Being Resilient & Adaptive in the Face of Crisis | Mark Ashby | Ep. 17

What is high performance leadership? And what are the most effective leadership qualities during a crisis? 

Who better to answer this question than Mark Ashby. Mark has held Specialist roles in the Australian Army and was deployed to Iraq as a team leader in the highly-dangerous private security sector for eleven years in Iraq. He has found himself in the most acutely stressful and high pressure scenarios that one can imagine. 

Today, Mark Ashby assists multinational companies and their leaders in crisis awareness, cultural change & high performance leadership. As global pressures increase across every sector and system, we need to nurture the leadership skills for navigating complexity, uncertainty, and chaos. How can leaders keep themselves (and their teams) safe and sane as they navigate the challenges of our times? THAT is what we will be exploring in this episode.

Inside the episode: 

• What is high performance leadership?
• What leadership behaviors or characteristics are essential for high pressure, high stakes environments?
• How can leaders become more adaptable and fearless?
• How can leaders transcend toxic work culture, to break these cultural patterns for good?

To learn more about Mark and his work (including his FREE masterclass on effective leadership) head to https://markashbyconsulting.com/masterclass/ 

Transcript

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The way we've been doing work and leadership is deeply broken. Whether you're healing from burnout or just looking for a better way to run your company, you're in the right place. What is the future of work even look like? That is a question we get to answer together. After working with 1000s of executives and entrepreneurs around the world. I know that the deepest leadership issues are deeply human. We've got to heal ourselves if we want to heal the world. Welcome to the new self Podcast where each week I'll help you explore topics that will level up your leadership and your life. I'm your host, Nicole Belisle. I'm a leadership expert and Reiki master, and I believe the secret to more conscious work and leadership is self healing, grab a seat and get cozy because we're about to go on a journey. Hey, leaders, welcome to the show. I am here with Mark Ashby today. Mark has extensive experience in the military and is joining us from Sydney, Australia. He now works with multinational organizations, helping them with crisis management, high performance leadership, and navigating cultural transitions. Because of the specialist roles that he has held in the Australian military, and the 11 years that he served in Iraq. Mark has seen a lot. He understands the contextual pressures of a war zone, where crisis and complexity is life or death. He has seen the behaviors and the leadership, skill sets and mindsets that allow for truly adaptable leadership and teamwork to happen in the most dire of conditions. And as we get into in the episode, the levels of complexity, chaos and crisis that we're seeing on a global scale, are not going away anytime soon. So what can executives, business owners and self leaders learn from Mark's wisdom and time in the military? What are the leadership behaviors that allow us to be truly adaptable and fearless in the face of crisis? How can we take care of ourselves, and the health and wellbeing of each other so that we don't lose access to our receptivity, awareness of our surroundings and the collective intelligence that is possible within high performing teams? And since we're talking about crisis here, how do we do all of that while processing our own loss and grief along the way, loss often comes up in the face of change and transition, Mark has experienced a level of loss threat, and danger that most of us will be too privileged and too comfortable to ever experience in our lifetimes. for so many reasons, it's not even fair to compare work culture, to a warzone. And yet, sometimes, particularly in toxic teams, or under toxic leadership, it can feel pretty high stakes. It can feel like a threat. It can feel dangerous to our nervous systems and our emotional or mental well being when stakes are as high as they are for our species and our planet. We can't afford to not transform leadership and transform our work cultures, we have to be able to be resilient and adaptable enough to respond to crises, whether those crises are internal, or external. So I can think of no better person than Mark Ashby to be joining me in this conversation today, around how we navigate the complexity, ambiguity, and chaos that can come with crisis management and big cultural shifts. Because we're in one, we're in a really big one right now. So without further ado, it is my absolute pleasure to introduce you to mark Ashby Mark, I'm so grateful to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for being here. Oh, it's a it's a fantastic offer to be a real real real pleasure. Thank you. I know, I know, there's a lot we can dive into. And I want to I want to help frame up our conversation a little bit because I think I think our audience is really going to benefit from the wisdom that you're bringing, especially around crisis management. As you know, I work a lot with sustainability professionals and executives. And we find ourselves very much in this context where complexity is only on the rise. There are so many crises that are happening side by side, whether it's the climate crisis sees our mental, our mental health crisis, all of the shifts that we're seeing in work culture with quiet quitting. I mean, the list just goes on and on. And you've probably heard this term VUCA. Before, right? volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. And I feel so deeply that that's not going away anytime soon. So here we have an expert on crisis management. And to drop us into that wisdom, I would love to start by just hearing more about your story and how you became an expert in this area, I've taken a bit of a different road, as opposed to the average person, I left school, I both grew up, I grew up at the beach on the rural grew up grew up in that whole surf environment in Sydney. And that was my life, you know, you're pretty much living by the beach. And that's all you care about. You're at school, and all you care about, I grew up near the beach at school. So you know, I was in the surfing team there. And that was my life, you know, as much as I could, I could do that my father was a good surfer as well. And, and that's what you think your life is going to be somewhere aligned with that. So. But I always had this fascination with the military as well, strangely enough, and I got to that sort of middle sort of 20s age and had a bit of a conversation with my father about life about what to do with my life. And so I went off and joined the military and got into the paratroopers, which was, which was my dream at the time, he did a specialty role. And that took me then on, I suppose amazing journeys I never thought would ever happen. Some of the countries that I've worked in I've never even really heard of, at the time. And I went off relatives and four, I actually left at the military, I got offered an opportunity to go to the Middle East into Iraq as a private, private contractor. So I, at the time will, the army was a bit ambiguous whether we were going to go into operations or not, and every soldier, they all want to go, they want to go to operations, they don't want to sit at home, and we all saw was going on around the world, in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And, and it's like when I suppose it's like being an athlete, you don't want to be just training, you want to be actually racing, or you know, competing. And it's the same with that, especially soldiering, you want to be part of it. So I took a position to go to Iraq thinking on my last however, they're free for a year or two, and they can maybe get back into the military. But 11 years later, you know, it's it was one of those situations where the, the position that I was in, it just gave me opportunities that I never would have imagined, like I spoke about before working with with the United States, with it, as long as all their specialty soldiers over there as a private contractor, which was just incredible. It's never happened in history, that some of the things we did over there. And that took me over there for all those years, I ended up working in the different diplomatic sector as well, I was working at Australian Embassy looking after our, our ambassador there for a few years. Lovely Lady, Ambassador. And then coming back to Australia, about 2015 at Christmas time went back to university went to university at 48 to do my master's degree in counterterrorism which was a huge I suppose you want to call it was a big hurdle. At that time of my life going back at my age and with all the all the differences, I suppose in learning with everything now on on technology wise and learning platforms and your online libraries and which was a huge learning experience for me to do that. And it was actually the one of the best things I've ever done pretty, pretty terrifying, to be honest, at my age to do that, but by not having a great experience and I was absolutely thrilled with my whole model time there and more results and and that then led me to then, you know, I suppose morph into my own my own dream of have my own business, I wanted to do something that I could use all my years and years of skills and what I'd acquired and all that experience to suppose just to really one one for myself something I really wanted because I love doing it day in day out. And then also that real byproduct of that is you get to help people in their own environments, their own worlds, helping them become you know, I suppose safer and smarter and better in their own their own worlds. And so that's where I'm at right now and it's something that I love to do it's almost not a job it's truly isn't a job and I love doing it. Thank you for for walking us to that arc I really see how the on the ground experience then sort of flowed into the study chapter of life and the counterterrorism and now translating all of those gifts into into working with people to bring this wisdom to light through your business and I can't help but but hone in on the the magnitude of the crises that you would have been experiencing. Maybe sometimes on a daily bases while you were on mission and serving. And I think sometimes in business things can feel like it's life or death, it can feel like it's urgent, our nervous system is up in arms, we're freaking out. It's where we get into that, that reactive zone where we feel like we can't fail. There's something at there's something so at high stake here that we have to press on. But you you were really in life or death situations, the stakes were even higher than in business. And I'm so curious to learn. What, what were some of the lessons, what were some of the patterns that you noticed, as you were, in this crisis management and beginning to witness what what effective leadership looked like in the face of crisis? I think in that high pressure environment, especially in that war zone environment, and the mission tempo that we had, there, were not like the normal average soldier that may be going out there and doing their patrols or whatever they're doing. And it's still, of course, it's extremely dangerous for them. And they've got to be wherever you die. For us, we're so busy. And you may sometimes get a day off per week, if you're lucky, maybe a day off a fortnight. And you might be working nighttime as well. And it's all about you're managing yourself and then managing also your team. taking advice from the all those leaders around you, I was really fortunate to work under a two star US General there for a while, he was a fantastic man that really taught me a lot about juggling professionalism, but also managing your burnout and managing your people. And also having that that real empathetic approach, he was a fantastic man. And I learned a lot from him about how to actually do it all quite calmly as well. No point getting animated, or, or sort of aggressive with the people because it mostly doesn't achieve anything in the end. You know, you've got to really look after your people. And that was something that I really saw from him having such a huge responsibility to look after all those 1000s of 1000s of of men and women over there, and do it so well. And it really just puts into into perspective, because for us in that environment, you can't just make a big mistake, go to work on Monday morning and have a team meeting in the corporate sector, and reset and think how do we do this differently next time? How do we get in to do it better? For us, if we'd had that'd be blunder maybe somebody lost the body part lost one of their legs, or maybe they lost their life. And you've heard them deal with that. And the repercussions of that and the knock on effect of that person and their family, if they've got children. It's a massive responsibility. And it's not for everybody, I think I think a lot of leaders maybe think are, I could maybe, you know, do that role. But in reality, it's a position that not many of us can really pull off. Because it's a real small percentage of people can actually get into that, that high stakes leadership role where you're facing that threat every single day. You don't have weekends over there, you don't have Saturday or Saturday or Sunday, to go for a surf or play golf or whatever you do. You're on it every single day. And you've got to be up for that challenge every single day. So it's a, it's the highest of high pressure environments. It really is. It's like being in a elite sports, it's like it's like an elite sports team. And you're in that team every day. It's like a NBA team that you're in every single day that has to perform at that elite level. It's actually it's actually pretty nice to be part of it, to see all these incredible operators around you and how they go about their own business and how they pull together every day and perform so so professionally, that's pretty amazing. Yeah, I'm really hearing the the connection between how how high stakes it actually is and how, how high performance is required for that context. And I just as you were speaking, I was just imagining people, finding themselves rising into that as as needed. And as they grew as leaders in that context. And I'm curious if you can share more about how how has your perception of what leadership is evolved over time? And what what is high performance leadership to you at this point, having had all this experience, I think there's a, a bit of a maybe a disconnect between a lot of leaders that are especially are sitting now in corporate and then environment that are very successful. The company is very successful, maybe they're earning big money, big salaries, and they might categorize themselves as being high performers. But to me, hot performers, they don't sit idle, they don't sit still. They're not afraid to go out and take on new ventures or, you know, when they fail, they don't take it too hard either. I find a lot of hot water hot performance, especially overseas and I corrections, they they make a mistake. They they learn from it, they adapt, and they think, okay, how can we how can we get better next time and they just move forward. They don't dwell on that mistake for days and weeks on end. And they release that small percentage I think of leaders can be really come through high performance. It's a very sort of interesting sphere. And I think as you become more experienced in your own career, you'll learn to identify those people better. And it was a term back then I suppose in that early 2004 2005, of what what is a high performer, I just started to learn what this sort of, if you want to call it a term or phrase, or, you know, designation is what's a high performer. And, and I've learned over the years now of a couple of decades of dealing with those people, you know, who weren't, who they are, and how to spot them, and, and you know, how incredible some of them are not all of them, some of them are as whole obsessed with being, I suppose, at the apex of their profession, that they maybe lose sight, a little bit of the people around them, but the ones that can juggle it, and they can get it right between that high performance, and also really, really dragging the people their own people want with them. They're the special ones, the ones that you want to be like that you aspire to be like, You think I want to be like that person. And I worked under a couple of like I said before, a couple of great people at a lady ambassador that looked after, and worked with her for a good few years in Iraq as well. And she was an amazing person and taught me a lot about the same thing about being professional on a daily basis. And so it's, it's really a, an interesting concept. And like I said, there's a lot of leaders you get, you get to the C suite, especially, they will think they're all high performers. And they are extremely successful. But they they run an organization that some of them run several, they're on multiple boards, multiple appointments. And but are they do I categorize them as an actual high performer? Some of them I would say that I'm not I don't categorize that person as a high performer, because they're quite comfortable in their role. They they're happy being at the top, but be comfortable in that position. And they'd want to sort of, I suppose, you know, they want they don't want to go from being maybe, you know, great to extraordinary. And that's the, it's a bit of a it's a bit of a cliche, but that's how I sort of see it. Yeah. And it's, it's almost like, sometimes, I think, a high performer, or someone can mask as a high performer, or present as a high performer in certain sets of incentives. Right. So it almost depends what we're measuring, as well, as far as our high performance. And I think, especially in business and the corporate world, there are a lot of perverse incentives are outdated metrics, where if we are stacking performance, against these metrics, where we're actually measuring the wrong things when it comes to performance and these reward structures that we that we breed our executives within. And it's I like what you shared about how you got really good at sniffing these high performers out and it sounds so human, some of the attributes that you described were you you admire them, they're these are people that you want to you want to be like, there's there's something in them that you want to emulate, and they bring they bring the team with them. So I'm hearing it's non, it's non ego driven, in a way when you say that, and so I'm curious, are there other? Are there other characteristics that that you learned along the way that are good indicators of oh, this is, this is a high performer and someone who can really help the whole ship rise? What are some of those characteristics? I think a big one that I've really noticed over the years, and I love it is the people who can turn complex into simple. I think we've, especially with leadership, and a lot of these terms today, we've got so many different variants now of leadership, and you see these gigantic, you know, wheels and flowcharts of different types of leadership. And honestly, some of them, I don't even understand them myself. I'm like, I don't even know what you're talking about. I'm lost. And I think they're just trying to create positions or work for themselves. Because leadership really is a very, very simple thing. And I mean, true leadership, about just being good. Good for your people. It's about like I said, Before, you want your people to one don't want to aspire to be that person. You've got to be that front and center. And like you said, you can't you can only mask or bluff, you know, for so long until you're actually exposed if you're not that true character. And that's something that I love though is that is that that Tony complex in a simple and that real simple approach. And I'll find the higher that I've worked in life. And this is working with like a couple of our prime ministers, you know, the person that runs our country, they actually are quite sick. upon the approach, they're not complex, their mind is complex, but their delivery, and how they outlet, an outlet to their staff and their plans are quite, quite simple because it works. It's fireproof, if it's something is very simple, it works every time. And if you make it too complex, you are giving yourself that room to fail. So it's one of these things that I that I love. And if I, if I find that I'm running a course, somewhere in corporate, and it's starting to turn into something that's, that's, you know more things through your communication there with the staff that it's becoming, you know, to sort of out of control, you got to really reel it in, and bring it back to that simple because not everybody might understand your logic, what you're explaining, but you understand it yourself in your own brain. You know, if you're, if you've got this big complex plans, but not the outsiders don't maybe not get it as well that maybe they don't understand as well as you do. So if you can really, you know, and offense at university a lot, that a lot of the people there that have got these gigantic words and explanations, that they'd they'd lose other people and translation. They breed themselves extremely, extremely smart. And but maybe they lose some of that. And people will nod their heads and like, I understand that it's like the you know, you don't because I don't understand what they're saying. And on. And well, my background, not afraid to call somebody out and say I've got no idea what you're talking about. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, what you just, you know, and it's quite often, I think that happens more often than we think that people don't understand your own process. And I find that high performers, a lot of ones that I've worked with, because they're so easy to work with, because they're very, very, like they've got big plans, but they're simple and their approach. And they really make you understand what their goal is, what their objective is, and what they're doing, what their path is they're going to follow. It's like, here's my path, come with me, you know, and they'll drag you along. But I want to hide things, they don't want it to be that, I suppose sometimes you get it in corporate where people want to, they want to keep everything close to their chest, a lot of the leaders, they don't want to, you know, tell you what their plans are what they're doing, in the fear of maybe they're going to lose their position or lose that, you know, lose that bonus. I don't know what it is. But it's very interesting. Yeah, so I'm hearing transparency in there as well. But also this, this moving from complexity to simplicity, including in the ability to translate and communicate effectively, because I think sometimes the wires are not connecting properly. And if we can't really receive one another's signal, how can we actually organize? How can we? How can we tap into that collective intelligence or the the cohesion that we could experience within teams or high performance teams? So yeah, I love I love this piece about simplicity. And I can't help but think about nature as well. And I think a lot about this as someone who absolutely loves regenerative operations and and nature inspired business models. And nature has a very small set of very simple rules, that life convenes around. And those simple rules have been tried and true and tested across millennia. And it's actually quite simple when you distill them down into just a handful. And then the creativity can sort of happen around that the complexity can can get bigger or smaller around those simple rules. But it's in hearing you say that I there's, there's something in my heart that warms a bit of like, that actually sounds a lot like how nature would do leadership to Yeah, and you're right, and the way that the animals work and the way that nature works, they take the most simple path, they don't, they don't make it hard for themselves. They make it easy. Exactly. They do what works for them. And we, we run our teams overseas like this, when you're dealing with that, that, that whole crisis and that, that risk every day, you've got to make it simple. So everyone understands what their role is what they're doing. Now, I didn't I never micromanage my guys. And I've said that they're really good leaders that are like that, they don't micromanage they, they allow those people to do what they're good at doing. They they allow them to shine to thrive. And you got to have that faith and that trust in your team. Because the whole collective is based on that you've got to have it's true, you will have your individual Bereans, you will have your individual high performers that are bring in what they do around you. But in order for that collective to to flourish, everyone's got to work together in the environment. And I've seen it firsthand how, how effective that is how it works every day day in day out. My guys would know their roles. They would know what their tasks was. I was just there to tell them where we're going, what our timings were. And how are we getting there. How are we getting back there as far as what they did? They they knew their roles. And it was like a well oiled machine every single day, year after year, with very, very few people leaving those roles because It is so so amazing to be part of. When you say rolls, my brain also translates that into really knowing your gifts as as a leader or as an entrepreneur. And if we can show up in service, basically in ecosystem service, right, we'd call it in, in ecology, but that that ecosystem service we provide, can be really consistent. And if we're very clear about what our role is, I mean, maybe maybe that can grow as our skills and our gifts develop further. But the the clarity piece, the being clear on our role and where we fit in, there's something so deeply human about that, because I do believe at my core that people want to do a good job, they want to be seen for doing good work. And even children want to feel like they're contributing from a very young age within within their families. So I do believe that there's something innate in us to want to contribute. But if we don't have the clarity, and if if the role feels very ambiguous or complex, we can we can get easily overwhelmed by that and start to have some of that existential crisis of where am I? Who am I? How do I fit in, I don't know how to actually plug my gifts into this, this system, and then we lose so much human potential, and so much collective intelligence. And so I want to lean into that with you a bit more around what have what have you seen in the space of collective intelligence? I'm so fascinated by how teams might work together effectively as well. So what what have you noticed there, I think you hit on a really good point before where it's like that, I love that term, individual brilliance, it's understanding what you're good at where your gifts, like, because we're not good at everything. You know, you might be better at, you know, driving a car, and one person, or the other person is better at maybe reading the maps and navigating. And that can be in, in corporate as well, you know, the whole setting. And it's about pulling those people together. Because sometimes you don't have a choice with the team, as like, this is a team we have, then, rather than actually working against each other, it's actually working at who does what well. And that's exactly what I did with my teams, who like, Okay, I've got one guy over here, Rob, he's, he's amazing with the clients the way he speaks to them. And he's going to be the sort of Chief body gardener team, we're gonna have another guy, another guy called Dave, who he's a brilliant to I see, he's a guy that's amazing at reading maps, and on communications. So he's going to be that to IC. That's what it's all about for us overseas. Because we had to adapt on the fly every day, we had our missions, of course, we had our, our templates and what we were doing every day, but sometimes we had to adapt on the fly as well on the run. We could never set patterns, we could not just go and do the same thing every day. Otherwise, we would be watched and monitored and filmed and then blown up. And that's the reality and that order. And you've got to be smart, because you've got to realize there's people out there that I actually are trying to harm us. It's not just going to work, it's going to work with obstacles every day. So you've got to think you've got to think without being arrogant, you've got to think you're better than your opposition, you've got to think that you are better trained, that you have a better mindset skill set, better attitudes, and your if you want to call the call the opposition that are out there, trying to try to do harm to you. So you've got to believe that you are better. You've got to be lock a lock windows and let sports teams that goes out there. Yeah, a lot of Chicago Bulls in their height, they believe that they could win every single match. You know, they would go out there thinking that, you know, we're going to win this tonight. That and without, you know, of course, you've got to put the effort in. But they had such self belief and such skill set and all those years of training and hard work that you don't see behind the scenes of a great sporting team or any sort of team, that there's not just, it doesn't just arrive overnight, it's years and years of dedication and hard work to get there. And I've I know, I've been in that world for so long. And so, you know, I understand what works and what doesn't work. And it's great to be part of it. It really is it's a real boss to be in that that team environment that that's really able to take anything on and prevail. You know, over a long period of time. It's it's really it's, you look back at a lot of what I do now, and it's quite surreal. A lot of it will be lived in. It's almost a bit like a movie. It's like a movie set the whole thing. And it's like you're sort of floating into it. And it's not until you get out of it. You look back at your experiences and you're like, Wow, that was that was an incredible time because when you're in it, you're not thinking that way. You're thinking about staying alive. You're thinking about getting yourself and your teammates back home to their family. And that's your biggest thing. Of course, you have the mission, your objective to get those things completed every day. But you want to get everyone home safe. And that's that's the main things and then the you don't get that without that team environment. If you've got a team full of individual people that are brilliant, but they're not team players, it's just never going to work. It's just going to stumble and fall and fall, you're gonna get that toxicity come in, and that negative culture come in. And I know you hear it a lot these days about about culture in the workplace. But it's so it's so important. If you've got that great culture in any business, whether you have 20 staff, or 200, or 2000. And you want your people go into work on a Monday morning, and loving what they do. You don't want them to go into work Monday morning, and all they're thinking about is Friday afternoon, that's what you do not want. And if you've got that, that staff under, under anybody that love doing, what they what they're doing at work there, then then life's easy, isn't it? It's just about steering that ship. And you know about letting your people shine and letting them do what they're good at. Yeah, absolutely. And this, this piece that you brought in around self belief is such a powerful one of, of not only adapting, and witnessing just how adaptable and resilient we can be, but to have that mindset of and I also believe I can do this, I believe I can, I can win or survive or adapt. And so yeah, I'm I'm curious it's almost there's there's almost two places I want to go back. So maybe we'll go in each direction. But I want to I want to maybe table the toxic work culture piece and circle back around but But first, I want to I want to dive into this this mindset of, of adaptability. And I mean, you faced a lot of a lot of loss, a lot of fear, or could have been faced with a lot of fear in you know, in in these moments in these experiences. So what were those mindsets or those self beliefs that got you through when things got really hard or really scary? Even? Yeah, and I'll I'll I'll back you up there with the whole fear thing. Everybody over there had elements of fear and be scared at times. You can't be human. If you're in a war zone, especially those first few years in Iraq when I was over there when the war started. It was it was insane. It was it was everything that you think that war is going to be and Thomas portent, it was crazy. On a daily basis. I believe back then there used to be 2000 reportable incidents per day in Iraq. It was it was insane. It was insane. And, you know, a lot of incidents that never got reported. So yeah, it's, it's, like I said, it's not a mindset, that's for everybody. Okay, and it's all about how you learn, I suppose. I mean, for myself, personally, I just got to a point where I thought, you know, you've just got to back what you're good at, you've got to back all those years of training, and you've got that responsibility of looking after your own teammates, they're looking to you for that direction and leadership. So if you crumble, you know, how are they going to perceive that. And it was such a big thing for me to want to get them like I said before, want to get them home. And it's really a, I suppose it's something that's hard to explain to people as you've been there, that day in day out grind of that, that role. And what it takes to be like I said, you can't just wake up one day and feeling a little bit off, and think I'm just gonna have a day off today or call in sick, you know, you just can't do that. You've literally got to be really really, you know, on your on your bed, can't get out of bed before you actually will be the mission already canceled. You know, and the responsibilities of the clients and then money at stake the you know, the actual the costing of the whole environment there. It's, you know, unbelievable the money involved as well. And a lot of pressure to get it right, a lot of pressure from above to get it right. And especially the the roles that we were doing over there and how much emphasis there was on the world's media and politicians were all watching us to get this right. What we were doing over there with the elections. And we were doing a lot of a lot of a lot of work behind the scenes with the elections over there in Iraq, and the first time they've ever had elections in our country ever Independent Elections. And we were the behind the scenes, making sure that was all working effectively. So the pressure was was massive was from your your your president was basically watching that at the time. And it's really attuned to that whole environment and having that in that incredible sort of team of people around you to make that sort of work. I mean, here you just list out the different contextual pressures and the different areas that that fall. was into, right. It's it's financial, it's physical, it's political. It's like environmental, I mean, just the the level of pressure that you're describing, I think most people who have not experienced that will will never actually experience it in their lives. Yeah, wow. And I can only imagine burnout in in that context as well. And having to, to fight through the the self leadership and the self responsibility that one might feel where it's not showing up actually isn't an option. I mean, even even a lot of executive leaders, like when we're talking about a work context, there still is an option to call out sick or to change jobs, or to reconfigure teams. I mean, I suppose you could maybe do that in the military as well. But yeah, to what we can show up to when when not showing up, isn't a choice is is pretty remarkable. When it comes to the self leadership and level of responsibility that you're that you're talking about. Yeah, the things that we had to do at that on the on the run is our missions, were basically working 72 hour increments. So you're, you're effectively on three missions, at the same time. So your, your process starts three days out from, from when a mission will, you know, go ahead. So that the day after you're on that process from the from when you first started that other mission, you're already on your second day of another mission. And then the third day, you're on a mission for another task, you know, and so you're this constant, you're constantly, you know, revolving door. So your headspace has got to be there, all the time of of the mission you're on. But the ones coming the next day, no one is coming the day after that. And this is how it works all the time. And you're right with it, that burnout is such a big factor, you've really got to pace yourself. In regards to your I suppose training, you've got to remain, I suppose you have to be physically fit over there, you've got to be above what most people think is fit, you've got a bit of rule what level of fitness you might have to get out and run for your life with 20 kilos of body armor on, you might have to go and run a kilometer with that weight on with a client. And you know, under fire, you know, under gunfire, and this is a reality of what you might face, especially in those specialty roles that we're doing over there. And you've got to manage that physical side of it, you've got to manage your mental side of things as well. It's that real juggle and and to avoid burnout. And you'll notice it in your movies. But we touched on it earlier about one of your teammates, where they go through that, that that change something changes in a person, you expect that person to be at a certain level every day. And you'll notice those little subtle changes, and solid changes will then they'll manifest each day. And then it gets it gets more noticeable each day. And you think, Okay, what's up with this person, something's going on. They isn't the burnout from the job, but they've got something going on back back home, in Australia or back in the States with their family, it's on their mind. And you've got to juggle that. And that was the another difficult part as being a team leader. You're not just juggling the missions, you're juggling your people and juggling their lives. And so the team the team leaders are could last for years and years over there without burning out themselves. I think it's a real testament to those people. It's, it's a tough job, you know, it wasn't easy. And yet you're dealing with the elements of the Haiti working in, you know, we an average of 48 degrees Celsius or not, that isn't if you don't comprehend that, but it's, it's insane. You know, and we're wearing we're wearing flight suits, you know, we're in those charcoal fireproof flight suits every day. You know, with all of our all of our combat gear on and, you know, Kevlar helmets and gloves and, you know, it's so hot, you can't open a car door without gloves on. You can't hold a weapon without gloves on. You know, it's, it's it is insane. It's so debilitating and the dust the dust is everywhere. You know, you can clean your, your desktop before you go to bed the next morning, you'll wake up and you're sealed room, and there's a layer of dust on your desk. So you're bringing that stuff in every day. And so you've got to manage that not just the physical but you got to manage the physical and the mental aspect of that every day. It's the real is that the you get better at it as you go on. Of course you start understanding where your your own strengths and weaknesses lie and how to how to sort of, you know how to how to work on that. I appreciate you painting the, the visceral details there of walking us through what what the environment was actually like and that it's this physical and mental toughness that that you constantly have to be attuned to not only in yourself, but in each other and what I'm hearing or seeing and what you're saying too is that The the health of the team is dependent on the health of the individuals. And if you've got one team player who's really suffering, I mean that could that could really impact the whole situation though, the health well being and even lives of the, of the whole team in this acute situation. So I'm really seeing like at the micro and macro level, how important being transparent about that, and getting to get really good at reading, where people are truly at emotionally, physically, mentally, so that you as a leader, I assume, can can then do what you need to do to recalibrate there. But it's yeah, it's just so powerful that and I want to, I want to switch gears a little bit into, because we have our environmental context that you've just described, I think another context that that can feel as real, as our tangible environment is the context of our culture, which we started to touch on here. And the context of our of our social relationships, I mean, these can feel they can feel threatening, they can feel triggering, they can put us in a state of fight or flight. There's so much there in our own relational trauma that we might have from our upbringing. It's a different circumstance, of course. And the body can get really up in arms about it, as we process these emotions. And workplace toxicity, I think has probably always been there in different forms, but our awareness of how workplace toxicity shows up in the forms of inequality or not having inclusive policies. I mean, there's so there's so much that we're becoming more acutely aware of and shifting or evolving into a better context. But when in your experience, when you think about what, what behaviors or mindsets create a toxic work culture, like what what are some of those behaviors that in this petri dish of culture are actually really detrimental or even dangerous? What shows up for you there? Well, I think with any any toxic culture, whether it's in the corporate environment, or anywhere, in any professional environment, it's either going to be come from the top, or it's going to be in that that sort of Lower, lower end. And in the management itself, whether it's a giant corporation that has an element that's actually been allowed to manifest to get to that toxic level, and the actual senior leaders in the execs have actually got no idea what's going on. I think that's a lot of time, I do see that big organizations, you know, massive companies, with staff and different floors and levels. And they don't know what's going on from from floor to floor. So it's all about whether you have that a culture like I was in a business a while ago that had a prime example. Where was the middle management, that you had a bunch of mates, they all working together, they were just running that place. And allowing it was a lot of nepotism, there's a lot bringing their own their own bodies, their own friends in a and it was a really bad environment and no identified in the end that it was a basic, it was one individual that was the one that was causing all the trouble there. And while it took that up to up to that senior level was actually dealing with the CEO himself there. And it's like the, it's a very, very simple fix a, you've got this problem here. And you basically got a monster working your organization. And this wasn't something that was determined over one day, this was this was discovered over, you know, weeks and weeks and weeks of working with these people. And if you allow it to manifest, and you allow that, that, that rot to take place in the organization, it just spreads like a cancer. And people become so disillusioned and they become so despondent, upset. And you can see it on their faces. And it's really sad, and it's so unnecessary. And, and I agree with what you said, it's getting better. We're becoming so much more aware now of what's expected of people from the, from their behavior to how they go about their positions. It is getting better slowly. And he's talking about I suppose inclusive behavior as well. I mean, I've seen some great female leaders starting to really come out and shine now. And that was something even even just 20 years ago, it wasn't as prevalent never to when I grew up in the 70s and 80s. It was non existent. I think there was back then it was, I think the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 was appointed in about 72 First one and and now, even in the I think now it's incorporates roundabout 6535 is about the percentage there's still a lot more men involved, especially at that board level. Now that he's sick level, the women are they're catching up. But you know, it's it's taking time. But at that real elite level of the so your, your top 100 organizations, there's still a mass majority of men that are running those organizations. And, and don't get me wrong, but for some brilliant, brilliant male leaders as well. But it's, it's it should get to a point in life where we're not discussing whether it's right or wrong, whether it's male or female, or whatever gender it is, it should just be about who the best person for the position is, that's where we need to be at. And that may take more generations, I don't know if we'll never get there properly. It may not ever be perfect that model. But that's where we sort of, I think the debate where we're just picking the best person for the job. And that's, you can only get to that, that level, though, when you have everybody in the basket together, you know, you can't have somebody with an advantage have always been up at the upper level. And whether whether the, you know, the females are trying to get up to that level, but they've been they've been inhibited and pushed down. So it's and I'll say that a lot in corporate Of course. And look, people don't wanna speak about it. But uh, I'm not like that. Outside how I see it, but I, it breaks my heart a lot it does when you see horrible cultures, and it's something like I said before, unnecessary just doesn't have to be this way. And if you don't identify it, and if you don't identify the problem, and it can be anything, I had a another environment where I had a senior executive that was, he was being pretty, pretty horrible to his staff. And when I really broke it all down with him, I got him out of that environment, we got him out of that building. And we went for a walk one day, I had a bit of a chat about it. And it was actually his personal life, I knew it was I could pick it straight away that it was something wrong with his personal life. He was going through a bad divorce and a custody battle. And, and that was the problem, but he was taking that out and his staff. And when you have it from the top, then it's going to filter through to the rest of your staff and everyone's going to start hating on each other. And that's it's a really bad environment. So you know, you've got to, you've got to really, I suppose, have that real ability in any environment to try and try and fix what's going on there. What's what's, what's rotting away? Yeah, and it's the even just the image of of rot, or, I guess toxicity as well, right? It's like the body can can have toxic buildup. And there's a process right for detoxifying that and letting it leave the system that can take time. And I do think that we are we're very much in that that time period. Now at least I I deeply, deeply hope and I can't help but notice, one thing you seem to point to there was how sometimes it can come down to an individual who is showing up in the dynamics of a group and maybe maybe they're showing up as the alpha, maybe they're exhibiting control based ego based behavior, where they can sort of get the team to go along with some of this toxic behavior, especially if that team is is afraid of them. Or if they're claiming or hoarding power information, whatever it might be to claim to that, that positional power that they might be hungry for. And I think often as you alluded to, there's something more personal going on there often where maybe that person has something going on at home, maybe they have unresolved or unhealed trauma in how it how they're actually treating themselves. Because I don't know if you've noticed this in what you've seen as well. But I often find that we treat, we treat others how we treat ourselves. So if our self talk is incredibly negative, or we have a lot of self loathing going on, we don't have that self belief that we talked about earlier than, then that inner culture that we might have is sort of rotten as well. And it's no wonder to me that that, that that permeates or builds up to a point where it overflows and then comes into our relationships and the cultures we create at work. So I mean, often on the podcast, we're talking about how that that inner work that deep healing work at the individual level isn't separate from an effective leadership practice. And I'm sort of hearing that in what you're saying. And I'm curious how, how, if at all, has that shown up in in your world Have you have you seen? Have you seen people actually overcome toxic behavior and come out on the other side as maybe a better leader if they were able to heal some of those more rotten patterns? Yeah, I've seen it quite a lot. And I think you're gonna get both answers. You're gonna get some people out there. And I had a prime example of a fellow team leader overseas that was having a lot of problems with his team and his teammates, and even got to the point where a couple of his teammates approached me, which is something you generally don't do and then environment for, for answers. So they were pretty desperate. When you get your knock on your door at 10 o'clock at night, you know, that's for its reach to a new level of toxicity. And we worked, I worked in that proper alpha male environment, that cohort for years, I understand it better than better than anybody, believe me. It's Doggy Dog that will. And when it gets to that level, and I tried talking to the his team leader was a decent guy. Very, very good at what he did. But it was too far gone. And he had just let it manifest for years and years and years. And in the end, he actually lost his position, he lost his very, very highly paid tax free position, he just couldn't change. Yeah, I've seen the other side of the coin, often in the corporate as well, where somebody can't turn around. Absolutely. They're going through a bad phase that one I was talking about before, that's that, that exact the the gentleman that was going through a bad phase in his life, he was able to turn it around and really, really reinstall and really reinvigorate that, that culture in that environment. And that was a big organization that wasn't some little firm that that was a pretty decent sized organization. So I believe it can happen, but it's got to be the individuals got to want to change, that person has to want to change, you can't do it for them, you can advise them, you can guide them, you can help them. But if they don't want to do it themselves, you know, they've, they've got I mean, I always feel bad face myself, where I, you know, I had a lot of loss overseas. And then I came home and I was going through a very bad divorce and my father died, it was like everything is compounding at the same time. And, you know, I ended up making that decision through I'm with a lovely, lovely lady now that she was the one that really helped me to go and go and talk to somebody. And I did it first time in my life later, when I actually went in and spoke to a person for that bit of advice, you know, just a bit of help there. And to really reassess and get yourself out of that, that bad phase you're going through and get your mentality back on track. And I think a lot of a lot of my former colleagues that really suffered a lot of took their lives because I didn't seek that help. I didn't go and talk to a psychologist or psychiatrist or whatever it is somebody to actually try and help them through that bad phase. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with putting a hand up and saying, Hey, I need a bit of help here. I'm really struggling with this. You know, because I've seen, witnessed personally, the biggest, strongest, toughest guys you can ever imagine, is Special Forces operators that have taken their lives because they they didn't reach out for help. And they ultimately and and once you're gone, Nicole, you're not coming back. You're you're you're gone. And it's it's a tragedy. You know, it's a really is a it's a really, really sad state of affairs. Yeah, yeah, it truly is. I really I commend you for, for doing that deep work and getting asking for the help and then going out and getting it I think, I think sometimes we don't realize how how dire these toxic environments or these these highly stressful environments can can be on on our mental well being. And we were just talking the other day, my team over at Harvard University in the the exec ed program that we run, about how we've seen work trauma play out to a point where if someone has experienced that deep work trauma, and they don't know what that is, or they don't go get the help, like they, they might not, they might not be taking their lives in the acute situation that you're describing. But there's they don't come back, like the light in their eyes doesn't come back. And I don't think that, that leaders who are exhibiting these toxic behaviors, necessarily realize that, that through bullying or control or just being unkind to straight up with with words and how and how we speak to one another. It's like this can ripple into really unhealthy coping mechanisms for people whether it's dipping into very poor mental health or alcoholism or isolation. And so there's there's a sensitivity that that I'm feeling in this conversation around the impact that toxic work culture can have. And I think if someone if someone has either been like the perpetrator, right of the toxic work culture, or the quote unquote victim of the toxic work culture, there's a lot of deep work that that has to come on on the tail end of that to actually heal from it and sometimes people might not come back which is which again, is such a loss. It's a loss of human potential. It's a loss of human life in the case that you're describing, and that that piece is so is so tragic to me, it's like I really see, I really see what's at stake as leaders in all in all sectors here and the world, or the future that we that we create through our cultures. Yeah, I really believe as well that to be in that mind space, where you have a leader or anybody that who who's coming down hard, and it's tough, like you said, whether it's bullying in the way they speak, speak down to them, it's hard work, it's actually, I think, must be hard work. And for that person must suck the energy out of them to actually be not nice to be nasty. My daughter made a great point. And the other week like that, she said, It must be really hard work to be not nice, it's actually it's actually much easier, just to be nice to people in life. You know, it's like all that energy you're consuming and using to actually be nasty. And I don't really understand it must be something inside those people, I suppose that they just, it's just how their brain functions maybe. And it's the ones that can come back. That's fantastic. And like you said, there's the other side of the coin, the ones that can't, or the ones that just like you said, they just fade away. You know, and it's very sad for the people that are the ones who who are targeted as well, that, that, that you lose these great people because they just can't put up with it anymore. They just don't take it, they can't take it anymore. They're not mentally tough or mentally strong, and they just leave. And that's it's an it can have a profound effect on us people for years. Sometimes, you know, that workplace bullying and harassment, and it's just, I think it's a human being you must, and I don't understand people who don't feel terrible about it, that, you know, they'd be finding it and the track that somebody left because of that person that left an organization. And you think, on a school that is a cruel place at school can be very tough when you're you're young, but you'd like to think when you get into the your adult use of that should disappear. But it doesn't sometimes it gets worse. And it's it really is a shame. But I mean, for us overseas and my teams, I just refuse to put up with that. If somebody was like that on the team, they couldn't stay. They couldn't they wouldn't last. We we had a we had a culture that was so incredible. And and so professional, and we we we weren't just what robots you know, we just have a lot of laughs and a team. And, you know, a lot of humor that most people would probably find pretty crass. But that's how we got around it. It's how you survived out there together all those years. And but we had such a great culture. And that was guys from different parts of the world. You know, a lot of guys from the UK in the States. And I still speak to those, those those operators all these years later, we still could contact because we had such a great culture there. I think it's a real, it's a real thing. It's a real important point that if the definition of a really great leader, is they're still speaking to their people, many, many years after their partner wise, it's a real good example of you know, what their posts did a great job because they're still in touch with their teams and the people that worked under them for years, but that's how well they treat the most daunting part of their life. Okay, it's a great example. Yeah, I agree. I love that. It's almost like, if that's the case, it means that the relationship wasn't just transactional, it wasn't just let me extract this value from you. It means the relationship was human and, and that is, is so beautiful. And I feel like I feel like the flip side of the coin here to sort of end on a high note, as we wrap up our our deep conversation, I mean, we've traversed loss, we've traversed, bullying, toxicity, that there's there's so much here high performance, but I want to I want to flip that coin that we were just investigating where it like hurt people hurt people is is really what I believe. And so if that if that is true, it makes me feel hopeful, actually, that that healing work is in our control. And like you said, people have to choose that they have to be ready for it, they have to want it. But it's in you hear this in other spaces, if we're the problem, we can also be the solution. And I hope that through cultures where these more conscious, high performing leaders are modeling and embodying these healthier ways of of leading that it sets the tone, it sets the example for, for others to step into that culture to even begin to investigate these things of oh, I didn't know that was possible. I didn't know I could have good mental health and not burnout at work. I didn't know I could have boundaries. I didn't know I didn't have to put up with with this bullshit. Like it's, I mean, it's amazing when you see it modeled. You go ah, oh, okay. Something something healthy or something more generative, more human is, is possible. So I hope that for those of us doing the work and getting the help in mental health, that let let that be an invitation. And and let that be sort of this this safe space, if we're transparent about it and speaking about it as we are now, where were others feel safe enough to maybe choose that themselves, or at least investigate it and, and to put a stop to some of these harmful patterns that we see in schools? In work in families? I mean, that the work heals all of those areas at once, I feel. So anyway, a bit of a rant there, but I guess, Mark, do you, do you have any, any final words of, of perhaps hope, or, or what you see coming down the pipeline in terms of leadership that we can look forward to or expect in, in, say, the decade to come? It's gonna be a real transitional time. I think COVID has really expedited that change as well. It's made people really aware of their their environments, what's, what they, what's going to work for them, what's going to work for the business going forward. I think the leaders, they're gonna have to be very adaptable, and very understanding moving forward of different work environments, whether it's hybrid work environments, whether it's shorter weeks, or staff working from home, it's gonna be really interesting to see how that all pans out in the future. And I think the, there's a lot, there's a lot of positive signs. It's just how it whether these current models that we're seeing right now, in a corporate sort of more corporate environment with empty offices and things like this, whether that comes back to being a bit more sort of normal, how it was maybe five years ago, or whether it actually continues on, and we just still have a certain majority of staff, because some organizations, they have to have staff there, you can't just do everything on his own. But other models, you don't need that. You don't even have to go on to work, you can work out of your home, if you work in it, or things like this, you know, maybe they have to have one, one or two zoom meetings a week, and then they can do their own thing. So it's gonna be interesting to see how that goes. And I think for leadership, it's going to have to be like I said before that that rule adaptability, that, understand that people in the future, especially the younger generation coming through now, they're pretty fearless. They're not scared to or frightened to leave a job anymore. at will, years ago, when I was working in that environment, people that have kept on to their kept their jobs for years, because they they're scared to leave even in a toxic environment. They're just scared to leave because of their mortgages. And but a lot of young kids coming through now they're just like, I'm not going to put up with this home. I'm out of here. I'm gone. And they're leaving now that I'm seeing corporate, you may see yourself as we're on a call. They're living in teams. Now. Yeah, this is a new trend. I have one a while ago, 1616 people on this team, they left bank, we're going we're going through a rough organization in two weeks time, like Hi. And that director I was dealing with, she like had a she was a COO She almost had a meltdown over at what am I going to do? I said, I don't know. There's no quick answer for you. I can't give you a golden answer. I thought it was your 16 staff. And they were very important to the organization going to a rival because they weren't happy anymore. They felt I've been disrespected and not, you know, not enough love going around, I suppose. And but they I think they actually had a bit of a pretty decent reason to be. There was there was a lot of lot of messages. They didn't read the room, you know, that that organization and they lost all those staff. And so I think that's going to be a big one going forward. And I hope that that education of just culture and what's what's expected how people should be treated in the workplace gets better. And that's that's all hope, isn't it? That we just get better? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Mark, it has been such a pleasure. Thank you for for leaving us with those thoughts as we as we wrap up today. And if people want to learn more about you or follow your work, where can they find you online? Is My Business very simple. It's just mark Ashby consulting.com. listeners can email me directly at Mark at Mark Ashby consulting.com. I'm quite prevalent on LinkedIn, as well. And so that's that's my sort of be platform for getting all my you know, all the information out there. And, and I'm actually just about to start writing for a industry expert magazine. It's called an industry expert. And that's going to be pretty exciting venture as well. So I'll be doing a monthly sort of a piece on high performance leadership in that magazine as well. Right on congrats, that's good. Yeah. Fantastic. Wow. Well, thank you again, Mark, and Lynn listeners. Thanks so much for tuning in. And I think we'll leave you with the message today that remember, if you can heal yourselves, you can heal your culture and together we can ground a better future for businesses and humanity. So thanks for listening today. We'll see you next week. The inner work is often the hardest work, but it is the work required for lasting change and a healthier future for us all. If you found the show valuable, please leave a review and subscribe. You can also take a deeper dive with me at Nicole bellisle.com Thanks again for being here and showing up for your new self. Your future self is certainly thank you