Mission Ready: Leadership Lessons from the SEALs

I’m excited to share three powerful leadership lessons from the battlefield, insights that I believe are crucial for leading high-performing teams in any environment. These lessons are drawn from both my military experiences and a new book I'm co-authoring titled "Mission Ready."

In this episode, we explore the principle of letting others "have it your way"—a negotiation strategy that is as effective in the boardroom as it is in combat. I recount lessons from Mike Hayes, a fellow SEAL who taught me the power of subtle persuasion and leadership through adept negotiation skills. We'll dive into how these methods apply not just to military scenarios but to everyday leadership challenges, whether you’re steering a company, managing a team, or guiding a family.

Key Takeaways:

1. Leading by Example: Learn the importance of setting a professional standard, as I share stories from Iraq where the appearance and conduct of our team set us apart from other contractors. This lesson underscores the influence of non-verbal communication in leadership.
2. Influencing Up and Down: I'll discuss techniques for influencing both your superiors and your team, turning leadership into a collaborative, persuasive interaction that enhances organizational cohesion and effectiveness.
3. Strategic Patience: Hear about the value of letting situations mature to make informed decisions. This approach saves resources and lives on the battlefield and can similarly prevent hasty decisions in business or personal life.

These principles aren't just for the high-stakes world of military operations—they're applicable to the challenges we all face as leaders in our own lives. Join me as I share these insights, along with personal anecdotes that bring these lessons to life.

Stay tuned for actionable strategies that will empower you to lead effectively, no matter the context. And remember, whether you’re navigating a critical mission or everyday challenges, the goal is to lead so skillfully that others naturally follow your lead.

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Transcript

0:03

Welcome to the Navy SEAL Mindset. This is episode 025 and I am your host, William Branham, retired Navy SEAL sniper instructor, business consultant, high performance coach, leadership coach, all those other things. Anyway, in this episode, I, I did an episode on the, on another podcast about a book. that I am writing with a friend of mine, and the name of the book will be called Mission Ready, how to train high performing teams. And, in that episode or in that podcast that I recorded earlier today, we talked about, three leadership lessons from the battlefield. So the, The co author and co host of the other podcast, her name is Brenda Neckvottle. She's a an HR professional And she does a bunch of other stuff and and again, we're writing a book together about creating high performance teams and and again, the name of that book is Mission Ready and when I in that book I really talk about leading training leaders to lead in a gunfight, so You Being in a gunfight is the most stressful, leadership scenario you could possibly be in. And so if I can train young leaders to lead in a gunfight, I can train new and old leaders to work in pretty much any environment. And so that's what that's all about. And so anyway, today, you know, we talked about three leadership lessons from the battlefield and I thought, why not bring those same lessons over here and see what I can deliver on this side. So, I think the theme of this episode is going to be something along the lines of let them have it your way. Let them have it your way. So, where I got that line from, I didn't make it up myself. I had a leader in the SEAL teams. His name was Mike Hayes. He went to the Naval Academy. He, Later went to Harvard Business School for his I believe his graduate degree and the Navy paid for it And then he later on went to become became a White House fellow and then later became this Commanding officer of SEAL Team 2, but it after he graduated Harvard. He came to SEAL Team 10. He was the operations officer and I worked directly for him as the operations senior chief One of the things that he said was, My favorite class at Harvard was the class on negotiation. And, you know, he said his definition of negotiation, what he got out of that was let them have it your way. Let them have it your way. And so, Mike later, worked it out to hire his Harvard professor to come down to the SEAL teams and train us on negotiation for three days. And it's funny because team guys, Navy SEALs, I'm sure Green Berets and Marsot guys and Rangers we're all a little bit different. And that professor said that he has never in his 30 years of teaching negotiation had people negotiate the way that we did. Like we absolutely did. We broke every rule that is out there in negotiation. And so we had to maybe relearn some stuff or we just think differently than everyone else. we, you know, he said, do this and we would do the opposite. So it was, an interesting time. I learned a lot of great lessons on negotiation and quite honestly, negotiation is a lot of leadership. Your job as a leader oftentimes is to get your people to do the things that maybe they don't want to do. And it doesn't matter if you're leading an organization, if you're leading a team, if you're leading your family, oftentimes the people on your team don't want to do what you want them to do. A family can be a high performing team. Your family should be a high performing team. And you, as the leader of your family, it could be mom, dad, husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, whatever that family dynamic looks like, there will be a lot of times where there will be people on the team that don't want to do what you want them to do. And so your job as the leader is to convince them to do The things that they don't want to do and make it their idea. I think the first battlefield lesson of leadership is to show them what they don't want to be. And what I mean by that is I had a group of SEALs and one EOD guy in 2005. We were handed, unfortunately for us, or we thought unfairly handed to us, the, the job of protecting the interim Iraqi government leadership. They were newly elected. And our job was to keep them alive. This was a no fail mission. My commanding officer called us in and said, Hey, by the way, you're not going to Afghanistan to go hunt down the Taliban and Al Qaeda, your job is to go to Iraq and keep these government officials alive. That was a very hard thing for me to do, to accept those orders. But he also said something that I couldn't really refute was he said, you are the best platoon at the SEAL team and I have to put my best foot forward. So therefore the best platoon gets the hardest mission. And so that was the hardest mission. This was a no fail mission. We cannot let anything happen to the interim government of Iraq. This was part of the national security. So. We begrudgingly went and learned how to become a security detail. And then we deployed overseas and we were, we started guarding the interim government of Iraq. Well, we weren't the only people over there guarding officials. There were companies like Blackwater, I think they're called Z or X or something weird like that now. There was a company called Dynacor, a company called Triple Canopy, and some other smaller, lesser known organizations. And there were a lot of paramilitary contractors that were doing all of this security work. They dressed the same as us. the biggest difference is they weren't really quite as professional as we were. And if you're listening to this and you were part of that, you know that I'm telling the truth. one of the things about leading SEALs is SEALs don't like to follow direction. They don't like to follow orders. They like to bend the rules to the point of maybe breaking them. I can neither confirm nor deny, but we for sure like to go against the grain. Free thinking group of individuals and probably the hardest group of people. we deployed to Iraq, we were in Baghdad in the green zone, and, we saw all these other contractors, we're all wearing, you know, 5. 11 gear when 5. 11 first came out. And, it's funny, I would, you can't, you won't catch me dead in a set of 511 anything nowadays just because I'm like so anti that, that look, that sort of paramilitary police sort of look where you just, you look military even though you, you may not be, like, the people are too busy looking cool out there. I don't really have a problem with it. I'm just not going to wear it. I'm going to try to dress much nicer than that, with my get naked t shirts on. But, um, the thing about the contractors is. We all wore the same equipment, same clothing, but we were My guys, they always wanted to, like, when we're out, you know, away from the headquarters, they wanted to grow a beard. They wanted to grow their hair long. They wanted to be a little bit sloppy and how they, just because they could. Anti military bearing. Anti establishment. Anti whatever. And so I'm completely on board with all of that. I think you should question authority at every turn. I don't think you should blindly follow anyone. And, and again, that's a part of leadership. And I think if you're a leader, you should encourage your people to not blindly follow you as a leader. I think they should always question you to make sure that you're doing the right thing. that keeps you in check and that keeps them in check. And that makes, keeps everyone on the same sheet of music. But, so we got over there. And guys were, they were like, they were asking me, of course, Hey, can we grow a beard? Can we let her hair go a little bit? Can we, you know, do we have to tuck our shirt in? Silly things like that, not military bearing. And so we were there maybe one or two days going to the chow hall. We all, all the, you know, contractors, they all went to the same chow hall as us. And then I think two days in. The, my group of senior guys in the platoon came to me and they were like, Hey, chief, we actually don't want to grow our hair out. We don't want to grow a beard and we want to keep our shirts tucked in because we don't want to look like the guys at Blackwater or Dynacor or Triple Canopy. We don't want to look like the contractors. We actually. want to look professional while we're out here. And just to kind of give you an idea of what the contractors look like, they would have like seven, eight or nine, like pistol mags on their belt. I have no idea why you need that many bullets for a pistol. I carry a rifle. A pistol is just a backup, but they would have like nine magazines on their belts. They were, you know, knives sticking out everywhere. It's like they were ready for John Wick. They were trying to be John Wick before John Wick was a thing, but wearing old school five 11 equipment. So it was, it was pretty funny. Looking at them, you know, greasy long hair, beards, scraggly, they just did not look professional. And so, I didn't even have to tell my guys what to do, or I didn't have to show them, like, you want to look professional, or try to beat that into them. When they saw what they were going to look like, they, on their own accord, decided that they did not want to look like that. And so another example of this, you can see in advertising a lot of times in fitness, is, you'll see before and after pictures of what someone looked like and what they look like now. And the reason for that, one of it is social proof on kind of the marketing side, but it's also a leadership thing. It's showing you what you don't want to look like. If you come and work with me, I will help you get better. You know, washboard abs and lose 872 pounds and, you know, have a tiny waist and a big bubble butt or whatever, or big strapping chest, shoulders, and you're just bulging out of your shirt, you know, when you, when you were, you know, Had a dad bod and now you have a rockstar bod. Actually, I don't think a rockstar bod is the right word. A warrior, the body of a warrior. I think that's much more appropriate for this particular, conversation and podcast. But, uh, really your idea as your, your, your, your job as a leader is to show your team what they don't want. And maybe if that's with your family. You find people out in society that, maybe kids are acting up and crying and screaming And you just, you know, you look over to your kids and you say, do you want to be like that? Do you want to act like that? Do you want people to think about you like that? So you show them the negative side of their actions. And they will automatically correct themselves. Unless they're sociopaths and they just want to be complete a holes. That's a different story. Then you have to address that in a different way. You can lead with a carrot, or you could lead with a stick. And I can tell you, Without a shadow of a doubt, if you try to lead with a stick in the SEAL teams, that stick will be used on you. And so, you always try to lead with a carrot. Let them have it your way. Also, in Jiu Jitsu, I've trained Jiu Jitsu for about a little over 20 years now. I'm still only a blue belt. I don't actually care about the rank. I care about the journey. I care about getting in there, getting a good sweat on, learning new skills, fighting other grown men and getting my butt handed to me. And sometimes I end up coming out on top and that's, that's very gratifying. But, one of my instructors once upon a time said something very similar to let them, let them have it your way is, is let them decide how they're going to lose. All you have to do is defend, wait for them to make a mistake. Then you capitalize on it, and you get on top, and you win. Or you from the bottom. It doesn't matter. In Jiu Jitsu, you can win from the bottom, you can win from the top, you can win from the side. It doesn't matter really how you do it. So let them have it your way. Show them what they don't want. I also say the same thing when I'm teaching close quarters combat. And I'm planning on running a few courses this year out in Temecula, California. Where I'll bring, you know, there's an obstacle course out there. There's a kill house. We'll do some fighting. I'll teach you how to clear a house, how to protect your family, how to protect yourself in different scenarios. there's a ton of leadership lessons that I teach, during these classes. and, you know, when guys show up and they're in a hot hurry to get run through the kill house or run through the door and I try to get them to slow down. One of the things I tell them is like, Let the bad guy determine how he's going to die. Don't give him the option of how you're going to die. So, again, let them have it your way. Know what the expectation is. Know what the end result is that you're looking for. and Show your subordinates, the people that you're leading, what you want them to do, what you don't want them to look like. Show them what they actually don't want to look like. And they will automatically change what they're doing to accommodate and actually go in the direction that you want to go. that leads pretty much right into the second lesson from the battlefield. And this was something that I talked to an organization about. A few weeks ago out in, I won't say where it was because if any of them are listening to this, they'll, they'll hear me. But, or they'll be able to put this together. But I was talking to some of the employees and one of them asked me a question. He said, how do I lead up? How do I lead my leaders? And so I, of course, had to ask more information because I didn't realize there was sort of this, some holes in the organization, some holes in the leadership. I had no idea. I could kind of guess based off what I observed, but I didn't really know. And so. I asked more questions and more questions and more questions, which is really an important thing to do as a leader is to ask lots of questions. You don't know everything, even though you may be in this position of leadership. It's very important to ask lots of questions. That's kind of where empathy comes in. And then once I finally really understood what the problem was, I told him like, so here's the deal. And the SEAL teams are in the military in general, officers. Create policy. The enlisted enforce the policy. Well, I was an enlisted guy. Not only do we enforce the policy, our real job is to influence the policy. So again, my job is not to make policy, but my job is to enforce and influence the policy. So I, if I want a policy, developed, I want it to be something that I'm okay enforcing. And so, My job was to figure out like, what do I want the policies to be? What do I, what do I think is the right thing for the organization? And generally leaders are pretty good at knowing what the right thing for the organization, but sometimes leaders. lead from inside of a box. And they really have no idea what's going on in the organization. And I can tell you from personal experience, I have been one of those leaders who led from inside the box. I didn't actually get out. I didn't really understand what was going on with the team that I was leading. And I had some massive failure when that happened, but that's how I learned. I learned through failure. So when I want. Something changed or I want to influence the policy. I want to influence someone. I have to make it their idea. And so this is what I told the gentleman that was asking me these questions. I said, well, What your job is now, since you're not the leader, your job is to help influence the policy that gets put in place and procedures to move forward. And so you can do something like, it's a very simple exercise where you're having a conversation with the leadership and, and they start talking about policies or procedures or whatever it is. And you can say something like, I really like that idea that you, you came up with this once upon a time about how to do X, Y, Z. And if you did it like this, this, and this, it would be more efficient. Now, I'm not telling you to lie. But what I'm telling you is, if you can convince them that that is their idea, and you got that idea from them, then there's no limit to what you can do. If you don't mind if someone else gets the credit for your idea, then you should just put your idea out there. Like, that's leadership. If you don't care if someone else gets credit for your idea, then what does it matter? As long as the idea got put in place, why do you even care? If you've got credit for it or not. If you can create more of an impact by influencing someone and making them think that that was their idea, you know in the back of your mind, that you're the person who created that change, who influenced that policy, influenced that decision, put those procedures in place that made the organization a better place, that made the family a better, more congruent family. if you're the husband and you know, your wife is wanting you to do one thing or another, but you really want her to do something else, you can use the same thing on her. You can say, Hey, you know, I really liked that thing that you said about going here and doing that and, and give her a compliment about it. Or if, the roles are reversed and you're the wife and you're trying to get your husband to do something Say the same thing. We all like to be complimented. We all like to be, I'm going to use air quotes here, we all like to be right. And we all like to be told that our ideas are really good. And you really agree with the things that we're saying. If you can calm things down and be very kind and gentle and, represent the other's idea. Again, those are air quotes. The other's idea, which really could be your idea the whole time. If you can frame it in such a way that they make it, you make them think that it's their idea, you've already won. So, let them have it your way. So, show them what they don't want to be. make the thing their idea. And the last is to let the battlefield mature. So, in combat, there have been scenarios that I've been a part of where we have someone over here taking a pop shot at us. They're just trying to get our attention. They're trying to get our focus to look in their direction. And if we fall into that trap and go run after this guy that's just sort of taking pop shots at us, we don't know, like we could get super excited or super upset and like, we need to go get that guy and go, you know, take him out. But what we don't know is there, there is an ambush waiting for us. And so an immature team might run after that guy. They might go chase that guy down and they won't let the battlefield mature. They won't Let the things that are supposed to happen on the battlefield happen so you can get more information. So the right thing that we did, is we called in, aircraft to go check out that guy. Let's check out the area. What else is going on around there? Is it safe for us to drive that way? Turns out there were IEDs, on the road to where that guy was. He, they saw us, they knew we were coming, and then they also had an ambush set up for us. So what we did is We stayed where we were. We called in, some jets. We dropped bombs on that guy. We dropped bombs on, on the, on the bad guys. And, we later found the IEDs in the road, which for sure would have killed a lot of us. So what we, we didn't make a quick reaction to the scenario that was immediately presented to us. We stopped, we waited, we let the battlefield mature. We let the battle mature. We let things happen that were supposed to happen. We didn't fall into the trap and therefore we ended up winning at the end of the day. The same thing happens in your life. Maybe you have an employee that maybe showed up late. Or maybe he got a DUI or something like that. And then, you know, the leadership just wants to make these like huge policy changes or procedure changes based on one small incident. And, you know, I like to call it knee jerk reaction. I think we saw this a lot in, in the, the, 2020 through 2023 C 19 pandemic. where, you know, the, the, the leaders in charge of our country were very staunch on one viewpoint. And then at some point, and no other viewpoint was accepted. And then at some point they made a big shift kind of in the opposite direction. And then they were still, no other viewpoint was allowed. When I saw that no other viewpoint was allowed, I knew very quickly that this was a, This was a form of control. So what I had to do as an individual, as a citizen of this country was to let the battlefield mature. I watched what was going on. I watched all the news agencies. I read as much as I could. I listened to podcasts. I listened to scientists. I listened to everything I could. I let the battlefield mature before I made any decisions, whether I'm going to take a jab or not, or what was really going on in the world. And, the thing that really. resonated for me was that the leadership refused to listen to any other point of view. It didn't matter if it was from a scientist, from an expert, if it was from anyone. and what we know now is, you know, all of that was just a means of control. That was just a means to, yeah, it was a means of control. I mean, that was leading with a stick, not with a carrot. So in that scenario, if the government was leading with a carrot, they would let you make your own decisions rather than mandating everyone get a particular medication, experimental medication or not. And so, what I did is I let the battlefield mature, so I could see really what was going on on the battlefield. Most people just blindly went and, Took it, got a shot, took some medication, still wear masks around in their car. I'm not judging you. I just think that I couldn't stand wearing a mask on my face anytime, much less, alone in my car. And I'm not making fun of those people. I certainly am making fun of those people because they are not leaders. They are sheep and they need to be led. So when you see people like that, your job, my job is to lead them, to lead them with kindness, lead them with generosity, lead them with gratitude. Thank them for their service. Thank them for being safe, but ensure them that they are also safe. Um, yeah, I think that's all I have before I start getting all super political and throwing my own opinions out there in the world. Because again, they are my opinions. Uh, I'm not going to call them facts. I'm going to call them my opinions. But anyway. Hope you guys enjoyed this podcast. This was, three, leadership lessons from the battlefield. Again, let them have it your way. It doesn't matter if you're doing jiu jitsu, if you're, you know, doing close quarters combat, keeping your home safe. If you're leading men in combat, you're leading your family, you're leading your team at work. Show them what they don't want to be. Make things their idea, especially if you're leading up, but also when you're leading down. If you can lead up and you can Let the leaders think that it's their idea. The people who are in charge of you, who cares who gets credit for it. And then the last thing is, again, let the battlefield mature. Hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Don't forget to like and subscribe and all that good stuff. Leave a comment. If you agree with what I say, hop over to my Instagram and leave me a comment. If you disagree with what I say, hop over to my Instagram or drop down in the YouTube menu and tell me what you really think. Because you know what? I'm open to criticism. I want your feedback. And if you don't give me your feedback, how will I ever change the way I think? If you think I'm right, awesome, let me know. And tell me why I'm right. So anyway, hope you guys enjoyed this episode on leadership. you guys have an awesome week, have an awesome weekend, whatever time of the week you are listening to this. And no matter what, don't forget to get naked. Talk to you guys soon.