Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 129

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

Rapid Fire Q and A to finish off the week: 1. What happens to a leader when they are fired from the SEAL Teams. Are they lateral transferred, or removed from the Navy. 2. I'm thinking about talking to a counselor, any advice on what to expect and how to approach it. 3. Wildland firefighter or pursue higher education 4. A letter to leadership - what do we want our warriors to be, are we actually being honest with ourselves. Enjoy

Ladies and gentlemen, what's up? It's Friday. It's time for Q&A, the 129th iteration of Full Auto Friday. And today, maybe we'll just go a little bit lighter. I feel like maybe it's been heavier questions recently. So let's take it easy. Let's take it back a step. Here we go. 129. Fire away. All right, ladies and gentlemen, here we go. Four questions for today. I'm going to start off with a little bit of a leadership one. This one is on my phone. So I'm not being rude and checking my phone while I talk. I have just attempted a few times today to air drop this thing to my laptop, and even though air drop is one of my favorite things, sometimes I just can't get it to work. So we're on my phone for the first one. Here we go. Question for Fallout Friday. When you've said a leader, officer or senior enlisted gets fired from a position in the teams, does that mean a lateral transfer to another team, lateral to somewhere else in the Navy, or does that mean out of the Navy all together. The answer to that question, I wish I could say that it was always based off of some particular standard, but in my experience at least, it depends on the person

and it depends on the reason that they were relieved from their position. In my experience, which is the only thing that what I say counts for is in my own experience with my own eyes. I don't speak for the Navy. I don't speak for the SEAL teams at all. When I was in the SEAL community, I would say that one thing that the SEAL community struggled with from time to time was kicking the can down the street. And by that, I mean, instead of making sometimes, not always, but sometimes, instead of making the hard decision and actually exercising a cancer, to use a pretty clean metaphor. The SEAL community or the SEAL team in which that individual was serving at

and likely needed to be removed from that position instead of making a hard reset. And I understand that there is a lot of time, there is a lot of money invested in people when they even arrive at a SEAL team their first day. There's a substantial amount of time invested by the Navy. there's a substantial amount of taxpayer money to even get somebody to that point. And I do believe in second chances. And I do believe that there should be a standard that is adhered to. And there should be a chance for remediation and additional training and opportunity to meet those standards.

But all of those things, having said that, at some point in time, you're going to reach a go-no-go point. What I saw occasionally is instead of having that hard go-no-go, they would latterly transfer to another team. And that gives an individual an opportunity to recreate their own narrative as opposed to having the command that is removing them and sending them somewhere else actually lay out exactly what happened, why, and what should be expected. And that may not sound like it makes a lot of sense. But let's just say if you went from an East Coast team to a West Coast team or a West Coast team to an East Coast team or a West Coast team to an East Coast team or somewhere where you don't really know a lot of the people. people that you are working with, kind of gives you the chance to tell this story that you want to tell as opposed to the story that you should tell. And I get it. Decisions are tough. Getting to a place where you are current and competent as a seal operator is not easy. You care very

deeply for the people that are around you. And I'm sure at this point in time, people have heard myself and others from this community say we serve with our best friends and our worst enemies. So it's, you know, there's both sides of that bell curve there. And whether you like somebody or hate somebody, you still need to make the right decision. So I have seen people removed from leadership positions because they were put into that leadership position before they were ready. And it was not the end of their career. The senior leadership above them recognized that perhaps we put this person into the breach a little bit early and they are pulled out and they are remediated, retrained. oftentimes they're going to miss a cycle and then they're going to be put back in.

I haven't seen that happen twice with an individual. If they fail in that position twice, now we're going to start talking about probably a more difficult conversation about maybe this job isn't actually for you. So there's failures in leadership not being prepared. And then there are failures in leadership because you are a piece of shit human being at the end of the day. And you are defined by your ego and your hubris as opposed to actually caring more for the people that, to your left and right, which is actually what we're looking for inside of the SEAL community. For those individuals, and then, of course, there's administrative issues. We're talking anything related to alcohol-related incident, an ARI, probably the fastest way out of the SEAL community at this point, or even the military in general.

In general, DUI, you know, alcohol involved domestic violence, which I could say it didn't happen, but it does, not just in the SEAL teams, but in society in general. So drug use. Shit, I've seen everything from theft. I've seen drug running. I have seen weapon theft. I have seen demolition theft. I've seen people trying to resell both of those weapons and demolition. And in combination, of course, why limit yourself?

So a whole variety of things. The easier ones are those that are in the discipline side of the house. Like, hey, you just fucked up. You got a DUI. And in the back of your car, there was a suitcase of cocaine that you were trying to take to Las Vegas and sell. You think that's a made-up story. It's not a made-up story. Or weapons or, you know, the domestic violence.

That one's pretty easy. And you're going to end up going through the UCMJ when it comes to that. So you might get an exos mask first or maybe start off even lower, like a Chiefs mass. And then, actually, I don't know if they call it that a Chiefs Mass. I forget. I got in trouble for the very first time. I met with all the senior enlisted personnel first. But it wasn't a mask because then I went to XO's mask and then I went to Captain's Mast, both of which I don't really recommend.

And I say that and I've been to both a few times. But I digress. So on the disciplinary side, that one's a little bit easier. It gets a little bit more difficult when it gets into the gray area. Sometimes people will get laterally transferred. Sometimes people will be removed. Easier to remove them directly on the administrative side when it comes to the DUI, the drug use, you know, failing a piss test, things of that nature. When it's just a leadership

failure and you are failing your peers, it can become more difficult. And this is where I'll go back to what I opened with seeing, I don't want to say the entire community, but I did see the can kicked down the road more than my fair share of times. And every one of those times, I'm trying to think of an example of when I didn't see this and I can't think of one. Every one of those times, if you give that person that has been kicked down the road, the can that's been kicked down the road, enough time, the problems rise to the surface again. I'm truly trying to think of whether or not I've seen it be corrected. I don't think that I have, which is not to say that it's impossible. But in my experience, that wasn't the case. And so instead of dealing with the problem

upfront and having that difficult conversation, sometimes too, when you kick the can down the road, they get into a new duty station, they're able to kind of maneuver themselves into a pseudo-leadership position or something that would be a mandatory career wicked. And then even they can get advanced. And this is where it becomes a problem. Because if you have a problem child that continues to ascend the rank paradigm and get to the top of that pyramid, it becomes more difficult to get rid of them, especially if their failures are based in leadership as opposed to something concrete like, hey, you just blew a point two on your third DUI. Every time that I can think, think of, that somebody was kicked down the road. They were eventually removed because of the

same issues or because the issues actually got worse. And that sucks to say, but that's the reality of it. And there's a lesson to be learned in that if you are a leader. And that lesson is identify and deal with problems at the earliest possible opportunity. Is it possible for people to change? Yes. Is it possible for people to learn? Yes, it absolutely is. Should you give people the opportunity to do both of those? Of course you should. But if you are finding yourself trending towards a difficult decision-making point as to whether to keep somebody, to retain them, or to remove them, time is not always going to be the correct answer. Giving them more time actually might cause more damage for your organization. So I recommend, as a leader,

if you find a cancer, exercise it at the earliest opportunity. Don't put it somewhere else and allow it to spread. So hopefully that answered the question. The shortest answer that I can give to the individual who wrote this question is it really depends. Sometimes it's a lateral transfer. Sometimes you get ejected. And sometimes it's in between the two of those. Question two.

This one got me at the opening line. It says, hey, fucker. So, of course, I'm going to read this. I feel like I've emailed you that many times, that everything is going to to the spam folder. But to be fair, I've only emailed you like four times and one of those times you answer my question. So this is really your fault for encouraging me 25% of the time. I really like the extreme ownership here in this first sentence. It's great. So here's my question. I've been a police officer for coming up on 20 years most of that time as a detective. Granted, this is in

Australia, so it's not like the U.S., but I've still seen some shit. I've survived so far on a solid basis of repressing all those negative feelings and then cooling them off with copious amounts of alcohol. Don't get me wrong. I'm not convinced this isn't the smartest way, but I'm dabbling with the idea of talking to somebody. What advice would you have for an emotionally stunted semi-functioning alcoholic wanting to be a grown-up and talk to somebody? And then if, parentheses, not really an alcoholic, just for shits and gigs. Thanks, buddy. So I'd love this sarcasm in the email. But I like this question because oftentimes I've talked about the journey of therapy or talking to somebody who is a professional of what goes on between

the ears, which I think is incredibly important. And I've talked about it from my perspective and the help that it has brought to me. And I don't know if I've ever been asked, you know, what should somebody be thinking of or what advice would you have for somebody who's thinking about talking to someone? So this one got me thinking a little bit. And I think the best piece of advice I can give you will keep this as short and as sweet as possible is to be 100% completely honest. that's the best advice that I can give you. I think if you're looking at talking with somebody,

and after 20 years of being a police officer or anybody who works in the first responder, ecosystem or community or sphere, I don't, I don't, the things that the men and women in that community see on the day to day, fuck, they have got to have some weight to them. And to think that that's not going to leave an imprint on your life and change the way that you think about humanity or yourself.

I don't know if that's even possible. possible. I'm sure it's possible. I don't know if it's very likely. I wish there was a way to make it mandatory. And I don't say that in a negative way, but just to integrate mental health care, mental help into this occupation. Like once a year you get like a week break to kind of unload this stuff. And again, I'm thinking through this in real time. I have no idea if that would even, if it would even work. But the point of all that is after 20 years, I don't think it's surprised. should surprise anybody that you come to the realization like, hey, maybe I should talk to a professional about this. Back to your question, the best advice I can give you is be as honest as possible. And that

applies to somebody who may not be a law enforcement officer. Maybe you're going through a divorce. Maybe you are struggling with your sense of self-worth. Maybe you are depressed. Maybe you're dealing with anxiety. If you're thinking about talking to somebody, but you're thinking about not telling them everything that's actually going on with you. I mean, I'm not an expert in this, and I'm sure you could still get some benefit from it. But if you've come to that realization that it's a good idea that you should talk to somebody or you think that it might be meaningful or beneficial to you, what's the point in doing that if you're not going to lay it all out there?

You know, to me, one of the biggest benefits of a counselor, at least conceptually, and this is the way that I look at it, is you're talking to somebody who spends a lot of of time talking to other people. And by that, I mean, they're not just solely concerned with you. They hopefully are when you're talking to them, but they're a person who you can interface with for short periods of time in your life when you need them without judgment. So it's okay if you have things that you may not want to tell other people. I think it's not only okay, but I would encourage you, if you are thinking about talking to a professional, to lay all that shit out there. I'm not, I mean, as a human being, I'm probably impossible to have judgment or not have judgment of some kind, but it's their job to look at that objectively.

And I do realize that, you know, there are some things that are mandatory reporting, self-harm or I think harm of children. And I'm sure there's more than that. And so I'm not talking about those things. I'm just, you know, we all, every single human being is dealing with something. I don't care who you are and what your status and orbit is in life. for the people out there who think that if you become rich and famous, of which I am neither, but I know some people who are to think that they don't deal with problems, although they may not be the same problems that the vast majority of other people are dealing with. Of course, they're probably going to be different, or maybe they're exactly the same, or maybe it's even worse. My point in all that is, we all have our own shit and we're all dealing with it. And sitting down and

talking with a professional who's not there to judge you, but who is there to listen and then help you work your way through whatever it is that you are going through. is incredibly cathartic, and I don't know if there's anything more beneficial that you can do for yourself other than pairing that with, of course, healthy physical habits. So then you're working in the above the neck muscles and the below the neck muscles. But that's really it. If you're going to do this and you're going to sit down and talk to somebody, first off, take the time to find somebody that you connect with, which may not be your first person, your second and your third, whatever it may be. Find somebody you connect with and then trust them to do their job.

and show them that you trust them by laying it all out there. Unzip the fly, put it on the table. Metaphorically, fuckers, not actually literally, and then work your way through it. And I think you will be better served by doing that. And it will be if you do that, if you're thinking about going to counseling and you do that and you lay it all out there, I think it'll be exactly what you hoped it could be and potentially even more. So, question. Number three. Let me make this bigger. I will try to be as concise with this as I can. I'm 25 years old and served almost six years active duty Air Force as an aircraft mechanic.

I love my job, but as I matured, I realized I wanted more of a challenge and to feel like I was truly earning my time here on Earth. I separated active duty and joined the Air National Guard so I could apply for an Air Force Special Operations position. After over a year and a half of getting my dick kicked in every month as I was waiting for my school slot, I was finally sent off to selection in June of this past year. Somewhere along that year and a half of waiting and unbeknownst to me, I lost the desire for that particular job, and quite frankly, just being in the military overall. I realized this a little over a month into the selection process and ultimately chose to leave. Although the decision was tough, and I think about it often, I believe I made the right

choice. Here's the issue I'm facing. On one hand, I still crave that challenge and the need to earn my living. I want adventure and to truly work hard. I've applied to multiple wildland firefighting positions for the next fire season, as I've always been interested in that. On the other hand, I'm now a full-time student in my second semester of college, and I love what I'm going to school for and can't wait to graduate and get into the workforce. My fiancé isn't necessarily relying on me, but I know she can't wait until I graduate so we can start living comfortably and move forward in life. I know I'm getting older, but I'm not ready for. I'm not ready for a nine to five yet. Wildland firefighting is seasonal, but I could be, but I could be progressing

with school even more in the summer instead of fucking around in the woods. What I'm asking for us, some points or some pointers in this critical stage of my life. I don't have a good father figure or really any peers to bounce these issues off of. Any response is appreciated. I've been a listener of yours for a long time now and I love your outlook on matters and also occasionally, you are hilarious. I just think what you're doing with Fallout Friday is helping people probably more than you realize. Thanks for what you do. You're welcome, first and foremost. And for people listening to this or watching, it's actually really helpful for me to answer these questions as well. My favorite question is why. And these questions are in essence a question to me of why. Why do

I believe what I believe? Why do I think what I think? And can I actually unpack it? Sometimes yes, Sometimes no. Some questions are easier. Some questions are harder. So it's definitely mutually beneficial. It sucks you don't have a father figure in your life and a peer group as well. I'm going to actually I'm going to lump these two together a little bit. One of my biggest pieces of advice for you is maybe try to fix that. I grew up really fortunate. My father was deeply involved in my life and he was a huge inspiration and motivating factor in my life. And I have for my entire life relied on him for his guidance from time to time. Some of my favorite episodes are actually when he's sitting across the table and we can

just go back and forth and talk about things. It's just a crazy dynamic that I never thought we would arrive at. And I also realize that not everybody has that and I wish that everybody did. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a biological parent. You know, there are people, maybe one of your teachers in school could become, and I don't, it doesn't have to be like, like a parental or father figure, maybe just more of a mentor. I would look at maybe a teacher as a mentor and your peers in school as exactly that, your peer group. And if you feel like you don't have anybody to talk with about these things, I would try to fix that. I don't think life should be lived alone. And I know you said you have a fiancé. I think that's amazing. But I don't think you should

have an unlimited amount of people in your social circle. But I think having some is good because it'll be a diversity of ideas, diversity of beliefs, and you can actually have these conversations. So I would start there. Maybe try to increase your social circle a little bit. Look for people who have interested or interested in the same thing. And if you're in a graduate program, studying for a particular topic, I don't think that should necessarily be that hard. Or if you go down this firefighting position, maybe you could find a mentor or a role model there as well. To your question now, you're not ready for the nine to five yet. I totally get that because I have never been ready for a nine to five my entire life. I turned 45 two weeks ago, and I'm trying

to think if I've ever had a nine to five job. And really, the most structured hourly job I've ever had was working for my dad when I was younger, because we would start in the morning and we would get done in the afternoon. The military was kind of a 24-7, 365 at time. CrossFit had odd-er work hours. It just, I didn't have an office that I worked in. Aviation was kind of the same thing. It was an on-call type of occupation, skydiving, largely the same thing. I was going and pursuing it to my degree, base jumping as well. The podcast, definitely not a nine to five. I try to schedule episodes to start at the same time when I do the recordings to kind of go around the

things that I like to do, but I'm not in a suit and tie. I'm not doing a nine to five. So I completely and utterly understand that. And I think it's important for people to realize you can have such a wildly enriching and fulfilling life outside of that. traditional system that most people would associate from nine to five. Does it work for a lot of people? Hell yeah, it does. Is it a great system? It depends on the person who's trying to integrate an interface with it. But I hope people realize there is more to life than that. For me, I'm still

at the age of 45, not sure where my life is going to take me, but I do know I don't want it to take me in a direction that leads me towards that nine to five. So, although I can't say exactly what I want to do with the rest of my life, I can tell you what I don't want to do. All of that to say, keep your options open. I'd have a conversation with your fiancé and see how much tolerance she has with you possibly pursuing both of these. And I would say, you know, it sounds like you're younger in your life, you know, six years of active duty, so it's going to put you at 24 if you join it. Let's say you're in your mid to late 20s. Total guess on my part, you're not at a critical phase in your life yet. I'm not saying these decisions aren't important, but you have a lot of

runway in front of you. And you are at a place where you can take risk. You could go invest time in wild and firefighting and maybe back off on school a little bit. Or you could go both feet in the bucket of school and put the firefighting on the back burner. Neither of those are wrong answers. I think, though, you're at a phase in your life where you could probably do both to determine what it is that you want to do. What I have seen in people is, is they don't, really take that time to push around at the boundaries when they are younger. And a lot of times it's because they talk themselves into feeling like they don't have any options. I have to get on this career path. I have to do this job because this is what I need economically. And that it's

this step and this step and this step. And the next thing you know, you're very railroaded down a linear trajectory or career path. The farther you get into that, I think it might be a little bit more difficult to navigate around a little bit, sniff around and figure out what it is that you actually like. So instead of putting yourself on that one path, my advice would be explore both if you can, if your fiancé is okay with that. You might find yourself completely and utterly passionate about wild and firefighting. And yes, I realize it's seasonal and I don't know that much about it, but I also do believe that there are full-time jobs associated with the fire service at a federal level and estate level. Will you get one of those? Will you get one of those?

jobs your first year out of the gate? Probably not, but could you get one later on? I think he absolutely could. And that's a great thing. So take the time to figure out what's going to be the best fit for you right now. What's going to be the most enriching and empowering? And explore both of them. Having said that, when you have this conversation with your fiancé, try to forecast a little bit down the road. Hey, where do you see us in five years or ten years? Where would you like to see us in five years in 10 years. And if you can actually put some things out there that you would want to achieve, then you can start planning backwards to do the things that you would need to do to accomplish those. Maybe it's buying your first home. Maybe it's buying your first home and paying it off. I have no

idea what your goals may be. Maybe it's advanced degree for her or for you, hard to say. But if you can identify that, it makes your picture, that front site focus that you can have a little bit clear. And that's it. You know, I wish I could give you something a little bit more precise. but on an issue like this where I have a choice between A and B, most of the time I'm presented with choices that seem binary like that. Well, it's like, you have to either this or this. It's like, well, how about C? Is there a way that I can do both of those things and then figure it out from there?

That is what I would recommend. Last one for today. And this one isn't necessarily a question. Maybe this is just something that I can leave everybody with. I started this episode talking a little bit about leadership from the perspective of what happens to leaders that fail in the SEAL community. And I was just recently on the Rogan podcast with Mike Sorrelli. And we were talking about leadership in the military in general and the creep of societal issues and the impact that it's having on readiness and leadership in the

military. And I received this email. And this email, this individual included a letter that they sent to their leadership when they left military service. And I think it's just an interesting exercise in food for thought. So this is the email that I got and I'll end it with the letter that they added. Yesterday while traveling, I was listening to Joe Rogan's podcast and I happened to catch the episode featuring you and Mike Sorrelli. The conversation you guys were having about the state of the military really resonated with me and it was a reflection of my own thoughts regarding the direction the services are heading. I retired from the military in October of last year, just after 20 years and the decision was partially a result of the cultural changes

that were taking place at the time. Shortly before I retired, amidst COVID work from home orders and around the time of the directed extremism stand-down day, I sent the below letter to my chain of command. I think when I sent it, it largely fell on deaf ears. And I have no purpose for sharing it with you other than cathartic reasons. And then he ended the email with the letter. I share it as food for thought. And it is titled, A Letter to Leadership.

What are we doing? We are not warriors, but we lie to ourselves. and we say that we are. We pat ourselves on the back by celebrating trivial accomplishments with awards and widely distributed congratulatory emails. We believe that leaders are somehow crafted out of largely irrelevant military PME courses, EPR-O-PR evaluation systems, CBTs that replace real-world training,

and numerous other completely intangible things. We are not warriors and we are losing the fight. A warrior is a warrior is. a leader of the self. A warrior is an asset on the battlefield, whether they are acting alone or within a larger group. A warrior is rank independent. The warrior mentally should exist across the leadership spectrum, from E1 to general. Furthermore, a warrior doesn't need a quantified list of adjectives to define them. They are defined simply by the term itself. This should be the foundation that all military knowledge and skill rests upon. How do we become warriors? First, we

stop lying to ourselves and acknowledge that we are not very good at most of the things that we do. If you don't believe me, ask any person from any career field to perform one of their core mission tasks completely out of the blue. Their performance on demand is an accurate reflection of their true abilities, and all of us perceive our abilities to be substantially better than they actually are. While this may be disheartening, acknowledging it does provide us with a path forward. We need to fundamentally change our approach to training, leadership development, and military work in general. We need to get away from our computers and all of the programs that keep us chained to them. We need to be continuously day after day practicing the core skills that enable us to do the jobs that our nation expects us to do.

There is no replacement for practicing our skills in three-dimensional space and time. We need to toughen up. Remember, as part of our jobs, we may actually be required to kill another person. However, this person is not a bad guy in a black set of fatigues like some of cheesy action movies portray. Instead, this person is most likely no different than you and me, someone with a family, hobbies, life aspirations, and generally good intentions. The mental fortitude required to take this action and then live with it afterwards is extreme. How many of us are actually prepared to do this? That's a hell of a letter.

And there's a lot of questions that are asked in that. And I would recommend anybody in a leadership position, specifically in the military, but even in the civilian sector, to think about those questions. What do we want our military to be? what do we want the leaders inside of our military to be? What are we training them for? What do they exist for? And how can we make them better?

And that's how we'll leave it for this Friday. See you all Monday.