S4:E98🎙️LIVE — Leadership Under Fire

Hi, I'm John Maxwell. When the top companies in the world are looking for trainers, speakers, and coaches, there's one name that stands above the rest, and that's Maxwell Leadership. Our certified team members have gotten proven results for companies all over the globe, and our reputation, I'm proud to say, is second to none. Some of our members have risen to the top of their profession, including the one you're going to meet today. I proudly introduce you to my friend Bob Fabien Zinga.

Welcome to the Leadership and Success Podcast with your host, Coach BZ, where we help you lead with purpose and succeed with impact. If you're ready to grow into the kind of leader others want to follow, this podcast is for you. If you're determined to elevate your success and leave a lasting legacy, this podcast is for you. As my mentor, Dr. John C. Maxwell, reminds us, everything rises and falls on leadership. Our goal is simple: to inspire you, challenge you, and equip you with insights that can transform the trajectory of your leadership journey. Welcome aboard to another episode of the Leadership and Success Podcast with Coach BZ.

Imagine gaining the leadership skills that could redefine your career. Join Coach BZ on the Leadership and Success Podcast, where each episode delivers practical insights from world-class speakers, military leaders, and industry experts. We dive deep into what matters most: building resilient teams, leading through uncertainty, and navigating complexity with clarity and confidence. Every conversation is crafted for aspiring leaders like you who are ready to grow, lead, and make a lasting impact. Don't miss our powerful live sessions and recent highlights. Michelle Hayward on building diverse, high-performing technical teams. Ann Leslie on leading through global complexity and cybersecurity risk. Ron Carpenter AI exploring faith, resilience, and AI-powered leadership. Colonel Michelle G.I. Gardner-Ins on commanding influence from the battlefield to the boardroom. Chris Robinson on shifting from drift to drive in life and leadership. And Coach Enrique Acosta Gonzalez on mentorship, legacy, and heart-centered leadership. Ready to level up your leadership journey? Tune in on Spotify, Apple, Audible Podcasts, YouTube Live, and LinkedIn Live. Join the movement toward leadership excellence. Listen now and start transforming your success.

Hello everyone, this is Uncoach Bizzy. Today is Saturday, October 25th. Thank you so much for being with me. Today is going to be a short episode. We're going to be talking about the leadership lesson from Pearl Harbor, the day that should live in infamy. And, uh, Before I get into it, let's do our moment of gratitude. Every time we meet, we have to be grateful for at least one thing that day. And you guys know the reason why I do this is because in the military we have an epidemic. About 21, 22 veterans commit suicide every single day. And I believe it's not possible to be suicidal and grateful at the very same time. I know times might be very, very difficult for some of us with the inflation and the unemployment rate and all of that, but I want you to be encouraged and I want you to think about one thing that you are grateful for today. What are you grateful for? So if you would close your eyes, put yourself in your happy place, maybe take a deep breath and think about one thing you are grateful for right now. I think more than anything else, I am really grateful for my community, for my family, for the support I get from my wife, my two daughters, my church family, and my friends. In moments like this, you really shouldn't be lonely and shouldn't be living life alone. Hopefully you've got the support you need, and I'm also hoping that this podcast, this environment, my platform is a place you can come to and feel supported and validated. So let us know what you are grateful for. Type it in the comment. And also let me know where you are coming from, what city, what state, and which country if outside of the US. And also if you have a question for me, please type it in the comment. Let me see if I can share my screen really quick. Um, let's see. Here we go. So you should be able to see my screen here. The podcast today is based on This article I wrote— let me see, do you see my screen? I don't think it worked. Let me try one more time. Screen share and share. Here we go. All right, you should see my screen now. So the article I wrote about, uh, Leadership Under Fire— uh, hold on, why do I see myself twice on the screen. Okay, this is very— oh, I know why.

Let me get rid of this.

All right, so, uh, like I was saying, I, uh, wrote this article, Leadership Under Fire, and, uh, we are going to go Fubis, uh, Lessons from Pearl Harbor for Modern Leaders. And, uh, 4 years ago it was the 80th birthday of the attack on Pearl Harbor. I happened to be stationed in Hawaii during that time. That was December 7th, 2021. I had written another article back then to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. There are just so many, many heroes. One hero I would like to focus on for just a second is this one. He actually was a cook, Cook Third Class Doris Miller. What an incredible, incredible man he was. He was the very first African American to receive the Navy Cross. And again, he wasn't into infantry, he wasn't a gun mate or anything like that. He was just a cook. And part of the reason why he was a cook is because back then African Americans were not allowed to be officers in 1941. It didn't happen until 1943 with the Golden Thirteen. That's when we had permission from our own government to join the Navy as officers. So Back then, African Americans were enlisted, and for the most part, they were really restricted into waiting, like being a cook, not really be part of the fight, not being pilot and not any of those other roles, not being a surface war officer or anything like that. But anyway, while at the side of his captain on the bridge, Cook Third Class Miller, again, no, is a third class petty officer, so an E-4. Junior enlisted sailor. Despite enemy strafing and bombing in the face of a serious fire, he assisted in moving his captain, who had been mortally wounded, to a place of greater safety and later manned and operated the machine gun directed at enemy Japanese attacking aircraft until ordered to leave the bridge. Again, he really wasn't qualified to do that, but he was very courageous and he did it for his shipmates. So for distinguished devotion to duty, extraordinary courage, and disregard for his own personal safety during the attack on the fleet in Pearl Harbor, Miller was awarded the Navy Cross. So CS3 Doris Miller was the first African American to be awarded the Navy Cross, the highest decoration for valor in combat after the Medal of Honor. And if I remember correctly, if history serves me right, initially he wasn't awarded the Medal Cross, but that happened later, maybe because he was Black and back then, you know, our country was pretty racist. But anyway, these are the type of people I really would like to remember and highlight. So what we are going to be learning today are the heroes of December 7th, including CS3 Miller, you know, from Rear Admiral Isaac Key to Chief John Finn, They all modeled courage, integrity, and calm in chaos. What President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Day of Infamy speech can teach today's leaders about crisis communication and unity. And I will be talking about the 6 timeless lessons from Pearl Harbor that apply today, I believe, in the Navy or tech or whatever your industry is. Acting on intelligence and foresight, challenging complacency and assumption, leading decisively under pressure, empowering teams to act, communicating with clarity and purpose, and investing in continuous training and preparedness. So I believe his lessons are just as critical today with defending networks from cyberattacks or leading teams through complex changes. So I'm gonna have my team of AI agents take you through it. It's gonna take about 20 minutes or so. Again, while you are watching, write down what you are learning. Let me know the 2 or 3 highlight from this lesson today and where you are coming from and also what you are grateful for. And if you have a question for me, please type it in the comment. Here we go.

Welcome to the Deep Dive. This is where we take those huge pivotal moments from history and, well, we pull out the practical, actionable insights that you as a modern professional can actually use today. We're not just looking back, we're finding blueprints for leadership, especially when things get really tough. And today we are doing a deep dive into a date that, truly changed everything. December 7th, 1941, that Sunday morning, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It went from quiet to chaos in what, just over an hour? President Roosevelt called it a date which will live in infamy, and he wasn't wrong.

Absolutely. The scale is hard to fathom even now.

A surprise attack by the Japanese Navy devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. 2,390 American lives lost, ships sunk or crippled. So our mission, it's a big one. Understand how leaders reacted in that absolute crucible from the top down to, you know, the sailors on deck. And more importantly, what does that chaos, that complacency, that crisis management teach us today? Whether you're facing, I don't know, a corporate meltdown or maybe a major cyberattack.

That's exactly right. When you really dig into the analysis, the reports, the firsthand accounts of Pearl Harbor, it's— it's more than just military history. It becomes this incredibly raw case study. You see organizational failure, you see human psychology stripped bare under extreme pressure. But you also see this amazing resilience, right? And yet, 8 decades on, the core principles of leading under that kind of sudden, overwhelming pressure, they haven't changed one bit. We're essentially drawing a line from the, the smoke and fire on the deck of the USS Arizona, where tragically 11,177 men died almost instantly, right to your modern challenges, your boardroom decisions, your cybersecurity ops center when the alarms go off.

So if you want to understand how to react when basically your worst nightmare happens in minutes—

This is the place to start.

Yeah. Okay, let's start there then, right on the water.

Mm-hmm.

Because the sheer scale of it—

Yeah.

It's almost unbelievable looking back. You mentioned the losses, the ships, the men. We looked at one historian who flat out called it the worst military defeat in American history.

And for some ships, the destruction was immediate. Underlee total. The USS Oklahoma, for instance, just capsized within minutes. Imagine being on that ship.

I can't.

And the Arizona. That massive explosion, it wasn't just the terrible loss of life, it was the physical destruction. The heart of the fleet was, well, neutralized or severely damaged right at the outset. Because they were caught so completely off guard, the normal chain of command, the standard procedures, they just evaporated instantly.

Which is why I suppose the stories of individual bravery become so important, right?

Exactly. They become the lesson. When the system fails, what happens next?

Yeah, this is where it gets really human, I think, and maybe most applicable, because leadership wasn't just the admirals. It popped up everywhere spontaneously, right in the middle of the chaos. We see these incredible examples, leadership without rank, or people stepping up because their superiors were, well, gone. It makes you ask, what makes someone do that when the world is literally exploding?

It's a mix, isn't it? Partly it's that inherent human capacity for initiative, for for action, but it's also gotta be linked to prior training, maybe even subconscious readiness. Look at the senior officers present. Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, he commanded Battleship Division 1, one of the highest-ranking officers killed.

On the Arizona.

On the Arizona, his flagship. The sources say he rushed straight to the bridge to direct the defense. Didn't seek cover, didn't hesitate. He stayed at his post until a direct hit on the bridge killed him.

And you see almost the same thing nearby on the USS West Virginia. Captain Mervyn Sharp Bennion. He was hit badly by shrapnel, mortally wounded early on.

Yet he refused to be moved. His only concern, according to survivors, was fighting the ship, saving the ship, giving orders right until the end. These are, you know, extreme examples of duty, but they show that mindset.

They set a standard, yeah. But then you look down the ranks, like you said, to the junior officers, the ensigns, fresh out of academy maybe.

Or the NCOs, the chief petty officers, the real backbone of the Navy's experience. Their actions, often completely spontaneous, made a huge difference. Sometimes the difference between life and death for dozens of sailors.

Like Ensign Francis C. Flaherty. Yeah. On the Oklahoma as it was capsizing. He was what, 22?

Just 22. The ship's rolling over, it's dark, chaotic. Men are trapped in a flooding gun turret. They're trying to get out. Flaherty grabs a flashlight. He holds it steady on the escape hatch so the others can see the way out.

Knowing he wouldn't make it himself?

Knowing he was sacrificing his own chance, He stayed behind holding the light. He died there, but the men he helped got out.

It's—

well, it's profound. Placing the mission, the team ahead of everything.

And then there's Chief Petty Officer John Finn, Medal of Honor recipient. His story is just defiant action personified.

Absolutely. He sets up a .50 caliber machine gun completely out in the open on an exposed runway under fire, keeps firing at the Japanese planes even after being wounded multiple times. They literally had to order him to get medical attention. And even then, as soon as he's patched up, what does he do? He goes right back out to help rearm the few American planes that survived, trying to get them into the fight. That's initiative under fire.

It wasn't just about fighting back either, was it? It was about trying to maintain control, salvage something. Like Commander Cassin Young on the repair ship Vestal.

Right. The Vestal was moored right alongside the Arizona when it exploded. The blast actually blew Commander Young overboard into the water.

Most people would swim for shore, surely.

He swam back, back to his damaged ship through the smoke and debris, climbed aboard, took command, and managed to navigate the burning, damaged Vestal away from the inferno around the Arizona. He deliberately beached it to prevent it from sinking and blocking the channel. Saved his ship through sheer force of will.

So what does all this tell us?

This, this collective resilience, this bottom-up initiative, Well, the critical insight I think is about organizational structure and maybe culture. This spontaneous action, from admirals down to chiefs and ensigns, it was essential. It prevented an even worse disaster. When your top command is gone, your communications are out, your Plan A is instantly irrelevant, what's left?

The people on the ground.

Exactly. Organizational survival hinges on whether the people closest to the problem feel empowered, trained, and trusted enough to act without waiting for orders.

That makes sense. Yeah, but doesn't the need for that level of heroism also point to a massive failure higher up? I mean, should a well-run Navy need a 22-year-old ensign to die holding a flashlight for others to escape?

That's the hard truth, isn't it? The heroism was necessary because the readiness failed systemically. Which brings us perfectly to the view from the top, 4,000 miles away in Washington, D.C., where President Roosevelt is getting the news.

Right. So the reports start coming in. What was his immediate reaction?

The sources describe initial audible shock, disbelief. There's an account of him shouting, "No!" into the phone when he first heard the confirmation. But crucially, that lasted only moments.

And this is where we really see that third lesson starting to form: maintain composure in crisis.

Precisely. Witnesses said he moved past the talk almost immediately, became, as they described him, angry but composed. He didn't fly off the handle. He didn't start pointing fingers right away, which is such a common human reaction to sudden failure, isn't it?

Yeah, find someone to blame.

Instead, he focused instantly on two things. One, get the facts straight, understand the actual extent of the damage. Two, figure out the path forward. He convened a war council within hours that same afternoon.

That poise.

Yeah.

It's vital.

Yeah.

Because everyone else is looking to the leader, right?

It's a force multiplier. In any crisis, think about a massive data breach today or finding out about major fraud in your company, your team mirrors your reaction. If the leader panics, the team panics. Clear thinking goes out the window.

Yeah, that composed leader becomes the calm center. They can actually slow down the internal clock even when the external world is spinning out of control.

Exactly. That clear thinking allows for prioritization for effective decision-making when it matters most. But composure alone isn't enough, is it? You have to channel it. Which leads us to Lesson 5: Communication as Unity.

FDR speech. This is maybe one of the most famous examples ever.

It's a masterclass. He was already dictating it that evening, December 7th. Think about the choices he had. He could have given a long, detailed report, listed the ships, the casualties, outlined the military procedures.

The technical stuff.

Right. He chose not to. He went for something different. A short, powerful, 6-minute message delivered straight from the heart, but carefully crafted.

—The Date Which Will Live in Infamy speech on December 8th, vowing that the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

The impact was immense. You have a nation in shock, confused, maybe scared. Roosevelt's words cut through all that. They didn't just inform people; they galvanized them. They defined the moment, framed the response, and forged this incredible sense of unity and resolve. So the lesson for leaders today is: In a crisis, Your communication needs to be clear, concise, and focused on the goal, the absolute victory or the successful resolution. It needs to inspire confidence and unity, not just list the problems.

Okay, that sets the stage perfectly. We've seen the event, the heroes, the top leadership. Now let's really break down these 6 timeless lessons. Yeah. How does this crucible translate into actionable wisdom for, you know, military leaders, corporate executives, cybersecurity teams today? Right.

Let's get practical. Lesson 1: Act on intelligence and strategic foresight. This is all about the cost of ignoring those early warnings, those weak signals.

And at Pearl Harbor, it wasn't really a lack of intelligence existing, was it? It was more about not connecting it, not acting on it. Precisely.

Intelligence circles knew war with Japan was highly probable, maybe imminent. There were diplomatic warnings, signals intelligence, and then most famously that morning, The Apana radar station picks up a large flight of aircraft heading towards Oahu. A huge blip. But it got dismissed. Why? Because of an assumption, a fatal one. The duty officer was told, "Don't worry about it." They were expecting American B-17 bombers flying in from California around that time. The Army running the radar didn't fully coordinate with the Navy's threat intelligence. That assumption, "It must be friendly," guaranteed the surprise was total.

So the lesson isn't just get intelligence, it's—

It's cultivate that antenna for weak signals, challenge the dismissal of anomalies, don't demand perfect certainty before you react, because by then, as Pearl Harbor shows, it's catastrophically too late. You need that prudence.

In today's world, that surprise attack could be a zero-day exploit hitting your network, or a competitor making a sudden move that disrupts your market.

Exactly. And the failure mode looks like this. Your security system flags some weird outbound traffic at 2 AM on a Saturday, but the analyst thinks, ah, probably just that backup script acting up again and ignores it. That's the B17 assumption happening right now in organizations everywhere.

So you need protocols that say essentially investigate first, assume later for certain kinds of alerts.

You absolutely do, especially for high-impact, low-frequency events. Strategic awareness isn't just nice to have, it's fundamental stewardship. You have to build processes that force you to consider, "What if this isn't the B-17s?" Which ties directly into Lesson 2: Challenge assumptions to prevent complacency.

This feels like the internal version of ignoring external warnings.

It is. It's about confronting those ingrained beliefs within your own organization. Before Pearl Harbor, there was this widespread, almost arrogant assumption that the Japanese simply couldn't pull off such a complex, long-range attack. Admiral Kimmel himself admitted he didn't think it was possible.

A failure of imagination, almost.

Rooted in complacency. A satisfaction with the status quo, thinking your defenses are adequate because they haven't been breached yet. And remember, the planes parked wingtip to wingtip.

Yeah, you mentioned that. Easier targets for bombs, but harder to sabotage individually.

They feared sabotage, an internal threat they understood from World War I, more than a large-scale air attack, the external threat they underestimated. That it can't happen here thinking blinded them to the most obvious danger.

So for leaders today, this means actively looking for those dangerous assumptions in your own team, your own strategy. Constantly.

What are your sacred cows? Is your product secure just because you haven't had a major breach? Will your project succeed just because the last one did? You need to build a culture, and this is hard, where people feel safe, even rewarded, for respectfully pointing out potential flaws. —flaws. For poking holes in the plan before the enemy does.

Like formalizing a red team role, not just for security but for strategy too. Someone whose job is to argue why this won't work.

Exactly! Normalize constructive dissent. Complacency thrives in silence and unchallenged consensus. It's the enemy of readiness.

Okay, now back to the moment of crisis itself. Lesson 3: Lead decisively and maintain composure. We saw FDR, but let's revisit the chaos on deck.

Lieutenant Commander Samuel Fuqua on the Arizona, his example is just textbook. Blown clear across the deck by a bomb, ship literally disintegrating around him, smoke, fire, noise, unimaginable chaos. And yet— And yet he gets his bearings and starts organizing, calmly directing firefighting, rescuing the wounded, getting survivors off the ship in a situation that was objectively hopeless for the ship itself. Himself. His composed, decisive leadership saved lives. He created a small pocket of order in absolute chaos.

That's the key, isn't it? The leader's composure creates clarity for everyone else.

It does. When a major incident hits, say, your website goes down globally during peak season, the team looks to the leader. If you freeze or start yelling or seem overwhelmed, that paralysis spreads. The clear-headed leader, the one who can pause, assess, prioritize, and direct calmly, that's the one who steers the team through in the storm.

It's a skill that needs practice, though. It's not automatic. Definitely not.

It requires self-awareness, maybe even specific techniques or rituals to manage stress and maintain focus under pressure.

Leaders need to ask themselves, "How do I stay calm and think clearly when everything's hitting the fan?" Which leads naturally to Lesson 4: Building on those stories of initiative, empower your people and build organizational resilience.

This is maybe the biggest institutional takeaway from Pearl Harbor. The top-down structure failed instantly. Communications broke down. Leaders were killed or wounded.

But the organization didn't completely collapse.

No, because junior personnel stepped up. Ensigns took command of gun batteries. Chief Petty Officers like Edwin Hill organized rescues and tried to get ships underway. They didn't wait for orders that weren't coming. They acted based on their training and understanding of the mission.

So resilience isn't just about strong systems. It's about empowered people.

It's fundamentally about empowered people. You, the leader, simply cannot be everywhere, know everything, or make every decision in a fast-moving crisis. Resilience comes from delegating authority before the crisis hits, from making sure people at all levels understand the overall intent and feel trusted to make decisions in line with that intent.

So for a company today, this means maybe giving that frontline customer service manager The authority to issue significant refunds during a service outage without needing VP approval.

Precisely. Or empowering the site reliability engineer to take a critical system offline if they suspect a breach without waiting for layers of bureaucracy. Define the decision boundaries clearly in advance. Empowerment isn't loss of control. It's a distributing capability. It multiplies your organization's ability to react and adapt.

Okay. Lesson 5 brings us back to communication again, but maybe more at the tactical level. Communicate clearly to unite and inspire.

We saw FDR's strategic communication, but think about the deck plates during the attack. Amidst the noise, the explosions, the dying, officers and NCOs were shouting clear, concise orders: Man battle stations! Fight the fires! Prepare to abandon ship! That clarity, that direction, imposed structure on the chaos and saved lives.

So in a modern crisis, the leader needs to cut through the noise.

Absolutely. Avoid two big pitfalls. One is silence, letting rumors and fear fill the information vacuum. The other is rambling or using jargon, causing confusion when clarity is most needed. Be transparent about what you know, what you don't know, and what the immediate plan is.

Teams need that anchor. They crave it.

Clear, honest, frequent communication builds trust and focus. Even if the news is bad, delivering it clearly along with the plan to address it is far better than uncertainty. Your words need to inform, yes, but also motivate people towards that absolute victory, whatever that looks like in your context.

Clarity fuels action. And that leaves us with the final lesson, lesson 6: Invest in training and preparation. This feels like the ounce of prevention lesson.

It's the painful pound of cure lesson learned at Pearl Harbor. The lack of readiness was, frankly, shocking. Ammunition locked away. Planes parked like easy targets. These weren't accidents. They were choices based on flawed assumptions and likely a lack of rigorous preparation for the right threat. Sabotage versus air attack again. Exactly. The system wasn't drilled or equipped for the event that actually happened. Of course, after the attack, there was a massive urgent overhaul, better drills, better radar training, better intelligence sharing, but the cost of learning that lesson was immense.

So the takeaway is obvious: prepare before the crisis.

It sounds simple, but it requires real commitment. Rigorous training, realistic simulations, constantly probing for vulnerabilities and addressing them before they're exploited. Leaders have to champion this. Preparation doesn't guarantee success, but as the saying goes, lack of preparation pretty much guarantees failure.

So running regular, realistic incident response drills isn't just a compliance task.

It's building essential muscle memory. Absolutely. When your team has walked through the steps, practiced the communication, debated the decisions in a drill, their response during a real event will be faster, calmer, and far more effective. Continuous learning and readiness have to be baked into the culture.

That's a really comprehensive look at the lessons. But okay, let's make it even more concrete. We've got the history, the theory. How does the listener, that modern professional, maybe a manager, maybe an engineer, maybe an executive, Actually implement these 6 lessons day to day. Let's talk practical tips.

Okay, let's translate this directly into action. These are about building commitment and consistency, turning hindsight into foresight. Tip number 1 for lesson 1 on intelligence: hold regular, meaningful intelligence briefings. Not just forwarding an email threat report. I mean a dedicated meeting, maybe weekly or biweekly. Discuss the top 2, 3 early warnings. Could be market shifts, competitor moves, new cyber threats. And crucially, brainstorm specific what-if responses. What's our trigger to act? Who does what? Make it a habit.

Like really counting the costs beforehand. Okay, tip 2 for challenging assumptions.

Encourage a culture of questioning formally in key meetings, project kickoffs, strategy reviews, architecture designs. Assign someone the specific role of designated doubter or devil's advocate. Their job isn't just to criticize, it's to find the most dangerous flaw in your core assumption. And this is key, reward them for finding it, even if it's uncomfortable. That's how you sharpen the collective thinking. Iron sharpens iron, right?

Got it. Tip 3 for readiness and composure.

Practice crisis response drills and debrief ruthlessly. Go beyond basic tabletop exercises. Run surprise simulations if you can. Simulate a real outage, a real breach. But the real learning happens in the debrief immediately afterwards. Conduct a blameless postmortem What broke in the process? Where did communication fail? What do we change before the next drill? Build that instinctive readiness. Okay, tip 4 for empowerment. Delegate and empower the front lines with clear boundaries. Don't just say you're empowered, document it. Create clear guidelines or authorization matrices. If X happens, person Y is authorized to do Z up to level Q without seeking approval. Make it explicit. Whether it's spending money, shutting down a system, or communicating externally, Trusting your team speeds up response time dramatically when seconds count. That makes sense. Tip 5 for communication: Communicate with intent and empathy, especially in crisis. Lead with the key message—what happened, what we're doing, what it means for them. Be upfront about challenges, but frame it constructively. Your tone matters hugely. Aim to build confidence and focus, not fear. Remember, the goal is to build up, not tear down, even when delivering tough news. And the final tip: Tip 6 for training: Commit to continuous training and cross-training. Make training an ongoing cultural value, not just an annual HR requirement. Update the skills constantly, and crucially, cross-train people. What happens if your lead incident responder is on vacation when the big one hits? Who's the backup? Who can cover critical roles? Keep those emergency checklists updated and practiced. Treat readiness like a core competency. Wow.

Okay, that brings us full circle. We started in the wreckage of December 7th, 1941, and we've ended up with a really practical, actionable guide for leading through pressure today. It feels like the core message from Pearl Harbor is, well, preparation, challenging those dangerous assumptions, and trusting your people are really the bedrock of resilience. Absolutely.

We look back at the courage shown that day, the sacrifices made, and I think the best way we can honor that is by diligently applying these hard-won lessons ourselves. Striving to be the kind of leaders who are alert, who are adaptable, who build trust, and who can, you know, genuinely rise to meet whatever challenge comes next, be it torpedoes or zero days.

Definitely. And as you, our listeners, think about everything we've discussed today, here's that final provocative thought to chew on. We talk about how the leadership at Pearl Harbor was caught off guard, partly because they feared sabotage, that known internal threat, more than the unprecedented air attack from outside. The question for you is, in your own work, your own organization right now, what obvious potentially high-impact external threat are you maybe overlooking because you're so focused on managing the familiar, maybe less catastrophic internal risks? Something to think about as you prepare for your own future challenges.

All right. Thank you so much for joining me today. I don't see any question on LinkedIn or YouTube. But I would be very much interested in knowing what are your free takeaway from the podcast episode today and what insight did you learn and how are you going to put it in practice this week. All right, so this is it for today. I'm gonna be back tomorrow for a 10-minute AI recap of this podcast. So tomorrow is Sunday and then next week, I believe on Monday, I am going to be having a leadership conversation with a cybersecurity leader all the way in England. His name is Mamane Ibrahim, Cyber Resilience Architect, AI Risk Strategist, and Board Advisor. So let's join me if you, if you can. And also on Tuesday, I'm gonna be talking with Coach Renata Bernardi award-winning career coach, originally from Brazil, now resident in Australia. She's the host of the Young Global Job Hunting podcast. You don't want to miss this. And then on Wednesday, I am going to be meeting with two people. First with Valerie, she's an MPA LinkedIn Top Voice career coach, Coach Valerie Martinelli. That's going to be on Thursday morning. And then in the afternoon, I am So glad and so looking forward to speak with my shipmate, Lieutenant Commander Amy Forsyth, US Navy retired. She's an author, speaker, a Navy and also a Marine Corps veteran. So we're gonna be talking about leading with purpose. All right, you don't want to miss it. It's gonna be really busy this week. And thank you for being with us until tomorrow. Have a wonderful weekend. Bye. Bye, everybody. This is Coach BZ. Thanks for watching. Until next time, don't forget to like, comment, and share.

Thank you for tuning in to the Leadership and Success Podcast with your host, Coach BZ. If today's episode added value to your leadership journey, be sure to subscribe, share, and join us again for more wisdom nuggets on how to lead better and achieve greater success. Remember, leadership is the most critical skill of our time. The world will always need leaders to inspire others, drive innovation, and execute meaningful strategy. So why not count yourself among the bold leaders shaping the 21st century? Until next time, stay inspired, stay committed, and keep leading with excellence.