Every military service has a set of core values. But what happens when those values don't tell you how to lead your team? Build trust, or manage your own burnout? That's where the Sherpa code begins. And if you're tired of climbing alone, then this episode is for you. Welcome back to the Military Sherpa Podcast, my friends. I am your host, mark, and today we are starting off a 12 part series, the longest series we've ever done on this podcast.
And it's gonna be all about something brand new, something I'm very excited about, over 20 years in the making. And it's called The Sherpa Code. And what this 12 part series is all about is unlocking your personal potential. How do you get to your highest peak? Maintaining your health and becoming the healthiest version of yourself? Well, simultaneously unlocking the potential of others.
If you listen to the Sherpa code, if you're faithful to what we integrate in each one of these episodes, you'll be leading better, living, healthier, and climbing higher, but not alone with others. In this episode, this series is so powerful. It matters because the military teaches us values. If we look at the Air Force, they've simplified it down to three service of force. Self excellence in all.
We do integrity first, but when it comes to what do I do when there's drama, gossip, my boss doesn't like me. I'm burned out. I'm overwhelmed. Well, if I look at those three core values, what am I supposed to do? The core values rarely teach us how to apply them in real world situations. They're great guardrails, but they're more like the bumpers on a bowling alley than they are a platform or a map for how we get to the highest peaks.
They don't tell us what to do when it comes to team dynamics, when it comes to culture issues, when it comes to our own personal development. And even when the core values are enough, if we say, Hey, our core values, that's all that we need. In reality, only 23% of US employees agree, according to Gallup, only 23% of US employees strongly agree that they can apply their organizational values to their work every day.
So even if we say that the core values are enough service to self excellence in all, we do integrity first, only 23% or less of us believe that we can actually live those out day to day. And when it comes to our shared values, these are not meant to be feel good exercises. It's not meant for us to just have some buzzwords integrity first, and then we look around and we try to exhibit these values ourself or look for gaps in them in others.
They're supposed to be things that shape the way that we do business every day. And when it comes to our values, what our values are supposed to do is they're supposed to help us to set boundaries. And when we think of something, let's say like integrity, what Integrity tells us is, Hey, do what's right even when nobody's looking. It's an awesome statement that encapsulates, but it goes so much farther than that.
And what I found is that there isn't a universal set of behavioral guidelines that actually help us deal with culture. And if we don't understand what our universal set of values are, then we can't set boundaries. And if we can't set boundaries, the ones that we set in advance are the ones that we're most likely to follow. And what we end up with is we end up with a loose set of beliefs that we can't rely on, that don't rise to the occasion and help us when things get really tough.
It's why we get an epidemic of people saying things like do more with less. Figure it out. Mission first. People always, but people never seem to come. And the reason is when the climb gets steep and when the burden gets heavy. People don't rise to the level of their training. They fall back to their default, to their values. They behave in a way that aligns with who they really are. And so for me, what I've seen as I've gone through the military there isn't a universal set of values.
There's not a code that exists. And the Sherpa Code, the point of it is to replace ambiguity with clarity. To replace chaos with a shared purpose. And for the first time, what we're doing, and many of you listening, are military Sherpa certified coaches. And for those of you who are listening who are military Sherpa coaches, this is the first time what the Sherpa code represents.
It's the first time that you're gonna have a creed, that you're gonna have a set of beliefs, 12 distinct statements that tell you exactly what to believe, exactly how to behave and what to do when it gets really hard. We use the analogy of the Sherpa for a reason. Worldwide Sherpa are recognized as the most proficient mountain climbing guides on Mount Everest. They operate in the harshest of environments. The price for failure is extreme. If it works, we implement.
If it doesn't work, it's going to get us killed, or somebody on our team killed. And so we recognize Sherpa as those that have the lowest tolerance for fluff. They have the highest standards when it comes to behavior on the team, and they represent those leadership qualities that each of us wants to exhibit. Because a climber's job is to reach the summit. A climber's job is to get to the top of the mountain to hold up their flag and say, look what I did. I made it.
The Sherpa's job is to get teams of people. To the top and back down again. Because if you know anything about Everest, you know that most people die on the way down. They don't die on the way up. And so when it comes to our Sherpas, you've gotta understand that they meet the needs of people on their team, but their obsession is getting their team safely to the top and back down again. And so I've spent a great deal of effort and time building out what I believe is the ultimate Sherpa code.
And the reason is most leaders we're still winging it. We're still going with our heart. We're going with our gut, but our values haven't been defined. And if we can't define it, we can't implement it. And more importantly, if we can't define it, we can't pass it on. And you'll be remembered as the greatest leader they ever worked for because you cared not for what you taught them. And the code comes and it reinforces this idea that leadership is not about having answers.
But it's about having anchor points. It's about being calm in the storm. When the mountain fights back, when the weather gets extreme, you don't move. 'cause you've defined your boundary, you've defined your values in advance. And so military values are often character driven, and that's a good thing. Military values often emphasize things like service and excellence and integrity. Where the Sherpa Code comes in is it's not an intention to replace those things.
But instead it's practical application. How do these things translate into leadership? And in a world where you're trained to complete tasks, but soft skills are being pulled out at an ever increasing rate from military professional education? Never has there been a time where this is more necessary and the Sherpa code, as you go through it, you're gonna see it's filling that gap for you, that gap of soft skills that the military is starting to bleed out.
And what happens when we get rid of these relational intelligence skills, when we train people to complete tasks but not to develop others, is that we get really high levels of burnout. And that's obvious. Look left, look right. Look, internal. People get burned out. They break down. And when the culture asks for output, but it never invests in input. That's like taking your car and revving it up to 150 miles an hour, and then driving, but never stopping to put in gas. What's gonna happen?
Well, there has to be some input if we want output and we're building high performance machines, but we don't have relational intelligence and we're not investing or leading humans. And so the Sherpa Code is a set of 12 universal principles that you apply across teams inside your home and your mission, like everything else that we do, self, family, team, organization, and community. And you're gonna see that as we go through the same principles that we implement at work.
We're gonna implement with our children, and with our spouses, with our friends, with our family. If you implement each of the Sherpa code principles as we go through them, you write them on your whiteboard, you print them out, you hang them up in your conference rooms, then you should see a measurable shift in your team's performance and your trust and your cohesion, because you'll be rooted in a shared language and shared language builds. It doesn't break.
Shared language, creates objective conversation, productive communication. And so you'll see a shift in team cohesion. And when we think about the Sherpa code, like everything else that we do, it's not theoretical. It's forged in the mess of real leadership. And real leadership is messy. There's no way around it.
And so what the Sherpa Code is designed to do is designed again to get you to your highest personal peak, maintaining your own personal health, and most importantly, unlocking the potential of other people. Starting next week, we're gonna have Sherpa code principle number one, and then we're gonna rock through all 12 principles. But this week as always, I'm gonna give you some conversation prompts that you can do with your team.
And so if you look at your team, you can sit down and send them these questions and then have a conversation over lunch or during your safety brief. Number one, what are the unofficial values of your team? Does your team have values? A great way to think about, it's like, okay, well, if you had to clone certain members of your team, what do they have in common? What personal values do you lead with every day? Which of them are true values and which are aspirational and aspirational value?
Who do you want to be? I don't like whales, but I want to like whales. Which of them are real values? It's like, well, unfortunately I really value money and so I'm obsessed with promotion. I'm obsessed with invest. Okay, that's fine. That's who you really are. But what we don't wanna say is, family is my number one value, but at work promotion is your number one. Number two, what personal values do you lead with daily and which are aspirational? And so some of us have our ABCs, our top threes.
Here's my my acronym of the week that I teach when I go out. It was always, I found to be very funny when I was in the military, added me. Because what often happens is if I ask people to write down their top three values, it'll be, oh, family and faith. But then if I was to have people follow you around, those wouldn't be what they would say.
If I looked at your calendar and your bank account, the two greatest indicators of your personal values, would I see family and faith or would I see something else? And so this one here, what are your personal values and which are your aspirational values? What is that you wish that you placed a priority on? So those are the two things that I'm gonna have you talk about this week. And as we close out the podcast today, I wanna remind you that this month I launched the high ground community.
Why did I launch the high ground community? There are 12 months of the year. There are 12 Sherpa code items every single month. We go through one Sherpa code item every single day. We have prompts and conversations about how we implement each item in the Sherpa code. I drop constant motivational videos into the community, and we have a private chat where we all engage. But the most important part are our monthly coaching calls.
So we do two monthly coaching calls a month that you join in, you bring your real problems, and I get to invest in you. So if you're looking for something that isn't another course. But you have a guide, me and a community, everyone else who's in the high ground, that's what you need. So you need to go to military sherpa.net and you can join the high ground right now and you get a 14 day free trial. It's not just another course.
It gave me tools to lead my unit, my family, myself, in ways PME never did that comes from a tech sergeant in the US Air Force will slide that testimonial right in there. So teammates, we will talk to you soon. Have a great day next week. Sherpa Code Principal number one.