How to Master Leadership Challenges | Advice from an Army Colonel

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Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast.

Today I'm excited to speak with Damon Wells, a career army officer with 28 years of service. Thank you so much for your service, Damon, and I'm excited to talk to you today about some of my favorite topics, leadership, team building, and strategies for success. Thank you so much for being here. My pleasure. Those sound like straights. I want to jump right into talking a little bit about your background, including your time as a commander, and working in high stakes and environments.

Can you share a little bit with our listeners? Yeah, so I can go through just quickly through my background, joined in 1995, which really sounds like ages ago, which puts me almost almost at 30 years, which as you know is mandatory retirement, which I'm absolutely looking forward to. Right now, I am in Schupegark, Germany, I'm the deputy chief of staff at Africa Command, the joint U.S. Command that oversees the command of Africa.

Before that, I would brigade commander at Carson Colorado, which is a beautiful post. I've been to from Silo, Oklahoma, to what's now Fort Cavattos, which used to be called

food in Texas, been on the East Coast, been to the West Coast, been to Iraq a couple times, been to Afghanistan, some time in Korea, the Baltics, and now Germany. So over the course of 30 years, around the world a few times. Well, that sounds amazing, traveling all these different places, and I imagine it must be challenging and to pick up and move. And I want to talk a little bit, one of the things,

you know, having a father that was also in the military. I know a lot of times, you know, uncertain times happen in the military and you're, like you mentioned, you change locations, you change ranks, you change roles, you really have to pick up and start over and sometimes

uncertain times. So I want to talk a little bit about what advice you would give to civilian leaders about maintaining calm and focus when their path isn't really clear and they have to pick up and lift to maybe a different job or a different state and just a little bit about your experiences as you've navigated across the globe. I actually love that question. So you mentioned uncertainty and then changing ranks and then changing jobs, where's changing, you know, changing where you live.

So to us uncertainty and ambiguity, and ambiguity, comes with the territory. There's always a certain amount of information that you just can't know. As an example, you know, as I get ready, as I'm looking for my new job, or I'm waiting on the new assignment, I'm pretty comfortable as are the people I work with, just not knowing. And I say that because my wife will always want to know, hey, did you find out where we're going yet? You know, where we're going now? She wants to know.

And I just know the answer, not only is it going to come later than you want it, but it's never, it's never 100% that that's where we're going. It could always change the last minute. So you have to be comfortable with ambiguity and have to know when uncertainty is important, when you need certainty. So there are certain things, you know, each rank comes with, you know, it's four or five years per pay grade, per rank that you hold in the military. And then there are certain jobs

that you must do. There are key development jobs that you must do in order to get promote to the next race. So understanding when and where you're going to perform those jobs, you know, the uncertainty isn't great for that. You've got to know, you've got to have a plan for that. And there are certain times when, you know, you're in environments, Iraq, Afghanistan, when there's, when you're given an operation, there's just a certain amount of that operation that you just can't

know. And there are certain parts that you that you really have to know. You know, where are we going? Why are we doing this? What exactly are we trying to accomplish here? The details along the way, sometimes they're just going to have to be ambiguous. What we do is we see, okay, this is a piece of information that I need to continue making my plan. I don't have that information. So I'm going to insert an assault in here. So between now and whatever that decision point is, I've got to look for

details of information that help me confirm or deny that assumption. And that that's a decision point that will tell me go either, you know, left or right. So it's, it's being comfortable, ambiguity, and it's knowing what facts do you actually need? And which ones can you make assumptions for? Yeah, and I love, you know, to, I always say this to myself, worry is negative goals setting. I think

there's thousands of assumptions one can make in any given situation. And the more you worry and focus on what could or might go wrong, it's, it really takes you off your course and off your mission. And you can't really focus on the actual facts that you have. And facts, the way I think of facts are like a puzzle, right? The more facts you have, the better you can put your puzzle together.

And worry just distracts you. It's like a blindfold as you're putting your, your puzzle together. And so a lot of times in uncertain times, I like to say to people, focus on the facts. And anytime you have a worry that comes into your mind, replace it with a fact because you can't make really strategic business decisions in your type of situations or in regular civilian life without all the facts, right? And so, you know, we live in a very rapidly evolving and changing world as far as technology

and global events. And so I want to talk a little bit about from your experience how the military prepares leaders like you to be adaptable and flexible from going to Colorado to Africa. Very different environments, very different cultures, very different weather. So let's talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so again, be adaptable just comes with territory. And I think in the military, because that is a prerequisite, if, especially the leader, the further you get in your career,

if you aren't adaptable, at some point you're going to get weeded out. So people that can't adapt to new situations and environments won't function all that well. And I'll be honest every organization I've been to, does it differently? Because if, because I went from Colorado to Germany, huge, huge difference. So when you do a new unit, there's things you're going to want to know, there's actually things you need to know. When you get a Germany, for example,

German government, because we are in Germany, though the German government is in charge of Germany. So when you get here, you have German rules. You have to follow, when you also have US rules, you have to follow. So what people like to say is, you know, for the end process, you have to go register your car, and you have to do, you have to do a lot of things, make sure it's your, I guess, legal, yes, data, support, as a commit, there's a lot of stuff, a lot of bureaucracy, you have to go through

when you come to Germany as a US military service member. And it's described as like the worst of German bureaucracy combined with the worst of US bureaucracy. It's just, it's a lot of, it's a lot of red tape, a lot of, a lot of hassle. But back to original question, what, what should happen? And like I said, every instance of some, some units do this well. But you have to be cognizant of the fact that everybody that's coming to you, nearly everybody is coming from

somewhere else. So it's sort of incumbent on the unit that's there to help the people adapt to, you know, whatever the new things are. So if it's, if it's Germany, that's a huge adaptation. So what can we do in a unit for incoming personnel to ensure that they adapt, they understand, because the German laws are different, you have to have a special drummer's license here,

there's different regulations on, you know, the maintenance standards for your car. And if somebody doesn't help you understand all that, you're going to have a lot of problems. So it's really incumbent on the unit to understand that the problem you just asked, and it's fairly ubiquitous throughout the army that there's some process for that. It's not always employed with 100% efficiency because somebody's actually got to be the one who takes the new person and

helps them do that process. It's just another simple example when you go to Carson where I just came from, Colorado. It's at 6,000 feet elevation. So running is much more challenging if for Carson that is at, at sea level. So because of that, you're a lot at a certain amount of time before you have to take

your physical pasture, your fitness test, because it's going to take you long to adapt. Kind of a small sort of physical example, but it's an acknowledged fact that everybody has to go through an adjustment period. And if helped along that just period, you'll, you'll adjust faster.

I love that. I think we got to give ourselves times to adjust, right? So any new situation, whether you're taking a new job or moving to a different country, there's time like you said, adjusting to the time zone, for example, seems pretty easy, but if your body is used to sleeping, you know, on Pacific Standard Time, and now you're, you know, X hours ahead in other countries, it takes some time for your sarcadium rhythm to reset so you can sleep correctly. And so I love kind of what you said,

adjusting and really leaning into that and giving yourself time to work through that and let your body adjust to whatever the new challenge that you're in is. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about the P4 leadership model and talk a little bit about the trust, excellence, embracing your purpose. Can you share a little bit about that with our listeners? Happy to. Yeah, so the P4 is obviously four P. So people is the first P partnerships is the second P practice is the third and PURNUS is the

fourth. So the most basic, and it's kind of based on complexity theory, a little bit of neuroscience, a little bit of in theory, but the most basic thing you have to understand about building a team is the people. So that's that's why people is first and then sort of the the pinnacle of where you can get a team is that everyone has a very clear understanding of the team's purpose, which is why that's the last one. And just to kind of caveat it upfront, not every team gets that purpose

domain, that echelon of team building is very hard. It's if you think of like special forces organizations, they get they're quicker because they have very rigid selection mechanism that sort of weeds out people until you get to a group of people who all kind of see the world the same way, who are all willing to sacrifice themselves because they believe in this thing that they tried really hard and seen their friends sort of fall by way, so they just built a lot of energy into

bidding into this organization. So they tend to see the world the same, they tend to share the same values already. So you kind of go through the first phases of people faster than that, but that's just an example. So in the real world, when you start with people, then if you're the new leader coming into an organization, you understand who am I leading? The first mechanism that you have to be aware of is trust. So trust is kind of the gateway criteria to get to the next one. So what does

that really mean? So I have to have to exhibit behaviors as quickly as possible because I want to reach a threshold trust where I can say things and they believe that my motivations are benign and that my interest revolve around making team better and making them better at individuals.

And that sounds simple, but you know if you're for example if you're an introvert, then you won't be compelled to communicate that often to what happens is people feel the gap in you not talking with their own assumptions about why you're not talking first of all, and then just have to try to use a very minuscule cues that you're giving them to understand you.

So I'm kind of an introvert myself. So I know I have to go out of my way to communicate, to talk, to let people know that I want the organization to succeed, and that's where my interest lie. So when you ask them to do something harder and comfortable, their immediate thought is, I don't want to do that. I don't think this guy knows what he's doing. Their immediate thought should be, it's probably okay. I trust him. He knows what's asked for the unit. I'll do the uncomfortable

thing. So to me, that's like the most basic line between the two thoughts of that are people in your organization. Next is partnership. So go ahead. No, no, no, sorry. For a long time. So if you want to chat, yeah, no, I think I was just going to say that like you were saying about trust, I think you know, I'm in a casino gaming industry and I think a trust like a slot machine, you, you got to put a

whole bunch of coins in that machine until you can take your prize, right? And I think a lot of times people assume very quickly that they have the trust and that people trust them and it's easy to break it down too. Like you could spend 10 years building trust and it takes one situation to lose the trust. And so I think a lot of times trust is not given its earn. And the only way you can earn trust is like you were saying is to communicate into talk. And if you're not talking, it's very hard

to build build trust with body language. And you know, so I just I think that's so spot on. Yeah. And but I imagine it's just way with every organization, but in the military, part of the implicit trust comes with the rain you wear. So I tend to just have baseline trust for someone who outranks me because I make assumptions about what they know. Got this far. So so there is a little bit of implicit trust, but a lot of it is earned out of its it's almost impossible

gained through nonverbals of body language and people just making assumptions out of you. And you know, you can't it is it does take a lot of time to build and you know, you should explain it to me like what I'm asking leaders that work for me like what are you doing to build trust and if we explain that it's literally the aggregate of all your behaviors that that add up trust or not because you can't

just go to your team and say okay team trust me. I want you to trust me. Did everybody trust me now? Just doesn't work like that. It's it's it's an indirect mechanism. And I can move on to partnerships if you're right. Yeah yeah yeah. Okay so because I needed a model that had all the same starting letters partnerships what I really mean is teams right. So the the milestone criteria for teams is cohesion. So you have the the two dots that are people with the link between them that's

trust. Now you aggregate dots and you put more lines and which one is team cohesion and what I mean by that is not only do I trust the people I work with that then have a have this you know baseline the

struttle level of trust. What we also have is sort of a we're beginning to congeal this unit identity i.e. I see my own identity but I also have this unit identity you know where the bear scooters or lands or whatever we are my brain and I'll start to adjust it's okay identify with this team like these are my people this is kind of like a family and you'll start to put a little more energy into making it seem better at your own discomfort because you feel a special bond

to these people. You know family is a good kind of it's a matter for for it but that you you sort of cross this boundary where now this team that you you know that you were new to at some point and you didn't know anybody now you know people now you know about their families you can say oh that's Joe Joe's really good at this if we this then we'll go to Joe and he'll do it then you get this like because you want the team to succeed hey Joe didn't show up today hey we got to pull that

out a little extra weight do Joe's job and nobody's really upset about that yeah I know big deal so we do it for us we'll just fill it in right so at this level generally then of course these things don't always perfectly apply but you can think of the transition from a very basic team to really efficient team at some point the team has a very hierarchical leadership structure in which the leaves at the top people at the bottom can be good but they're always looking up for so

into kind of give them direction and this is where it sort of transitions at that puntership stage is I'll go from a hierarchical leadership to you know what I've been doing this I know how to do this I want the team to succeed if I go ask the boss he's going to tell me to do this I know this is what we're doing Wednesdays I'm just going to do it anyway without asking and then people sort of

build this you know this initiation mechanism that lets them just do what you're supposed to do without being told that's a huge threshold right there and that's purpose I'm sorry that partnerships yeah I think it is it's an interesting I love the piece first of all that's great um I do think when I think of a you know a well you know cohesive working team you know sometimes one of your teammates are going to be down and the some total of the group needs to pick up when let's say somebody sick

right and you have a mission to get done or so I think when there's trust in a team and one person is not on their A game the other team members pick up the slack and I see this in sports I see this and you know the military in corporate America but if you don't have the trust in the team it's highly unlikely you know people are going to want to you know do stately to do extra work if you know you're

not well liked and you're not well trusted in that group so your spot on it requires a lot of trust communication collaboration understanding the vision and the purpose and why we're all here doing this together and so I think those are great great uh any final thoughts on that before we I switch gears on you no uh yeah let's switch gears um I want to talk a little bit when I about you know making decisions I think in the military you're often it's it's like a muscle you make

you're able to make quick decisions and you don't think about it's gut reaction you you do it right away without thinking I and in corporate America I think a lot of times we do a lot of humming and thinking and processing and going back to the drawing board and sometimes decisions might take take years in corporate America which effectively slows the business down from like you were saying their purpose so I want to talk a little bit about how you can balance these quick decision making

um with fear of not making the right one but still making sure that you're making the best decision for that time yeah that's a huge topic so decision making in the military so there's a couple ways this happens and it's not necessarily quick it depends on what the decision is because I know our times when you know I'm gonna I'm gonna let you do this right now it's a high stress environment and you have to do it and I have to think through you know was you know what's the decision somebody's

got to do it go go for the most part every service is different but in the army we have a structure sort of framework called the military decision making process and it's very rigid very structured first understand all the variables that go along with this problem that's our things like assumptions come in do I have all the facts I need to conduct operation and essentially what the way to describe the military decision making processes if you could put out a theoretical theoretical dry

race word here's all the facts that I would need to know in order to flee execute decision some of those you do know so you can kind of mark those off some of them you don't if I don't know this do I really need to know it and I really need to know it then it becomes an assumption that I have to verify along the way before we execute hopefully and then you can you can build a plan and you can second here here was a big conceptual problem that we wanted to solve

and and the white and here are the much smaller more well-defined less-complinated problems that prize that big problem which you essentially do is you take this big ambiguous problem like move you know 300 vehicles and 1200 people from Texas to California to conduct a big training rotation you essentially whittle those problems down into command level problems at the Virginia level okay commander you know figure out how to get your people from your headquarters

this bus with with this gear and it even goes lower than that okay slot leader I need you to take your sub people inspector gear make sure they have other stuff make sure it's sensible and get to this point at this time to get on the bus so there's there's different ways to look at decision I can that is the most deliberate most sort of step action drill of decision making but there are other times like you said when I just need to be made right now so it's it's one of things where

hopefully you have enough experience and context to be to not just be at a decision point and have to make a decision in the in the absence of any other data usually what going on is your situations usually stressful it's got to be a quick decision and then the environment you're in you're constantly watching for data and as a commander which you should be thinking about as a leader in general but the commanders really do is you're always thinking what could happen what's next

where am I accepting risk with the worst thing that could happen right now what would I have to if that thing happens and then and you're always thinking what decisions might I have to make in fact you might say hey look the worst thing that can happen in this operation is something that's catastrophic so before we go well let's figure out what can we do to mitigate that risk because it might be something on a road okay can we avoid that road that way that decision point is just

eliminated but it's kind of things like that so it's not the absence of data because you're constantly scanning for data the ability to keep that data in front of your mind so that if there's a decision point it's going to be it's going to be quick you can make it as much data as you as you had access to at the time and you know one of the things they they kind of beat into us is an 80 80% solution

right now is much better than a hundred percent solution that's too late so and that was made sense to me absolutely I love that and I think the military really does help train leaders to make decisions I think you know going back to your example in in the military if if you know your leader yells at you to do whatever the thing is you do it you don't overthink it you don't you do it right he's your leader

where she's your leader in in corporate America if you know your leader you know yells at you to get something done you're let we get into the emotions a lot with things or overthinking it or you know in not just doing it right because really like you were saying at the beginning the leader is you know made its way up to the CEO or whatever the rank is in the military and and they're the decision makers for whatever the mission is whether it's you know military or corporate America so I

do I do like that saying about 80% because you know kind of going back to what I said before I see people him and hall over decisions all the time you know and sometimes it's just picking and going with the best decision with 80% of the information so I want to transition and talk a little bit about leadership principles and you know from the military's point of view how do you think that those principles that you mentioned some of them any others how they translate into civilian world

and how you think it they will transition for you yeah well they're kind of ubiquitous so they translate into everything and I'm writing a book right now that starts with those and sort of drives down to some of the details throws a cup other leadership models on top of them and it kind of spits out the the P4 model and you know I think some time when I was in the war college leadership's always been my passion so I wanted to understand you know leadership

or leadership doctrine in general where does this come from how how well are we applying it but what is the army really say we're supposed to do and the interesting thing is if you want to you take the arm get to the art principles here in the mint but you can imagine there's a ton of army leadership doctrine like it's a leadership factory we you know we are very we prioritize leadership we we want to train people leadership the funny thing is we don't really train specific

leadership skills until the much much higher like not so you're you've been an army for probably 15 years do you go to school that shes kind gives you leadership paradigm to talk through the intricacies of leadership writ large you're just expected to go read the field manual that talks about leadership and apply it from you know knowledge from the book which always found was interesting because leadership is one of the the backbones of what we do and in my opinion

if you can learn how to be good leader you can fit all the other stuff in there because you're really good at getting people to do what's supposed to be done without you know without too much of a fight so there's a couple things right so a fast-mount of leadership doctrine that's that's not really trained in any of the army schools a little bit but not too much less than you'd expect and then you have things like well okay if we're not going to put you in the schools then the assumption

is they're going to get when they go to the to organizations and at you know at the junior ranks the organization will be responsible for training very young officers lieutenants on tenant level tasks and they'll be responsible for training young commanders, county commanders and aptans on specific skills for that rank and on and on which which does happen the problem is because it's not formalized at the army level it is actually somewhat it's just not

enforced for the army level down to the unit level so what happens is you get different versions of that everywhere you go so you get some versions where none of that happens and you get some versions of you know somewhat who really cares about leaders and understands how to train and convey information and get people to interact with stuff like that it happens very well but it's not standard so it depends on the organization you go to and you've seen the the P4 like I'm so

interested in it I built my own model that's derivative from the army model but there's just a lot of ways to do it now what army uses is what's called the army leadership requirements model though these are roughly the principles it is broken into sort of six facets and there's three on top there's three on bottom and the fail on top are called attributes and three on the bottom are called competencies so the three attributes are things like character presence intellect so these are the

things a leader should be and no so what we expect of leaders is to have strong character that you're not going to break the laws or break the rules or demean people we want people to have strong intellect so the ability to solve problems to understand what is human related problems as well as tactical related problems and uh so I already forgot character intellect and presence so presence is the third one so we expect you to look and behave like a leader i.e you don't show up to work

look and sloppy you and four standards um you stay fit things like that now the competencies are the things you should do so that things like just a simple category it's called leads right there's another one that's called develops others and there's a third one called uh get back to that one and make because I forgot that one too so let's talk about leads so leads is the sub-copy to see of uh getting people to do the things that you need them to do right which I'll say at the junior level

sounds like I know what to do I say do these things and people will do the things but the longer you stay in the military the more you realize it was certainly not that simple um so along the way you go from transactional leadership to you know it would just be easier if they knew all the things and they were willing to do the things without me even calling them um so you learned leadership techniques they've all from you do this and then they do it to here's the plan here's

where we would go as an organization here's the behaviors I expect here's the mission here's the intent here's what we exist and then you you want your subordinate leaders to do that kind of stuff right so the next one is develops and interestingly develops is the one do these surveys of a couple of years develops others is actually one where most army you know in the aggregate army leaders score the lowest in other words this is our of those cis attributes and competencies that I'm

explaining develops others is the one that's always raid the lowest meaning that the what the respondents said was that develops others is not very high on their organization's priority list and remembers develops others is part of how you build leaders because we don't do it in schools organizations have to do this but it's done very poorly which is an interesting contrast so it's very hot it's very low on the organization's priority list I mean it's not being done all that well

and it's also not being done all that effectively and it's not consistent across units so I'm you'll get a lot so you'll get literally zero so that's a big one and that's to me that's the most important one that's where I love especially once I was a badon commander and a brigade commander I really love spending time helping people wade through the complexities of what leadership is and explaining basically telling them everything I know about it I just fun doing that and then

the third one is kind of catch all called achieves so you can be careful with that when I'll explain why I didn't make it but achieves you know the simple bumper sticker for that one is GITS results the problem with that is I can violate all of the all the other five at future competencies to get results but then it doesn't matter right because I basically destroyed my team so yeah I got results I did the achieve but now everybody hates their army and doesn't want to stay in the army

because of how I treated them because all my plans were terrible and so anyway if I was going to boil down leadership principles it's those attributes and competencies yeah and I think kind of what you were saying leading people and developing people are you know here's the mission do the thing and developing people to have the same skillsets is

a tricky tricky and corporate America right I think right now for fear of there's not enough for everyone mentality like there can only be one of this rank so I can't train someone less ranked because I don't want them to take my job right so I think a lot of time like you can't move up until you help somebody move behind you right and in some other industries I think in like multi-level marketing they say you know I don't make a dime and till you make a dollar and that is really

you know correlates back to leadership too right you to build and develop people it takes time and just like you develop your children right your kids don't you know they're not born and they don't take care of themselves they need to be developed and coached and they make mistakes and you put them back on the yellow brick road and you teach them again and and and I'll correlate it also to parenting like you want your kid to make a ton of mistakes

while they're in your home because when they go out in the world and they have to make mistakes if they don't make them with you they're not going to understand in the world how to resolve them and it's the same thing with leadership right you want before people are leading people you need them to make some of the mistakes with you to learn right from wrong and how to do things the way you know the military wants it to be done and I think um you know

talking a little bit about the future of leadership I think leadership is changing a ton right now and what is a leader um because a leader isn't just by rank and by title a leader can be someone without a title without a rank that needs to step up in an uncertain situation and do things because maybe the leader is not present or something happened a leader or they're not available to do what the mission is they those people need to step up and kind of like you were

saying at the beginning like that takes a great determination understanding the mission and being all in right and it correlates in all different industry so I want to get a little bit of your thoughts and your experience as it relates to you know resiliency too and how do you cultivate resiliency and leadership when you're building your teams yeah so resiliency is kind of comes with the territory and again it's you know this is keep

retraining the same ground but there's a certain amount of resiliency required just just based on the uncertainty of the military that if if you're not you know if you don't have a certain level of resiliency the army is not going to be for you because it's just come with territory so artificial sort of filtering mechanism there but resiliency is important so there's a there's a lot of things that can happen to you or around you in the military that are

emotionally traumatic or very stressful that require you to be able to have order to kind of process however long that takes process and then get back to what you have to do so it's sort of sort of a built-in mechanism I'll have them point out that resilience was one of our taglines for what we were sort of in the heart of the Iraq you know global war on terrorism because servicemen have come at back and you know having emotional problems

and we're have a hard time we didn't have the the structure the institutional knowledge to process that now we do but the other time when having social you know people who could give care and and have you know psychologists to help folks it was there it wasn't robust enough to service the needs of the service numbers coming back so that that got added to the the military's sort of institutional structure and we started we started enforcing on commanders to build resilience

and now we've got things like we've got classes that the units do we've got there's actually a position in a lot of units now it's called a master resiliency trainer and I always love the one of the module they do this is like a four-hour block of instruction on how to be resilient resilient with a first blocks they do is we titled how to hook the good stuff so it just simply teaches you to understand your circumstances see what's going on and understand that maybe your

intervigain is bad may not but you really need to understand what's going on and so are in there is something that's good you can reinforce right and the army is our lifestyle in a lot cases I'm I'm sort of suited for it and I'm institutionalized at this point so I'm okay but but I know especially for folks transitioning especially young folks transitioning from the civilian world to military the huge culture change and so that comes with a lot of a lot of pressures a lot of stress a lot of

uncertainty so it is incumbent on people like me more senior folks to understand and to do this but to understand that you know anytime you go to a new organization just just being the new person in an organization is stressful especially when you're young even compounded more when this is your first unit ever right so so much uncertainty so much of I don't know you don't know the people you don't you have no you have no signs of safety and that's really what you're looking for when you're

stressed right I'm looking for something stable you know indications or signatures of safety that I could sort of latch on to so it's a big deal when people are new I've always tried to do this but when people are new you have to go out of your way to make them feel comfortable because I really literally the first day that's sort of the the signal are you are you building trust by helping them feels even this new environment or you you're gonna play the game of oh you're the new guy I was

dressed now you're gonna be stressed let's let's make it more stressful for you as sort of a test or even worse that you're the new guy and I'm indifferent I don't care so just figure it out like everybody else did so it is real important for you to see I think it's important for senior leaders to understand that I can make that guy more valuable to the team I can make him or her want to be on

this team more simply by doing a few behaviors to indicate this is a safe place we're gonna take are you part of the family yeah and first impressions are everything and how you leave people feeling is everything because that is how they're going to how they're gonna leave feeling is how they think of you right and if you're making a first Brad impression and you're angry and you're aggressive and you're yelling that's not going to be the great first impression so

like you said you got to go out of your way to make it right for them to get them in the right mindset to move them forward with the mission and I love kind of what you were saying I think it's spot on and the other thing is discipline I think resilience and discipline you know I kind of see them hand in hand right so when people come back from these really challenging missions they need to have the discipline to take care of themselves to process it to work through it just like staying in

shape right because a lot of times I think the more we bottle things and say okay I'm gonna bottle that I'm gonna put it in a file folder on the back of my head before long the file folder gets full of stuff that we haven't had the discipline to process and work through that it just spills out into your life and so I love kind of what you were saying but I think you know just kind of enclosing just final kind of closing thoughts and takeaways or anything any key lessons that we

maybe haven't talked about or thoughts you want to leave with our listeners before we close up so because leadership is is my passion I see the world through the lens of basically all the stuff we've already talked about so I'm real real cognizant of how a leader makes people feel and

you know you mentioned at one point that maybe it's not leader who's making the decision it's it's one who's in the right position at the right time that has to do leadership things I think that's very true because it's not just a person that wears the highest rank that has to be the leader I think everybody has to be able to understand when the environment calls for them to be a leader and to be ready for that and it's getting the environment to understand is this the time where I need

to do a leadership thing nobody's called me leader but the environment is indicating that I need to do this thing I can do something simple as make someone feel comfortable in this environment you know help them understand what it is that we're supposed to be doing and just lead that person so for me it's not just it's just not just a corporate or a decorative or a military leadership thing it's a way it's a framework to see the world around you and to understand how you're interacting with

the people the most basic unit and the social system around you they're acting with the people and either making them more comfortable in the environment or helping them do something that makes them better yeah oh I love that um oh I have to add impact that I think you could be a fantastic leader you can be the world's greatest leader but if your culture and your environment isn't set up for success and it's toxic it can be hard to lead in those kind of environments and getting everybody in the

mission right so like the principles you were mentioning um if you achieve a mission but you know nobody trusts you you've done you know you've taken things you've you know you've not been you know I would say the right leader is it really all worth it right I think I hear a lot in corporate America you know my culture is toxic therefore I can't do what I need to do or lead the people the way I need to lead and it becomes tricky right and I think I love all that you just said because I

think to be a really great leader you have to have the support and the vision and clearly understand the mission that you're going for because it gets everybody going and pulling on the rope together versus against each other on opposite ends of the road yeah if you've created an environment and you're the ones technically in charge but but you have a toxic environment and nobody will go out of their way to do the right thing unless you force them to you're not the leader somebody else is

but it's not you you're the person that owns the reins and you can tell people which direction to go and they might do it but they're not the leader the leader is driving the organization it is somewhere else in your organization but it's not you yes that is so good I really agree Damon thank you so much for being here in sharing your insights I cannot wait to read your book I'm excited to hear all about the principles that we've talked today about follow Damon read his book

we'll share all the details in the show notes and follow us that's the executive connect podcast [Music] [Silence]