WHY Leadership is OVERRATED with a Former Navy Seal and Culture Shaper

That people hate their boss. Many leaders lead by fear. My boss looked at me and said, it's your fault.

Leading had become like a drug to me. All this negativity surrounding me. I'm getting ready for the most torturous week of my life. It's just non stop. It's brutal. Nobody was envious of my position. We killed the leader.

This is a whole system that's broken. Maybe you're the problem.

This is actually the first podcast I've ever told what I'm about to say. James. $8.1 trillion in potential revenue loss every single year because of.

People.

Sometimes, from your experience, leadership is overrated. Well, that's what the next two guests are going to talk about. One of these guests is an epic culture shaper and influencer. The other is a former American Navy seal. Look, they talk about killing the leader. They must be able to kill the leader so that if the leader dies, everyone else can step up. That's what every business needs to think about. Every team, every family. How do we make all of that power that sits at the top with the leader or the CEO? How do we devolve it and decentralize it so that everybody is empowered to step up and lead? Please sit back and enjoy the show. Kyle, Chris, a huge welcome to the Lead on Purpose podcast.

Thanks for having us.

I'm excited to be here.

Oh, I'm so excited. Hey, leadership is overrated. The title of your new book got me fired up. I was like, what on earth does this mean? Like, I geek out in leadership. So I lifted it. I was like, whoa, I gotta chat to these guys. So what do you mean leadership is overrated?

Well, I'll start this off, James. And here's what we mean in our country. In the United States, we spend about $60 billion a year on leadership development. Worldwide, we spend about $125 billion on leadership development. This is workshops. These are books that you read. These are conferences you attend. These are possibly even TED talks that you speak out, whatever it might be. We are spending billions and billions of dollars across the globe on leadership development. Yet year after year, survey after survey, it comes back that people hate their boss. In the United states, it's about 75%. Worldwide, it's about 82%. And so our premise is we're spending a lot of money and not getting a lot back. Why is that? What's the problem? Because we are a world obsessed with leadership, a culture obsessed with leadership. And yet, why do so many people still hate their boss? Feel disengaged at the office, don't feel like they're working hard, don't feel like they're appreciated. What is the problem if we're doing all this? Well, the fact is we're just not getting any return on our investment. First and second, Kyle and I believe that the whole premise and the whole culture itself is a class structure gone bad. It's broken. You know, people are writing books because they make money off it. They're holding conferences because they make money off it. They're not incentivized to make you great. They're not incentivized to make teams great. And that's where we came together. You know, I said, hey, Kyle, you know, we've won. Where I've worked in two organizations now combined about the best place to work in the city for 16 straight years. You know, what is it that we do that's unique? I'd love to hear what the seals do. They're a very unique culture. They're world class. Everyone looks to them as sort of an example of how great functioning teams come together. What can we learn from each other? And, you know, we went into it with that, and what we discovered was, you know, this is a whole system that's broken. And we've decided to pick a fight with the entire leadership industry by, you know, titling our book. Leadership is overrated, quite frankly, because we believe there are a lot of leaders who are overrated. And, you know, if you're out there listening to this podcast now, put your hand up if you've ever worked for one of those leaders, you know, yeah, I, you know, right. We're all putting our hands up here as well. So that's where we sort of started the book is, hey, what is wrong with this culture? We put too much emphasis on the leader. We don't give enough emphasis to the team or the individuals who succeed and make the leaders look good. And we raise up leaders under any premise we can because they're the best salesperson, because they've been there the longest. And then we generally don't train them.

They.

This breeds resentment and. And just kind of creates this whole entire cycle that repeats itself over and over again across the world. And. And let me. And ask Kyle to go ahead. Kyle.

And additionally, you know, we are so focused. We have a society and culture of organizations that are so focused on that point of what Chris just mentioned, which is the leader. And so when Chris asked me like, hey, what do you guys do? I told him, well, actually, we kill the leader. Right? We actually in training, in Navy SEAL training, we will actually walk over in training, in an exercise, we'll walk over to the guy in charge of the mission and we'll go, hey, whisper in his ear, hey, you just took a gunshot to the chest. You're now dead. You're out of the mission. Lay down and play dead. And so we get to watch what happens with that organization when the individual has passed away. How do, how does the, in the next individual or how does the group, how does the fire team, how does the platoon step up, assume the responsibility, assume the mission, take the mission on, or you know, retreat? And so a few things get to, that gets to happen when you're doing that, right? The leader gets to see how good of a job he has been doing to elevate the next person in the chain of command, right. The individual gets to see how good of a job they can do when they are elevated into that level of command. And then the whole group gets to witness very quickly what's been going on. So there is the old fashioned, good old fashioned peer pressure, right, that everyone gets to see, which reinforces both the leader and the subordinates, roles and responsibilities and how good they've been doing, you know, communicating to each other, expectations.

That's huge. And if we think about it for a second, I, I totally get this concept. What, what you're sharing with us, what are the costs? So for the, the listener or the viewer that's watching right now, if you get leadership wrong and you're investing in all the wrong things and you're going about it in a very traditional, orthodox way, what are the costs and consequences for the team, the organization?

Well, I'll jump in here at the start and just say, hey, it's money, right? Business is just another fancy word to say, hey, we're trying to improve the world, the society, the community we live in. We're generating a service or a product that we think are going to benefit people's lives or organizations, and that's it. And when you have a disengaged workforce, what this means is if, you know, we use the worldwide statistic of 82% of people hate their boss, then that means only about 18% of the people coming into your office every day are working at 100%. There are 82% who are working at a lower rate. They're probably working at 18% of their capacity. And so if you could say, hey, I'm going to pour into my team, I'm going to create a culture that's empowering and Encouraging. I'm going to appreciate the people who are here and get rid of the people that drag this whole organization down and others around them. And we're going to create a place that makes people feel valued and we're going to do work that matters and we're going to raise that 18% of those people working 100% and we're going to get that eight other, that other group up to maybe 50%. I mean, imagine the profitability and productivity that you would do even if you raised it 10%, even if you got 10% of your team to be fully engaged, how that would change your organization and quite frankly, you know, your entire country if you could get them up and working. And so that's what's at stake here. It's not so much that companies can't make money. Companies have been making money for a long time. The problem is they're just hiring lots more people to be more productive because they have a lot of unproductive people there. And that seems to be the norm. And so that's the challenge that everybody faces is how do you get around the norm of just the expectation? And we sometimes say, well, the boss is asking me to do more, they're asking me to make more or contribute more. Really, we're just asking you to be fully engaged at the office. That's what's at stake. And people feel more valued when they do do that. They just don't like the people that they've put in charge of them because they're all typically pretty bad.

Yeah.

We referenced, real quick, we referenced a Pendle study in our book. I think it was two or three years ago, Pendle came out with a report that it was costing us more than just morale. It was really costing, that lack of engagement was costing a lack of productivity in the U.S. they reported that we lost somewhere between 483 to $605 billion in productivity every single year due to that lack of engagement that Chris was just mentioning. And they went on further to say that global numbers even more staggering at $8.1 trillion in potential revenue loss every single year because of a lack of engagement. It's mind blowing. It really is. It's staggering and you know, it's all can be avoidable. And so to what you were just about to ask, I believe James, correct me if I'm wrong, was, you know, what can that cost in the, in the SEAL teams? Right? Yeah, well, you know what happens when heaven forbid, I get shot and I'm the, you know, the platoon Tactical leader. And I have not raised up, I have not elevated, I'm not empowered or entrusted, ever the next guy in the chain of command. The mission just gets worse and worse and worse. Right. Whereas what we focus on, what I was alluding to a moment ago, is we focus on encouraging and empowering and training so that the next person can step up. Right. And can focus on, you know, getting to mission complete. Should I, you know, take a bullet? Heaven forbid. Right.

Two. Two funny things, Kyle. We should tell a story. I know this is not necessarily in podcast inside the U.S. but Kyle and I wanted to name the book Kill the Leader. And we were talking with our publishers, HarperCollins, the week after the big January 6th attack on the US Capitol. And they were like, no, absolutely not. We're not going to get dragged into the political drama on a book title. So we're like, it has nothing to do with politics. But yeah.

Where have you seen this play? I, you know, if we look at.

I was going to share that example. James, if you're asking, you know, give me, can you give me an example of where this. So, Colin, I talk about in the book, it's in the introduction. And we, if you have, if you get the book, Leadership is overrated, please read the introduction. Kyle and I both believe it's probably one of the better chapters in the entire book, but people sometimes skip the introduction, so I just want to throw that out there. We kind of think it's one of the better chapters. And in that we tell a story about Waterson's bookstore in England. And so they were going to kind of go in the way of Amazon and all these other bookstores, you know, bookstores. It's an antiquated business. These are all going out of business. You know, no one's going to stop start shopping there anymore. And they brought in a new CEO and he immediately went to work and he said, we're going to kill all the, the special relationships we have with the publishers who give us a big chunk of money if we put their books on sort of the front, at the front of the store and on the ends of the book aisles. We're going to get rid of all this cheap stuff that we put up at the front that's kind of campy. And we, we think it's silly, but it has really nothing to do with book sales. And we're going to hire people who actually love books and, and want to talk about it ad nauseam. And we want them to kind of write, even maybe their own little book Reviews and we're going to post them.

Up in the store.

And most importantly, I want you now as a frontline manager for all of these stores to take ownership of this entire thing. You're going to hire your own people, you're going to, you're going to figure out which books are selling your store and you're going to put them up front and move them. And we want you to kind of set the store where you think it's best for the people in your area to kind of come through. And what they discovered was people came back to bookstores. It felt like a valuable sort of scenario. I can go in there, this person knows what all the books that I need, the books that I actually want are at the front of the store. I don't have to go looking for them. I don't have to walk through all this junk to get to what I'm looking for. Things turned around so dramatically that Barnes and Noble, one of the biggest, largest bookstore chains in the, in the United States, noticed and hired him away from WaterSense and said, hey, will you come be our CEO? So he empowered that frontline worker. He said, we're not going to dictate how things are done. We are going to give you the opportunity to pick and choose and essentially do what we call in our book we create self led teams. Teams that there are part of a team. The team is an important part of that phrase. Self led doesn't mean dictator, but self led teams where we're working as a team but I have the authority to make decisions. What we do sometimes in leadership is we give everyone the responsibility and we say why can't they do things that give them all the responsibility? But what the leader fails to do is give them any authority to actually make decisions or charge a card, a credit card, if you will, or do any of those things that really make the difference. And so that's what's frustrating team members across is they get a lot of responsibility, but the owner or the leader rarely gives them the authority to make the decisions that need to be made at the front line that really make a difference.

And to me that's crucial. And I want to ask you both to be able to give people authority to kind of decentralize the power, decentralize the decision making. I imagine there's a couple of key ingredients like everyone needing to understand the overarching vision or strategy and then understanding within that strategy. Here's my role, here's the tactics that I've got to actually implement on. So from Your experience maybe in the ceilings as well. How does that work? How do we give people authority safely and know that they can thrive?

You know, it really comes down to engagement, right? You have to be engaged first and foremost. Foremost. And I know that this might sound very elementary.

And I, I know it might sound very like, oh, yeah, no, duh, Kyle. But you can't understand how that person is motivated. You can't understand their true soft skill capabilities. You can't understand their teaching style, their coaching style, you know, and on and on and on. Unless you're engaged. So how can you then mentor that person to then mentor others? For example, we were just working with this company last week. They're a large insurance company and they are, you know, our consultant group culture forces working with them. And they are trying to focus on, hey, how do we elevate our sales leaders to then elevate their new managers that are coming up? Right. And their concern is, right, if I elevate this manager, if I elevate this leader to now come up to my level, I'm going to be out of a job. Leadership. The company leadership is saying, whoa, no, not at all. Obviously that's not at all. We're going to be able to. Now you're going to be able to go do that and above and do much more. Right. And so my point of, why I say that is you have to understand how that person underneath you is going to receive information, what's going to motivate them, what's going to drive them to success, and then also understand how they can then reach and approach their subordinates. Right. And you can't do that without being engaged. So, for example, right. Fama. I'll use like disc. Are you guys familiar with.

Very familiar with this.

Okay. Okay. So if I'm a D of a strong D, I'm very dominant. And Chris, and, and Chris is a, you know, an SC and I'm a di and Chris works for me. And then James, you're underneath him and he. Chris is an SC and you're like me and you're a di. I need to figure out by being engaged, how do I mentor, how do I coach Chris to now coach you? And I can't do that without being engaged. Right. I can't do that without understanding his leadership challenges or his team and what he's having a problem with focusing on and mentoring those junior leaders. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. It really does. And I was just thinking I'd love an example from each. So maybe Chris, if you don't mind talking about Dave Ramsey. I know you've done a lot of work there. I love Dave Ramsey, and I've read his books and applied some of the stuff. He's amazing. But you did some work there to really elevate the culture, I believe. Is that right?

Yeah. I was the vice president there for. And I worked there for almost 10 years. Even flew around on the jet with Day. We did events all over the country together. Well, my team put them on, and he did the events himself. But we. We saw a lot. I mean, I'll give you a story. Early on in my years there, I had hired an assistant. Her name was Krista. And every time I gave her a project to do, she would come back to me and say, hey, was it like 50, more, like a lot more questions than, you know, return on returning with sort of the solutions, what I'd asked her to do. And I finally went into my boss at the time and said, hey, I am. I'm not finding Krista very helpful. I feel like when I give her something to do, she gives it back to me, and I end up writing out all the details and everything, which. And then I just feel like I should just do the project anyways. If you're familiar with the desk, I'm a high id.

Kyle and I bunkheads a lot in our D section, so it's. But it's cool. We. We figured out we know how to talk to each other, but at the time, I didn't know how to talk to somebody about that. And I will never forget, my boss looked at me and said, it's your fault. You're not talking to her in a way she fully understands. You're a D. You just want to give her, like, three bullet points and have her go do a really complex project, because that's the way you operate. She's a high C. She needs details. And so he said, you need to go back and figure out how to communicate with her and talk to her in a language that she understands. But the. The two points that kind of blew me away was I went in to say we should let Krista go. And he looked at me and said I was the problem. And that was the first time anybody kind of said, are you thinking about how people relate to you personally? Are you thinking about how you relate to others and how you could work better with them? And it was. It was a big moment in my career, in life. I went back to Krista and said, hey, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to give more details, but you're gonna have to take those details and run with it. Essentially. Let's meet in the middle. You know, I can't spend all my time digging this out. That's why you're here. But I can also appreciate that you need more info and intel. I'll bring you into meetings sooner, I'll bring you into the process sooner, and I'll give you more info as we go along. But from there, I need you to run with it. And I'll tell you what, it turned into one of the most fantastic working relationships I've ever had. And so it was really just understanding that at the Ramsey organization, we printed our disc profiles and they were on every door, they were on every cubicle. You knew the kind of person you were communicating with before you even walked in and sat down with them. And it became extremely valuable and very helpful and eliminating all the junk that sometimes happen in organizations. Jim Collins in his book Good to Great says every great teams over communicate. And at Ramsey, with those dispersonality profiles everywhere, we knew how to communicate with each other. We knew that. When I'm going to meet with Tom, he's high. Details. When I'm going to meet with Lisa, she's a high s. We're going to have to spend some time talking about how was your day? How's, how's your life, how's your kids, how's your pet? Because that's how she communicated. That's what she related like. And I feel like when we did stuff like that, we took off. You know, when I started, we had 110 team members. I had 10 team members on my team. We did 12 events. When I left, we were doing over 100 events. I had 50 people personally just in my department. We had over 1200 people in the company. I mean, it was really. You start to hum, you start to see things go. Everybody gets on the same page. Communication is, is paramount. But understanding how to communicate is. Is sometimes complex, but it's really. We don't do it well because it takes emotional capital. It takes time for you to personally invest in people. And we don't like that. We just want to send people away to a weekend conference and say, come back an amazing leader. You know, why haven't, why hasn't things turned around? You were, you were at a conference a week ago. Why team still hate you? You know, it. It takes time. Kyle will share here. You know, one of the things that blows me away is people think just because a seal makes it through Hell Week and Bud's training that he's now a seal. And he, he'll tell you that it takes almost two full years before you can even go on mission and be considered a full seal. And yet, you know, part of the problem that we have is we want everything, everything so dang quick these days that nobody wants to put the emotional time and capital in to making sure that we get the foundation right so we can grow properly 100%.

And that disk profiling, I love doing it with, with individuals, but more so with teams and seeing the aha when they're like, oh wow, that's why we're having the conflict or the friction. It's a great tool. Now also I'd like to Kyle, just talk a little bit about that. So I'm very familiar with what Hell Week and BUDS looks like. I have no idea what it feels like. I've done a lot of reading, I've done a lot of chatting to Navy seals. For the person who's never heard of BUDS or Hell Week, can you please give them a little insight to your experience of it and how that's actually the start of the journey of leadership and not the end.

Actually, my leadership journey started very early on. So you're going to get to hear a little, a little story here. The first, the first day you show up to training, the instructors are in your face non stop, right? They're just trying, even the first day, they're just trying to get you to quit through non stop intense physical exercises while demoralizing you to see if that's going to be a reason for you to quit. And of course I always joke, you're now surrounded by your experts, AKA other students on a job that they've never done, right? So that, so you're listening to, you know, the chatter of from the experts again on a job they've never done. And so you start, you start looking around and you start noticing these new experts dropping off left and right and ringing the infamous bell. Now, I wasn't the fastest. I'll be the first one to say I wasn't the strongest, I wasn't the smartest, but I wouldn't quit because I was never lying to myself, right? People ask me all the time, like, what's the secret? It's really simple. It's not easy, but it's pretty simple. Like the guys who are never lying to themselves are the guys that make it through because they're there knowing that they're going to do whatever it takes to make it through. The training. And so if you've never to back to your point though, if you've never heard of what Navy SEAL training is, it is the maritime Special Forces of the United States Navy. And we go through a six month basic training pipeline which I'm about to continue talking about, followed by six months of advanced training, followed by a year of professional development and unilateral training at a SEAL team before you actually deploy and you're on your first mission, like Chris was saying. So it's a very long pipeline. And in the very initial six months of the training, there's two infamous Hell Week. Two infamous weeks that are very difficult. One is called Hell Week, which is the one I'm about to talk about where you're awake for a week without any sleep, consuming around 10,000 calories a day just to keep your caloric burn fed. And you know, you're running around with boats on, on your heads, logs on your shoulders or above your heads. You're doing push ups, sit ups, swimming, running. It's just non stop, it's brutal. Then there's another week called pool week where they put you through intense scuba diving training where they, the instructors mess with you, tie knots in your air supply lines, rip your masks off, blindfold, you know, all that stuff so you can't see what you're doing. You have to, you know, work through it. So, so anyway, so the first day you show up, it's brutal. And for me, I had all these experts around me, you know, and again, I wasn't the strongest, I wasn't the fastest, but I was still there. It didn't matter because I wasn't going to give up. So fast forward like a week or two into it, I'll never forget this is, I actually always joke. And you'll appreciate this because he's one of your countrymen. I'll never forget. One of my buddies walks up to me and he looks like Chris Helmsworth playing Thor. He runs up to me and says, man, I can't do this anymore. And he gives me a high five. And he runs over and rings the infamous bell. He ding, ding, ding. Notifying the instructors that he's quitting, never to be seen or heard from again. We hadn't even started Hell week, right? That night I go to my room, I've gotten, I've got the experts saying that this can't be done. You know, the friends from high school or you know, the, the parents and the parents friends saying it's too brutal. Now I got the experts, you know, in the class saying, this can't be done. And then now I've got Thor quitting as well. And I wake up the next morning and I realized that I had started developing an inflamed it band in my. The lateral tibia band that runs from like your. Your hip. The Lial band that runs from like your hip down to a little below your knee. And I'm in excruciating pain, excruciating pain. I go see the doc and he gives me Motrin. And I start consuming 3,000 milligrams of Motrin a day just to keep. Just to keep the pain, just to get through the pain. And more and more guys are quitting, and I'm just trying to get to the next evolution. And so, you know, a week or two goes by. I'm pounding, you know, Motrin, I'm stretching, I'm trying to do everything. And it's the night before Hell Week. I've made it to Hell Week. I've arrived, I'm about to go to sleep, and I'm just thinking to myself, the experts say I can't do it. Thor says it's too hard. My leg's killing me. All this negativity surrounding me. I'm getting ready for the most torturous week of my life. All right, whatever. Put it all behind me. I gotta go to sleep. I wake up, I'll never forget this. I wake up, it's the day of Hell week. My leg's on fire. And now I've got a new problem. I have 102.5 degree Fahrenheit temperature, which is what I think, 38, 39 degrees Celsius. Am I right? Yeah. I'm like, great. Add it to the freaking list. I'm like, great. So the medic asked me like, hey, do you want to quit? You gonna quit? And I'm. And I'm like, I'm not going through everything. I've already gotten to this point. Like, I don't give a crap. Let's go. So the explosions start going off. There's 137 of us at this point, right? The explosions and the gunfire starts going off. And we enter, like I was saying earlier to the listener, a week of no sleep. The instructors are in your face. There's confusion. It's cold, it's wet, it's sandy. You don't really know what you're supposed to be doing, you know, until an instructor comes running over and starts yelling at you. Do more jumping jacks or exercise or do some push ups or go run around or go do the obstacle course or, you know, whatever it is. Countless hours of running with boats on your head, doing squats with the boat on your head or logs on your shoulder, or doing log presses with your buddy of a. Tell what looks like a telephone pole in America. And it's brutal, right? The ocean that week where I'm going through training, I can't do the Celsius. It's 51 degrees Fahrenheit. I think that's 15 Celsius.

It's cold.

It's very cold.

15 is like 60. I think it's even. It's colder than 15, like 5 or 6 degrees.

Is that right? Okay, there we are. And it's freezing, right? And on Tuesday night, guys are quitting left and right. And then all of a sudden, I'll never forget it. The instructors line us up and they're like, who's, who's the next leading petty officer? And no one answers. And there's mass confusion. So every class has an officer in command and office OIC and an lpo. Who's the leading enlisted man, who's in charge. He's responsible for headcount, ensuring you know everyone. It's kind of like a CEO and a COO relationship to a degree. And the instructors ask again, who's the next lpl? Nobody knows the answer. It's all confusion. So they hey, everyone, run back down to the water, get in line. And so we get in line and we're all in the water. And hey, heads back. So now we're gurgling underneath the water. It's freezing and my head's underneath the water. And we're down to now, at this point, by the way, 17 people. We went from 137 to 17 people. My head's underneath the water. My head comes up out of the water and I hear. I'm like, there's still water in my ears, right? And I hit barking. I'm like, what? Bucket, bucket, bucket's next up. And I'm like, are you freaking kidding me? I'm like, I'm the next guy. I'm like, I don't know how to, how to lead. Why am I next, you know? And so very early on, my leadership career began. And the week continues. And at that point, again, we're from 137 to 17 guys. And for the next three days, without sleep, the instructors apply constant, constant pressure, demanding us to perform at our best under the most adverse conditions, as you can imagine, right? And when they don't. And when we, the class don't perform, me and Mike, the oic, we pay for it. We're held responsible. We're held to a higher standard than the rest of the class. Every time the class fails, we get punished. And honestly, in the moment, I'm trying to figure out how to be a good teammate while also leading.

I'm trying to do everything else. Everyone else is doing well. Lead.

What did you learn in that moment? Where was the. That kind of balance of being a teammate and being a leader? Was there something that you. Okay, this is how I can do it.

I need to focus on collaboration, communication, communicating fast with the team, meet them where they were, and nobody. And here's the unique thing, right? Like, nobody was envious of my position. In fact, everyone's looking at me for guidance through the unique lens of pity.

Pity, right? Everyone's like, ah, it sucks. It sucks to be you, man, because it's not. It's not. You're not getting reward.

I'm not.

I'm not making any more money than the guy next to me, right? I'm making the same amount of money as him. And so I just started smiling. I just started being the encourager, the cheerleader, the jokester, even patting everyone on the back and just repeating to everybody, hey, we got this. We can do this. We're crushing it. Keep going. We're almost there. And we got to. Eventually, we got to, like, a place of laughter where, you know, we can all think of that time, you know, in life or at work where it's crappy. That special moment when the team comes together and being exhausted and you're able to laugh. We all remember how that feels, right? Well, it happened. And I've told this story a couple times, but, you know, I'm kind of going on here, Chris, but I think this is kind of cool. I'll tell this too.

You're.

This is actually the first podcast I've ever told what I'm about to say. James.

That's exciting. Bring it on.

So. So Thursday afternoon of. Of Hell week, I look around and all 17 of us are still standing there. No one else had quit. And all of a sudden, something happens. I'll never forget that. Remember when I said I wasn't one of the fast guys, I was one of the slower guys? Well, I'm looking. I'm sitting there looking at the 17 teamworks at an all time high. Camaraderie is at an all time high. We're literally in one of the most grueling you know, trainings on the planet. And we're about to start a two mile timed run during, you know, BUDS training, they, they often have exercises or evolutions, if you will, that are timed evolutions that you need to perform at a certain level. Right. And so five days of no sleep. We're entering our fifth night and dude, something happened. It's pretty trippy. I got overwhelmed with a natural high. We start the two mile run and it happens. Epinephrine kicks in. It's a hormone or neurotransmitter produced by the adrenal glands. For those of you who don't know. It kicks in and I find myself winning the two mile timed run. One of the slow guys.

That's unreal.

Leading had become like a drug to me. Seeing the team excel and stay together and perform at the most elite level had given me the energy to perform and lead myself. And I'll tell you what, I was addicted. That was my leadership story. That was leadership 101 for me. And I got addicted.

I love that. Thank you for sharing that. And I love that you've highlighted that leadership. And doing it well and doing it through service actually impacts our biochemistry. Like it makes us feel good, it impacts us internally.

That's huge, right? That's right. Well said. Well said. I got addicted to that feeling of just watching. Like, hey, look what happens when everyone's performing together, when the team is excelling, when we're staying together, when we're, you know, leading, but at the most elite level. But we're still ha. We have teamwork at an all time high, camaraderie at an all time high.

You know, Kyle, I get, I get that same feeling. No, I get that same feeling when I lead you.

That's right. That's right.

I get through a hell week every day with you, but I get that adrenaline going and it's all worth it.

Tell me this, Chris.

Chris is laughing because, you know, sometimes I'll ride Chris pretty hard to a listener, so, you know, he's. I love Chris. Sometimes he'll be like, hey, he asked for, hey, I'm. I'm with you, buddy. But.

I have not gone through that training.

I love it. The dynamic Geo.

Yep, that's right. That's right.

Chris, I wanted to know your thoughts. What's the difference between good culture and bad culture? And the reason I'm saying it's good or bad, I recently sat down with the former All Blacks head coach and he took them to a world championship victory. And he said, look, James, there's only two types of culture. It's either good or it's bad. That's it. He's like, you've either got a good culture that grows and thrives, or you don't. So from your perspective and your experience working in companies and consulting, what do you believe is the difference between good and bad culture?

Well, you know, when Kyle and I go into organizations and they have us look around, see areas of improvement or areas that need fixed, that are bad, there are usually a few things that really stand out. And the truth of the matter is, many leaders lead by fear that you may get fired if you don't do your job. So you come in and work and do your job. But that does not inspire people. It only inspires hatred if it does anything. And it's that old kind of saying, well, you should be grateful you have a job even, and if you don't do a good job, I'll get rid of that job. And that doesn't inspire anybody to work hard. It just inspires people out of fear. And when people work out of fear, they. They make mistakes, they screw up. But a lot of leaders, you know, that's the only way they do it, and that's the only thing they've seen. You know, over here, if you watch the TV show the Apprentice, you know, the guy at the end just fires the person outright. And we. We love to look at that one singular leader who just makes all the decisions, and if you screw up, you get fired. But the truth of the matter is, we want to inspire people. We want to create a culture where people on Sunday night get excited about going into work on Monday. And I have worked in many organizations where that's the case. And I've been in many positions. You know, I'm in a senior position now. And you might say, well, that's easy for you, but I've been at the lower positions also. You know, when I first started out where I felt the same way, and it was the culture, and there are a few things that stand out. One is the leader was always clear. Here's the expectations. Here's what I need done. And then he kind of got out of the way and trusted us to get things done. And so that was empowering. You know, if. If we screwed up, he would say, hey, I gave you the authority to do it. What. What happened?

Where did.

Where did the mess up go? Why aren't you getting this done? You know, my expectations of this, let me restate them. And so it was always great because you Always knew where you stood and you always knew what was required and what would happen if you didn't hit it. And, and it wouldn't be that, you know, if you failed, you got let go or anything. But it was things like, hey, if you steal from the company, we fire you. You know, if you, if you're taking home a ream of paper at night, that's stealing, we fire you. That we didn't hire you for that. And, and it was just always clear on what those expectations were. We come in and we work hard, but also the expectations were, I want you home at 5. Here's what I believe. When you work late, generally speaking, not always, sometimes what we say, we see the ox is in the ditch and we all got to chip in to pull the ox cart out. So I'm not talking about those kinds of situations. I'm just saying he kicked us out at 5, too. This is Dave Ringam Z, by the way. He kicked us out at 5. Look, I find when you know you can work till 6 or 7, you're not very efficient during the hours of 9 to 5 because you'll, you'll just say, I'll string it out. But if I tell you you have these responsibilities and it has to be done and you know every day you're going to go home at 5 because I want you to have a balanced life. When you have a balanced life, you're a better team member, you're more engaged, you're living healthier, you're more inspired, you're more useful to the company when you have a balanced life. So that's the reason I went out of five. I want you to have hobbies. I want you to go with your family. I don't want you to feel resentful about this place. I found I worked way more productive between 9 and 5 than I ever did when I knew I could work till 7 or 8 if I had to, or work weekends. Now, that's not to say that weren't occasions where I had to do that, but in general, you become more productive. And so when the leader is clear, when the leader just says, hey, guys, here's what we need to do, here's how we're going to do it. And you stated out up front, it's kind of hard for someone to go, well, he's a poor communicator. I don't really know how I'm doing or what I'm doing or what we're supposed to be doing or if I'm doing the right stuff. Because it's clear and those organizations are always seem to have great culture. You know, I think we've reduced it somewhat to thinking, hey, if we put a ping pong table in the staff room, we've got a, that's a. I've contributed to creating culture and nobody in your team wants it. Boston consulting group surveyed 2,000 workers or 20,000 workers worldwide. And they said what do you wish you had more of at the office? And it was everything for money and time and along those lines. And the number eight thing, the number eight thing on the list was money. The team doesn't want more money. What the team wants was the number one thing. They want appreciation and recognition and places that are direct and clear and appreciate and recognize. And they're not the ones that say you should be grateful you have a job or you should be afraid of screwing up. They never thrive. The ones that thrive are the ones that appreciate the team and recognize the team no matter how insignificant it is. Those teams are the ones that are most productive, the most engaged and generally speaking always win best places to work and create great cultures.

Incredible. Thank you for sharing that and going back to I guess the battlefield for a moment. So Kyle, if you go back to some of your experiences, where have you seen this level of self starting leadership really pay off? Where it truly mattered. It was life and death and thank God we trained people like this to be self starters. Is there something that comes to mind for you when you think back on that?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I was in Afghanistan in 2012. We had petitioned to go over there and conduct unconventional warfare which is working by, through and with the local population to establish democracy. So think about, you know, our normal kind of mission set which is targeting, going after, you know, bad actors, nefarious actors. You know, you've heard all the, you know, the groups, the Abu Saad, the Taliban, ban, the isis, isil, you know, aq. But we were going to be doing that and establishing democracy in the region by working through the local population to do infrastructure development, irrigation projects, establish a security force, establish a police force. So we went over to the do that and in 2011, 2012. And so very quickly Rob, my, my officer in command and me, I was the attack lead, the, the chief in charge. We started getting smoked really quickly. We had established a red, white and blue rotation. And so red would be the guys out on an operation. And then so Rob would go out with the guys on operation, I'd stay back and monitor communications and with white supporting red on their operation and then blue Would be the guys on downtime, right? The guys emailing, working out, sleeping, Talking to family, etc. Reading, whatever. And we started getting smoked really quick because he and I would just be rotating. We were the only ones in the rotation. And so we had to do very quickly is elevate the next four leaders to start getting into the rotation. And it didn't happen overnight. It took us time, but, you know, it took us a little bit of time to make sure that they were within line of expectations. Legal requirements, because there's legal ramifications. We fall under rules of engagement, you know, in a, in a country, in a foreign nation, there's a lot that goes into it that, you know, often we don't really talk about as a, as a community, but there's a lot of legal ramifications. So making sure that, you know, everyone understood all of the requirements of all the expectations if they were going to go and lead, you know, an element on an operation. So we started elevating. My point is we started elevating the next four and slowly over time we were able to bring them into this loop. And now we had six leaders in a constant rotation. And once we enabled that to happen, it took time. It didn't happen overnight. I had to get, I had to give trust, I had to empower them, I had to delegate and I had to eventually back to what we were talking earlier, replace myself. Right. But once we did that, once we put those other four guys in the, in the rotation, we now had six guys in a rotation of three colors, red, white and blue. Does that make sense? Because I'm gonna keep going, but I wanna make sure. Okay, so once I did that, once we did that, then we were able to, you know, do much up and about, up and out, right? I could focus on the future, I could focus on the vision, on the long term strategy. I could actually turn my radio down. Because of my trust with the team, I was able to turn my radio down and hold key leader engagements on a regular basis. And we were enabled. It enabled us to expand our footprint, it enabled us to have innovation happening at all levels. It enabled us to increase the security force, to increase the police force, to establish new checkpoints, and eventually, you know, there was no single leader whose removal or death would have had devastating effects on the battlefield, on the team, because we had effectively killed the leader and the mission continued. And we had great success become because.

Of it, the ultimate in succession planning. What you have just described is like any thriving team that wants to thrive for more than the lifespan of the leader. This is how you do it. That's absolute gold. And I want to ask you both, I know we're getting close to the top of the hour, and I want to be very mindful of your time, but what is the ultimate principle in the book that you love the most? And it might be two different principles for you guys, but what's the one thing in the book you like? That's the one.

You want to go first? You want me to go first, Kyle?

Yes, sir. Yes, sir, Sergeant.

I think for me. Well, I'll give you a couple things. In the book itself, what I love is what Kyle and I got together. We said we don't want to write a book, business book. That's just businessy. So we threw in a ton of great stories. There's stories in there from Aretha Franklin. There's stories in there for Kyle Sealy days, or stories in there from examples in business. We've got stories in there from Norway and monks and 19th century explorers. You know, we wanted to make it really entertaining. Every chapter is tied back to revenue that's driven. So I think my favorite part is crafting that story. But for the takeaway that I want, and what Kyle and I see with culture Force when we go in and look at organizations is it comes down to relationships. If you. If your team knows you don't like them or if you're difficult to work with, you're not going to create an amazing culture. You have to put the time in, and it's people that matter. You know, these people, we hear it all the time. You know, if you're a Dave Ramsey fan, you know, our message is simple. You know, if you don't know, Dave Ramsey is basically personal finance radio host in America, it's the third largest radio show in the country. And it's. It's this live. If you want to get out of debt, live on less than you make, right? It's simple. Jenny Craig, who does wellness and fitness in America and, and sort of a weight watchers type of thing is, hey, you want to lose weight, consume less calories than you, then you burn, Right? It's simple. And in many ways, leadership is simple. It's about people. But we don't want to put the time and energy and effort in. There are people there that we don't like to which we often say, well, you hired them. Either fix them or help them. Go on. You know, why did you hire them then? But it's about people. It's about relationships. And if you would just pour into your people, your people would turn that thing around. If you would just trust your people and get out of your. Get out of their way, your. Your people would turn it around. Stay. Stop acting like you can't trust anyone. Maybe you're the problem. And quite frankly, you probably are. And that's the biggest takeaway from the book is it's if you pour into your team and if you read this entire book and you can't get that out of it, you've missed the entire premise of all the stories and things that we've shared. So that's my biggest takeaway.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Good. Thanks for going first, Chris, because it really ties into my point, James, which is what's really exciting for me to hear is when I hear somebody that says that looks, that goes, hey. And reaches out and shoots us an email or whatever and says, hey, I really think you guys are onto something.

Because that signals to me that they're capturing and absorbing the essence of the book. They're, they're, they're going, oh, I haven't, I haven't really looked at it this way before. And they're absorbing. That is so much more than just empowering your people or empowering your teams. They're coming to the realization that they can create a culture that does it instead.

And when that light bulb goes off, when that light bulb goes off, we can see it. They're like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. And this book is the blueprint of how to do it. And when that light bulb goes off, it's truly a powerful thing. I love it. That, for me, that's. That's number one. When that light bulb goes off and goes, hey, I can, I can create. I can create a culture that does it instead and start to slowly kind of back out so I can focus on vision, strategy, the future, etc.

Wow. Incredible. Well, thank you. I've got a couple of last questions. Go ahead.

I just want to add at the end, you know, we tell these stories and we talk about culture, but, man, it comes down to productivity, engagement, and revenue. And so many people want to talk about culture. And in a way that makes people feel good when they come to the office, they feel excited, but it is all tied to the bottom line. The reason people should listen to what we're saying is because if you want to have a successful business, I. E. Make money, these things matter, period.

100%. I'm going to put a link, actually, for the listener or the viewer. Right now, there's going to be a link in the description right below where you can order the book right away. And if you run a company, why don't you serve the people that you lead and order them all a copy and then you guys can actually explore what all the principles and apply them. But two last questions. One. So Kyle, I'll throw this question to you. So being decisive, I believe is such a critical leadership skill. You've got to be decisive. We don't need people who are wishy washy or who'd beat around the bush as a seal. What was the filter you looked through to be decisive and make decisions when it was critical?

That's a good one.

You know, we, we observe, orient.

And then decide and then act, right? It's called an OODA loop loop. And so observing the situation, orienting yourself to knowing, you know, hey, what assets do I have at my disposal, what resources do I have, you know, etc. Etc. What budget do I have? And then deciding and acting on it, right. Like that's something that's ingrained in us from early, early age. Now, simultaneously though, which I think is even a better, you know, part B I guess would be to this question is, you know, how do you get better at being decisive? Well, that's by making mistakes and learning.

Right?

And so when you're, when you have that decision overload or, you know, we like to, what do we, we call it? I'm drawing a blank right now. But when you overanalyze a decision.

Drawing a blank. It's been a long day. Sorry.

That's all good.

When you overanalyze it, making a decision and you just can't. Your decision paralysis. Sorry, okay. Decision paralysis. When you have decision paralysis and you just can't make a decision, it just compounds and compounds and compounds where in the Navy SEAL teams, what we focus on is, hey, make a call. Just make a call. Communicate that call. And when that calls wrong, you're going to learn so much from that call. And we focus on trying to give our leaders the opportunities to make calls left and right in training scenarios so that when it's the real world, on a mission, on an objective, they're making a call quickly, decisively, safely, because they just have been through making, you know, thousands of calls in a training scenario. So when it's the real world, now that it comes to play, they're used to making decisions in a fast manner. Right. And so when you have that decision paralysis and it starts compounding, it can be really problematic. So, okay, how do we do that. Right. How do we enforce, how do we enable our leaders in today's world to make decisions? Well, it's not that complicated. You'd be surprised. You'd be very surprised how often you know, you're making decisions on any given day. You'd be very surprised. Right. And so there's numerous ways you can do that. We work with clients all the time on how to, you know, improve that decision making matrix. But that, that's a whole nother podcast.

Well, that's a whole episode. We need to go deep on that.

Yeah, that's right.

I'll give you one example what I use when we go in and we teach people like on my team, and this isn't, this is tried and true. I do this all the time. Hey guys, I'm not here and you have to make a decision and you're concerned about what decision to make or if I'm tied up or you can't. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to look at that list of projects or that decision. I want you to say, hey, what's going to be the biggest thing that's going to make the largest impact and the least amount of time and possibly generate the most money? If you tell me you made a decision based on those criteria, I will never walk in and question the decision you made. So go for it. If I'm not here, I'm busy, I'm out or doing things. Teach your team what those things are for you and your organization so they can make a decision and they'll start to feel empowered. Now will they make mess up? Yeah, occasionally they do, but for the most part they start to go, okay, I'm thinking at another level. I'm not just thinking about all the decisions and being afraid to screw up. Now I'm teaching them, hey, here's some criteria I use and I'd like for you to use when it comes to decision making. And that's really empowers people. It makes them feel like very grateful. And generally they end up making the right decision, the same decision that you would make. But as leaders, we sometimes just want them to make decision, but we don't often say, hey, here's a really simple sort of matrix you can use to help you make a decision. And that's where Kyle and I kind of work together with our stuff.

That's cool.

What's the culture? What's the culture of when you make a bad decision?

Right.

What kind of environment have you created?

That's huge. Both of what you just shared there is incredibly powerful. And I know that the listener, like, I hope that whoever's listening and watching you've been writing some of this down. It's absolute gold. One last question, and this does go to you both. We fast forward many, many years into the future. It's your very last day here on Earth. And you know that it's your last day. A very young person who you love dearly comes into the room and asks you this. How do I lead my life? On purpose? What do you say to them?

That's it. That's a great question.

James.

James, That's. No one's asked us that. I'll go first. First off, Kyle, you've been really, surprisingly more entertaining and engaging this podcast than the others, so good job, buddy.

I think it's this. I had someone tell me once. Hey. And to put it in, like, a real perspective, Chris, I want you. You've got a son. At the time, he was 16. And your son's going to college. And, you know, once you get to college, they kind of start to go out on their own and stuff. They haven't quite left the nuts, he said. So that means There are 52 weeks in the year. You have about 104 weekends left. Let's. I want you to put a marble into a jar, and I want every weekend that happens, I want you to take that marble out. And when you start to see that marble get low, you'll know you have how you're having fewer and fewer weekends to spend. But the second thing is, what are the stories you wanted Cameron, my son, to share about his childhood when he gets older and now write those down like, you know, I want him to talk about the fun times we had when we went camping. I want him to talk about the amazing trips we went when we fly up to New York City or over to LA and do things. I want him to talk about the time he and I took a road trip to St. Louis and went to see where Mark Twain wrote his books. Those are the things. Write that down. And then I want you to look at that marble jar. And as that starts to dwindle, I want you to ask yourself, have you done enough to set him up to be able to tell those stories? You can do that with yourself. You can do that with your wife, you can do that with your family. Whatever it is, you do that with your team. But I think for me, what that was a very tangible thing. I don't know if that answers your question exactly, but it's what came to mind is like, hey, how. When it comes to being intentional and things you can do, you know, be intentional, write it down, tell your. Ask yourself what stories you want to tell when you get older and then figure out how much time you have or when you put a date together when you want to do a buy. So many people say, you know, if you're on your side of the world, you know, I want to go to visit America or I want to visit England or Europe. Over here we say, I mean, I'd love to go to the south island and, and see the America's cup race live in, in New Zealand sometime, or see the all backs, all blacks play, you know, but we don't ever put a timeline down. We don't ever say anything. I'm going to do this before I'm 40 and, and here's the steps I'm going to take to make it happen. And when we live our lives intentionally like that is sometimes what you hear people say. That's what they mean. You know, what do you want to do? What are the stories you want to tell? And then why? How do you go about making them happen? And being intentional is important.

That's beautiful. Thank you. And that is the lead on purpose podcast. So to me, on purpose means be intentional. So that, like, I really love that. That's. I really resonate with that. What about yourself, Kyle?

Can you say that? The question, the sentence again?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we fast forward many years into the future.

Just the, the loved one sentence.

Yep. So they say, hey, how do I go about leading my life on purpose?

Got it. Well, it's my last day, so I'm gonna say, here's a wetsuit, here's a surfboard. This is a long conversation. So we're going to go out in the surf and we're going to surf together with my children and my wife on the beach, enjoying the day. And I'm going to spend that. That's what time you get, person. Because the rest of my day is going to be with my family and loved ones.

And. But in that question, I would say. Exactly. It's very similar to Chris's. With intention, with empathy, with kindness, with grace. And when you look at it through the lens of trying to replace yourself in everything that you do and leaving behind that legacy to the next leader, to the next tranche, to the next level of individuals, you look at it from an entirely different lens. Now, I get it that there's certain types of roles in this world that you don't necessarily want to replace yourself with. But for the 99.99 of everything else out there, when you look at it through the lens of, hey, how do I lead with intention, knowing full well that I want to rise up the people that are now that I'm getting blessed with the opportunity to lead, it completely changes the game. It completely changes the game because you're leading with intention. You're saying, hey, I want them to have a much more success than I ever did. I want this to have a better culture than I did. I wanted to have a more innovation, more productivity, more profit than what I did. Okay, how do I lead them to then take the torch and carry it on.

That's incredible. Thank you guys so much. And I know for me, sitting here taking this in, it's been inspiring. But I know that the viewer and the listener will be taking so much from this. And I want the listener not to go away and go, that was a nice listen. Please go deep and do the work. And to do leadership, to actually do leadership, you've got to do the work. Buy the book, it's in the show notes in the link. Buy multiple copies, highlight it, share it, talk about it. And I'd just like to say a huge thank you to you and give.

Us a review on Amazon. That's much appreciated.

Done. I'll be doing that. Right.

I'm ordering a bunch of copies right now for my clients, so I'll leave you a review on Amazon. But I just want to say sincere thank you to you both. I want to wish you all the best with the incredible and important work that you do. Thank you.

And if you want to hire Kyle and I to come out and assess your business, wherever you're at in the world, we're happy to. We do it on a regular basis.

I'll put that in the show notes as well, where they can get in touch with you guys.

Thank you, James. This has been wonderful. What a great time.

Hey, guys, if you enjoyed the content today, please smash that subscribe button below. And if you want to become part of my community, I've got an amazing free Facebook group. Please come and join us. The link is in the description below. And also, if you've got any questions about today's session, I'd love to know. Just comment below and I'll be sure to get back to you guys. Have the most amazing day.