This podcast episode (Optimize Coach program) features Brian Johnson interviewing former Navy SEAL Alden Mills about day-to-day leadership at home and work. Mills emphasizes beginning each day with tenderness (a hug and "I love you"), the principle "only ever be as tough as the situation dictates," and cultivating vulnerability, authenticity, and scaled empathy to build trust. He links parenting and professional leadership—helping others discover their purpose and courage—and contrasts common male toughness with female caregiving tendencies (mentions higher oxytocin in females) while urging leaders to shed masks and be their authentic selves.
Chapters
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Are there other things that you use on a day to day basis as you're leading your family, leading your children that help you to be a better leader?
The very first thing, now I've got all boys, right? That wasn't my design, it was someone else's design. But the first thing that I lead with every single day, a hug and telling them I love him. And I had this commanding officer who I adored. And in SEAL Team, you know, you get all kinds of characters there. You can have the super rough and gruff tumble type and then you can have philosopher types. And this guy was like a philosopher. He was like a philosopher warrior. And he put his arm around me right before I was leading, heading off for my first set of missions. And he said, lieutenant Mills, I want to leave you with one last thing before you go into harm's way. What's that, sir? Only ever be as tough as the situation dictates. And if you really think about that, and especially when it comes to parenting and when it comes to boys in particular, it's pretty easy to be tough, it's hard to be tender, it's hard to scale your level of leadership and empathy and vulnerability and transparency and all the things that get somebody to trust you enough because that's what you're really after, right? In leadership, it's about building enough trust that when you tell them to go out, pay past that safe breakwater of the harbor, past the horizon, when they're scared and they don't know what the outcome's going to be, but they trust you enough, they have enough faith in you that they go beyond what they originally thought possible. And how does that happen? Well, it starts every morning for me with giving them a hug, telling them I love them, and then telling them, hey, go push yourself a little harder today, whatever it is. And I spend a lot of time trying to help each of them understand. What their goal might be, what they were built to do. And that can be hard, right? Boys are running around doing all kinds of things, getting caught up in the Joneses. But what I really want them to do is to have the courage to be them, to be their authentic self. And I truly believe that first starts and give them enough love that they can love themselves enough to Then establish some hope and some faith that they can go out there and go after their dreams.
I love that so much. And I've got two girls, so working on a brood of the opposite type, but just as relevant and important. I'm curious about, in a professional leadership context, the overlap there and how being a parent has helped make you a better leader, how being a leader of these organizations has potentially helped make you a better parent and a crossover between the two.
Well, I will tell you, the.
Guys.
Seem to have a lot of tendency to be tough, super easy, right? They've got to fall into this, this social dynamic of oh yeah, I'm a tough guy kind of attitude. Then you've got the female perspective. And I'm a huge fan of female leadership. I'm sure you all know that on average, female has somewhere between three to four times the amount of oxytocin that males have, right? That's that caring component that allows them to be empathetic and be the mama bear. And using the term mama bear, by the way, there is no more fierce animal in the planet than a mama bear, elephant, or a mama bear itself. Right? You don't want to mess with the mama bear. But the large majority of the time the mama bear is super tender and sweet. And a lot of times that I will go as I coach CEOs of multibillion dollar companies, it's about getting them to shed that social mask that they think they have to live up to and get them to be more tender, to get them to be more vulnerable, get them to be more authentic so people can relate with them. And then on the, that's on the male side and then on the female side, the females that I run into that are looking for coaching advice, they kind of feel like, oh, I gotta be just as tough or even tougher than the guys. When you want to say no, no, you actually don't. I actually just want you to be who you are. Right? Getting people to be their authentic leader is the first step in helping them build whatever kind of leadership platform they're looking to be, because they don't want them to be anything else than who they were meant to be. The world will adapt to them. They don't need to worry, right? Because you'll be who you are, be your authentic self. And you will be surprised how many people will come in line with you to say, I want to be on your team.
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