Admiral William H. McRaven in conversation with Mark Harmon at Live Talks Los Angeles

welcome to another virtual live talks los angeles event we welcome admiral william mcraven and mark harmon to our series we invite you to visit and subscribe to our youtube channel for over 300 conversations follow us on twitter facebook and instagram our handle on all three is live talks la admiral mcraven's book is the hero code lessons learned from lives well lived he is the new york times bestselling author of make your bed and see stories my life and special operations in his 37 years as a navy seal he commanded at every level as a four-star admiral his final assignment was as commander of all u.s special operations forces after retiring from the navy he served as the chancellor of the university of texas system from 2015 through 2018. mark harmon is an actor producer director voice actor and former football quarterback he is best known for playing the lead role of leroy jethro gibbs in ncis i am ted habdigaber founder and producer of the series they will talk and towards the end i will pose some questions that came from you in the audience take it from here mark bill this is going to be easy for me because i'm such a fan it's an honor to sit here opposite you and and uh and i was one of those uh individuals in 2014 who who saw your texas commencement speech and and then three years later happened to read make your bed and then three years after that c stories all bestsellers and then now today i have the opportunity to be talking to you about your new one which i have read and thoroughly enjoyed um i'm i'm so intrigued by you as a storyteller um and i'm curious about the name the hero code where's that come from well first uh thanks mark for taking the the time to do this uh i appreciate it and uh you know this idea of telling stories uh kind of resonated with me from the time i was a kid my father was an air force fighter pilot during world war ii a little bit of time in korea and i think that generation that greatest generation really understood how to tell stories and they told stories because i think it helped them deal with you know the challenges that they had as a generation in life when you think about that generation who were the children of world war one and the depression and then all the men went off to world war ii uh and so they had to kind of use these stories i think to to get over those uh those tough times in life and so i think as i watched my parents talk about the things that they had done in life and tell stories my father in particular you kind of picked that up but i would offer for the the hero code you know this is a little bit about society i mean society needs heroes i mean every society every culture needs heroes so that it will inspire the younger generation to be better than the current generation so in my my 40 years 37 in the military and then a little over three years running the university of texas system and i had a chance to be around a lot of heroes so this book is about you know the the qualities the traits the virtues of some of these heroes that that i've encountered in my lifetime and i i hope that particularly this young generation the the millennials and the gen z of which i am their biggest fan uh i hope they will take a look at these stories and and take them to heart and realize that you know everybody today can be a hero ma'am we need heroes were you at all concerned your experience in the military then you're going into the private practice of sorts um that you wouldn't find those same individuals yeah i was a little bit i mean i came from uh you know spending time with these remarkable soldiers sailors airmen marines you saw them in combat and from in my case from desert storm and then iraq and afghanistan and of course it wasn't just the soldiers the remarkable civilians that were part of the intelligence community and the law enforcement community and then the next thing you know i'm the chancellor of the university of texas and now i'm a bunch of with a bunch of academics and and students and and doctors and i thought it's just not going to be the same but it was i mean remarkable heroes everywhere i looked uh in my time as the chancellor i am i watched the state of texas go through hurricane harvey and you saw you know men and women of all races genders orientation step up to help their fellow neighbors i mean i i've watched you know young kids going to school in the rio grande valley and permian basin in el paso in austin trying to make a better life for themselves you know you meet these remarkable doctors uh state legislators that are trying to do things uh for for the state so there are a lot of heroes out there and for me it was great to have this opportunity to make the transition and come away inspired by the fact that a lot more heroes out there than than i think i realize from just being in the military well these individual stories that you have talked about since 2014 in your life um the way you turn that so interests me because i can learn so much for from you for sure but i i i find that that you have an ability to teach in what you are writing about but at the same time um you you are you are doing things that not normal people do bill you are i mean i can think of so many stories and that's part of reading your books is yeah i find myself telling other people what i've just read that you wrote because something they've said is something that keys something that you've made a point of um and and that's true in this book because uh you have these 10 virtues that you've you've done chapter headings with and and i i see that as such a a guide right and it reminds me so much of a man i knew earlier on in my life that that was a remarkable teacher for me and and i think you have that same gift well thanks part of it is you know when you have an opportunity to be again to encounter these remarkable men and women that i have invariably it's at kind of dramatic moments and those dramatic moments become teaching points uh you know i i talk about the story when i was in dallas a few years back uh with uh sitting at a table with roger stahlbach a hall of famer from the dallas cowboys and i'm going around the table kind of introducing myself and i i meet this uh elderly couple and he introduces himself as charlie and i didn't catch his last name and so as the as the dinner goes on charlie and his wife dottie and we talked for hour and a half two hours and charlie is just as i mean incredibly gracious and all he wants to talk about is me and my family and he wants to know about my my son in the air force because charlie had been in the air force and he wants to know about my wife and he wants you know he's just just a wonderful fella and and when the dinner's over he invites me to come down to his home in new brunswells and and i i said that i appreciate the invitation but as i'm leaving roger stalbach comes up to me and he says uh i see you were talking to charlie and i said uh yeah yeah i mean you know very nice guy and he goes man can you imagine what that must have been like so what are you talking about roger because just imagine imagine what imagine walking on the moon and i said i'm sorry what are you talking about he goes charlie charlie duke he was the youngest man ever to walk on the moon and of course that hit me of course general charles duke the youngest man ever to walk on the moon and never in that hour and a half that we talked that he happened to mention that he walked on the moon and as i began to read the story of charlie duke you know you you find out that he wasn't always humble you know it's uh when you're when you're kind of a fighter pilot and you're the youngest man ever to walk on the moon all of a sudden the burden of the notoriety and the celebrity comes um but his wife dottie became a christian he quickly kind of followed that path and uh and it was his humility that to me was this kind of noble quality this this heroic quality that that you don't often see and people that happen to have walked on the moon so i do think it's these dramatic events these dramatic moments that really become kind of teaching moments certainly teaching moments for me some of these stories are i find intensely personal for you um you have a chapter heading hope yeah um you talk about personal issues uh personal fights personal no-quit moments um yeah so the the chapter on hope uh in 2010 i was over in afghanistan and then i received a video call from my doctor and she informed me that i had chronic lymphocytic leukemia cancer now they told me at the time look if you got to get cancer this is one of the better ones to get it's treatable but it's in the spleen it's splenic marginal zone and the protocol at the time was to come back get your spleen taken out start on chemotherapy and and the doctor basically said look you're probably not going to be able to continue in the military with uh with the you know the way you're gonna have to to take care of this treatment well that's that's a pretty big blow uh and and i struggled with it for for a while well i left afghanistan i went back to the states you know kind of preparing and fully expecting that i was going to have to undergo some major surgery and start chemotherapy and my wife god bless her said hey we're going to go to md anderson cancer center in houston because the world's best oncologist on cll is is there in houston so we traveled down to houston to nd anderson and i remember you know as as everybody who has had a tough diagnosis you know i'm walking through the hospital and you can as you're walking through the the war the the kind of cancer ward you see the people that are struggling with this horrible disease in many different ways and and it scares you um i remember walking into the uh to the doctor's office and it's kind of your standard uh you know small white office and i'm sitting there and you're wondering what's the doctor going to tell you is it is this going to be a kind of a life sentence and all of a sudden the door flies open and then walks this kind of ready face australian fellaini he looks at me he goes hey give me a hug i'm not a hugger and i said okay so give the guy a big hug turns to george and he says uh so you're the wife that's where jan kind of nods and she goes and he says well if if you're looking for a new boyfriend you can stop uh he's going to be okay and of course i i had to pause for a second i said i'm sorry doc what he goes yeah you're going to be fine um i'm sorry the the prognosis i had gotten earlier he said well the prognosis was right but we've got new medicine and and you're going to be just fine and my wife george ann finally turns to him and she says well uh you know should should he eat more fruits and vegetables he goes no i don't think so she says well uh well should he exercise more kind of looks at me says no he looks like he's in pretty good shape and finally she says well should he cut back on his alcohol and all of a sudden he gets back up out of his chair you know kind of faints this expression goes oh god no you know and all of a sudden the tension just kind of went down and we we talked through you know the the effects of cll and and you know how i was going to have to deal with but all of a sudden he he gave me hope that dog there's hope out there life can be okay and you just realize this the power of hope that's out there and uh and so you know part of what uh i want people to take away from that story is that everybody has the opportunity to give people hope you don't just give them false hope everybody has a talent i mean everybody has a talent some people are smarter stronger braver more compassion you've got a talent out there and you have to use that talent to give people hope and that really is i think what makes certain people heroic it certainly was i thought he was heroic for me it's uh commendable and revealing of yourself to tell that story at the same time um it's humor that turns it for you yeah and you talk about that as well humor is important yeah i think humor is one of those very undervalued noble qualities and you know when we talk about heroes and the kind of standard definition is you you admire heroes because of their noble qualities not just because of their achievements but because of their noble qualities we don't think of humor really as a noble quality until you see it in the hospitals in iraq and afghanistan where these young soldiers have lost legs lost arms and they're able to laugh about it and of course you know it's i can't tell how many times i would go in and i'd i'd see some young soldier who'd been hit by a blast or lost a leg and and i i'd make some kind of funny comment about man you look like crap and of course the quick response was yeah but you should see the other thing and it was a standard response but it was also a way for them to say they didn't beat me uh you know and and so humor became not only a shield but a sword um but also i saw humor used so many times in all the eulogies uh that uh the services of our our fallen our fallen heroes um and the services were best when somebody would get up and tell a funny story about the the fallen warrior and a funny story that kind of uh played on the fact that they had a good life it may not have ended the way you wanted it to but they had a fun life they had a happy life they were funny they had a sense of humor life was good um and being able to find that humor in tough moments like that and that is that's true heroism that is a noble quality you mentioned in that chapter as well uh you just joining the teams right as a as as a young frog man and uh i don't want to get any of this wrong and i don't want to offend any seals but but there's a moment you talk about with a um uh less than tall italian seal who you have a little playback back and forth yeah so uh it was either the first or second day that i arrived at what was referred to as underwater demolition team 11 and we all became seal teams and not too long after that but you know i'm a young instant i've just come out of seal training i don't even have my seal tried yet it was normally six months after seal training and i had met with the executive officer of the team and every single morning at a seal team you have morning pt morning physical training and you have officers call then you have everybody kind of musters and then they quickly fall out into a circle on what we refer to as the grinder it's a concrete pad basically and everybody gets around the circle and you start your pt but it is on the grinder where you are tested every single day i mean it is a constant roasting by whoever is there uh and so my first day on i remember the executive officer as we're kind of walking out uh to the to start our morning pt he says he welcomes me and he says oh yeah he says the yeah the the the chiefs they're gonna they're gonna love you they're they're wonderful they're gonna take good care of you you know uh you're gonna be welcomed with open arms but i could tell he had a little twinkle in his eye and i knew something was up so we get into the grinder and we start pt and i mean as soon as we start it it starts you know one of the chief says so uh you know ensign where'd you go to school i heard you went to texas a m and of course i went to the university of texas and as you well know a little bit of a rivalry there i said no no no chief i went to the university of texas and some other guy says well that's not a real school and before long they're assaulting my school and then they wanted to know what training class i was in when i was in class 95 but of course that was the easiest class in the history of seal training and then the rather diminutive italian fellow chief petty officer and chief petty officer who i knew was a highly decorated vietnam vets starts asking me about well do you have a girl i said yeah chief i do and he says uh well tell me about her i said ah you know she's a beautiful cute little brunette uh you know and he says well yeah do you think she'd like a swarthy italian and i'm thinking oh here's my opening because he was kind of a small guy and i i said well i don't know chief i said she generally likes men that are taller than she is all of a sudden the whole pt circle goes quiet and the chief kind of bows up and he kind of walks over to me and of course he i'm six two he comes up to about here him he says i'm sorry ensign are you making fun of my height and i can look at the guys in the pt circle they're like oh for god's sake don't don't go there he's really sensitive about his height and of course i'm thinking maybe i went a little too far here and he's looking up at me and he's kind of growling at me and the only thing i could think to say was well chief you are looking up at me and and of course he goes through this kind of mock uh anger and then all of a sudden a big grin comes across his face and he goes that's good that's good welcome to the teams but every day in the teams you'd get around that circle i don't care whether you were the commanding officer or the lowest ranking you know seaman apprentice you were going to get harassed and it was important for both team morale but you know if you thought you had done something great the day before rest assured they were not going to let you have a big head because they were going to kind of cut you down the size and conversely if you'd had a bad day they knew how to kind of lift you up with the humor as well and you also you found this ability on the pt uh grinder to learn to laugh at yourself and then to find ways to use that humor to help other people and i think it was one of the greatest experiences in being a seal was that morning pt uh you know on the on the asphalt grinder give it back to him yeah that's right that's the only only thing you can do i have a have a favorite uh chapter duty your chapter on duty uh airman jackson and john mccain yeah and uh that's a that's a story i've told already and it it has an interesting parallel too certainly your time uh with john and also in a different way your own time with aaron jackson so the the story about duty it to your point mark there's kind of two contrasting stories there the first story i tell is about uh i don't know if it was the first time but certainly my first time as a senior officer meeting with john mccain and i went to the senate office and i was getting ready to be confirmed for four stars and and part of the normal process is you know you go meet with the senators that are on the in this case the senate armed services committee and so i go in to see you know senator john mccain of course being a naval officer uh senator john mccain is one of the truly great american heroes um and so i i go and he comes out to meet me and he's very precarious shakes my hand we come into his office and and of course i'm thinking about this remarkable story of when he was a prisoner of war in vietnam and mccain had the opportunity to get out of the pow camp the north vietnamese were going to let him go if they wanted to let him go so that they could show favoritism because john mccain's father was an admiral and they wanted to break the morale of the other pows by you know giving somebody else a a favor by letting them go and mccain refused their offer uh to leave the pow camp why because the military code of conduct the military code of conduct says that if you're a prisoner of war you will not take any favors any exceptional treatment from your captors i mean can you imagine you are in there he'd been in there for three or four years at that point in time uh i mean he had been tortured and brutalized here you have an opportunity to leave and he didn't he didn't i mean that's the you kind of the highest end of doing your duty but i remember as we were leaving that day mccain thanks me for my service i i was just stunned both at his humility and also at recognizing the character of the man but my point in the story about duty is it's not always about these incredible you know sacrifices and duties of a john mccain and so the the other end of the story was when i was in afghanistan it was probably 2010 president barack obama had come to afghanistan to meet with hamad karzai and the president of afghanistan and the air force one had flown into bagram air base which is where my base was and then the president was going to get on a couple of helicopters and fly from bagram about an hour into kabul well the weather came in and and he was unable to uh to make the flight so the next thing i know the general who is in charge of his visit calls my office and says look we got we're gonna do something we got the president here uh we need you to come over and brief the present and you need to be here in within 20 minutes and i was actually in the gym working out and i was like okay i think i can make this so i told my aide to camp i said get a couple copies of the brief i change clothes real quick uh we get to the convoy i got two-car convoy and i'm gonna all i have to do is go across the main road to the airfield and get through the gate and get to the hangar where the president is easy drive so we're getting the convoy i'm looking down on my watch got about 10 minutes left figure i'm gonna be fine so as we cross the main road we get to the airfield at the back gate and there's a gate guard there young woman petite young woman guarding the gate and so the sergeant gets out of the out of the vehicle and i'm kind of watching from the back seat and and i see him as he gets out and he towers over this young woman and and i can see he starts off and he's kind of calm and then before long he's like tapping his watch and he's pointing to the hanger and he's waving his arms she's not budging and he comes storming back and he starts rolls down the window and says sir she won't let us in she has orders that nobody is supposed to get past here unless they're on the list and we're not on the list and my sergeant major the senior nco says sir i got this so he gets out of the car he goes for the woman and i'm watching from the back same thing i can see he's calm at first and then all of a sudden he's tapping his watch he's pointing at the hanger he's waving his arms she ain't budging sergeant major comes back and goes sir she is not going to let us through and of course i'm thinking i'm a three-star habit so i get out the car i said all right so i get out of the car and i kind of calmly walk up i look down and name tag says jackson on it and then and so i said airman jackson i i'm admiral mcraven yeah you can see i'm i'm not a bad guy uh but i'm supposed to be briefing the president of the united states right this very minute you need to kind of let us through she's going to take a deep breath and i can tell she's scared you know i mean i'm towering over i got three stars looking at her in her eyes and she says well sir you're not on the list and my orders are pretty clear unless you're on the list nobody gets past this gate i took a deep breath and i said uh how long do you think that will take you sir i i've asked my sergeant as soon as i know i'll let you know so i walk back to the car and i get in and we wait finally about 10 minutes goes by and gate comes up and we we drive through and i go brief the president president never even asked me why i'm late but as i'm on my way back we come back through the same gate and i told the convoy i said hold up a sec pull over so we pull over i get out of the back seat of the car and i go up to airman jackson and i looked her in the eye i said airman jackson do you know that i was 10 minutes late briefing the president of the united states and she's shaking a little bit and she says yes sir i said ten minutes late and you know when my sergeant came up here and you wouldn't let us through my sergeant major came up here and you wouldn't let us through and i came up here and i'm a damn three-star admiral and you wouldn't let us through and she said yes sir i said you can come work for me anytime you did exactly what you should be doing i reached in my pocket and i pulled out a challenge coin which commanders only give to soldiers when they do excellent work and i always remember her response she said sir i was just doing my duty and the point of the story isn't that she was blindly doing her duty the fact of the matter is you know if she hadn't protected that gate you know then what if i wasn't who i said i was she was part of the cog there was a sergeant that was over in charge of her and there was a captain over the sergeant there was a colonel over the captain and there was a general over the colonels and it really is about this if you've got a job to do do your job in the military we have this thing called general order number one general order number one and it's a very simple order it says i'm in charge of my post and everything within view but i think general order number one has a much bigger meaning to it it means that yes you're responsible for the job you do and for the things that immediately affect the people around you it's about doing your duty i don't care whether your duty is flipping hamburgers at mcdonald's or whether it is guarding your gate or whether it is taking care of the elderly or whether it is taking your kids to school whatever your duty is do it to the best of your ability that that is a noble virtue to have the great part of that story for me is you getting out of the car on the way out that's what makes you you well you've done that a lot bill you have to it doesn't just happen and my point is is is is it's a different story if it's just someone trying to do their duty and you're late and you get in and no one mentions you're late it's a very different story that you took the time and made the effort to let that person know but it is as i mentioned earlier it is about the dramatic moments that are the lessons i mean i kept thinking back i mean this was a young airman i mean she is the almost the lowest enlisted rank out there and she held her ground against the sergeant the sergeant major in the three-star album i mean that is that's pretty remarkable that that's something that's worth you know thanking her for you uh you talk in one of the chapters about integrity and and being in the pentagon right and learning about that please yeah so as i think i start the story off by saying look not all the lessons i learned were you know on the battlefields in iraq and afghanistan and challenging places this was uh one of my first days on the job in the pentagon and i i worked for a navy captain named ted grabowski navy seal and uh and we were having a meeting with the three-star admiral about our budget so it was just a budget meeting and i'm the slide guy and of course back this was the day when you had viewgrass which was uh 1986. and so i'm supposed to meet captain grabowski in the in the briefing room so i rush in with a briefing room and and i've got this stack of slides and he's going through the side where the admiral shows up and uh and we begin the briefing well i know enough about briefings that you know if you're briefing the budget and you have told people this is how much money we need you don't come off that number because the implication is well then you haven't done your homework so as we're talking uh the three-star admiral a guy named neville netcap who was a salty old you know vietnam vet um and kind of crusty hard-nosed admiral and he's talking to captain grabowski and he goes ted i just don't understand you know do we have to have this do we have to have this much ammunition do you have to have these number of many subs and of course i'm thinking to myself well grabowski's going to hold the line he's going to tell the admiral there is absolutely no way we can't do without this and all of a sudden grabowski says sir i think you're right i don't think we need that much ammunition and i don't think we need as many little mini subs as you're asking for i remember looking at the bean counters the accountants that are over there and they're kind of like well this is kind of a different approach and um so metcalf said uh okay if you can make those cuts then then you can keep your budget and this was at a time when we as seals post vietnam we were struggling i'm not sure we had much of a future if we didn't have a good budget and i came up to kevin grabowski afterwards i said sir i don't understand but we just lost millions of dollars he goes bill this was a success he said how is that possible he said because one you know the the accountants probably knew we could you know we could probably absorb these cuts and he said let me let me tell you what my golden rule here is in the pentagon never lie or misrepresent the truth because if you lie or misrepresent the truth you will be caught and then people will no longer trust you and if they don't trust you you are no longer of any value to me and it was this relationship between honesty and trust and trust and and being able to do things on a small scale on a large scale that really i i took to heart we all know it's not good to lie but there's there's this kind of subtleness of misrepresenting the truth that i think is almost as egregious and so i always try to approach the rest of my military career recognizing that of course you never want to mislead anyone but also recognizing that if you mislead somebody not just with a lie but mislead or misrepresent the truth then they may no longer trust you and if they no longer trust you they will no longer trust you with their relationships they won't trust you with their money they won't trust you with their business they won't trust you with their lives and if you're a leader and you don't have the trust of your men and women uh you're not gonna do very well so it was a great lesson for me at a very young age compassion and you learned something from an actor i did yeah this is uh again the the kind of dramatic moments for me so this was i think 2006 i'm a one-star animal i'm in afghanistan and we are uh meeting with general john abazad and that general abize was a four-star general he was in charge of both iraq and afghanistan wars and he had come to afghanistan and we were talking important strategic you know uh you know i mean really things that were going to affect the war in afghanistan with all the generals in the admirals and i'm the only animal in the room and we're having dinner in the chow hall in a separate room as as all this conversation is taking place and as we're sitting there i see the door open up and the uh the general's aide comes in with a civilian and uh kind of think it looks interesting and the civilian looks around the room and he's clearly shocked to be walking into a room full of of generals and he looks around and he and he says uh kind of blurts out he says uh well who's in charge here and of course all of us thought that was pretty funny because we knew exactly who was in charge and joel amazing had a little smile on his face and he says i guess i am so civilian walks up to the the front of the table and uh introduces himself to general amazing and says well uh i'm gary sinise i'm an actor and uh and of course we're all trying to process this and he said i played lieutenant dan in forrest gump and i could see you guys like uh that was good you were good in that role and so he starts talking to general absolutely he says sir uh i'm here because i'm trying to deliver school supplies to some afghan kids and i remember having to say how that looked like i'm sorry you do know we're in the middle of a war here and and gary says yes sir but you know if we don't get school supplies to these kids they're going to lose you know a year or two of education and we're not going to be taking care of them in a way that will be meaningful for the country of afghanistan and it was interesting to see the room and the change in the posture of the generals in the room and i say in the chapter that it is easy to get jaded in war and particularly when you're a warrior uh you don't want to have to you know bleed for every kind of dying soul you don't want to let your guard down because you think it will make you weak as a warrior and when you do that sometimes you can lose your humanity but when all of a sudden somebody comes forward and you see what a gary sinise did that night but not just that night as i mentioned in the in the book i mean how many times have i seen gary at walter reed and bethesda showing up to uh you know to give young soldiers a pat on the back to thank them for what they've done without any fanfare but that night in particular uh you know you could you could see the room change there was this really good feeling that came over all of us to know that you know there were people out there that were doing good uh and that we could help them do good by getting them a c-130 to be able to deliver the supplies which joe lamsay did but but i remember that night finally i've had the opportunity since then to get to know gary very well and he is a remarkable as you well know a remarkable guy and just does so much uh for for the military again with very little fanfare well thank god he was good in that role yes and he was good in that role you talk in the uh in the preface of this book bill they're they're young memories yeah and um you talk about a wonderful moment when you're in new york with your dad and looking up so uh how are you looking up yeah so yeah when uh i was about three or four years old my father got stationed in france and of course we had no television in france uh at the time and i read comic books and i mean i read all the comic books but but the comic book that fascinated me most was superman and i mean superman was this this incredible hero you know from from middle america kansas uh you know red white and blue and and kind of everything that a young boy my age kind of dreamed of of being and and superman i mean he fought all the bad guys i mean of course this was at a time when uh there were stories of uh of superman who had fought the nazis and now superman was you know fighting the aliens and superman was fighting criminals well when we left france i was about eight years old and we sailed uh across the atlantic on the ss united states and we came into new york city and so this was 1963 and uh my my mother and two sisters went off to see a play or something my dad and i were left but i'm in the hotel room and i'm i'm seeing superman on tv and gloria's kind of black and white i'm thinking wow and of course i realized that i'm in metropolis i mean new york is metropolis right there yeah so later that day my dad takes me out and we're going to go hit all the sights but while i'm walking through these you know massive canyons of skyscrapers in new york city i i kind of keep looking up and uh and again i'm eight years old i i know that superman isn't real i think but i'm still kind of hoping that maybe i'll just kept catch a glimpse of this kind of red cape bouncing around as i keep looking up finally my dad turns to me and he says nobody what are you looking for i said nothing dad and he kept giving me a little fatherly push he said why do you keep looking up finally i said well i was i was hoping maybe i'd see superman and he pauses and he looks over and there's a cop standing on the corner and he says son that's the man that protects new york city and it was an epiphany for me i mean it was one of these recognitions that yeah i know superman's not real and but if superman is not real who's going to solve the problems of the world who's going to take care of the bad guys who's going to help us through the tough times who's going to take care of the struggling men and women and children and of course the epiphany was we are we're gonna have to do that and i became kind of fascinated with these heroes of course this was at a time when the astronauts were you know we're looking to go to the moon and and i i love the you know these these men that were part of the right stuff but it was just there seemed to be heroes when i looked around but but of course i knew i i couldn't be here bro there was no way i i was never going to be as brave as the astronauts or as compassionate as some of these other people or as you know as dutiful as john mccain there's just no way but you realize you can learn these traits you can learn these qualities you can learn these virtues and that's really kind of the focus of the book is recognizing that you know this generation uh of millennials and gen z and even older folks like us um you know in particular the millennials and the gen z's they are going to be the heroes of this century and we need them to be the heroes and i'm hoping some of these stories will will inspire them in that direction well you've been inspired and and i i i don't know about your mom and dad but i i i know enough to say they were remarkable people they were and uh and they'd be are so proud of you um your interpretation of the teaching of lesson of what you've learned in your time is it's fortunate for people like me to to be an audience that to be able to read that to be able to remember that to be able to interpret that it's the first time you and i have met actually in person here today but i've admired you for a long time and and and that is pretty much from afar as it should be but um you have so much to say and then i i i think this will be your third best seller and and i hope that you keep writing and i hope that you keep keep bringing this to the public you have so much to give thank you very much mark appreciate it i guess we have some questions from the audience okay yeah very um thank you mark uh and uh thank you admiral mcraven we have several questions from our audience the first one is we make the assumption that a heroic act determines a hero is that a mistake no i don't think that's a mistake if again you characterize a heroic act as a noble act uh where i where i think sometimes people get confused is they see achievement or accomplishment as doing something heroic so you know you may be a great athlete a great entertainer a great military officer that doesn't necessarily make you heroic your achievements it's what you had to overcome it's your perseverance to become a great athlete or it's your humility to become a great doctor or it is your sense of duty that made you a great military officer so it is a recognition that a heroic act is absolutely how we define heroes but be careful about how we look at this idea of a hero it's not just accomplishments it is these noble acts that make something heroic there's another related question uh lady asks the difference between idols and heroes and our tendency in social media and popular culture to idolize sports figures and celebrities and look up to them as heroes yeah so so kind of back to the the previous question i don't think there's anything wrong with looking at certain uh athletes sports figures and actors and others as heroes but it's not because they you know scored 45 points in a game that's not what made them the hero what made them the hero is the fact that before they could even get to the nba the nfl they had to persevere they had to overcome something that's that's the heroic act the word idol of course is to me i don't know that you idolize people and i don't like that particular term uh because if you put somebody up on a pedestal they're gonna fall off it you know heroes they're not all perfect uh there are some noble qualities that heroes have but we all have these flaws and i would offer that the heroes are the ones that kind of overcome those struggles overcome those flaws to do something noble the question for gentleman says teachers are not often held up with the esteem um as others as heroes can you talk about some of your teachers who were heroes to you oh well i i would offer when you're talking to the right guy because i've always put heroes with teachers up there as heroes always have my mother was a teacher my sister was a teacher watching what they did to you know raise the youth of america there are a few things more heroic than being a teacher recognizing that you know these teachers go in to class every day they have to again they have to persevere they have to have a certain in certain places a certain amount of courage they they are certainly sacrificing a lot of things to be a teacher and they are instilling values in the young men and women in this country i i tell you i put them right at the very top of the list when it comes to heroes i've the gentleman asks i've attended a lot of uh author talks and i was wondering if you may make a comment about authors as heroes you know i think it depends on what the author is trying to convey in their work the the authors i like uh are ones that tell a good story that that that story has got a moral it's it is inspirational again don't confuse achievement and success with heroism maybe you're a pulitzer prize-winning author or a nobel prize winning author i don't think that necessarily makes you heroic i think instilling virtues in people with the work that you do that makes people better heroes make people better you can make people better by being an author you can make people better by being a doctor by being an actor heroes make people better that's why we value their noble qualities if you make people worse you're probably not a hero so what are you writing about if you're an author that's writing a story that's going to inspire people and make them better yeah i think there's some heroic value in that i saw on social media a post i believe on facebook promoting this event and a lot of people had written the comment thank you for your service uh would you react to that remark because i hear sometimes maybe that is not the right thing we should be saying and maybe there's a better thing we should be saying to heroes well one i don't think i fit the hero cat category i'll tell you that right up front i've met a lot of heroes uh and and particularly heroes uh soldiers sailors airmen marines that i've spent time with um but it's always always appropriate to thank a service member or first responder or a doctor or a health care worker or a teacher you bet i have never been put off by somebody saying thank you for your service but i will tell you those of us that have served will tell you that believe me it was an honor for us to serve um but no i i always appreciate it and i tell you the country has uh has been very very good the servicemen and women and and we appreciate it a couple more questions what was your reaction to the january 6th event at the capitol when it was revealed that some current military and retired military were involved yeah well you know the military is a microcosm of america um and so you know i i wish there had been frankly i wish january 6 hadn't happened at all uh but i i certainly lament the fact that there were any military either active or retired or former involved in it and of course what we've done now is uh secretary lloyd austin has uh has put out a request for all commanders to take a look at whether or not there are extremists in the in their organizations uh i think that is a good thing to do in general we want to make sure that we root it out where it is where it is growing within the military but um you know again the military is a microcosm of of america and where there is extremism in america there will there will be some measure of extremism in the military so you've served as president of a university and you've held leadership roles in the military which of your military skills did you feel were important to bring over into higher education and what higher education based skills do you think are ideal to transfer over to the military oh very interesting i've heard the first part of that question before but rarely the second part um you know for me it really was about the leadership skills and as i've told a lot of young officers you know leadership skills are fungible uh if you know how to lead and by that you know in the military we think of ourselves as servant leaders and what that means is that my job as a leader is to make you successful it is to make sure that the men and women who work for me are given the resources they need to do the job given the latitude do the job you set the standards and you hold people accountable but it really is about making the team successful if it ever becomes about you you're probably not the right leader for the job so those leadership skills i think transition very nicely when i became the chancellor of the university of texas system because leadership is leadership i had 14 institutions i still had to make sure that i was taking care of the students and the faculty that i gave them again the resource to do the job the latitude to do their job held them accountable when they failed to do their job that is leadership and that works i think everywhere the flip side of this is uh what i've really enjoyed about my time in in higher education was the the great diversity of talent and in the military uh the strength particularly the special operations community was our diversity of thought air force army navy marines civilians of all socioeconomic background gender orientation etc but when you get into higher ed you see that you know times 10. and it really you really begin to see the power of diversity and the power of bringing these people together to give you the best solution so frankly if i had to take one aspect of higher education that i saw and move it back into the military would say hey let's double down on diversity in the military it'll just make us a better military a couple questions uh the pandemic the pandemic has um shined the light on um as you said earlier first responders people in the medical profession uh who've really helped us turn the corner um any other significant lessons that you observed from that that you'd care to share with us yeah i i think the pandemic has also shined a light on us individually as people um i mean we we applaud and rightfully so as you point out the first responders and health care workers and those that have really battled on the front lines of the pandemic but i would also offer that you know i've seen the goodness in the individuals you know the neighbors in my community the the people in the state of texas and elsewhere where i have traveled helping each other out those that are trying to do the right thing wearing the masks socially distancing that's a personal responsibility it's a recognition that it ain't just about you it is about you sacrificing to take care of the people around you uh and you see what people have people have adapted in the middle of this pandemic i mean you know we we wondered how we as a culture would adapt in in the middle of a very challenging situation and i think in general people have risen to the occasion uh and so you know i think we again rightfully so need to applaud and laud those great individuals that have been on the front lines but i think we need to take a little bit of pride and how we have individually kind of tackled the problem as well and our final question comes from a gentleman who says i have a graduating high school uh student this spring and i also have a graduating college student this spring um i feel your book is full of messages to graduates uh what advice message might you pass on well i won congratulations uh to that person and the book really is i think designed for uh the millennials in the gen z those those kids that are graduating from high school and college those that are out there in the world uh you know as entrepreneurs as you know first responders joining the military because they are going to be this century's heroes we need them to be this century's heroes we need them to inspire the next generation coming forward and so i'm hoping that when they read this book they will find a little bit of that inspiration well thank you admiral mcraven thank you mark harmon for being part of bringing out your stories the book again is the hero code lessons learned from lives well lived it is available wherever books are sold and we have a few signed copies available in the link below go on gently

Channel: LiveTalksLA

Views: 51,536

Rating: 4.9148936 out of 5

Keywords: NCIS, Mark Harmon, Admiral William McRaven, Live Talks LA, Live Talks Los Angeles, TED Talks, Grand Central Publishing, Hero Code

Id: wW27R6iMTzc

Length: 52min 42sec (3162 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021