Annual Letter 2021

Dear Friends,

We are excited to share Applied Leadership Partners’ second Annual Letter! Upon starting this journey, we were well aware that partnerships are notoriously difficult, and most small businesses don’t survive to see their second birthday. However, we are happy to report that, while it hasn’t always been easy, our friendship, our partnership, and our business are all thriving. 

Over the course of 2021, we had 25 partner engagements, grew revenue by over 300%, and built some really strong new offerings. And we had a lot of fun doing it. But before we dive too deep into the particulars, let’s talk a little bit about how we got here. 

By the end of 2020, we’d gotten quite busy. Leaders wanted, and benefited from, the work we were doing. To be honest, we began 2021 feeling a bit like the “dog that caught the car”. It’s one thing to chase after a dream, but another to wake up one day and feel like you’re achieving it. 

So what does a dog do when it catches the car? He gets in and goes for the ride, so our theme for 2021 was: Get In! 

We started the year understanding that all of 2020’s problems weren’t going to magically go away with the turning of the calendar. We knew that 2021 would bring its own set of surprises, challenges, and opportunities…and while we couldn’t predict them, we could prepare for them. In January, we gave a keynote address at a large national meeting and stressed that while we cannot have certainty, we can absolutely have confidence - and that earned confidence is attained through our experiences and our preparation. 

In many ways, 2021 was a year of really rolling up our sleeves and digging into the practical aspects of leadership and teamwork. And while concepts like perseverance and sustainability still rang true, our modules around Expectations, Empowerment & Accountability, and Difficult Conversations remained very popular as organizations faced challenges like:

• Returning to the office

• Managing people in a hybrid work environment 

• Changing employee expectations and preferences

• Shifting relationships with customers

• Staff growth amidst opportunities

• Staff reductions amidst challenges

Much of our work in 2021 was focused on alignment. Whether aligning on mission, brand, strategy, or priorities, teams need alignment more than ever. We helped our partners to understand that while we’d love to have agreement (harmony of opinion) on important issues, we can settle for alignment (harmony of effort) to carry us through effectively. Teams gained better alignment through four of our most popular modules and training programs: Difficult Conversations, Brand Alignment Workshops, Empowerment and Accountability, and our Applied Value Creation Training. 

Difficult Conversations

The complexities of people, adversity, and organizational change always brings forth the need for difficult conversations within teams. Many great teams have fallen apart because of their unwillingness to have difficult conversations, and many mediocre teams remain mediocre because they have them poorly. The ability for trust to build between teammates in the midst of difficult conversations cannot be overstated. People grow through sound feedback, thoughtful direction, keen listening, and finally alignment on the way forward. Our module of having difficult conversations has been the most requested and delivered training over 2021. 

Empowerment and Accountability

A number of our partners reached out to explore how to move the words “empowerment” and “accountability” into a way of life and a living breathing part of their cultures. Steeped in our experiences as Soldiers, we shared our vantage point on the critical interplay between authority and responsibility. In this module leaders learned healthy ways to extend ownership throughout the team to generate great success and deal with the ever changing landscape. Many of the teams we worked with had experienced personnel losses, new leadership, and new remote working paradigms and this module was beneficial to setting new processes in place and reinforcing processes that slipped over the course of so much change. 

Brand Alignment Workshops

The theme of alignment blossomed in our Brand Alignment Workshops where we repeatedly found that organizations didn’t need new products and services - they needed a clear and consistent understanding of what they already had and the ability to communicate this for effectiveness. There is nothing more rewarding than witnessing the trust and confidence that teams share when they’re truly aligned. And we got the opportunity to see teams emerge with clear, codified brand messages after playing our full day “game”. 

Every time we delivered this workshop throughout 2021 was a challenge that put us on our toes in a room full of professionals who know their business, and needed a little push top the next hilltop. And every time we left we were exhausted and the feedback was astounding. “You are not going to find very many people who could walk in here and do what Blayne and Brandon just did in one day. Their ability to engage the whole team, guide the discussion, listen thoughtfully, then distill it down into something clear and concise, and finally pitch our brand back to us is unheard of and helps us out significantly. This investment was thoroughly worth it!” - Joe Lebryk, Vice President of Business Development, State Volunteer Mutual Insurance Company (SVMIC). 

Applied Value Creation Business Development Training

We believe that business development is leadership. From our vantage point, leadership is a relational process of influence that yields results. Leadership in a business development context effectively influences the exchange, and creation of value in a way that benefits all parties involved. We took that approach to task after leaving the Army, and refined an approach to professional selling over time that continues to yield excellent results.

Using this approach, we have generated over $200MM in revenue in the last twelve years for the organizations we have served and in our own business. We have turned around a failing business unit to become one of the highest profit centers in a $7B global laboratory business, led a $30MM multi-state/ multi-product sales district, grown a veteran serving nonprofit from concept to $9MM annual revenue, and constructed partnerships with the worlds most iconic brands including Nike, Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Apple.

This year, we packaged our approach to business development, Applied Value Creation, and delivered it to business development teams hungry to exceed their goals by creating long lasting, value accelerating partnerships with their customers.

Speaking of alignment, there’s nowhere it’s more important than at home and we are blessed to have two families fully behind the Applied Leadership Partners mission. The past year was also filled with a number of exciting developments worth sharing. 

• Brandon continues to pursue his studies at Denver Seminary and is now well over the halfway mark! He works alongside Kelly in the Reengage marriage ministry at their church, and created an amazing event called Proximity: Caring for Those Wounded by War, which helps veterans and community members to understand Moral Injury and the complexities of returning home from war.

• Kelly continued the year on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic serving as a nurse in the Emergency Department, and has recently taken a new and exciting role in Interventional Radiology. She continues to serve as a volunteer nurse at Alternatives Pregnancy Center and leads a women’s bible study.  

• Jaden graduated from Army Basic Training and is preparing for his new life as a professional Soldier.

• Elliot decided that four years was too long to be in high school and has ramped up her school work to graduate a year early this May.

• Blayne continues his work with George W. Bush Institute and is leading a project that will bring mental and brain health services to thousands of our nation’s Veterans. He’s also serving as co-chairperson of the Armed Services Arts Partnership, and on the GORUCK board of advisors.

• Jeni made a big shift and completed EMT training and certification in fall. And though she continues to work in the intelligence field, she’s got big plans for helping people to explore the outdoors. 

• Dylan is busy learning to drive, wrestle, and speak Japanese. At 15, he is really starting to come into his own. 

• Dalton dislikes middle school, as we all did. But he continues to impress us with his ability to ride, and perform sick tricks on a skateboard, snowboard, or mountain bike.

• Penny is (mostly) a ray of sunshine and absolutely loves to sing and dance. She knows every word to Disney’s Encanto and has really embraced Kidz Bop!

Do. The. Work.

Looking into 2022, our primary goal is to establish a strong foundation for future growth. In our partner relationships, our content, our systems, and our team we want to continue building something that will last a lifetime. We’re right where we want to be, and now it’s just a matter of DOING THE WORK. With a fully booked Q1 and some long-term partnerships in place throughout the year, we feel like we can start making some investments in our business that will deliver huge value in the coming years. Over the course of 2022, you’ll see us roll out some new offerings, you’ll likely see some new faces joining us on the trail, and yes, we’re finally working on a book! 

To close, we’d just like to offer a massive and sincere thank you to everybody that has made these past two years possible. The trust, encouragement, and support that we’ve experienced has been absolutely amazing, and we will be sure to make good on it.

Hope to see you on the trail,

Blayne and Brandon

Style vs. Standards

I’m fascinated by the difference between style and standards in leadership practice. This week during a coaching session, a leader shared the tension he feels between letting his people do things their way while ensuring that things get done the right way. 

That’s so honest, and something I think that many of us struggle with. 

There’s no hard and fast ruling on this one, but we must always begin with answering “what is right?” for the job in question. If we have empowered our teammates with clear expectations of the job, then we can measure and evaluate the performance indicators in order to reinforce behaviors or refine them. If we haven’t, then a solid resetting of guidance, support, and resources may be in order. 

This in place, how can we make room for different styles, while still upholding agreed upon standards? And how can we look for clues to distinguish between the two? 

We can begin by identifying the non-negotiables in our mission - what must be done in order to be effective? If the teammate is getting the job done effectively, ethically, and in keeping with the prescribed expectations, then let them rock on with their style. 

Leaders may feel a sense of tension if that style is different from their own. We might be a bit uncomfortable watching something done differently than we would do it, but that discomfort is an accepted part of the mantle of leadership. As leaders, we know that the solutions often reside closer to the action, and we must be willing to learn from our people as much as we hope they would be willing to learn from us.  

Even if we used to be in that job, and we had a particular style to execute it. 

Learning something new can be difficult. Learning something new from your employee can feel difficult and awkward. 

Photo Credit: @bernardhermant via Unsplash

When I became a Sales Director for Quest Diagnostics, I had the chance to learn this lesson in the field. I had a teammate who just did things...differently than everyone else. When I joined the company, we were peers, and I observed her approach from afar finding it a bit…odd. She was unique. She did things her own way. And I knew that her way wasn’t my way. 

For example, she would create cheat sheets on word documents for clients that had specific details on them that--though they were correct--did not come packaged and pretty in our corporate generated marketing sheets. And regardless of how many new gizmos, sell sheets, or new products our company launched, she still did the work in her style. And year and after year, she exceeded her goals - ethically and within the limitations of communicated expectations. 

When I became her manager, I was wary about her style with clients and unsure about what to make of her unique training materials. She was a nurse, however, thus medically qualified to speak to these matters in a way that I was not. She had the education and the clinical experience to cut through the fog and get to the heart of what the providers needed, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt and observed - discomfort and all! 

Consistently, she got the job done. And her clients loved her for her unique insights and her superb customer service. 

Though I knew that I wasn’t geared to operate the way that she was, I learned a lot from her while she taught me the difference between style and standards. For that I am grateful. 

But it didn’t come without its routine challenges for me as her leader. Every little deviation from the corporate norm was a tiny little challenge to our system and I had to decide if those differences were ethical, safe, and beneficial. I had to determine if her style was in keeping with my guidance. Sometimes it wasn’t. And to her credit, whenever one of her style deviations was ineffective or questionable, she received the feedback like an adult and she changed her approach like a professional. 

I suspect the trust I gave her to execute things in her style earned the trust I received in return when those adjustments needed to be made. 

Photo Credit: @krewellah87 via Unsplash

But it doesn’t always turn out that way, even when we as the leaders may lack the specific technical or tactical proficiencies that our teammates have for the job at hand. Sometimes teammates hide behind their qualifications instead of using them to achieve or exceed the standards. 

If a teammate is not getting the work done, then we as leaders must intervene. And though we are all unique individuals, at the end of the day, we don’t get paid for our style, we get paid to produce the work. When the mission isn’t getting accomplished we’re not having a conversation about style; we need to have a conversation about performance. 

I recall another teammate that I managed who was empowered to do a job, and was certain about his approach. That person had great experience; he had the degrees and the acumen to back it up. We needed him to monitor and evaluate the critical indicators of the work we were doing. This work informed our community of partners and funders of our progress and illuminated actionable insights for program improvements. The role was mission critical, and his work production consistently missed the mark. 

During routine performance reviews, though his tasks were not hitting benchmarks, he would constantly invoke the style card, asserting his need for empowerment and trust. As leaders we must always remember that accountability is always on the other side of empowerment, and that trust is a two way street. 

We trust our people to do the work, they must trust that we will inspect it. 

After months of missed objectives, and rejected or deflected feedback, I eventually had to let that teammate go. Because when the style isn’t accomplishing the mission, then the style needs to change. And if a teammate is unwilling to see their faults and grow--if a teammate is unwilling to change--then that individual is opting out of the job he or she has signed up for. 

We all take pride in our work, but if we're prideful at work, the team and the work always suffer.

A colleague who refuses to change their approach (though the results remain consistently below expectations) is demonstrating a degree of obstinance that cannot be allowed to persist. Obstinance disrupts teams leading to a breakdown in cohesion, poor performance, and missed objectives. 

We are all people. We all matter. And we all get to choose whether we wish to be on the team we are on, or to be elsewhere. Accordingly, if those obstinate individuals wish to retain their style while failing to achieve the standards, then that person can remain an individual elsewhere while the team moves on without them. 

That’s a choice we all have to make as leaders when we have folks who are holding on to their style at the detriment of the standards. 

There is always space for style in execution, as leaders we have the gift of holding the discomfort of learning from others, along with the tension of ensuring that the standards of the role are achieved. Afterall, a standard that goes unchecked is merely a suggestion. And suggestions are matters of style. And when a teammate is wed to their style in the face of failed execution, it is our responsibility to clarify and correct in order to achieve success. 

And though much can be learned--both ways--nothing replaces the responsibility to achieve the prescribed expectations that our organizations require of us. And sometimes the very best thing we can do for someone is to sit them down and give them permission to take their style elsewhere, especially if we’ve had the difficult conversations and we are getting nowhere. 

Thumbnail photo: @cavespider via Unsplash

Impact vs. Contribution

A lot of talented, driven people wrestle with the notion of Impact. They feel compelled, even obligated to leave their mark, or what Steve Jobs called “make a dent in the Universe.” I think that, for the most part, this comes from a good place. We want to use our gifts to do something that matters. But for many of us, the need to make an impact can have undesirable side-effects. We can alternately feel that our lives and work are too important or totally insignificant. So we’d like to start off 2022 by the offering you a little encouragement and providing a slightly different perspective on Impact. We’d suggest that you might do better, and feel better by thinking of your effort through the lens of Contribution.

Maybe it’s just semantics, but I’ve found this re-frame to be really helpful. It’s a great reminder to take the focus off of myself and put it on others. Instead of thinking about how I am going to go out and impose myself on the world, I consider how I can support the people and causes that I care about. How can I be a positive and meaningful contributor to the work and life of my partner, kids, clients, neighbors, etc.? To do this I have to ask them, and then I have to listen. I don’t need to get them to buy-in to my vision. Rather, I need to try and see things through their eyes. Over the years, we’ve learned that the best way to be significant is to help others achieve their goals.

Another nice thing about contributing is that it doesn’t require you to have any particular role or title. How to effectively lead without authority is a very common topic in our practice and a very real challenge in many organizations. And where we usually recommend people start is with building trust and demonstrating value, or said differently…show that you are committed to contributing to the success of others (or the collective). Doing this will quickly make you a valuable (and valued) person.

Focusing on contribution is also great fo keeping you out of what I call “The Existential Ping Pong Match”. This will be familiar to many of you. It’s the back and fourth between feeling that our work is going to save the world, and that none of it really matters. It’s our difficulty in finding an appropriate balance between arrogance and indifference. But if we just think about how we can contribute, even in so-called small ways, we tend to calm ourselves and simply do the next right thing.

Every major philosophical and spiritual tradition has some version of explaining our universal interconnectedness while reminding us of our relative smallness. They encourage us to embrace that tension, to remember that all of our actions matter, but that none of them change the world on their own. I personally find Don Miguel Ruiz’s “4th Agreement” to be the most useful cue: “Do Your Best”. Those three words are both empowering and freeing. Just do your best. We don’t really know which of our actions are “big” or “small”, so we’re wise to simply do our best. We don’t need to worry about what others are doing or have accomplished. That doesn’t have anything to do with us. We either did our best or we didn’t.

So as you look into 2022 and think about the impact you hope to make, perhaps you could take a moment to shift your perspective and consider how you might make a positive and meaningful contribution to the success of others. Take a few minutes to write down the people and issues that you care about: family, employees, customers, vendors, colleagues, neighbors…and think about how you can do your best to help them. You don’t need to worry about your impact or your legacy…your contributions will take care of that.

The Whole Truth

I spent my entire Army career as one of the “guys on the ground”. It was a charmed path that took me from Tank Platoon Leader to Scout Platoon Leader to Special Forces Detachment Commander, with each successive role moving me closer to my soldiers and further from the flagpole. 

That kind of experience, especially during times of conflict, provides you a certain perspective on things. It gives you an appreciation for nuance and subtlety, for detail and variation, and for the very human aspects of the business of war. There are no abstractions on the ground. 

I found a lot of pride and satisfaction in living out on the tip of the spear, of seeing things up close and personal. It was a big responsibility for a young man and one that I took seriously. It felt like the work we were doing was all that really mattered. We were the ones in the fight. We bore all of the physical risk. Of course we knew the truth about what these wars were all about, because we were on the ground - and to a combat soldier, there is no truth except the Ground Truth. 

The problem, I would discover, is that the Ground Truth is not the Whole Truth.

I first started to notice this in 2004 when I was in Iraq. As a Brigade Reconnaissance Team (BRT) platoon leader I would regularly work with the brigade’s various battalions, each assigned their own Baghdad neighborhood as battle space. And I was often stunned to realize that while they all knew their areas very well, these large, sophisticated units didn’t seem to have much of an idea of what was going on just one neighborhood over, much less across the entire city or region. It was almost as if they were all fighting their own little wars, all contained within some imaginary lines that we drew on the map. I remember thinking (and probably uttering semi-respectfully), “you know that the enemy doesn’t give a damn about these battalion boundaries, right?” Way back then, I could see the limitations of the ground truth, but my youth and hubris kept me from really learning the lesson.

About ten years later, I found myself leading an awesome nonprofit organization called Team Red, White, Blue (RWB). With over 150,000 members and chapters in over 200 cities, Team RWB was all about the ground game. Our mission was to deliver local, consistent, and inclusive opportunities for Veterans to engage with their communities in positive ways. Every single week, Team RWB chapters hosted thousands of run groups, workouts, and community projects. And almost all of that was led by volunteers. These leaders knew their communities, understood the Veteran landscape, and cared deeply about their members. Their passion was undeniable and their energy was inspiring. We were crushing it. All we had to do was keep our focus on the ground and the rest would take care of itself, right?

If only it were that easy. As we’d quickly learn, small things don’t become big by accident - and as powerful as inspiration can be, it probably won’t help you make next month’s payroll. We became acutely aware of this in the spring of 2014 when, through a series of missteps, oversights, and bad breaks we almost ran out of cash and crashed our big boat of awesomeness right into the rocks! It was time to shift our focus a bit. We had to figure out a way to balance the creativity and initiative of our local chapters with more sustainable financial and operational practices. If we didn’t, the whole thing was going to fail.

So sometimes, as much as we preferred high-fives and atta-boys, we had to be the bad cop. At times we were the brand police and had to say, “we’re sorry but you cannot make custom t-shirts in pink”. Sometimes we had to be the finance police and would say, “we’re sorry but we can’t double your chapter’s budget even though the local Chevy dealer donated $10,000”. As you may imagine, none of this went over particularly well. We got a lot of pushback from hard working volunteers that were making things happen. From the staff’s perspective, we were just trying to keep the Team RWB freight train on the rails, but from the chapter’s perspective, we were putting up roadblocks. As more and more of these conversations were happening, we became concerned that the staff could go from being a source of inspiration to a wet blanket. Finally, I heard the magic words - “you guys don’t know what’s going on ON THE GROUND!”

My response: What?! How dare you! I’m a ground guy! For God’s sake, I lead my local chapter!

If there was a problem it certainly wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate what was going on at the ground level. If anything, it was that THEY didn’t appreciate what was going on at the strategic level. THEY didn’t understand all of the things we had to manage to keep the organization healthy. THEY couldn’t see the bigger picture.

And who’s fault was that? MINE.

That’s right, while I had a good (but not full) understanding of the ground truth, I had failed to consistently communicate the broad truth. It turned out that things like strategic vision and national partnerships really matter to the folks on the ground, and understanding their implications helps local leaders to make good decisions and move confidently forward.

From that point on, we started making big changes. We became much more transparent. We communicated proactively. We included key volunteer leaders on all reports to the board of directors. We started regional leadership summits, where chapter leaders would come together to share successes and challenges - and the staff would have the opportunity to share what was happening at the regional and national level. There was no more local business or national business, just leader business. And we were no longer simply pulling information from the chapters, then pushing information back. We were engaged in an ongoing dialogue. 

When we started doing this, we discovered that there weren’t different versions of the truth, just different perspectives. In order to be truly successful, we had to stop debating whose truth was more true. Rather, we simply had to combine our various perspectives to paint a fuller, clearer picture of our situation. 

Big, collective endeavors require us to dig into the details and really appreciate how decisions affect the lives of those closest to the problems. They also require us to zoom out, see the bigger picture and recognize the broader implications of local action. Most importantly, they require us to stop believing that any of us have a monopoly on the truth. We need to start listening with the intent to understand, speaking with the intent to inform, and cooperating with the intent to improve.   

And that’s the whole truth.

Blindspots - Pride is the Enemy of Growth

In the Rangers and the Green Berets, every class cycle conducts something called Peer Evaluations, “Peers,” for short. This process is an opportunity to lift the curtain that the cadre cannot see behind and offer insights into all the candidates' real behaviors—what they do when no one is watching. 

You learn a lot about character in the barracks, at chow distribution, weapons cleaning, or during other monotonous tasks. During Peers, you learn that someone is always watching. Every candidate gets feedback, but the peer review process culminates in listing the bottom three members of the squad based on their patterns of poor performance, or (potentially) poor character. 

These are the guys that you wouldn’t want to go to war with. 

Being told that your peers wouldn’t want to go to war with you is a hard pill to swallow while serving in the armed forces; essentially, your comrades have just told you that you are not up to the standard—and it hurts. 

But sometimes it’s the medicine you need most; especially if your heart beats for service and your pride is keeping you from your next big breakthrough. 

As a former cadre for the Ranger Indoctrination Program (now RASP) and the Pre-Ranger (school) program at the 75th Ranger Regiment, I’ve seen Peers go down many times, and I’ve counseled at least a hundred young Rangers and Ranger hopefuls who’ve ranked in the bottom three—“peered out” by their mates.

The common denominator among those who took that feedback well was humility. Their commitment to excellence and growth—and to their team—superseded their personal feelings, and they changed their behavior. The common denominator for those who responded poorly to feedback was pride; their attachment to self, and commitment to individualism, clouded their ability to correct their own blindspots. 

Those blindspots are where we will fall the hardest—especially if we are too proud to accept correction—and this is why being called an “individual” is an insult in the Army. Individuals rely only upon themselves, while teammates rely on each other. Rangers have no use for individuals, and cadre have no time for counseling those who dig their heels in. 

I am convinced that pride keeps us shackled to our deficiencies, while humility allows us the freedom to grow. Pride is the enemy of growth. 

Ranger School, Malvesti Field Photo credit DVIDS

In the Ranger Regiment, we required Rangers to read their peer reports directly to their comrades; we did this because the process of feedback is about competence, not compatibility, and the objective in high performing teams is collegiality—not likability. Whether you like another Ranger (or colleague) or not is entirely irrelevant; when you’re part of a team, the only matters in question are performance and character. 

During Peers, we required the men to provide the observed issue, a discussion about the details involved, and a recommendation of how the Ranger needed to improve. This ensured that Peers remained an opportunity solely for constructive criticism, not destructive gossip—and we looked for patterns, not isolated incidents. Hence, the bottom three candidates were indicated by the number of peers who identified the same issue.  

After Peers, the young Rangers are offered the chance to course correct and are dismissed if unwilling. This is where pride or humility are exposed in glaring fashion. The humble change and grow into great Rangers. The prideful don’t and find themselves elsewhere, typically with a story about how they got “screwed” in RASP or Ranger School. 

Having been on the giving end of this one way conversation more times than I can recall, I’d like to share a peek behind the curtain on one of those short counseling sessions. Though direct and hard in some cases, perhaps there’s a word in here some of us need to hear—especially if we’ve received feedback that we don’t like, and are digging our heels in.

• “The Window and The Mirror” - This model has been used across many different leadership approaches and is a staple in the US Army Special Operations community. Simply stated, when someone receives criticism there are two common responses - either they point the finger out at everyone (looking through the window), or they turn the attention back on themselves (the mirror). Always choose the mirror. Instead of firing away at everyone else, take aim at yourself. Look yourself in the mirror and ask, “what can I learn from this? How can I grow through this? Though I may not like what I’ve heard, what part of it may be true? Looking in the mirror is the first act of agency in an otherwise off balance situation.

• “Asshole Math” - If you think someone’s an a-hole, they’re probably an a-hole, but if you think 9 people are a-holes, you’re probably the a-hole. The numbers won’t lie on this. If your team has told you the problems they observed and your response is to dismiss them, then that is a you problem. If you find yourself rationalizing with, “they just don’t like me, they are jealous of me, they all conspired against me...” maybe you’re the problem. Do the math.

• Seek Responsibility and Take Responsibility for your Actions - this is drilled into every single Ranger from day one. Heeding constructive criticism is a chance to take responsibility for your actions and your faults—and to take ownership of your growth and your future.

• Put Down Your Shield and Pick Up Your Pencil - It’s natural, you perceive that you just got “attacked” and you feel the need to defend yourself. Don’t. Instead of picking up your shield, pick up your pencil and start taking notes; ask questions to better understand what your team is trying to tell you. Far too many people walk through life with blindspots because we have lost the art of sharing difficult feedback with each other—try to receive the criticism as a gift.

• Stop Making Excuses - You can excuse yourself from growth your entire life, but litigating every point of improvement that someone gives you is foolish and counterproductive. Keep making excuses if you want to stay stuck where you are, or accept feedback with class if you want to grow. The choice is yours. 

• Grow Up - Just grow up. Don’t pout like a child, grow like a professional. All professionals ascribe to a set of qualifications, expectations, norms, and guidelines specific to their field. If you’ve been called out of line on any one of those matters, then fix it. Period. 

Photo Credit: @zacharykadolph via Unsplash

It’s been a long time since I’ve sat with a young Ranger who’s been peered out, but seeing professionals react to difficult feedback is quite common in the marketplace. As it turns out, a prideful reaction to having our blindspots exposed is a universally human experience. No one--regardless of relationship, sector, or level of professional tenure--is immune. 

And though I never got “peered out” myself, I certainly received some harsh feedback from my Ranger Buddies while I was going through training because I was a “drone,” meaning I fell asleep - a lot. Standing up, on a knee, during a patrol, lying in the prone…you name it, I did it. I was so bad that one night my Ranger Buddy, Chris, took me by the ears, sat me down on my ruck, and said, “Brandon, I love you, but if you don’t sit down and go to sleep while I dig this fighting position, I will punch you in the mouth.”

He was direct. And it was appropriate. I had fallen asleep three times while organizing our fighting position, hitting Chris in the face with my weapon, a dummy rocket launcher, and my digging tool. I thought I could drive on through it, and that my droning wasn’t that bad. But I was blind to the severity and how much it hurt my team. Chris helped me see clearly. And though I hated being sat down like a child, I had a choice: be proud and fail, or be humble and graduate Ranger School. 

My buddies helped me earn my Ranger Tab. I’d like to think that I helped some of them earn theirs too. Relying on others stung my pride at age 19, but learning to rely on others has blessed my life immeasurably as I’ve matured. 

There are no lone Rangers. 

If today you’ve found yourself on the receiving end of some difficult feedback, before you react, get some space and consider the source and the purpose of that criticism. Re-read some of those quick hits above and consider the possibility that you’ve just had a blindspot exposed. Now you see it. Your teammates already had. 

And though it may hurt, consider that those who fight growth often end up alone with their blindspots. Professionals humbly take correction, regardless of how much it stings, and grow into stronger and better teammates. Because wisdom walks with the humble, the humble never walk alone, and anything worth accomplishing in life is only worth doing together. 

Cover photo: @ante_kante via Unsplash.

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