Jocko Podcast 206 w/ Dick Thompson - The Stress Effect. Why Good Leaders Make Dumb Decisions

this is Jocko podcast number 206 with echo Charles and me Jocko Willing good evening echo good evening and back for a third time is Henry dick Thompson I have to throw Henry in there just to make sure when people look for your book they'll be able to find it right so dick Thompson SOG warrior was on podcast 203 and 204 if you haven't listened to those just go and listen them immediately and you'll realize the magnitude of the fact that this individual is sitting here alive talking to me is just an absolute miracle so go listen to 203 204 where you can hear about dicks experiences as a SOG team leader and team member in Vietnam where we left off was home from Vietnam and now checking in as a ranger instructor which for you was a great deal because you were going to have the opportunity to take the lessons you had learned teach them to the Rangers and also hone them for your own experience because you figured you were eight months away from going back to Vietnam yes so this is my opportunity to get ready and so I could be more focused next time and I could do a better job now when you said eight months what is it what was that based on what was that when you say I was probably going back over to eight months what was that based on at that time that was about to turn around right you come back from Vietnam they and give you a little time to recover and you know eight months or so you're gonna get orders to go back again and you're now did you make captain yet or you still yeah I don't I can't so now you made captain and the you must be looking around at the guys that you deployed with and that you knew I mean you must be missing a lot of guys now I mean wounded killed or missing in action this has got to be just a tremendous number for you when I when I look at the ones that that I knew that I consider teammates I mean we did things together we knew each other I have a list that I run for 35 names those are just the ones that I considered you know my personal friends and teammates now at CNN we lost a lot more people in that I just I didn't know him very well but just the time I was there you know I got 35 names and I run for him and you got to have that in your back your mind when you're training these young Rangers you know what they're getting into even if it's not SOG you know you want to prepare them to the best of your ability for what they're gonna face yeah because I knew at that time I mean that's they were going to Vietnam I mean there was no no doubts especially they made it through the Ranger school I mean they were going so the question for me was in addition to the personal things that I wanted to do like you know improve my skills what could I do for these guys to help them have a higher chance of surviving once they get there so I kind of made that my mission so you've got you got the normal instruction from a Ranger instructor plus then I added other things on it and I said you got to do this learn how to do this this is how you talk this is how you lead so they got a lot of extra coaching and training whenever I'd load their group and I just I felt responsible yeah to do that what were some of the leadership principles that you focused on teaching the young Rangers some of it was you know you got to be accountable these are your guys you got to be accountable you've got to take a responsibility if you're gonna lead them you got to make sure you know what you're doing you got to be physically fit you got to be mentally fit you need to know the tactics techniques you need to enforce them you need encourage them and you need to build a team you need to take care of them you need to know everybody on your team if you've got a platoon you need to know everybody in the patan and at at that time the army used to issue a little green notebook pocket-sized notebook hardback that you put in your pocket and you know every time you need to have you people in here you know in peacetime you need to know who they are know something about them so you can relate to them when they're having problems and how to train them you know the best you know what their weak areas are how you can build them up because you're accountable for them they're your people and you're the guy that's the leader you need to be the first one out there and you know you know for me I'm not going to ask you to do something I won't do I'm not going to go to you and say hop out the door the airplane here if I'm not going to do it you know I I tend to to do more of follow me you know I'm going out there I'm going to do it too and I'm gonna set the example for you this is how I want you to do it and so trying to get that through to them and trying to get through in terms of think of yourself as a professional think about your medical doctor every day you should be reading learning studying and getting better every technique that you know you should be trying to improve it every day is about practice whatever it is that you're doing ask yourself is there somebody else better than you then you need to be practicing you know you've got to get as good as the best because you want to be that person and you don't get there by just wishing hoping you kind of get out and take the action some of the things that you're going to be doing particularly if we if we think Ranger Special Forces seal all that stuff's of mindset some mindset you've got to think like you can be in the greatest physical condition in the world but if you don't have the mindset you can't do it and you guys are the party seeing here in Rangers go how many of your buddies have already dropped out now when I went through Ranger School we started out with 248 people when we finished we had 175 actually make it to the end of the course 75 others got a range of dead rest of them didn't so there are only 75 Rangers you know produced and it was mindset it wasn't it they were bigger stronger faster they had the mental capacity to keep going on one meal a day three hours of sleep at night keep pushing and still be able to think cognitively enough to put together a good tactical plan communicate that plan execute that plan and it takes work and you need to be the leader so people follow you so you know why whatever it is that I'm gonna do out there that I expect you to do I want to be doing it to the utmost of my ability if you're going to jump out of an airplane with a rope tied on until you to pull the parachute out I'm going out from 30,000 feet hayloft and that's that's what I do if you have to have a landings on the size of a football field to get into I'll cut it down to a third of that and do it in the dark you know I want you to say it can be done better and if you can beat me more power to you you know because now what you've done is told me I need to practice but you're gonna make them work for it yeah that's a the the part that you said about being a professional and when I talk to young seals or young Marines or soldiers or Airmen sailors whoever you know I always say I would say you're a professional and then I told this is your life this right here is your life that everything else is secondary to what you're doing right here and you need to study you need to learn you need to read you need to practice you need to rehearse and you need to do that all the time because you're never gonna be good enough and you need to make this right here your life you got a couple other notes in here one of them just says Staff Sergeant Shelly what's that all about when I when I went through Ranger School in the mountain phase there was a African American Ranger instructor there called sergeant Shelly hardcore hardcore dude rarely did he pass anyone on Patrol and I had him he graded me one time when I passed when I came back from Vietnam and went to the Ranger Department I ended up in the mountains he ended up on my team so now I've got the famous sergeant Shelly on my team I thought man is it's cool we we go on a patrol where I'm grading the patina leader he's growing grading the patina sergeant it's 18 degrees outside Shelly shows up she got his fatigue shirt on but he's got his sleeves rolled up I said where's your Parker I don't have a part where are your gloves I don't need clothes it's 18 degrees they said okay I'm fine hard dude and then we were out on patrol the snow is almost knee-deep went dragging the Rangers through it they're tired too cold and you know so I called an expert role leader next person who's going to take over the patina and I say all right Ranger take out your mouth and I want you to show me ten digit coordinates to where we're standing right now that you got to know where you're starting from and he kind of looks at me and I said take your map out I don't have them out sir why don't you have a map he said well sergeant Shelly took my map when we stopped back there and we had go ahead man because of the guy getting the frostbite he took my mouth we didn't go past sergeant celli to give you your mouth back tell them you need it I can't do that that's why not so sir he built the fire with my mouth I said okay then you need to find somebody here that's gonna loan your mouth and you're gonna be the patrol leader you got to have a map back then I you could do a lot of things that you know you can't do now sergeant Shelley would take onions cut them in half rub them all over him he would eat garlic he would take in some Kentucky Fried Chicken with him in the bag and so when it was dark and the Ranger students you only had to feed them once every three days back then they forgot to call her and resupplies they didn't get any further or if they call them for resupplies and they didn't ask for food they just got ammunition so they were always hungry and you get under a poncho at night I'm sorry Shelly would say all right can you show me show me where we are on the map and the Ranger would start to point out where he worked and nobody under the poncho can breathe Shelly smells so bad you did second her breath their eyes are watering and the guy starts to point to where the Orlan mouth and he drops his chicken leg on his finger he said don't you touch my chicken leg don't you dare lick your finger now show me where you are I mean he do things like that moving to a model town and he was he was very good but he was very hard and then as I started to develop a similar reputation they would hear about it at Fort Benning and when they got to the mountain face and Shelley and I would walk in to take over the patrol for the next 24 hours then we didn't reduce ourself you could see the looks on their face no one's bad enough we got both of them at the same time no one's going to pass yeah that I mean Shelley was super guy they're really smart and got another name down here Bob Howard Bob Howard Medal of Honor winner to use SOG down at Conn tune wounded's like 13 times eight Purple Hearts he was a he was a tough guy and he came up and flew a visual recon with us one one time and you know I had already heard some things about him and I thought man I'm kind of nervous about getting in a helicopter with him because I mean he did draw his boards I mean you know I I'm sure he's gonna save most of us but you know it might not be one he's a hard dude and then he came through the Ranger School when I was an instructor and saw like Tommy already he came through Ranger School yeah starting years old he came back from SOG and it was coming through Ranger school you know and I ended up grading him you know sign you I mean he did a great job but he was he was a hard dude and then we went to the infantry officer advanced course he was the the company commander of my class you know so we were there for a year together like that you know he didn't believe in foul language you gonna clean your language up if you were in his organization did a lot of things he you know he was promoted to captain and retired as a full colonel randa airborne school for a while did all kinds of things you know he in 11 months he was put in for the Medal of Honor three times got it got it once I got you know D F C's for the other a warrior at one time he was I think he was the most decorated person on active duty and then you know after him I have to you've got cancer and passed away and then I think barge well kind of took over as a loves decorating for a while were so hardcore sod guy so at what point did you decide this is gonna be your career have you already decided that are you still thinking well I'll do another tour Vietnam or nah man you know during the time I got through a sock I mean now what would I do if I got out ya know but I want to go do some other things in the in the interim I'll do the Ranger stuff to get ready to come back I'll do another tour here and then figure out you know where I go from you know SOG and so now so now it's 1970 alright and are you seeing the war wind down yet or not really it's still still going pretty strong from where I am what I'm seeing so I'm still expecting to get orders anytime and you know that happened but before that happened unless the I got a call from dick meadows one day and he said this is me I can't tell you anything except you're gonna get orders and you really want to do this I need you click so then I got orders to go somewhere on temporary duty another guy in the Ranger department got it and medicine was in the Ranger Department at the time and then he's already been moved out on temporary duty for some reason and then two more of us get orders like that you know the Ranger department my commander said what's going on somebody better tell me what's going on and you started raising so much you know disturbance about not knowing what was going on that they cancelled our orders mining the other guy because the security they did they didn't want people asking questions about something might be going on so several months later it that was raid into North Vietnam into Sante to to the powa aunt so you know I had been picked for that and you know just didn't get to go unbelievable mission probably one of the most successful missions we've ever had except know no prisoners right they had just been moved but the training the knowledge and stuff that came out of that and the way those guys trained you know having to build the PIO Debbie can't every night in the darkness so they could practice on it because the daytime the Russian satellites could see it so you hit the time all of that stuff and then talking about practice once they figured out how they were going to do the mission they practiced the mission over a hundred and seventy times and it took a long time to do a mission so as most of the night and they were just everyday every night they'd go practice that mission and you know training during the day with their skills everybody knew their job I mean one of the guys when they landed in the compound one of the guys job was to take out a guard tower and helicopter was going to land and he had a certain number of steps to run to to get down behind a big tree that was there and used that as cover while he took out the guard tower helicopter lands he runs over gets down kneels down starts firing taking out the the guards up there and then something says hey dude there's no tree here where's your tree and look he's been cut down but he was right where he was boy if the tree had been there he was in the right place he had rehearsed it so many times and all the stuff was like that you know he got dig meadows out there doing his thing know anyone then no when when did you get orders to go back but I'd been there about eight months and and I got orders to go back I had actually signed out and was starting to go on leave I was going to get it you know you got 30-day leave before you have to go and then I got orders revoking those orders because at that time to be an instructor in a ranger department you had to have combat experience so and they're running out of people with particularly officers with combat experience because they're getting out yeah so they put an operational hold on myself and I think about three or four other guys that said no you're not going anywhere you're gonna stay right where you are keep doing what you're doing you know so I was already set to go back to go to SOG and if everything set up and then they say no you're gonna remain in place so how long did you end up stand as a ranger instructor a little over three years long time and now you definitely are seeing the war wind down I'm seeing the war winding down I'm seeing the protest I'm seeing a lot of different things now but still very you know proud to be in the military proud to be a ranger Special Forces and whatever so I'm not thinking about getting out now and and you got married sometime around this timeframe that deal was confirmed right after I got orders revoking the trip back to Vietnam so yeah you got confirmed I lightened that yeah no because what I'd said was it would probably be better let me do the tour and when I come back you know think we can get married rather than you know something happening to me and you becoming a widow and all that kind of stuff listed last night do that but you know once my orders were revoked then okay now we can move forward go ahead and do it and then your next tour was went to Korea yes well I went to the Advanced Course down at Benning for a year and went from there to Korea well we do what the engineers class course yeah and that's to prepare you to be a company commander a company commander or yeah really start moving you know toward the next level if you if you're going to get promoted you know you got to go to the Advanced Course you know the nice one you know Bob I was down there there are some other people who saw I knew there and was it interesting to see the the guys like the guys from SOG the guys from Special Forces in there now they're teaching the the company commanders for infantry what kind of what kind of lessons were going back and forth from those two elements you know as you know being there I learned a lot about you know just the mechanized units and things like that you know because I I've never been in one I've been in you know some kind of special ops group I didn't I didn't understand about people outside of Special Ops I didn't understand about someone that you could say okay we got to get this accomplished this afternoon sergeant Jones and this afternoon I go look and it's not done wait how could that happen I mean you tell a special ops guy I mean this needs to be done I mean it was a different mindset different I'm not trying to demean anybody that wasn't Special Ops but it's just that different mindset so getting used to that when I got to Korea I had a head of time I had written a letter to the commanding general I found that I was going a second after division and and he was prouder yourself so I had written a letter to him and said you know I'm coming I want to command a company but I want to command arrange your company I think a second after division could benefit from a provisional Ranger company so what I'd like to do is take over a company and let me convert it and you know if anything happens with North Korea I'm out here you know you put us on there first I mean we'll go do it it created a lot of controversy with the staff and other people found out that I had written the commanding general a letter in fact in the battalion that I was assigned to there was a couple of weeks there before I got to take over the company the battalion commander brought me in you know right off the bat and he said let me tell you something Thompson you've never been in a real army unit you won't last a month you'll be relieved your command within a month you're a snake eater you don't know how we do things and you're not gonna survive here and I'm sorry that I'm not going to be here to see it but you know I'm leaving Korea in about a week or so but my replacement will see you and I thought my motivational way to greet the new guy coming in anyway a company called Bucky Bravo it became my company and within a few days so we painted the wall of the building you know black and gold it became Bravo Rangers and we we had a game there there's a called combat football you had 40 people on the field from each team with two balls and play at the time and you had so it's 40 people per side yeah so then you had you had ten substitutes that you could use so I before what I took over I went down and when I got a new first sergeant he and I came in at the same time so I said let's go down and watch them play this combat football game see what's going on so we go down Bravo Company couldn't get enough people on the field to play the they had to forfeit the game because nobody would go out there so you know I have a dozen people and I'm thinking what why are they not going out there I told tell the first side guys at the top when we take over things are going to change around here this company is gonna see the world differently so once we took over we had a combat football game a couple of days later so took the company down to the field and they're all standing there and I walked out onto the field and I faced them and I said okay I'm number one top where are you First Sergeant went running out and I said okay top you number two we're my lieutenants lieutenants get out of here okay now we got some more players where the NCO why are there no NCOs out here all the NCOs get on the field okay top figure out how many spaces we have left in case some of the troops I want to play home they were all out on the field wanting to play and I said man if all the officers and NCOs are gonna play it's like we were talking about before I'm not gonna put you out on a game like that well you could break your leg or something if I'm afraid to go out here you know if that's leadership you get out there follow me I'll show you how to do it I might not be the best player on the field but I might give it my best won the division championship twice yeah how did how did to two parts when you took over bunky Bravo means I'm imagining is a pretty slack attitude for them and you know sometimes people get the impression oh well when you come in like that you got to drop the hammer on everyone how did you balance dropping the hammer to everyone creating a distance between you and them and actually you know and you just described one way that you did it which is hey I'm gonna be the first one out here somebody will lead from the front there any other techniques as a leader that you utilize to turn that to turn the the the folks that forfeited matches to the folks that win the championships two times there were several things that happen as you can imagine with bunky Bravo there was a lot of drug uses particularly marijuana so I was walking through the company area about a week before I took over and I was walking about the barracks and I was the window was open and I was listening and they were talking about this new guy coming in his company commander and they were talking about you know we have to get rid of him and they were talking to a Korean guy and they were talking about what's it gonna cost us to have something happen to him so I hear that for a little bit and then all of a sudden I just kicked the door open and I step in and I said you know we haven't met yet I'm captain Thompson and I'm curious do you have enough money to pay this guy to take me out because if you don't let me alone you some money so he can try to do that but you won't notice you know drugs are gonna be out here everything seems to change around here like that so you get with the program you're in good shape you want to use drugs you're gonna have a real problem and I'll fast forward just a little bit but what I found was you could catch someone with marijuana and as a company commander I could find them I could take their money I could reduce their rank but I know that had no meaning to him so then I thought what are they value the most their free time so you know the guy gets caught marijuana and he comes in and he says how much this gonna cost me sir I said I don't want your money why I said I don't want your money but it's 1,700 you report here to the first sergeant I look out my window you see that big creek right next to the area here yes sir I said you see all those rocks on the creek bank on the other side yes sir I said tomorrow they're gonna be back on this side what you can't do that I says you can I can give you extra duty and that's what's going to happen every night for a while I can give you seven days back to duty and you won't be going to the village and the word spread like wildfire he's in it he's a crazy man you know he doesn't want your money he's got to keep you here look when Brock's back in home so we started to get into drugs out things like that you know we had the combat football I was able to get after helicopters so we could you know they got to play with helicopters they got to learn how to build bridges we put on a demonstration for the president when he came over different things like that and then one of the techniques this won't show up but I just want to give you an example of the power of motivation that's like get in trouble we're company formation and I said all right you guys need to understand you belong to Bravo Rangers you're better than anybody else here you can outperform them you can outrun them you can outdo whatever this is a special company that you belong to and the rest of them don't so when I finish talking I want to see the report to the her sergeant and he's going to issue you a Bravo Ranger card and this card says that you are a member of Bravo Rangers and you need to understand if anyone in this company including myself catches you down in the village and says show me your card and you can't produce it you're going to buy everybody at that table a round of whatever they're drinking and also understand if you lose this thing you have to come to me to get a new one and explain to me how you how you lost it I won't i won't say necessarily on the podcast hear what it says on the back of this card like let you look at the back of they got so excited about those car that was the most valuable thing that they owned in the company well the I'll read one part of it you've never lived until you've almost died and until you fight for it life has a special flavor that only a ranger will ever know Bravo Rangers and then there's some various there's some various special activities that the Bravo Rangers are are capable of executing and they're not all legal I'll say so that's that's outstanding but the power it hasn't happened to me for some time now but in the 90s I mean there's an in Korea in the 70s in the 90s I'd be walking through the air but around an airport and a guy would say hey sir you know I'm you know sergeant Jones or whatever and he'd introduce himself and the next thing out of his mouth was you got your card and he would have his card I mean it was amazing how many people I would run into over the years and one of the first things they would say he got your card I got mine they were still caring these cars that's why it's in here yes first thing they're gonna do is ask me about it so that you know I'm a big I don't know what the right word is but I learned a lot from david hackworth from colonel david hackworth and one of the things that we did was renamed the hopeless battalion in in Vietnam later took over into the hardcore and like when I took over for tasking at Bravo at SEAL team 3 as the tasking the commander I immediately changed the name to task unit bruiser instead same exact idea enough I got a great email recently from a guy that had changed the name of his his he's had a big construction company and that his team changed the name of his team and it like changed the attitude and all of a sudden they started completing projects and just that that little element and there's a portly an important part to it is you can't just change the name and expect like oh now everything's different that's an element of it you have to do the other things you have to say oh we're gonna work hard we're gonna fight hard we're gonna we're gonna win this championship we're gonna we're gonna be the best here you can't just change the name and expect that to happen you're gonna have to do work behind it you know pride comes from pride comes from struggle and an overcoming struggle that's what pride comes from so when people ask me how do you develop pride in a team cool you want to develop pride in a team you make them do hard stuff hard training go through you know even with military units that have battle streamers that's that's the pride that they've carried for the years a hundred years since they did whatever you know thing in World War one or World War two or Korea or Vietnam that's something that that unit achieved and that gives them pride so you can't just change the name and expect oh cool I changed the name now I'm good to go no you need to change the name and then you need to give them something to be proud of which means some kind of struggle to get through some kind of pain to get through that not only does it give them the sense of achievement it also brings them together right because when you that shared suffering that you go through whether it's boot camp or Airborne School or Special Forces selection or a hard training mission all those things what they do is bring you together and the ultimate form of that is is combat you know which is why you can you can go through a be a member of of a guy that was in SOG and you reach out to till you guys never met before and all of a sudden hey yep we'll meet up at some point and you can move forward you guys have that camaraderie because of what that unit achieved and the struggles that you went through so the other question I want to ask is with when it relates going how do you keep that in check at least well from your perspective for you because now all of a sudden you got guys are walking around with a chest bowed out and you start getting professional jealousy from the other company commanders and they're gonna try and make you look bad and they're talking behind your how do you contend with that kind of thing and keeping your guys from becoming arrogant which is a possibility it's a real issue a big issue and it also happens internally so we're out on a range practicing and we are there for a week and all of a sudden the first sergeant says Serge you need to come with me we got a little issue going on out here and there was a little bank that had a road on it and there was a little road you know 30 40 feet below third Platoon was coming down the road first patine was going the other way third Platoon made some little comment the first potential and hey little rocks came down you know it's and you know we had to go break up a rock fight like I say were so popped and yellow yeah you're not better and now you can't call this name you know all right guys these are young people the enemy's outside the wire yeah you can be fired up but yeah and other company commanders even another battalion commanders were upset because the general I mean I'd been there maybe a week and all of a sudden I mean in command and all of a sudden the siren goes off and the cyrene is deployed to your battle positions and you don't know if it's real or not it's just deploy so I run back down there my you know my headquarters and the first sergeant's there and say okay what's up and he said you know you got a deploy to them the battle positions I think you need to go to the battalion commanders office and find out which battle plan we're implementing don't worry about the company I know we have to be out the front and gate in two hours we'll be there you go find out where we're going and what we're gonna have to do I'll make sure we get everybody here and we load up everything and take it with us so I go get it and I I come back and we we're in the head of whole battalion so we're gonna lead the whole brigade at a camp Hovey to wherever the battle position is and just as we start to move a jeep runs over my radio operators foot breaks his foot throw him in the in the ambulance but we go and and we get you know late at night and we get up on the mountain and the in the area that we're supposed to defend and we have to dig in dig fighting positions and everything it's just getting daylight I got everybody dug in and they were putting in firing mistakes aiming stakes and all that and I hear this what what and a helicopter pops up sets down on a ridge this guy gets out and all I can see other stars on this and he come comes over and you know I'm saluting and he says you know captain Thompson I want to see your fighting positions so he walks around the ridge and we talk about him and he's asking me courts why did you put this in here why is his orange like this he asked the soldiers in the fighting position some questions here and there and you know it takes about 30 minutes and he comes back he gets in his helicopter and he leaves and I said wow I wasn't expecting the division commander to show up all of a sudden it wasn't 20 minutes well here's the helicopter back up there again he gets off his boss a 3-star steps out with him and he comes to me and says I want you to take us around I want you to show him your battle positions so they get in the helicopter and when I was hero I mean he's ranting and raving to the whole division about how great you know probable company looks and all the stuff and a patent of a battalion commander on the back and throwing my name out and then he starts showing up at least once a week at my mess along the division commander walks into my little company met us all to eat breakfast on a regular basis and you know and he talks and we talk about the things I've got the company doing and what I need them to do and you start to share that as you know you get the company again why don't you think the reason commander comes down here does he go to other people's I myself know he's coming to Bravo Company look around you what do you guys do I mean you're Roach's the combat football combat football is his thing he invented it and you guys are animals that there and he loves it and we we won you know best tactical platoon in the contest it was head I call private Jones out and I said look Jones won third place in the division Christmas card drawing contest third place guys had about 10,000 people in the division you got third place I mean it doesn't matter what we do you guys are winners we can do it you know we just keep this up and you know so there's just constantly having things to do and because we won the football championship twice we won the tie Khan Taekwondo championship you know I was a player coach on on our team and we wanted to champion taekwondo championship in the division and just all kinds of things because they were so pumped up and they do whatever you'd format and they it was like they couldn't lose except you know you had to put up with the people who were jealous because they he was down there with us all the time then you know they sent us to they sent us to to be the immediate reaction force for the nuclear sites you had to wrote you had to rotate people three there so you're on thirty minutes notice to deploy to where we were what every nuclear site might be under attack so I walked in and we're looking around and I'm looking at the battle plans and I'm saying you know this this is pretty cool you know I mean maybe they'll activate us and we have to go do something I said you know I would feel better if I could see the live ammunition that we have for their mission well you can't see it it's got sand there in footlocker's the magazines are locked out they have steel bands around them you can't really see it I said get a pair of bolt cutters I want to see it open those boxes up nobody had opened one of those boxes in ten years the magazines were rusty the ammunition wouldn't feed out of it created a major stare when I reported that we needed new ammunition the guys it wasn't functional a few days later I said you know we've got a battle plan here that says we're supposed to fly into this LZ up here in support around this nuclear site I say get a hawk up here get some choppers let's load up the first Platoon I want to make that insertion you couldn't land trees had grown up since that plan was written there was no whales either you know so I reported that and Italian commanders that stomps it back off I'd like to find anything just back up you got me in so much trouble I say it's not trouble I mean what if we had to do something anyway well all those are awesome leadership lessons and then after that you go back to Bragg and emergency deployment readiness exercise evaluation for Special Forces and Rangers so you're like an evaluator at this point yeah so all of the Special Forces and Rangers you know came under the 18th Airborne Corps the division commander from Korea is now the 18th Airborne Corps commander so did he call you out by name and bring you back there he had me brought there to do special projects and things so and one of them was you got to be on the scene I want somebody that knows about special ops that can deploy you know so I would show up at a ranger battalion headquarters at 2 o'clock in the morning and the CQ of a paper classified document that says wheels up in two hours and you know gotta get out of the way because that place was going to come alive and then I would go with them I'd you know be one of the evaluators if they put in a halo team I would jump with the halo team and evaluate them we take them on classified missions sometimes there's a lot of things that you know we would do with them that I just ate up because you know it was all Special Op stuff so I got to do that that was a lot of fun and you know the sniper team came under sniper all that sniper training at Fort Bragg that was under us so I could go out and play with the sniper person yeah she improved my skills and so what are you at this point at this point are you a major are you still no I'm still a captain and then what about the next time that dick meadow has called you up circa 1978 he actually showed up at my house okay one better I I have several people like that that if they call or they showed up at my house and my wife was not happy because she knew they were there from one reason there was something they wanted me to do that she was not going to want me to do so meta shows up I know he's coming you know he pulls up in my driveway I was outside that's all I mean so we go talk and he said I need you said we're putting together a special group I need you to come in and be part of my Kadri to help set this thing up and also evaluate and train the people and be an operator in this group when we get it set up and he said I really can't tell you any more than that Judy go I want I said does it mean right now and you said yeah I said my wife is pregnant with a third child I just sold my house here I just bought a house in Athens Georgia I just got accepted into the doctoral program and University of Georgia and named off a bunch of things like that and I said I can't just stop this process right here and he was not happy and you know his final comment to me was you hung up your guns I said how about hung up my guns I just I need to delay it for about you know two years now I can come back and do anything you want he said no I need you right now and that was the last time we had a face-to-face encounter and the group he was setting up Delta yeah you said that was the last time he ever asked you to go anywhere with him yeah that's crazy now what would it had made you want to go to college and what were you going to study you asked me earlier on about going to OCS and only having a year and a half of college when I left to second Infantry Division as a captain and you know came back to the States I was assured secondaries on promotion yeah I was going to make major way before any other captains in my year group and stuff it was a done deal promotion list came out and I wasn't on which is not bad because many people don't have a few people whenever you get a secondary any but I was not so when I called mill person and DC and said what happened and I said well you know you were not considered why not he said you know first thing we did was that we went through all the records and divided you in the two piles of college degree not a college degree mmm-hmm you don't have a college degree that was that you were not eligible you wouldn't even looked at beyond that so that irritated me you know I said no look at my performance nobody's outperforming me and all this stuff so then eventually I talked to him on it you wasted all your luck staying alive in combat yeah I guess I did you know okay then I'll go to school at night and I'll finish the degree so I did and then once I finished disagree then I I got a call from them saying how would you like to go get a master's degree I said you wouldn't let me get an undergraduate but now you want to send me for a master's that's okay I'm interested in that my plan was why do I want a master's let me find a school that has an ROTC program that I could get a follow-on assignment to you after I finish the master's program so what I do is I enroll in a ph.d program complete the Masters along the way you know I'll have a two-year or more assignment with ROTC I'll be able to finish out the doctorate so the next time you want to ask about education you know I haven't you can call me dr. Masur that's right so here I come like I said before you know if you're gonna do it you do it you practice you do what do you have to do you take the lead and what did you get your decided in psychology so you know I think we talked before about I started out in chemistry and I found myself on the battlefield leading men in combat and I was kind of looking around and thinking I need to learn how to motivate people I need to understand the psychology of motivation the psychology of people if I'm if I'm good nature yeah if I'm gonna be a leader I need to learn about that not chemistry it's that when I went back to school I'm gonna back school in psychology so I could learn how to do that stuff with them and then reality I think I've gone full circle and now I understand is that chemicals and things in your brain just driving all this other stuff if you deal with those a lot you can do but you know I I got to do a lot of things I helped put together the AirLand Battle of 2000 highway we're gonna do war fighting in a 21st century I got to all kind of research on sleep on stress how we gonna fight because we were predicting in the 80s we were predicting the next ground war was going to be a hundred hours straight you know before there was any break so how are you going to keep people awake that long and keep them effective perform the mission how you going to create high-performing leaders high-performing battle staffs high-performing teams what does that mean so I get you go all over the place you know meet really smart people I learn from and and work on projects like that do research like that a lot of which was you know used in some in the falklands because I worked with the British Army staff on and you know the head general at the time there said we're not doing that there's kinda stay away I said they can't stay away not that long so there's some things you have to do but he discovered that in the Falklands you have to do some things to keep them going and then you know the Gulf War the ground face was a hundred hours my brother you know butch a helicopter pilot or patchy palate he didn't get out of the aircraft he would come in to refuel they would feed him you know while the aircraft's rearm and refueling and send him right back out and you know using you know some different things so excuse me keep him away so anyway so then you was it was the command and General Staff College was at your final tour no that was one where you know my luck had run out so when I finished I was going back to to a regular unit and then they realized that I was the only infantry officer in the class that had a PhD and the general right there the Commandant said you're not going anywhere you're staying here to work with me on this airline battle stuff I need somebody that thinks like you do and has the combat experience and everything to work on this with me you know so they kept me there for four years counting the year I was in school and then they called me up and said how would you like to be the professor of military science at the University of Georgia so you go back and I said when you're calling me where's this coming from and I said well actually the university is turning down everybody we sent every applicant to be a professor of military science they're finding a reason not to not to accept him but they can't do that to you you had an ROTC assignment there you've been the XO or the department you got a PhD for masters and PhD from there you know academically you've got everything that same C's name Saul Holly stuff and you said say I have to take you I think okay I'll try that so they took me and I just finished up there because I had started high-performing systems Conley on the side it's just something to play with but it started growing so fast and you know you can't have an engagement with a client and then the general decides I need you at Fort Bragg for a meeting home Monday morning you can't do that that means you can't turn the clients down if you want to keep them so now I'm having a conflict so I decided you know 21 years that's enough get out and go do the company because I've set the company to be able to do the kinds of things I like to do I mean I don't get to shooting people but they don't get shoot at me either it is also nice yeah yeah but at that time outdoor training was a big deal ropes courses are kind of repelled throw in the briar patch I mean I can do that stuff in my sleep and I enjoy doing it you know so we had executives jumping off cliffs and going down rivers and rafts and all of the stuff that played out you know toward the end of the 90s people started saying been there done that I want something different so you know we changed up a little bit yeah so somewhere along the way you wrote you wrote this book the stress effect right which which I read and definitely has some some some really good information in it and I wanted to hit some of the information that you put in there just to kind of give people feel for the book I'm not going to do as much of a detail as well as I would do with with like the document that we read about rest or a cooporation on the last podcast but you know just to give people some feel for what you're what this book contains so I'm coming out of here out of the gate researchers Shelley Kirkpatrick and Edwin Locke state it is unequivocally clear that leaders are not like other people leaders do not have to be great men or women by being intellectual geniuses or omniscient prophets to succeed but they do need to have the right stuff and this stuff is not equally present in all people so this is interesting because you're saying something that a lot of people don't want to hear right which is hey there are certain leadership traits that you may or may not be born with and that's the reality of the situation now I talk about this a lot too and I actually say the same thing and I have this description that I use and saying that you know you're gonna get different capabilities that you have as a human being and what you can do as a leader is if you have an area of weakness if you're smart you'll bring people under your leadership team that complement your areas of weakness but you can only do that if you have the humility to admit that hey I'm not that great at planning or hey I'm not that great at paperwork or hey I'm not that good at talking to the troops whatever areas of weakness you have if you can't admit to them and bring people on your team that can complement that and say hey you know what I'm not great talking the troops dick you know can you get out there and deliver the work yeah got it and that's fine as long as I can admit it but if I won't admit it my egos in the way and even though I'm not good at communicating with the troops I decide I'm the one that has to get up there and do it and I bumble around and and leave them walking away not feeling confident about it that's bad so this this idea right here that we all get you know you're gonna get some qualities but you're gonna be missing some too and so that's something we all have to admit you go here you talk about learned ability which includes job knowledge skills and experience it's critical component of leadership and decision-making selecting a former GE executive just because she was an employee of GE to run a hospital corporation or a publishing company does not make sense just because someone worked for an organization without with outstanding reputation doesn't necessarily mean that individual become will become an outstanding leader who makes outstanding decisions especially if she does not have the learned ability for that role level and industry this is not to say that high-performing leaders can't successfully switch organizations and assume higher roles however it's not a given right important point there I have a company where we place veterans into organizations and a lot of times people think oh well the person has veteran experience so they're gonna be a hundred percent good to go and as much as I would love to say that you can't say that that's why we do a screening process and we actually train them too for that transition but this is the same thing people just because people are from an organization like you know GE has that reputation for their leadership but that doesn't mean that that person is necessarily a good leader and you have to be careful of that and and and this section here I have to say was I found very interesting individual leader complexity find the person who can do the work and so you get new to this topic here simply put leader complexity refers to a leaders a bill need to handle the choir the requirements of his or her job depending on the size and type of an organization a leaders job is often enormous ly complex two factors determine ability to work at a particular level of complexity learned and innate abilities so once again you're talking about innate abilities meaning that people have limitations right and you know my big point to that or my thoughts around that is the people that really have problems aren't the people that don't realize that they have limited that they have limited innate capabilities which means everyone we all have things that were not doing that the people that can't admit that are gonna have real problems now you get into this all leaders have limitations to what they can learn and how far up the leadership ladder they can climb innate ability as it pertains to leadership consists of four major factors cognitive ability emotional intelligence motivation and personality and this is that most this is this is the section that I really was very interested in because I work with a lot of different leaders all the time because I have a consulting company too and we work with leaders all the time so this topic here of cognitive ability cognitive ability is how a leader processes organizes stores and retrieves information thus determining how she creates the world she lives in makes sense of it and acts on it cognitive ability is a key determinant of a leaders ability to be successful at different organizational role levels unlike learned skills cognitive ability is not trainable it is a hardwired ability that unfolds through a natural maturation process across one's lifespan a leaders cognitive ability determines how she approaches problem solving decision making and interpersonal interactions let's look at the general characteristics of cognitive ability going from high to low so now you start talking about the actual person that has high cognitive ability and this interesting and we may have to come back to this one that is not trainable that's an interesting statement because I would think and I've seen people get better at you know simp coming up with simple solutions and dealing with stress so maybe that doesn't follow those things don't fall quite in the category of cognitive ability but here's what you say about the higher the higher leaders cognitive ability is the lower the need for consistency in the information being processed this is a very important thing right I'm going to read it again the higher a leaders cognitive ability level is the lower the need for consistency in the information being processed what that means to me is and this is very very prudent on the battlefield it's like you're not going to get consistent information out there and if that bothers you if you can't wrap your mind around different pieces of information coming in that are contradictory to one another you're gonna have a problem making a decision that's what you're saying right there yes you you need to be able to halt have contradicting thoughts ideas concepts information in your mind both of them at the same time and still function you know and they you know they're opposites of each other but you can still deal with that it's not gonna stop you from moving forward and you'll find a way to use that information to fit in what you're trying to do yeah the the hope that I have in going through this with a little bit of detail is that people recognize this people recognize what are you know I wrote one of the books I wrote is called the dichotomy of leadership and it's it's about this idea that you as a leader are gonna have different forces pulling you in opposite directions and you need to learn how to balance those different opposing forces with just about every trait that we have that's what you need to be able to do so I hope when people hear this that they say to themselves oh I get wrapped around the axle if two different of information or opposing each other this is really important I hope that even though it's not trainable I hope that you can actually when people get recognition of it they can go oh you know what I know what's happening right now I'm hearing two different pieces of information and my tendency is just to want to focus on one or ignore them both but I don't make a decision where I want to need to do is think about how both these things are actually true or possibly true or you go on and this is a great example consider the question do cell phones cause brain cancer you can find as many studies that say it does as it does not at lower cognitive ability levels most people would find the inconsistency in the research confusing their response would be there must be a right answer the low cognitive ability leader may choose to ignore the data altogether or pick the dot data that support her position so there you go classic example Hey look there there's got to be a right answer we need to know what the real deal is when as you know you can Google and right now you can google anything and you can get supporting data for any hypotheses that you have right and if you have low cognitive ability whichever one you think is right that's where you'll pull all that data to back yourself up it says this in contrast the high cognitive ability leader understands that there is no single answer and tends to look at the implications of cell phone use in the organization or how to put in safeguards just in case the phone's do cause cancer she does not let the inconsistency prevent her from making a larger decision in which cell phones play a role so you can still function as you say almost any topic consent contains some level of data inconsistency what financial markets are going to do in the future when the construction industry will rebound which Airlines will survive and whether we need more fa20 to Raptors which is currently the world's most advanced fighter the key is that high cognitive ability leaders rise above the level of inconsistency and make decisions they're not waiting for everything to be perfect and I would just add to that there's a level of cognitive ability that you get to where you realize there is no single right answer for anything therefore any answer that you choose any solution that you choose will have a downside at some point in the future there will be unintended consequences for whatever you choose now so in a lot of cases with the people who can think forward they're looking at which unintended consequences am I willing to accept you know at some point if I have enough time between now and then to begin to put in something that may you know counter their I know they're coming it's gonna happen but I'm gonna make a decision we're gonna move forward this is worse not to make a decision because that's an unintended consequence too so there'll be there'll be an unintended consequences for no action you go on here leaders with lower levels of cognitive ability are constrained by the information they receive infrared information must be consistent for them to make sense of it high cognitive ability leaders by contrast rely on themselves to provide missing information look for more novel information and search across more domains to find information which is interesting search across more domains that means there's a problem over here that's in a certain arena and a haikon group thinker will look at that arena go you know what that's reminds me of this other arena and I can apply this and overlay it to this arena that I'm looking at right now and and further my decision-making process add color to it the greater they show and this is again the high cognitive ability leaders they show greater certainty in judging in consistent information and are more focused on long term strategies then low cognitive ability leaders are the low cognitive ability leaders are looking at the short-term game the leader with high cognitive abilities uses multiple dimensions when processing information these multi-dimensional this multi-dimensional approach creates a high probability that the leader will match some facet of herself with a facet of another person during interpersonal interactions this leader is more inclined toward assimilation of information about herself than a leader with lower cognitive ability is thus leaders with high cognitive ability show a propensity for receiving feedback they seek out information about themselves are open to feedback and assimilate this information into knowledge about themselves this goes back to me talking about being a humble person if you're a humble person you can take feedback and you can put it into your world and the other part that I found interesting about this is that the high probability the high cognitive leader will match some facet of herself with the faster the person so when there when when I'm having a discussion with you and your your you have a different perspective that or you're opposing me you're arguing with me instead of me saying no you're wrong I look at you and say oh what's where are they getting that perspective all I see where he's getting that perspective from that actually makes sense because he's on the front lines and he's doing this oh okay so I actually will put some facet I will match some FASTA myself to you so that I understand your perspective better with this expanded knowledge and confidence they can more easily find some aspect of others with which they can connect and this connection allows them to gain more feedback and knowledge again one of my things that I talk about all the time is just humility and how leaders have to be humble and which is actually one of the cool things that you said about bars well and we never talked about it but you said you know he was really tough he was super smart and he was humble if those are those are the qualities you call doubt and and that's what this represents to me you continue here a leader with high cognitive ability perceives herself as being more complex than the average individual in a decision-making situation she might delay longer and submit a more complicated decision now when I originally originally read that right there I had a problem with it because because one of the mantras age-old mantras of leadership combat leadership for sure is simplicity right you got to keep things simple so I'm gonna come back to that one because my immediate reaction to was wait a second I don't know if I agree with that because we're talking about this person with a high cognitive ability that's coming up with a more complicated decision but I'll get back to it here her interpersonal reactions interactions tend to result in greater perceived similarities between herself and more senior people she may perceive differences between herself and others more accurately than a leader with lower cognitive abilities does this complex internal structure results in a greater perception of the external environmental structure which can manifest in interpersonal conflict so again we have someone that can that can sense what someone else perspective is and this is where I come back to the the simple thing the high cognitive ability leader recognizes when she is communicating with others who are at a lower or higher level cognitive ability when talking to a lower cognitive ability leader she recognizes that person's simpler language structure linear thought process and shorter term focus and we'll understand that the lower cognitive ability leader might not get what she's saying so what that tells me take that one step further what a really good high cognitive leader will do is take the complex and answer and simplify it down so that this lower cognitive ability leader can actually understand it so even though it might be a more complicated decision the lower cognitive leader below me doesn't need to know that they're gonna get the simplified version that they can grasp and make sense to them and then move forward continuing on when she is talking to someone of equal or higher cognitive ability she may find that the conversation moves faster and is more enjoyable and stimulating low cognitive ability leaders tend to use fewer dimensions when processing stimuli resulting in fewer and less complex information domains and a lower probability of matching some facet of themselves with that of another person and again see this is this is why I think it's important to talk about this because if you can't relate to other people if you're having a hard time talking to people up the chain of command talking to people down the channel and talking to your peers if you're saying oh they don't get it they don't understand how can they think that way if you're thinking that if that's going through your mind that's a little red flag that you are that's it's it's a it's a little symbol or a sign of low cognitive ability you're the one that's not getting it yes so when you get there instead of continuing to point the finger outward take a look at yourself and recognize the fact that there's you need to try and find some common ground with other people and the fact that you can't find common ground with other people is a sign that you have low cognitive ability and that's a problem so I'm hoping again I know this can't be trained but I'm hoping that when you become aware of it you say oh that's me that's me and this is the worst part about this whole section the worst part about this whole section is this what I'm hoping for is that the people with low cognitive ability will recognize that this is about them right this is about me okay I tend to do this sometimes I I can't connect with other people I can't see their perspective you know what that's that's mine that's me that's on me that's what I'm hoping people say unfortunately people with low cognitive ability have a much lower chance of actually being able to recognize this so that's the problem it's a catch-22 yeah it is continuing they tend to contrast themselves with others that are and are less open to feedback another great point if you're not humble and you're not again I use the word humble if you're not open to people telling you hey you know what you could do this better that is an actual sign of low cognitive ability I hate to break the news to you the next one in there interpersonal interactions they tend to perceive themselves as being more similar to their peers and less similar to their superiors they are predisposed to be more rigid and concrete in their thinking this is another this is something that you can recognize in yourself this is something I can recognize myself when I'm going no we got to do it this way no this is the way it's got to be that's an indication to me that I am tending towards low cognitive ability and what I need to do is open my mind and try some new things accept some new ideas otherwise I'm putting myself on report for being a low cognitive thinker I mean let me share one thing if you're a high cognitive ability person if you become angry the tendency is for you to start to drop in levels in terms of your response right now the interaction right now the more anger you get the more you drop really low and when you hear people arguing I'm very often they're angry very often they both drop way down here and that's where where the problem is so we had to get you back up and you hear it all the time in meetings and between people and just listen to what they're focused on listen to the time frame that they're focused on listen to the concreteness of what their focus done and you know you can you can figure out where they are now how can we elevate if you and I having this conversation and I'm down here and I'm really I've dug my heels and you just you did wrong Jocko just yeah there's something wrong with you if you can't see my point here if I'm dug in down here we're not gonna we're not gonna be able to top this yeah I decided a discussion like this with a client it's like the best thing I can do when you say I don't like this I don't like your plan Jocko the best thing I can do isn't well that's because you don't understand it the best thing you can say well hey can you can you give me some feedback on what it is you don't like about my plan because now instead of you digging your heels in and look and how you're gonna strike me you're you're actually looking to formulate a legitimate answer to a legitimate question and by the way when you ask that question I'm not just asking you this question so I can trick you know I'm legitimately asking for feedback because maybe you know something that I don't know or maybe you see something that I don't see so I immediately get us to start moving up that ladder again and set it down where when you say I don't like your plan I say that's because you too dumb to understand it all right where's that conversation going you've dropped all the way there you continue on here the accuracy of their predictions this is again low cognitive the accuracy of their predictions about others is directly proportional to the amount of information they have about others their concreteness filters out more aspects of the external environment structure particularly when they're under stress low cognitive ability leaders tend to have a relatively narrow set of interests and knowledge domains although they may have an in-depth knowledge in a few air consequently they look for others who share one or more of their interests unlike the high cognitive ability leader they do not have a broad range of areas of expertise they can use to connect with others the bottom line is that leaders with and what that tells me is hey you know I need to get outside my zone right cool I like jujitsu and I like war but if that's the only people I hang around with I'm not expanding my horizons so I need to go and play in a band and draw and write and hang out with people that are doing those other things as well hmm the bottom line is that leaders with high cognitive ability are able to possess greater amounts of information and operate more successfully in complex environments with a higher level of inconsistency in ambiguity then can leaders with low cognitive ability as they rise to higher roles role levels in an organization the problems they face become more complex and ambiguous these leaders with high cognitive ability tend to perform well at upper organizational echelons so true I mean you can think about just the difference in any any job right your frontline troops is concerned with you know this part of the manufacturing line it's relatively small it's not a complex thing and then the more higher up you get in the organization the more complex decisions are being made and whatnot and the good thing is when we think about cognitive ability is there's a place for everyone you have a real need for everyone someone has to do that day-to-day hour-to-hour work and be happy with it be good be happy and go home at the end of the day saying yes I'd like that out of the park above them you need somebody with a little bit more that's really good at that level and you know so getting the right person into the right role level at the right time because if we think about cognitive ability for a lot of people is continuing to change so there's like a growth curve as you can see you'll flatten out someplace but as long as they're growing they can take on higher and higher role levels right as they they cross those different thresholds as eventually they're gonna hit a point where I mean this is it yeah they need to be happy here because if you move them up to the next one they're gonna fail yeah and what I've see with people is there's a certain spot where they go yeah this is where I'm at and I'm comfortable in this area not comfortable in a bad way of like on my comfort zone but you start to move them outside that cognitive ability level and all of a sudden they're stressed yes because they're trying to make decisions on inconsistent information and it's too much and you know what that's that's like you just said that's actually good because now we know what the limitations are and now you can focus on this this cognitive ability level where you excel at because by the way you get somebody with a really good cognitive ability and you put them in a job that doesn't require as much well now they're gonna be bored and you use the term in this book which I had never actually heard before it's not burnout it's the opposite of burnout it's called rust out so that's all good and I mean like I said we work with all kinds of organizations and the other interesting point I gotta make is the the cognitive ability isn't doesn't measure your intelligence it measures a bunch of different things that and and just like some people are more articulate and some people are taller and some people are shorter like this is one of those things where it's some components combined together and you could have somebody that went to an Ivy League school and I know I got to see this and the SEAL Teams people that went to Ivy League schools they scored super high on whatever IQ test there are their cognitive ability is not high because they can't look at complex things they get wrapped around my new show or whatever the case may be so this is a really interesting thing I would like to think and maybe it's just cuz I'm a positive thinking person I would like to think if a person has humility and they say you know what when I hear that my that that when I hear it being described that having concrete ideas probably means that my cognitive ability is a little lower maybe I need to open my mind up a little bit and maybe they can I know that I saw leaders and I still see leaders I know for a fact I see leaders get better become better leaders and and be able to look at complex things and and start to understand that information doesn't need to be perfect and even if I look at myself when I was when I first got to the SEAL Teams and I was a new guy I couldn't look in a complex problem immediately go oh okay you know what oh that these two pieces of information are kind of different but I can make a sound decision that will make sense right now and we can make some adaptations later got it no I would have been looking for hey what's the is this right or is that right I don't know which one okay I got to move forward with it so I think that that idea that you can improve it is a positive thing even though I don't know does that mean it's trainable what happens is I I'm growing and I cross a threshold and I don't realize it I don't realize that I have more build at you all of a sudden because it it's like a stair step it jumps up it goes along it jumps up and when it makes that jump I might not realize it initially and so I might need a coach I might need you to come in and work with me to help me start to used as a this increased ability that I have because I don't I don't know how to do it so you know we work with leaders a lot helping them be able to take advantage of the abilities that they have because lots of times they don't know what they don't know they can handle more ambiguity they can think further into the future because in their job they're not allowed to yeah you're in a role level where they they keep pulling you back down to here even though you have a lot more ability so one of the things that we're looking at with people in an organization is are you working at your potential do you have unused potential that if we could help you to start to use it you raise the whole bar for the organization performance level for the organization goes up you know because now you're operating closer to your full potential than you were before we were doing immediate action drills I was tasking a commander the platoon commander my two to platoon commanders were staff and lay flavor at the books that may set was the other platoon commander the Delta platoon commander and you know the deal with immediate action drills there's a there's a standard operating procedure there's a place where you're gonna go on a peel left on a peel right on the center peel on a flank right on a flank left on there's there's positions for you to go into and so I was watching him in his platoon and basically the call would get made whether it was him or whether it was the leading petty officer whoever someone would make a call and I'd watch him and he would he would stay like in the precise position that the standard operating procedure dictates him to be in and so which meant that if he ran down a ravine and was facing the the six-foot wall vereen ravine and couldn't see anything he was gonna stand there because that's where he was supposed to be and I said hey man what can you see right now you know it's like well nothing well why don't you move a little bit well because that's not the standard operating procedure well guess what you're the platoon commander it's okay you can have someone fill in here right and you can go and you can crawl up this little this little part of the ravine and you can actually see maybe an out where you can direct your guys so you can get out of this cone of fire how does that sound so that becoming aware that you're allowed to move that you're allowed to think that you're allowed to take action it reminds me of what you just said about a leader being able to step up suddenly realizing that like a stair-step up as soon as you realize that he's like oh oh I can move around and yes as a leader yes you can talk about emotional intelligence emotional intelligence focuses on the inner personal and emotional aspects of innate ability it can be defined as a purse innate ability to perceive and manage his own perceptions in a manner that results in successful interactions with the environment and if others are present to perceive and manage their emotions in a manner that result in successful interpersonal reactions emotional intelligence being able to read people you talk about the innate ability to do this but can you learn it to some degree okay good I'm glad you said that because I've talked to people and helped people know like let me give you a big hint on emotional intelligence to anyone that's listening if you want to get better at it here's a good step to take be quiet and listen to what people are saying you know you actually shut your mouth and listen people will and you truly listen to what they're saying you can hear what their tone sounds like and pay attention to it you can watch their facial expressions and pay attention to it you can watch their body language and pay attention to it when you're not listening when you're on transmit instead of receive you're not gonna you're not gonna perceive as much about their emotional state at that time which means you're gonna react badly to it so instead of being on transmit mode for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about when you're on a radio as a radio man when you're pressing that push-to-talk button you're transmitting information don't be on transmit be on receive that's my advice that'll improve your emotional intelligence in the next five minutes motivation motivation is a combination of work aspiration the role level the role level the leader aspires to reach motivators what drives the leader to be fully engaged at work d motivators what causes the leader to lose interest in work and drive for results the leaders need to achieve in general motivation is highly associated with job performance and promote ability I think Jordan Peterson calls this conscientiousness like are you going to do your job personality a leaders personality tends to be hardwired so that most of his core preferences for interacting with people gathering information decision making and general orientation to life changed little over the course of his life you kind of get what you get you know do how often you see people's personalities change not much we're asked all the time you get you gotta fix that go Charles you got it you got it fixing and you know we tell them you know we can work with him we can smooth it off some of the edges yeah but he still gonna be a coach on soon when the dust settles because that's who you that's a sad fact that I've been dealing with for quite some time here's here's what I had here's what I have seen one I have seen people change personality from some kind of event that takes place in their life like usually a traumatic event something happens bad good chance luck and they they end up it's not gonna drastically change their personality because over time people will be the gravity of their personality will draw them back to who they are but occasionally the times that I've seen personalities change the most is something happens and that changes their personality but it's hard it's hard to change it's hard to truly change someone you know the that story about the one is it the frog and the scorpion then the Frog says I'll take you over or the scorpion says can we take me over he says no if I take you over the river you'll you'll sting me and I'll die and he says no why would I do that we both die and they go across and of course the scorpion stings is why'd you do that cuz on a scorpion would you think I was going to do so the fundamental core of leadership is decision making everything a leader does or does not do as the result of decisions every day leaders are called upon to make decisions routine and non-routine and then you say problem-solving is just a series of decisions good point you have these steps the 7 step a problem-solving model 1 identify the problem to gather the information 3 redefine the problem for generate alternatives courses of action 5 evaluate alternatives 6 select and implement implement the solution 7 evaluate the results and then back to one again so that's what we're doing all the time and you talk about the OODA loop in here which we've talked about bunch on on this podcast and then you talk about the other the loop that what is it the Pama loop what's that loop that's where you're perceiving information which is so this one reminded me of the little loop right there they're very similar there's some degree yeah okay so you perceive information it comes into your system you appraise it you know make sense side of it which is like Orion right so observe orient yeah so those two are pretty close right perceive and and observe would be the P and the O and then you get to a which is what is it in the Pama what does it stand for assess I'll praise a praise and that's very similar to orient mm-hmm okay then what's the M yeah then we get into to the motivational part and then we get to get into the action mm-hmm and then we're back in the loop again yeah and even the last one is action in the Pam loop and in and in the loop it's act so you go through you know kind of dissecting what these two the differences are the similarities and that's that's definitely a an interesting thing because again see for me I always have this I guess positive outlook on things that if you know something you can at least try and apply it right so people do the other loop people do the Pam aloof but they don't know it and so therefore when they miss it or they do it or they or they get caught in some meaningless cycle of it if they don't know that that's what they're doing they can't even correct it but if you're aware oh you know what I'm I'm not acting and that's why I'm sitting here I'm not acting so I need to I need to take action so I think being aware of things just like being aware of low cognitive ability if you we're of it even if you're aware of it hopefully you can make some adjustments in your life to get it moving in the right direction you talk about rational strategies which is logical sequential analytical conscious well thought-out process that takes time and typically involves others so this is hey we're going to come up with a rational decision for our problem and the other one is intuitive which is intuitive decisions are made quickly automatically emotionally mostly unconsciously and this is the type of decision usually made in routine or emergency situations so these again these are two if you understand these two things that you can make a rational decision or you can make an intuitive decision and understand what the shortfalls of each are because you can make two rational of a decision right you can analyze things to death or you can just look at the numbers or and you just make that kind of decision it can be wrong or you can make an intuitive decision which can also be wrong right and it can be right so one of the shortness is and this is again stuff that you cover in depth in this book which is very a very interesting book and I believe will raise people's awareness and make them more capable of making decisions and by the way right now this is page 35 in the book the book is actually called the stress effect how why smart leaders make dumb decisions and what to do about it so all you've done up into this point is explaining what types of leaders there are what types of decisions are being made so that way you can then explain what stresses and what stress does to your decision-making process many of the things of which we've already talked about yeah stress this destroys your decision-making process as the stress level goes up your cognitive ability goes down your emotional intelligence goes down the quality of your decision-making goes down so managing stress is really key if you're in a combat situation you're gonna make a lot of intuitive decisions when I get on my feet and I look and I see there are two NVA standing there and they look at me and they turn their weapons I'm not gonna say okay let me see here now what what do I think the problem is let me I heard those NVA what's going to happen and I don't work through that big problem solving process I see it I see the answer I pull the trigger and I've got to do it and but when I ask somebody in I do this all the time somebody will talk about a decision like that and when I say how did you make that decision they immediately launch into that problem-solving model that's it you did it in less than two seconds yeah you didn't have time to do all of those things what you're doing is you're using the solution that's sitting on the top of what I call a dominant response hierarchy you have trained and trained and trained to produce a certain response when you see them squeeze the trigger as you're going down you that's setting up there and that's what you're going to execute if you want to execute a different plan you're gonna have to train in something else up there because it's going to come so fast and and that's how that's how you survive in a life-and-death situation you got to make a decision and you got to do it very quickly and if if you have time you got a week or so to make a decision you can bring your team in you can work through that problem-solving model and you know come up with a with a good decision if you got two seconds if you can't do it you go to the intuitive because it's so much faster but it's going to grab whatever is sitting at the top so you better be training for the right response and that's where the training comes in over and over and over in that's automatic when you when you watch pro athletes they train all the time and they train for particular responses and that when they can do it so fast you if you like complete golf and you play golf with someone if you want to give yourself an advantage and the guy you're playing where there's a really good putter so you get on the green and you say Jocko I've always been impressed with your ability to make those long putts I mean we're friends help me out here tell me what you think about I mean when you're getting ready to put Tommy who taught me through the steps that you go through to make that putt he's gonna blow it because now he's thinking rather than executing you know pros execute it's automatic they don't have to think about it you make them think about it to blow it when singers are singing the national anthem or something if they make the mistake of thinking about what words come in next and the lyrics they don't block yeah you got to be automatic I we train a lot at jujitsu and you know I talked about jujitsu with the loss of combat and leadership in life and how it all is intertwined a guy said to me hey what how does decentralized command sit in to jujitsu I don't see where them I see we're prioritizing executors I see where simple as I see where cover and move is I see where those are in jujitsu but where's decentralized command and I said here's exactly where it is you need to train enough that your body parts know to execute without being told what to do so when it comes time to defend your arm you need to move that arm you don't have time to think about it just like you don't have time to tell the platoon commander or the squad leader hey take and put down cover fire as we move to the flank milk they've got to have the instinct to make that happen without you needing to tell them so that's where decentralized command comes in to your tears jujitsu game you talked about this recognition prime decision model or our PD and just hitting a couple things here here's what you do assess the situation evaluate a course of action select an option develop a solution set generate and evaluate options adjust the option take action and again these are very similar ideas but there's little nuances that you spell out pretty that you spell out inside the book here's one the technique of safai Singh allows the solution to be chosen that is not perfect but is sufficient to provide a satisfactory solution to the problem the RPD model chooses the first solution that might work Asif Ising approach in most cases trying to choose a solution using a maximizing which is optimal or perfect approach tends to be unrealistic and inefficient because the leaders making decisions in an environment where all the information about the problem and possible solutions are unknown so this is a great thing that I think I have always used safai Singh like yeah that's the solution it's gonna be good enough we need to go with it you talk about cognitive intelligence and now this is a little bit different cognitive intelligence a very general mental capability that among other things involves the ability to reason plan solve problems think abstractly comprehend complex ideas learn quickly and learn from experience it is not merely book learning a narrow academic skill or test taking smarts rather it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings and then there's these terms catching on making sense of things or figuring out what to do so this is a different type of intelligence which obviously is very important that definition is an excellent starting point for about for thinking about leadership and decision-making especially the last point about a figuring out cognitive intelligence doesn't begin and end with having some smarts an individual must know what to do with his or her cognitive intelligence and this is once again you get these smart young officers that and at a certain point in the SEAL Teams I mean we were getting these incredibly qualified on paper individuals that were you know they should be the smartest people in the world but you'd see them have problem not all of them of course some of them are great you know some of the guys went to Harvard and Yale and everywhere else and they were fantastic but some of them it wasn't all like that wasn't across the board and that's exactly what you're talking about here you get it you got to be smart but you got to know what to do with those smarts just some of the some of the things that that the cognitive intelligence some of the some of the abilities that includes fluid reasoning crystallized intelligence visual processing auditory processing processing speed short-term memory long-term retrieval quantitative knowledge correct decision speed again these are as you think about these things and if you're a humble person you'll think to yourself you know what I need to learn the prod I need to I don't process things very well what should I do to counter that maybe I should prepare more maybe I should study more my my auditory processing hey how well do I actually listen what can I do to improve my listening skills if you don't admit that you don't listen well you're not going to get any better at it cognitive intelligence moderating factors when all things aren't either so so here's some things that you talk about when it comes to cognitive intelligence the factors that come into play one of them is environment and you you've got a very interesting study you've got all kinds of studies in here but one of them was like they looked at groups of kids that they gave better opportunities for - you know like low-income kids they gave really good opportunities to some and didn't give them to the other ones and actually didn't have that much of an effect which surprised me like there was a little bump in beginning but then it just leveled out most most of those studies are short-term studies and so they they create those environments I'm you know a few months later they test and they say wow this group really improved but then they don't come back two years later three years later when you find those studies they everybody's back to the same as they get older by the time kids are fifteen most of the stuff this enriched environment kind of work that you do with them when they're they're young everybody's back to the same I mean but they've all matured back to the same place so you you can't just look at what happens the first few months but nobody wants to do that they want to fight research study everyone move on hey I got great results that work they want to sell you the Einstein music for your kids maybe Einstein yeah whatever it's called Baby Einstein little lion little lion Stein yeah you talk about age here's some things if you want to help preserve cognitive intelligence cardiovascular the absence here's some things that that that specific factors that seemed to help preserve cognitive intelligence as people age the absence of cardiovascular and other chronic diseases a favorable environment above-average education occupational pursuits pursuits involving high complexity and low routine above-average income and the maintenance of intact families a complex and intellectually stimulating environment a flexible personality style at midlife being married to a spouse with high cognitive intelligence maintenance of high levels of perceptual processing speed being satisfied with life's accomplishments important things and some of those things are hard for you to do I mean they happen you know the most important thing that you can do to maintain your cognitive ability your intellectual ability is aerobic exercise nothing has been proven long have a greater impact on your your brains operating particularly delay in the onset of dementia or Alzheimer's nothing does better than aerobic exercise where you're pumping the blood you're pumping the food into your brain you're cleaning your brain out aerobic exercises I'll do it for you good good information talk about memory and then you talk about physical conditioning which I'm a big supporter of nutrition obviously if you're not eating clean sleep getting good sleep there's there's one of my weaknesses I don't sleep very much cognitive intelligence can be a double-edged sword a leader with high cognitive intelligence can possess can process information rapidly solve complex problems quickly and make effective decisions he might also be perceived by his team as arrogant condescending and impatient the leader knows he can do the work better and faster than his team members and may forget sometimes that they don't have his ability this is one of those where I'm worried about saying that one because what this does is it makes someone say well you know people think I'm arrogant because I'm so smart because I have high cognitive ability that's everyone else's problem but as I've said too many smart people over the years if you're so smart why aren't you winning I mean we see it all the time double-edged sword you come across as a jerk you come across as arrogant and you you're condescending towards people what's taking you so long I mean this is simple well for you it might be but for the average person is not then when you start putting that kind of feedback out you're just taking too long I don't understand what's wrong with you yeah you're just killing their motivation and causing them to see you more as a jerk yeah that's that's gonna hurt your leadership Capital talking a little bit about emotion here all human decisions have some emotional component that's the way the brain is wired as you're about to see the moral leader understands the emotional component of decision-making the more effective her decisions can become emotions happen emotions are neural impulses that happen inside the brain and trigger a motivation to reach a goal emotions are goal-oriented whenever you try whenever you experience emotion there is an end goal that the emotion is trying to move you toward emotions have their beginning in the unconscious and most of them stay there when an emotion becomes conscious we have a feeling for example when the emotion of fear becomes conscious I feel scared emotions can be viewed as providing situational reports about what is happening in the body why am i shaking I feel scared emotions have survival value David Caruso and Peter Salle of a researchers and educated and educators provide the following linkages between emotions and survival fear from a survival standpoint is let's get out of here sadness is help me disgust is don't eat that anger is about fighting when you get angry your anger raises your energy level to overcome an obstacle in your path so there you go you've got to recognize what's going on with these emotions emotional intelligence has always been present and identified but not valued as intelligence 1995 Daniel Goldman brought emotional intelligences of the world's consciousness with the publication of his best-selling book emotional intelligence why it can matter more than IQ his books quickly spawned a profession of articles books workshops training materials assessments and conferences on emotional intelligence a cottage and Industry sprang up almost overnight the term emotional intelligence is used to describe a non cognitive type of intelligence I define it as a person's innate ability to perceive and manage his or her own emotions in a manner that results in successful interactions with the environment and if others are present to also perceive and manage their emotions in a manner that results in successful interpersonal interactions note that this definition does not require interaction with another person emotional intelligence involves managing and controlling the awareness and appraising of emotions and the resulting motivation and action in a manner that produces successful outcomes whether in the presence or absence of others as a leader I need to understand my emotions and how they impact me and what it causes me to do or how I can use it I need to understand yours so that you know I want you to proof a document for me if I make you really happy and then say proof this you'll miss most of the typos if I make you irritated you'll find them all you'll rip it apart if there was something in there you'll find it so understanding the impact that the emotions are having on you and your performance and in which way it drives you you know that's using emotional intelligence to be successful to help you be successful same on the battlefield I need to understand the emotions that you're probably going to experience and what are they going to do to you how do you need to adapt them how do you need to redirect them understanding that fear takes away you know your fine motor skills and I need to train you to be able to operate without those fine motor skills to be able to use the gross motor skills and still perform just as well you just have to perform the task a little differently so she without aiming you learn the quick kill technique you talk about hijackers of emotional intelligence when the hijacking occurs it sets up an opportunity for your evil twin Skippy to come forward Skippy is the bad side of you who says and does things that are uncharacteristic of you it was not Mike Tyson who bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield's ear during a championship fight in 1980 it was tight Tyson's evil twin Skippy so then you just go on to describe the fact that you've got to keep your emotions in check and something we all need to look out for especially Mike Tyson stress interferes with decision making and again now you know I've already talked about a bunch of stuff and now we're sort of getting into the meat is some of the book more control equals less stress I really like this Bart data collected over the years on stress levels within the baboon population reveal data the higher a baboon is in the hierarchy the less stress he experiences this were these results suggest that the amount of control you have over your situation influences the amount of stress you experience just to give you an example in the in the old days over the SOG team you got on a helicopter you flew out to do your insertion you found out what was going on at the LZ when you got there and one day I asked the crew chief said you've got an extra head set up here can I wear that headset and he said you're so when I put the headset on all of a sudden I'm listening to cubby talk I'm listening to our gunships talk I'm listening about what's going on at the LZ or they prepping it or that you're seeing anything did they receive any aircraft fire on the way out there if the LZ is hot I know it I know which side is hot and I may have a plan that we're gonna exit the aircraft and and go east I really need to go west all of a sudden I've got all this information that I can use to make decisions and I can just literally feel my stress level coming down ok I understand what's going on now I don't have to figure it out in two seconds when I get there and I'm being charged now I've got a plan so given my self-control I don't know why we didn't do that right from the beginning but I know for me once I once I I could get access to that information it just made all the difference in the world yeah there is it like study and I'm trying to remember it all it was something about like I think I don't know if these cats or people or what but it was like they'd get a shock no this is the rats okay I've talked about this at the muster okay yeah yeah like so it made they'd shock them with a like a certain strength rate of shock no so this is the deal there's a cage yeah two sides to the cage each of this each of the floors in the cage deliver a shock one of them has a stronger shock but there's a light that comes on before the shock goes off and so they're able to like expect it and they usually know when it's coming the other side less of a shock but it's just completely random and there's a there's a pathway to get between the two areas but you can't like hang out there so the the rats basically have to decide which side they want to be on the stronger shock that they are prepared for or the random shock that's less and the rats always pick the side that has the warning so they know what's going on and know it's worse yeah it's worse yeah I I I just talked about this I was talking to some army troops out in Hawaii as a matter of fact and talking about you know you mentioned earlier that the the thing that you can take away from troops that they care about the money more than money and rank is freedom contrary to that or or I guess the the other side of that is the best thing you can reward someone with is more freedom in the form of and when you can do it at work you don't only give someone so much free time but you say give them control over the exercise give them control over the training give them control over what time they get done give them control over where they go the more control people have the more satisfied they are the better they're going to perform and so that way you can use that you can you can take control away from them and that's the worst punishment you can give them the best reward you can give somebody is give them freedom give them control over their fate I think that's the most powerful driver I think that even drives people generally more than money so I talked about that with companies that they you know way we can't afford to pay anyone it's the same we can't afford to pay our employees more than X or we'll go bankrupt or in the military I can't go and you know I can't pay my corporals more it doesn't work that way what do you do how do you reward them you give them freedom you give them control over their destiny that will drive people and it's the best thing you can use but that stress element like it's almost it even in do you have that if you compete in jiu-jitsu if you don't know like when you're gonna go on you know because it's like I'm so it's gone right now but then they're not calling your name and you're like you get all stress but then if you know oh it's your time then you're like less stress it's almost like if you're in the dark about something you're just more stress so the more information you have about it so that's why I like people when they're worried they're like asking all these questions like how's it gonna go they just want to know how it's gonna go you know so yeah that makes sense I feel that check out this dichotomy a lot of people think I got it in my favorite word but it is check out this dichotomy as the number of choices increases the autonomy control and liberation this variety brings us is powerful and positive but if the number of choices keeps growing negative effects start to appear as choices grow further the negatives escalate until we become overloaded at this point choice no longer liberates us it might even be set to tyrannize mm-hmm so that's why I discipline will give you freedom and that's why giving someone you know if you have too many options it can turn out to be a bad thing there's a definite dichotomy there here's another again I'm jumping around a bit a key point to remember is that all models whether mental physical mathematical or iconic have blind spots when you choose a model you choose your blind spots that's powerful so whatever you're thinking you're not necessarily you're not going to be 100 percent right there's gonna be things that you don't see that you don't understand that you miss it's critical as understand the models understand the one that you choose and so what are the blind spots that I've just chosen what am I not gonna see by using this and whenever you can if you can use multiple lenses and and we do that a lot when we're assessing people I don't want just this one assessment instrument because it's got a little kind of blind spot so I pick another one that's going to close some of those blind spots because it covers those and you know so I get a better picture of what you look like by using multiple lenses to look at you with so I don't I don't have just one I give you this one test I don't I miss all the step over here and by the way if you don't have a high cognitive ability when you see these two reports about someone that might have contrast information you won't be able to do well this report doesn't make any sense now and you'll lean towards the one that makes the most sense to you that he feels the vision that you've been looking for here's the thing that I just had to read catastrophic when catastrophic leadership failures occur it is sudden and causes a catastrophic change in the leaders ability to perform successfully the leader will exhibit some or all of a characteristic characteristic set of behaviors and here's those behaviors and this is to me these are like red flags these are things that if you're paying attention right now and you're listening you want to improve your leadership capabilities pay attention to these things and when you notice yourself doing them check yourself detach take a step back and and correct your your your trajectory because your trajectory is not good number one not listening that's number one not listening over analyzing failure to make decisions low quality decisions emotional decisions flip flops short-term decisions and focus reactive decisions defensiveness rationalizing self-satisfying hedonism denial inattentional blindness fear-based decisions anger facilitated the automatic decision-making and mental paralysis so there's a list of things that you can identify about yourself when there's a stressful situation going on and you start making a rational decision or you start making an emotional decision or you should not listen to anybody else anymore time to take a step back detach and get yourself get your mind right because it's not right to make decisions at that point these are similar lists of behaviors that will get you thinking about how you behave in stressful situations aggression loss of humor taking offense isn't that a great one we take offense right and that's a sign that says oh you're stressed out and you're not about to make a good decision and in my opinion when you're taking offense there's that's rooted to something that we call ego it's gonna be something that's brushing up against your ego here's another one wanting to be right oh that's also ego wanting the last word that's also ego flooding with information to prove a point that's ego holding a grudge that's ego I know that that's ego jealousy that's ego playing poor me sarcasm blaming being too nice that's an interesting one being too nice you're just gonna okay yeah I'll do it it's like oh you just broke so there's a dichotomy right one of them is well one of us we're getting aggressive the other one is I'm just cow cowering down mmm there's a little dichotomy there if you're doing well you'll be balanced here's here's echos favorite it's my it's my personality it's just the way I am don't lecture me these are all just classic just classic things that you do that should be signs that you're you're not doing well chronic stress is a constant drain on the leaders overall capacity accidentally leaving the car light on begins to drain the car battery here you do a great job of you know talking about the comfort zone and we don't want to be in the comfort zone all the time we want to be pushing out of it a little bit that that forces us to to step up our game but if we spend too much time up there out of the comfort zone we'll get burned out because we're having to be undergoing all this stress also the other one I already talked about is rust out and that's when you're you're just you're doing something that's too easy it's not challenging you're you're so deep in your comfort zone it's so easy for you that you don't care about anymore the further the leader moves into the burnout zone the faster you will burn out his performance job satisfaction interpersonal relationships motivation and health will begin to deteriorate dropping below the comfort zone takes the leader to into the rust out zone there the leader will experience boredom loss of motivation and lowered sense of purpose so those important things to look for with your troops you see someone that's bored not motivated cool put them in a leadership position let them step up stress is not just a nuisance designed to frustrate humans and shorten their lives and this is again I'm jumping through this book quite the opposite the purpose of stress is to help people increase their odds of survival by providing quicker response time more alertness and ability to focus more narrowly on the environment the trick is to keep stress as an ally not an enemy so stress is not bad it's not necessarily battle time it will make you better with with some as long as you get breaks from it yeah and and you can you can adapt to stress so it's like you know if you if you lift weights yeah and you're gonna do curls you know you get so neck eko approves of this exist you can you can get so you're using thirty five pounds and you're doing ten reps and if you just keep doing ten reps for 35 pounds every day you don't get better what you have to do is stress yourself okay so you have to increase the weight you can increase the reps adapt to it then you increase again and what what your body's doing is adapt in to that stress a little at a time so you keep it within a range that it can adapt to and you'll keep getting stronger and stronger same with running you don't go out and run 26 miles the first day you kind of build up to it you're so your stress in the body as you run longer distances or if you run hills or now you're running sprints you do a series of things that stress you to help you get so you can go farther and you can go faster and eventually you can do that 26 miles but if you just you run three miles every day it's the same pace you're gonna max out right there and the 26 is just eat your lunch when you try you know this is this is when I was talking about me being you know having a positive attitude earlier being an optimist and I was thinking about this quote cuz I knew I was gonna get to it when Collins asked Stockdale this is Admiral Stockdale it was a pio w when Collins asked Stockdale which POWs didn't make it out Stockdale responded that's easy the optimists the optimists were the prisoners who believed that believed and would say that the North Vietnamese were going to release the POWs by Christmas when it didn't happen by Christmas they would say would happen by Easter then Thanksgiving eventually the optimist would die of a broken heart the solution according to Stockdale is that you must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end which you can never afford to lose with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality whatever they may be that's important right there yeah we say in the 1980s I work at the Center for army leadership at Fort Leavenworth Kansas a subject matter expert on leadership and stress on the battlefield research indicated that people high in Psychological hardiness differed from people with low psychological hardness in four primary ways a stronger commitment to self an attitude of vigorousness toward the environment a sense of meaningfulness and an internal sense of control continued research narrowed these differences to three factors commitment the ability to feel deeply involved in life's activities control the belief that you can control or influence stressful events in your life and challenge the anticipation of change as an exciting challenge for further development yeah those are those are key that challenge thing instead of looking at everything like oh no this is happening to me and instead saying oh this is all this is an opportunity for us I you know I had some client ask me the other day well what would you do you know if your if your team got assigned like the hardest job and how you gonna break the news to them you know and I said oh we gotta sign the hardest job I'm gonna walk in there be like hey guys guess what this company knows that there's only one team that can get this done and they're saying it's gonna take three months to get it done and guess what we're gonna get it done in two months and it's gonna take everything we've got but we are gonna crush this thing and we're gonna show not only we're the only team that can do this we're the only team that can do absolutely anything and it was like oh yeah cuz that's the attitude you gotta have this isn't a challenge that we're going to shy away from this is an opportunity for us to to get after it most people who study resilience agree on a core set of common factors flexibility adaptability meaning value determination strength and recovery so talking about resilience those are some things to think about that flexibility one isn't one that you might think of it's a little counterintuitive to think well I'm resilient so I just keep going the same direction it's like no actually I'm flexible and I'm gonna adapt got it down as opposed to burning yourself out beating your head against the wall you talk about this this acronym you use here stress resilient emotional intelligence the ability to resist the negative influence of stress on the emotional aspects of decision making by flexing and adapting to sudden change as the stress level goes up particularly toward the extreme level people lose their access to emotional intelligence if you can't take a step back take a breath and get control your emotions you're gonna have problems there's no doubt about that you have to learn how to breathe breathing is a big deal tactical breathing or you inhale for four seconds you pause and you exhale four seconds very quickly that will help calm you down slows your heart rate back down we use it with sniper training you know when you're reaching out those distances like they do today you know with a 50 caliber you know I mean you can reach out and touch somebody two miles away but the pressure of the pulse that you finger is enough to change the trajectory to cause you to miss it so slow in your heart rate down causing it be a little weaker being very controlled and squeezing it off and you know the Canadian guide I don't remember his name right now I think he has the record of a kill like 2.2 miles of that's a crazy shot like that's a long way but there why used to do that yeah I always talk about the fact that it was always our goal just to never sound excited on the radio and in order to do that you're gonna have to get control your breath when you get control your breath and you can control your voice that just calmed you down instead of a hang we need help our hair just hey we're gonna need two more guys down this hallway please got somewhere to stay calm you get in here to the seven best practices to prevent a stress and it said a leader can get caught in an ever-accelerating downward spiral and it starts with rising levels of stress at first the leader might think I can power through this I'm tough that's how I got to where I am but this as his stress levels begin to rise he finds it more and more difficult to maintain the lifestyle that helps keep his stress manageable the diet quickly turns unhealthy there's no time or energy for exercise no time for sleep or rest no time for family or friends his attitude turns negative and learning halts a reinforcing loop emerges that sends the leader into a downward spiral like an airplane as lost power is out of the pilots control with little hope of recovery unless the leader can break the cycle and begin to climb again and this is your something that you call Arsenal which another acronym the seven best practices awareness rest support exercise nutrition attitude and learning and you know you you you go through each one of these and talk about how you know some steps to take for awareness dedicate time to stepping outside yourself observing your actions for rest you know you give great little sections of what to do to rest force yourself to take breaks include personal time each day like you go through support what a support mean support is psychological emotional and physical people that help you in those categories so significant other family friends colleagues coaches mentors etc and and what can you do identify these people and you get again you do that for each one of these for exercise you talk about what you know how do you start an exercise program and I think you use a couple you you give what you give one thing is sixty days ago sixty days do not miss an exercise session during the first sixty days not even one while some say new habits are created in 21 days I find that for most people 60 days tends to firmly transform any new behavior and do a habit so and and you obviously are a little bit of an exercise fanatic because you you still run an Ironman yes how'd you get into that well you know I've always been physical and about ten years or so ago I had my other son-in-law go do a triathlon and he got with Eric and I and say we got to do this this was a lot of fun so wait how old do you right now 72 so it's 62 you decided was a good time to start triathlons yeah got it okay well then you know it got into that and then you know triathlons are okay but I thought you know Ironman and the distances are considerably you know father so I got into that and you know it's pretty cool I mean it's uh it's a tough day yeah and especially at 62 is when's the last time you did one a year ago mmm less than a year I mean this year okay wind is here and you know may I start back again there you are you like ranked in the world I was until I think last year you have to do a certain number got a year and then then you can total up points and they rank you so you know I think the last my last ranking was fifth in the US 15 in the world and my age so you definitely recommend exercise apparently I talk about nutrition you know eating the right stuff this is all stuff that we know but we we don't want to do you talk about attitude engage in activities that build your self-confidence and esteem jiu-jitsu smile see the glasses being half-full talk directly the person you are unhappy with not to your co-workers about that person become a team player ask fellow team members what you can do to help them that's a good attitude adjustment and the last one you got is lifelong learning and again I'm breezing through these things right now and that's why people need to buy the book so that they can get the the menus themselves and read through lifelong learning this is just such an important thing set daily monthly quarterly and annually annual learning goals for example read two books monthly or improve a foreign language skill over the course of a year spend time with others who like to learn spend time with someone you consider intelligent get out of your comfort zone learn something you have always wanted to learn but keep putting off exercise all parts of your brain by choosing a variety of learning goals so those are that's your that's your Arsenal approach to controlling stress awareness rest support exercise nutrition attitude and learning here's the takeaway on Arsenal these are these are cool an unaware brain is a surprised brain a tired brain is a grumpy brain an unsupported brain is a sad brain an unfit brain is a slowed brain a hungry brain is a distracted brain a negative brain is an angry brain and an unused brain is a forgetful brain anything I'm missing on Arsenal no that's good I mean we we have an actual assessment that you can take online shows you where you are so no I mean we we use it quite a bit with our clients stress is always an issue out there so if we can help them find a way to to bring this dress down they'll perform better particularly as a leader I'm gonna wrap up with this book here training leaders is similar to training parachutists you have to train them to jump before pushing them out the door and then you say this closing out this book in for the future we should keep in mind the old native-american analogy that describes the past present and future as a log burning in a fire the part of the log that has burned into ash is yesterday the part that is burning is today and the park that will burn soon is tomorrow we are the fire we can only live today and what we do today determines whether our fire will still be burning tomorrow well that's uh that that wraps up this book and again I mean I breezed through this thing there were some points that I definitely wanted to talk about and and let people know about the book is called the stress effect by Henry L Thompson and it's available on Amazon what else you know we've covered a ton you know we've we've merged a bunch of podcasts here what else do we need to know about what you've got going on what about high performance systems HP sys com that's your company and this is what you do yeah that's what we do we work with leaders around the world we do a lot of work helping them improve their performance we look at their caller cognitive ability we can measure that then we can work with you to make sure you're getting the most out of it we work with manufacturing and building those high performance work teams so well ago when you were talking about giving people control if you take a high-performance work team and a manufacturing plant you say ok you guys can start making decisions so you can even decide that Echo Chavez tomorrow off because he's got something he has to do and Eric it's going to come in and work his shift so he can go do it and you don't have to come to me the supervisor to ask permission to do that you guys are already authorized to do all kinds of things like that if it's going to make the team perform better you guys do it so you run yourself you take care of yourself and I'm I'm available if you need to ask me questions or maybe some resources you don't have then you let me know I'll go find your resources for you some of it we we do a lot of work like that we did a lot with stress management we do a lot with decision making under stress so nuclear operators that are making decisions about whether or not the plants going to meltdown because sometimes the stress gets really high in the control room when they have an incident so teaching them how to get control of those stress and not lock up law enforcement for the most part I mean the law enforcement has a different approach to dealing with bad guys than the military does I mean a law enforcement SWAT team it's a different approach when they go into a room when they kick a door down and go in it's not like having a special ops team SEAL team come through that door you know when you go through you're gonna take out everything in there you know the when the police SWAT team goes through there's a bad guy in there they want and they're not going to take out everybody that's in the room necessarily so they it's a very different approach going in but it's very stressful and there's things that they can do and things they need to understand about what they can do when the stress level goes up we're just going to do to their decisions so we work with them on that we can train them firefighters the same thing EMTs so we do a lot of work like that we also work you know with that's better organization so we have this thing going on you know 22 push-ups because we have 22 vets a day committing suicide so the 22 push-ups is an awareness thing so we get that all over social media people doing push-ups you know you had said something earlier about you know echo which also is probably going to knock out 2018 for us the video so we can post him out there too and you know we had the challenge corns and when I have a group of people around the country that that have some of our coins and if they run into that that they thinks you know maybe on the edge and they give him a corn it says welcome home thank you for your service all that kind of stuff and they reach out to him sometimes all you have to do is smile at somebody there's a there's a person out there today that is on a mission to in their life before the days over and very often they set up a condition I'm going to ride the bus to this place where I'm going to terminate myself if nobody speaks to me if nobody smiles at me nobody recognizes my presence between now and the time I get to this place I'm going to take my life but if I get some kind of interaction from somebody I won't do and they get on the bus they go nobody acknowledges them you know and they commit suicide just reaching out just talking to someone sometimes can turn them around and all of a sudden they don't do it you can take them off of that list of 22 so we do that is there a is there a website to go for that is that like there is a non-profit or yeah there's a mission 22 okay their website on our website we put on our stress effect website we put things you can do to recognize pets not just fast but firefighters police you know there are other groups that are doing it but particularly the vets particularly it's not just the older vets but sometimes it's easier to see and then but if you watch you can see people that are not acting quite right and they may have on their their hat now you can see they've been in Afghanistan and wherever they are and you need to talk to them thank you you had one a person on one of your podcast very recently who is a suicide survivor the person attempted the suicide and and somebody you know snatched her up ain't got her out and she's doing all kinds of things that she wouldn't have done doubt about it you know so everybody has a purpose there's a reason that you survived as long as you have and to go out and terminate yourself I mean all of a sudden all those things don't happen I mean you you might be the person that saves a lot of other lives if you stick around and I don't think we as a nation do very well taking care of the vets I'm doing the transitions and I know a lot of the vets who do take their own lives or you know they they're not in the VA program they've just trying to do things on their own and you know they get that downward spiral but if we see one we talk to him I mean it's amazing some of the stories I'm getting back from some of the people that kind of Lee joined me in this program women who are not walking or running and they'll see a guy with his veteran hat on or something clues them in and they just talk to him the guys just they turn around I mean all I'm doing but military people I think you know we have an obligation we have an accountability you know take care of real people so anyway we we do things a lot of things like that well that's uh I mean that's awesome that you already you served your country you know in so many other ways and continue to serve the the vets and idea any other final thoughts I really appreciate the opportunity to become you know talk about some of the things that went on in SOG and some of the leadership and other topics that we got on today I appreciate you giving me that opportunity you guys have been great great questions it's been a fine day I have a question Oh what the snake eater said that a few times he's a snake eater special forces second term it's like a ticket term yeah for like a special forces guy and they'll say to my seals they'll say like oh that guy is a snake eater you're kind of saying it in the context like it was bad almost like from who was saying it in your stories the competition oh yeah I'm a ranger and you special forces yeah yeah yeah yeah so I'm better than you are yeah yeah God so when I call you a snake feeder it's bad yeah you know what I call myself point is good yeah yes rattle I don't thank you okay well you know thanks to Eric for for getting you out here and I'm telling ya this is just a total honor for me to be able to sit here and hear your stories and pick your brain and so thank you for coming on and sharing everything with us and you know more important and I think it's pretty obvious thank you for your service and thank you when I when I hear your stories and I think about the times that you thought you would not come back and you went anyway and you did that for me and for my kids and for our country and I just wanted to say thank you and it's been an honor to talk to you and I can't wait to hear feedback from people and I'm sure they'll have so many questions that I'll have to drag you out here again at some point you know I appreciate your service and thank you for that and all the things that you've done and you're doing for the vets I mean people listen to these podcasts they listen to what you guys say and it makes a difference you know you just you don't realize when you help most of the people that you help because you don't know where they were when they listened to your podcast or listening to you talk but you're impacting people all over and you know I'm glad I could come in and you know just hang out with you guys and watch how you do this but you're really making an impact well appreciate it the door is always open to this podcast room the microphone will be waiting for you anytime you want to come back and I'm sure that the amount of people will hear what you've had to say and see what you've been through and then you're gonna help infinitely more people and it's so appreciated again not just for what you've done in the past before you're still doing now so thank you thank you thank you echo so once again dick Thompson has left the building and once again I cannot even get my mind around what he's done and what he has learned and what he is passing on in these lessons because really there's no better way to learn and there's no better teacher then learning from those who have gone before us who have tested the limits of human capacity for performance and leadership and decision making and here we all we get to sit here we have to actually sit here and absorb the knowledge of these great men who paid dearly for this knowledge and as we know many of their comrades paid with their very lives so let us never forget that that for every lesson there was blood spilled for every story there is a man who did not return so value these lessons lessons that we can apply to our lives to our family to our businesses to our communities everything we do we can apply what we're learning here don't squander these lessons pay attention to them be aware we talk a lot about awareness be aware of your own shortfalls and then apply these lessons that's what you have to do you have to actually apply them you can't sit back and listen to them gonna actually apply them so echo we are all looking to learn we are all looking to somehow make up for our own shortfalls and apply things to our lives that will make us better do you know of anything softball coming at you do you know of anything that broadly speaking can make our lives better yes broadly and narrowly okay that would be do you get to okay by far okay now is it possible that you're just a person that's just into it and so you're you're biased because you like jiu-jitsu and now you think everyone could gain from it and benefit from it even though yeah that could be wrong it is that a possibility yes that's a possibility well actually I was gonna say that's actually not possible yeah well I I'm more a thing yes to the biased part of it okay you are biased but even if you're biased then that doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong I would tell you this you're biased you're biased in favor of jiu-jitsu and that doesn't affect the outcome of someone starting jiu-jitsu and really gaining a ton from it in making their life better yes across the board it's kind of like you know how hmm like the son if I say hey the Sun is warm on my face today mm-hmm and I really like that okay and I'm biased towards the Sun okay what if someone doesn't like that it's still warmer in their face assume saying okay let's see not only that they didn't know Brad that was a perfect analogy yes actually that's pretty bad but nonetheless short notice that's sort of sort of how those hey actually actually jujitsu will improve your life yes actually unless you do it wrong here's the thing unless you do wrong yeah yeah I guess that is possible yes and I don't mean do jujitsu wrong I mean approach yeah jujitsu wrong so like okay so you mentioned before how how the person like a person in the beginning you your confidence go like can go backwards one step because you're like oh oh like how many people know this and I didn't even realize it so you're kind of apprehensive just in general that is yes if you approach it correctly in my opinion because if you approach it wrong you're kind of like oh I know a a choke now I know armlock now I'm better than everybody you know kind of thing that's the reality of jujitsu is you won't feel that way because you'll get before you choke you learn to choke but then you get choked and are mock didn't come here at fifteen times in one day so you don't feel more confident out of the gate I didn't know yeah but then again no you know what a small part of me did did only if I knew that old he was but on top of it I would know you know I know who in my little what do you say in my circles like I knew who didn't train and who did just like we all do you know I mean strangers I'd all be always be like men like you know that you're gonna watch out yeah just like you know how like sometimes you're like you don't know if that guy has a weapon or something like that I'm feeling it's that feeling you know a little bit worse because if a guy's what being kind of runaway if someone has even in any kind of jujitsu scenario like mounted or in armbar isn't it weird you can be mounted and you can't get a win literally can't get away you can scratch bite go for growing stuff like that okay not a winner you will not gonna yeah is yeah it's bad and and I would think about that stuff - yeah it's scary but it's just like the whole concept of passing the guard right doesn't seem like you if you said okay the idea of jiu-jitsu one part of jiu-jitsu is you have to get around the other person's legs yeah that's the whole that's what you got to do you think oh well how long is that going to take four seconds three seconds maybe even two seconds or whatever I'll get around their legs and then you realize it can take years and years and years of trying to get past one person's gark if not never sometimes yeah that's a crazy thing very crazy room it was I think was you at the muster where I was like we were talking about that I forget if you were saying it or I was saying it mm-hmm I think you were saying and I was like maybe daddy I don't know nonetheless I was like because technically getting past someone's guards just getting bastard legs just like I said and you can use this whole room I don't care if you walk out the door and sneak back in the back door you still can't do it and like you can like go and I did a little demonstration where I'd be like okay this is like all I gotta do is get past your legs guard no guard I just gotta get past your legs right so I backed way up and I started like walking around all you do is like turn and it just it's yeah it's crazy how just how impossible that can kind of seem you know but that's the Jiu Jitsu you know you know and that's one tiny little sliver of an aspect of it it's just passing the guard you know yes it goes deep nonetheless but yes if you approach it correctly I have no doubt in my mind I don't know under any circumstance where it wouldn't be an improvement in your life net-net sure cannot think of one so so overall we're saying do Jiu Jitsu yes sir once we decide to do jujitsu which we just decided now we need to get a geek yes we get an origin geek from origin man calm you need a lot of stuff from them but yes you get ug from there many different options speaking of keys I've been noticing people getting blue belt winning tournaments saying hey I joined you do too because of jock oh yeah because of this well yeah so there's there's a at camp this year there was people that were like I'm a jock Oh blue belt right and I was like what is that and they say I started training cuz the podcast I was like oh awesome and I've met I think to Jocko purple belt so no the podcast has only been out for four years four ish yeah yeah we're coming up on four years so I mean someone out of the gate was like okay I'm gay because you got you know it takes about four years to get a purple belt if you're like training hard right this is no slack someone that just jumps in so I think I've met two like Jaco purple belts but yeah that's that's super cool yeah so so you're not alone don't feel like you ever feel like all the other odd no one's really actually doing that that's all I'm not doing it yeah people are absolutely yes hundred percent my wife just was in England she delivered a friend and she delivered an Origin ghee to England for her friend's husband Anthony he's obsessed he's you know he's like whatever 50 year he's like my age 48 52 something like that obsessed with the jujitsu yeah he's been trained it for six months like a white belt things I get in the game oh yeah right yeah at some point you commit you say you know what I'm gonna do this yeah just do it yeah just do it this is how you know you and we haven't used the expression used to bug recently but this is how you kind of know when you're sort of trying to figure out moves when you're like in bed or driving or this kind of stuff what it's like constantly rolling in your mind it might be this a good feeling yeah cuz it does translate when you go back in it like you work it is good man but yes people are in the game so yeah and you're gonna train key so get a jujitsu geek from origin mein kampf get a rash guard so you can train nogi which is also important very important as echo would say yes I would just say important but he would say important I don't hear the difference yeah well the defense don't hear anything and then the problem is the Brock is you're gonna want to represent off the mats off the mats right and we go into the whole thing about how you can't wear Aggie to the club all right attempt yes you can't wear Aggie to the grocery store now you can get away with D pants let's face it let's face it I think most of us have been into a grocery store in Japan I know I have specially the black ones no Arjun black ones they look kind of do you'd probably go to a club in the orange and black you can put it off you could pollute it what kind of level what kind of fashion you know you're a fashion guy but where does that fit into the fashion world like what would you wear with black pants to a club - no - uh let's say a bar you're going to a bar you put on the ghee pants and you just what are using wearing a t-shirt there's an origin t-shirt well that's the deathcore t-shirt let's clarify first off I'm not a fashion person but if I was I would say there is no fashionable unless you're going extreme new-age fashion which I can see then yeah you could wear it you know it's funny you ever heard of this store called Patagonia it's a yes outerwear and stuff oh yeah yeah outdoor clothing right well Patagonia used to have pants maybe they still do that were called the pants okay that's what they were called they probably still have no no so maybe you know they're over there wearing their deep ads out just way hit the game it represent even harder well are they called they pens yes they're called gay pant or are they called GI pants they're called deep ants they're there when you I remember back in the day I would read the little description and it would say you know the GEEP ants is based on the loose-fitting martial arts oh yeah say that a little description yes okay so yeah well yeah I mean it's kind of like whatever you did I mean it wouldn't be a violation overall especially if there were the black ones the blue or the white maybe the kind of work people like if you were oh yeah yeah you know you couldn't wear white no he pants out for just no reason but the black you could kind of be a trifle obvious yeah so anyways but if you don't want to really be pants and you still want to represent that's fine you can get a pair of origin jeans which are also made in America the little brass rivets are made in America the zipper is made in America the thread is made in America and they're sewn by craftsmen perhaps women mm-hmm up in Maine that's what that's where they're made so everything is there there's a they're as American as American can be that's what those jeans are they when you put them on you are embracing America through its court and you're rebuilding America because you gotta remember all those none of those people had jobs none of those people at origin had jobs five years ago three years ago two years ago because all the jobs had been taken overseas we're bringing them back so embrace America and embrace origin jeans two kinds there's there's the heavy there's the there's the factory jeans what we call the og the original the original ones and then there's the Delta 68 which are mine and then I signature jeans yeah look they don't say Jocko on them because that's not know they say Delta 68 named after my forefathers in the SEAL Teams in Vietnam that war jeans into the Mekong Delta to hunt down the enemy and they did it because they were more durable they lasted longer if they were quiet so that's what we did we brought him back Delta 68 represent yep good and get some what else Wow from origin well supplements of course keeping us in the game so you know 50 years old your friends your wife's friends husband you know what was the name again Anthony Anthony 50 will just say 50 around 50 so cuz people will ask like am I too old to start you know you're 40 you're not yeah negative I know guy 41 and started and it's kind of a little bit of a handful rhonu with 41 which you know that's not terribly old but it's not terribly well no actually what surprised me it's just a handful to deal what that means because there are some people that whether they're twenty or whether they're 40 there they just have a little something yeah have a little they have some skills some inherent good instincts they have some inherent strength yes sir yeah flexibility or something yeah for everybody in it you can even train hard but if you do you do have to mine these things like okay I'm not 20 years old anymore I'm 50 years old now so you gotta you do have to mind those things not nothing yeah so if you're going deathmatches eight rounds six minutes okay that's a good not it's not nothing there either so but here good news joint more a fair krill oil these things will keep you deep in the game take from me I can turn up the work up personally I'm speaking for myself I'm no anomaly I can go deep hardcore on a workout week after week after week difference is if I do take gentler for a crow oil and if I don't take John warfare crow I'll I won't be able to go if I don't if I do I can this applies to everybody like I said so that question is sir answered yes and if you and if you want to make it a little easier to maintain then just get the subscription we have the subscription now so that way you can just here come's join warfare once a month and you get your bottle there you go you start to get your krill oil you get it and you and you actually save money so check out the subscriptions they're on Origin main calm and don't forget about mulk which is additional protein which you also need if you're if you're lifting if you're training if you're running if you're alive and on top of that if you get done with a really good dinner even if you had something delicious like steak and then you've got done and you still have this little less a little thing in the back your head that you just need a little a little bit of sweetness a little bit of that he just makes it a one scoop hitter just mix yourself a one scoop Mull cater and you'll go to bed completely satisfied you feel like look I I'm I'm completely satisfied with what I've eaten yes and and you're stronger and healthier on your way to recover yes - um you will not relate to this but people might be able to okay so when you get on the path from not being on the path your initial get on might include quitting drinking cutting down drinking but probably quitting drinking okay so here's a common thing that I heard and experienced with quitting drinking where you kind of crave like sweets or like desserts just something that'll like give you a like of what a dopamine or whatever the chemical hit yeah yeah so you want that like you want like cookies or stuff you know because you're not drinking anymore or whatever that'll be like a result yeah this is what I heard and literally experienced and it was like stronger than I expected - now if you have the mulk boom problem solved hundred percent because it does supply that you know the desert kind of scenario unless you've put some peanut butter you're on the path hundred percent know no side effects no drawbacks yeah speaking of no side effects no drawbacks if you get the RTD they'll ready to drink discipline go in a can or the RTD think that it no no that's a thing that's a product name it's like oh this is an RTD sounds like I didn't make it up it's this sounds like you made it up okay it's it says it right there on the page oh yeah high-speed low-drag RTD then would make it happen RTD no but speaking of that when when I was when I went up to a fee of ons podcast and he was drinking it and he started getting that you know you start feeling it yeah he was pretty funny and he says he said something along the lines you know I might find myself back on cocaine so he started feeling like the and I said no you don't need to go back on cocaine you know thinking to myself you don't need cocaine you just need a little bit more discipline go rtd yeah yeah which is not and the day it won't make you it's not a gateway drug well it's not a gateway drug it's not gonna make you end up sleeping on a park bench so no no the opposite yeah you might buy the park it's probably gonna happen so so thank you also chuckle whitey speaking of picking up park benches and whatnot yeah chuckle right key boom and it happens to taste good and it happens to be certified organic you like mentioning that yeah man there's a big deal to get that little qualification I did it's good it's very good actually cuz here's the thing yeah you well even when you first you thought people do you think people in Nebraska care if it's certified organic or do you think it's only 40 mile radius around okay I think some people in Nebraska care that's what I think and this is why we're does because when you first announced that you're drinking pomegranate white tea Oh people were asking is it organic is that what you're gonna say that's part of it yes I'm saying that whole experience for well primarily it was like all right that's surprising that doesn't sound very hardcore you'd think maybe you're drinking something else but when you're like okay now we can do that or we can in admit we drink these white teas which is good but a lot of our wives drink white tea and they tend to care about certified organic in my experience which is very limited by the way so I'm saying pomegranate white tea Jaakko white tea is for everybody and just because you're not all I don't care about certified organic just because you're like that doesn't mean everyone else in fact I don't think the majority of the people would rather it be certified organic then non-organic I would agree with that and versus it is the root of me drinking pomegranate white tea is when I used to debrie sealed platoons out in the desert hmm after they would get done with their brief and I would drink chocolate eternity but by the time I get done at least notes and just get into it but yeah yeah so check that as well it's good also chocolates door it's called jaw closed door so we go to jaw closed or calm we do have t-shirts hoodies rash guards hats three kinds of hats by the way three types of headgear by the way women's stuff you know decals and stickers these are all things if you want to represent while you're on the path discipline equals freedom deaf core to the core I like it good all these things and that's one that's gonna permeate kind of everything that good you know when you find the good in this situation all these things you can represent get you stuff chuckle store calm you like something get something on them oh also I gotta mention that I have a little I have some events I'm gonna be doing around the country starting in January around the time the book comes out a little bit earlier I'm gonna be in Washington DC Austin Texas I'm gonna be somewhere in the vicinity of New York maybe somewhere in this vicinity of LA somewhere in the vicinity of Seattle Washington and somewhere in the vicinity of San Francisco so I will let you know but just pay attention I just got an email right before we started recording this that that is actually factually happening I don't even know what I'm gonna call it yet so I will be live on stage interacting so there you go boom also speaking of live but I imagine when I do those live events that there will be lots of people representing representing big - they will be representing in their garments oh yes that they're on the path yes we normally see a lot of people that are wearing something that says def Corps or big time also subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already on your iTunes if you listen iTunes mm-hmm Google Play if that's what you list you stitcher if you have Android what's with the voice bro no I'm just don't care just delegating listening leave a review if you're in the mood if you're in the mood leave a review reviews are welcome I haven't read reviews lately on the podcast but I've done that before I'll do it again if I see some good ones some some ones that kind of nail it yeah kind of have layers we're looking for layers yes primarily yes so and you notice they said welcome reviews are welcome because the difference between welcomed and accepted it's already no reviews are accepted where do you know you can write a review are they expected you're not expected know what it's they just didn't know yeah welcome meaning like if there's a review that's like we kind of like that you know like we're puts a smile on certain people's faces and we're gonna go ahead and read down don't forget that we have another podcast called grounded it's just a podcast called grounded where we talk about other things and I think that's the way you you said this on the last little support section mmm-hmm because how do you describe what we talked about on grounded and I think the answer is we talk about other things yes you know what does that mean well it's other thing other thing I think it spells it out yeah man yeah as opposed to what these things it's not these things it's more other things yeah it's other things yeah for equally important things maybe not well varying levels of importance yeah maybe not equally important but interesting yes I think and here's the here something that is important I will say this even though they might not be of equal importance they are things that will grant you a better understanding a broader understanding of things yes of other things the more you understand other things the more you'll understand these things yeah well foot thank you need to change whatever that little you know that you know a podcast has a little you know blurb about what it's about mmm I don't think you've changed the jockle podcast one since you wrote it when you were nine years old but you should make a grounded one say a podcast about other things yeah all right I'm gonna do I do too so for example Jason Gardner talking about how he lives up in the mountains and when they go jockey and they gotta carry guns just in case they get attacked by freaking mountain lions those are other things we talk about but it's important to understand that yes we also have a warrior kid podcast this is a great podcast not just for kids but if you're a parent you can use it to help you parent but you can also learn from it I am a parent I got four kids two of which are over the age of 18 20 18 got a 16 year old and got a 10 year old I'm passing on some lessons learned covertly mmm-hmm flanking you with some lessons learned that will help you and I wish I would have this podcast when my kids were younger but or your kid podcast let your kids check it out and don't forget to get yourself some more your kid soap from Irish Oaks ranch comm where young Aiden is kind of zone business it's not just a business that's making money it's a business that's helping people stay clean speaking of staying clean on YouTube you just called for bad no no no no it does anyway so yeah so yeah if you want to watch the podcast watch and listen put on your Smart TV in your office Jim it's the place of you know place of work out or if you just wanna watch anyway it's a video version so yeah man you know because some people cause video watching video Smart TVs the per the permeation permeation I don't know what the hell you're talkin revelant of Smart TVs is what I'm saying you know yeah so boom subscribe put it up put it on there listen to it do it seem sane do it and if you need some some psychological help getting through a moment of weakness you don't have to be alone you don't have to be alone you have to fight that fight by yourself you can get fire support when you press play on your phone of an album called psychological warfare the artist known as me Jaco layin down tracks no music just voice just me talking mm-hmm and telling you hey this is what you can do to overcome that particular moment of weakness whether it's your thinking you don't want to go to the gym whether do you think you're gonna eat a doughnut gonna eat a doughnut no press play on your phone and you take a listen take a listen won't get you right we'll keep you on the path and if you need um a visual reminder to be on the path to stay on the path check out flipside canvas comm with Dakota Meyer its Dakota Meyers company and he's creating graphic visual designs that will help remind you where you are where you're going and where you want to be the flipside canvas comm also I have some books the first book is the stress effect written by Colonel Henry dick Thompson so we just reviewed that it's an outstanding book there's all kinds of information in there I only read a small percentage of it but tons of knowledge so order that you can find it on Jocko podcast.com under looks from the podcast and then there is leadership strategy and tactics which is my newest book coming out January 14th I just open up the index open up the index and what do I say here's some sections some sections you can read about fear inducing moments failure feedback fighting fire teams flanking maneuver foot patrol friendly fire leading from the front front lines FTX full mission profiles and good teams gossip guidance hackworth David hands-off leadership headcounts heavy-handed approach high ground high-risk operations honesty hope humility these are some of the topics that come get covered in the leadership strategy and tactics Field Manual I wrote this so it's so you can refer to it you can open it up and say hey I got a person that I'm that is has a negative attitude what should I do with them oh I'll open up the the field manual and follow the directions so that's what that book is tons of good information in there for you don't forget if you've got kids well you know kids help those kids out by getting them the knowledge that they need to live a better life where you gonna get that or your kid one two and three warrior kid one way of the warrior kid or your kid - Mark's mission and warrior kid three where there's a will these books are the book books that every human wishes they had when they were eight years old nine years old ten years old 11 years old 12 years old make that wish come true for someone that you know for a kid that you know your kids some other kids nephews nieces bring it to the library whatever you can do to spread the word and then there's Mikey in the Dragons which is a book that teaches even little or kids maybe four five six seven eight how to overcome fear which is what you have to do when you are growing up as a human being you've got to learn to overcome fear that book actually teaches little kids how to do it Mikey and the Dragons and get that for every kid you know get that for the library get that for the for the classroom spread the word and then there's the discipline equals freedom Field Manual you don't know what to get that person for Christmas cool do you want that person to be weak do you want that person to be out of shape do you want that person to have mental trauma or do you want them to be on the path give them the gift of discipline give them the gift of discipline discipline equals freedom Field Manual there's no book like it it's it's a different it hits you in a different way it's not it's not normal and that's why it's effective discipline equals freedom Field Manual get that also the audio version of that is not on audible it's on mp3s through iTunes or Amazon music or Google Play also we have extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership where life babban and I wrote to explain what we learned from a leadership perspective on the battlefield and how you can use those same tools in whatever doing in leading whatever situation you are leading in and also we have a shell on front leadership consultancy where we solve problems through leadership that's what we do we come in to businesses and we help with the problems that the businesses have we help them solve those problems 100% based on fixing leadership improving leadership aligning leadership when you align and you fix and you improve leadership that turns businesses companies and teams around so go to Ashland front comm if you want some of that EF online you don't necessarily have to bring us in to speak to every person in your company you can go to EF online.com and we can train your people or you virtually that's what it is it's a virtual training it's interactive you actually get put in leadership scenarios inside that training online and you got to make decisions it's like choose your own adventure so that's EF online comm we have the mustard dates coming out shortly for a Leadership Conference extreme ownership calm for that where we come with the entire echelon front team live and in-person and we bring the knowledge that we have and share it with you and then we have EF overwatch and EF legion where we are taking selected military personnel we are ensuring that they understand the principles that we talk about the principles of extreme ownership the principles like the dichotomy of leadership we make sure that they know and understand those and then we place them into companies in the civilian sector so that those leaders can lead and help those come Wyn go to EF overwatch comm or EF Legion for that and if you if you need more of us which is really just hard to even imagine that someone could want to hear more of either of us but if you want to find us you can't we're on the interwebs dick Thompson Colonel dick Thompson Colonel Henry dick Thompson he is on Twitter he is at HBS underscore CEO and he's at H P sy s dot-com which is for high-performance systems if you want to check him out and learn from him he's just an unbelievable human being and it's an honor to have sat with him as far as echo and I we are also on the interwebs we are on Twitter we are on Instagram and we are on that echo is adequate Charles and I am at Jocko willing and once again just complete thanks sincerest possible thanks and gratitude to dick Thompson for coming on this program and sharing his lessons with us and of course we thank him for his incredible service and sacrifice to our great nation for what he's done inside the military and for what he's done since he's left the military so thank you colonel salute then appreciate it and obviously an open door anytime you want to come back and to the rest of our servicemen and women out there who stand watch for us every day thanks to what thanks to you for what you do and the same goes to our police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMT and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all this first responders out there you also make sacrifices to protect us so thank you for what you do and everyone else out there just stay aware to be aware be aware of what leadership is be aware of what stresses be aware of what cognitive ability and emotional reactions and be aware of stress and the impacts that stress has on your decision-making process and think about that and also think about this think about the fact that you're free you're free our country is free and we are free because of the heroism and valor of those warriors that faced fear and horror and death and still moved forward and gone after it and until next time this is echo and Jocko

Channel: Jocko Podcast

Views: 213,880

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Id: w5ajc6qds3c

Length: 191min 50sec (11510 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 07 2019