The Danger in Keeping Our Options Open

Our world today is full of options. We can choose from 30 different kinds of orange juice, a million shows on Netflix, and virtually limitless ways to spend our time. I suppose that makes us fortunate, and it’s worth acknowledging the incredible abundance that most of us enjoy. But I’m not sure that it is making our lives or our businesses any better. All of these choices come at a cost, and perhaps a much bigger one than you think.  

Because as much as the world is full of options, it is also full of uncertainty. We’re not sure what things will look like in the future, or even how we’ll feel. Often, when faced with so many choices, we simply decide to make no decision at all. We keep our options open. We wait for better information. We wait for the perfect option to show up - or at least for some of them to fall away so that the decision is made for us.  

Big decisions make us nervous because we might not be happy with it tomorrow or next week or next year. What if we chose poorly? What if something better comes along? We are terrified of, and often paralyzed by the idea of giving up our precious optionality. And it’s not because we’re afraid of the option that we DO choose. Our fear is all about what we might miss out on. That’s right, our FOMO is what’s holding us back, because we know that by taking one option, we’re passing on so many others. But here is the thing, we will never be able to do everything. And if we don’t accept that we can’t do everything, we’ll end up doing nothing. 

There is no inherent value in optionality. None. 

All of the value resides within the options themselves, and none of that value is actually captured until an option is exercised...and the optionality goes away. 

It’s only when we choose to invest our time and energy that we can start seeing returns. Compounding is the most powerful force in the universe, but you cannot benefit from its power if you’re not invested. Be it a stock, a business, a skill, or a relationship, time under tension really matters. We can’t just wait for something (or someone) great to come along, we have to choose a path and make it great. 

• What’s the best training plan to help you get strong? The one you follow. 

• Best nutrition plan for maintaining a healthy weight? The one you can stick with.

• Best investment strategy for retirement savings? The one you commit to for 30 years.

• Best school district for your kids? The one you actively participate in. 

You get it.

The danger is not in making the wrong choice, and it’s not in passing up an amazing opportunity. The danger is in failing to commit. We have the power to make almost anything great if we commit to it and take care of it.

We sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that half-stepping or half-assing our way through life’s difficult decisions will protect us from disappointment or heartbreak or looking foolish. We think it won’t hurt so bad if it was only a half-hearted attempt. Right? That’s wrong. Nothing hurts worse than wondering how things might have worked out if we’d only done it wholeheartedly. 

Maybe you’re familiar with the term “plan shopping”? You know, like when a friend invites you to a party and you tell him, “yeah, sounds fun, maybe I’ll stop by”, because not-so-secretly you’re wondering if something better might come along. We’ve all done it. And we all should stop, because in addition to it being inconsiderate, it prevents us from really engaging with the people and activities that make life great. Our obsession with keeping our options open is robbing us of the ability to enjoy and appreciate what we have - which for most of us, is a lot. 

To be clear, I’m not talking about blindly picking a path nor dogmatically sticking to it. We should take some time to identify and consider our options. And we should feel free to change course when things are truly out of whack. What I am saying is that we should make the best decision we can and give it our best shot. Because if you really want to have great options, you should be the kind of person that consistently does your best...right where your feet are. 

Afghanistan Today - Looking Into the Face of Moral Injury

Today is no better than yesterday in Afghanistan. The war is over, and it will only get worse tomorrow.

We are all complicit in this mess we’ve created and we must do better, if not for the good of our Afghan brothers and sisters, then perhaps for the good of the service members who were stuck at an airport, taking casualties, while helplessly sending people to their impending doom outside the gates to freedom. We are no city on a hill in this historical moment. Americans - we are heaping injury upon our service members, our allies, our friends, and our souls when we turn away those who require assistance. We cannot look away. 

The situation is bad. In an era where all Americans are struggling to discern who they can trust for accurate information, I know I can trust former US Army Ranger Jake Denman at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA). Rangers don’t lie to Rangers, and Jake’s been a trusted friend for over 20 years. Amidst the worst conditions he’s seen in 15 combat rotations, Jake shares that young Soldiers and Marines at the gates must look innocent people in the eyes and say, “‘Hey, you can’t come in,’ and it’s like telling the person he’s probably going to die.”

Welcome to the world of moral injury.   

You can hear more directly from Jake broadcasting on Good Morning America from Doha, Qatar.

Retired Air Force Chaplain Dr. Jan McCormick (a leading authority on military chaplaincy) provides a threefold definition of moral injury: (1) The injury (or wound) to the soul experienced as a result of a traumatic event; (2) a disruption in an individual’s confidence and expectations about his/her own moral behavior (or others’ capacity to behave in a just and ethical manner); or (3) the injury or wound in the soul that results when two deeply held ethics (or beliefs) collide and must result in choosing one ethic (or belief) over the other. 

But here’s what you really to know about moral injury: moral injury strongly contributes to suicide and the suicide rate is increasing. Since the onset of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, there’s been a 100% increase in suicides amongst active military personnel, and the last decade has yielded a 600% increase in veterans seeking treatment from Veterans Affairs Medical Centers for psychological difficulties resulting from military service. More service members died by suicide than by combat in 2013 (one the top 5 bloodiest years in the war in Afghanistan). A common experience across the board is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) exacerbated by guilt and shame, which is closely linked to suicide and suicidal ideation. 

This compounded shame and guilt hangs like millstones around the necks of many veterans, and we hung those millstones on the necks of our service members standing at the gates of HKIA, sentencing innocent people to their inevitable deaths. Thank a Soldier for their service and they will likely tell you, “I’m just doing my job.” Doing your job means following orders. Over the past two weeks, at HKIA, following orders meant barring entry to people, and sending them to the whims of the Taliban. I fear that we are not only sending Afghans, but also American service members and veterans to their deaths. This is not hyperbole, but a fact we must reckon with now before we see it further escalate past its already horrific state of affairs.

Moral injury plagues the veteran and military populations, inflames PTSD,  and is connected to suicide. If there was any mystery about how moral injury occurs before these past two weeks, it seems fair to say that we’ve moved far past wonder and into clarity. We all watched it happen in real time. We can learn all we need to know about moral injury by reading the lips of the US Soldiers saying, “I’m sorry...I’m sorry,” as they turned women and children away at the gates.

We should all be sorry. This entire situation is sorry.

Photo Credit: Coffee or Die Magazine.

This has been a long time coming, I could have told you that in 2003 on my second of four rotations to Afghanistan--all of us Soldiers could have told you that. We stand at the unceremonious end of a botched twenty year war in Afghanistan. A war on terror, which is an emotion, not an enemy.

The ethical double binds that service members have experienced in real life and death situations are resurfacing. Freedom is costly. The cost of American freedom was paid by the sacrifices of military service members. And though that freedom is a birthright for 100% of Americans, the burden to maintain and defend that reality rests squarely on just 8% of the population who have had real skin in the game of America’s wars. The ones who are reprocessing their guilt and shame today as we watch young Soldiers and Marines who were babies in 2001 accrue their own moral burdens to carry.

These fellow citizens surrendered their constitutional rights to submit to the political will of our nation, deploying to unstable lands in support of US policy. Though the politicians command the authority to send our service members, the life long burden falls upon those in uniform to carry long after they take off their camo. But one that can be mitigated by a community of caring supporters, pastoral and spiritual care providers trained to navigate moral injury, and an integrated menu of mental health treatment options. 

Though they will be able to wash the Afghan dust from their uniforms upon return, they will not be able to wash away the guilt of every apology made into the innocent Afghan eyes we have ordered them to turn away.

I am old enough to confess ignorance on many matters of this mess. I concede complexity. I do not believe that a single American policymaker is operating out of malice in their posture towards this withdrawal. I am confident that there is information that I do not have access to, conversations that occurred between world leaders that influenced this decision, and heaps of people at the State Department working in earnest to make this better.

But just because this issue is complex doesn’t mean we cannot do better, that we must do better - right now. For the good of the human beings who were clutching to the outside of planes taking off to freedom; and for the good of the Americans who absorbed every single “I’m sorry” at the gates of HKIA upon all of our behalf. Because though they will be able to wash the Afghan dust from their uniforms upon return, they will not be able to wash away the guilt of every apology made into the Afghan eyes we have ordered them to turn away.

If you are a veteran and need help, please reach out right now:

VA Veterans Crisis Line, America’s Warrior Partnership, GetHeadstrong.org, Cohen Veterans Network, Vets4Warriors

If you are a civilian reach out to a veteran today and care for them - invite a veteran to coffee, to church, on a hike, to lunch, etc. and connect with her/him. Please feel no burden to solve the problem, just care and listen.

If you are a pastoral care provider or a chaplains, stay ready.

If you are a US policy maker, do better.

Cover Photo Credit: Jariko Denman (@laidbackberserker) via Instagram.

The Tradeoff War

In a recent 5 Things in 5 Minutes, J.R. Briggs with Kairos Partnerships got me really thinking about tradeoffs. He shares:

“American economist and senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution Thomas Sowell shared, ‘There are no solutions, there are only tradeoffs.’ Much of leadership is about tradeoffs instead of solutions. In leadership it’s tempting to try and look for perfect solutions to problems. But they aren’t out there. This isn’t pessimism or cynicism; it’s reality. Fortunately, there are always tradeoffs.”

Priority is a singular word, and with the limitations of time, talent, and resources examining priorities in leadership means making tradeoffs. We trade our time with family for a client engagement trip, we trade another five emails for a walk outside to clear our minds after lunch, or we trade the launch of a new initiative for the sustainability of our most successful product. 

Tradeoffs help us achieve our goals within the real limitations of our organizations and industries. They are not inherently good or bad, they are just real. 

What intrigues me most, of late, is the tradeoff war that occurs between our ears; a war that has consequences and casualties—or rewards and benefits—depending upon our choices.  

Amusement and responsibility are at war within us every moment of every day.  We are constantly faced with choices between our comforts and our duties. In those moments when we succumb to our comforts, while the tradeoff might seem harmless at first, the consequences will eventually come. 

And oftentimes we won’t see the full cost until it's too late. 

We haven’t made choosing our responsibilities easy on ourselves, that’s for sure. On the battlefield of this war, we all carry a great enemy within our pockets everyday. Our smartphones offer access to an entire world of options—seemingly more interesting than the responsibilities before us—and before we know it, hours are lost down the rabbit hole of amusement.

Choosing amusement over responsibilities leads to missing goals, disappointing others, guilt, and regret. Maybe it felt good to binge watch that season of Friends in the moment, but when we see how we’ve failed to achieve a goal and hurt others, we often feel guilty. When we experience the loss of something we cared about—a promotion that we wanted or a target that we missed—we feel regret. 

Photo Credit: @a_d_s_w via Unsplash.

And while these consequences become the ultimate price of choosing our amusement over our responsibilities, integrity is often the greatest casualty of the tradeoff war.

The US Army defines integrity in four words, “do what’s right”. Seems simple enough, but right and wrong are very difficult to discern in a relativistic society making integrity even harder to pin down on a broad scale. It’s easy to recognize in our daily actions though.

If the tradeoff you’re making involves a choice you are hiding from your employer, your family, or your community - it’s wrong. And hiding happens all the time in professional settings.

Soldiers hide in latrines to eat contraband chow, sleep, or read when they are supposed to be on guard. Employees hide in Facebook, Instagram, or Amazon instead of conducting their work. Leaders hide in meetings and strategy sessions when they are supposed to be on the field guiding their teams. 

When one person hides, everybody hurts. 

But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can fight the gravity of comfort by deploying our greatest weapon in the tradeoff war - discipline. 

There are a lot of great ways to define discipline (biblically, grammatically, epidemiologically, and so forth). Command Sergeant Major Shelton R. Williamson offers this solid definition in the NCO Journal at Army University Press: “Discipline or "military discipline" as it is often referred, is defined as the state of order and obedience among personnel in a military organization and is characterized by the mens’ (read as humans’) prompt and willing responsiveness to orders and understanding compliance to regulation (emphases added).” 

Adding the emphases illustrates that obedience is at the heart of discipline. Obedience is a salty word these days, but the reality is that we are all obedient to something. Author Paul David Tripp puts it this way, “Everybody worships; it’s just a matter of what, or whom, we serve.” 

What or whom we serve is illustrated by where we give our time, talent, and resources in the tradeoff war. Rightly applied discipline in the tradeoff war is choosing obedience to your integrity, your goals, and your responsibilities instead of being obedient to your impulses. 

When we deploy discipline in the tradeoff war—when we choose obedience to our integrity, our goals, and our responsibilities and we make the right calls with our limited gifts—we open ourselves to the rewards of responsibility: achievement, advancement, and growth. These rewards come with the benefits of self respect, pride of effort, trusting relationships, and the joy of walking in the light of our own skin, knowing that we fear nothing hidden in the crevices of our character. 

Photo Credit: @yukie via Unsplash.

Cover Photo @tjump via Unsplash.

Conflict vs. Tension

“We lead from who we are.” Dr.’s Angie Ward and Tim Koller remind us of this every session in the Denver Seminary Master of Divinity in Leadership program. 

It’s a foundational principle for our learning community as we dive deep into the biblical, sociological, psychological, military, and corporate illustrations of the art and the profession of leadership. As we navigate that terrain, the core of who we are always informs what we learn. Who we are shapes how we lead and leading from any other place is flat and phoney. Our people can always sense it. 

I’ve been considering this a lot while working with our clients, who are engaging in a number of challenging team and interpersonal conversations and for good reason! We are now 17 months into consistent operational, personnel, and expectation changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Universally, exhaustion and malaise have set in.

All organizations feel the weight of these pressures. Whether growing or shrinking, thriving or struggling, we are placing an extra emphasis on the need to communicate clearly and consistently in order to generate positive outcomes. 

While pressure turns coal into diamonds over time, sadly it has the tendency to turn relationships into something far less beautiful. Relationships that are unable to navigate this pressure just seem to get crushed. 

As a result, one of the most common workshops that Blayne and I are invited to facilitate is simply titled: Difficult Conversations. 

Spending so much time on this concept over the past year has given me the opportunity to further refine my perspective on the matter, while reflecting on how I have viewed difficult conversations throughout the course of my life and leadership. One thing I’ve realized about myself is that early on, I had an unhealthy relationship with conflict that shaped the way I approached difficult conversations.

I grew up in conflict, I learned to survive and to thrive in conflict. From the time I was a child and my father would viciously pit his children against one another or write off family members, conflict just seemed to be the natural outcome of disagreement. 

It’s no wonder that when I became a 20 year old Ranger Leader, I viewed my position as one of conflict with my subordinates. Especially in the late ‘90’s era Ranger Battalions where Specialists with Ranger Tabs were like salty inmates running the prison yard. I wielded any degree of authority I could through coercion and position, and discarded those who didn’t comply. That was a mistake, but I guess in those days I was just happy to be one of the inmates a rung up from the floor. 

I never considered any of this a problem until one evening my girlfriend Kelly (now my wife of almost 20 years) asked, “so how many guys have you sent to Ranger School successfully?” 

Zero. I was a 21 year old fire team leader and the answer was zero. 

“Seems like that’s your job though…right?” Kelly replied matter of factly.

Right. 

Photo credit: 2nd Ranger Battalion yearbook. Fast rope training, Ft. Knox 2001.

Something had to give, and the way that I related to my team when tension arose was the problem. To be clear - I was the problem. I didn’t understand tension, though I felt it constantly in leadership when the men would not achieve excellence. 

I misread growth opportunities for a chance to fight. Time and again I missed the mark and wore out some good men and my soul in the process. In retrospect I can see that I was wracked with fear, insecurities, and anxieties too often in those early days. 

In moments of team tension, I chose a posture of team conflict because I failed to properly distinguish the target. If something didn’t go perfectly, I would make my teammates the opposition rather than the actual issue. 

I think this might be something we can all relate to today. And I think what is making difficult conversations so damned...difficult is the fact that we are confusing conflict with tension.  

Conflict occurs when two or more people, or teams, are in opposition to one another. Tension on the other hand, is when two or more people, or teams, are together in opposition to the circumstances. 

Conflict by definition, whether viewed in noun or verb form, must include a clash or an argument between competing bodies. 

Tension is a stretching or straining, often of the mental or emotional type, which understood in verb form is the application of a force to (something) which tends to stretch it. 

Tension is a good thing because we all need to be stretched to reach our goals. No matter how uncomfortable the tension is, we all intuitively know that adversity is the gateway to growth. And maturation as teams, and as people. 

But tension is also straining, mentally and emotionally, and that’s where we become vulnerable. 

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by what we are feeling, activating those anxieties and fears. How we respond to this internal tension oftentimes determines whether our communication is effective or not. Effective communication prioritizes team unity, goal orientation, and the co-creation of solutions that lead to achievement. Negative communication disrupts unity, assaults character, and invites more failure. 

And let me be clear, failure is a part of the process. State it, examine it, and learn from it, but don’t vaguely dance around it like it’s acceptable. Nothing about the environments I’ve led in allow for failure to be acceptable. Not in Special Operations, Corporate Healthcare, or the Social Impact sectors.

But does any role invite or allow for this? Does anyone get up in the morning thinking, “how can I suck today?” No one that I know does that. 

And I’d bet that about 99% of those whose performance is lacking are not thinking that either. 

And that’s where we come in as leaders. We have the gift and the responsibility to step into the muck and help our people find the right way forward. It’s up to us to endure the discomfort, to establish clear and kind communication methods that address issues, and to set clear intentions towards success. 

But we can’t do that if we are looking for a fight instead of looking for a solution. 

Every time we walk into a difficult conversation with a sword, we can expect our teammates to pick up a shield. If we allow ourselves to get baited into fighting with our teammates, our spouses, our families, or our companies, then how can we possibly be focused on achieving our goals with them? 

Photo Credit: @jupp via Unsplash.

There is a better way. 

I learned this from a Ranger Legend, CSM Hugh Roberts, as I sat in his office contemplating reenlistment in 2000. 

Comically, I told him about the leadership development advice I had received from my girlfriend, to which he responded, “don’t let go of that one,” (I didn’t) and we discussed what growth might look like for me as a young Ranger leader. 

The thing is, I didn’t accomplish what I had hoped to and my fixation on conflict was a contributing barrier to my professional growth. I had to change. I had to stop demanding immediate perfection and start looking for progress. And I had to do this by coaching, teaching, and inspiring my men instead of fighting them into shape. 

Just because you’re in front, and others are forced to catch up, doesn't mean you’re leading them. 

The next four year enlistment saw great growth in me, and great success in leading men to Ranger school - one of my greatest accomplishments as a Ranger leader. It saw many difficult conversations, giving me many chances to learn that tension occurs in moments of growth, but that doesn’t mean they are moments of conflict.

So much so that I even got the chance to serve as a cadre in the 75th Ranger Regiment’s Pre-Ranger Course, preparing future leaders of the Regiment to graduate Ranger School. 

In retrospect, I thank God that people like Kelly, CSM Roberts, and the many great leaders I’ve learned from embraced the tension of the moment to have a difficult conversation with me--a young hothead--instead of fighting me or writing me off. 

I share this in the hopes that it may encourage others to resist the urge to jump into conflict with your people and embrace the tension of taking aim against the real problem together. 

The enemy is the enemy. Our people are not the enemy.  

Here are a few ideas for how we can isolate the enemy of our progress together, thereby avoiding unnecessary conflict. 

1. Identify the problem - people are not problems, people are people; problems are problems. Behaviors, results, systems, and processes that people exhibit or otherwise operate within may be the problem, but just because people function within them (or from them) doesn’t make them the problem. 

2. Identify your problem - what’s going on inside of you that is making this so difficult?  Are you scared, insecure, or anxious? Interrogate your feelings and your motives for what’s going on inside of you during your preparation for this difficult conversation. By the way, not wanting to hurt someone is a good thing, but it can’t excuse leaders from their responsibility to remedy off course performance. 

3. State the problem - candidly and clearly; clear is kind. In one sentence consider how you can communicate the problem to your teammate leaving no room for confusion. By the way, if at this stage you still think the problem is the person, start over. 

This simple and useful three step process may increase the effectiveness of the impending difficult conversation. And opening that conversation with the stated objective and an explanation between the difference of tension and conflict can take a lot of the pressure out of the room. 

When people know they are not under attack, and are given the opportunity to join in the assault against poor performance, disunity, and failure, they are far more likely to pick up arms with us instead of against us.

Cover Photo: @hagalnaud via Unsplash

Together Again...Now What?

**Author’s Note** - We originally published this blog on 15 May 2020, exactly 13 months ago. At the time, quarantine orders were just starting to be lifted in many American cities. Most businesses planned to bring folks back to office by the 4th of July, and we were hopeful that COVID was going to be a serious, but relatively short disruption to our lives. And while the path forward was far from certain, I’m not sure that any of us thought we’d still be sorting this out in the summer of 2021. Yet, here we are, almost a year and a half into a life that still feels a long way from where we started. We wanted to re-share this article because we believe that it is more relevant now than when it was written. In working with a variety of organizations across the country, it has become clear to us that figuring out how to successfully come back together is going to be trickier than figuring out how to get everybody working from home. When COVID struck, and we were all ordered to shut down, there was no choice. We had to figure out remote work, period. But now that things are opening back up, we don’t necessarily have to go back to the office, do we? There’s a lot to consider. Some folks can’t wait to get out of house while others hope to never see the office again. Remote work opens up the talent pool, but what do we lose in collaboration? And on it goes. Every situation is unique, and we don’t have any hard-and-fast answers for your business. However, we do think that this short piece can provide leaders with a mindset and an approach to help you tackle the challenges ahead. We hope you find it useful, and we appreciate the work you’re doing. Now, from May of 2020…..

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Things never go back to normal. There’s no such thing. We veterans know this all too well.

From the first moment of any deployment, we’re counting down the days until it’s over and we can all go home - back to our families, back to our favorite restaurants, back to our lives, back to normal. We know that we’ve got a job to do and that we need to stay focused, yet still, we can’t help but constantly daydream about the warm hug and cold beer that’s waiting on the other side. If we can just suck it up and get through this, everything is going to be awesome…unless it isn’t.

The problem is that re-deployment (returning home) from combat is not just one big Budweiser commercial. Don’t get me wrong, it is wonderful to be reunited with friends and loved ones. It’s great to eat a delicious meal and sleep in your own bed, especially without the serious threat of it being interrupted by mortar fire. Still, re-deployment is tricky at best and brutal at worst. It’s full of pitfalls that you can’t or would prefer not to see. We believe that coming back from a forced, difficult situation will be great only to discover that it just isn’t that simple. What I personally failed to appreciate about re-deployment was that ‘normal’ was gone and it was never coming back. In ways that I hadn’t expected, things changed. I’d changed. My family had changed. The world had changed - and I just didn’t recognize how much. If I had to do it again I would do it so much differently. But with my military days far behind me, I assumed that most of those hard lessons learned would be filed away as regrets and probably never revisited. This COVID-19 situation suddenly has me feeling differently.

Over the past two months, I’ve often joked with my veteran friends about how the quarantine has felt just like a deployment. We’ve been told where we can go, where we can’t, what we’re supposed to wear, and nobody’s quite sure who’s in charge. There’s danger in venturing ‘outside the wire’, an invisible enemy that we can’t pin down or directly confront. We’re stuck here for a while, happy to be alive and healthy, frustrated with all the uncertainty, and ready to just get it over with. The only big difference is that this time we’re ALL deployed; spouses, kids, civilians, everybody. And as little by little, the country starts to re-open and re-integrate, I think it’d be wise for all of us to think of it as a re-deployment. Businesses, communities, churches, gyms, and schools are all eventually going to return back to something that looks like, but isn’t quite normal - and before we do that, here are some things that you should seriously consider.

Same Conditions Do Not Equal the Same Experience: Ten people can be exposed to essentially the same circumstances and have ten completely different experiences. No two people will have had the same exact COVID-19 experience and this must be factored into your approach to re-deployment. Be careful about blanket policies or protocols. Some of your team will be eager to get back while others will have become quite comfortable working from home. Still others will be dealing with real challenges as a result of this crisis. If you’re a leader, you’re going to have to pay very close attention to your people and be willing to support them as individuals.

Re-Deployment is a Process, Not an Event: Just like in the military, we have to plan for a successful re-deployment. We won’t be able to flip a switch and be back up and running. Everything from administration and logistics to personal dynamics needs to be considered. Think hard about who comes back to the office first, which clients need immediate attention, and what might be able to wait a while. What are the phases of the operation and goals for each? Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Take Stock of What We’ve Learned: Deployments aren’t all bad. Far from it. Talk to almost any veteran and they’ll tell you about how much they enjoyed certain aspects of being ‘down range’. Maybe it was the heightened sense of purpose or the camaraderie or the simplicity. The same goes for COVID-19. As scary and somber as it’s often been, this certainly hasn’t been (and shouldn’t be) an entirely negative experience. How can we use this laboratory to identify ways to get better? We’ve been creative, flexible, and resilient during this difficult time. Don’t let that go to waste. Figure out what tactics and habits we need to keep and which ones we’ve learned to do without.

No Unspoken Expectations: This is big. Unspoken expectations are usually unmet, and given that we’ve all experienced this differently, we likely have different expectations of what life will be like after re-deployment. If you’re a leader, you’ve got to be transparent about how you see this re-deployment going. What is your vision of success? What are your top priorities? What are you most concerned about? You also need to be open to hearing this from others. If necessary, make it a mandatory exercise. I like to ask my team three simple questions:

1. What are you most proud of during your time in quarantine?

2. What are you most looking forward to?

3. What are you most concerned about?

Don’t Rush It: On so many levels, we are not going fully understand the impact of this crisis for quite a while. We just don’t know how our people, our customers, and are markets will be affected in the long run. I know things feel urgent. I absolutely encourage you to move with purpose and intention. However, I also encourage you to be patient and keenly aware to what’s going on around you. There will be plenty of warning signs and opportunities if you can manage to keep your eyes up and your mind open. As Brandon wrote in this great piece, we have a long walk ahead of us. The coming months will require leaders to demonstrate both grit and grace.

We appreciate that these are unprecedented and difficult times. We also know that there are better times ahead. The transition between will make all the difference. Thank you for your leadership and hard work to this point, and best of luck with your re-deployment. If we can be of any help, please let us know.

Keep It Between the Ditches - Effective Leaders Are Peacemakers

In 2003, as the 75th Ranger Regiment shifted its attention to the war in Iraq, C Company of the 2nd Battalion, 75th, was doing time as “the forgotten company” in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province. Deep inside the Hindu Kush Mountain Range, narrow roads cut through poppy fields and high mountain peaks.

With mobility challenged by terrain and villages inhabited by warlord sympathizers, operating at night was a critical component of our security and the success of our missions. Daytime ops exposed us to improvised explosive devices, especially on Route Blue, where multiple IED strikes killed or wounded many and destroyed vehicles. We called the route “IED Alley.”

A few hours into one of our many nighttime convoys through IED Alley, I watched through the green screen of my night optical device (NODs) as a Toyota truck driven by one of the “slice elements” — a non-Ranger support team — drifted toward the side of the raised dirt road and careened off into a poppy field. The driver’s Afghan team scattered like popcorn from the truck bed, their eyes wide enough to see through my NODs. 

The Kunar River Valley in Afghanistan. Photo courtesy of DVIDS.

The sound of crunching metal and breaking glass was cut by an “All halt!” and all four of the truck tires spun in the air impotently. We were miles from our objective and had possible casualties inside the cab.

 It was at this moment I realized I had failed as a leader.

Pushing the pace is a Ranger standard. With the mission to conduct direct-action raids in unstable environments, Rangers have a knack for winning by pushing through complexity. This resolve can sometimes become stubbornness that shuts down communication, and in those moments, I try to remind myself to “keep it between the ditches.”

Taken literally, the idiom means to stay on the road while driving. Figuratively, it means to stay on the high ground and avoid extremes. Communicating effectively helps us avoid pitfalls, and when communication shuts down, the ditches come calling.

Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 2003 — our truck, “Black Sunshine,” on all fours.

That’s exactly what happened hours before our joint force moved out on our mission that night in Kunar.

In the joint-operations fight, gaining and shedding different “slice elements” is routine. Our slice element for the mission was a small Afghan special-mission team led by an American operative we’ll call Bill. 

Bill wore body armor and a collared shirt that smelled of fabric softener and home, with a weapon strung clumsily to his side. He jockeyed his black Toyota truck into the convoy as we prepped NODs for the drive, suddenly turning sheet white when I asked him to put on his NODs. 

“Bill, we drive blacked out at night,” I said.

He and his team just stared at me. We were minutes from launch, and I was suddenly painfully aware of a pretty big oversight in our pre-combat inspections and mission planning. Namely, a better understanding of Bill’s equipment and capabilities. 

Soldiers prepare a HMMWV for an airlift by a CH-47 Chinook helicopter at the Korengal Outpost in eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar province. Photo courtesy of DVIDS.

With a long trip ahead and no time to waste if we were going to hit our target by daybreak, we slapped a set of NODs and a skull crusher (head mount) on Bill, congratulated ourselves for a rapid solution, and cranked up the convoy. Go time.

Three hours later, Bill drove into a ditch (poppy field).

We sprang into action, securing the area and assessing the situation. After confirming Bill and his men were okay, I kicked myself for my stupidity and cockiness. I was furious with my lack of communication and preparation prior to rolling out of the wire. I knew better. I sensed Bill’s tension as we cinched the NODs to his face, but I didn’t have the difficult conversation. 

Bill experienced an obstacle called “mission risk versus personal risk,” a problem that occurs when the teammate feels a lack of safety in the relationship that causes him to self-preserve, even at the risk of the mission. He didn’t want to expose himself by looking a Ranger in the eyes and saying, “I can’t drive in these conditions,” or “I’m scared.” I can’t really blame him. I never gave him that option. 

I experienced an obstacle called “keeping the peace,” an obstacle we see often in marriages and partnerships. Keeping the peace looks a lot like quiet when you know you should speak up. 

But quiet is not to be confused with peace. 

A soldier performs a radio check atop Little Gherghara in Afghanistan’s Sabari district in 2012. Army photo by Sgt. Christopher Bonebrake.

Rather than being peacekeepers, we should really want to be peacemakers. Peacemaking means asking the questions and addressing the issues to either initiate or restore communication. Peacekeeping very often is avoidance, an exit door that I walked through that night. 

It was my responsibility as a leader to initiate the difficult conversation. My failure to act created the larger problem down the road. We were stuck in a ditch of my creation and the poppy field of a stirring village. My failure to have the difficult conversation destroyed crops, damaged a vehicle, compromised our position, and nearly killed some of our companions.

All over modern America today, relationships are damaged by a lack of difficult conversations. I see people jumping into their ditches in fear or pushing others into ditches not of their own choosing on critical issues that need to be addressed with care. 

The ditches of any complex issue are dangerous places to be. If we’re not careful, they can become ideological trenches in a war of ego and opinion. 

When we dig our own ditches, they become like shallow graves, burying us in our own certainty and self-righteousness in ways that shut us off from caring about others and achieving progress. But when we focus less on winning and more on trying to understand one another, we find the will to have a difficult conversation, to understand sincerely, and to align upon a common purpose, even if we don’t agree on everything. 

We often have much to agree upon, and disagreement by itself is not inherently good or bad. And disagreeing with each other is a far better outcome than disagreeing without one another. 

Peacemaking, an important part of effective leadership, means having the hard talks instead of avoiding them because of embarrassment or ego. A .50-caliber machine gun crew explains their employment of the weapon to 173rd Airborne Brigade Commander Col. Jay Bartholomees as the Brigade Support Battalion conducts base-defense live-fire training in Slovenia, March 13, 2018. Photo by Lt. Col. John Hall.

Difficult conversations are the rope holding us together in tension between the ditches. We all have memories of the damages in the ditches, but are we willing to learn from those experiences and change before we suffer more losses?

I pray that we are, especially as I recall the helplessness of that night in Kunar when I could have thrown Bill the rope instead of a pair of NODs.  

As dawn began creeping over the mountaintops, we were stuck with a dead truck and no air support to cover our movement by day. We had a target with a hit time to achieve and a village of Afghans waking to find their livelihoods disrupted by foreign invaders.  

Accidents happen. When they are avoidable and happen on our watches, they become crucible moments in our formations as leaders.

Winching a dead truck up onto the road as our Afghan counterparts apologized to the farmers and paid them for their losses, I learned a lot about peacemaking. The cost of inaction remains with me today, but I feel blessed that my mistake only cost us a mission. It could just as easily have cost us a life.

We all came together as a team and got our convoy up and running again just in time to clear the area before sunrise. We drove away with the whole force intact and a lifelong lesson. The damage done in that ditch reminds me that a difficult conversation together is a far better alternative than the damage wrought by the silence that keeps us apart.

Difficult conversations help us stay between the ditches and, one would hope, find higher ground together. And together is what we all desperately need more of today.

This article originally appeared on Coffee Or Die Magazine. Please check them out.

Cover photo credit @sethadam via Unsplash.

Powerbelts, Eye Protection, and Hand Grenades: Leadership Lessons from the Front

Power belts, eye protection, and hand grenades — oh my! And all the sergeants major said, “Hell yeah!” While the staff sergeants rolled their eyes.

Let me explain.

In the Army, the senior enlisted service member of any (battalion-level or above) unit is the command sergeant major (CSM), the “Smaj” (rhymes with badge). But never call a CSM “Smaj” to their face.

The CSM has the most experience, has been around the longest, and is typically the oldest and most likely the crabbiest of all the soldiers in the unit. The CSM is typically around 40 with 20 to 22 years in service. They’ve seen it all. As top adviser and “Ranger buddy” to the commanding officer, they are big difference makers.

But why is the CSM crabby all the time? Well, because the CSM is typically roaming the unit area spot-checking for compliance to unit standards, which inevitably drives the staff sergeants (SSGs) bananas. They typically lead nine-soldier squads, composed of the SSG, two sergeants, and six soldiers. Squad leaders are the closest “leader of leaders” to the fight. They are tactically maneuvering fighting elements, are typically focused on the mission at hand, and tend to care little about the “rules” they feel don’t apply to them. The mean age is 25 with four to seven years in service.

The credo of the SSG is “Follow the rules you agree with.” If you don’t agree with it, change the standard when you’re out of sight, or claim “shooter preference” or “non-mission essential” when you’re caught outside of the standard. Better to ask forgiveness than permission.

This is the part that really chafes CSMs because “shooter preference” is typically soldier code for “I don’t wanna.”

But “shooter preference” conflicts with a standard if (and only if) someone is monitoring for compliance to the prescribed standard. And in the Army, someone is always watching for the standards because you cannot expect what you do not inspect. Any prescribed expectation left unmonitored is merely a suggestion, not a standard.

Blacksheep, A Co. 2/75 Ranger 1999. The typical response to powerbelts. This photo basically captures my 20’s. PS - the guy in the back walking between the platoons is most likely the CSM. 

A lot of people don’t like being told what to do, even in the Army, which is why monitoring standards — especially safety standards — is important. Here are three examples that highlight three common categories of negative responses to prescribed safety standards:

Power Belts (Negative Response Category: “I don’t like” the safety standard)

Power belts are night reflectors that soldiers wear when running or ruck marching on the road. They are often part of the standard physical training (PT) uniform. Soldiers hate them.

I hated my power belt. Some of the more common affronts against the power belt are to claim “It’s not tactical,” or “It’s not like it’s car repellent,” or the ever famous “If I’m going to get hit by a car, I’m going to get hit by a car! This power belt is stupid!”

Looking back in my 40s, I know that as a young soldier I didn’t want to wear a power belt for two simple reasons: because someone told me to and because they look dorky.

I thought power belts were dumb until a Ranger on a tactical march got hit on a highway at night by a speeding car and was injured so badly it ended his military career. Turns out CSM was right about the power belts. Looking lame is a small price to pay for not getting run over. 

Eye Protection (negative response category: “the safety standard impedes my ability to work”)

Ballistic eyewear that protects the eyes from debris and shrapnel — eye protection — is also infamous for capturing the heat and sweat coming off your face and fogging up to obstruct your vision. Typically, it happens right during the decisive point of the operation when you’re most amped up and your need to see the target is the most critical. It’s also typically the moment when you are most likely to encounter debris and shrapnel.

It’s not that eye pro is really hated, especially if you’re rocking Oakleys. In fact, though it was cool to rag on eye pro before the war, all of us got really happy about wearing our glasses once the GWOT started. Especially after that “wear your eye pro” photo with the 2-inch piece of shrapnel sticking out of the dude’s lens started circulating circa 2006.

I hate that photo because it made me love eye pro, and I had one less thing to drive the CSM crazy about.

This one! The worst! 

Though I had good reason to pull off my eye pro from time to time to see the battlefield, my Oakleys saved my vision more times than I care to recollect, and I’m thankful to have my sight today.

CSM was also right about eye pro, but don’t tell him I said that. I have a reputation as a Ranger to uphold. Which leads me to hand grenades. (You’re welcome.)

Hand Grenades (Negative Response Category: “I don’t agree with” the safety standard)

This may be the trickiest category of all because it’s genuinely founded in a disagreement about right versus wrong. This is where thoughtful perspectives actually collide with one another creating friction if an idea becomes an ideology — a thought that becomes the fixation of the whole.

In 2002, Bagram, Afghanistan, was a tent city on an abandoned Soviet airfield surrounded by Hesco barriers and soldiers on guard. Down the center of the base, paralleling the airfield, was a long, hard-packed dirt road that we were authorized to run on when we left our corner compound.

When we ran on that road, we were required to have a weapon in hand. A weapon to run on a road surrounded by barriers and well-trained American soldiers guarding those of us inside the barriers.

I thought it was dumb, and I was willing to share my rationale.

Bagram 2002

Why would I need to shoot if we have soldiers on guard? Who am I going to shoot at on the inside of the base? If we are so overrun by the enemy that the guards have been eliminated, I’ll pick up an M4 and get to the fight. And most important, who the hell wants to run while carrying a gun?!?

Ultimately, the CSM was not persuaded by SSG Young’s thoughtful argument, and the safety standard remained in effect. So in one of my finest acts of smartassery, my squad and I complied — kind of.

After the weapons were issued, the boys and I went on a run, as prescribed, with one LAW (Light Anti-tank Weapon, a collapsible rocket launcher) tied up with a piece of 550 cord to one man’s back and eight M67 fragmentation grenades. Every hand had a weapon — a hand grenade.

We were pretty proud of ourselves. The CSMs on Bagram were not amused.

During the next rotation to Afghanistan, sometime in the middle of the night, we got attacked and a Hesco barrier saved many Rangers’ lives (including mine) by taking the full blast of the 107 mm rocket fired at us. I was pleased to have my rifle to return fire from the barrier, especially since none of the guards were reacting to contact. About two squads of Rangers were happy to oblige instead.

Obviously, being armed in the middle of a war is valuable, even if you’re surrounded by well-trained American soldiers. Someone (probably a CSM) made a decision — an unpopular one — about running with weapons that was founded in the best interests of all soldiers.

Lt. Col. Jacob White, commander of 2nd Battalion, 58th Infantry Regiment, talks with E Company soldiers after they received cloth face coverings from Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center in Natick, Mass., April 27, 2020. Photo by Markeith Horace/Fort Benning Public Affairs Office, courtesy of DVIDS.

That’s the challenge with many safety standards, rules, and expectations that create some level of discomfort or disagreement. Many times safety standards feel ridiculous until the moment you need them and you discover why they exist in the first place.

It’s typically in those moments that SSGs and CSMs stop shaking their heads at each other and start thanking the Lord that one of their soldiers is still alive.

Today, I’m a little older, a little wiser, and a little less inclined to fight over something that someone else made a thoughtful decision about in the interest of others’ safety. I still may not “wanna.” It still might “impede my ability to work,” and I still “may not agree with it.” But these days I’m far more likely to just do it for a few reasons. It’s most likely not that big of a deal, it probably doesn’t really disrupt my life (or infringe upon my freedoms), and because I assume the person who made the decision most likely has more information than I do.

I’m still happy to submit a thoughtful response to rules that don’t seem to make sense, but I am more likely to comply with a safety standard because enduring a minor discomfort or inconvenience demonstrates more about my character than it does about anything else.

Namely, that I value discipline more than opinion, and compassion more than comfort.

In doing so, I’ve learned that it’s far better to be known for my character and my actions than for my attitude or opinions. And I’ve learned that showing respect for the governing authorities over minor inconveniences is a simple way to love others through my deeds, not my words.

This article was originally published on Coffee Or Die Magazine.

Cover Photo: Former Sergeant Major of the Army (SMA) Dailey (courtesy of Army Times).

Bonus Read: SMA Dailey's top 10 leadership tips for sergeants major.

3 Communication Commitments for Leaders

Communication is a critical component of leading people. We build trust be demonstrating a pattern of dependable communication. As leaders these three communication commitments serve us well: clarity, courage, and consistency.

• Clarity: See the world as it truly is, not as we want it to be, and share this with our teams. Share guidance, intent, and vision when communicating.

• Candor: Be honest...say what needs to be said, when it needs to be said. if we don't know, or if we are wrong, say it. Clear is kind.

• Consistency: Say what you mean and do what you say. Follow through with actions and resist the urge to routinely pivot.

While this offers no unified theory of communication in leadership, leaders will find these three commitments well received and appreciated by our teams.

Cover Image @krakenimages via Unsplash

Leadership Isn't Likership

As leaders, we cannot please everybody, though we wish to. "Leadership isn't likership" means not everyone on the team will like the decision. Frankly, you as the leader might not like it, but you can make it and align the team to execute together because we can have alignment without agreement. Alignment is harmony of efforts. Agreement is harmony of opinions. There will inevitably be disagreements within any team. As leaders, we can hear all relevant perspectives on a given matter, review all the information, and still be left with differences of opinions within the team. As leaders, we have to care for those who disagree, while aligning all teammates to achieve the objective. We can do that with care and compassion for those who disagree, while staying the course and ensuring they remain valuable members of an aligned team.

Cover Image @priscilladupreez via Unsplash

Listening for Distance

As coaches we come alongside our partners and guide them through their leadership practice. Our intent is always to increase their effectiveness and sustainability. It’s a lot like being a mountain guide, helping great people as they navigate their way to their next big summit. 

It’s an awesome job and a big responsibility, one that we do not take lightly. 

Some of my friends think it’s cool that I get to “talk for a living”. But that’s not right, because coaching is all about LISTENING. And when we do talk, the most important thing to come out of our mouths is not good advice, but good questions.

As any leadership situation requires, it is incumbent upon the leader to ask the relevant, and often difficult questions, that help to clarify the situation. If we are clear, then we can make sound, objective decisions. Without clarity, we flounder and react. 

Questions matter, both for ourselves and our people. The quality of our questions will determine the value of the answers.  

Raising teenagers has taught me the futility of questions like, “How was your day?” “How was school?” “How is going at work?” 

“Fine.” Insert eye roll. 

Fine...I know just as little now as I did before I asked. Another close-ended question that dead-ended the conversation. Parents of teens, I know you feel me on this. 

Photo credit @tarafuco via Unsplash

Alternatively, asking a better, open-ended question often yields better results, like, “what was the funniest thing that happened at work today?” Or, “what was the most difficult part of that math test you took this afternoon?”

Thoughtful questions yield thoughtful responses. And thoughtful responses provide clarity...if we are willing to simply listen.  

Let them talk for distance and discipline yourself to listen for clarity.

Letting people talk for distance means quieting our mouths and our minds. It’s letting our conversation partner own the air time and our undivided attention. It can be very hard because most of us are uncomfortable with silence and want to solve problems. So rather than truly listening, we are inclined to fill the space and get way ahead of ourselves, missing our chance for clarity. 

Kelly and I serve in a marriage ministry at our church called Reengage, and one of the best pieces of advice we got for facilitating group sessions is to ask a question and then be quiet.

Wait. 

Politely wait for someone to answer. 

It only takes 30 seconds...someone will fill the air. 

Try it at your next team meeting or your next family dinner. 

In our culture, we’ve grown to hate silence (that’s why we call them uncomfortable silences) while equally hating the noise. And we’ve been taught to guard ourselves and project perfection, while also wishing to be heard and seen authentically. These paradoxes are worth noting and as leaders, worth using to truly help our people. 

When we let people talk for distance, we are far more likely to see the situation truly come into focus. And once we have focus, we are often able to gain clarity. 

And it’s not just for others. It helps us to ask ourselves the relevant and the difficult questions and to give our minds the time and space to process for distance. 

One of my all time favorite questions comes part and parcel to my personality: “so what?” I ask this of myself daily. 

“So what?” helps me out a lot. As a grad school student, I'm currently devouring 1-2 books per week in my studies and I’m constantly asking myself while I read, “so what?”

“Do I understand this, and what should I do with this information?” 

Sometimes I find the information is good to know, and sometimes I find that it may be transformative to my leadership practice. A perfect example is the Family Systems theory of differentiation of self (getting involved in others’ lives with care and compassion, but not so involved that we become enmeshed to a point that we are ourselves ineffective). 

It’s like caring for your teenager who is crushed by that D on her math test with compassion. 

You’re not standing outside the hole she’s in telling her, “get over it, it’s just a math test,” even though it is, and you’re also not in the muck crying beside her, reaching for the pint of ice cream. Instead, you’re fully engaged and empathetic, right there next to her saying, “I can imagine how frustrating this must feel, especially after how hard you studied.” 

Differentiation of self is just as important as a coach for me, and as leaders for us all, so that we can help our people crest that next summit. I can’t guide someone through a particular challenge if I’m just as unsettled as they are. 

But I also can’t guide someone through their practice if I don’t understand their situation. And that is hard because we all walk into these situations with our own preconceived notions, formed by experience and personality. 

Photo credit @zuzi_ruttkay via Unsplash

I have found that if I can begin with a posture of curiosity, instead of certainty, then I can ask the questions that help feed that curiosity, from a totally interested and invested heart posture. And that posture helps me to ensure that we eventually arrive at their summit, not mine. 

And their summit is far sweeter than one I’ve determined is best for them. That’s not our job. Our role is not to tell partners how to live their lives, or which mountain top to set course towards. Our role is to listen to partners so that we can see their goals and guide them to achievement. 

With this in mind, here are a few questions that we have found helpful and what we are listening for in order to gain clarity. 

• For who and for what? 

Listen for personal motivations that may cloud judgement and listen for intent. 

Sometimes we may be operating with unformed intentions making it difficult for our people to know how to achieve unarticulated objectives. Also, sometimes we have to pull apart our motivations to see if we can get down to the heart of the matter. 

(We find that bundling these questions helps detangle personal motivations from team objectives)

• How’s that working out for you? 

Listen for results, and for areas of frustration. 

It’s not uncommon for us all to feel stuck, and uncertain why or from where the friction originates. Give someone the permission to let this air out without judgement. 

• Who said it had to be this way? 

Listen for standards and purpose.

Any organization that’s been functioning for more than a week has certain norms, but those norms may not be serving the team any longer. This question gives your partner the permission to chase their expectations back to the point of origination. 

• What are you going to do about it? 

Listen for agency. 

Within the answers to this question leaders are often reminded that they have the authority to positively affect change. We all need to be reminded of our agency from time to time. Sometimes by ourselves.  

Leadership is a gift, and coaching leaders is an absolute honor. We started this practice with the intent to help leaders wisely apply timeless knowledge to yield timely results. And we’re having a blast while we navigate different terrains of accomplishment alongside great people doing big things in the world. 

If you feel like leadership is a lonely place, give us a shout. Maybe we can help you feel a little less lonely, by starting with an opportunity to be a little more listened to. 

Cover photo credit @wocintechchat via Unsplash

Stop Being Busy and Start Getting Engaged

If you're watching this video, I think it's safe to say that being BUSY is not your goal in life, at least not anymore. But if you're like us, you still want to be productive. You still want to be fulfilled. And we do that by being ENGAGED.

So how do we get there? How can we get ourselves and our teams to shift from busyness to engagement? This may be the most important leadership question of our time. And while we don't have all the answers, we do have a some suggestions as to where to start.

Priorities: It's not about how much you do. It's not even about doing things right. It's about doing the right things. Most of us have far too many things on our to-do list and too little understanding on what's most important. If you have a team, providing them with clear priorities is one of the best things you can do as a leader. Good, smart people will do amazing things if they can execute confidently.

Focus: We need to start doing one thing at a time. The distractions are endless, and the ability to focus is truly a super power. Sadly (and contrary to many marketing campaigns), there is no secret pill or potion to help us focus. We have to practice. We need to train ourselves. Start with the simple stuff. Just brush your teeth. Or drive your car. Or have one conversation.

Our goal is to live a fully engaged life. And that means that we have to stop being so damn busy.

Stop Trying to Build a Better Flashlight

The past few years have been full of change. We’ve all experienced, and will continue to experience big cultural, social, and economic shifts. And we’re all wondering, what’s next? 

Many leaders we speak with are looking at how to move their careers or businesses forward. Recently, while sitting with an extremely bright and talented leader, I listened as she spoke about what’s next in her career. She’s at an inflection point. 

Circumstances have allowed her the opportunity to make a big decision about what’s next and she is not sure how to proceed. Should she continue her career in established organizations? Or should she take a shot at starting something on her own?

She has a wealth of experience, loads of talent, and that magnetic blend of humility and ambition that just screams something big is on the horizon. The burning question, though, is which mountain top will she choose to set as her destination.

Does she continue with what she is comfortable with, or deploy her gifts in something new? 

It’s scary. Anyone who’s started a business or changed careers knows this. Those nagging voices inside our heads don’t help very much: 

“Who do you think you are?”

“What if you fail?”

“What if you’re not as good as you think you are?” 

And on and on it goes.

We’ve all experienced this in some form. Maybe going to college, starting a new job, or a new relationship. We want to be able to hedge our bets with some degree of certainty in the outcome, but the reality is that life just isn’t very certain. And when we are uncertain about the outcome, it’s easier to stay where we are. Never missing that shot we never took, but also never scoring the game winning bucket. 

When we’re given the chance to pick our next mountain top, we wish so much to be able to see the path between where we stand and where we are going. But we can’t, unless we choose to move forward, to let the trail emerge along the journey, with all its gems and jam ups. 

It’s a lot like being in the woods at night with a flashlight. We’re at a fork in the path and we’re not sure which way to go. We shine the flashlight down each of the trails, but we can only see as far as the light allows us to, which can be scary as the woods rustle and pitch around us. Unsure of which way to go, we may wish to see just a little further down the trail for certainty. If we could only sit down and build a better flashlight! If only we could know what’s around the bend. But we cannot.

Photo credit @magnusostberg via Unsplash

Alternatively, we can pick a path and take a step forward, allowing us to see one step further into the dark. If we move to the edge of the light we can see, the path will emerge, one step of courage at a time. If the path feels right, take another step. It is that simple (yet difficult) act of courage to take the next best step that most often allows us to experience our next big adventure and it’s our confidence that unglues our feet from the floor. 

Confidence is hard to come by and must be earned over time. Earned confidence is experience plus preparation, honed in the arena, for the arena. You can’t get it from books or podcasts. You have to get some reps. 

Our friend has all the relevant experience necessary to take a shot at the next step, regardless of the route she chooses. But experience isn’t enough to go on because experience is built within the settings of our past. However, experience carries with us and can be applied to other settings when we are willing to prepare for what comes next. 

Preparation is doing the work required to take you to that next opportunity. It can look like additional training, examining your options, analyzing prospective outcomes and developing appropriate courses of action. 

But preparation is not to be confused with prediction. Those who predict what will happen rarely get unstuck. They are the ones who stay in that spot in the woods, certain that if they move forward the rustle will be a wolf, not a field mouse. 

In Ranger school, the people who obsessed over the patrol grading schema were the ones that seemed to get stymied when they were in a graded position. The people who read their Ranger handbook and used it during their graded patrol learned that applying the principles to uncertain situations led to success. Time and again. 

Because the principles are timely and timeless; flexibly applicable to any situation in the arena. 

That earned confidence, the blend of experience and preparation, gives us the courage to move boldly forward, uncertain of the outcome, yet steeled by our reliance upon ourselves and our faith. 

That confidence will be tested. Taking those first few steps into the unknown will undoubtedly excite and terrify us. And as we pick up speed, we will undoubtedly experience setbacks and stumbles.

When we are tested, will we sit back down, comforted by the small beam of light against the dark woods, or choose to drive on?

Drive on. Always drive on.

There are no answers at the trailhead. All the wisdom is out on the trail.

Photo credit @sammiechaffin via Unsplash

And by the way, despite what we tell ourselves, if the trail turns out to be wrong for us, we can almost always go back to the last fork and try again. Our setbacks teach us something new each time we choose to reflect, refine, and grow. Regardless of how many times you get knocked down, you will find that getting back up generates an earned confidence to carry you through the challenges on the horizon. 

You’ll learn to move forward with commitment, planning to succeed and prepared for the unexpected. That brand of earned confidence will change the way you lead people, and how you approach your mission. It can be seen and felt from miles away. It’s contagious and it’s what our world is starving for right now - leaders of character, ready to get back up for their people, as many times as it takes, for as long as it takes. 

No one is ready for a baby until they walk out of the hospital with their baby. No one is ready to start a business until they are months into running their business. And no one earns their confidence sitting down on the dark trail trying to build a better flashlight. 

All that remains in those moments is to pick your mountain top and carry your light into the uncertainty of tomorrow taking one next best step at a time.

Thumbnail photo credit @nathananderson via Unsplash

Earned Confidence: Leading Into Uncertainty

In a world with so much change and chaos, it's natural to reach for something certain to hold on to. It is totally normal to want some certainty...but we can't have it, because it just doesn't exist.

So what do we do? How can we lead our teams into an uncertain future? Well, while we can't have certainty, we can have CONFIDENCE. And we earn confidence through a combination of experience and preparation. When we stop trying to predict the future, we can start preparing for it.

Influence: Force vs Power and Creating Your Own Gravity

Influence is a big part of the world we live in. It seems that everybody is trying to get more of it. As leaders, we absolutely need influence to move our teams forward. That's not debatable. Influence IS important. But what's more important is how we derive and apply that influence.

We believe influence comes in two fundamental forms: Force and Power.

Force tends to work in the short run. We can push and pull and grab people's attention. We can gain influence by shouting the loudest or pushing the hardest or gaining the most leverage. But when we think about the people we most admire, those who are most influential, we don't see that. Instead we see calm and confidence and consistency and integrity.

The people we truly respect seem to be magnetic. We just want to be around them, to be on their team, to help in their work. They have a certain GRAVITY to them. And that is their real power. Generating this kind of power takes time. It is the slower, but stronger path to influence. And all it requires is for us to be where we are and WHO we are. Just like any celestial body, our mass will eventually pull others toward us, and maybe even into our orbit. If we can focus on our mission, stay in our lane, do the work, and stay within our integrity, we can slowly build some mass and generate some gravity.

It's hard to resist the shorter path to influence. It's easy to chase whatever is currently getting clicks or likes. It's faster to force it. But that is not the way to long-term success. Great teams, companies, and cultures are not built that way. So take your time. Think hard about who you are and what you stand for, then be that person. The gravity will build and the influence will come.

Curiosity is a Cure for Certainty

As leaders, decisiveness is important. The ability to make decisions quickly and effectively makes a difference on a daily basis. Decisiveness comes from confidence, and breeds confidence, but that can be hard to come by when we are uncertain about the outcome.

The challenge is, as much as we’d like to be (and sometimes think we are), we can never be certain. Life is uncertain, it always has been and we can thank 2020 for exposing this eternal truth. 

Making decisions for our teams in times of uncertainty is incredibly difficult. Deep down inside we want to be certain. And we’re often influenced as strongly by what’s going on inside of us as what’s going on in front of us. If we’re not careful, our desire for certainty can convince us that the path is far more clear than it actually is. 

The choices we must make are often easy on paper, but people don’t live on paper. And there is nothing easy about any decision that includes peoples’ lives and livelihoods. It’s a leadership crucible, and one that is not to be taken lightly. We want to feel like we’re making the right call. 

Whether facing a decision about a program, a product, or our people, certainty lurks as a trap in our thinking. As a smart, capable leader, it will feel easy at times to be certain about the facts of the matter or the right way to proceed based on your instinct and observation - and that is exactly the moment where caution is warranted, in business and in life. 

Simply stated, we would all do well to look very closely at the number of things that we are certain about. If we find ourselves certain about everything, we’re probably in trouble. When we lose our willingness to examine and explore, we stunt our growth and inhibit our ability to make sound decisions.

Instead, we recommend taking up a posture of curiosity, which will ultimately lead to a far superior alternative to certainty: confidence. 

Photo Credit: @isaiahrustad via Unsplash

Be curious, not judgmental – Walt Whitman 

Confidence comes from doing the work over time and learning from every opportunity we can - every bump and bruise, every hilltop and victory. All of them have something to offer us if we are willing to suspend judgement and be curious in our reflection.  

Curiosity allows us to proceed without judgement. It helps us to continue seeing the world as it is, not as we predict, or as we hope it to be. It keeps us open to signals that there may be pitfalls, or opportunities ahead. 

Curiosity in decision making invites us to collect more information and screen it against what we suspect, a process called corroboration. Corroboration is used heavily in the Special Operations community. It means to confirm a given theory, which is critical when intelligence is coming in from a variety of sources. Confirming (or denying) theories, opinions, and information allows leaders to understand their situation to the best of their abilities, in order to make decisions confidently. 

Curiosity in relationships allows us to communicate for understanding. When we are certain about what people in our lives think, we are in real trouble. We cannot read minds. Body language, yes, but minds...not so much. So when we are certain what someone thinks of us, we’ve judged them by proxy, leading to big problems, oftentimes with those we care about the most. 

Curiosity requires the extra work, a challenge when time is of the essence. But the extra effort allows us to discern the path of wisdom. And wisdom is something that we could all use more of in this world.

Photo credit: @garybpt via Unsplash

When I was a younger leader, I was so certain about everything. I knew everything, I could predict everything, I could control everything...until I couldn’t. I woke up one day to the world around me and realized the error of my rigidity, while sitting with the consequences of my certainty. 

Today, I can count on one hand the number of things in life I am certain about. Thanks be to God! But those few truths are enough to give me the confidence to navigate the uncertainty of life and leadership. 

As you approach your leadership practice today, here are a few questions to consider:

• What am I certain about? 

• How do I know? What is the evidence that confirms this?

• What situation that I am presently confronted with requires more curiosity?

• Which of my relationships could use a little more curiosity?

• Who can I trust to gain more information? 

Taking the extra time to examine your situation can illuminate new options. It also affords us the opportunity to deal with factors and emotions inside of us that may be clouding our judgement. If we can surrender our false sense of certainty, and exchange it for a posture of curiosity, we will find the path to wisdom and lead with decisiveness and confidence.

And as we recognize how uncertain life is, it’s ok for us as leaders to say, “I’m not sure.” That phrase will definitely lead you to more truths in life than, “I know!”

Cover photo credit @rahabikhan via Unsplash

Annual Letter 2020

Dear Friends,

This is the first of what we hope will be many annual letters from our family at Applied Leadership Partners. After almost a decade of trying to talk ourselves out of it, we finally decided to launch a leadership development business in January of 2020. Needless to say, it didn’t exactly go as planned, but as our lives have taught us over and over again - it never does.  

We want to take a moment up front to acknowledge that 2020 was immensely difficult, even tragic, for millions of people.

This past year was one that none of us will ever forget, as much as some of us may like to. A global pandemic, economic crisis, civil unrest, and a tumultuous election season, created conditions that were as challenging and uncertain as any in recent history. In our own ways, we all struggled to wrap our heads (and hearts) around the experiences of 2020. There was plenty of frustration, and stress, and loss, and anger to go around. There’s no denying it. But if you looked closely, not at a TV or computer screen, but at the real world around you, there was also a tremendous amount of resilience, ingenuity, and love. We’ve been blessed to experience a lot of that. 

We found so much of that love and resilience within our communities and with our partners by keeping a few simple themes in mind. These themes have come to represent the internal commitments that our family has made to our mission and the world we’ve been given. We hope to share a little of that with you here. 

Bet on Ourselves. Walk in Faith.

We’ve always believed that all Big (capital B) problems are, at their core, leadership problems. So when we found ourselves talking about what we should do for the second half of our careers, the answer emerged pretty quickly. What do we love? What are we great at? What does the world actually need? Answer: Leadership. A few beers, a lot of prayer, three days in Tampa, and some strong coffees later, we were off to the races. We took a shot, but not a shot in the dark. 

We put in the work up front. We had difficult conversations. We shared our concerns and our fears, along with our hopes and dreams. All relationships experience bumps and bruises along the way, and we certainly had ours after 11 years as friends and colleagues. But not all relationships grow stronger with time. Ours has. Through shared respect, care and purpose, we’ve chosen a commitment to each other, our families, and this mission. After a lot of conversation and time at the white board, this business finally became the thing that we just couldn’t unsee, couldn’t ‘not do’. So, we decided to bet on ourselves and walk in faith. 

Be Generous. Respect the Moment.

After a couple months of working through hundreds of whiteboard sketches, Google docs, and website templates, we officially launched Applied Leadership Partners in mid-March. We had a few engagements lined up, our website went live, and we were off. And then the whole world shut down. In the blink of an eye, our business plan was out the window and it was unclear for how long. Our gigs were cancelled and amidst the crisis, nobody had the time or energy to talk to us about leadership development. 

It soon became obvious that COVID-19 was going to be a major issue, indefinitely. And that left us wondering what the heck we were supposed to do. Some days, it felt like our new business might fail before it ever got started. But one thing was crystal clear: calm, competent leadership was needed more than ever. And while we couldn’t solve the world’s problems, we also couldn’t simply standby while so many of our friends and colleagues were fighting to save their businesses, and in some cases, their lives. 

Truth be told, we found ourselves in a position very foreign to us: on the sidelines of a fight that mattered. But we also recognized that we had the ability to share some hard earned wisdom that was timeless and timely to the cultural moment. 

So, we got busy doing what we could to help out. We started doing pro-bono work and offered a bunch of free whiteboard jam sessions to any leader that was wrestling with a difficult problem. In the process, we met so many awesome people (from high school teachers to innovation hub directors) and worked through some really important stuff. We had a blast doing it and it felt great to help leaders find a little clarity in the chaos.  

We also took the pen. Together we authored 32 articles on our blog as well as in Coffee or Die Magazine, the GORUCK blog, and Thrive Global. We put original thought into the world, writing from our values, our lives, and our hearts. And we challenged each other to show up and be counted. Blayne dug deep, sharing “At Her Pace”, while Brandon did the same with “Daddy Was a Green Beret”, which made the Coffee or Die Magazine Top Stories of 2020. We also took a stand for loving others with our most read article of the year, “All Lives Matter is a Copout”. Some have asked us why we often don’t specify who the author (Blayne or Brandon) is on a given article. It’s because we write and edit almost everything together. Co-authorship is a part of who we are and how we do our best work. Our complimentary strengths make our ideas better and our words richer.

Settle In. Keep Walking. 

The weather started to warm up in May and June, and so did our business. Slow, but steadily, the phone began to ring and the real work began. Leaders started to realize that life and business was not going back to normal and teams were beginning to fray at the edges. It was an honor, and incredibly exciting to be asked, “Can you come in and help us?” 

By the end of 2020, we’d conducted 12 client engagements with organizations ranging from large corporations to nonprofits and local governments. We partnered with our clients to create 10 distinct leadership modules, built to fit the needs of their business and the times we’re living in. We worked together with patience and creativity to adapt our model and deliver highly relevant and effective experiences. We’re extremely proud of the products, and even more proud of the process. From keynote presentations to team alignment workshops to 1:1 coaching, every interaction was engaging and rewarding...and we’re not gonna lie, it’s been a ton of fun!

Through it all, we’ve been able to identify some common threads that present challenges for almost every organization. Here are a few of the prominent themes from our work from 2020. 

Perseverance is Greater than Endurance

Endurance is admirable, and important, but endurance is not the same as perseverance. Endurance occurs when faced with difficult situations that test your training and resolve. Perseverance occurs when faced with adversity beyond your training that requires growth. 

There are times when it makes sense to rely on our endurance; to simply put our heads down and grind it out. But the journey of leadership is really about navigating life’s unpredictable peaks and valleys, something we call the Ridgeline of Adversity. Doing so requires a choice, and it requires us to change.

Perseverance forces us to become the person the situation requires us to be. Perseverance is greater than endurance.

More (and Better) Conversations That Matter

Our most popular presentations and workshops were on the topic of “Difficult Conversations”, and for good reason. We’re sure that you’ve noticed that many of us are struggling with our collective willingness and ability to have difficult conversations. Additionally, we’ve seen the reality that adversity more often puts a microscope on pre-existing problems rather than creating new ones. Whether in our homes, our communities, or our places of work, we can all do better at leaning in to the discomfort of a hard or awkward conversation - and doing it with the intent to understand and emerge together. We’ve had the great pleasure of guiding teams through some of these and have provided them a solid framework to take into the future. Bottom line: if you’re a leader, this is where you really earn your salt. Whether you like it or not, it is your job to share difficult news, to really listen, and to chart a course forward, even if imperfect.    

Integration Over Balance

We also need to mention that we both spent considerable time this year focused on our most important roles: husband and father. We have amazing wives who are badasses across the board. And the work they do is incredibly important to our respective families and the world. Emergency room visits and terrorism didn’t take a pause for COVID-19, quite the opposite. So with Kelly as an ER nurse and Jeni as an intel professional, both of these ladies were very much at the office. We’ll be honest here, the business often took a back seat to cooking and dishes and laundry and homework. We’ve been acutely reminded that the work of raising a family is the hardest and most important work we’ll ever do.    

And we can’t forget about the kids! Jaden Young began his service journey joining the Arizona National Guard and the ROTC program at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott. On the high school front, Elli and Dylan navigated the challenges of an ever changing virtual school world, Dalton made great gains at the skatepark and little Penny became Daisy Joy’s (our family dog) favorite person in the world. 

All of life came into close proximity for every one this year. With the quarantines, and homeschooling, and Zoom meetings, we were able to lean on (and share) some of the work that has been closest to our hearts over the past ten years - living a life in integration. Rather than trying to walk a tightrope to find “balance”, we focused on building sustainable and effective lives that include a blend of work, wellness, family, and fun. We’ve tried hard to make our lives less like a pie chart, with a bunch of separate compartments, and more like a pizza, with a nice blend of all the important ingredients. Some of our clients took the journey with us on this one, and we are so proud of the growth we have seen in them while conducting big missions that matter.  

The Unknown Distance March

Our second most popular presentation this year about leading through uncertainty. Unknown distance ruck marches are used in the special operations community to build grit and resolve, a timely topic that resonated across the board. Settling in and tempering expectations is critical in these times. The ability to persevere through continuous hardship for however long it takes is a new competency for many leaders that we have been fortunate to share. It’s about learning to focus on the mission, not the moment. 

As people, our ability to gracefully and earnestly navigate uncertainty couldn’t be more important, especially as we all ask ourselves and one another, “when will we get back to normal”? Normal is an illusion, and there is no going back, a truth that we also shared in our story about “Re-Deployment - Setting Expectations”. While the world received a crash course in this lesson, we found ourselves “re-certifying” these skills from prior life experiences. We generously shared our personal stories of struggling with reintegration, and the valuable lessons we learned. It’s been a blessing to guide others along this journey, and share the hard earned wisdom that we’ve accrued through a lot of losses and a lot of wins. 

Moving Forward with Confidence

Like everyone else, we’ve already moved out on the ridge line that is 2021, confident in what we have learned and earned (in 2020). There are very few things to be certain about in life, but one thing we know at this point is that we are right where we are supposed to be - helping leaders become more effective and sustainable as they build tightly knit, high performing teams ready for the challenges ahead. 

And we are confident. Confident that we will take more journeys alongside leaders that are ready to go, and ready to grow, as we navigate adversity, together. 

We are ready. And so are you. 

To all our friends who have bet on us this year, thank you! You have made our dream a reality and we are forever honored by your trust in us. To all the new friends in 2021 we are yet to meet, drop us a line and let us know how we can help you. Let’s get to it, together.

Here’s to 2021! We’ll see you on the trail.

Blayne and Brandon

At Her Pace

It was a beautiful spring evening, the kind that reminds you why you love living in Florida. It was warm, but not hot. The sky was a perfect cornflower blue. And a little breeze was blowing in off the ocean. The sidewalks were alive with a light sort of energy that you get in beach towns. It wasn’t a setting where you’d expect to be jolted with a deep, emotional wake-up call, but I had one coming.

Our time in Jacksonville Beach was coming to a close. Jeni was starting to spend a lot of time back in Tampa, ramping up her new job, and I got to spend a ton of time with Penny. Sometimes it was just her and I for 4 or 5 days. For the most part, I felt like I was doing a pretty good job of being her dad, but my head was often elsewhere. I was consumed with thoughts and concerns about what we’d do next. Should we buy a house? Where will I work? Are people disappointed in me? On and on.

Through it all, Penny was a good friend. We went to breakfast together, played at the beach, and covered countless miles in her jogging stroller and bike seat. On this particular night, we were doing our favorite activity, eating frozen custard from Whit’s.

So there we were, walking back to our bike, a sugary smile on Penny’s curious and charming face as she continued what we called her ‘campaign for Mayor of Neptune Beach.’ She waved in all the restaurant windows, jabbered with people on the sidewalk, and picked up every single piece of trash in sight. It was a nice night and I was in a good mood, but almost instinctively, I started to hurry her along. We didn’t have anywhere to be. Nobody was waiting on us. Yet the words just rolled off my tongue like they had a thousand times before, “Come on sweetie, we need to get going.”

Suddenly, I hear a man’s voice calling from behind me, “Sir! Sir!” I turned around to see if he was talking to me and noticed a homeless man sitting on a bench. My gut reaction was one of avoidance. Maybe if I didn’t make eye contact, we could just keep moving along. But it was too late. He looked right at me and again said, “Sir!” Reluctantly, I answered him with a “Hey.”

“You should learn to enjoy going at her pace.”

I was completely caught off guard, and his words completely changed my life.

You see, I had always lived life at my pace. Pushing the pace. Staying on track. Relentlessly pursuing the things that were most important to me. Personality profiles often describe me as an Achiever and Arranger, which can be a highly productive, but dangerous combination. Being obsessed with both accomplishment and efficiency is great for getting shit done. That part seems quite obvious. Less obvious were all the things I was missing while doing so. From life’s simple joys to some pretty significant warning signs, my drive to do more often made me blind to things that were truly important.

I was a pro at writing off my personal agenda as serving the ‘greater good’. After all, who else was going to provide for my family, save us all from terrorism, and re-build the American dream!? It had to be me, right? The hard truth is that most of my pursuits have been pretty selfish. And while my desire to ‘fulfill my potential’ has done some good, it’s often left those closest and most important to me feeling like role players in my life - which is a huge problem, because they are obviously not.

My oldest son Dylan’s life had been at my pace. He was born when I was in the Special Forces Qualification Course. When he was one week old, I had to go to DC for a week. When he was six weeks old I left for for another 5 weeks of training. And on it went. By the time I got home from Afghanistan in 2009, he was more than 3 years old and I’d been away for more than half his life.

Dalton was born just a couple of weeks after I got back from that deployment and he didn’t fair much better. While I was there physically, my mind was mostly just ping-ponging between the recent past and the near future. I was alternately consumed with the grief and guilt of losing four teammates a few months earlier in Afghanistan; and figuring out what I was going to do with my life as I exited the Army just a little later that year.

And then it just got harder. By Dalton’s third birthday, his mother and I were divorced, unable to collectively and harmoniously navigate our post-military transition, and it was time for single dad mode. I certainly tried my best, but was still going 1000 miles per hour. I was leading a startup organization with big dreams and trying to carve out a new life for myself. The boys were troopers and we had a lot of fun, but they were mostly living life on my terms. I dragged them to a million Team RWB events, rushed them off to bed when I had evening conference calls, and had a before-school-pre-launch-sequence that would put a NASCAR pit crew to shame. Raising two little boys had my fully divided attention.

Meeting Jeni, and later having Penny felt like such an amazing opportunity. A second bite at the apple. One of life’s rare second chances to do things right - to be the husband and dad that I have always wanted to be, but hadn’t always been. As my life started to come into focus, I didn’t always like what I saw, but I was grateful to be seeing more clearly. Jeni’s influence was huge. She provided a ton of encouragement and support for my role at Team RWB, but also really helped me to understand how the boys needed me. We talked a lot about building a life that would take some emphasis off of work and place more on our family. And for a while, we pulled it off fairly well. By the end of 2016 we were living what I’d call a truly integrated life. Though it was far from perfect (or easy), we’d managed to settle in to a life that felt full and sustainable. Our careers allowed us to earn a living doing work we cared about. We had a great little house. The kids were in a rhythm. And we had an awesome community of friends. Things were solid and steady, right up until I couldn’t take it any more. Solid and steady felt like stagnant and slow. The ambition monster was in my ear.

“What are we gonna do next? Where do we go from here? How can we keep progressing? Surely, we can’t run this nonprofit forever.” On and on it went. It was all just too comfortable. I was starting to fall off the pace! I had to step it up and make a move.

Fast-forward 18 months and there we were, in a beautiful little beach town, working at an amazing little company, with a great little group of friends, wondering why the hell we were 200 miles from the boys. The move to Jacksonville Beach made a ton of sense professionally, and we made it make sense for our family, until it didn’t. The decision to head back to Tampa was a really hard one, but the right one. We’d created a lot of chaos for ourselves, and at least a little for others. It felt shitty. I was worried. My brain was spinning. And then a homeless man made it all very simple for me. My whole life in one sentence.

“You should LEARN to ENJOY going AT HER PACE.”

He didn’t say that I should go at her pace. He didn’t say that I should enjoy going at her pace. He said that I should learn to enjoy going at her pace. It hit me like a damn bolt of lightning. I had rarely ever gone at anybody else’s pace, and if I had, I probably didn’t enjoy it. I wasn’t even sure what that would feel like. My mind just kept flashing to the countless times that I’d shooed the kids along or rushed off to the office or said “not today, honey” when I could have easily said “sure, why not?” It made me feel sick to my stomach. I really did have a lot to learn. Fortunately, our little Penny was a great teacher.

Slowly, but surely I adjusted my pace, and though it felt unnatural, I began to enjoy it. It’s amazing all of the little things you notice by following around a curious toddler. Seeing the world through her eyes made it seem so much richer and more exciting. I started catching myself saying “wow!” more than Owen Wilson.

And here’s the best part: I still felt motivated to work and make a professional contribution. Slowing down and letting go didn’t turn me into to some kind of lazy freeloader. In fact, it gave me the time and space to think hard and do good work.

The hardest part for me was all about identity. I went from being an SF guy to the Team RWB guy to the GORUCK guy and now who was I going to be? Just some guy? It seems a little silly now, but that question really bothered me. Penny showed me that it was ok to start with being “Penny’s Dad” and take it from there.

Going at her pace taught me that my life wasn’t some kind of pie chart that required me to allocate certain amounts of time and energy into various compartments like work, family, hobbies, etc. Instead it could be more like a delicious pizza, with all of the toppings spread out evenly across the whole thing. There was no need to be constantly shifting gears from Work Blayne to Family Blayne to Friend Blayne. Instead I could just be a whole Blayne, all the time. And that was plenty.

I still struggle against my hardwiring. I frequently catch myself running at a breakneck pace in pursuit of I’m-not-sure-what. But I know I’m making progress because I haven’t pretended to miss an interstate exit in years - if somebody in my car has to pee, I’m pulling over no questions asked. If you’re a hardcore pace-keeper like me, you know that’s a big deal!

Two Sides of the Same Coin

Two of the most common questions we get asked about is “how do I get my people to be more empowered?” and “how do I hold my people accountable”? They are both great questions. You can’t truly address one without the other, because empowerment and accountability are two sides of the same coin. 

Perhaps the best illustrations of this is the relationship between Officers and the NCOs in the United States military, when it’s done right. It’s unlike anything you’ll find in the private sector, and it hardly makes sense at first glance. But through generations of refinement, the military has figured out a system that both clearly defines authority and actively promotes empowerment. For all of it’s inefficiencies, the military knows what it’s doing when it comes to small unit leadership.

As one of our Army buddies says it best, “the Army is all about leadership and people.”

We agree. 

And since people and leadership happen to be two of the primary ingredients in any world class team, it’s worth digging in to uncover some insights about empowerment and accountability that transcend any leadership situation, across any sector.  

The military has two primary pathways to serve within, the officer and the enlisted ranks (a third is warrant officer, which is far less common). Officers must start their journey in a commissioning source like the US Military Academy at West Point (Blayne’s alma mater), while enlisted personnel start at Basic Training. Both have their initial training, both have advanced training, both have specific leadership training courses as they progress through the ranks. And both, are critical to mission success.

This system of dual, mutually supportive leadership is actually a key ingredient to the secret sauce of the Army. 

As enlisted personnel progress into formal leadership positions, they become Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) taking on the rank of Sergeant, then continue on into the Senior NCO ranks through time, proficiency, and performance. 

Leadership at the platoon level gives us a great illustration of the Officer-NCO relationship that exposes critical insights to how empowerment and accountability work hand in hand. 

The platoon is typically composed of about 40 personnel with one officer, the Platoon Leader (PL), and one Platoon Sergeant (PSG), plus four Squad Leaders (who are Staff Sergeants), who each have two Sergeants reporting to them. The PL is typically a Lieutenant, in their initial leadership assignment while the PSG is a Sergeant First Class, (SFC, Brandon’s rank upon exiting service), and in the “middle management” stage of their career. 

The PL and PSG must operate as one to generate effective and sustainable results. 

Together, the platoon is unstoppable. Divided, the platoon is laughable. 

Photo Credit: The 75th Ranger Regiment

Brandon shares some of his observations from his time in the NCO ranks: 

In the Rangers, we have some of the Army’s finest Lieutenants and Jr. Captains running platoons. By the time they arrive, they have already led a PLT, and passed Ranger Assessment and Selection Program. When they do arrive, they are met by NCOs who have most likely “grown up” in the Ranger Battalion. 

For example, I was a Private in the 2nd Ranger Battalion and grew up through the ranks until becoming a Staff Sergeant (SSG), leading a 9 man Ranger Assault and Weapons Squad in combat, and then ultimately progressed to become a SFC at the Ranger Regiment’s Assessment and Selection Program (which at the time was called R.I.P.). 

Our PL’s were smart, driven, competent, and capable leaders who had experience as PL’s in the Army Infantry, and were now getting their first entry into Special Operations. Basically, they were the very best that the Army had to offer. 

As new PL’s (and Rangers), setting the conditions for success was critical. I have seen it done poorly, primarily when pride and identity rear their ugly heads (both on the parts of the NCOs and the officers) resulting in damaging effects on the platoon. The team becomes fractured as unnecessary “battle lines” are drawn between leaders, creating confusion for the men.

And I’ve seen it done well, primarily when both the NCOs and Officers embrace their respective authority and responsibility, creating incredible benefit for the mission and the team. When everyone is aligned in a Ranger PLT, we have a name for that. We call that PLT the “main effort”, the PLT that leads the way for the rest of the unit.

Setting the conditions sounded a lot like clear guidance and expectations from both parties. It was a dialogue.

After seeing this enough times to understand what right looks like, I settled into an approach with new PL’s that came to Ranger Battalion. Later in my career, young Lieutenants I had the honor to teach in Infantry Basic Officer Leader Course, heard some version of this “PL Speech”, which established unity up front, along with clear empowerment and accountability. 

Keep in mind, as a Ranger I was in the same unit for 9 years, talking to a newly assigned PL. As a PLT Trainer I was a Senior NCO with 11 years in service talking to young men who had just graduated college. They had been in the Army for about 3 months, and in 2008, they knew they would take an Infantry PLT into combat within the year. 

Nearly every one of those young studs asked me the same question, “how do I talk to my PSG when I get to my unit, and how do I empower them?”

I would answer, “well, first, say ‘hello, my name is (fill in your name)’ and go from there. Next, here’s how we would receive our PLs in Ranger Battalion and I hope you experience the same…”

The key elements follow:

• One, you are the officer, we are the NCOs. We chose to be NCOs and are proud of that; you have formal legal authority over this platoon (and me), and there is no conflict or discussion about this fact.

• Two, we are a team, we fight for one another, we fight besides one another, we do not fight against one another. We may disagree behind closed doors, but we walk out shoulder to shoulder.

• Three, you are our critical link to the commander and the greater Task Force, and that is where your authority is critical for the entire PLT. We will not let you fall. Hold us accountable to this. We won’t let you fall because you are one of us, but there will be times that we need you to back away and let us work. We need you to trust us and empower us to do that.

• Finally, you have responsibility for this entire PLT, we have responsibility for our Rangers, our squads, and our sections. As a result, you have to stay back from the front line. We need you looking into the entire battlespace, not looking through your weapon sites…Oh, and if you find yourself up front in the stack, I will remove you, and put you back behind us. Because we need you, and we need you to do your part as we do our parts. 

Photo Credit: US Army Special Forces.

Blayne shares an experience from the officer ranks:

I graduated from West Point in June of 2001, ready to be done with school and eager to lead. I was frankly tired of the ‘pretend Army’ and couldn’t wait for the real thing. While I was still in my officer basic course, I sat and watched a TV as the events of 9/11/2001 unfolded. Suddenly, my future role as a platoon leader came into sharp focus. It seemed likely that I’d be leading me into combat - and I wanted to. 

In December, I showed up to my first assignment full of energy and purpose. It was finally time to take over a platoon and put all of my training into action. It didn’t take me long to realize that my new platoon sergeant, SFC Avila, didn’t exactly share my level of enthusiasm. SFC Avila was a grizzled veteran of the US Army and had spent nearly 20 years in tank platoons. He’d seen countless platoon leaders come and go over his career, and I don’t think he’d been particularly impressed with any of them. It was clear from the start that he really just wanted me to stay out of the way. In some ways, I couldn’t blame him, at 46 years years old, he was literally twice my age and knew 10x what I did about leading a tank platoon. It is a bit odd for the least experienced person in the platoon to be in charge. On the other hand, I knew, as young as I was, that I had both the skill and the mandate to fulfill my role as platoon leader. For me, it wasn’t so much about authority as it was about responsibility. 

At first, I was just frustrated. Who did this guy think he was, trying to shut me down before I ever even got started? But rather than try to wrestle control away from SFC Avila, I decided to take a little time and let things develop. My goal was to do everything within my role to the absolute best of my ability, while soaking up as much knowledge as I could about the tanks, weapons, and the men. I’d qualify ‘expert’ with my rifle and pistol, earn the max score on the physical fitness test, write crisp operations orders, and spend my days turning wrenches with my tank crew. I figured that after a while, he’d acknowledge my leadership (or at least competence) and soften his stance. Well, that didn’t happen, at least not as quickly as I’d hoped. So I finally decided to sit him down and have a heart-to-heart, which he wasn’t super stoked about. 

I’ll never forget sitting knee cap to knee cap in our tiny little platoon office to have this conversation. I was nervous and had been psyching myself up all day. Despite my trepidation, the words came out - and this is where I made my stand on empowerment and accountability. I share five points with SFC Avila that I thought he’d respect. And I hoped that, just maybe, he’d come around. I told him:

• I’m assigned as the platoon leader and no matter what, I am ultimately responsible for everything the platoon does or fails to do. I take that responsibility seriously. 

• I am happy to delegate you the authority you need to do your job. I have no desire to do your job. I know that you’re good at it and I need you to be.  

• I trust you to do a great job and to do the right thing, but we are going to communicate and there is going to be accountability. Nobody is perfect and two sets of eyes are better than one. 

• We have to be a team. We refine each other. If something needs to be fixed, we’ll figure it out together and speak with a unified voice to the platoon. 

• We might be going to war. The platoon needs both of us to be doing our respective jobs at the highest level. We are much better off with both of our ‘paddles in the water.’

That day, it clicked for SFC Avila. He told me that although he knew how to run a tank platoon, he wanted and needed me to relay the commander’s intent and provide guidance. He wanted me to plan and write operations orders. He wanted me to make sure that the platoon had the resources it needed to be successful. And he wanted me to have his back. Too easy. From that point forward, we were off and running. And over the next year, we built the highest performing platoon in the battalion. 

We were both very fortunate to learn the direct relationship between empowerment and accountability early in our careers. We experienced how they were the driving force behind the sharing and distribution of power within leadership teams. After leaving the Army, we’ve sometimes struggled to emplace this dynamic in the private and social sectors, but have always found it to be worth the effort and highly effective. 

Photo Credit: Jeni Smith ;-)

Three critical insights into the marriage of empowerment and accountability follow from our experience leading people over the last two decades: 

1. Inextricably Linked: Empowerment and accountability are two sides to the same coin.  We cannot have one without the other. Leaders must provide guidance, resources, and support (empowerment) and that must be buttressed by transparent measurement, evaluation, and refinement (accountability). Your people need to know what you need them doing, and they need to know how they are doing.

2. Delegation and Dilution: Good leaders are comfortable with delegating authority. They can give their people the specific (or diluted) portion of authority required to make decisions, secure resources, and execute the mission. With that authority comes a certain level of responsibility. But it is important to note that the leader always retains full responsibility. Responsibility can be delegated, but never diluted. 

3. Routine Practice: Empowerment and accountability are not acute moments in time. They must be consistently and actively practiced. Accountability doesn’t just happen at mid-year and end-of-year performance reviews. And empowerment doesn’t just occur at task assignment. If you want your people to feel empowered, consistently ensure that they have the guidance, resources, and support they need. If you want to be accountable, you must check in with them regularly to let them know if they are on, or off, course. 

Regardless of whether you’re leading a Special Mission Unit, growing a start-up, or running a large corporation, you’re unlikely to accomplish anything meaningful without highly effective leadership - and that requires both empowerment and accountability. Because just like officers and NCOs in the Army, they are two sides of the same coin. 

Cover Photo Credit: US Army, 75th Ranger Regiment

The Race to 51%

The way that actual business (especially small business) is conducted is very different from what many of us learned in school. The information age has completely changed the game for how businesses interact with customers, members, vendors, competitors, and collaborators. The Internet, mobile devices, and social media have all conspired to create entirely new expectations around service and value. Think about it, we now live in a world where:

1. People can share their experience with a product or service in real time.

2. Thousands of others will see/ read/ watch/ listen to that testimonial.

3. Decisions and behavior are informed/ influenced by the experience of friends, or even strangers.

With more choices than ever and a wealth of information at the touch of a finger, people are becoming very selective about who they choose to do business with. Though your spam folder may suggest otherwise, major corporations are shifting resources away from front-end sales and marketing and into back-end customer service or client retention. They’ve started to realize that taking great care of current customers is an effective growth strategy. This is a good thing. 

When I was the executive director of Team RWB, we didn’t necessarily have customers, but we certainly had a lot of members, and tons of relationships. By 2016 we were a 150,000 member organization, operating 45,000 events per year, in over 200 cities across America. We did this with 2,000 incredible volunteer leaders and 25 full time employees, who nearly all lived in different states.   

We were very much in the relationship business. Some of these people were sponsors, some were partners, some were local volunteers and members - and all of these wonderful people could have taken their time and talents elsewhere. With such a large and varied group of stakeholders, we constantly asked ourselves a simple question, “how can we get these folks to stick with us?” We could certainly point to the mission and the inherent desire to help others and serve the greater good. That was absolutely a factor, and probably what originally drew people to the organization, but we knew we had to do more.

At some point, it became clear. Whether personal or professional, relationships stick when people feel appreciated and valued. They may come to us for a million different reasons, but they’ll stick with us if they find the experience truly valuable; if they feel like they are receiving something more than they expected.  So, I suggested a thought to help us think about this on a day-to-day basis and the results were incredible. I called it The Race to 51%. 

Simply stated, The Race to 51% means that you have to go more than halfway to meet someone in the middle. 

The Race to 51% was a commitment that we would cover more than our fair share of the distance and deliver more than our share of value. The commitment applied to all relationships, even financial ones, and for good reason. 

Partnership building is relationship building at all levels. And the old-school tactics on negotiation and leverage don’t work very well anymore. Trying to get the most out of a deal or take someone to the cleaners just aren’t good long-term strategies. Instead, try to figure out how you can deliver at least 51% of the value in any relationship. Can you help them achieve their goals? Can you help promote something for them? Can you deliver a little more than they expect of you? 

It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t keep your interests in mind or that you should enter into a bunch of lopsided, bad deals. It means that once you’ve decided to work with someone (ideally through a fairly rigorous process), you immediately start thinking about how you can make it a valuable relationship for him, her, or them. 

The principle applies just as strongly in our relationships with the people on our teams, and those in all aspects of our lives. If you can cover more than your share of the distance to meet people half way, your relationships will not only be more functional, they’ll be much more loyal and trusting. When trust is established teams will be more resilient and more committed to weathering the bumps in the road together.

At Team RWB we really took this approach to heart. Nothing squelches enthusiasm and energy faster than a leader with the default setting of “no”. So we committed to doing whatever we could to “find a way to say yes”. If a request or an opportunity made sense, and it aligned with our mission, vision, and values - we would figure out a way to make it happen. 

We were not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but we made an earnest effort to meet people where they were at, every day. If we needed to adjust to better execute the mission, we would communicate, try to understand, examine the situation, and make decisions as quickly as possible. We did our best, and when a situation arose that was (for whatever reason) out of our scope for the relationship, we were up front and honest about it. Sometimes we had to say, “we’re sorry, but that just doesn’t work well right now”. We hated to disappoint people, but we slept well at night knowing that we’d acted in good faith, and were pleased to find that most people are quite reasonable. Sometimes, relationships don’t work out, even when you cover more than your fair share of the distance, and that’s ok. You never know when you might meet again.

Keeping the Race to 51% in mind encourages us all to do the work, to care for others just a little more, and to deliver as much value as possible, regardless of the outcome. 

That feels like something our world could use today, perhaps more than ever.

Thumbnail photo: @cytonn_photography via Unsplash

Trust is Spelled C.A.R.E.

Effective leadership, and in fact all relationships, must be built upon a foundation of trust. If we have real trust, we can do many things wrong and still succeed. If we lack trust, we can do almost everything right and still fail.

Trust creates confidence, daring, communication, and patience. It reduces stress, anxiety, resentment, and risk-aversion.

What makes it difficult is that trust is not something that we can just decide to have. We can’t simply institute a policy of trust. We can’t print trust on banners and hang them around the office. 

Trust must be built. And while it generally takes time and effort to establish, it can be lost in a moment.

If you want to have real trust, you simply need to CARE. 

Candor – Candor is proactive honesty. It is the ability to have difficult conversations. It is the willingness to proactively communicate. It requires that we place the relationship ahead of our own personal comfort. Candor leaves no room for half-truths or lies of omission. It allows us to address and resolve concerns, misunderstandings, and misgivings before they become major issues. Being candid is the best way to avoid building those small bits of resentment that can aggregate to create contempt.

Authenticity – Authenticity is about understanding and owning who we are. Authenticity allows us to have a real personality, not a persona. When our thoughts, words, and actions are aligned, we are expressing our authentic self. Living authentically reduces judgment toward ourselves and gives others permission to do the same.

 Reliability – Reliability is more than being dependable. When someone relies on you, they know that you will not only make good on your word, but that you will actively look out for them. This is an often-overlooked component of trust. Whether consciously or subconsciously, we cannot trust until we answer this question: Can I rely on you?

Empathy – Empathy is so important to understanding. It is the ability and willingness to see things through the eyes of others and to feel what they are feeling. Shame and hate cannot exist in the presence of empathy. If we believe that our leaders and partners truly appreciate and account for our perspective, we can trust.

 Showing that you CARE is crucial to building trust, and rebuilding trust when it is lost. I learned a lot about trust during my time in the military, but I didn’t full appreciate it until after I left.

Virtue Benches at The United States Military Academy at West Point. Photo Credit Dave Lowe via Unsplash

When I first left the Army I started working as a Field Sales Rep at Ameripath, a subdivision of Quest Diagnostics. I was tasked to lead a $15 Million territory and grow the business. I was new to this line of work and my base of knowledge was really thin. I knew I couldn't just go out and take business from my more experienced competitors, so I went to the lab and asked them if we had a list of recently lost clients. Customer service had really suffered since the territory had been abandoned for six months, and I hoped that I might be able to go earn back some business.  

In pathology testing, trust is paramount. A medical provider sends a tissue sample from a patient in the office after conducting an uncomfortable (or downright painful) process. An elderly patient fearful of cancer may have just had their hip bone penetrated by a needle to extract a bone marrow sample. That sample cannot get “lost in the shuffle”. But sometimes those things happen, and it’s an unpleasant conversation when they do. If you want to see a really mad doctor (and patient), just lose a pap smear sample.  

Fortunately for me, we had several clients whose trust we’d lost because they felt a lack of care and competence. Trust had to be reestablished with the lab while I built it from scratch. 

Trying to earn trust as the “New Guy” was going to be a process, especially coming from a totally different life background and not really knowing how to navigate the space. During my first attempts to go out and sell, I would do what I had learned in sales academy. I would run the sales scripts from Professional Selling Skills, wear the navy blue suit (with my white shirt and red tie), and hand out marketing sheets. But I didn’t feel very much like myself. 

 I wasn’t comfortable projecting this persona and I knew that they wouldn’t be able to trust me unless I changed my approach. So, one sticky Tampa day, I took off my damp suit coat and tie and rolled up my sleeves and tried a totally different approach.

First, I spoke to customers with candor. I walked in and started over. “Hi, my name is Blayne and I’m the new guy. I just want to make sure you know who I am. I would love to meet someone here. I understand there have been problems and I want to do what I can to be helpful. Here’s my card, please let me know if you need anything.”

Being candid includes being proactively honest. I wasn't trying to be slick, I was being authentic. 

Speaking with authenticity, I was also transitioning from “Blayne the Green Beret” to “Blayne the Sales Rep”, which was very difficult. And I told them that. My kindness and honesty disarmed them and their guards began to drop. I told the truth (generally the best approach to life as it turns out). I didn’t try to dazzle them with war stories or act like I knew all their pathology answers; I didn’t, but I could get them the answers. 

And they began to realize that what I lacked in technical knowledge, I could make up for with my reliability. I would give them my card and say, “call my number, and my number only, when you have a problem. I will answer and I will help you.” Some days I had to drive to the lab in Orlando to get pathology kits and then drive out to Clearwater Beach to drop them off. Those extra miles cost something from me, but I showed them that I was responsive to their needs, and they responded with appreciation…and more business.

Photo Credit @healing_photographer via Unsplash

Reliability isn’t always about putting out fires, it’s also consistency on the front end. Being dependable and predictable provides a level of comfort, so that when the problems arise, you can solve them together. Truth be told, sometimes I messed up, but with some cache built up, they were willing to cut me some slack and forgive my mistakes with empathy. 

Empathy was the last part of the recipe. Seeing people not as customers, or potential customers, but as people. As leaders, we all have to see people as people first, not headcount or employees. People. I would aim to see Doctors from their perspective. Especially when they weren’t very kind to me. 

No one likes being treated poorly, but I took a step back and thought, “he's got a hundred guys like me coming in all the time trying to be slick and pitch him on a sale.” Meanwhile he’s been up since 5:00 a.m. to do his rounds at the hospital, then conducted 21 colonoscopies, then saw a full caseload of patients in his clinic. And maybe he’ll get to have dinner with his family tonight. If he’s not on call that is. 

Multiply that by 20 doctors, each with a nurse and a medical assistant, plus an office manager, and a receptionist and I could appreciate the moments those front desk windows would slam in my face. Or the five minutes the Doc would give me at lunch. So yeah, sometimes these people were mean to me, but I learned to give them some grace.

Some days, at a presentation lunch, I’d sit down and simply ask the staff how they were doing. Then I’d listen as they’d talked. And as I’d suspected, they were all just people.  

People require CARE. Caring for people offers a pathway to trust, and trust makes all the difference. I’ve never been the smartest or strongest or most capable leader, but my clients and my teams have always been able to trust me. And I think that comes down to this fact: the people I serve know that I CARE. 

Thumbnail photo credit @wylly_suhendra via Unsplash