[Music]
Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast.
Today I'm excited to speak with Damon Wells, a career army officer with 28 years of service.
Thank you so much for your service, Damon, and I'm excited to talk to you today about some of my favorite topics,
leadership, team building, and strategies for success.
Thank you so much for being here.
My pleasure. Those sound like straights.
I want to jump right into talking a little bit about your background, including your time as a commander,
and working in high stakes and environments.
Can you share a little bit with our listeners?
Yeah, so I can go through just quickly through my background,
joined in 1995, which really sounds like ages ago,
which puts me almost almost at 30 years, which as you know is mandatory retirement,
which I'm absolutely looking forward to.
Right now, I am in Schupegark, Germany, I'm the deputy chief of staff at Africa Command,
the joint U.S. Command that oversees the command of Africa.
Before that, I would brigade commander at Carson Colorado, which is a beautiful post.
I've been to from Silo, Oklahoma, to what's now Fort Cavattos, which used to be called
food in Texas, been on the East Coast, been to the West Coast, been to Iraq a couple times,
been to Afghanistan, some time in Korea, the Baltics, and now Germany.
So over the course of 30 years, around the world a few times.
Well, that sounds amazing, traveling all these different places, and I imagine it must be
challenging and to pick up and move. And I want to talk a little bit, one of the things,
you know, having a father that was also in the military. I know a lot of times,
you know, uncertain times happen in the military and you're, like you mentioned, you change locations,
you change ranks, you change roles, you really have to pick up and start over and sometimes
uncertain times. So I want to talk a little bit about what advice you would give to civilian leaders
about maintaining calm and focus when their path isn't really clear and they have to pick up
and lift to maybe a different job or a different state and just a little bit about your experiences
as you've navigated across the globe. I actually love that question. So you mentioned uncertainty
and then changing ranks and then changing jobs, where's changing, you know, changing where you live.
So to us uncertainty and ambiguity, and ambiguity, comes with the territory. There's
always a certain amount of information that you just can't know. As an example, you know, as I get
ready, as I'm looking for my new job, or I'm waiting on the new assignment, I'm pretty comfortable
as are the people I work with, just not knowing. And I say that because my wife will always want to know,
hey, did you find out where we're going yet? You know, where we're going now? She wants to know.
And I just know the answer, not only is it going to come later than you want it, but it's never,
it's never 100% that that's where we're going. It could always change the last minute. So you have
to be comfortable with ambiguity and have to know when uncertainty is important, when you need
certainty. So there are certain things, you know, each rank comes with, you know, it's four or five
years per pay grade, per rank that you hold in the military. And then there are certain jobs
that you must do. There are key development jobs that you must do in order to get promote
to the next race. So understanding when and where you're going to perform those jobs, you know, the
uncertainty isn't great for that. You've got to know, you've got to have a plan for that.
And there are certain times when, you know, you're in environments, Iraq, Afghanistan, when there's,
when you're given an operation, there's just a certain amount of that operation that you just can't
know. And there are certain parts that you that you really have to know. You know, where are we going?
Why are we doing this? What exactly are we trying to accomplish here? The details along the way,
sometimes they're just going to have to be ambiguous. What we do is we see, okay, this is a piece of
information that I need to continue making my plan. I don't have that information. So I'm going to
insert an assault in here. So between now and whatever that decision point is, I've got to look for
details of information that help me confirm or deny that assumption. And that that's a decision
point that will tell me go either, you know, left or right. So it's, it's being comfortable,
ambiguity, and it's knowing what facts do you actually need? And which ones can you make assumptions for?
Yeah, and I love, you know, to, I always say this to myself, worry is negative goals setting. I think
there's thousands of assumptions one can make in any given situation. And the more you worry and
focus on what could or might go wrong, it's, it really takes you off your course and off your
mission. And you can't really focus on the actual facts that you have. And facts, the way I think of
facts are like a puzzle, right? The more facts you have, the better you can put your puzzle together.
And worry just distracts you. It's like a blindfold as you're putting your, your puzzle together. And so
a lot of times in uncertain times, I like to say to people, focus on the facts. And anytime you have
a worry that comes into your mind, replace it with a fact because you can't make really strategic
business decisions in your type of situations or in regular civilian life without all the facts,
right? And so, you know, we live in a very rapidly evolving and changing world as far as technology
and global events. And so I want to talk a little bit about from your experience how the military
prepares leaders like you to be adaptable and flexible from going to Colorado to Africa.
Very different environments, very different cultures, very different weather. So let's talk a
little bit about that. Yeah, so again, be adaptable just comes with territory. And I think in the military,
because that is a prerequisite, if, especially the leader, the further you get in your career,
if you aren't adaptable, at some point you're going to get weeded out. So people that can't
adapt to new situations and environments won't function all that well. And I'll be honest every
organization I've been to, does it differently? Because if, because I went from Colorado to
Germany, huge, huge difference. So when you do a new unit, there's things you're going to want to know,
there's actually things you need to know. When you get a Germany, for example,
German government, because we are in Germany, though the German government is in charge of Germany. So
when you get here, you have German rules. You have to follow, when you also have US rules, you have to follow.
So what people like to say is, you know, for the end process, you have to go register your car,
and you have to do, you have to do a lot of things, make sure it's your, I guess, legal,
yes, data, support, as a commit, there's a lot of stuff, a lot of bureaucracy, you have to go through
when you come to Germany as a US military service member. And it's described as like the worst
of German bureaucracy combined with the worst of US bureaucracy. It's just, it's a lot of, it's a
lot of red tape, a lot of, a lot of hassle. But back to original question,
what, what should happen? And like I said, every instance of some, some units do this well. But
you have to be cognizant of the fact that everybody that's coming to you, nearly everybody is coming from
somewhere else. So it's sort of incumbent on the unit that's there to help the people adapt to,
you know, whatever the new things are. So if it's, if it's Germany, that's a huge adaptation.
So what can we do in a unit for incoming personnel to ensure that they adapt, they understand,
because the German laws are different, you have to have a special drummer's license here,
there's different regulations on, you know, the maintenance standards for your car. And
if somebody doesn't help you understand all that, you're going to have a lot of problems.
So it's really incumbent on the unit to understand that the problem you just asked, and it's
fairly ubiquitous throughout the army that there's some process for that. It's not always employed
with 100% efficiency because somebody's actually got to be the one who takes the new person and
helps them do that process. It's just another simple example when you go to Carson where I just came from,
Colorado. It's at 6,000 feet elevation. So running is much more challenging if for Carson that is
at, at sea level. So because of that, you're a lot at a certain amount of time before you have to take
your physical pasture, your fitness test, because it's going to take you long to adapt. Kind of a
small sort of physical example, but it's an acknowledged fact that everybody has to go through an
adjustment period. And if helped along that just period, you'll, you'll adjust faster.
I love that. I think we got to give ourselves times to adjust, right? So any new situation, whether
you're taking a new job or moving to a different country, there's time like you said, adjusting to
the time zone, for example, seems pretty easy, but if your body is used to sleeping, you know, on
Pacific Standard Time, and now you're, you know, X hours ahead in other countries, it takes some time
for your sarcadium rhythm to reset so you can sleep correctly. And so I love kind of what you said,
adjusting and really leaning into that and giving yourself time to work through that and let your
body adjust to whatever the new challenge that you're in is. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about
the P4 leadership model and talk a little bit about the trust, excellence, embracing your purpose.
Can you share a little bit about that with our listeners? Happy to. Yeah, so the P4 is obviously
four P. So people is the first P partnerships is the second P practice is the third and PURNUS is the
fourth. So the most basic, and it's kind of based on complexity theory, a little bit of neuroscience,
a little bit of in theory, but the most basic thing you have to understand about building a team
is the people. So that's that's why people is first and then sort of the the pinnacle of where you can
get a team is that everyone has a very clear understanding of the team's purpose, which is why
that's the last one. And just to kind of caveat it upfront, not every team gets that purpose
domain, that echelon of team building is very hard. It's if you think of like special forces
organizations, they get they're quicker because they have very rigid selection mechanism that sort
of weeds out people until you get to a group of people who all kind of see the world the same way,
who are all willing to sacrifice themselves because they believe in this thing that they tried
really hard and seen their friends sort of fall by way, so they just built a lot of energy into
bidding into this organization. So they tend to see the world the same, they tend to share the same
values already. So you kind of go through the first phases of people faster than that, but that's
just an example. So in the real world, when you start with people, then if you're the new leader
coming into an organization, you understand who am I leading? The first mechanism that you have to
be aware of is trust. So trust is kind of the gateway criteria to get to the next one. So what does
that really mean? So I have to have to exhibit behaviors as quickly as possible because I want to
reach a threshold trust where I can say things and they believe that my motivations are benign
and that my interest revolve around making team better and making them better at individuals.
And that sounds simple, but you know if you're for example if you're an introvert,
then you won't be compelled to communicate that often to what happens is people feel the gap in
you not talking with their own assumptions about why you're not talking first of all, and then
just have to try to use a very minuscule cues that you're giving them to understand you.
So I'm kind of an introvert myself. So I know I have to go out of my way to communicate, to talk,
to let people know that I want the organization to succeed, and that's where my interest lie.
So when you ask them to do something harder and comfortable, their immediate thought is,
I don't want to do that. I don't think this guy knows what he's doing. Their immediate thought should
be, it's probably okay. I trust him. He knows what's asked for the unit. I'll do the uncomfortable
thing. So to me, that's like the most basic line between the two thoughts of that are people
in your organization. Next is partnership. So go ahead. No, no, no, sorry. For a long time. So if you want
to chat, yeah, no, I think I was just going to say that like you were saying about trust, I think you
know, I'm in a casino gaming industry and I think a trust like a slot machine, you, you got to put a
whole bunch of coins in that machine until you can take your prize, right? And I think a lot of times
people assume very quickly that they have the trust and that people trust them and it's easy to
break it down too. Like you could spend 10 years building trust and it takes one situation
to lose the trust. And so I think a lot of times trust is not given its earn. And the only way you can
earn trust is like you were saying is to communicate into talk. And if you're not talking, it's very hard
to build build trust with body language. And you know, so I just I think that's so spot on.
Yeah. And but I imagine it's just way with every organization, but in the military,
part of the implicit trust comes with the rain you wear. So I tend to just have baseline trust
for someone who outranks me because I make assumptions about what they know. Got this far. So
so there is a little bit of implicit trust, but a lot of it is earned out of its it's almost impossible
gained through nonverbals of body language and people just making assumptions out of you. And you know,
you can't it is it does take a lot of time to build and you know, you should explain it to me like
what I'm asking leaders that work for me like what are you doing to build trust and if we explain that
it's literally the aggregate of all your behaviors that that add up trust or not because you can't
just go to your team and say okay team trust me. I want you to trust me. Did everybody trust me now?
Just doesn't work like that. It's it's it's an indirect mechanism. And I can move on to
partnerships if you're right. Yeah yeah yeah. Okay so because I needed a model that had all the same
starting letters partnerships what I really mean is teams right. So the the milestone criteria for
teams is cohesion. So you have the the two dots that are people with the link between them that's
trust. Now you aggregate dots and you put more lines and which one is team cohesion and what I mean by
that is not only do I trust the people I work with that then have a have this you know baseline the
struttle level of trust. What we also have is sort of a we're beginning to congeal this unit identity
i.e. I see my own identity but I also have this unit identity you know where the
bear scooters or lands or whatever we are my brain and I'll start to adjust it's okay identify
with this team like these are my people this is kind of like a family and you'll start to put a
little more energy into making it seem better at your own discomfort because you feel a special bond
to these people. You know family is a good kind of it's a matter for for it but that you you sort of
cross this boundary where now this team that you you know that you were new to at some point and you
didn't know anybody now you know people now you know about their families you can say oh that's
Joe Joe's really good at this if we this then we'll go to Joe and he'll do it then you get this like
because you want the team to succeed hey Joe didn't show up today hey we got to pull that
out a little extra weight do Joe's job and nobody's really upset about that yeah I know big deal so
we do it for us we'll just fill it in right so at this level generally then of course these things
don't always perfectly apply but you can think of the transition from a very basic team to
really efficient team at some point the team has a very hierarchical leadership structure in which
the leaves at the top people at the bottom can be good but they're always looking up for so
into kind of give them direction and this is where it sort of transitions at that puntership stage
is I'll go from a hierarchical leadership to you know what I've been doing this I know how to do
this I want the team to succeed if I go ask the boss he's going to tell me to do this I know this is
what we're doing Wednesdays I'm just going to do it anyway without asking and then people sort of
build this you know this initiation mechanism that lets them just do what you're supposed to do without
being told that's a huge threshold right there and that's purpose I'm sorry that partnerships
yeah I think it is it's an interesting I love the piece first of all that's great um I do think when I
think of a you know a well you know cohesive working team you know sometimes one of your teammates
are going to be down and the some total of the group needs to pick up when let's say somebody sick
right and you have a mission to get done or so I think when there's trust in a team and one person
is not on their A game the other team members pick up the slack and I see this in sports I see this
and you know the military in corporate America but if you don't have the trust in the team it's highly
unlikely you know people are going to want to you know do stately to do extra work if you know you're
not well liked and you're not well trusted in that group so your spot on it requires a lot of trust
communication collaboration understanding the vision and the purpose and why we're all here
doing this together and so I think those are great great uh any final thoughts on that before we I
switch gears on you no uh yeah let's switch gears um I want to talk a little bit when I about
you know making decisions I think in the military you're often it's it's like a muscle you make
you're able to make quick decisions and you don't think about it's gut reaction you you do it right
away without thinking I and in corporate America I think a lot of times we do a lot of humming and
thinking and processing and going back to the drawing board and sometimes decisions might take
take years in corporate America which effectively slows the business down from like you were saying
their purpose so I want to talk a little bit about how you can balance these quick decision making
um with fear of not making the right one but still making sure that you're making the best decision
for that time yeah that's a huge topic so decision making in the military so there's a couple ways
this happens and it's not necessarily quick it depends on what the decision is because I know our times
when you know I'm gonna I'm gonna let you do this right now it's a high stress environment and
you have to do it and I have to think through you know was you know what's the decision somebody's
got to do it go go for the most part every service is different but in the army we have a structure
sort of framework called the military decision making process and it's very rigid very structured
first understand all the variables that go along with this problem that's our things like assumptions
come in do I have all the facts I need to conduct operation and essentially what the way to
describe the military decision making processes if you could put out a theoretical theoretical dry
race word here's all the facts that I would need to know in order to flee execute decision
some of those you do know so you can kind of mark those off some of them you don't if I don't know
this do I really need to know it and I really need to know it then it becomes an assumption
that I have to verify along the way before we execute hopefully and then you can you can
build a plan and you can second here here was a big conceptual problem that we wanted to solve
and and the white and here are the much smaller more well-defined less-complinated problems
that prize that big problem which you essentially do is you take this big ambiguous problem like
move you know 300 vehicles and 1200 people from Texas to California to conduct a big training
rotation you essentially whittle those problems down into command level problems at the
Virginia level okay commander you know figure out how to get your people from your headquarters
this bus with with this gear and it even goes lower than that okay slot leader I need you to take
your sub people inspector gear make sure they have other stuff make sure it's sensible and get to
this point at this time to get on the bus so there's there's different ways to look at decision
I can that is the most deliberate most sort of step action drill of decision making but there are
other times like you said when I just need to be made right now so it's it's one of things where
hopefully you have enough experience and context to be to not just be at a decision point and have
to make a decision in the in the absence of any other data usually what going on is your
situations usually stressful it's got to be a quick decision and then the environment you're in
you're constantly watching for data and as a commander which you should be thinking about as a leader
in general but the commanders really do is you're always thinking what could happen what's next
where am I accepting risk with the worst thing that could happen right now what would I have to
if that thing happens and then and you're always thinking what decisions might I have to make in
fact you might say hey look the worst thing that can happen in this operation is something that's
catastrophic so before we go well let's figure out what can we do to mitigate that risk because
it might be something on a road okay can we avoid that road that way that decision point is just
eliminated but it's kind of things like that so it's not the absence of data because you're constantly
scanning for data the ability to keep that data in front of your mind so that if there's a decision
point it's going to be it's going to be quick you can make it as much data as you as you had access
to at the time and you know one of the things they they kind of beat into us is an 80 80% solution
right now is much better than a hundred percent solution that's too late so and that was made sense to
me absolutely I love that and I think the military really does help train leaders to make decisions I
think you know going back to your example in in the military if if you know your leader yells at you
to do whatever the thing is you do it you don't overthink it you don't you do it right he's your leader
where she's your leader in in corporate America if you know your leader you know yells at you to get
something done you're let we get into the emotions a lot with things or overthinking it or you know
in not just doing it right because really like you were saying at the beginning the leader is
you know made its way up to the CEO or whatever the rank is in the military and and they're the
decision makers for whatever the mission is whether it's you know military or corporate America so I
do I do like that saying about 80% because you know kind of going back to what I said before I see
people him and hall over decisions all the time you know and sometimes it's just picking and going
with the best decision with 80% of the information so I want to transition and talk a little bit about
leadership principles and you know from the military's point of view how do you think that those
principles that you mentioned some of them any others how they translate into civilian world
and how you think it they will transition for you yeah well they're kind of ubiquitous so
they translate into everything and I'm writing a book right now that starts with those
and sort of drives down to some of the details throws a cup other leadership models on
top of them and it kind of spits out the the P4 model and you know I think some time when I was in
the war college leadership's always been my passion so I wanted to understand you know leadership
or leadership doctrine in general where does this come from how how well are we applying it but
what is the army really say we're supposed to do and the interesting thing is if you want to you take
the arm get to the art principles here in the mint but you can imagine there's a ton of army
leadership doctrine like it's a leadership factory we you know we are very we prioritize leadership
we we want to train people leadership the funny thing is we don't really train specific
leadership skills until the much much higher like not so you're you've been an army for probably
15 years do you go to school that shes kind gives you leadership paradigm to talk through the
intricacies of leadership writ large you're just expected to go read the field manual that
talks about leadership and apply it from you know knowledge from the book which always found
was interesting because leadership is one of the the backbones of what we do and in my opinion
if you can learn how to be good leader you can fit all the other stuff in there because you're really
good at getting people to do what's supposed to be done without you know without too much of a fight
so there's a couple things right so a fast-mount of leadership doctrine that's that's not really
trained in any of the army schools a little bit but not too much less than you'd expect
and then you have things like well okay if we're not going to put you in the schools then the assumption
is they're going to get when they go to the to organizations and at you know at the junior ranks
the organization will be responsible for training very young officers lieutenants on
tenant level tasks and they'll be responsible for training young commanders,
county commanders and aptans on specific skills for that rank and on and on which which does happen
the problem is because it's not formalized at the army level it is actually somewhat it's just not
enforced for the army level down to the unit level so what happens is you get different versions
of that everywhere you go so you get some versions where none of that happens and you get some
versions of you know somewhat who really cares about leaders and understands how to train and convey
information and get people to interact with stuff like that it happens very well but it's not
standard so it depends on the organization you go to and you've seen the the P4 like I'm so
interested in it I built my own model that's derivative from the army model but there's just a lot
of ways to do it now what army uses is what's called the army leadership requirements model though
these are roughly the principles it is broken into sort of six facets and there's three on top
there's three on bottom and the fail on top are called attributes and three on the bottom are called
competencies so the three attributes are things like character presence intellect so these are the
things a leader should be and no so what we expect of leaders is to have strong character that you're
not going to break the laws or break the rules or demean people we want people to have strong
intellect so the ability to solve problems to understand what is human related problems as well as
tactical related problems and uh so I already forgot character intellect and presence so presence is
the third one so we expect you to look and behave like a leader i.e you don't show up to work
look and sloppy you and four standards um you stay fit things like that now the competencies are the
things you should do so that things like just a simple category it's called leads right there's
another one that's called develops others and there's a third one called uh get back to that one
and make because I forgot that one too so let's talk about leads so leads is the sub-copy
to see of uh getting people to do the things that you need them to do right which I'll say at the junior level
sounds like I know what to do I say do these things and people will do the things
but the longer you stay in the military the more you realize it was certainly not that simple um so
along the way you go from transactional leadership to you know it would just be easier if they knew all
the things and they were willing to do the things without me even calling them um so you learned
leadership techniques they've all from you do this and then they do it to here's the plan here's
where we would go as an organization here's the behaviors I expect here's the mission here's the
intent here's what we exist and then you you want your subordinate leaders to do that kind of stuff
right so the next one is develops and interestingly develops is the one do these surveys of a couple
of years develops others is actually one where most army you know in the aggregate army leaders
score the lowest in other words this is our of those cis attributes and competencies that I'm
explaining develops others is the one that's always raid the lowest meaning that
the what the respondents said was that develops others is not very high on their organization's
priority list and remembers develops others is part of how you build leaders because we don't do it
in schools organizations have to do this but it's done very poorly which is an interesting contrast
so it's very hot it's very low on the organization's priority list I mean it's not being done all that well
and it's also not being done all that effectively and it's not consistent across units so I'm
you'll get a lot so you'll get literally zero so that's a big one and that's to me that's the most
important one that's where I love especially once I was a badon commander and a brigade commander
I really love spending time helping people wade through the complexities of what leadership is
and explaining basically telling them everything I know about it I just fun doing that and then
the third one is kind of catch all called achieves so you can be careful with that when I'll explain
why I didn't make it but achieves you know the simple bumper sticker for that one is GITS results
the problem with that is I can violate all of the all the other five at future competencies
to get results but then it doesn't matter right because I basically destroyed my team so yeah I got
results I did the achieve but now everybody hates their army and doesn't want to stay in the army
because of how I treated them because all my plans were terrible and so anyway if I was going to
boil down leadership principles it's those attributes and competencies
yeah and I think kind of what you were saying leading people and developing people are
you know here's the mission do the thing and developing people to have the same skillsets is
a tricky tricky and corporate America right I think right now for fear of there's not enough for
everyone mentality like there can only be one of this rank so I can't train someone less
ranked because I don't want them to take my job right so I think a lot of time like you can't move up
until you help somebody move behind you right and in some other industries I think in like multi-level
marketing they say you know I don't make a dime and till you make a dollar and that is really
you know correlates back to leadership too right you to build and develop people
it takes time and just like you develop your children right your kids don't you know they're not
born and they don't take care of themselves they need to be developed and coached and they make
mistakes and you put them back on the yellow brick road and you teach them again and
and and I'll correlate it also to parenting like you want your kid to make a ton of mistakes
while they're in your home because when they go out in the world and they have to make mistakes
if they don't make them with you they're not going to understand in the world how to resolve them
and it's the same thing with leadership right you want before people are leading people you need
them to make some of the mistakes with you to learn right from wrong and how to do things the way
you know the military wants it to be done and I think um you know
talking a little bit about the future of leadership I think leadership is changing a ton
right now and what is a leader um because a leader isn't just by rank and by title a leader can be
someone without a title without a rank that needs to step up in an uncertain situation
and do things because maybe the leader is not present or something happened a leader or they're not
available to do what the mission is they those people need to step up and kind of like you were
saying at the beginning like that takes a great determination understanding the mission
and being all in right and it correlates in all different industry so I want to get a little bit
of your thoughts and your experience as it relates to you know resiliency too and how do you
cultivate resiliency and leadership when you're building your teams yeah so
resiliency is kind of comes with the territory and again it's you know this is keep
retraining the same ground but there's a certain amount of resiliency required just just
based on the uncertainty of the military that if if you're not you know if you don't have a certain
level of resiliency the army is not going to be for you because it's just come with territory so
artificial sort of filtering mechanism there but resiliency is important so there's a
there's a lot of things that can happen to you or around you in the military that are
emotionally traumatic or very stressful that require you to be able to have order to kind of
process however long that takes process and then get back to what you have to do so
it's sort of sort of a built-in mechanism I'll have them point out that resilience was one of our
taglines for what we were sort of in the heart of the Iraq you know global war on terrorism
because servicemen have come at back and you know having emotional problems
and we're have a hard time we didn't have the the structure the institutional knowledge to
process that now we do but the other time when having social you know people who could give care and
and have you know psychologists to help folks it was there it wasn't robust enough to service the
needs of the service numbers coming back so that that got added to the the military's sort of
institutional structure and we started we started enforcing on commanders to build resilience
and now we've got things like we've got classes that the units do we've got there's actually a position
in a lot of units now it's called a master resiliency trainer and I always love the one of the
module they do this is like a four-hour block of instruction on how to be resilient resilient
with a first blocks they do is we titled how to hook the good stuff so it just simply teaches you to
understand your circumstances see what's going on and understand that maybe your
intervigain is bad may not but you really need to understand what's going on and so are in there
is something that's good you can reinforce right and the army is our lifestyle in a lot cases I'm
I'm sort of suited for it and I'm institutionalized at this point so I'm okay but but I know especially
for folks transitioning especially young folks transitioning from the civilian world to military
the huge culture change and so that comes with a lot of a lot of pressures a lot of stress a lot of
uncertainty so it is incumbent on people like me more senior folks to understand and to
do this but to understand that you know anytime you go to a new organization just just being the new
person in an organization is stressful especially when you're young even compounded more when this is
your first unit ever right so so much uncertainty so much of I don't know you don't know the people you
don't you have no you have no signs of safety and that's really what you're looking for when you're
stressed right I'm looking for something stable you know indications or signatures of safety that I
could sort of latch on to so it's a big deal when people are new I've always tried to do this but
when people are new you have to go out of your way to make them feel comfortable because I really
literally the first day that's sort of the the signal are you are you building trust by helping them
feels even this new environment or you you're gonna play the game of oh you're the new guy I was
dressed now you're gonna be stressed let's let's make it more stressful for you as sort of a test
or even worse that you're the new guy and I'm indifferent I don't care so just figure it out like
everybody else did so it is real important for you to see I think it's important for senior leaders
to understand that I can make that guy more valuable to the team I can make him or her want to be on
this team more simply by doing a few behaviors to indicate this is a safe place we're gonna take are you
part of the family yeah and first impressions are everything and how you leave people feeling
is everything because that is how they're going to how they're gonna leave
feeling is how they think of you right and if you're making a first Brad impression and you're
angry and you're aggressive and you're yelling that's not going to be the great first impression so
like you said you got to go out of your way to make it right for them to get them in the right
mindset to move them forward with the mission and I love kind of what you were saying I think it's
spot on and the other thing is discipline I think resilience and discipline you know I kind of see
them hand in hand right so when people come back from these really challenging missions they need
to have the discipline to take care of themselves to process it to work through it just like staying in
shape right because a lot of times I think the more we bottle things and say okay I'm gonna bottle
that I'm gonna put it in a file folder on the back of my head before long the file folder gets full
of stuff that we haven't had the discipline to process and work through that it just spills out
into your life and so I love kind of what you were saying but I think you know just kind of
enclosing just final kind of closing thoughts and takeaways or anything any key lessons that we
maybe haven't talked about or thoughts you want to leave with our listeners before we close up
so because leadership is is my passion I see the world through the lens of basically all the
stuff we've already talked about so I'm real real cognizant of how a leader makes people feel and
you know you mentioned at one point that maybe it's not leader who's making the decision it's
it's one who's in the right position at the right time that has to do leadership things I think
that's very true because it's not just a person that wears the highest rank that has to be the leader
I think everybody has to be able to understand when the environment calls for them to be a leader
and to be ready for that and it's getting the environment to understand is this the time where I need
to do a leadership thing nobody's called me leader but the environment is indicating that I need to
do this thing I can do something simple as make someone feel comfortable in this environment
you know help them understand what it is that we're supposed to be doing and just lead that person
so for me it's not just it's just not just a corporate or a decorative or a military leadership thing
it's a way it's a framework to see the world around you and to understand how you're interacting with
the people the most basic unit and the social system around you they're acting with the people and
either making them more comfortable in the environment or helping them do something that makes them better
yeah oh I love that um oh I have to add impact that I think you could be a fantastic leader you can
be the world's greatest leader but if your culture and your environment isn't set up for success
and it's toxic it can be hard to lead in those kind of environments and getting everybody in the
mission right so like the principles you were mentioning um if you achieve a mission but you know
nobody trusts you you've done you know you've taken things you've you know you've not been you know
I would say the right leader is it really all worth it right I think I hear a lot in corporate
America you know my culture is toxic therefore I can't do what I need to do or lead the people the way
I need to lead and it becomes tricky right and I think I love all that you just said because I
think to be a really great leader you have to have the support and the vision and clearly understand
the mission that you're going for because it gets everybody going and pulling on the rope together
versus against each other on opposite ends of the road yeah if you've created an environment
and you're the ones technically in charge but but you have a toxic environment and nobody will go
out of their way to do the right thing unless you force them to you're not the leader somebody else is
but it's not you you're the person that owns the reins and you can tell people which direction
to go and they might do it but they're not the leader the leader is driving the organization it
is somewhere else in your organization but it's not you yes that is so good I really agree
Damon thank you so much for being here in sharing your insights I cannot wait to read your book I'm
excited to hear all about the principles that we've talked today about follow Damon read his book
we'll share all the details in the show notes and follow us that's the executive connect podcast
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