Tales of Leadership
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Tales of Leadership
#125: Jason “Buzz” Lewis - Formation-Based Leadership
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Jason “Buzz” Lewis is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel, coach, mentor, and leadership practitioner with more than 26 years of experience developing people and leading organizations. Today, he serves through youth sports, faith-based leadership development, and business consulting while co-founding Home Team Standard alongside his wife, Des. His passion is helping strengthen the homes, teams, and relationships that shape future leaders.
Tales of Leadership is a leadership platform dedicated to developing Purposeful Accountable Leaders (PALs) through real stories, shared experiences, and practical insight. Each episode breaks down the decisions, failures, and defining moments that shape leaders in the arena—offering honest, experience-driven lessons you can apply immediately. It’s built for those who want to grow with intention, elevate how they lead, and make a lasting impact—because leadership isn’t about rank, it’s about responsibility, and the greatest leaders live by one principle: deeds, not words.
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Cold Open And Mission
SPEAKER_01And I said, Hey buddy, I just really enjoy creating the environment for the coaches to be successful. And he goes, Yeah, dad, you just love making people better. I started bawling. That was such a special moment for me to realize my kid understands my heart for other people. Talk about caught and taught. That's that's it right there. And if that's any indication of the type of leader he's gonna be, I'm super excited to see that.
SPEAKER_05Welcome to Tales of Leadership. Our mission is simple to develop a better leader by arming you with the tools required to lead with purpose, integrity, and accountability. This podcast is designed to do one thing: help develop a more purposeful and accountable leader, what I like to call a power.
SPEAKER_00Leaders who are in the arena, making tough decisions, lifting others up, executing people over their own interest, to real stories and conversations with leaders who have walked that fast. Powerful leadership left to build with the needs to tackle any obstacles, this world can process.
SPEAKER_05If you're ready to step into the arena and become a leader of your team, your family, and your community needs, you're in the right place. This is tells of leadership. All right, team, welcome back to the Tel is a leadership podcast. I am your host, Josh McMillian, and we are on a mission, and it's simple. I want to help develop a more purposeful and accountable leader, what I like to call a pal, leaders who choose people over their own egos, and they do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. This show exists to help real world leaders like you share lessons that are from leaders in the arena. So you can sharpen your mindset, begin to build discipline, start leading with a purpose integrity, and most importantly, go make an inspired impact. If you are new to Tales of Leadership, you can go visit the Leadership Armory at Tellsofleadership.com and you can find all the different articles, all the different episodes, and additional resources and tools to help you become a more purposeful and accountable leader. On today's episode, I'm gonna be interviewing a good friend of mine, Jason Buzz Lewis. He's a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. He is a coach, he is a mentor, he is a leadership practitioner who has spent more than 26 years of dedicated service developing people and leading organizations. Today he serves through youth sports, faith-based leadership development, and business consulting while co-founding home team standards alongside his wife, Des. His passion for helping strengthen his homes, teams, and relationships that help shape future leaders. And that's what we really get into today. I can see his passion of the journey that he has been on. And we walk through everything uh here towards the end, too. Make sure you stay on because we really start getting into how he has developed such a strong family unit. But without further ado, let's jump into the show. Jason, welcome to the show. Long time coming, I think about two, three, maybe three years in the making for this. But glad we are actually able to make this happen.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, man. I'm just humbled and uh thankful uh to be here, man. And I look forward to the conversation and look forward to unpacking the story and hopefully it's helpful for some people.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. So background, I know we'll get into this, but just for everyone, is Jason and I were neighbors almost for three years when I moved to Fort Belvoir, and we developed a close relationship. We've been in like a small group together, accountability group together to try to hold each other accountable towards like growing into who we want to be as men and men of faith. Uh, and you recently you just separated from the military after 26 years of service. So there's so much stuff that I
Defining Leadership As Environment
SPEAKER_05know that we're going to talk through that we've talked through over the past years, but I'll start off with this one. So, okay, out of 26 years of dedicated service to the country, uh, you've been in multiple different positions through the National Guard active. How do you define leadership in your terms now?
SPEAKER_01I I really appreciate that question because I know what I've learned is everybody has their own version, and no version is wrong, but it's more right for them or you know, people that they have surrounded themselves with. So, kind of how I define leadership now, having been out a year of the military, because that answer I think a year ago would be drastically different because I had experience, but I didn't have the perspective to really align that experience with how I thought my own leadership style was being um implemented with others. So, leadership to me is intentionally creating the environments where people can become the best and the most capable of who they're supposed to be. So it's less about me, more about them. Um, and so that's kind of how I define it. It's the environment shaping so that the person can be who they are supposed to become.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I love that, man. Like it kind of goes to how I define leadership too is like it's true to inspire other people, and to inspire other people, it's to push them to become more, to do more. Like it's the John Quincy Adams quote that like I always find myself going back to, but you're setting the conditions so they can be successful.
SPEAKER_01Like I love what you just said there, yeah, absolutely. Because another way, I another way it's helping create the conditions or set the conditions, that's a military term, right? That's kind of what yeah, but I like it because setting the conditions where people can thrive, grow, and become who they're capable of becoming that's really what it is. So yeah, I think we're in alignment on that. That's that's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_05So let's just jump off at the beginning. Like, where where did your leadership journey start? And what this would be an interesting one, and I think this would be a cool one to like set the tone on. Is where did your nickname Buzz come from?
SPEAKER_01All right, so that nickname came from my wife, and it came probably after a year of being married, you know, when you're still in that honeymoon phase, and I thought I was being cool and sweet and romantic, and I we were having a conversation, and she said something, and my response was, I love you to infinity. And she goes, and beyond, ha ha, buzz light year. Now I'm gonna call you Buzz for the rest of your life. And so that name was a pet name for us internal to our marriage, and and we can get into this later, but so the name came from my wife. Uh, when I went
Nicknames And Reinventing Identity
SPEAKER_01out to work in Special Operations Command, uh, so we went out to Hawaii. I was I was leaving the Georgia National Guard going and trying to do other things outside of just the Georgia Guard. Um, I got to Special Operations Command and I noticed because it was multi-service that all the pilots would put their call sign in their signature block, right? I got annoyed with that, and so I started putting Buzz in my signature block. And it wasn't until I got in the Pentagon where I had a clean slate, nobody knew who I was, and so I could just call myself whatever I wanted. And so I there, everybody in the Pentagon who knows me, and if they watch this, they're gonna laugh. I am not Jason to any of those people, I am Buzz. But then what's more interesting is I had a conversation with a retired first sergeant, a good buddy of mine, who retired about two years ahead of me, and we were having that conversation, and I told him part of my identity, I feel like the separation from the uniform. I don't know why I did that. That's a superior separation from the uniform, I think, is gonna be difficult for me. And he goes, Why don't you just create a new persona? Be somebody different. You have agency to do that, Jason. At the time it was Jason, and he goes, You have agency to do that. Just who do you want to be when you transition? And it gave me freedom. And so I'm Buzz Lewis now. But the problem is people in my previous life who don't know me or knew me, know me as Jason. Everybody else knows me as Buzz. Now everybody's like, Who the heck is this guy?
SPEAKER_05Um that's the story. So I bring that up because I don't know if you know this about me, but like in high school and through middle school and through grade school, I had a nickname stick with me since like the fourth grade. And like my letterman's jacket, like as I grew up, like no one knew my real name. So you're gonna you think this is funny if you ever watch American Gladiators. My nickname was Turbo, uh associated with sports, uh, because like I was really good at like tackling people, and for whatever reason, like I knocked this kid. Uh he was bullying some other people. He was in the junior high, and I was in the fourth grade at this time, and I was always like a relatively big guy compared to like other people. And I was like, hey, I'm not gonna take that. You're bullying my friend. So I like run as fast as I can, knocking through these two big old school oak doors, and like lay the doors flat, and like, oh man, that's like a turbo plow. It's like, oh, we're gonna call you turbo, and it just stuck with me ever since then. So when I go back home, people still don't know my name, like turbo. It's like that's like I feel like I'm an American gladiators movie.
SPEAKER_01That's that's that's an interesting story, but yeah, Dez tells me all the time, people ask her, What do I call him?
SPEAKER_02She's like, Well, I call him, I don't know what you're gonna call him. So that's pretty funny. Because she got mad when I started using it.
SPEAKER_01She's like, Oh, that's my name for you. I'm like, No, it's not, it's everybody's name now. Sorry.
SPEAKER_05When when you talk about like so that's something that I've started to recently think about, like who you want to become and like agency on how you want to define yourself, and I know we'll talk about that like later, but like that that is something I think that is critical for someone like you and me who've thrown themselves into like selfless service for like almost two two decades, and then you walk away from that, you have to really reinvent yourself, and it's hard to do. So having like that grace and space to do it is critical.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, it's just one of those things as you prepare for transition. I know we're not talking transition specific here, but as you prepare for that, one of the things, and it it doesn't make a lot of sense until you've experienced it because it was told to me, and I'm like, Yeah, I don't have time for that. It is allowed, no, seriously. I was like, that's a great thought, but it's just I am I need a job to support my family, so I can't just take months off after I transition. It was some of the best advice, and in a roundabout way, if God said, Ha ha, you're funny, I'm gonna give you the time. And so I would say to anybody who's listening, and you included, on your glide path to retirement, is try to position yourself where you can have that space. And it may look different because what I've learned upon stepping away from the organization and really getting to look back is I thought I knew what I wanted to do. The reality was what I wanted to do was colored by what I had seen others before me do, and I and I tried to fit myself into that mold.
SPEAKER_08Wow.
SPEAKER_01And when I tried to, we were gonna do a franchise, and that fell through because it didn't feel right, the alignment wasn't there. We were gonna, I was gonna get a job, so I submitted a bunch of applications, and the only person that got back to me, and it's part of the story, is the FCA Fellowship of Christian Athletes Area Director who gave me an interview and we had coffee. Out of a hundred hundreds of applications and resumes, I got one call back, and it was God saying, Hey, I want you to entertain fellowship of Christian athletes. You have to raise your own money to do that, you don't get an income. And so he was kind of like laughing at me. But anyway, the farther I got away and the more times I tried, he's like, I just want you to sit and be because oh, by the way, the pension and disability that I'm giving you will take care of your family, and it has. Yeah, I mean, Des does some things a little bit to bring in some extra income, but I have been left to be able to just observe and assess and be aware of where I actually migrate and what I actually enjoy doing, and some of that's part of my story, so I know we're gonna get into that, but I would encourage you and anybody listening, do what you can, even though it would be tough, to create space enough for you to get perspective and just be for a little while. Be silent, be still, be present, because that's been so helpful for me.
SPEAKER_05I love that, man.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um, all right, so let's dig into the leader that you are now, starting off at like a younger age. What were some of the more influential leaders that you had in your childhood that kind of set you on this path?
SPEAKER_01Well, hopefully I don't get emotional because this is not part of my notes because I didn't realize you were gonna be pre-military, but hands down, and still one of the leaders that I look up to the most is my mom. Um part of the reason why I got into the military was because she couldn't pay for college, she was a single parent. Um she wanted what was best for us and told us we were gonna go to college, but didn't have the resources to do it. So my story starts with seeing her example and the selfish, selfless service that she imparted through really raising us as both mom and dad. And
Childhood Leaders And Needed Structure
SPEAKER_01what I didn't see, and what I've found out since, is that my mom leaned on other people, and so we all get this perception of those that we look up to, they've got it all figured out, they just made it happen. And the reality of that years later is she had a support system and people who were propping her up and helping her get through some of the most tough times. And I've often asked her, like, why didn't you share that? And she said, I didn't want to bother you with those things. I wanted to make sure the entire and this is where I think thinking back now, actually talking through it with you, she wanted to create the environment that allowed my sister and I to figure it out on our own. But she was the very first person who I can look back and say she started my leadership journey, and then she kicked me out of the house and said, now you got to figure it out on your own. And that was even helpful because she forced me to leave what I knew, get out of the entire state where I grew up, and go figure out life. And there were times when, and I told her this after the fact, there were times when I would find ways not to have to come home. So I would sleep on an air mattress in in my office at the armory in National Guard when I was working full-time because I didn't have a place to live. And so just the encouragement she gave me to figure it out, that's where my leadership started with my mom, who set the greatest example ever. And she wasn't perfect, but who who is?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. That's like one of the most, I think, influential relationships that you can have, either with your with your mom or your dad. Like so my my mom and dad got a divorce when they when I was like 15, I believe. And I had to my father and I have developed a very, very, very close relationship. And I knew that I was either going to join the military or go to college, one of the two. And it's I just happened to do do both. And like going to college was a hard one for me, uh, joining the National Guard because I had to figure out how to pay for all that cost. Um, and I remember my dad sitting down and we're thinking through like how we're gonna pay through this, and like he's a he is a humble, humble man from rural West Virginia, just a good old mountain man, yeah, and never never leaves the state. He's like, if we do this, like you can't, you can't fail. Um, and that kind of set me on a path of where he helped push me outside of my comfort zone because I was just going to like, hey dad, I don't need to go to college, I'll join the Marine Corps, and I was almost getting ready to do it, but he put me on a path to you know who who I am today. So we both share that, you know, coming from like slightly a broken family. It's funny, your mom was your your uh guiding light or your asthma check, and then my dad was mine, and I just modeled the behaviors that he would show and emulate with other people. Like, hey, yeah, he never taught me like those types of lessons, like verbally, but he did it with his deeds. Uh and it sounded like the same with you and your mom.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and sometimes you know it's nice to think about a guiding light. It was more like the mama bird that pushes the baby bird out and said, See you later, bro, figure it out. Yeah, yeah. Somewhere in there is you know a healthy balance, but yeah, sometimes it felt like a stern push. Hey, get out of here and go for the wall, as opposed to, oh yes, it's gonna happen, you know, so gently.
SPEAKER_05So that's awesome, man. Uh so deciding to join the military, what was that you know, tipping point for you? Like, hey, I'm all in.
SPEAKER_01Well, I again it was I need to pay for college because my mom said I must go to college. And um, I wasn't I didn't know any better to go find a job or I didn't want to do any of that. But I think part of it too was I knew that I needed more structure, even though my mom did a great job of providing the environment, I didn't have a dad, he was not in the picture. Um, and he recently a couple years ago did pass away, and we were able to reconcile after probably 30 plus years. But I felt like in addition to being able to pay for my own college, the military would do that. But I also deep down, I think I needed some male
West Point Detour And New Direction
SPEAKER_01role models in my life. Yeah, and I knew enough to know that if I went to college and I did all these things agnostic of people who could guide me through some of that, I I would I went off the rails. And and part of that college story, and I'll just do this briefly, is the example of that is I got into West Point. I did never I never ended up going to West Point. I got into West. Yeah, yeah. I got into West Point, I had the nomination, I was ready to go, I had it all done in March. And then in May, when everybody was graduating and going to college graduate or high school graduation parties, I got picked up by the sheriff walking home from a party. And I got thrown in the in the drunk tank. Uh, my mom and dad had to come get me, and I was like, All right, I'm good, nobody's gonna know about this. And West Point knows about everything, apparently. And they called they called me and they said, Hey bud, why didn't you tell us about this? I was like, Because it hadn't happened yet, it happened in May. Uh, you guys told me I was good in March. It wasn't a thing during the application process. And they're like, Well, here's what's gonna happen you're gonna write a letter and try to explain to us why we still need to let you in. And I said, Okay, and I did, and I heard nothing for months, and I finally heard something from the recruiting operations officer. I can't remember his first name, but he was Captain Davidson. Captain Davidson said, Hey bud, sorry, you ain't coming. You better find a way to get into college and and figure out your next year. And so I did. I went down to a small college, uh, it was Marion College in Indianapolis, and now it's Marion University, so they've grown significantly. But I went down there, I had a year of a 1.9 GPA and figuring out life because back to what I just said, I needed structure and I thought I was gonna get it going to West Point, and I went to college on my own, none of that. Now, God has a funny way of saying, okay, that was you by yourself. Now let's figure this out. And I actually ended up receiving a bunch of letters. Captain Davidson and set my name to a bunch of RTC programs in West Council. And he said, This kid is worth saving, it just won't be through West Point. Yeah, and so I got a VHS tape. Some of the your audience probably doesn't know what a VHS tape is, in a big, big yellow envelope, North Georgia College and State University at the time, now known as the University of North Georgia. I ended up going there because they sent me a VHS tape that I could see, and I was like, Mom, that's where I'm going. I want to have all that fun, do all those outdoor things. And so my second year, my sophomore year after I finished basic training, I ended up there in Frog Week. And then that's the start of really the officer part of my journey because I was enlisted first.
SPEAKER_05So, but what made you make the pivot from going enlisted to officer?
SPEAKER_01Uh, so I always wanted to be an officer. I just yeah, was told, and fortunately, um, given the information that if you are enlist before you become an officer and you go to college, you get paid monthly. So in my junior or my soft, my junior and senior year, my junior year I got 350 bucks a month, and my senior year I got 400 or yeah, 400 bucks a month for being part of the guard simultaneously, part of the guard and part of an RTC program.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah, I was uh same. Uh that was my godson, bought my r rent ramen noodles and protein.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and then you come out of school having been paid, and then no debt, and all you gotta do is give back your user service.
SPEAKER_05So it was good. Yeah, I I think that that was like one of the the biggest things, like financially. So we have like different pillars of our life, and then you you know that I have like these seven key pillars, one of them is like finances. Not having to pay for college debt and doing like the simultaneous membership program was looking back at it now, was was massive because I still have friends who are still paying off their debt, and how far that has set them back because I've been able to use that as a catalyst to save more uh and grow more. It's it's insane.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it is, it is, and it was so helpful because I came out with no debt, and everybody gets married differently. Des came in with a little bit of debt, and we were able to like completely remove that in a short period of time because we didn't both have debt, and then now we're that's awesome, you know, paid for cars, no car payments, that kind of stuff. It's just it's such a blessing because um, and this is kind of off the subject, but not really. But it goes back to leadership. Yeah, when we got married and we had kids, Des said, I want to be at home, and I So let's do it. And we've lived on one income for the last 16 years. The military is that blood. But I got told by somebody, you will never make that work. Nobody lives on a single income anymore. And I said, And I thought I didn't say this out loud to that person, but I said, watch me do it. And we've done it. And it's just a blessing. But it goes back to financial stability, right? About how do you lead that all too?
SPEAKER_05So yeah. So to you, the same. Like my wife and I have been on a single income, you know, two two kids for almost uh six years, and she just recently started going back to work. You can a hundred percent do it, but it requires you to be unreasonable. And what that means is like you have to have a budget and you have to say no to your wants, and it it requires discipline. And a lot of people in this day and time lack the discipline to say no to their wants. Um it's it's uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_01It requires uncomfortableness, uncomfortable conversations, not keeping up with the Joneses or the Josie's, that kind of thing, right? And that's hard to do in a world that says, hey, look at everybody else. Um, so yeah, I get it.
SPEAKER_05There's one thing that you said in there, too, that I want to make sure we go back. So one door closes, other doors open. So West Point at the time, when looking, because I didn't know that about you, probably super devastating. But the doors that opened up was the path that you should be down. And there's so many times that like doors have shut in my face. Like, well, I have no idea what to do, but a little bit of tactical patience, another door opens, and lo and behold, that door was the one I should have gone down the entire time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, no, and I'll and I'll tell you this, and this kind of gets into my faith journey too. But to that point, I I used to think, okay, I'm just gonna wait for the door to close. And then that's my answer, right? And then since I've been out, been more active in building my face, faith, excuse me, been more in uh encouraged to do decision making with my wife because we're always together. We've started praying to God to say, hey, Lord, if this isn't the direction you close the door, you make it so apparent that there's no question that you're all over this. And instead of just allowing it to happen by default, we pray for it to happen. We we say, Lord, if it's not your will and it's just something I want, make it abundantly clear. And that door closes, and then we'll then we'll pivot in the direction you need us. But it kind of changed my perspective on instead of just by default waiting for that door to close, be prayerful about ensuring that God is the one that's closing it and not something or someone else. And that's hard to do. I wasn't ever faithful enough in in my walk with Christ to do that back then. But the more I've realized that he's always closing those doors, but he almost sometimes wants us to ask him to do that as a as a show of our faith to know that he's got something better to your point, he's got something better planned for us, and we just can't see it.
SPEAKER_05So yeah, yeah. That's I really think that that's like one of the hardest things of like the ego of like we almost force things to go like, hey, I I need to do this, I need to do this job, and like I stay in this position and uh keep grinding, even know that I know that hey, I'm not intrinsically tied to this. There's no there's no heart alignment, and like I always talk about this as like head, heart, hand alignment. If I can see it, if I can feel it, I will do the work and it's easy. The work is easy. Um, but that's just the ego. I what I've learned is my ego, uh, and I have to be okay with like shifting to to another place. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01And and don't get me wrong, sometimes he lets you go through that door that you weren't supposed to, because you need an experience on the other side that's gonna by default move you in the direction he wants you. So sometimes he allows it too.
SPEAKER_05I found see the you've had like a very when we first connected, so Fort Belvoir is an interesting thing, so that we have reserve officers, national guard officers, joint officers, all living in like the same community. And for me, that was that's different than I've ever had in like my entire 18 years in service. It's usually hey, all army officers active duty, and they're like the same carbon copies of you almost of the way, living in like a neighborhood. Yeah, but you you've been active national guard your entire career. Walk me through kind of that that journey as being a guardsman and then being in the military.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I I think so. Going back to West Point, right? And I think we all know this, and this is not nothing, I'm not saying this in a disparaging way, but people who go to
Why The Guard Shaped His Leadership
SPEAKER_01West Point, it's one of two paths. You come out super rock star and you do a 20-year career and you enjoy every part of it, or you come out because it was all day, every day, even in the summers, and you're like, all right, I'm just gonna do my next six years and get out. So you have two guys, two types, like they come out really good and gung ho, and they're probably some of the best leaders I've ever been around. And then some of them just come out and they're not bad leaders, they've just been beat down by the by the experience, right? And the reason I highlight that is because I think God knew that I I would have come out the second experience, it was too much, too often, too soon, from what I had known, which was nothing. My mom did the best she could, but I was free to do what I wanted as long as I was home before she got up in the morning. And for me to go from everything's on the table to you can't do anything on your own without us telling you to, I don't think I would have been ready for that. And so the funny part about this is North Georgia College and that college experience where you're in the core, but you're having the college experience all at the same time, naturally led me to making the decision to go National Guard because when I was at North Georgia, I was still, and I don't say this to brag, but I just say this about where I was at when I was a cadet. And I think a lot of people uh who are young officers or aspiring young officers are kind of in this category. It's all about how well I can do, the spotlight's on me because I'm the one getting assessed, and I want to do as good as I can do to get the top spot. And so I was in the top 50 in the country when I graduated out of 5,000 ROTC cadets in the top 50. I had my packet, active duty infantry, and then the PMS, the professor of military science, irritated me. And I went to the lady who had all the packets and I said, please give me that packet. I would like to change it. And I changed it to National Guard, military police, human resource, anything but infantry and anything but active duty because I was gonna stick it to the man. And I got National Guard, military police, yeah. But the college experience at North Georgia provided me an opportunity to migrate into the National Guard in a in an environment where I was getting structure, but I still was allowed time to decompress and disconnect. And so for me it was the right choice, but it came about, I think, in the wrong way, because I was a young, cocky, ignorant, prideful person, and I thought the decision I was making was what best was what was best for me, which it ended up being, and God knew that, but I didn't. And so I think my journey into the National Guard had less to do about the fact that I couldn't hack it active duty infantry, but more because God was telling me I needed to head this path. Because I can tell you some of the first few stories that I can remember about my formation in the National Guard, I think was a direct reflection of something that you just said. Is everybody comes out of West Point or goes into active duty as a young officer and they're carbon copies?
SPEAKER_08Yep.
SPEAKER_01I think the value and the benefit in anybody who's transitioned out of the active duty into the National Guard, the demographic in the National Guard is older than it is in the active duty. And the benefit to that is you have people who have jobs and leadership experiences that aren't solely military. And so when I came in as a young lieutenant, I didn't just come in and finish bullock, I came in, finished bullock, and rolled right into a deployment. Three NCOs Sergeant First Class Clint Teague, Staff Sergeant Joel King, and Staff Sergeant Phelps, who had life experience and taught me it's less about me and the individual I thought I was the rock star to be, and more about the team and we and what that taught me was really um leadership isn't about having all the answers, it's about using the knowledge and the experiences of the people in your unit to achieve the mission. And so I that's a long answer to your question. That's why I think I went national guard because I needed that experience at the very start of my career to realize it wasn't about me, it was about the people and the experiences they had had, and how was I going to use that information to make the the team better?
SPEAKER_05So I think it goes back to one of the questions I want to ask you too is like, when did you realize that leadership was more about like formation than than influence? I I think like that that would be in my mind. I I first of all, just to kind of shape it for the listeners, so order of merit list, as as you come out as a a young cadet um in the service academies has their own order of merit list, or like as a cadet and ROTC across the nation. To get the infantry um and your duty assignment would is like top of the top. That and aviation are the two hardest ones to actively to get. So you have to be well-rounded, you have to crush it at these camps that we have, LDAC, um, LTC, if you've done any of those, go to different schools, community service, uh grades, just be an upstanding man of character, uh, extracurricular activities, all of those things. And then I find it like absolutely wild that you pulled your back and you uh put it in National Guard. But I I think all of that leads you to who you are today. Uh but then you come in there and you gravitate towards a lot of those leaders that you just talked about. And I think like that's where true leadership lessons can be pulled from, is just the tacit knowledge that comes collectively from like the wisdom of older generations. So, like me being in SOCOM the last three years and working with those night and day difference versus the regular army. And why is that? Well, the average age of most of those people are like 36 years old, sergeant majors, common sense style leadership, like it and it was refreshing to see how they thought through problems and then coming back to the regular army, totally different. Um, so it's interesting to get those perspectives, as especially as a younger officer.
SPEAKER_01Well, absolutely, and I'll go back. You asked me who was probably one of the first leadership mentors that I looked up to. It was my mom. The second, yeah, very close second, was Sergeant First Class Clint Teague, who was, and this is hilarious to me, and this is God's way of saying, he was instrumental in your development. So I first class Teague was my first platoon sergeant. When I was a company commander, he was my readiness NCO.
SPEAKER_08Oh wow.
SPEAKER_01When I was the Brigade S1, he was my senior human resources NCO. When I was in the G1, he was the G1 sergeant major. And so he tracked with me most, if not all, of my career. And he was with me on the two deployments that I had in some form or fashion. He was a guiding light. If you want to call us a guiding light, he was 10 years my senior, he was always giving me sage advice, but you know, going back to the question you asked, where did I see formation start to occur? Yeah, I started seeing how he was forming me first, and I'll share an anecdotal story with you. Yeah, we went on our first we went on our first deployment, and the the six-month train-up was horrible. It was one of the first they're always horrible. Well, we were a national guard unit, and that unit hadn't deployed in years, so it took six months at Fort Stewart for somebody to feel comfortable enough for this unit to actually deploy. Um it was it was terrible. Part of that process was there were a few times that he and I, toe to toe, yelling and screaming at each other, me just being ignorant and not realizing he was trying to help me. We were out practicing a traffic control point during training, and all of a sudden rounds started coming in. And I looked at him and he looked at me and he said, What do you want to do? And I said, I have no idea. And then he said, We're gonna go this way.
SPEAKER_02I said, No, we're gonna go that way.
SPEAKER_01And I said, We're gonna go that way because we gotta keep you know maintaining this control point. And he's like, Right now we're getting killed, who cares? Let's move. And I didn't listen to him, but I looked at the um the person, the controller, uh the OC, right? And I looked at him and I said, What would you do? He said, I don't know, and walked away.
SPEAKER_08Oh that makes me mad.
SPEAKER_01I was like, um, okay, what do I do? And so we all got killed, basically. End of the story. I thought about that after the fact, and it really, it really got to me. And so let's fast forward to actual deployment, right? Out of the training, actual deployment. I tended to keep that dynamic where I thought I needed to do everything. We set up an actual traffic control point in country doing the job that we were put over there to do. And Sergeant First Glass Teague sat in his truck. We backed our trucks up, and then we had two other trucks on either side. And he allowed me for probably an hour to run back and forth to the vehicles on the outside of the traffic control point, letting myself get tired. Because every time a car would come, I thought I needed to be in the moment. I thought I needed to be the one to execute the leadership and oversight. He let that go on for about an hour. And then as I passed the last time, he grabbed me by the back of my kit and he threw me in the truck. And he said, This is a microphone. Use it. And I said, What are you talking about? Execute leadership from here and tell them what you need them to do. Allow them and their experience to be what makes this successful, not you individually. And I didn't know it at the time, and in retrospect, that was where I realized that it's less about me and more about them or we, and formation is important because you can take what you do and help somebody other get better, somebody else get better, but you have to be aware of that first. And he was the first person that helped me become aware of formation. Now, I didn't do much with it until later on down the road. Um, but as a company commander, you add to that formation is a thing, and everybody has a story, and I have a story for that, but I don't know if you have any questions on kind of what I went over there.
SPEAKER_05No, I I think we all have those leaders that were instrumental. I so I think uh similar to you, Sergeant um Leonard Kabyab. Uh, he was my staff sergeant, platoon walker, and eye bullock. And then I mean there's a couple stories there that like I just failed. Uh like squad leader live fire. I was the squad leader. We got recocked, we had to stay the night on the objective. Powerful moment where he set me down. He's like, hey Josh, like you're doing all these things and you're trying to manage your two teams and they keep failing. This is obviously not working. Have you thought about realigning people on your team to different leadership positions? Because it's in your ability to do so based on their strengths and weaknesses. It's like, well, shoot, no, I have not. And then I did that, and then we just knocked it out of the park and we had the best iteration in the world. Yeah. Fast forward. I go through ranger school, airborne school, mortar leader school, all the HUA schools that we've both been through. And I show up to my first unit at Fort Lewis, Washington, getting ready to deploy, and I take over my platoon in combat, and staff sergeant caby is my weapon squad leader. And like, oh my God. And he's like, Well, I already know you. I was like, Yeah, you do. Uh, but that was instrumental because that was really the the molding ground for me of who I am today, like to really submit like my my character, what my core values are, my belief system, like how I choose to lead and what to uh want to be remembered by. Like that experience in Afghanistan was key for me. So I'm no questions, dude. Like, I I loved that. That was fire.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And and kind of continuing the arc of that leadership towards how I came to realize that formation is actually so much more important than we give it credit for, is company commander to battalion XO. So as a company commander, an infantry company commander at that, uh in Arista unit. So guys that go out and scout for all the other guys. So you got to be fit, you got to be in shape. Everybody has a story. The reason how I came to that realization is my first PT test when it was the APFT, so just push-up sit-ups, two mile run. I had a bunch of 18 to 22-year-olds getting double-digit scores. Now, I know you know what that means, Josh. Most of everybody, 325 score, right? I had guys getting 56, I had guys getting 92, uh, not even like close to passing. And as a young guy, I was 27 at the time, I think. And I had a bunch of guys older at National
Formation Over Ego In Command
SPEAKER_01Guard, like 35, 40 year olds passing with flying colors. And I'm like, what is wrong with these young kids? And I was I was irate. I looked at my first order at the time, and then Sarner First Glass Teague was the readiness NTO, and I said, I'm counseling all 17 or 20 of these kids directly. And they laughed at me and they said, No, you're not. I said, Yes, I am. And so they gave in, they said, All right, the commander wants what he wants. So as I started that process, though, I was gonna jump in everybody's fourth point of contact. I was gonna tell them how it was, this is how it's gonna be. And if you can't get on, you're out. And as I got to have those conversations, I realized everybody has a story, and sometimes it's not about what they're not doing, and what about what's going on in their environment preventing them from doing the best they could. And so you fast forward that from that experience where I learned it's about the people to my battalion XO experience. Um, I had a bit the one of the best battalion commanders ever. He was pretty hang loose, he was an engineer guy, he had chewed a lot of dirt, um, been active duty, came to the National Guard. So he just had a calm about him. I am not a calm person, I am on all the time, I'm always doing stuff. And he's like, All right, hey, I'm gonna give you guidance, I'll be hands-off. You run the battalion staff and you make this organization the best it can be. Really, what he told me is, I'm gonna teach you how to be a battalion commander without telling you I'm teaching you how to be a battalion commander. Yeah, but through that process, I realized that everybody has a story and leadership multiplies through other people. I didn't I didn't have to do everything, and it wasn't incumbent on me to make the organization better. What I learned he was actually doing was giving me a proving ground where I was able to listen and understand each of the people in the organization. I was able to use their talents and resources, and where I saw gaps, I was able to shore those up. And so one of the coolest things I was able to do, and one of the things that I think made that battalion one of the best in the brigade, was I chose and I strategically started to develop the other XOs at the company commander level so that they could do what I was doing for my battalion commander, for their company commander, and create space and time to develop other people so that all of the organizations were getting better, not just the battalion headquarters. And so leadership multiplies through other people, is what I learned there.
SPEAKER_05There was a story, uh, Edward, I can't remember his last name, I had him on the show, and he walked me through like, hey, the the science of um teamwork, and he used like a horse and a buggy metaphor. So a horse and a buggy, a horse can pull 4,000 pounds. But if you put two horses on chain, then it can pull 12,000 pounds. So there's a multiplication effect that happens if you have one good leader and they begin to build systems processes that are focused on growth and the organization and the culture, and they have a clear vision of how they want to take the team and they have the norms established of how we interact with each other, it will trickle down because like trichinosis, like you you see it, you get it, like and it dawns on you, and I man, that's genius, too. I'm gonna replicate this in each one of the companies. Now, if I replicate this in each one of the companies, these executive officers are probably going to start doing this with the platoon leaders, and the platoon leaders will get it, and then at bottom up, they will be better team members, and it's a team of teams approach, like the team will win because it's collectively a better organization.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. One of the things that I would think would be most challenged of leading to so I was in a national guard too, and that's where I started. Um In West Virginia. And like being there and working with a lot of those people, like PT, like obviously, is something that isn't as important to some of those. And in West Virginia, it was even worse though. Leading civilians, because really I think that's a portion of it, like in the National Guard. Like, how is that? Like, all right, so you're a high-level functioning officer, you're in the National Guard, but you are also given the unique dynamic of having to lead really civilians. Um, that are are they have a daytime job, they may be a police officer or a firefighter or a construction worker. Like, I remember when I was an OTC, and when you told me that about the OTC, like walking away, it it pisses me off because like I I would per coach, teach, and mentor. That is the purpose of an OTC. Like, if there's a young lieutenant that doesn't know something, then this is a teachable moment. And I'm not gonna let you just fall on your face, but like, hey, I'm not gonna give you the answers either, but there's certain things you could do. Here's some co-as of like thinking through logically, and then you choose the path you want, and we'll talk about it at the end. Um, but how how was that? Like leading those types of individuals.
SPEAKER_01I again I think um, and I'll use a story and then I'll answer your question. So when I got to my first unit as a platoon leader in the National Guard, I had a group of tankers, so it was a smaller platoon because you only have four tanks in a platoon, so it was 16 people total, me plus 15 others. I had a specialist, a 50-year-old specialist. I I will not tell you his name because I love the man to death and I don't want to be disparaging towards him, but I learned very quickly that as a 25, 26-year-old man, I would have to engage with others who weren't of my age and probably a senior with experiences that weren't just the army. And so he just wanted to show up and do something different and enjoy serving, right? And so if you go back to every every person as a story, I think understanding one, where they're coming from and why they are choosing to serve in the National Guard and not in the active duty, I think helps paint a picture and a filter by which you then begin to use them in a capacity that lights their fire, if that makes sense. So every unit that I remember had to have a fire marshal. Why am I gonna make a platoon leader be a fire marshal if they have no interest in firefighting? But I have a firefighter in the unit that could do that. Or, you know, any of the other various things that we had to do, I made it a point to tell the platoon leaders and the platoon sergeants find people who are naturally gifted to do these things. Don't think it just has to be the platoon leader or the senior leader or the first sergeant or the XO. Because if it's left on our shoulders, a lot of that's gonna fail. And so why not have a hundred dudes showing up with one job that they love to death? That's how I started to get more involvement and I started to manage more civilian than military folks who just wanted to show up and do something different and serve in a capacity that made them feel good and valued. And so I started using people, not just in a in a team leader role. That team leader obviously he had an important job with his team, but he also had an important job for the unit, whatever that assignment he got. But it made him feel like he didn't just show up and stand against the wall with his foot on the wall, you know, standing around doing nothing.
SPEAKER_05Today's show sponsor comes from 10th Mountain Whiskey and Spirit Company. They are a philanthropic award-winning craft distillery located in the heart of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. For being a listener of Tales of Leadership, you get 10% off on any order using the promo code PandoCommando when you place an order at 10th Whiskey.com. Both of those are in the show notes, so you'll be able to find them. 10th Mountain Whiskey and Spirit Company honor heroes and they craft a legacy. 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. No, I think I think that that's powerful. And and so that's a countercultural thing, I think, within the military. It's like
Sponsor Break And Back To It
SPEAKER_05because it's very hierarchical in terms of like rank and title, duty, description, time of service. Like when I was a company commander, uh, as a H H C company commander specifically, and a rifle company commander, I I would I had a private that came from the Ranger Regiment. Dude, um, I'm not gonna say his name. Uh, he happened to be in the car with a battle buddy who got a DIU, uh D D I D I U is not what I'm trying to think. What's the term? DUI, there we go. Not Defense Innovation University. Um, I still have acquisitions on the brain. And then they kicked him out of regiment. Dude, that was the best thing ever because that dude was an absolute stud. And his leadership acumen and potential was higher than some of the senior E6s I had. I was like, hey, I'm gonna put
Using Civilian Strengths On Military Teams
SPEAKER_05you as a squad leader. I don't care if you're a private because like your potential is much higher. So, in order to do that, what can I do to like be able to give you more authority? So I made him like the training um room NCO IC and like all of these different things. Like, hey, I know you're not an NCO, but I see the potential that you have and thinking outside the box. And like I had a lot of peers like give me slack on those things. Yeah, but at the end of the day, we crushed every other company. And I think it was because like I used that formation concept that you talked about, like the the gaps, where are the gaps and seams in my formation, and what are the unique strengths that I have to apply to? Because the military, we're we're given the team that we inherit, we can't necessarily build that up, so you have to optimize that. I dude, I love that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I I mean, if I if I want to take it to sports, which I'm heavily involved in now at the youth level, right? Because there's there's a whole bunch of reasons why I navigated that when I got out to that when I got out, but I think too, it goes back to what you just said. It's the formation piece occurs in the environment, and you can't have somebody in the environment if you didn't give them the responsibility, because then they're not looking to execute those things. And if I go back to sports, the training, practice, competition type framework is we can train them to do something, but the practice and the competition is really giving them something potentially outside of the training they've got for the specific position because they have other skill sets. Just because you got trained to be an infantryman doesn't mean you have no other skills, right?
SPEAKER_05100%.
SPEAKER_01And it's it's the utilization of those skills, and how do you help them see that those skills can incorporate into the job they're doing, but it also can be valuable other places? And if you don't give them those opportunities to um grow in that area that you've given them, you don't create the conditions in the environment to allow them to get better.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, man. The yeah, that's that's straight fire. Um, yeah, I it's funny, we're already almost 50 minutes into this, and I haven't even got like through a round of my question. So is there anything that you want to share from because I was gonna dig into your deployments, but is there anything specifically that you want to share about lessons that you learned from your your two deployments? Is there any story that really like just resonates and stick with you that shapes who you are today? And then we're gonna dive into like the transition piece where you're at.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, man.
SPEAKER_01I mean, there I can't, and this is funny because I spent almost two years, which is far less than most people, right? Um, on deployments, but I I can tell you that I don't know that there are any like stories that come to the top about on deployment other than the one I shared about you know the traffic control point.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because I think through the rest of that time on that deployment into others, the opportunities where I had to execute the most leadership were largely private, meaning I took the time outside of big opportunities with everybody around to coach, teach, and mentor the leaders who were actually executing the tasks on the deployment. Meaning uh I feel like there wasn't any big thing that occurred other than the small, consistent conversations under the current of those deployments that I think made the organization successful. So again, it was less about me and more about them, right? It was they were successful, and I think we brought we did bring everybody home on both the deployments, and that was a function not of me, it was a function of everybody else. Feeling confident, feeling capable, feeling positioned and established enough to make sure everybody got home. So I think that's the biggest takeaway is again, it goes back to less about me, more about we, and how are you using those people in those capacities, even in a situation like a deployment where life's on the line? Because if it's all about one person, everybody else just sits around and gets complacent and um doesn't do their part, and then that's when bad things start to happen, when uh standards start to slip and things start to go where they're almost there's almost an inability to bring them back to standard, right? Like they just get so out of whack that either people die or the organization's asked to leave and go home.
SPEAKER_05That's something I think a lot of people don't necessarily like think through. Like burnout with me of what I've learned. Why do people typically burn out? And like high achieving people, like why do they typically burn out? Because I think like leadership, people gravitate towards the people that they know they're going to knock down home run. So they're always putting these hard jobs, there's constantly under pressure. But what's the side effect of that? The side effect of that is that you have a whole vast array of individuals that could do that exact same job. And I can give you multiple examples, like pinpoint examples of this, that don't have the opportunity now to grow, be taught, to be mentored, to be groomed to achieve their full potential because the easy button is, and it goes to leadership complacency. I'm gonna keep asking Jason to do this because I know Jason's going to do it. But the side effect is you know, he is eventually going to burn out because we're all human. We only have so much capacity, and then it's going to lead to complacency, which is overall going to lower the capability of your organization. And like that was a hard lesson for me. And I learned it like relatively recently, especially like in acquisitions, is like if you go to your same studs every single time, yeah, and eventually they'll either move um or they will be burned out and it'll be diminished, and then it you don't have a crop to grow. So, like as as a as a leader, you're you're a farmer. That's really what you're doing. You're you're sowing the seeds of others in your organization so we all can reap a harvest together collectively. And I that that's that's powerful. I love that too.
SPEAKER_01Well, so now that now that I've I I've talked through that and I've I kind of heard what you just said, I do have two stories that pop up. Ooh, love it. So the first story is kind of a meta meta-narrative of the second deployment. Um, and it's a contrast to my first deployment. So the first deployment, I was a young platoon leader. We went over as a unit, the unit worked together seamlessly. We were one unit that trained up and deployed together as a unit. So if you take what we just talked about and what you just said about um utilizing the skills and strengths of everybody on the team, and it's not just left to one person. Is on on my second deployment when I was a company commander, I was like, this is gonna be awesome. I'm in charge of the whole unit. We're gonna deploy together. We got through training, we knew what we were gonna do, and we got to the deployment site, and they said, Oh, by the way, you guys are no longer doing this job, you're gonna be a bunch of police mentor teams, and we're gonna split you into five separate units, smaller platoon-sized units. And I was like, Are you kidding me? I am so grateful, I am so grateful that our leadership team, and based on the experiences I learned as a young platoon layer and all the stuff I talked about, you know, it's more about me, it's less about me and more about we. Everybody has a story and all that formation, took the time through training to form all those leaders so that when they were separate from me, I knew that they were capable and could take care of their soldiers. Because I can tell you this a third story that just popped in my head. So during that deployment, I had a young platoon leader and a platoon sergeant. Um, I'm glad he had the platoon sergeant he did because he wasn't the strongest. I had done my best. They got down to a place where the police mentor leader was not him, it was a lieutenant colonel. So my team got given to somebody else. And through the course of and the process of planning for one of the missions that they had to go on, I am so grateful that the platoon sergeant felt capable and qualified enough to tell the lieutenant colonel and the young lieutenant, we're not doing that because that's not safe and stupid. And I'm not putting my guys in that situation. Long story short, and you know the chaps, you never go in the same way as you come out, particularly when it's information given to you by a local national. You never go the same way and then come out, and that's what they were gonna ask them to do was go in one way and come out the same way with no other alternatives. And he said, We're not doing that. And I'm so grateful for that platoon sergeant who stood up because he felt like it was his job to, and oh, I'm not just gonna listen to the platoon later, I'm gonna use my intelligence and what I had been told is I am valued and I am valuable, and I don't have to listen to either of these two who are making a poor decision. So that that's that story of social. But I don't know that they would have done that if when we got split, I hadn't and my first sergeant hadn't taken the time to give them the confidence because we gave them the responsibility. Now that's a serious story, but if you have a question, go ahead. I have a funny story that I think your uh audience will like.
SPEAKER_08No, go ahead.
SPEAKER_01So, this story is on the team I was a part of, I was actually uh working with a lieutenant colonel who kind of did the same thing my battalion commander uh when I was an exo did. He he knew enough to know I was a young guy. He was probably in his 50s, he was an older lieutenant colonel, right? Um, I had spunk in vigor, and he was like, hey, you can run the show. So every every time before we went out, we had like three trucks. We would go out, go around the fob, shoot the 50 cals behind just to make sure they were good before we went on the mission. I had a young specialist and I said, he was on my truck. And I said, Hey, did you check the headspace and timing on the 50 cal? Roger, sir, got it. I did it. And I looked at the team waiter and I said, Did he check the headspace and timing? Yep, Roger, he did it. All right, got it, guys. I I trust you. You guys run the truck. I just get on the truck, you take me to where I need to go. You guys have got it. We went around the back of the fob, test fire, test fire, test fire. All of a sudden, smoke explodes into the cab of the MRAP. And I'm like, I look back and I'm like, what the heck just happened? I knew what had happened. The 50 cow blew up, right? Like it blew down because the head space assignment hadn't been checked. And this kid, uh he I pull him down because he's bleeding all over his his crotch because all that had even hit. And I said, All right, we're going back in. Medic, take care of him. While he was in the medic station, I went in my office and I typed up a counseling statement. And I went in while he was getting shrapnel picked out of his crotch and I said, You're gonna sign this, and this is what he looked at me, the medic looked at me, the platoon star looked at me, he said, Are you serious right now? I said, Absolutely. Here's what's gonna happen in the future. You will check every single vehicle's headspace and timing. You are responsible for the care and the safety of not only the weapons, but the the people in those vehicles because you could have hurt a lot of other people other than yourself. And now in retrospect, I still know the young man. We laugh about that story, but in the moment, I was dead serious. I'm like, I took it as my responsibility, and it was my fault, and I needed to make sure he understood that it it was partly my fault because I didn't double check what I expected, but he knew moving forward that it was his job to make sure he did that and the safety and the care of everybody else in the equipment, and he did for the rest of the deployment.
SPEAKER_05There's something that like I've I've learned learned recently, and I never thought through this, is like everyone has responsibilities based off their title and their descriptions that they have. Like, you are responsible to do X, Y, and Z. It's just part of the job description. Yeah, but when you don't do those things, then you will be held accountable. So you're responsible for these actions, but you'll also be held to accountable for those. And like you, you as a company commander and a platoon leader, I think a lot of people would have been unwilling to do what you did. Yeah, but the right answer is you have to hold people accountable. Like, hey, I get it, man. Like you got hurt, but you got hurt because you didn't do your job, and then you lied to me, which is a violation of one of my core values respect, integrity, and duty. So not only did you do something that you uh violated a core value. So that I'm gonna be unreasonable and I'm gonna hold you accountable. And I'm not doing it to be malicious, I'm doing it to make you better, and I'm doing it to make the team better because now lives are online, and that's the most extreme version of accountability, too, man. Like, do back in World War II, if someone didn't listen to you, like an officer pull out is like 45, and it's just a different world. Like you have to be unreasonable as a leader to have these tough conversations that I've learned, and a lot of people nowadays just want to try to kick that get down the road, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And and and don't get me wrong, if he had been unconscious and yeah, 100% it was a critical situation, I would have not done what I did. But he was in there, he was fully conscious, he had a little bit of shrapnel in his in his thighs, and I was like, dude, I need you to know while you're having this experience how important this is. Yeah, and this is the outcome of your choice, your willful choice to not be truthful, and just say, No, I didn't I have a five about five more minutes, sir, to make sure this is right, and you didn't do that, so I love that, man.
SPEAKER_05Um, all right, so transitioning from that to where you are now, just recently transitioned out of the military. What did retirement teach you about leadership in general that the army has not in this experience of becoming civilian Jason?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I mean, you know, it's a lot of the same things we talked about, but I think I early in my career, what I viewed as leadership was, you know, influence and having all the answers. And I we I used to say it all the time, right? I like getting people, other people to do what I need them to do and making them think it's their idea. That's influence, right? Like I said it all the time, I thought it. I was like, I was gonna be the one to influence them. It was about me, right? And then we talked through my most of my career. So after an XO position, most of the rest of that career was trying to figure out how to utilize people's stories,
Retirement Stillness And Zone Of Genius
SPEAKER_01how to get them involved, and it's that formation piece. How do you best form people? Something I also said during my career that I've really been able to kind of turn back and look at, because it's sometimes I think it's very difficult, even for you, right? Like you're in it, you're in the army, so my perspective was colored by only that, and this is what leadership is. It wasn't until I was able to step back and I started substitute teaching, I started coaching, I started serving in the elementary school mini ministry at our church that I started to see leadership differently. It is about information, but we'll use a young kid, right? It's about what Des and I have come, and we we love saying this to each other because it means something, but it's it's about the home and it's about the team, it's about the environments, the curated environments. You as a leader need to be aware enough in your position, because it's not really about titles, it's about influence, influence from the set, but not directly to the person, influence of the situation around them and the experiences that you allow them to have. Because you're a parent, I'm a parent. I'm not gonna tell my kid, hey, you got an e-bike, now drive down to Walmart that's five miles away and go get a drink, right? Yeah, hey, you got an e-bike, and I'm gonna let you drive around the house like for six weeks until you're competent on the e-bike, then I'll let you drive the neighborhood for a few weeks and then experience other people who probably are not happy that you're driving an e-bike on the sidewalk because they're walking their dog. And how do you interact with those people? Are you a royal not nice person? Or have you uh lived or do you live the values that we've taught you at our house is be kind to everybody. And even though they're they might be in your way and they have some comment for you, how do you respond in that moment? And then I'm gonna let you go across the main street. Where you have to cross the road with drivers that I don't trust and I don't know, right? So I use that as the parenting example, but what I learned is how are we curating environments where I don't have to always directly tell the person or directly influence the person? I influence the environment that allows them to learn. So it's more really more about curation, but formation and influence happen within that environment. Does that make sense? What I'm saying?
SPEAKER_05No, yeah, it does 100%. Yeah. I think the biggest thing that I've seen from you and that I wish I had more time is like reflection time, like time to like read and then journaling is one of my favorite things to do. And like there was a point in time, I did I write like 210 leadership blogs, and I've only posted like 45, but I did that in the span legitimately of like a year from 2023 to 2024 because I had time and space. And I would just get lost in my mind, um, which is amazing too, because it gives you time to reflect and think of who you want to be and like what where you want to become, and like and you talked about this before, and you and I both share this. It's like we're both super intense. This is how other people have uh defined me, uh, robotic in a way and laser focused. Uh, and I have been that way, like switched on for 18 years. So when I get out of the military one day, I am legitimately going to need six months off to decompress and learn how to be a civilian, like how to relax, how can I quiet my mind? Because, like, even us doing this podcast now, uh, I'm gonna be going to Michigan tomorrow uh to take my boss to do all these different engagements, and then we're immediately flying to Florida, and then we got all those different engagements, and then I'm setting up all these other engagements. So I have thousands of things on my brain that I'm orchestrating in a moment. I cannot wait for the day to where all I have to worry about is my family, um, and then that day, like, and then just focus on like really quiet reflection time because that that is a secret that I've learned about everything. Uh, the secret of like personal growth, of building stronger families is self-reflection, self-care is critical. And I feel like us high-performing military officers, you know, I wake up at four in the morning every morning, work out, I'm at work at 7:30, leave at like 6, 6:30 every night. It's just it's it's hard to stay in those battle rhythms. So just hearing you and knowing you, it seems like that was one of the biggest things about retirement that's been a godsend.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And and I'll share this story. It's not really a story, it's kind of more of the last eight months of how I came to what I just heard you describe. I'd say, yes, the perspective, but you can't allow yourself to gain perspective unless you give yourself the ability to be aware. The awareness, I think, was the key that unlocked the perspective, right? Like, and when I say awareness, it's simple things like, and I'll give you an example of how I came to this conclusion. I got out and I was like, all right, I've got leadership skills, and I see all these other people doing business consulting. I'm gonna use my leadership and my lean six sigma experience in the military to help businesses. I thought that's what I was gonna do. I was either gonna do it through a franchise or start my own business. And then when I realized those things weren't working, I applied for a bunch of jobs and God laughed at me and said, You're not getting a job. And I was like, But I need income, support my family, insert pension and disability. That's taking care of the family. So now what's your excuse was like God was saying, What's your excuse now? I am trying to get you to slow down. I need you to stop and be silent and be still and listen. And I said, I don't want to because I gotta support my family, I gotta feel like I'm doing something. And so then I started volunteering. I I volunteer on two boards, uh, Fellowship of Christian athletes, and then a local football team here. And I started to do that. That's no money, that's volunteer. Um, I started going to the gym, getting up when I wanted to, and I realized very quickly getting up when I wanted to, hanging out with a family, going to the gym, and around 9:30 or so when I got done at the gym after I grabbed a coffee on the way home, maybe around 10 o'clock thinking about working. And that was like, wow, this is awesome. No job's gonna let me do that. And all these people were out there like, why don't you have a job yet? You got so many skills, and I'm like, because it's not in alignment with what I'm feeling like I want to do. So I stopped, I stopped trying to do what everybody else wanted me to do, and I became aware was what was most fulfilling me. And you said it a lot of military officers or people in a current job, they never get that ability to gain the awareness through stillness because they can't. And so the benefit of me deciding to retire to be more with my kids gave me this awareness and perspective that I couldn't have otherwise gotten if I had stayed in. And so at the end of the day, I I think any way, shape, or form that you can do that, or any way, shape, or form that your listeners can do that, to get that, and you may not get that to transition to something else, but who doesn't know a pastor that takes a sabbatical?
SPEAKER_02It makes sense for doing that.
SPEAKER_01Who doesn't know it that lots of senior leaders and organizations take that time off? It's it's probably because of what I've experienced, which is you give yourself that time and space doing completely different things. Like, dude, going to sub at a high school and a middle school, I never did that in 26 years, but I can tell you a lot of that is just like having a platoon full of specialists, right? Like doing different things, um, being on a microphone with a bunch of elementary school kids teaching them the gospel, those kind of things are so different than what I had been doing. It allowed me to be like, man, I really like this. And here's what I realized I could have forced myself into a business mindset and business consulted. I would have been really good at that, I think. That's not my zone of genius, that's my zone of excellence. I can do those things, but if I do those things for long term, I get burnt out. Yeah, but I can I can coach. There's been times in the last three weeks where I've had three coaching gigs. I I coach cross-country, so I have kids over the summer that I'm coaching in the morning. I went and volunteered my time to do strategic planning for a board, and then that night I went to football practice and I ran a football practice. Those are some of my most fulfilling days that I could go for 18 hours and not get tired. But if I sit in front of a computer, if I sit in front of a computer to do business consulting or try to get a client, I feel like it's the worst thing in the world. And that's the awareness that's allowed me the perspective that I've gained. And again, if I if I can say nothing else, is even if you're not transitioning, build in your build time into your schedule to get away and gain perspective and awareness because it's so valuable.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, man. That yeah, that's so powerful. That that's another nugget right there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_05So kind of I'll transition to the last section. One of the things that's always standard uh stand out that I've noticed about you is that one, you're a man of faith, and then family. So family is deeply important. Walk me through like what have you done like in your life to kind of help build a strong, cohesive, like family centered around faith. Like, what were some of the practices that you've used that has helped you develop that?
SPEAKER_01So I'll give a short intro to when Des and I got married, we had both been in the faith. We didn't have a faith. There's totally a difference between the two. I had been raised in church, Des had been raised in church. We got married, and within the first six months, Des' brother got in a motorcycle accident. I was at work, she came home, I came home, she was nowhere in the state of Georgia, she was all the way in Missouri. I called her,
Building A Faith Centered Family Culture
SPEAKER_01I said, What are you doing? How did you get there? She's like, Oh, I bought a plane ticket. I'm like, How are we gonna pay for that? That was where I was at. She's like, I don't care, I'll see you in a couple weeks. And I was like, Whoa, what's going on here? The reason I bring that up is less about the experience and more in that moment and with her brother, she came back to her faith. And the reason that's an important part of the question you ask is because my formation and my faith had less to do about me and more to do about her getting back into her faith. Because she will tell you after that moment, she started back on her journey to get close to God. You're gonna laugh, you're gonna laugh at this because I'm sure you often feel like this, and most of the male listeners will feel the same. I was a very unsavory character who went to church and kept doing what I was doing. I'm going to church, but I'm not gonna change. My wife, my best friend, prayed for seven years for me to take, and I'm gonna get emotional, spiritual ownership of our household. Because I was unwilling, and quite frankly, I felt ill-equipped to do it, and so I allowed her to do it. And it wasn't until 2013 where I had Kai and a little carrier. Ryan was a little kid, and obviously we had been married at that point for probably six years, I think. Yeah. Um I made the decision, the pastor called us to get baptized, and I, in full clothes, just got baptized. I was like, okay, I need to start this journey, and it hasn't always been easy and it hasn't always been fun. Um, but it was in that moment that I started to do small things, and I think this is where people get it wrong. The things that Des and I have done since she got back in her faith and I started to walk my sanctification path again, is it's not been big, huge movements. It's like the Titanic, right? It's been small, consistent little things. And so because I wasn't always at home, when our par when our kids got school aged, the decision we made, similar to Des being home with her kids and us living on a single income, we decided to homeschool.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Allow the kids to be home with Des because she had the flexibility, right? Um, that wasn't always easy, but it allowed Des to have worship music on, to read the Bible with the kids, to have time with them throughout the day to talk about those things. She always would play worship music in the car. It was always in the house. I was never a worship guy, so I was like, this is cool, but this isn't for me. Um I'll tell you this now. I'm the guy in church with my hands up praising the Lord every Sunday because I love the music now. And it's not less about the music and more about how it makes makes me feel now. So so that's where the journey to how we've reintegrated God back into our household is it really started with Des, not me. And and I say that because she was my example, and anybody who knows the Bible enough knows that Adam was created first, and God was displeased because Adam didn't have a helper, so he created a woman. And uh, I know a lot of people get um uncomfortable when you start talking about head of household and helper because a lot of people don't like that dynamic, but it's biblical, right?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, biblical.
SPEAKER_01That's a whole nother conversation for a whole nother day. But I think the point is, is I can't be who I was designed to be based on what the Lord has planned for me, which as a man, I'm the provider, protector, and priest. So I am in charge of spiritual formation in my house, but my wife was the one that helped me get there. And now here are some things that we do. So the answer to your question is we started with worship in the house. Death started doing that consistently, getting the word of the Lord into our house because our kids weren't reading the Bible at six, seven, right? They they might have picked it up in the kid version, but those kind of songs being in their mind constantly were instrumental in their formation. We said we sat down with our kids, and I know Josh, you've done this too with your family because I've seen it. We set family values. We took the values that Des and I had created at the beginning of our marriage, and we said, All right, we need to include our kids in what we say we value in our house, right? So we do that, which turned into, and I know you know this, and I wanted to have a podcast for the longest time. We were gonna call it the Saturday show.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_01We have set aside time on Saturdays where back then in Belvoir it was called the Saturday show. Here we call it the dive because we do it next to our pool. So the deep dive, we call it the deep dive. And we just create space where we come together, we put on a worship song, we allow the kids to talk about what the song means to them or how they feel about it. We we spend time just talking about the blessings, things we're thankful for, and then prayer requests, and then we just have a discussion about, hey, what's going on in your life? You know, we do that around the dinner table too, but Saturdays has really become that time where the kids will even say, Hey, I don't like the way this is going, because now we have teenagers. I don't like the way this is going. Why do we have to go to bed at eight when it's the summer? All right, what's your recommendation for how do we influence that? How do we change it so it's more in alignment with what you think you want as a 12-year-old, and less about me just telling you what to do? And so we have those conversations, but I can tell you those are some of the small things creating a shared set of values, having time to allow your kids to feel heard, and then just loving on the Lord, having them always present, whether that's music or a conversation or reading the Bible with your kids, right? And so those are some ways we've done it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, one of the things I'm thinking about doing, man, just being honest, is get rid of the TV. The TV seems to just be like such a time suck, and it's yeah, like usually just completely um nonsense that like my son watches like random YouTube videos of kids playing with toys. Like, oh my gosh, what are we doing right now? Colossians, uh, this is last week. So Burke, um pastor Pastor Marty shared this Colossians 3 through 19 through 21. Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. And so it's talking about biblical principles as a father in in a household. And I think that that like that it's funny that he shared that last week because a lot of that stuff that you just talked about is it lays it out right through there. Like, hey, absolutely. I I really think one of the things of like spiritually running your family, it's like one deeds and words, so they they emulate the behaviors that they see that their father's doing. It's crazy now because my son is eight, but he's gravitated more towards me this last year in ways that I have not seen. So if I'll say something, so I I got home yesterday and uh I happened to say, Man, they're freaking killing me. Uh because my my phone wasn't working, so I couldn't check my email and I couldn't, I I didn't know he was within earshot of me. And then I walk in time, he's like, Oh, freaking killing me. Uh it's like, what'd you did? You just hear me say that? He's like, Yeah, I did.
SPEAKER_01It's like more, it's crazy, man. The phrase I like is more is caught than taught. Yeah, and that is proven true with my son specifically, obviously. They're carbon copies of us, and like you just said, Des is always like, you know where he gets that from, right? And I'm like, dang it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, they do.
SPEAKER_02I'm sorry, yeah.
SPEAKER_05That is amazing. That was something that like I've always noticed, like with you, uh, strong family, unreasonable, uh, when it comes to certain things, and I think every family should come up with a list of like characters, core values. Like, what do you guys want to emulate? So, and I always talk about with like my kids like this is what McMillians do, like McMillians. Like, and continually ingrain that in them, and they're not gonna catch all you know the wisdom that you're throwing now. And and my wife will tell me this is like Josh, you're talking way above them. It's it's just about frequency. It's like when I was going through um basic training, drill sergeant, hey McMillian, you're gonna learn pain and repetition. It's like I now I always choose repetition. So with my kids, it's the same way, it's just like continually reinforcing behaviors. And when they go through a life lesson, bring back those like those different lessons that you're trying to teach, like, hey, you know, I've always talked to you about this. Now you just lived it. Um, and pain also often is like the greatest teacher, and we can't protect our family from everything, but we can try to like guide them just like the Lord does in our life.
SPEAKER_01Well, and and I think I I hope, I don't think, I hope your listeners heard what you just said. What what I heard you what I heard you just say is that these things take time, yeah. And what I hope your listeners come away with is what I'm not saying is I have it all figured out, or you, you don't have it all figured out either. It's the small intentional decisions over a long period of time, that iterative nature of what you're talking about, yeah, that is the most important. And so I don't want anybody leaving this call because I often feel like this like, whoa, I gotta do all that. Like, no, just start somewhere, right? Like, that's part of my story. My wife encouraged me to start somewhere, and so I started by having us pray at dinner. I didn't even pray, I wasn't me praying, I was having everybody else pray until I got comfortable, until I got comfortable enough to do it because I was like, you know what, I have to start doing it. I can't just expect everybody else to that's where we started. We started with family values and prayer. It's that simple. Yeah, there's nothing like the there's nothing very theological about any of that, right? Like there is, but there isn't. It's not like you don't have to be a a Bible scholar to bring God into your house.
SPEAKER_05I love that, man. And like it's simple, keep it simple, stupid. Yeah, and I literally say that at least 10 times a day because like being part of a brand new army organization now, we're kind of like in the tunkum model of building all these new organizations. I was like, whatever we develop, guys, it needs to be simple. Uh like it just has to be, and like that lesson is universal in any chapter of your life.
SPEAKER_01And and I just want to I want to make this point because I agree with what you just said. Um, I'll go back to legacy, right? And part of my leadership journey obviously is I'm hopeful that more is caught than's taught. So my kids, right? Like they they're now seeing me daily, and and so knowing that I'm doing that well is important to me because that's what my kids will do, and that's what their kids will do, and it just goes from there, right? And so the reason I say legacy is is because recently, with my son specifically, you know, Kai, he's strong-willed and hard-headed, and he and I enjoy a good uh uh fight. That's just the easiest way to put it. Yeah, uh, when I started coaching him, I realized very quickly that he did not need me to coach him. I realized though that he was a great student of the game. There is not a sport that this kid will not watch. Now, he really still enjoys football, but he's also in basketball and now triangle cross. And so I called him and I said, Hey, look, man, this is what I want to do with you. I want to coach with you when you're a freshman in high school. I want you and I to coach a team. And he said, Oh, that'll be awesome. So I took it from me coaching him to more creating an environment that I knew he would succeed in, or I was hopeful that he would succeed in, right? And this is that formation. I have a goal for him now, which is he and I are gonna coach together. I just did this this week. He is no longer playing tackle football. He went through the last season when I was with the organization that I'm still with that kind of transitioned now. He came to practice with me, not as a participant, he was walking around with me as a coach. He I didn't tell him to do this. He did everything I asked, no questions asked. He didn't have a bad attitude, but he would come up to me and be like, Hey, why are you guys doing that at that drill over there? And I explained it to him. He goes, I think you should adjust these things. And I said, Okay, I'm writing that down because that's something I wouldn't have thought of. And he's now giving me his perspective from a kid who had done those drills last season. And no, and then so this gets better, right? I'm like, Oh, this is awesome. I'm asking him to do everything, there's no fight. He's going around talking to coaches, picking up cones, he's giving feedback on practice, he's loving it. And so in the car on the way home, I said, Hey man, what was your fat? What was the favorite part of practice? He was like, I think seeing the improvements that you made, everything seems like it works better. And this is coming from a 12-year-old. I was like, awesome. And he looked at me and goes, What was your favorite part? And I was like, You mean outside of just spending time with you? He's like, Yeah. I was like, I don't know, I have to think about that, bud. He goes, I already know what your answer is gonna be. I said, What do you mean? You know what? You're he's like, It's not that you liked being in charge. And I was like, No, you're right, it's not that I liked being in charge. I was like, Well, what do you think it is? He's like, I'm Not gonna tell you until you tell me. So I had to think about it for a second because I'm like, now I gotta give the right answer. And the answer is I said, Hey buddy, I just really enjoy creating the environment for the coaches to be successful. And he goes, Yeah, Dad, you just love making people better. I started bawling. That was such a special moment for me to realize my kid understands my heart for other people. Talk about caught and taught. That's that's it right there. And if that's any indication of the type of leader he's gonna be, I'm super excited to see that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that's that's amazing, man. It's I so I still have tons more questions, but I know we both have things that we have to do today. I say this all the time, is like I can always tell the the quality of a podcast episode based off the time. If I'm at 40 minutes and I'm like struggling to have a conversation, like, man, I don't know about this one. This one I feel like could easily be like over three hours, um, just based on all the different things that we know about each other. Yeah. So it's definitely as you continue your journey, love to have you on again.
SPEAKER_00It'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_05Question one. So, what separates a good leader from an extraordinary leader in your eyes?
SPEAKER_01The ability to create space to have awareness so you know how to use your skills and what you learn over the years. I think that makes the distinction is the ability to pause long enough to correctly implement the skills and abilities you have.
SPEAKER_05I love that. So, second one, throughout your journey, what is one leadership lesson tool hack that has improved you the most? And then how can our listeners apply
Killer Bees And After Action Review
SPEAKER_05that today?
SPEAKER_01I think I said this earlier, and I said it a couple of times, is I really enjoy getting to know people, and so every person has a story, is the number one thing that I think I would impart to others because knowing and learning somebody else's story causes you to slow down to hear to hear them correctly, and then if you're leading them to take what they've told you to either make the environment better or help make them better. And so I would say the stories of other people, every person has a story, is a concept I would impart, and the application would be it pa it causes you to slow down to my first point, and it allows you to actually hear what they're saying, not what you think they're saying.
SPEAKER_05I love that. So final one, easy one. Where can our listeners find you and support you on your current mission that you're on?
SPEAKER_01All right, right now they can find me on LinkedIn. I know you took my link for LinkedIn. Um, that's the best place to get me right now, as Des and I are um kind of building out what kind of business we're gonna have and and where that's gonna be. So right now, LinkedIn is the best way.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, brother. Jason, honor to call you a friend. I really mean that, genuinely mean that. I look forward to you coming back in the DC area. I don't know if we're ever going to be traveling to Florida. Uh well, I technically I'll be in Florida next week, but uh I won't have any time to like hang with you. But it's been an honor knowing you, man. Uh, you pushed me to be a better father, a better husband, a better um man of faith. Uh so everything you've done for me, I just want to personally uh say thank you publicly and then thank you for taking the time. Um, this has been a long time coming, and I've learned a lot. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01I I do. I and I know you said this just a second ago, but the length of time uh you made it easy for me to share my story, and I appreciate that. So thank you.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah, too easy, brother. All right, team. So it's time for our after action review. What are some of the top takeaways that I had from this episode? So I had a list of them, and it's hard for me to bound them down, but here are my top three takeaways. The first one, and I think the most important to me, is carbon copies. And what I mean by that. So my son, he's eight years old, and everything that I do, everything that I say, he is literally a little sponge, and he just enacts, reenacts everything that I do every single day. That is going to lead into remember T-ball, thoughts, beliefs, actions, legacy. It's gonna start defining how he thinks through things, it's gonna define what he believes is acceptable. His beliefs are going to start to form, and that's gonna start driving his day-to-day actions and how he interacts in the world. And eventually that's gonna define his legacy, how he is thought of by other people. So it's critical as a leader. You need to understand deeds and words. So I always say deeds, not words, because deeds is more important than words, but both of these are absolutely critical. You have to model the way. A leader is the one who knows the way, who shows the way, and who goes the way. This is the way. So quoted two people the Mandalorian and then John Maxwell, right there. You have to understand leadership is a burden because there's a lot of pressure put on you. You have so many people watching you. And remember, leadership's universal. If you're a father, you're a leader. If you're a husband, you're a leader. If you are a leader in an organization, in a community, and then also self-leadership, the first phase of leadership. You have to get your ass out of bed every morning. So you have to lead yourself. You have to brush your teeth, you have to make your bed, you have to put on your clothes, you have to go to work. These are all things that we have to do, and that is self-leadership. That is the building block on you becoming a more purposeful, accountable leader. And remember, everyone is watching everything you do. If you take a shortcut, someone will notice. And then now you've just lowered the standard of what is acceptable. The second key takeaway, and this is what we all need more of, is time. We have to be able to slow down. We have to be able to create space. And that was the word that I wrote down create space. Space gives us a couple things, it gives us the ability to develop the situation. There's a great book by Pete Blaber, uh, if you get a chance, Common Sense Leadership, and kind of talks about developing the situation. And what I mean by that is that there are natural interactions that we're going to have in an environment based on the patterns of knowledge that we have that we've learned, the tacit knowledge over our lifespan, those two things begin to merge together. And then you start noticing patterns around you to make better informed decisions. The same is true with your life. If you can slow down, if you can truly think and you can truly pause on things, have a little bit of tactical patience and not just constantly go, go, go, go, go on that hydronic treadmill, you are going to begin to create space. You're going to have decision space. Decision space is way better than decision fatigue. If you're constantly just making decisions to make decisions, you're going to burn out. So the challenge here is what can you stop doing today to help begin to create that space to slow down and identify who you want to become. Remember, it's not focused on short-term goals, it's focused on long-term growth. That is where the secret sauce is. And the last one that I have is formation-based leadership. And I summed this up as formation-based leadership is basically a multiplication effect. Look across the depth and breadth of your organization or your team or your family or whatever it is, right? What are the unique strengths, the God-given strengths that they have that they possess that can help cover gaps and seams? If you inherit a team, that does not mean everyone is specifically in the right spot, in the right location. Their talents are aligned to the job set. Formation-based leadership means the job that someone is responsible for is the best in that seat. Doesn't matter about rank, doesn't matter about title. So look at that. Constantly evaluate that and make sure that you're putting disruptors in seats. I have a boss now who says the term maverick. That's what I want. I want a maverick in a position because they will push the envelope. They will question the status quo. And that is how we move the needle. We need disruptors. We don't need people who are willing to say no and not have their reason behind it. We need people that will move the needle. So formation-based leadership is not about rank or title, it is about finding the right person in the right time, in the right position, with the right skill set to cover your dead space. All right, team, thank you again. Bottom of my heart, it is an absolute honor and a privilege to be able to run a podcast. And I will tell you, it is not easy. Now I'm an executive officer to a general officer. So it is even more time constraining on me to do this, but it is something I'm deeply passionate about. I want to help develop better leaders. So remember this the most important thing that you'll get out of any of these shows, and I always end with this, is not about what you heard, it's about what you do next. So I challenge you, take a lesson that you learned today from Jason, apply that to your life so you can become a more purposeful and accountable leader. And here are the five challenges that I want you to do. Number one, if you're listening this, regardless of the platform, make sure that you subscribe, make sure you leave a five-star review, make sure you share this episode because that helps me grow my mission and my outreach by getting new listeners to hear how I see leadership and helping shape the world in a better way. Number four is go visit talesofleadership.com. It's up and running. You can submit questions to the show. You can interact. You could become a guest if you think you have a story that is worth sharing, which I guarantee you you probably do. And the most important one, number five, the key takeaway is apply a lesson. Actually do something. Move the needle in your life. Become the purposeful, accountable leader that you are meant to be. As always, team, I'm your host, Josh McMillion, saying every day is a gift. Don't waste your time. I'll see you next time.
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