do. You're actually working towards your purpose and you have to remember that, as a leader or as a company, your job is to set those conditions. Make sure that they have that hygiene, both psychologically and personally, to do well and they're equipped to do well. That's the whole purpose of leadership.
Speaker 3:And then, going back to accountability, all right, team, do me a favor. I always ask this, but I sincerely mean it. If you found value in this episode, here's how you can help spread my message. First, make sure you like, share and subscribe to this podcast. Wherever you're listening right now, make sure you leave a review and send me feedback. I love to hear feedback from you guys because it makes me better. Right, I'm iteratively growing. I know I'm not the best podcast host out there, I'm probably not the most eloquent when it comes to words, but I'm improving every single day and that's the whole goal of it.
Speaker 3:Right, and you can do that by going to Buzzsprout or you can reach me on mcmillianleadershipcoachingcom. Make sure you follow me on social media, and if you're not doing that already, why aren't you, I'm joking. You can find me at tells the leadershipcom or you can search me by name. And if you want to support the show, uh, I would be humbled. Um, I'm always looking for a show sponsor. So if you're listening to this and your company aligns with the core values of what I bring to this world, I'm always looking for a show sponsor. Just reach out, and you can do that by visiting tells the leadershipbuzzsproutcom if you want to donate or just support the show financially. And, as always, guys, I'm your host, josh McMillian, saying every day is a gift. Don't waste yours. I'll see you next time.
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