Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 25 - Kick off to 2018

Episode Date: January 4, 2018

Closing out 2017 and kicking off 2018 with a cleanup question from last year that I have been wanting to answer for weeks. We are all going to experience others letting us down, and we are all going to let others down. How you handle it is what will separate you from those around you.

Here we go. Episode 25. A close out of the year for 2017. I meant to do one last podcast in 2017. And that didn't happen, but I meant to do it. I actually got this question a few weeks before the end of the year. And I've been thinking about it pretty consistently since I received the question. And I think it's actually perfect timing for a close out to 17 and an intro to 2018. Most people, a lot of people, I don't know, somewhere in between there, most and a lot, are in the phase of New Year resolutions, new year resolutions, commitments, you know, whatever you feel comfortable calling it. And this question, I think, is right in the sweet spot that most people are going to

find themselves in at some point in time during probably the next 90 days, but somewhere into 2018 when they're dealing with those commitments and resolutions. So let's go. Let's kick off 2018. I'm going to try to keep it short and concise for number 25. Close now. The question is, and this is slightly paraphrased from the way it was delivered to me, but I think I captured the essence, is, have you ever faced disillusionment with someone or something you had high expectations of? How did you deal with it?

And the answer is, yes, of course I have. If you're dealing with human beings, and you work with human beings and you surround yourself with human beings, this is not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And I have found this to be true with people that I have worked for, people that I have worked with, my parents, my siblings, and I am sure that everybody that I have encountered, who was on the other side of that coin with me, maybe I was their boss or I was their co-worker or I was their parent or I was their sibling

has had the exact same experience. The reason I like this question is that I feel there are two ways to view it or two ways to have an optic and approach this question. And I think they're both very powerful. So let's start with the first one. And I'll call this the external view of this question. and that is it is my assumption that the person that asked this question was asking it from that

optic of being an individual in experiencing disillusionment or I'm going to call it letdown from either the environment or somebody that they are working with or for and I think that's a very common optic for people to have I also find that most people spend the majority of their time from that perspective. And what I mean by that is externally looking outward at others. Like I said at the beginning, I've absolutely experienced it from that perspective. So to answer the second part, how do I deal with it? I try to start off with the mindset and I try to start off remembering that kind of like I've already mentioned, everybody's human. And because of that, perfection isn't even remotely possible. I was recently on Joe's podcast, and during the course of

about a three-hour conversation, he brought up the page that was dedicated to President Trump's lies. And the page was pulled up. I don't know who is responsible for the origination of the page. I don't know if it's a single person or if it's a group of individuals that are working together. I have no idea. But essentially, it is a chronological list. I don't know when it starts, but it documents every misstep and every mistruth or lie along the way that has come out of the president's mouth and then the reality in the world. The scrutiny of that page, I would agree, is absolutely warranted given his position. If you're going to be the president of the United States or you're going to campaign for a public office and be in the public specter, you should be prepared to have somebody break out a magnifying glass in a fine tooth comb

and go through the portions of your life that may not look as well as you may want them to. So the scrutiny is warranted, but that's not really the point. What I try to remember and what I tried to express when I was talking with Joe is how well would you or how well would I fare given the same level of scrutiny? Obviously, for me, I can tell you right now, never running for office. So I know I don't have to worry about that. But again, that's not the point either. If every word that came out of my mouth and every failure or shortcoming was recorded

and listed for everybody to see, it would not be the picture that I would, want it to be. And I think that most people would be in that boat as well. And they forget that when they judge other people. And again, the scrutiny is warranted given the position. But take a moment and apply that level of scrutiny to your own life. And take it a step further. Would your behavior change if you knew that a website like that was going to be created

about you? The question is, what is you preventing you from changing that behavior right now? And the answer for every single one of us, as much as it sucks to say, is laziness, myself included. So I got a little bit off topic there, but I think it ties in because it speaks to how I deal with what happens when I'm let down by those around me. And right now I'm a little bit talking about people in leadership positions and coworkers because I have experienced that. I tell people often that the best leaders and the best people that I've ever been surrounded by were in the seal teams. And then I followed up with the next breath that the worst leaders and the worst people that I've ever been surrounded by are also in the seal teams. It's not an environment of rainbows everywhere and a meadow with unicorns standing in it all day long full of perfection.

It is a broad cross-section of everything that this country has to offer. There's some greatness and there's some darkness and everything in between. So I did have to deal with this. Not, I would say, often, but it certainly happened. So when I saw a failure, not a failure, when I was let down by, or my expectations were not achieved by either leadership or coworkers, the first thing that I would try to do in that situation, one would be to recognize it before it actually terminated it in some type of failure. And if I could recognize it before that would happen and I saw somebody that I worked with

or for struggling, I tried to support them. That was my first step. I tried to step in and I tried to support them. Because what does it say about you as an individual and your potential for leadership if you see somebody struggling and you're passive? Or worse, maybe you don't like the individual that much. Maybe you're happy that that individual is struggling because you want them to be gone at some point. And maybe you want that position that they're going to be into or that they are at.

And if you sit there passively or worse, you pile on instead of grabbing a bucket and you start bailing out for that person, what does that say about you? it's very easy to be kind and compassionate and supportive and caring for the people that you like or the people that you love and because the word easy comes into that sentence in my own personal opinion i don't think that has much value i think if you want to take a true depth and sounding on somebody's character you need to watch how they treat their enemies because that's the real person coming through right there so if i see a leader, you know, and a lot of people probably think I'm talking just about the military right now, but I'm talking maybe your spouse, maybe a coworker who sits in a cubicle next to you, if that's where you come from, or in the squad car next to you, if that's the environment you come

from, and everywhere in between. If you see your work for a leader that needs help, step number one is try to help them. The most often reason that I would see leaders or people in leadership positions failing is because they were overwhelmed. And as a subordinate, as somebody who thinks of themselves at all times as a leader, which each and every person should, what you need to do is you need to lighten the load wherever possible. The most common cause that I saw of leadership becoming overwhelmed was a lack of experience. Leadership positions in experience are not synonymous. I would like to hope that that is understood

and a very basic piece of knowledge. I don't think that it is. In the military, to use an experience or a background that I came from, the most junior officer, the person who just graduates the Naval Academy, is senior in rank to the most senior enlisted person in the military.

And that's just the way that it works. Now there are obviously our mechanisms in place, and the most junior officer, if they have any wits about them whatsoever, is not going to go to the most senior enlisted member and start barking orders. But two to three to four years down the road, it's very easy for an officer to be in a leadership position,

leading individuals or in a leadership position over individuals that have exponentially more experienced than that officer. And it's a tough position to be in because especially coming from an A-type personality community, people are watching, people are judging every single thing that you do. And if you don't have much experience, it's very easy to get overwhelmed and to make mistakes. And those mistakes will be get other mistakes. And then the snowball starts rolling downhill. And then the next thing you know you got an avalanche. I have no doubt that the SEAL teams are not the only environment where you can find that.

And there's plenty that everybody else around that junior leader can do to help. If you see somebody who is struggling, whether it's a leader or it's a coworker, and they just can't seem to figure it out, the biggest piece of advice or what I would recommend is that you show them what it is you want to see from them. Slightly repetitive. What am I talking about? I'm talking about setting the example for the person and for the people around you. so if you see somebody you're working with or working for is losing their cool you know the

the heat's on high underneath the pot and it's boiling over the best thing that you can do to reinforce the behavior that you need to see out of those individuals is to show them your calm under pressure maintain control of your emotions regardless of what is happening around you the worst thing that you can do is get into an emotional escalation with your boss that's I don't like to use the word never, but I'm going to say that's never going to work out well for you or for the people around you. If you see somebody that you're working with or working for to become an overwhelmed, show them proper prioritization of information. And show them that even though you might be getting bombarded with things coming at you, all information is valuable, but not all information is important in the moment. So prioritize that information, make a decision, make a problem.

plan, execute on that plan, and then show that individual what it looks like to be situationally aware, because they're focusing on what their job is, leading or doing their job, and not getting crushed by the minutiae and keeping their head down as the world around them shifts and they're not catching it. If you're working for somebody who's a micromanager, show them through how you treat the people that work for you or with you. Show them empowerment and what we call in the military decentralized command, aggregating that power out, not holding it for yourself. Don't tell people how to do their job, empower them, create an environment so they can do their job. If you see this person making emotional decisions, show them the exact opposite. Rational, calculated thought and the impact

that that has on the actual decisions that are being made. If you hear them giving out confusing directions, go the exact opposite route. Show them and set the example of clear and concise guidance. So you can say it in 10 words, try to say it in five. Pick the words that are important. Be crisp and concise and then move on. And then just remember the back of your head. Because those things I just listed are a small subset of examples, and it's difficult to do, especially, like I mentioned earlier,

if you have a personality conflict with this individual, if you want their job, whatever it may be. But before you judge somebody else, Just imagine yourself in their shoes. It's very easy to sit back and judge somebody that you have high expectations of when they fall short. But at some point and at some time, or maybe even in that moment that you're judging somebody else, you might be letting somebody else down behind you that you don't even see that holds you in that same regard. So that's how I try to deal with it in others.

And like I said at the beginning, that's what I would consider to be the external approach to others not meeting the expectations you have set for them and how I deal with it or how I try to deal with it. Believe me, I haven't been perfect at all in any of those approaches that I just gave you. The second way that I think this question can be viewed and the one that I consider to be the most powerful is internally. When I first read this question, this is actually the perspective that I took it from. When I read the question, have you ever faced disillusionment with someone or something that you had high expectations of and how do you deal with it? My first, an initial thought was, yes, I have. And the person that I have experienced it in the most is the one that I look at in the mirror in the morning.

I have very high expectations for myself. I demand a lot out of myself. And if I look back and everything that I've done, I turned 40 late last year, if I look back at everything that I did, done or that I can remember in those 40 years, the place that I have experienced failure and not achieving expectations and let down, the place that I have experienced that the most or the person that I have experienced the most from is me. First and foremost, what I generally do is I beat myself up about it. And I know that's not the best route to take and I think I'm getting better at short-circuiting that cycle, but it is generally the first feeling that I have.

And when I say that I fail often, to me, it's the little things that seem to have the most impact. So it could be something that, an attitude that I have with my kids or my wife or a random comment or interaction from somebody that was very poor, whether it be a friend or somebody that I'm meeting for the first time. And it sucks. And I know it almost instantly when it happens. and the first thing that I try to do is I just try to own the fact that it happened and own the fact that I didn't meet the expectation that I set for myself. And if I can, if it involves another person along the lines of, you know, like I just said, my kids, my wife, or a random interaction,

I will absolutely try to address it with that individual as soon as humanly possible. And then from there, what I try to do is I try to move forward. I don't try to move on. I don't try to forget what happened. What I try to do is use what happened and the resulting feeling that I get from that to drive me. As far as I'm concerned, adversity and failure, they're going to happen. If there's anything that's going to, everybody is going to experience in their life other than death, we're all going to fail and we're all going to face adversity of some kind.

It truly is a matter of when, not a matter of if. and you have choices when it comes to experiencing those things. You can use them as a roadblock or you can use them as a motivation. But only you can choose. You could certainly make an excuse and say that others have chose for you, but the reality is that only you have that choice. Do you want to use it as a roadblock or do you want to use it as motivation? And I have to be crystal clear on this point.

It's a choice. You have control. over how you respond to these situations. For people who use it as a roadblock, and I'm talking about adversity and failure that we're all going to experience, and I'll tie this into the time of year that we're at right now with the resolutions or the commitments or whatever you want to call it,

the people who use failure and adversity as a roadblock, they accept where they are. They give up. They quit. They give in. They encounter failure and they throw the towel in. And maybe it's not the first failure, maybe it's the second failure, the third field, the fourth failure, or the fifth failure.

But they let those failures slowly increase in their weight over time until they are crushed by them. Instead of doing something with those failures that can drive them forward. What I try to personally do is take that feeling of disappointment and the sick sensation that I get in my stomach when these things happen. and I try to throw it into the fire and let that fire burn so hot that it drives me towards improvement or the goal that I'm trying to achieve. And when that happens again, I do exactly the same thing. There's no attempt for me to try to forget.

I just take that experience and I throw it right back into the engine that drives me down the road. Perfect example that I can give you. This happened over this Christmas break with my kids. and it was simple frustration that boiled over about completely trivial things that just made me sick to my stomach in the moment I knew that it was wrong I could feel that it was wrong and I still fell short of who I want to be when it comes to interaction with my kids and I know exactly where this comes from It comes from an environment of the vast majority of my adult life, working in an environment that has zero tolerance for subpar performance.

And that environment was an environment of being around seals. And my biggest fear would be, I'd be show up and I would be the weakest link. And I would have not done my job to the level that it needed to be done and somebody else would have been impacted. Or I would have been late. or I just wouldn't have met a standard along the way. And that has just been hammered into me over a lifetime. And that works great when I'm dealing with other seals.

It sucks when I'm dealing with my kids. Because I want my kids to grow up and achieve so much that it makes them look like my life is a complete joke. And the way to do that is to empower them, not smash them down. and get over their shoulder when they're doing things the kids do. So essentially what was happening is this is my first year. I think everybody probably realizes we live up in Montana now. Rain has turned into snow. I'm enjoying the snow much more than I've enjoyed the rain.

So it's our first year snowboarding with the boys. And it was actually our first day of going on to the mountain. And, you know, this is how messed up my head is. before I went to the mountain the first time I had tried on all of my gear I had put my boots on tightened them up figured out how the boots work

put them into the bindings on the board I had marked the bindings where I wanted them to be so it was going to be very easy I could get out of the truck get in my gear get on the board and up off kind of like I don't know

a military operation so my boys are 14 and 12 they're not interested in trying all their stuff on first figuring out exactly how their boots function, getting their stuff ready to go, knowing where their left glove liner is and their right glove. It's just they're in a different story arc of their life. So we're sitting on the

back of the truck. I'm ready to go and they're not ready to go. And it just, it irritates me at a baseline level. And the problem is that's my fault, not theirs. And it got to the point where I just, I got extremely frustrated. I made some flippant comments and I felt like shit for the rest of the day about it. And I actually, I made an effort during that day to bring it up more than one time with each of my boys because we were riding the lifts kind of, we were alternating. And just to dress it with them, like, listen, hey, I'm sorry that that happened. That's not your fault. Let's, I'll help you put together a structure. So it's easier for you to find your gear and get your stuff on, get your stuff on. I'm not going to do it for them because again, I want to empower them. But I address the problem with

them. And then to this moment, sitting here right now talking about it, I remember that sick to my stomach feeling and I throw that sucker right back into, like I said, the fires to get it to burn as hot as possible to drive me down the road to make sure that I don't do it again. If I were to try to make an effort to forget about that, personally for me, the odds of me repeating it will be higher. So to close it out, like I said, this first one is going to be short. We'll be back again next week. The short answer to the question is, yes, I have experience. let down and people that I hold in very high esteem not meeting the standard that I set for them. But I have no control over anything that anybody else does.

I can only control myself. So what I'll close with is if you want to move the needle and by that I mean, in my opinion, improve your life and the lives of those around you. And if you want to achieve the goal, whatever it might be that you have set for 2018, focus on the things that you can control. And there's only one thing that you can control, and that's yourself. So if you see others struggling, control yourself,

and use that to help other people. That's going to help move the needle. In my opinion, it's the only way that we're going to improve the world that is around us by focusing on what we can control at a very micro level that's going to have a very macro impact. And that's it. That's all I got for episode 25.

First one in 2018. See you guys next week. Thanks, everybody. for tuning in. Really appreciate everybody going to iTunes and submitting the reviews and writing your feedback. Appreciate everybody who's been reaching out either through the podcast contact. I think that's pretty much how most people. I don't even know how people are getting my email address. I think I gave it out once. But whatever it is, I really do appreciate the reach out and the feedback. If you send me an email, I'll do my absolute best to get back to you. If you ask me a question in that email,

I'll do my best to answer it on the podcast or I'll try to answer it the email. back to you. And that's about it. New t-shirts coming out. I'm going to launch that sucker today. I mean, I don't know if it's legal to say that it's the most awesome t-shirt that's ever been created, but it just, it just might be. And that's it. Until episode 26. See you.