FBI SWAT Team Leader James Gagliano: The Enigma of Transcendent Leadership

here we go my name is lawrence rosenberg and this is the alpha human podcast back with us today is james galliano a former airborne infantry officer with the army rangers who spent 25 years with the fbi as an undercover agent investigating organized crime james was also a member of the fbi's hostage rescue team the bureau's elite counter-terror unit where he was deployed to afghanistan three times in support of operation enduring freedom james was also the senior team leader for the fbi's new york field division swat team jim i gotta tell you it's it's an honor to have you back on the show welcome well lawrence i gotta say um i don't do redos on on podcasts you're the one podcast and i'm coming back for a second stint i i really enjoyed our last conversation and i know you want to get into some really interesting stuff tonight so i appreciate you having me back uh i'll tell you what i'm uh you know i'm super excited to have you back jimmy because i got to tell you you know we we covered on a lot in our last podcast about your history in the fbi with organized crime and we we also touched on swat a little bit but more from you know the the ethos of swat and more from the his you know historical perspective but what i really wanted to delve into with you last time and we just we just ran out of time we were talking for you know for a while was leadership and the fact that you headed up the fbi's new york swat team you know i really wanted to delve into that so that's why you know we've got you back on the show to really sink our teeth into your perspective on leadership i know that you've done a lot of coaching and training of major fortune 500 corporations on leadership you've written some great articles about leadership what what good leadership looks like what bad leadership looks like so you know i'm i'm looking forward to getting into this but let's kind of let's kind of ease into it by talking about uh your time with the new york swat team so you you became senior team leader for the fbi's new york swat team and you know i guess what led you to join swat because what drove you know what drove you to sign up with the bureau was your desire to go under cover and work organized crime and go after la cosa nostra and the new york's uh five families right the infamous five families how did that lead you to joining swat i mean what you know what what was the driver there and what was your role initially well lawrence i i think that's a great question and i and i think i i think the the the easy answer the the one word the two-word answer would be natural progression um i spent time in the u.s military i loved being part of a team i mean whether it was being on a team in high school or being on a team at the united states military academy or being on a team in the united states army i loved being on a team and obviously i was i was drawn to tactical resolution and really if it's from the military perspective or from the law enforcement perspective yes of course there are distinctions i mean you know soldiers have a different mission per se than say law enforcement officers do domestically i get that but tactical resolution is is somewhat similar in that you are going to find people that are going to come together as a cohesive unit you're going to give them a mission that they have to accomplish one of the prerequisites for these people these men and women that do that type of job is they have to be they have to be able to accept a little more risk than the average person now we're not talking about thrill seekers i'm not talking about somebody that just gets off on being a base jumper or on you know riding a wave that's you know three stories high not not that we're looking for people that that have the ability and i talk about it all the time when i when i when i speak to those companies and those fortune 500 companies you're talking about in trying to show them the difference between inextremist leadership meaning leadership at the point of death and how you can apply those principles into a non-inextremist situation and i always talk about it from this perspective it is it is finding those people that have a certain comfortability around fear and i say all the time with with the guys that used to try out for the new york swat team or the hostage rescue team with the fbi you know courage is not the absence of fear it's the mastery of it it means you're scared shitless but you're able to control your emotions you're able to control the physiological changes that happen in your body when you're scared and you're still able to focus and accomplish the mission and that really if you can lead in those kind of circumstances dealing with hey the bottom line every month in a boardroom and making sure that we're selling enough widgets so that we stay in the black and we're not in the red yes that is stress but if you can do it at the extremist level when it's at the point of the the the pointy part of the spear the tip of the spear makes it easier to do it in a normal sense okay so uh you you clearly had the ability to you know work effectively and operate uh in an effective manner in extremis scenarios so you know and you say natural progression to the uninitiated you know it it doesn't necessarily seem like going undercover infiltrating the mob and then joining the swat team which is a direct action unit they don't seem congruent right but i know you you know you look you were in the you you were an officer in the army rangers right uh so clearly you had the you know the the you know the tactical uh experience you had the mindset to do that kind of work and uh you know i guess when when you ended up joining swat you know what so what's the role like initially because you know you've gone from go another thing is swat a full-time job or is it is it is it part-time how does that work sure couple things here first of all let me just clarify something i was a ranger-qualified infantry officer but i wasn't in a ranger battalion i mean they're okay those are those are separate but i mean i went through ranger school class 4-88 i i i earned a ranger tab but but there is a distinction i was not in a range of battalion i was in the 10th mountain division where back in the 80s the idea for the 10th mount division was all the officers and non-commissioned officers they wanted to make them range or qualified because again you know ranger school is a crucible right it's a 61 day test of being hungry and tired and cold and wet and making decisions you know when again you're starving and you're soaking wet and you're cold and you haven't slept in three days and you know one of the famous things that i've heard from a number of people that that served in vietnam or served in the first gulf war served in afghanistan or iraq and they all say the same thing getting through ranger school is supposed to prepare you for combat but as harrowing as combat is it doesn't suck like ranger school does range of schools ranger school is about making you feel uncomfortable getting you out of your comfort zone and still have you have the ability to be able to make decisions and lead so you know you talk about the incongruity with my wi with my career i just wanted there was so much available and so many opportunities for for for leadership roles in the military and law enforcement i really didn't want to be stuck into one lane and and while i respect people that were in one lane because they become subject matter experts on white collar crime or tactical resolution or undercover work i wanted to do them all so that i could step back as a leader when i started moving up in the ranks in the fbi and i could say i know what it's like to send people undercover into a situation where it's them against you know the bad guys and they've just got their wits about them no guns no nothing and they got to be able to stay safe get what we need for the case and get out of there alive and have the same perspective on swat and understand what it's like to be in a paramilitary unit and your question about is it full-time is it part time the only full-time team the fbi has is the elite hostage rescue team that is a full-time they're stationed down at quantico it is the somebody else said this and i can't remember who because i'd love to give them an attribution but it is the equivalent in the counterterrorism world of being a professional athlete you have the best of everything the gear the equipment the training the ability to work your body to make it to chisel it and put it put yourself in the best physical condition the best gear the best tactical training and you get the best missions there's only one hrt and there's only 52 guys on that team hrt can't be everywhere at one time so all 56 field divisions in the fbi they're scattered around the country in every you know almost every state but there's 56 total field divisions each one has a swat team it could be as small as a six-man team or as large as the new york team that i had that was a 45-man team so that is a part-time job and and i don't mean that's an unfair statement to say because those guys eat breathe and sleep it and those women too because there are women on fbi swat teams but they are doing it as an ancillary duty their number one job is to be an fbi agent is to make federal cases and see that they're prosecuted and see that the bad guys go to jail but when the when the bell goes off and the horn sounds they respond and the team goes and does a mission so it is an ancillary duty so it's part-time but we don't like to use that term we consider it to be an ancillary duty okay thank you for clarifying and uh you know pardon pardon my phraseology you know i'm trying to think about understanding i always i always thought that swat was you know if you were in swat you know that that's it but then you know it you know thinking about it now you know obviously you guys got to train but for the most part unless there's an emergency taking place where swat is called in you know you're you know then you're not doing it it happens in rare instances and i'll give you a quick example the fbi has 12 000 fbi agents scattered around the world okay the nypd the new york city police department has 36 000 cops in new york city so they have the ability to have a separate unit which is called the emergency services unit esu and you know the new york state police have one a lot of big departments lapd has one but those guys are full-time in a department that large where they have that specific mission in the fbi you can't you got to be an agent first right and then your ancillary duty is to be a swat team member unless you're a member of hrt and then that's a full-time gig which you were yes okay so were you were you with the hostage rescue team with the counter-terror team first and then you would swat first so so again i think i think the theme tonight laurence is going to be natural progression so the natural progression was you know i came out of the army i was a first lieutenant promotable in a in a high-speed infantry battalion in the 10th mountain division up at fort drum um a ranger qualified wanted to do things and i got into the fbi the closest i could get to the tactical world was be an agent i was working organized crime at the time in the early 90s but i tried out for the new york office brooklyn queens swat team so at that time there were three 15-man teams in new york one that covered manhattan and the bronx another that covered brooklyn and queens and one that that handled upstate new york and long island so i was on the brooklyn queens team so i tried out for that team i was on that team again as an ancillary duty okay for seven years before i tried out for the hostage rescue team and got selected for hrt went to hrt for four years came back to the field back to the new york office in 2001 just in time for 911 and a year or two later i think about two years later i was appointed the swat team leader for the new york office so i was a junior swat guy then i made the hostage rescue team came back to new york and then took over the new york swat team got you so you know it that's interesting and the way you've described uh hrt um they're like the the navy seals of the fbi no doubt so the way it's spoken about in the business it's called it's tiered tier one assets are the army's delta force which you know they don't even call themselves delta force because it's just operational detachment delta or whatever right there's delta force there's seal team six there's the army ranger battalions there's marine force recon there is um you know task force 160 which are all the aviation units that were put together after uh desert one failed in in in 1979 1980 trying to rescue the iranian hostages so um hrt came online in 1983 in anticipation of the 84 la olympics and the fact that at the time president reagan was speaking to the fbi director who at the time was judge william webster and says hey what's our plan if something like munich in 1972 at the olympics if that happens and in that instance palestinian terrorists took a bunch of uh israeli athletes hostage and killed a bunch of them what is our plan and they're like well sir we really can't use military assets um it has to be law enforcement due to posse comitatus and that was the impetus to standing up hrt so what happened was they had a tryout across the fbi a lot of the swat teams sent guys in they picked an initial 52 guys and then they sent them down to north carolina to train with delta and to train with the seals and to train with british sas german gs g9 all the top tier one counter-terror assets around the world and in 1984 right before the olympics they got their sign off from the community that yes this asset this unit the hostage rescue team is signed off and is ready to become part of our community and so we've been in the tier one asset community since 1984. you know it's really interesting how you you know you you were in the military um you didn't you know you didn't get to see at that time action i think you left before uh the gulf war started i'm a cold warrior right and yet you end up getting deployed to afghanistan yeah when you're with the fbi it's just in you know incredible uh how things work out but clearly you were destined to be in the heat you know in the heat of it in the heat of battle um and when you were with the new york swat team um you and your colleagues were awarded the fbi's medal for bravery for your role in the 1993 apprehension of terrorists that were planning to bomb the holland tunnel and other new york city landmarks and and you didn't just arrest them by scooping them up in their homes right you you raided their bomb factory yeah and that was years before 9 11. can you tell us a little bit about that that situation that case well sure first of all i gotta i gotta add the caveat that i was a very junior member of the swat team back at that time i couldn't spell swat if you spotted me the s and the w and the a but um i was very privileged to be around some very senior guys in the in the new york office real heroes i mean real guys that i cut my teeth under and you know and and i say this was that a was that a dangerous mission where we literally you know busted in on them as they're they're literally stirring you know the the the witch's brew as it was called to blow up a number of of of landmark and historic places in new york city bridges and tunnels and and you know icon you know the fbi building federal building yes it was it's a dangerous mission but i think most people that get awards pinned on them and don't feel like they deserve them there were plenty of other times in even more harrowing situations where nobody hears about it but in that instance we all felt a little uncomfortable that you know the fbi director decided at that time that our team was going to get awarded the second highest medal for for which is called the medal of bravery for the fbi but i say this it's the same thing in the military you know a lot of times there are people in in our u.s military in our armed forces that deserve the damn medal of honor the highest award for valor you can get but nobody in their unit lived to tell the tale and i say it about people that get metal spin on them not all of them but i certainly put myself in there and say you know i was in the right place at the right time and they recognized it but trust me there's other people that have done far more dangerous things and you know we were recognized for that but there are a lot of folks in the fbi that did equally or more dangerous things and didn't get recognized but yes that was the 93 the precursor if you will to obviously what happened on 9 11 because right you had the bombing of the the world trade center the original one in february of 93 we make the arrest on the bomb factory and then seven years later osama bin laden is successful in actually bringing down both the towers and destroying part of the pentagon and crashing a plane in shanksville pennsylvania but yes this was this was one of those plots that we were able to disrupt and dismantle and the fbi and law enforcement writ large does a lot of these all the time and many of them do not make the news but lawrence you know the old saying for bad guys they got to get it right one time the good guys we got to get it right every single time yeah it's it's so true and um you know i i understand what you're saying with respect to metals and this kind of thing but you know i wanted to bring that up because number one you talk about progression and you know it's an it that's an interesting uh historical note with respect to your progression where you were when you first joined the swat team you were in potentially if you want to call it the right place at the right time but that kind of shows you know where you were when you were first on the swat team and then you know what ends up happening well i you know i hear about from an old friend of yours uh who was on the show recently navy seal commander uh errol dobler who was an a he was also an fbi agent and he was a member of the uh new york uh field division swat team he was one of your guys and and you know what he told me he said that he said you were already the leader of the swat team when he got there but he said that everyone told him that before jimmy galliano got there the new york swat team was in bad shape and he said that you turned the swat team around and that under you it became the top unit in the country if not the world so i mean you know those are you know those are powerful accolades coming from someone who you know has has you know been there and done that navy seals you know also fbi on the swat team investigating uh you know uh terrorists globally he's saying that about you tell us what things were like when you got there and what you did as a leader to turn it around well first of all let me just let me fix a few things there so i'll i'll say this first of all errol dobler um is one of the single most humble and talented guys i've ever had the privilege of working with now i'll never forgive him for the fact that he went to the united states naval academy i thought that was a poor career choice and that he made a huge mistake but both kidding all kidding aside um just a just an outstanding talent and and a very very home people in my business aren't typically without ego um it's it's hard to be in that kind of business in this kind of business without having confidence and self-assuredness and i don't mean arrogance but but but it's ego it is you know that i can do this i can make this happen um arrow was one of those guys that came in and again uh into the fbi after having a stellar career as a as a lieutenant in the navy seals um annapolis grad real humble guy and yes he does he does kind of sketch out the way that things were and and you know it's funny lawrence i'm an elected trustee in the tiny village of cornwall and hudson and it's a small village of 3 000 people in upstate new york and and i'm very proud of that because on this village board that i'm on there are people that think like i do politically and think like and that don't think like i do politically but there are no political parties you run on you know village one and cornwall first you run on these these crazy party names but there's no democrats and republicans we are a divided country right now and i've always thought that one of the main roles and the main i think the the the main responsibilities for a leader is to take factions and to take the things that naturally divide us whatever they are whether it's race creed ethnicity gender whatever it is political party or in the case of new york swat the blue section and the gold section that had historically um and i'd come from one side of the house but then i left and went to hrt and came back and that time away well first of all it gave me the bona fides because i'd been on hrt right that can and it allowed me to grow up and mature too because i was a young kid when i was in new york the first time but it also allowed me to come back and have the the gravitas to say the [ __ ] ends here so if you can't work with you and if this squad can't work with this squad and this team can't work with this team you're off the team i don't care how much you know me how far we go back the unit is more important than any of us and i did a house cleaning now the house cleaning involved maybe five or ten people out of a out of a team of 45 but by removing those people that said oh galliano is an [ __ ] or we don't want to work with him i then had a group of people that said i'll buy in i've grown up in the ranks underneath this or this but guess what i'm going to buy into this arrow came on shortly after i had already done the the whole reconfiguration and and and kind of you know changed the team construct around i no longer wanted people to identify with i'm a democrat or i'm a republican or i'm blue swat or i'm gold swat your new york swat and here's how it's gonna work you're gonna there's gonna be three teams and each of those teams is gonna be headed by team leader and those team leaders are gonna pick and they're gonna have to pick guys one from blue and one from gold so every team is heterogeneous there's no homogeneity to the to the thing so you're going to do this or you're going to leave and so that was drastic that was non-traditional but i was in a good position i was still young but i had come from hrt and i still had new york roots people gave me a chance and that's the important thing and i think that that was something that was a seminal moment for me because i took over the team november 15th of 2002 i remember the day like it was yesterday when they posted me to it i had a meeting up at camp smith and peekskill which was our firearms range for swat over in in westchester county i had all the team members come up that day i read them the riot act and said this is how it's going to be in this regard now having said that once you get past that i am a leader that believes in surrounding himself with smart people because i'm not smart i graduated the bottom of my west point class that is the truth i will surround myself with smart people and i'll take your counsel i'll listen to you i will consider all sides and then i will make the decision and own the decision and that's how that's how i i led and the last thing i think that was an important thing for me and i learned many years before i was a plebe at the united states military academy and i i don't think i was during beast barracks which is the summer where they just totally destroy you break you down and then build you up in their image i don't think i was a super plebe but i definitely wasn't like you know the guy that couldn't you know get out of his own way so i was i was in here somewhere but i had a roommate who's one of those guys during beast barracks young guy from and i'll never forget from indiana who was as messed up as we would say in the business as a soup sandwich so he took he took a lot of attention from the upperclassmen and they abused him and this is you know my father was at west point in the 1950s they could put their hands on you when i was there in the mid 80s they couldn't touch you but they could scream at you and they could abuse you and haze you as long as they didn't touch you now it's different right but in the 80s they could do that and they made this guy's life miserable and and i did everything i could to help him the night before getting his stuff squared away the whole nine yards he wanted to be at west point and i knew that if he just could turn the corner and stop getting all the fire from the upperclassmen he'd be okay i remember him coming to bed one night right so we're in a room there's two single bunks it's lights out it's 10 o'clock the alarm's going to go off tomorrow morning at 4 30 to go begin training again and he's sobbing crying right 18 year old kid crying himself to sleep because he'd been abused all day i said man hang in there we got this come on tomorrow's a new day look don't try to think about getting through plebi or just get through tomorrow that's our goal just get through tomorrow okay he says to me i'll never ever be the kind of guys that are doing this to me if i make it through this i'll never be that guy fast forward one year later he makes it through plebeir by the skin of his teeth he now becomes an upperclassman and he becomes everything that he loathed everything that he cried about everything that he complained about and i remember thinking to myself and i'm an 18 year old kid at the time like wow this is a great lesson because when you're being led and you see things that are wrong i wouldn't do this i wouldn't scream at somebody i wouldn't act like that i wouldn't be a bully but then when you make it through and you're now on this side of the fence you become everything you profess to loathe and your philosophy was well they did it to me and i learned that and what i learned was you learn good and bad things from the leaders above you and and i think i mentioned it the last time leaders that i've served under go across a football field right from the 10 line and in right the 10-yard line this way superstars the 10-yard line to the goal line this way jerks everybody else is the mediocre folks 80 yards in between they're in between the 10 yard lines right you're aspiring to be that 10 where somebody like errol dobler who humbles me to hear that but you go i say to myself man i did it right i made a right difference and you know what that's now something that he's going to incorporate into who he is as a leader he's going to say i didn't like any everything galliano did but the way he did this i respect it and that's what i'm going to do so we're all kind of a composite of the leaders we've served under right so be more like those 10 yard line in in on the superstars and not like that 10 yard line and in on the other side of the football field of the really bad leaders unfortunately most people don't understand that and unfortunately the vast majority of us the vast majority of leaders in the world are between the 10 yard lines they're not on either end right it's a good thing they're not on the bad end but they're not on the good end so gotcha that lesson was something i think that uh that that shaped how the new york swat team was my first real leadership opportunity where i owned it i was in charge of those 44 men i was in charge of their safety their health and welfare and i felt like yes we're going to go into harm's way yes it's it's an accepted it's accepted that you may lose people along the way because it's a dangerous business but i will never lose somebody because i didn't train them well enough prepare them well enough or give them an operations plan that gave them a fighting chance to succeed okay so there's a there's a lot of stuff to unpack there and i certainly want to get into what separates those great leaders at that that end of the football field you know the top 10 percent from everyone else um but maybe a good place to kind of pick up on this is the leadership quote that you left me with the last time that you were on the show you you left us with a teaser jimmy uh what i'd like you to do is i'd like you to bring up what that quote was and also you gave us a little background on the quote you didn't just give us the quote you said you gave us the background on it so let's talk about give us give us that quote so i've always felt that you know when i do speak to groups and organizations about leadership and and one of the biggest questions i would always get is jimmy i need a quote i need a motivational quote what is the best leadership quote you've ever ever heard and for a while i was like man i you know if you if you google leadership quotes your search engine will start smoking because there's you know 3.3 trillion different you know uh you know findings there so i i keep it simple and and this is a world according to me and i know i left you with that teaser and you you're a good host because you do your homework and and and you do the follow up because the quote that i left you with was by general dwight david eisenhower now he was part of west point class 1915 which many considered not me but many consider i agree with it the greatest west point class of all time because they call it the class that the stars fell on now in that class i think um there were let me see if i get these numbers straight there were two five-star generals that came out of that class two four-star generals seven three-star generals 24 two-star generals and 24 one-star generals jesus yes and i think the number is like 50 6 58 out of 167 or some crazy number like that and literally it breaks down to in that class three guys are standing next to each other look to your left and your right one of you is going to make general officer that doesn't happen in my class west point class of 87 which i consider to be the second greatest west point class of all time if i might humbly say so myself i want to say that maybe maybe three percent four percent of our class reached the rank of general officer we have a couple of three stars and i think we just had our first four-star general but that's the normal kind of spread so that class and you can argue that it's you know nature versus nurture was it you know the times because when they graduated in 1915 it was right before world war one and they were senior officers when they got to world war ii okay i get all that but that class was full of rock stars and the greatest rock star in that class was our 34th president and that was general dwight david eisenhower who basically you know led the allied forces on the d-day invasion and you know that battle we just don't real there's so many battles in our history that we go the battle of little round top at gettysburg my god if lee had been able to turn that flank we might be eating grits right now and speaking with a twang you know it's like how things could have changed if the allies hadn't have gotten a foothold in normandy lawrence i'm a military historian this would be a different world right now so the consequence of that operation was it's just incalculable that was a long wind up to your simple question which was jimmy give me the greatest quote no i love the i wanted to build up the greatest quote was from him and i i say all the time that i'm sorry hands down this is it but general eisenhower famously said leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you need done for the mission because he or she wants to do it leadership is the art of getting someone else to do what you need done because he or she wants to do it okay so here's yeah so so this is what great leaders are made out of because you know getting people to do something because they want to do it it's a it it's almost like you know it's like one of these spiritual martial arts like you know uh you know see without seeing right it's like you want to get because if you can get people to do you know what you want them to do something that they want to do right because they want to do it you know it's almost like you're not leading at all right but yet you are and it to find that to you know to find that um that zeitgeist that that that ability within yourself to be able to do that without forcing it without you know doing it naturally is it take you know it takes years to develop that kind of skill that kind of gravitas that kind of emotional awareness that kind of um you know just that kind of uh understanding of the ebb and flow of the personalities on your team so i want to put this in context okay because it ain't like um you know for you that we got to get the team to work a little bit harder to sell some more widgets for for someone in your position you've got to get people to go into harm's way okay and yeah we get that the people signing up for the job know that but i'm gonna quote you from something you've written so so you say uh in an article that i read every time law enforcement goes in to try to neutralize a terrorist suspect there is a risk that they themselves may be deliberately targeted but at the end of the day when you join the police or a law enforcement agency you sign on to accept a higher personal level of acceptable risk and for those joining tactical or hostage rescue units that accept that acceptable risk increases exponentially yeah so even if you assess jimmy and select effectively to find people that are psychologically geared to consistently throw themselves in harm's way like you were talking about before the kind of people you're looking for you know it's not it you know you know the kind of people that they don't they're not it's not that they're not afraid it's that they've mastered their fear yeah okay so selecting for that great but as a leader it must be it must be crucial to keep that attitude that they have primed and the motivation of the team high enough that everyone continues to be motivated for game day because just because i know that look i know i'm going to put myself in harm's way and i'm up for the fight you know okay great doesn't mean i want to do it every single time so how do you do that well first of all you get extra points for using the word zeitgeist hey i don't even think that was the right word but i was searching for something no and and then to follow up with the with with with what you just said there um and to go back just a little bit and then i'll come back to that um it is the difference in leadership between demanding respect and commanding respect so i have a pit bull right so he's he's the one that makes the curtains behind me flutter back and forth because he walks through here like he doesn't believe that i'm in the middle of something right now but he's six and a half years old and he's an old man now and he kind of rules the roost here gotcha it is the same way when you deal with a pit bull puppy and this is my third one and we get them when they're rescued and they're young but it's the difference between fear and respect right when they're puppies they gotta fear you not because you're gonna smack them or whatever but you have to have you've got to you've got to be that pack leader right you've got to give them that fear that they don't know that you're not going to go sideways and do something even though you'd never do it but from that it moves into respect and it's the same thing with dealing with human beings where i talk about demanding respect versus commanding respect demanding respect means i have lieutenant bars here you're a private you have to salute me and if i tell you to go clean out the latrine and burn the [ __ ] you have to do that that's that's demanding right okay commanding is when you have been in in extremist situations with somebody or when your men realize or you're women because obviously the the military is you know when i was in the military women weren't in the infantry they didn't go to ranger school but we are an integrated force now do they believe that you are willing to do everything and anything that you would have them do now look and i'll give you one little quick vignette on that when i was in training i was a young lieutenant just out of range of school i was assigned to the second of the 14th infantry uh second brigade in the 10th mountain division and i was a platoon leader for third platoon in bravo company 214 infantry we immediately get sent and you made the point at the top of this my deployments in the military in the late 80s were conus within the continent of the united states and we traveled to fort irwin california to do an exercise out there at the national training center and i'll never forget just gotten out of range of school just graduated from west point and i wanted to be that lieutenant that his men appreciated and revered and respected and would follow in battle but i was misguided and you say how was i well i had a crusty first sergeant by the name of paul eastwood and i'll never forget it was the first night we were out there it was going to be an exercise it was six or seven days long we were in the mountains of fort irwin california we were a light infantry force so we didn't have jeeps or humvees or you know apc's so we were doing everything on foot going over hillandale and we were meeting the op 4 which back in those days they were russian forces right so we were fighting the fictional opera you know opposing force and i'll never forget it was day one day two maybe i think and it was late and we had an early morning hit to do it like four in the morning and we had to put people up on guard duty right so the so my my platoon sergeant says all right sir i'm gonna go and make up the list for uh for security tonight go ahead and get some sleep you got a long day tomorrow i'm like no platoon sergeant i know better put me on the list tonight i want the men to see me doing what they do he looked at me hey sir kid i appreciate what you're doing west point and all and i know you want to do the right thing i don't think that's a good idea no no platoon sergeant i want to do this because i want the men to know that i'll do whatever they do hey sir they kind of got that figured out but if you do that you've got to lead the operation tomorrow they're going to expect you to lead from the front you need to get sleep tonight because you're going to have 40 men you're going to have their lives in your hands you know obviously this is a training exercise i i didn't listen to him so that night my shift was from two to three o'clock got up at 3 30 after 20 minutes of trying to sleep or whatever and was shot for the rest of the day the lesson learned there well the first lesson learned there is when you're a lieutenant you think you know everything and you're 22 years old you don't know [ __ ] listen to your platoon sergeant but the second thing was understanding the balance between yes i want to be one of the men and i want them to know that i will do anything just like i would ask them to do right but my job and my role are different private first class snuffy his job is to be the point man on a patrol his job is very limited it's important it's critical the team requires him to be good at what he does and to do his job the right way my job was to have my wits about me and to make decisions in battle and i learned in that in that short six day exercise that trying to be that guy that was i want the men to know that i'll do whatever they do in that scenario and instance was not the right thing now you always want to do whatever you're going to ask your men to do but there are different roles in teams as a swat team leader my job is different i can't i was still a young guy when i took over the new york swat team i just come back from hrt i'd been a number one man a number two man a number three i'd done all those different roles i'd kicked in doors and been overseas and snatched bad guys when i became a senior team leader in new york i could no longer be that action guy and that was another hard thing to realize was hey i'm not that guy anymore i have to put these guys in the best position to succeed and they're relying on this from me and not the ability to jump over tall buildings in a single bound so i think judgment and discernment are two critical leader traits that you don't learn when you're young you learn them when you get a little bit older right you know i think that's interesting um because there's a couple of ways you could earn the respect of your or command the the respect of your your team firstly you could be willing to roll up your sleeves and do everything that you're asking them to do and you'll do it from time to time right the other way is that obviously you can't do that all the time because it's not your role so i guess the and the other way is that they see that your decisions whether or not they agree with them actually end up succeeding and then wait a second jimmy knows what he's talking about i might not agree with him but you know what he has a history of making decisions smart decisions that lead to success yeah so you know i that makes sense what you've just said there makes sense to me because a lot of leaders you know and i don't you know i don't know if it's an insecurity thing or not feel that you know i i've got to be at the tip of the spear as well i've got to be there to the point where you know i'm even putting myself at risk yeah yeah so you know let's go back to like let's go back to the 19th century or the 18th century in u.s military history and back in those days the officers had to be at the front leading the charge right you know right general lewis armistead on pickett's charge for the confederates was at the very forefront it ended up getting you know killed right up there at the at the stone wall but he had to lead because you know he put his hat on top of his saber and you know follow me there are times for that and there are times where you have to be in that kind of position readers have to be able to accept the same risk as the men they're leading or the people that they're leading but by the same token what screws things up more if you lose a private or you lose somebody that is a decision maker that is keeping you as safe as possible i and look every loss of life whether it's in combat or whether it's in law enforcement every loss of life is important and in law enforcement it's even you know the and i hate to use this term because it sounds lazy fair and i don't mean it that way when you say what are the acceptable losses you know hey you've got a mission in the military and you're like hey we're probably going to take 20 casualties but in order to do this we've got to do that we've got to accept that law enforcement's a little different because you're like wait a minute 20 casualties these are civilians but you still know that you're going into harm's way yes leaders need to be leading from the front and not just saying that in in in an abstraction in you know in the kind of a figurative sense but at the same time too why in combat do they do the snipers always look for the people with the shiny epaulets you want to take out the command and control the people that are making that are making the decisions and so lawrence it's a fine line and i think again it's my mother used to always say and she stole it from somebody youth is wasted on the young because you know when you're young you just don't have that that wisdom and you don't have that ability to say one of the hardest things i had as a swat team leader in new york was my higher command would say jimmy if you think you can do it if you can take it safely do it and i'm looking there and i'm doing the cost benefit analysis and i'm doing the x's and o's and i'm like shoot i know we can get in and get a foothold and we might be able to get here but i may take some fire here and that means one of my guys is in harm's way and you're doing that and one of the hardest things is you're leading alpha males and alpha females you're leading people that want to be that tip of the spear and when you reign them back even though inside i'm the guy going if i'm number one i want to go and i don't want to listen to any leader telling me not to but as a leader you have to look at that and you have to be responsible and you have to make decisions in their best interest when those young hot shots lawrence aren't capable of making those decisions because they just want to do the right thing they just want to get to the bad guy they just want to rescue the hostage they just want to take that hill in kandahar you got to be the one to say nope we're not going to do it this way or we're not going to do it today or we're going to come up with a better plan that might even you know what that's interesting that might be the that might be the harder thing you know you talk about get you know getting people to do something you know that they wanted you know you know how does the po go give me the quote again leadership is the art of get getting someone else to do something you need done for the mission because they want to do it what might be harder is when you have a bunch of pit bulls that that want to go in in fact all they ever want to do is go in probably the harder thing is to pull them back and to and to get them to accept the fact that you know maybe now isn't the right time to take the hill as a leader so why is leadership more difficult than being the tip of the spear because when i was the tip of the spear i was 10 feet tall and bulletproof and you know what i never expected to live past 50. i never expected to live past 30 and i figured i'm going to go down the blaze of glory but i'm going to do righteous and i'm going to serve my country and i'm going to get the bad guys i'm going to save the innocents as a leader my calculus was always this i'm not thinking about it from the perspective of the number one guy because i was that kid one day i'm thinking about it from the perspective of his wife his mother his children that was the calculus how do i now go because it's my responsibility as a leader you know it's you know we we as officers in the military or as swat team leaders or police chiefs in in law enforcement our job is to go to the widow and explain i sent your loved one into harm's way i did the best i could for them and he or she died serving their country valiantly but that's a tough thing to do if i did something reckless or i wasn't 100 certain that i gave my folks not 100 chance of victory but the best chance to succeed because there are some missions that you know you're going to be asked to do something where you're like wow it's a military that's a suicide mission or hold this post at all costs and in law enforcement go get that bad guy go shut it down go save that hostage and you know you're gonna take casualties in it are you okay with the plan that you put forward and are you okay with meeting a parent the next day or a spouse a surviving spouse and saying i gave him the best chance to succeed and your your son or daughter gave their life in the service of this country and this nation owes them a debt of gratitude but i don't feel like i could have left anything out that i could have done anything more to make them safe or to give them the best chance to succeed and that's it that's why you've got to be a student of the business and that's why i eat breathe and sleep this stuff because i wanted to know what swat tactics were in the 70s and how they dealt with things out in in ruby ridge or it wounded me i read all that stuff i studied it the same way i did in the military because i didn't want the worst thing you can do is make mistakes that have already happened before and repeat them so i wanted to make sure that i i gave myself the best chance to give my folks a fighting chance so is this is this where you know you're you're a quote that i've heard you say uh a saying that i've read um in in again it may have been an interview or an article you wrote but you said mission first soldiers always yeah right is that what is that what you were just describing there yeah so first of all i like to take credit for a lot of things um but you know i i can't take credit for that quote i know that quote's been around for a long time i don't know who to attribute it to but um essentially that is a conundrum and and to explain to to your viewers the type of conundrum i was a brand new fbi agent you know straight out of the military sent to queens i'd grown up in atlanta georgia so i was lost and i get sent to queens new york and i was on the gambino squad working the john gotti case and my boss calls me in one day and he says kid i need you to go out and follow this mobster today we know he gets up around the crack of noon and we know he goes and he does this and he picks up money here and he drops this off here and he goes here you're gonna go set up on his neighborhood and then you're gonna follow him he's gonna go through the bronx queens and into manhattan today and then back to his home you're gonna follow him but kid here's the caveat don't lose him i gotta get you to get pictures of this guy making this handoff but don't get burned now getting burned in surveillance terms means the guy that you're following goes i got a tail so it was that fine line between wait a minute bumper lock him or don't get made so that's what we call a conundrum and that's the same kind of conundrum that mission first soldiers always is and what does that mean well the mission accomplishing the mission may include casualties it's just a it's a part of the business so whether it's the business of the military or it's the business of law enforcement we go into harm's way we know that our job as in the military our job is to go take that hill or capture that high value target or defeat that battalion that's your job and in law enforcement your job is going to be to be that sheep dog that thin blue line to to be that thin blue line between the rabble and the bad people and and innocent people so what does that mean well it means that you're going to accomplish the mission but you're going to take care of your people but what if taking care of your people means putting them in harm's way well that's part of the business so it is a conundrum accomplish the mission always take care of your people but taking care of your people doesn't mean being a patsy right doesn't mean that you're going to let them walk all over you because soldiers and cops they sense weakness in leaders like you wouldn't believe they're like piranhas so if you're weak they will chew you up and spit you out you cannot do that so you've got to look out after them you've got to take care of them but when the mission is what the mission is you've got to again i go back to the same thing i just said in the last segment you've got to give them the best chance to succeed but accomplish the mission there is no there's no coming back go take that hill literally or metaphorically right but always take care of your people and you can do both taking care of your people does not mean that if you're in a dangerous business you can protect them from any harm it's not realistic lawrence because it doesn't happen that way this is it's not a hollywood movie this is reality but you can do that as long as you give them the best chance to succeed that means being technically tactically proficient and that means knowing each and every one of your soldiers or your cops and what does that mean that means knowing their strengths and weaknesses every one of us me included you included we got good traits and we've got weaknesses right so as a leader your job is to identify what the strong suits are for each of your people and put them in the best position to succeed conversely your job is to recognize the weaknesses in every member of your team and not put them in a position to fail does that make sense it may it makes sense once again we got you know we got ourselves you know threading the needle right so much of this so much of this is threading the needle being a great whether it's being a great leader um or whether it's you know again in extremist scenarios like you describe when lives are on the line it's so different it's so different than in business and it's it you know it's kind of why i always go back to speaking with tier one operators guys that have done what you've done hrt swat because the lessons that you learn from having done things on the razor's edge of life and death make make business where you know life isn't on the line but there are goals to achieve i mean you it's like a hot knife going through butter when you take the skills you have and and you can train someone in business hey here's how we need to look at leadership um because if you can succeed in life and death and thread that needle man all day long that's why and you know i was i was i was interviewing a guy uh who just wrote this uh this amazing book the talent war uh mike cirelli uh another navy seal and you know he talks about you know the books about how you know house how special operations have mastered the art of winning the talent war because the best of the best somehow the cream of the crop ends up in those tier one units but how do you get tier how do you get those tier one people into those units and how do you assess them how do you select them but you know once you're once you're once you're a tier one unit like hrt everyone wants in everyone wants in right no and you got a good chance of getting you know putting your life on the line yet people are beating down the door to come in so um you know i think there's a lot to be learned from what it is you've done what a lot of special operators tier one operators have done that can translate to business like your three c's let's get into the three c's of leadership all right this is a i this is a jimmy galliano special what are so i've read your article the three c's of leadership can you talk to our audience about what the three c's are and kind of describe why each one is so important you do your homework don't you i'm like i'm like holy cow you're like jimmy we're just going to get together we have a chat on leadership i'm like holy cow this guy has done his homework yes i um you know i uh i i wrote an article for um for ceo magazine and and kind of to your point lawrence um you know people say all the time like well jimmy you know what's the connection between you know what the navy seals do or what fbi hrt does or or what you know special operators do how do you translate that into you know the boardroom because look we're bean counters you know we're not charging up a hill and i said this i said first of all and i don't blow smoke up anybody's ass you know i call it as i see it but business is the economic driver in this country in this economy it is an economic driver what you do right you say well you know my job is to it's just is it create profits sure but if you create profits you feed yourself and your family and you feed the people who work for you themselves and their families and if you do really well you expand and you feed more people's families and then you expand and you feed more people's family so don't sell short what you do i get it you're not drawing your sword and you know going forward and lopping off heads and that's okay not everybody does that but the bottom line is don't sell yourself short on what you do and and what you add to the mix and so you know you talk about the the c's and and and i was always i was always caught up in in in seas because i looked at it and i said man there's like so many of these words you know character and charisma competence and and really the number one see that you know the reason why i wrote that article was about communication right because we're we're in a tough stage right here you're in the podcast business so you do this more than i do before covid i would have told you nope i ain't doing this where are you i'll come sit in studio with you we'll sit across from each other because i use my hands i like to read you i want you to read me right let's get an audience let's do it let's let's let's really do this because i am a people person and doing this through a flat two-dimensional media medium you're seeing me in a little you know thumbnail i'm seeing you in a little thumbnail it's not our usual means to communicate and so communication was something that i really really really started to look at shortly after i got in the army because i found out that you know there's ways you can tell somebody to go to hell and they'll hate you and there's ways you can tell somebody to go to hell and they'll say all right sir i'll pack a lunch and i'll be back what are we gonna do tomorrow but you said the same thing you said the same thing and so communication became a thing where i was like wow the way that i frame something whether it's a conversation with my wife and you know how wives can be where they read into everything and well what did you mean by v i don't know it's a determinant v t h e what do you mean what did i mean but i recognize that words matter and that the way that you communicate matters and and i learned that 55 of what you and i are doing right now even though you don't realize it is nothing to do with what we're talking about is nothing to do about how we raise our voices or lower our voices and inflection it's body language you're nodding your head and i said he heard me and he concurred right so i raised my hand i do this you're like wow he's really passionate about that that's 55 of human communication 38 is tone inflection how you leave a word off or a sentence and seven percent are the stupid words that i use to make myself seem much smarter than i really am think about that 55 38 7 55 is physical 38 is tonal right seven percent are the actual words and so when i started thinking about that and i'm like wow that's really neat because you know in law enforcement i mean you know polygraph examinations were huge to us not necessarily that we were going to use them in court because they're they're not admissible in a court of law right but the threat of using them and what they would do to people whether they'd agree to take one or not take one you know it's i i always say it goes back to that old seinfeld thing you do you remember when in the one seinfeld episode where you know george costanza comes in and he looks at jared he goes jerry it's not a lie if you believe it and that was so in indicia of of the guys that i would deal with whether they were mobsters or gang bangers or white collar criminals it was trying to sort out the sociopath and the psychopath from normal people because the vast majority of us have a conscience right we understand right from wrong and that's why if i put you on the box right now and i asked you questions that you didn't want to answer truthfully you'd start sweating profusely your fingers would get clammy your heart would start pounding all these physiological changes would happen because you're a normal human being and you have a conscience but some people don't but that some people is a small infinitesimal percentage of people and so what i try to deal with is people like me and you where i go i recognize the value and i recognize how important communication is because like i the example i used about go to hell i can tell that to you in in in two different ways and like i said one way you hate me you never want to talk to me you think i'm the biggest a-hole in the world the other way you're like i got you jimmy i'm on my way and i'll be back tomorrow and let's figure this thing back out it's how you do it and i realized what a powerful tool that's not an inextremist tool that's not a tool that's just part and parcel of special ops that's not part and parcel of the military that's not part and parcel of law enforcement that's human communication and i realize that of all the seas that's the most important how you communicate and i've got my differences with james comey and i know that your podcast is not political so i'll leave it like this because i served under four of the only eight fbi directors in the bureau's 112 year history right right because because jared hoover served for 48 years so no one's gonna ever you know have that have that run again but the last one i served under was james comey and before james comey was fbi director he was the deputy attorney general during the bush 43 administration and at that time chris christie who we all know now is a you know former republican presidential candidate and the former governor of new jersey but at the time this is back in probably 2003 at the time chris christie was the uh u.s attorney for the state of new jersey okay so he traveled down to dc and he was at maine justice the department of justice the main building down there right near the fbi or the fbi headquarters and right down from the white house maine justice he's down there and it's a friday afternoon and he sees jim comey who's the number two at the department of justice at the time the the deputy attorney general he sees comey come walking out real quick he's got a a briefcase in his hand he's got his you know his london fog jacket or on his arm because it's pouring rain outside five o'clock on a friday afternoon chris christie sees him says hey jim where are you going it's friday afternoon in dc traffic is crazy it's pouring rain right now where are you going you're going to be stuck in traffic he said chris i'm flying up to new york he goes new york i know you got family in connecticut but why are you going to new york on a friday afternoon and jim comey says i'm going to have a sit down with the new york times editorial board chris christie looks around and goes are you out of your mind the new york times editorial board you realize they hate the administration they hate the department of justice they've been exceedingly you know uh just their their their editorial board is like it's a it's a pit of vipers it's a it's a it's a den of of wolves why would you go there personally and sit down with them and jim comey says well they sent me some questions they want me to ask answer and and chris christie goes so send him an email answer the questions be done with it go home to your family right jim comey says nope i'm going to fly up there and i'm going to sit down with them tomorrow on a saturday morning i'm going to go over the questions that they want to ask you know why chris because it's impossible to hate up close sorry say that again he said i'm going to go up there and i'm going to sit down with the new york times editorial board i'm going to listen to their questions i'm going to answer them personally and you know why i'm going to do it face to face because it's impossible to hate up close and i came away with that and again i say this as a guy who's been a harsh homie critic i say that because wow think about that where does most of the hate and most of the descent and most of the acrimony where does it exist it exists online and it exists in the flat two-dimensional medium here and why did i give that long wind-up because it goes back to communication when you're a boss and you say all right you know what i run a big company i'm running ge and i've got i've got an office in new canaan connecticut and i've got an office in new delhi india i can't get everywhere but i've got to do some layoffs so i'm sending my pink slips out uh mrs mcgillicuddy just go ahead and email them out well no there are things that need to be done face to face or in the covid world that we're dealing with right now there are things that need to be done like we're doing right now they need to be done on if it's classified secure video teleconference but it needs to be done like this and this is what communication is about because if you read something if you look at a text or an email or you read it in the wall street times or the new york times it's flat two-dimensional it is easy to misinterpret and it is easy to hate the other guy but when you deal this way man it doesn't matter what our religions are our sexual persuasions our ethnicities our genders doesn't matter any of that stuff we all cut and believe the same we got to deal with each other as humans so that's why of the three c's communication is the most important and i know i spent all the time talking about that because character and competence are equally important if you don't you know if if you're not if your word isn't bond if what you say isn't what you're about um you know i remember one of my first first sergeants in the army telling me hey sir you can [ __ ] me you'll never be able to [ __ ] that 17 year old private and he was right because you know people with fancy degrees like us we can [ __ ] each other but when you're dealing with a 17 year old kid they cut right through it sir tell me what i need to know don't [ __ ] me they cut right through it and that was a huge lesson for me so those are the three c's the other two are equally important right communication is the most important you know what you said there a lot of powerful stuff um especially your anecdote about jim comey who you know again i've read i've read what you've written i've read your harsh criticisms so for you to say that is something but when you went into talking about how you know that relates to so much of the hatred is fomented these days from being behind the computer screen typing away on uh social media where no one has to see each other and you're trolling and you're you know and you're just you're spewing out all the hate you said when leadership failures occur root cause analysis can often lead directly back to a lack of communication or misunderstanding of the commander's intent and so when the you know so when you're behind the you know the keyboard and you're sending out your pink slips or you're the leader who's just firing off email after email giving directions to people that way what's the intent because emails a lot of times they don't convey what what the you know what the actual meaning of the the tone that you would use or the body language you know it's like you said you could say the same thing two different ways go to hell right can have two different meanings the way it's said so you know this thing about intent and how things use you know what you said was when when leadership failures occur the root cause a lot of the times is that there was a misunderstanding commander's intent was not understood 100 right and let me just follow up on one thing in regards to the james comey thing um and you're right and i know you're being polite because you're going you've been kind of harshly critical and so it was it was different to hear you say that because lawrence we're all complex human beings none of us are perfect i have my differences with former director comey about some of the things he's done but i've always maintained i don't think he's the devil incarnate i think he's a decent human being who who made some mistakes and there but for the grace of god go i and you know james comey did have to deal with the 500-year flood with everything that happened in 2016. so i've been harshly critical but i also look at things and say we're all redeemable good human beings at heart and that was something that i learned from james comey and i use that in all my leadership talks and people raise their hand in the back from ibm and they'll go well didn't you write this about james comey i'm like yeah i did but guess what he also is the guy in that vignette that i also just told you about and i respect that so good people can do bad things or good people can make poor decisions trust me i've made a few in my life so that's that that's the first thing then the second thing is going back to what you just said in regards to to to the communication piece and just feeling that it is such an invaluable tool and it's not just in the inextreme of situations but it is in everyday life we are in a place right now i mean we started this off where you mentioned hey the climate right now look the country is riven it is riven in half right right so it's it's 50 50. and one side you know thinks the other is evil the other side thinks the other's evil and you got all that going on the vast majority of us so we got in a room together and talked to each other and whatever we'd get past all that because the that's the communication piece in in this whole thing i just think that that that going forward as leaders you know and it's one of the things that i really and again i i don't i don't want to harp on my political career because my my political career is you know a elected village trustee in a village of 3 000 people so i'm i'm not going to get crazy i didn't get 71 million votes so you know i'm not going to get crazy but one of the big things and i'm going to look up here because it's you know as as one of the things when i we had a recent board meeting and i talked about things are important to me leadership vision and collaboration and you know we're talking about leadership tonight and and how i go to get there and and how i view it because everybody has a different way to skin the cat but the last part of that is collaboration and you can't get there without collaboration today if you think you can do it alone um you may be the smartest guy in the room it doesn't matter if you can't get people to say he or she is on point and i'm going to follow that person doesn't matter how smart you are it doesn't matter how big your muscles are doesn't matter how much money you have if you can't engender collaboration where people say i'm going to work with that person or i'm going to i'm going to get involved in that cause or i'm going to follow that person all the all the you know soliloquies that are you know the that are rife with molyphilis stylings and dulcet tones and none of that matters because if you can't get people to buy in and if you can't get people to buy in under the notion that it is a collaborative effort remember i used to always say to my swat guys you know if as leaders you know if we succeed you did it if we fail i got to figure out what i did wrong and fix it and when you go into it and you just don't do that as platitudes and bromides you don't just hey i think i'm supposed to say this because i'm a leader and in the book that i read it says leaders do this but if you really believe that that if we succeed it's the team if we fail i got to go back to the drawing board because i'm the guy or the gal who's putting this whole thing together if you if you live your life that way as a leader you'll succeed wow i think that's a great note to kind of wind this down because um you know that kind of that that kind of just wraps this whole thing up brings it full circle and it's another freaking c collaboration you love the seas jimmy what's going on you see um you know one last question before i let you go and thanks so much for you know spending the time with us um you've got i know because you've told me thousands of books oh look at that this is he he wanted to make a starring role so he just popped in well you know i love pit bulls um i i've had i had a oh an old family red red nose pit bull yes yeah that that i raised from a pup um i've had a uh uh english staffordshire terror which is like the british version yep yep and now i'm in the market to rescue um you know a pit so i i hope you do and there's plenty of places online and i'm gonna make i'm gonna make a a shameless shill right here real quick before your last question which is going to be to adopt don't shop to your listeners and viewers that if you do get an opportunity go rescue a dog no matter what breed you want if you're patient that's that's the key thing you have to be patient but there's a rescue organization that can find you the dog you want and the pit bulls are the most misunderstood breed um it's i'd never owned another another breed they're the absolute best and i hope you get another one because i i've never owned a dog that was more loving and more loyal they truly truly are so absolutely completely misunderstood you know a lot of people they're the you know and i you know i read a ton of book you know i read a ton of books on pitbulls and you know there's there's a famous guy richard stratton who wrote you know some books on breeding pit bulls and their history um but what they ended up doing you know a lot of people think you know the the fighting aspect of what they used to do with pit bulls when when it was you know legal um many years ago um by breeding them to to fight what they ended up doing is yes they ended up breeding these incredibly powerful dogs that are very you know obviously misused in the wrong way you know can can be very very uh dangerous but at the same time by in by breeding them to fight they would have to the the owners would have to get in the pit with these dogs and break them apart because they didn't fight to the death they didn't fight to the death right and so they would actually have rounds and they would have to separate the dogs if they ended up breeding a dog that bit them when they were trying to separate the dogs the dog would take their arm off so they never bred what they called man-biters and they ended up instilling in this breed the type of dog that adores human beings loves loves kids loves people wants to be around them just turns to mush in front of people obviously with other dogs you know potentially they're not so great but with humans they're amazing animals and they're so misunderstood the most disgusting thing in the world is when you take those dogs and you abuse them and you turn them against people and you fight them which obviously is a brutal thing that that is completely horrible that you shouldn't do but an a a good unintended consequence of their roots was that they created the most loving dog to mankind that was ever created but people don't understand that so i have a soft spot for pit bulls as well i'm passionate about them and i'm rescuing another one for sure good well you know it's one of those things too where you know it's like we humans you know we do such awful things you know we're the ones that created the breed and then once we created the breed we created them to fight and then once we create the breed we go oh no we don't want them around anymore now we got to destroy them and and i always say all the time to to people that ask me about it um are guns bad no in the right hands of a responsible owner guns are a tool and i think that i believe in the second amendment and i believe that in the right hands they are a part of our life and our culture are pit bulls bad no in the wrong hands somebody that shouldn't own them absolutely in the right hands there i've got a 10 year old i trust the dog around her it's he's a he's a pushover my children grew up with my with my pitbull bouncing on the dog's head poking his eyes torturing them and the dog just takes it i know you got to go so what is your last question i took you down a rabbit hole you took me down a pit bull rabbit hole i took you down a pit bull hole but uh what's your last question jesus christ um okay my last question is this i know you have a massive library of books yes thousands which you keep threatening to give away yes but you haven't given them away yet so not one what i want what i want to know is this recommend some some goodly what would be your recommendation when it comes to leadership books now here's the difference you're a leader you're a leader right and so a lot of people who aren't leaders recommend leadership books but i'd love to hear from someone uh who has a library and who definitely studies so now you're now your your viewers are going to think that you teed me up here and that uh definitely did not you did not but uh the the the timing is very fortuitous so um i just recently got asked to write a chapter in really what i believe is one of these seminal leadership books about what we have talked about tonight for a friend of mine who is the editor it's a guy by the name of dr patrick sweeney west point class of 82 i was 87 so we didn't cross paths but he's retired from the military retired as a full colonel and i'm gonna show you the first edition of this book which was published in 2011. it has been reprinted a gazillion times you can find it on amazon i don't get a nickel from it so i'm not chilling that way um you can find it on amazon and it is done amazing they're doing another edition i am going to write a chapter in it and the name of the book is leadership in dangerous situations wow and it is a handbook for the armed forces emergency services and first responders and lawrence for your listeners this is the bible and again i'm not in this book i'll be in the second edition so i don't get a nickel from this i'm just saying i ordered this book i'd seen it before and when i was asked to write a chapter in the next book that's probably going to be out next summer when i was asked for a chapter i said absolutely and i went back and pulled this up but when you say what would be a great book to read if you're a junior officer a young cop a young firefighter a young emergency service worker and you want to know about inextremist leadership and about how to lead from how to lead from every perspective from the strategic from this tactical this is the book amazing amazing i it's so it i so didn't tee this up for you you did not serendipity yes but that that is the book and again for folks that want to know leadership in dangerous situations a handbook for the armed forces emergency services and first responders you will not regret it i literally i read it years ago i went out and bought another copy because i had to start writing my chapter for the next edition and i was blown away by how much i thought i knew that i didn't know wow you know um that's phenomenal what i'd love about your recommendation is i've never heard of this book it's so that's fantastic um thanks so much for uh for giving that uh that tip to us absolutely i'm i'm definitely buying that book um i'm i guess i'll get the one without because now i've got to get it so i'm going to get it uh but that's phenomenal thank you so much jimmy it's been great having you on the show once again giving us some insight into the the heart of what it is that you personally have not only experienced and been involved with but that you coach and train others on not in as you say platitudes and bromides you know you speak from the heart you've you've been at the coal face you've been on the razor's edge and you tell it like it is and it's so refreshing to hear lead down to earth real leadership lessons that we can all apply um i i absolutely love the communication uh advice and how important that is so uh thank you so much for being on the show jimmy great great having you appreciate you having me back and uh what a great conversation and what a great topic i mean we could go on for hours and hours and i appreciate you having me back because um when you told me i think we could do a whole episode on that and i'm like yeah we could probably barely scratch the surface so thanks for having me asked all the right questions and and i hope your listeners or your viewers take something away from this uh absolutely and uh where can our viewers find you again so you can find me on twitter at james a i a galliano g-a-g-l-i-a-n-o um or you can find me at my website which is james a galliano.com so um you know and i write op-eds you'll see me that there you'll see me on cnn but uh you'll definitely see me here on the alpha human podcast so thanks for having me brother wonderful thanks a lot jimmy take care

Channel: Lawrence Rosenberg

Views: 203

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: SWAT, FBI, James Gagliano, Hostage Rescue, HRT, Counterterror, Organized Crime, Leadership, Podcast, Crisis Leadership, Leadership Skills, Leadership Training

Id: 9qQzmo9sR6U

Length: 93min 0sec (5580 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020