The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 357: Stanley McChrystal - Leadership In Uncertain Times

Episode Date: March 22, 2020

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 For full notes go to www.LearningLeader.com Episode #357: General Stanley McChrystal - Leadership In Uncertain Times "As we lead through this time of crisis, leaders are more important than ever: 1) Communicate relentlessly 2) Match your internal operating pace with that of your external environment 3) Continue to reiterate what 'winning' looks like to your organization." Foreword from his book Team of Teams, legendary author Walter Isaacson wrote: "Whether in business or in war, the ability to react quickly and adapt is critical, and it's becoming even more so as technology and disruptive forces increase the pace of change. That requires new ways to communicate and work together. In today's world, creativity is a collaborative endeavor. Innovation is a team effort." Stockdale Paradox - (named for Admiral James Stockdale - the highest ranking POW of the Vietnam War who described how leaders survive terrible ordeals) "You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." From page 104 in my book, Welcome To Management -- General McChrystal extended a gracious invitation for me to tour the hallowed grounds at the Battle of Gettysburg alongside the students he teaches in his leadership class at Yale. We learned a lot about the history of the battle over the course of two days with General McChrystal and some of his friends as tour guides. However, one teaching point that I specifically remembered was this, "The real lesson is . . . it's not tactics, not strategy; it's always about the people." Uncertainty -- What's most scary for people.  While you can't predict the future, you can be that sense of calm, cool, composed (QB in the huddle in tense moments).  General at war. The quarterback at Yale (where Stan teaches) said, "When you throw an interception, don't say 'My bad.' The guys know it's your bad. Say, 'here's what we're going to do next.'" Recent events:  "These observations remind us of our early months fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq: We struggled to keep up with the pace of events, needed to unlearn conventional management rules and had to learn to lead in a totally new way." From James Clear - "The most useful form of patience is persistence. Patience implies waiting for things to improve on their own. Persistence implies keeping your head down and continuing to work when things take longer than you expect." "You have to navigate from where you are, not where you wish you were." From Stan -- The German Army had a say, "feel the cloth." They were referencing when the men were walking so close to one another they could literally feel the cloth on the person next to them. Right now, we don't have that luxury with our co-workers, and it's a challenge. But what we do have and what we need to utilize are communication platforms to stay connected to our teammates. This is our new normal and it's our time to be a leader and help our team get the job done. Communicate -- Losing these in person interactions in a remote-work environment means leaders need to start communicating with more regularity and breadth to their organization. Set Realistic Goals - This is not business as usual, but you can still succeed. Your role as a leader is to be brutally honest about what is achievable in the coming weeks and months as this disruption continues to ripple across the economy. Be Patient - Many of your employees, especially the younger ones, have not experienced turmoil like this in their careers. Be patient, but start communicating now. It is your responsibility as a leader to be a source of calm and steady for them. (from CNN) Questions from members of my Leadership Circle:  Nicci Bosco --What values can we hold in our mind/should we be thinking about/allowing to guide our own actions with when speaking to a group/leading a group/etc in uncertain times? What can we do to re-fill our own reservoir when we notice we're depleted? If we don't know the answer to something, but still want to provide guidance and a response, what are some options? Tom Carvelli -- If you had to sum up your leadership principles into a single unified concept, what would that be?  What does your your daily fitness routine look like in times like these when resources and activities are curtailed? Matt Spitz -- In a world that is incredibly uncertain is there anything in his life that never changes?  Matt Mullins -- In times of adversity and uncertainty how do leaders ensure that their people are prepared and confident to thrive and maintain character through those moments?  How does one develop the ability to maintain composure in stressful situations? How? Stan's daily routine - It always starts with a workout in the early morning hours. "Always start the day lifting. Do a lot of Abs. Work on your core." That discipline creates consistency and that creates confidence. Stan weighs exactly the same today as he did when he was 17! He's only eaten one meal per day for 40 years. If you have to fire someone (or lay them off) -- "Explain it, be honest, do it with grace." Roosevelt during Pearl Harbor - "We are going to do whatever it takes to prevail. It's an unthinkable time, but we will get through it." "You exist for the team... To give them what they need." People are watching what you (the leader) is doing at every moment. How do you respond to good news? Bad news? What is you facial expression on that video conference call? The "Say-Do" gap. As a leader there should not be a gap between what you say and what you do. You must LIVE your values. Building a committed team -- Top CIA agent said to Stan when they were overseas... "I don't know what the Ranger way is, but I will commit to YOU as a person." A two-thousand-year-old Stoic phrase (from Ryan Holiday's Daily Stoic): What is up to us, what is not up to us? And what is up to us? Our emotions. Our judgments. Our creativity. Our attitude. Our perspective. Our desires. Our decisions. Our determination. Here is WHY joining a Learning Leader Circle is a good idea...

Well, one, as soon as you think you're going to fail, you're going to fail. It's decided. And second, you exist for the team. You don't exist for you. The leader doesn't exist for the parking spot or the title of the paycheck. The leader exists to give that team what they need. And so it's critical that you look into their eyes and say, what is this group need? What would I need if I was standing in the back rank of this team right now, wondering what's going to happen? They need to know that you're confident, we can do this, and they need to believe in the cause as well. You need to make sure that you've got something that's worthy of their effort. My philosophy on this podcast, The Learning Leader Show, is to create timeless conversations that could be listened to at any time and be useful. However, given the times we find ourselves in, I felt it made sense. to break that rule and have a conversation with one of the greatest leadership minds in the world,

General Stanley McChrystal, to ask him directly, what are you doing in these times of uncertainty? How are you stepping up to lead when everyone is looking to you? Everyone is watching you. And not only did Stan and I have this conversation one-on-one, but I did it on Zoom. We had more than 250 people from all over the world joining to watch this conversation, listen to it live. And towards the end of it, a few of them had the opportunity to ask direct questions to stand. And he was so kind and gracious. And I would ask you, how are you choosing to step up right now?

People will remember how you behave right now forever and not trying to use hyperbole. However, leaders are made when times are tough. Leaders are made right now. It's easy to lead when times are good. Easy. It's much harder to step up and be a leader and behave like a leader right now. And so I'd ask you, how are you choosing to do that? And I think this conversation with Stan can be very helpful as a guide to say these are some tools, tactics, ideas of ways that you can behave right now to lead your family, which is most important.

Lead your team, lead the people that count on you at work. And as Stan said, you exist for the team to give them what they need. What do they need and how can I as a leader deliver it for them? Ladies and gentlemen, I think you'll get a lot out of this one with the great General Stanley McChrystal. So for those you don't know, and that's probably a small number of my guests today on this first live virtual edition of the Learning Leader Show is the great four-star General Stanley McChrystal, founder, CEO of the McChrystal Group, served our country, those of us who are Americans. I know we have a worldwide audience today, but Americans, he served for three. 34 years. He commanded all forces in Afghanistan, joint special operations command and served as director of operations for the Pentagon. Command included more than 150,000 troops from 45

allied countries. He's also written a number of bestselling books since retiring from the military, including my share of the task, team of teams, and leaders myth in reality. And I recently read a quote by former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, who called Stan, one of the most incredible warriors and leaders I've ever met. So Stan, honored. Thank you so much for being here. Welcome. Well, thanks, Ryan, for having me. It's great to see you again. You too. You too. And I'm so grateful I have to say off the top, and I wanted to publicly say it to you for the invitation that you gave to me last year to go to Gettysburg with the people, the great leaders that you are teaching, and I'm sure learning from as well at Yale. It's one of the most memorable days of my life

of touring the battlefield at Gettysburg with you being the teacher for the whole day. It was just truly, truly amazing. So I want to thank you for that. But it makes you think about leadership when you're on that ground. It sure does. It sure does. Recently, I saw a quote from you that something you had published that said, as we lead through this time of crisis, leaders are more important now than ever. There's really three keys that you tweeted about recently. Communicate relentlessly. Match your internal operating pace with that of your external environment. And three, continue to reiterate what winning looks like to your organization. So I love Stan to get us started if considering everything that's going on. And we tied out this leadership in uncertain times

because I think that's what's most scary to us or to just people in general is we don't know. There's so much uncertainty in the world right now that we're just, if someone said, look, this will be over in exactly 21 days. We know for certain. I think we'd be okay. We'd like, okay, I get it. I can handle that. But we don't know that.

We think we have a hypothesis. Some people have some ideas, but we don't truly know. So starting with number one that you've written about, communicate relentlessly. Why is this so imperative at this time? Yeah. Whenever you have a time of uncertainty, people want as much clarity, and if they can't get clarity, as much reassurance as possible. If we think about, I just did some writing recently about Franklin Roosevelt and after Pearl Harbor, and the day after Pearl Harbor, he went and he gave the speech asking for a declaration of war against the Empire of Japan, but what he communicated was, we are going to win this

He didn't say it would be easy. It didn't say it would be cost-free. But what he said is, we are going to do whatever it takes for us as a nation to prevail. And so communicating to groups of people is first giving them a sense of clarity on what it is we're trying to do. We'll talk about that as a third point, but a sense of confidence that even though this may be an unthinkably difficult time, we are going to get through it. And people recalibrate all their actions if they think there is going to be a tomorrow. If they think that they are going to be able to come through this, where they and their families and the people that they care about.

So leaders have got to communicate that verbally. They've got to do it in writing, and they've got to do it in their demeanor in their actions. They've got to show people that they are completely committed and that they are absolutely confident that we are going to get through this. Where does that come from in a leader? Like, is that something that you've had to develop over the years? Because there are probably people who are in leadership roles that are part of this call right now thinking,

Stan, that sounds great. But I, myself, as the leader of my company or the leader of my team, I'm really scared. I'm uncertain. I don't know. How can I say that if I'm not fully sure. of what's going to happen in the future. Yeah, that's one of the great paradoxes of leadership. Sometimes you have got to communicate something

that is actually directed also at yourself. Yeah. If you, you know what, if you take a bunch of soldiers and you point at a hill and you say, I want you to attack the hill, and I think we got about a 32% chance of taking it, they're not going to be too excited to go up the hill. You have actually, for sure, decided

you're going to fail. Instead, what you've got to do is look at them and you don't say, hey, it's an easy hill, the enemy aren't going to fight. You have to say this is going to be difficult, but we are going to win, even if you have inner doubts about it. And some people say, well, I'm not being completely honest if I don't tell people, I think we're probably going to fail. Well, one, as soon as you think you're going to fail, you're going to fail. It's decided. And second, you exist for the team. You don't exist for you. The leader doesn't exist for the parking spot or the title or the paycheck, the leader exists to give that team what they need. And so it's critical that you look into their eyes and say, what is this group need?

What would I need if I was standing in the back rank of this team right now, wondering what's going to happen? They need to know that you're confident, we can do this, and they need to believe in the cause as well. You need to make sure that you've got something that's worthy of their effort. Well, can you think back to times you're leading 150,000 people that's from 45 allied countries. So that is just blows my mind. But can you think back to moments in your career when you were like 70% or 65% but you couldn't say that?

You had to share the message with your team that you were certain or you were confident that you could accomplish this mission. I know I read about some of the guys you were after, some of the worst terrorists in the world, and there's so much uncertainty there as well. You don't know where they are. Their communications are crazy. So can you think of times in your career that you can draw from now that maybe people could hear an example where legendary General Stanley McChrystal was, I don't know, but then was able to have success despite that? Well, yeah, I take. the legendary Stan McCrissolough, but... Sorry, I got to just say, okay, it's just

stand. Yeah, exactly, but yes, and I tell you what, when you are responsible for something very important, the fear goes up even more, because you're not just going to fail, you're going to fail in something that matters. In 2005 in Iraq, we were losing the

fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq, and many of you remember, if you go back, there was sort of the arc of that effort. We went into Iraq, it looked like it was going to be easy, and then it got wickedly hard, and then the The U.S. didn't figure it out until about late 2006, you know, how to do that better. So in 2005, we had this situation where we had lost control of the Western Euphrates River Valley to al-Qaeda. And a terrorist group now controls part of the country, which is atypical for terrorist groups.

We were asked to go out by the commanding general in Iraq, General Casey, to go out and be the main effort. And so to do that, we had to put J-Soc in a role it didn't usually have. And we had to deploy two-thirds of the force into that fight, which was unsustainable, because we rotated typically a third because you had to refit and whatnot. And so we put them in for a period. We knew it would be unsustainable, gambling that we could make it work. And we thought we could keep it up for about six months. And as soon as we started, we took a bunch of casualties.

It got really painful. And so inside my force, there's doubts that maybe I had bet the nation's counterterrorist force. And there were doubts inside Stan McChrystal that this was even doable. We got together some senior leaders in a room, and we spent about three hours in front of a whiteboard with the question, have we already lost and were too stubble to admit it? And it was interesting. We talked for three hours. And at the end of it, we said, we don't think so. We think we can do this if we do it right.

Where I took strength was from my comrades. And I going into a room by myself and just been captive with my own fears, I probably wouldn't come to the right place. But with each other, what we essentially did was we were saying, we are committed. It was less a vote of confidence that we would win. And it was a vote of confidence in each other's commitment that we would do everything possible. after about six months we did it worked but it was one of those periods and those bets when you're

uncertain every day now during that period what i had to do and other leaders in the organization we have to go out communicate to the force all the time because they've got huge doubts they go as you know as general stan lost his mind what are we doing you know and particularly as they're and comrades. But over time, as they see the big picture, and you have to be really honest with them about the big picture and the purpose, they start to build their confidence and conviction. And finally, in the fall, I had a sergeant major one day said, sir, I had doubts, but I got to tell you, it has worked. And I could have hug the guy because he had such credibility in the organization. If I told everybody it worked because I was the architect, I had it okay, here's a guy

who's a step away and says, no, it worked. We want. It feels to me, your style of leadership is one that builds commitment above just compliance. And some in the military world can say, well, and I'm not, you know, I don't have a military background. I obviously admire you and everyone who has served the United States. But one of the things I've written about, and obviously you've, you've been a part of my book because you wrote the forward, which I'm obviously extremely grateful for, is that the phrase compliance can be commanded, but commitment cannot. And that's a big deal to me, because as leaders, we want to build a type of teams or organizations where people want to commit as opposed to just complying because I have to, because I report to Stan or because that's the CEO,

or because his rank is bigger than mine. How have you worked? Because I think commitment right now is as important as it's ever been. How have you worked to build committed teams? Like that story you just told where people say, I believe in him, I want to follow him. I'm going to commit to him. I'm not just going to comply to the orders.

Yeah. You and I have touched on this before. And you know how deep they feel about this. Yeah. Getting people to be committed to a cause, but also to you, not personal loyalty to the furor, but loyalty to somebody who returns it in kind is incredibly powerful. I'm sitting in my office and I've got a little page out of a notebook torn out from the former head of the CIA in Afghanistan back in 2004.

And I barely knew him at the time, but we're in the back of this darkened helicopter and we're flying and we'd just gone to this place and what we'd seen had not been very encouraging. And he wrote me this note that says, I don't know the Ranger Creed, which is what I grew up under. He says, but you can bet your sweet ass, I'll never leave you. And it was funny. From this sort of a stranger, I'm going, wow. And that guy is named Greg Vogel. He became number three in the CIA. He's a legend. But it was like a check. He was saying, I will commit to you as a person. and that was 2004, and he and I are best friends to this day, because he makes that kind of commitment.

And what I found was, if I'm willing to make that kind of commitment to comrades, that people pay it back in spades, I'll be quite honest with you. The most disappointing part of my life was when I left Afghanistan, you know, the big hubbub from the Rolling Stone article. Yeah, it hurt to lose my career, you know, all of those things, particularly when I thought that, you know, there was no real cause for it. it. But I had caused a number of people to go to Afghanistan and commit. I had gotten a number of Afghans to commit to me because I said, I'm here. I'm with you. And when I'm suddenly unable to

fulfill my commitment, you feel like you let them down. So I would say that one of the things commitments have done for me is make me a better leader because it makes me more responsible. It makes me understand that if I fail, it's not me failing me. It's me fail. It's me and a bunch of people, I made promises to. From the forward of your book, Team of Teams, you had, this is truly a legendary author, Walter Isaacson, he wrote, whether in business or in war, the ability to react quickly and adapt is critical, and it's becoming even more so as technology and disruptive forces increase the pace of change. That requires new ways to communicate and work together.

In today's world, creativity is a collaborative endeavor. Innovation is a team effort. Given the situation we find ourselves in where most people are now working remotely, even if they had never done it before. And before we started recording here, you mentioned how this is such a change for you because you're traveling a lot for your work and now you're not anymore. And thinking of what Walter Isaacson wrote in the forward of team of teams,

how have you used some of your learnings both from him as well as what you've gathered working in a wild environment, especially when communication was tough and you had to build teams of teams. How have you used that now for now? And what advice would you give to others as they find themselves in an unfamiliar environment? Yeah, that's a great question, Ryan, because that's what I'm focused on right now. Just to give a quick background for people who may not be aware, when we took on the fight

against al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2003 in Iraq, they were a completely different kind of organization than we'd ever run into. They were like a virus. They operated using intelligence technology. They were remarkably fast, constantly moving. They weren't a structured conventional threat you could deal with the way we've grown up. So what we found we had to do was we had to geographically disperse ourselves. We were across 27 countries at 76 different bases. every day permanently. And then we had to operate that entire thing as though we were one entity. We had to learn, share information, be able to respond almost instantaneously because our threat was that good. It was like COVID-19. And so we geographically dispersed ourselves and we started

operate and we realized suddenly there are a bunch of learned skills you have to develop to do this. one of the things I'd say is as we go into this dispersed or work from home environment, whatever we want to call it, many of the things we would do during a crisis are hard to do. Remember typically of a crisis in your organization, everybody goes to the biggest conference room you have, you start working, you put whiteboards up, you know, pay stickies everywhere, you buy pizza and you work your way through it. We can't do that now. And you've got to do that, and everybody's in their area, and you've got to get in, information to them and you've got to give information from them, you have got to make that efficient,

not just effective. So what we found is a very disciplined operating rhythm, a drumbeat of certain video teleconferences we talk about that. They don't have to be long, but keeps everybody informed about what's happening. You mentioned at the beginning, communicate, communicate, communicate. That's exactly what you do. You're increasing their shared consciousness. or contextual awareness about the situation. And when you're doing that, you're empowering them to act. You're not sucking decisions to the center because that's too slow. And that's ultimately going to be incorrect for actions locally.

And so by giving them the information that used to be resident only at the sea level of many companies, by pushing it down and telling them they are empowered to act and they are expected to act, suddenly open it up. And the beauty of IT is we can connect so well now, nobody can get too far off the rails. They can make a mistake. They can go in a slightly wrong direction. But you can see it, you can pull them back if you have a discipline, rhythm to it. The other part is we're dealing with human beings. You know, we go home. We were joking earlier about when you're working home, you say, this is great. I can dress casually. I can do whatever I want. But now you got kids running around the house. You have all of the other distractions. You also were at home

with your own demons. If you're scared of the virus, there's nobody to reassure you. The German army used to have a saying called the feel of the cloth. And what they were talking about was in combat, when you marched in formation, you felt the shoulder of the man next to you, and you knew you went alone. Well, suddenly, we feel alone. And so our insecurities come out as well. If you think your boss doesn't like you or doesn't trust you, just going through emails or phone calls is really hard to keep your sense of confidence up that I'm contributing. She thinks I'm a good operator, et cetera, and I'm keeping up with what the expectations are. So what we recommend is if you understand you're dealing with people, start with that discipline battle rhythm

that's communicating both ways, making sure you're getting up and down, but also a series of informal interactions. Leaders should have literally a schedule. I think early in a crisis, you ought to be talking to your first line subordinates every day. You ought to give them a short call, can be for five minutes. It's just, how you doing? And try to do it video because you'll get a lot from that. You can look into their eyes and get a sense of how they're doing. And they get a sense, one, that you care. And two, they get that renewed confidence that, yeah, I'm in the good graces of, you know, my boss and that sort of thing. And then I would also create the equivalent of water cooler or coffee break groups. And I would get six or eight people

and I'd say, okay, at four o'clock, all you six, get a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and a beer and I just want you to get into this room, video room, and I want you to talk for 30 minutes, and I want to talk about this subject, but you could also talk about anything. It will be a little bit awkward at first, and then they'll get good at it. Last night, our company, the young people, had a virtual happy hour, and everybody from their house, you know, got a drink and they did a happy hour. Is it the same? Not exactly, but it's got a charm to it. And I think that sense that I am not alone and I'm connected is extraordinarily important. The second part of that that I'm getting back to the initial question, which is match your

internal operating pace with that of your external environment. It feels like that's, that's what you mean right there. I do. And you need to admit the external operating pace. You know, a lot of companies have legacy-based systems that work Monday through Friday and they work nine to five and they they do an annual budget and then they do it. And what they find is they're always out of step because things are moving much faster than that. So I think the first thing you have to do is what is the field I'm operating and what are the situation I'm in right now and you've got to speed it up. With COVID-19 and this imminent financial situation that we're in that's going to hit us all

like a sledgehammer, people have got to react really quickly. And so in my view, you're not panicking. That's not the definition of moving fast is panicking. Moving fast is when other things are moving fast around you, you've got to move as faster, faster. And so I think you set new expectations. I remember when J-Soc was operating as its highest tempo in Iraq, about 2006, we had an individual sent to us from one of the federal agencies to spend six months with us,

and they sent back a report to their headquarters back in Washington, D.C. And they said, you don't understand what's happening out here. In this war, things happen fast. When J.S.K. talks about doing something, you guys look at your calendar. They look at their watch. And it's a mindset that says, why are we waiting until Tuesday to do it? In reality, it could be done this afternoon. You need to continue to reiterate what winning looks like to your organization.

How does a leader who's running a business, there are people leading businesses and teams of various sizes that are listening and watching right now, Stan, what is the model or the framework for showing your team what winning looks like right now? I think that's really important. And it's much more nuanced than might be obvious. if you take a non-crisis environment, a company might say winning is this level of growth, this level of revenue, this level of EBITDA, whatever they do. And that's interesting, but except for a few companies and a few personnel, that's not the force.

They got that. They need to believe that there's more to it than that. And on the other hand, I would not say that it needs to be changed the world. We're going to get each puppy, you know, a new home. live in. That's not necessarily what you do either. I think in that environment, you have to say success in this organization looks like a successful firm that contributes in the marketplace in a credible way and profitable, otherwise it's not going to last, a workforce that wants to come to work in the morning because they feel that it is meeting needs that they have, not just financial

needs, but emotional needs, a sense that I am developing myself, I'm interacting with people that I care about. And then I also think it's important that they feel good about what the organization does. If, you know, if you make drugs that hurt people or that sort of thing, you might not feel really excited to come to work in a morning. But if you feel that what we do feels an important need in society, and that's the range of just incredible number of things, I think The leader has to paint that nuanced picture together. Now, put it in a crisis. In a crisis right now, I'd say the first thing is,

we are going to make the company survive. We are going to weather the storm so that we're a credible firm as this thing evolves. Second is, what are we going to do for each other? How are we going to come out of this? Are we going to come out of this as healthy as possible, physically, financially, are we going to emotionally feel like that being part of this organization was a net plus, not a net drain? And I think the leader can draw that picture for people and say, this is what success looks like. And the leader may say, be honest enough, say, it's different

from what I would have said two months ago because the ground has shifted under our feast. That's okay. Because I think if you don't admit that, you lose credibility with you. team. The, um, I found, you know, my background's more in sports, as you know, and yours in the military. And I think these, though, this could apply to both. It's really easy, not really easy. It is much easier to be a leader or to be the captain of the team when you win every game, when you face little adversity. What's really hard and really revealing is how you as a leader choose to respond when you're losing, when you get knocked down, when your offensive line is struggling, right? How am I going to respond as the quarterback of the team when they're getting

manhandled by the defensive line and we're losing the game? How am I going to respond? What am I going to say? What am I going to do? I think real leadership, the moment that it happens is right now. That's why there's so many people on this call watching, I think, because they understand that aspect of it. But that doesn't mean that it's easy. In fact, it's really hard. I had conversations with some leaders that I work with one-on-one earlier today and say, you don't understand, like right now, this is the time. This is the time that people are going to remember how you chose to handle it,

how you chose to respond. And so, Stan, I have to imagine during your time leading, you're facing people dying, you feel responsibilities for that. You're losing a war. I mean, some of the worst stuff ever. Those moments, though, are when the people who said, stand on with you forever, it's because of how you responded then. What's your mindset towards preparing yourself to handle crisis and handle tough situations

and to be the leader in that moment? Because that's when it's most important. Yeah. And we've all felt that in some way or another. I felt it because I fail more than the average person. I'm experienced in this. I think the first thing you do is admit it to yourself. And a lot of times when people died, it was my fault.

It wasn't just something that happens at war. It was something I didn't do well enough. And so it was my fault. And so you've got to just get over that. If you can't stand that level of responsibility, you shouldn't leave. The second thing is you've got to be honest with your people. I work with the Yale football team on leadership. I've been doing it for nine years now, and I just love them.

And I had their quarterback a couple of years ago in my class at Yale as well. And we were talking about this very subject. And I said, Morgan, if you throw an interception or you throw a lousy pass and screw something up and you come, what do you say when you get into the huddle? And it was funny. He surprised me. He says, here's what I don't say. I don't look at everybody and say, my bad. He said, they know it was my bad.

They know I know it was my bad. what I say is here's what we are going to do now because it's about the next play, not the last play. So I don't think you go in denial. I don't think you blame it on other people. I think what you do is you understand that everybody gets it. You may need to say, in some cases you've got to say, okay, we didn't get that right, my fault. But now here's what we're doing. It's really key that you keep leading. You don't wallow in your own self-pict. pity, you don't look for people to go, no, Stan, it's all right, and we'll read me back for a while. Instead, what you do is say, we're here to win. If you're with me, that's what we're focused on.

I think that's what people want right now. I think they want leaders who are reasonable, meaning they understand that everybody's going through their own disorientation, dislocation right now, but they also want people who are going to get it done. I think if they find that the leader is saying, well, we really can't operate because we're all operating at all home alone. Most people don't want to be on that team. Most people want to be on the team that says, okay, we're going to figure this out. We're going to make mistakes. We're going to adjust.

Let's get it done. I think of the Stockdale paradox named after Admiral James Stockdale, which you and I have talked about. He was the highest ranking POW of the Vietnam War. He described how a leader would survive terrible. ordeals. And his quote for those who've probably heard it before, but I think it applies now, you must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be. And they might be. I think that Stan really seems to apply right now to what are,

those people who are scared, what are they looking for? Someone, that is I think that type of mentality towards how they're going to aggressively think about the situation they find themselves in now. I think that's exactly right. You look at a coach, an admiral, or anybody like that, if the organization gets stunned like a deer in the headlights and they spend all their time talking about how much hand sanitizer, they're missing the point that there's going to be a tomorrow. So what you do is you say, everybody survive.

Here's what you got to do. We've got to do smart stuff, boom, boom, boom. We are surviving for a purpose. This purpose is this. I don't know how long it's going to take us, but we are going to accomplish that purpose, if you want to be in this organization. Stan, hitting back, I'm not sure.

Maybe I should have checked with beforehand. So I won't go into too many details about what happened at Gettysburg, but one of the things that I think is okay to share is, I remember so many of the teachings and you had some great guests, teachers when we toured Gettysburg last year. And one of the notes that I jotted down before I drove back to the airport was the real

lesson, and I believe this is from you or may have been from the other teachers, though, at one of the stops on the tour was it's not tactics, it's not strategy, it's always about the people. and thinking of these high-level strategies and getting down to the tactics of what we're going to do day-to-day. And when I heard that and felt that, because some people would say that's a soft skill as opposed to the proper term, which is essential skills to develop. And can you follow up on that of why that is really first and number one priority above all else? Yeah, and you remember we had Sir Graham Lamb there and Greg Vogel and some other heroes who

I know. I remember we each, just for everyone here, you made us all get up the night before we tour Gettysburg to say, Stan's like, I have a few friends here, a few guests, and there's this, you know, the head of this huge thing. There's a British special forces guy with the incredible accent. There's the American Special Forces guy who's done it all. And then there's me. And I think I was last even to introduce myself. And I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I've never, ever felt more out of place in my life, but I'm so grateful that I was there. You were absolutely where you should have been with that crowd. They're all at touch crazy, and so you fit right there too.

What you hit on was exactly right. If you go back to Gettysburg, one of the things we draw, and for people who are aware of Gettysburg, you've heard a pickets charge. And on the third day, this ultimately futile charge of about 15,000 soldiers tries to cross a mile of open terrain against an intrans. entrenched enemy, and it fails. And you say, well, that was stupid. Why did they do that? I mean, why would you try it low probability of success? Well, two things were at work that day. One, where there was a general, Robert E. Lee, who had built such confidence in what his soldiers

could do. They had marched all the way to Pennsylvania, many of them without footwear. they had gone through two days of fighting and now on this third day he asked him to do this charge across a mile of open terrain because he believed that they could do it because so many times in the war before they had done just that and it was it was two way they believed in him they believed that he would not ask them to do anything that didn't need to be done and he had this incredible belief that they could do it. Now, again, we can say it was futile, it was ineffective, but it was powerful because four o'clock in the afternoon, this group of veterans, they weren't brand new soldiers, they'd all been through an awful lot, it seemed comrades die,

they line up and do this charge for that man, for their cause, and for each other. and if you realize just how powerful those connections and the ability to inspire people can be. You see it on sports fields, you see it in organizations where people sacrifice because ultimately we want to. We don't want to sacrifice and die, but we want to commit ourselves to something because it is so utterly fulfilling. we want to be relied upon by other people. There's a great line, and of course, the greatest movie ever made, The Outlaw Josie Wales, the old Clint Eastwood movie. I say that with tongue-in-cheek, but he is a young comrade who dies,

and he didn't know the guy very well, and the guy died in this unfortunate shooting. And old Clint Eastwood stands up there as the ultimate cowboy chewing tobacco, and he's going to say something over the grave, and he says, well, all I can say is I rode with him and I got no complaints. And if you think about what would you like to people to say at your funeral, that wouldn't be bad. I love it. I'm curious for how people can personally choose to behave in these times, Stan. And James Clear is a guy I've done a number of podcasts with and have been fortunate.

to talk with for years now and he wrote an incredible book called Atomic Habits that's done very well and one of the things that him and I had talked about at one point was about persistence and he's just written about this and published it recently but his his definition of persistence is a little bit unique because he relates it to patience because right now people are saying we have to we have to be patient there's uncertainty we don't fully know and And James, there's a quote from him that I want to share and get your thoughts on. He says the most useful form of patience is persistence.

Patience implies waiting for things to improve on their own. Persistence implies keeping your head down and continuing to work when things take longer than you expect. And that in this very moment speaks to me as to say, I could, you know, I've had six figures worth of keynote speaking gigs. canceled over the next three months. I'm sure you've got a lot of that type of stuff happening. And instead of just saying, well, 2020 is going to be a brutal year. I guess I just have to put my hands up and take it, take it as an hell. Or persistently saying, let's figure something creative out. Let's do something different. Let's keep our head down and keep working and keep at it. And I know that's the way you operate as well. And so that's actually why this is happening.

We're doing this live. I didn't know if it would work and I'm happy that it is. But how, How do you view patience and persistence, especially right now? Yeah. No, I like the definition as you're using it there because patience does sound passive. You can't do anything about things. And I think persistence sometimes means it takes a long time to do something. I draw a couple of examples to you that I've studied. One is the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955.

And this was the African-American community in Montgomery, Alabama. My family's from Alabama, so I'm sensitive to this. They wanted to integrate public transportation. This is when Rosa Parks refused to give up or see. Well, to do this, what they did was they boycotted all use of public transportation. And for 382 days, they walked to work, they carpooled, they did everything they could to put pressure. Now, 382 days is a long time. They met once a week to give themselves inspiration, to keep their confidence up, but every day they had to commit themselves. And I would say that that persistence

is what ultimately allowed them to wear down the resistance that they met and to win that particular struggle. You know, sometimes we shouldn't have to be as patiently persistent as we are, but the reality is if you stay at it, it works. Admiral Stockdale, who you mentioned, you know, famous as a POW, one of the things that comes out of his story is that he went into captivity with expectations of himself as a military officer and a professional, and he would give name, rank, and serial number. Well, what he learned very quickly is when you're under torture, that's not realistic. When you're under torture, you will be broken. You will talk. You will say or sign things ultimately that you're embarrassed about. But his persistence and really that the

incredible strength of his character is he was able to recognize that like any other human, he could be broken. He could be physically broken. He could be morally damaged. But he didn't, he didn't make that the new normal. He said, I will be persistent. The next time I go in, I will be just as professional as I can be for as long as I can be. I'll hold out. And he would hold on to his values like a mooring for a boat that gave him a sense of stability. And I think it's an incredible lesson for all of us. You know, two months ago, you know, I'm a retired military guy. You don't come out of the military with a lot of money. Two months ago, I had more money in my 401k and all than I do now. And now I've got a business and we're working real hard to make

sure the business is going to stay afloat and go in the right direction. And a lot of other things in my life are not as certain as they seemed 60 days ago. But, you know, we stay at it. I was going to say, how do you mentally handle that? Are there some things you do, like practical things? And it's only been a few days since we've been on this kind of lockdown setup that we're in. But are, from working out to what you, I know you're famous for, for what you eat. And if you want to share, you can do that now too. But what's like your routine now as you're getting into the new, the new temporary normal? Now that, that's great. First, I believe very strongly that you navigate from where you are, not from where you wish you were. Yes. And so 60 days, it's different than it was 60

days ago. So what I'm doing is navigating from here. I do start every day I had a series of back operations over the winter, three of them. And I'm recovering from those, but I'm back working out. And so for me, it's the daily discipline of doing the working out. You mentioned I eat one meal a day, just a habit. It's not a Zen strength or anything. But it's a habit I have that makes me feel like I am disciplined and it helps me, you know, from gain of weight or that sort of thing. But the most important thing is like with my team and our company, every day we meet at 8 o'clock in the morning virtually, the whole company gets on the thing and we talk about, okay, what are we doing now? Where are we going? How are we adjusting? What are ideas we can do? How many people is that?

I'm just just to get tactical here for a second. You get about 90, 92. So you get 90 people. every day at 8 o'clock. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. And so it gets everybody in the huddle and we go, okay, here's what we're doing. People give their different things.

And then all day we're on chat and things like that. Because in this uncertain environment, we're trying to help our clients navigate through this. We're trying to get thought content out. We're trying to understand how we best adapt to be effective. We set up, I've got a little studio in my home office now. We brought in a high intensity camera. got the IT specialist from the company together with me, so that we can do these things really quickly, really easily.

And I think there'll be countless adaptations like that where we learn to be better so we can be effective in the new environment. Stan, if you're good, I'd like to open up for a few questions. A few people send them to me prior to the call. I'd like them to, if I can unmute this properly, to have them ask you directly. Is that cool? Absolutely.

Nikki Bosco, are you good? to go first. I'm going to unmute you. Nikki, are you there? I think so. There you are. Hey, yeah, yeah. Go ahead, Nikki. Thank you, Stan, so much. This is incredibly useful and inspiring. My question is maybe around that moment you have each morning with those folks on a call. And you've done your best to lead yourself. You're showing up. You're inspiring.

I'm wondering what the signals are amongst that group that you might be picking up on either as a whole group think or that you might notice in an individual that would let you alert you to like, okay, I need to take action or help restear. Yeah, that's a great question because you do get those. Sometimes you pick them up in a person. This way video is so much better than just call or something because you'll see a little of that. What we'll see is, you know, the stock market tanks, a lot of clients start pushing business to the right or canceling because in this environment, everybody wants to hoard cash. And suddenly people start to feel like they're failing.

And so we've got team members out there and they've been working with a client. The client says, okay, we're going to stop work. And they feel like I failed. And so one of the things you've got to do is build their confidence back up. You've got to say, one, it's okay to fail. We're all going to fail and look around. It's happening. But two, it's not okay to not pick it up and get moving again because that's what we have to do.

And so it's funny. Our morning call, some mornings, it's mostly inspiration. Hey, thanks for what you're doing. Everybody's doing good. Some mornings it's kind of kicking the butt. Hey, we're not moving fast enough. Boom, boom, boom. Some days it's self-critical of what we're doing this company.

Hey, we're doing this, but it's not working well. We've got to fix this. And then some days it's exactly as you talk. People are starting to lack confidence or they are starting to. to almost take on a passive aggressive response. Because they're frustrated with themselves, they're frustrated with the environment, and it's sort of, screw it.

Quit telling me to do that because it ain't working. And you gotta go, well, something's gotta work. Here's the guidance, figure out what works and that's what we'll do. It's funny because every day it evolves a little bit. And so it takes an entree. tremendous amount of paying close attention. What you can't do is go in, what I found,

don't go in with a script you wrote the night before and tell people what you thought at 10 o'clock last night. Wait and see what the mood and morale of the organization is because it's organic. Good stuff. Let's go to Matthew Mullins. You good, man? Yep, I'm good. Go for it.

Yeah. All right. Stan, thank you. This is really awesome. So my question is in times of adversity and uncertainty, how do leaders ensure that their people are prepared and confident to thrive and maintain their character through those moments? Yeah. Now, that's a good one because you hit a key word that are character, because when things get

painful, particularly for younger members of the team, they're not sure what they're right answer is. So if suddenly you've got to do things to get revenue or whatever that you didn't do before, is it okay because we're in a crisis? The answer is no. And so the leadership has got to come from the top that says, you know, we're going to get through this crisis. And when we finish, we're going to have to look in the mirror. We're going to have to be able to live with ourselves and we're going to be able to live with each other. We're not going to, we don't want to be embarrassed by something that we individually have done or we as an organization have done. And as you know, it's tempting to do that.

In the fight against al-Qaeda, it got pretty grim and there were great temptations to sort of take the gloves off and fight in ways that we would not have done before. But we realized that was a slippery slope, and you don't want to be on that one. Young people need to have this reaffirmed for them constantly. one of the things we found is you have to be careful about how you talk about certain things. If you get in front of the company and you say the priority is revenue, revenue, revenue. At a certain point, what they do is they go, okay, it's revenue. I got it. You've got to be careful because if you say revenue at all costs, you'll pay all costs.

and so there's got to be a pretty nuanced or careful approach to communicate. And I say young people, that actually applies to the people at every level of the organization. And then the last thing I'd say is people watch what leaders do every moment. I mean, they watch how your facial expressions on a video teleconference. They watch whether you pay attention. They watch whether you cut corners. and the worst thing you can do is get what we call a say-do gap where you speak a bunch of platitudes about how we're going to act

and then they know that that's not the way you're acting. Once you have a say-do gap, your credibility is undermined. Thank you. Thank you. I love that say-do gap. I haven't heard it used that way, but I think that is so true. And we've all unfortunately probably worked for a boss at one point in our career who had a big say do gap and that's certainly not useful.

Since Ed Epley in the chat just wrote how well he wrote that privately so sorry for saying your name already Ed but I thought it was public. The question though is how would you potentially fire somebody during this time if you had to for whatever reason somebody needs to be fired. It's obviously a sensitive time. There's a lot of things going on. How would you do it right now. Yeah. This is really hard. A lot of people are going to get fired right now. And it's happening probably every minute today and in the coming future. I think the first thing you got to do is make sure you're doing it for the right region. If somebody's being fired for misconduct or they're just not effective, okay, you do that like anytime you would. But if you have

a situation where the financial situation in the organization is such, that you cannot be economically viable. You're in this tension. Everybody wants to be the person that says, well, we'll take care of everybody because we're good people. If that causes the company to go bankrupt, you didn't take care of anybody.

And so what I would say is, I would first explain it to the organization. Most people know the general financial situation, and they can certainly watch the news and the projections. So explain to people, this is the economic reality, this is what we have to do. Then as you deal with each layoff or firing that you have to do, you have to do this with as much grace and as much class as possible, as though you're the person being let go. You've got to say, how would you like to be informed?

How would you like to be treated? In fact, I think now is a time because these are mostly economic layoffs, you really celebrate in somebody's service to the organization and you're mourning the fact you've got to lose them, but it's just an economic reality. It doesn't mean people are going to like it or feel good about it, but they're going to feel a lot better than if you don't treat people as they should be. Yeah. I'm going to go to Tom Carvelli. Tom, are you on? I just unmuted you. Should be good. I am here. All right. Go ahead. I actually had two, but I am the kind of guy that likes to sort of boil things down to like what I'll call like a one-liner. And the question that I had for you was if you had to sum up your leadership principles and just a single unified concept, what would that be?

Yeah. If you're talking leadership now, not management of an organization, then I think it really comes around the idea that it must be based on character. character that you have and that you are willing and disciplined enough to exhibit. And then it's being focused on the welfare of the team. And the welfare of the team includes the team succeeding in what they're doing. That seems really simplistic, but it's really not. It's comporting yourself in a way that becomes a positive example and inspiration to them, but also is looking out, your actions look out for their welfare.

Thank you. Go ahead with number two, Tom. Number two. What does your daily fitness routine look like in times like these when resources and activities are curtailed? And sort of the impetus for this question was I heard you on a podcast from Kim Ferris and Chris Fustle where you detailed your morning routine, which I thought was very impressive.

And I'm just wondering what that looks like right now. Yeah. Well, right now, because I'm just off back surgery, I am somewhat curtailed. But I do at least an hour every morning. And I always do it in the morning because everybody else can screw with the rest of your day, but they can't screw with very early morning. How am I starting my days now? Good question.

Feel free to ask questions if you guys want. Well, the tough thing is having. a gym closed is really hard for me considering that that is a huge part of my routine. So having that close has been tough, but we do have a decent amount of home gym equipment that my wife and I have used all along. So I do still get up at the same time, still do the same type of workout with what we have because I'm a big morning workout guy too. That kind of helps get the day started properly for me.

and now though given we're lucky we live by a park with a lot of open space so we go on at least two long walks a day and i want on one this morning and i'll hopefully go on one tonight um if it's not raining too hard so uh yeah it hasn't actually changed very much other than the fact that i i'm not able to go to the gym that i normally go to it's uh but it's tough it's definitely different and i and i uh but i understand that we the gym may be closed for quite some time so if so then we have to figure out our new normal we may be ordering some some new stuff for our home gym to make it more like what we're used to but hey i mean that's in the grand scheme of things that's that's that's a first world problem um so i'm not uh we'll make do with what we got appreciate the kind words we will do more of these

it's hard though when you start with somebody like stan just so everybody can uh here i usually you would build up to something like this you wouldn't start with this. So I may have messed up my ordering, but I thought I always like to swing for the fences, just like I did with the forward of my book by asking Stan. I made a list of five people, and he was number one. Everyone else was pretty far below. And then when your home run, swing actually comes through. It's pretty wild. And he did, which was cool. And I did the same thing for this first ever live virtual. And then Stan replied immediately saying, oh, yes, we're, we're definitely doing this. So I'll do my best to try to make these as useful for everyone

while we're dealing with our current situation. Okay, go ahead, Lance. Can you hear me? Yeah, we got you. We got you. All right. Let me just say first, it's a real honor to be able to talk to you, Stan and Ryan, excellent job putting this together. It's really cool. My question is about communication in particular. It's the kind of the workspace that I work with folks in. And we notice and everybody who's in any kind of organization, you see leaders kind of go into one of two kind of inertia paths, right? One is either the communication to the organization is an afterthought, box checking, a necessary evil kind of thing.

It's not really leadership. It's just kind of you got to do it. Or it's overly managed almost, you know, crafting with the PR team. If we have a good story to tell, we can say it almost like magic words and everybody will buy it. And nobody ever does. So can you talk a little bit about how, not just yourself, but other leaders in your orbit to buy into not doing either of those two things. Yeah, those are great points because particularly now, and I see I was on a number of corporate boards and whatnot,

you've got lawyers recommending people, don't communicate unless you've put it through six lawyers. And I don't do it, they suck. Yeah. And so it stops being communication. Right. And so what I think a leader has got to do is be as genuine as possible, but not be emotional either. I'm not a great believer in sort of the populist school of too much rent and against something or for something because it starts to money the message. But I think being consistent, being genuine to themselves, and being as candid as possible with their team is just extraordinarily important.

And I think people, I know I appreciate it when people talk to me that way. And it's good to have somebody you trust in the organization that has your ear, that can talk to you in a way that maybe other people are allowed to. I used to have a command sergeant major. And what he was able to do was tell me just when I was feeling good about myself that, no, you're not as cool as you think you are. There was a good question, I believe, from James Gamb. I see you wrote in there about someone with not as much experience as Stan has. So James, do you want to, I just on mute, do you want to go ahead and ask that? Yeah, again, as everybody said, thank you for the opportunity.

So I have a lot of younger managers on my team, people that don't have that sort of length of experience to fall back on. You know, when I'm speaking to my team, I rely on all the successes I've had. in the past in order to communicate to my team on how to move forward. And I know I have a lot of people that don't have that to rely on. So without that, what would you recommend or what are some tips for them to be able to encourage them to be able to speak up and be able to speak and have those deep conversations with their team when they themselves are feeling fear and they don't have that experience to rely on? Yeah.

And as you know, sometimes it also goes with credibility. People feel like they don't have credibility because they haven't done as much. And the team's aware of that. We had a really interesting problem on the football game a few years ago in that the rising seniors on the team were not the best football players. So they had to be the leaders in the locker room, but they weren't the stars on the team. They were bench warmers.

And we talked about it in great detail before the start of the season. We say, how are you going to handle that? Because are you going to feel confident enough to stand up and lead people, even though you're not out there scoring touchdowns or whatever? Ultimately, they were, but it was really a tough, it was a tough journey. It's like a young leader who comes in to lead a bunch of experienced people, and they all sort of give that jaundiced eye and they go, the young leader says, let's try this.

They go, well, we tried that six times before. At that time, it takes a young leader, I think, one, some courage, and two, it takes a support network. It takes peers. It may take one or two people in the organization that sort of come to and said, hey, that's a good message. It can come from their boss, but I actually think it's better if it comes laterally in a case like this because most young leaders don't want to go to their boss and pour their hearts out about their insecurities. That makes sense? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you so much. My pleasure. So we're going to do one follow-up and then one more. I want to go to Matt Spitz, who had a question. But Jimmy, good reminder. Stan, you were beginning to talk about your morning routine and what you're doing now, the second part of Tom. question when when the technology broke up briefly. Can you go back to that answer? Yeah, absolutely. My morning routine is always workout, come in no matter what. If I've got to get up at four in the morning, I work out at 2.30 because I find psychologically it's just so much better for me to start the day after working out. And so I do that. I alternate running one day and then the other day is this gym workout I have, which is weightlifting and a lot of abs. I really

even working out on the core because that's the rest of the day. And then I typically just eat one meal a day in the evening. A lot of people would say that's not good for you, but I've been doing it for 40 years and it's worked just fine. So, you know, I'm not going to change suddenly at my age. I think the key thing about all of this is you can do almost any kind of workout. You can do bite. You can do whatever. If you are disciplined about it, it is a, you know, we all have habits. I've got some bad habits and I've got a few good ones. And if those habits become ingrained into who you are, they become a source of confidence. If you are honorable, if you are honest, if you are kind to people, that's a habit. It comes from self-discipline, but it's a habit. I fold all my underwear in

my drawer. Now people laugh at that. I started doing it West Point. It's a habit. I ain't changing now. So I would say that if you are intentional about creating some good habits, it will pay off. Love it. All right, Matt Spitz. Go ahead. Stan, I just wanted to echo everyone's sentiment and just say thank you so much for your service to the country and your time with all of us this afternoon. My question relates specifically to just the, the ever-changing world, I mean, even down to the minute now, the world is changing by the minute

as we work through combating the virus. And so my question to you specifically is, are there things in your life that don't change, that don't ever change in the midst of leading, you know, 150,000 plus people to navigating your own business today. What are the things in your life that never change or don't change? No, that's really good, Matt, because you're right. Everything is changing. And on that side of your life and your personality, I think it's best if you just embrace that. Say, this is good because I was bored with what we were doing yesterday,

so we won't do that anymore. Yeah, I do have some things in my life. And one of them we just talked about working out for me is a constant. You know, I'm 65 years old. I weigh exactly what I weighed the day I went to West Point as an 18 year or 17 year old kid. And so that discipline gives me a sense of consistency. It gives me a sense of confidence. It is one of those sort of unchanging things.

I've been married 45 years and my wife and I are extraordinarily close. And that's, I mean, it takes a lot of work to stay married. You know, no marriage is easy. But that's one of those things that we both, we talk about this a lot. It is one of the things of consistency we count on. We wouldn't let this marriage fail because that sense of foundation is too important to each of us. And so that's really important. And then the last one I'd say is relationships, some of my friendships, some of my friendships,

Some of them aren't as old as, you know, the years I've been married or whatever, but you establish those relationships and you try to make them such that you know you'll be friends to the day you die. I've got some people I work with that we just have a relationship that we know is there forever, no matter what happens. Sky falls in. If both of us are still alive, we're going to be friends. and and that's again that's something you you nurture it doesn't just stay you have to maintain it but it's worth it because when everything else goes to shit it's great to be able to say yeah but i got this and this that i hold on to yeah love it thank you stan i noticed i got to witness kind of both the relationship with your wife as well as with chris fustle exactly in gettysburg going to feel like Chris has got to be one of those guys for you. What's that relationship like

between the two of you? Well, we've been through an awful lot. We met in 2000, well, we first met about 2005, I think, when he was an upsalcer. And then we worked together when he was made to camp 2007. And it was a very difficult time of the war. And we built a relationship at that point. And now we've been at this company for 10 years together. You know, we've been building this company for 10 years together. And so it starts with respect. I don't know I could be close to somebody I didn't respect. It's good that I, someone like Chris, I admire. I admire him deeply. But if I didn't respect their values, if I didn't respect if they were due, and I think it would be difficult to go around that. Of course, with Chris, it's the opposite. And we've also now got a lot

of shared challenges. And you know, you build just like in a marriage, you build up emotional connections to the times you went through that weren't that easy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Stan, I have to say, man, I'm just so appreciative of your time investment here, you know, an hour and 12 minutes of sharing your wisdom. I know there's a lot of people pulling your way, including all the 90 plus people

that work at the McChrystal group. And certainly, I want to do everything. I can to support or shine a light on the incredible work you're doing. Where could anyone who's watching or listening go to, in addition to go to Amazon, search Stan McChrystal and buy every book he's written? I highly, highly recommend it. But where else would you send people to learn more about you online? Yeah, the thing we're doing right now, it's McChrystalgroup.com, one word there.

But the key thing that we are doing is we are helping firms deal with this uncertainty now. the fact that they've got to go to remote work. We did it. We have all the scar tissue and the lessons to know an awful lot about it. And we're trying to help, and we are helping a number of clients do that. So for those of you who are trying something you've never done before and you're wondering, why is this harder than I thought it would be

or what are some tips? We've got an awful lot of those. And so I would offer, we put out some documents recently. And if you go to McChrystalgroup.com, you can download those documents. and I think a number of them will be upheld. Love it. Stan, thanks again. And for those of you who are maybe checking this out for the first time because of Stan,

thank you for being here. I record the Learning Leaders Show and publish usually at least once a week on Sunday nights. And it's my favorite thing in the world to do to have long-form conversations. Certainly when it's somebody to the caliber of Stanley McChrystal, it just blows my mind. So thank you for being here. Stan for being here. I've put some things. I'm sharing my screen that you can see if you want to, if you're not already engaged with what I do, you can text learners to 4-4-222 or even email me

directly. I really appreciate you being here, investing your time, everybody, because this is really cool. And I want to do more of them. Again, I know I messed up by starting with the best best guest. I should have probably ramped up to this. But when Stan said yes, I was not going to pass it up. So thanks again, Stan for being here. Thank you all for being here. This was a lot of fun. And I'm looking forward to the next one. My honor, everybody. And thank you. Thank you, Stan.

Take care. All right. Bye. What an experience to speak with General Stanley McChrystal, especially with a live virtual audience. More than 250 people from around the world. It's great to see your smiling faces. I'd love to do more of those in the future.

If that's something that you're interested in, email me. Let me know, Ryan at learningleader.com. I'd love to hear from you. if you enjoyed that. I certainly did. And Stan is such a kind, gracious, thoughtful, intelligent leader. He gave so much. A few of the parts that really stuck out,

navigate from where you are, not where you wish you were. Basically, let's think about what's within our control and focus on that. Then when Stan was talking about his daily routine, it really spoke to me. Discipline gives consistency and confidence. waking up every day, starting it with a workout.

That's how I operate as well. It's been very helpful, especially getting used to the new normal that we find ourselves in. That discipline certainly for me creates consistency and confidence as well, just as Stan said. Then think about your say-do gap.

The most excellent leaders do not have a gap. What they say is what they do. They have high integrity, and that's something that Stan talked about. And then I brought up a quote from my friend James Clear when it comes to patience. The most useful form of patience is persistence. Patience implies waiting for things to improve on their own. Persistence implies keeping your head down and continuing to work when things take longer than you expect.

That's what I'm talking about. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. If so, I'd love it if you would spread the word, tell a friend or two this episode with The great General Stanley McChrystal is a great place to start. Because you continue to do that, it gives me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk with you soon.

Can't wait.