Leadership BITES

Bo Brabo, From the Battlefield to the Whitehouse to the Boardroom

November 21, 2020 Guy Bloom Season 1 Episode 32
Leadership BITES
Bo Brabo, From the Battlefield to the Whitehouse to the Boardroom
Show Notes Transcript

Throughout his career, Robert “Bo” Brabo has always focused on the people, helping them tackle their challenges as if they were his own. Since retiring from the U.S. Army as the Chief of HR Operations with the White House Communications Agency and as a Presidential Communications Officer for President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, Bo has served in several executive positions, and today Bo is an inspirational keynote speaker, career / leadership / executive coach, and business consultant.

Bo previously co-founded a consulting agency that assisted government contractors in HR strategies and contract proposal efforts.

Bo received his MBA from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, is the co-host of The Bo & Luke Show podcast, and is committed to lifelong learning and sharing, to make us all stronger.


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so bo it's absolutely great to have you on the leadership bites podcast wow how amazing i am i'm thrilled to be here truly probably not a thrilled as i am to be frank that's how it should be i think oh this is great so until i hit the heady heights of being a joe rogan where you're excited to be on my podcast i'm the person that's excited to have my guest on so that's how it works i think at this level yeah i'm with you so i just uh i'll have done um an introduction to you at the start of the episode and obviously i know who you are but it would be great just to get a line of sight on almost the essence of who you are and what you're known for and if people do know you that's fine but for those that don't who who is bo be great to hear that bo yeah awesome thank you uh no truly guys i'm happy to be here and it's and it's always fun for me to be on uh be on someone else's podcast as a guest to share my thoughts uh and so forth especially on leadership it's a great topic i'm passionate about it so who am i um i'm a retired u.s army chief warrant officer i was a presidential communications officer for both presidents bush and president obama i had the the fortunate uh experience to be in the transition from one one polarizing administration to another polarizing administration and be kind of part of all of that and in the middle of all that um i had a had a long career in the army 26 a little over 26 years tons and tons and tons of leadership development throughout that time frame not just being developed but the actual opportunity to do it and to lead lead teams lead troops in in very austere environments combat environments to at the white house what we used to call a zero defect environment um so tons of leadership experience throughout that time and what that all formulated into today guy and and the question of you know what am i known for uh i came up uh came up with the term because one of my executive coaches that i use because i believe in coaching 100 um is he asked the same question and i said you know what it's really about execution so what i'm known for today uh i i have a tagline called make strategy a reality and if i'm being informal i'm saying i'm mr executioner because we can talk strategy we can you know even in the military you can talk strategy this is this is what we're going to do this is how we're going to win the war whatever the case might be and in business it's how are we going to increase our profits and our sales new products to market services we can have a strategy around all of that but you got to have somebody who's really good at executing the strategy you got to have leaders who can influence their people uh their teams their departments whatever the case might be and actually do it so that's that's my forte today i would tell you that's what i'm known for today is to be able to turn strategies into reality make them hum make them click and make them tactical so you can actually do what it is that you set out to do so we're going to get to that i think that's going to be a fantastic thing to uh to talk about the the the thing that attracted me to you was when somebody s talks about the military when somebody talks about um the white house i mean like with all things i haven't been to the white house but if it's like most businesses that i have been into the looking at it from the outside and then seeing it from the inside you know there's usually a combination of it is as awesome as you'd think it would be all the way through to i actually don't know how this thing still functions i like that that's that's good that's normally true for most organizations you know yes it's kept alive by its own momentum sometimes so i'll we'll we'll definitely talk a little bit about that and i'd love to hear some thoughts on it but just for the first the first part of this i'm always interested in how somebody got to where they are and i think that's quite fascinating because i think um experiences make up the person and sometimes we come from you know silver spoon situations or sometimes you know i was born up a mountain you know we didn't even have an indoor toilet you know and everybody's journey is different and it'd be great just to get a sense of yours how did you get to or what were the the key points of you getting to that position that you've just spoken about and you're now sort of operating yeah it was um that's a great question and i definitely and and i ask people or i try to influence others to really look at pivotal moments and define them in their life i had those and i've and i've looked back numerous times to to really define when those moments were that really changed the course that got me to where i am today or even got me to the white house um for me it it literally started at the age of 17 when i was in high school uh i would i went to we had what was called a career day so you have all these different people different professions adults come in want to talk to all the students and tell them about what they do and the one that back then that got the most attention was a was an army recruiter so a military recruiter came in and had probably the session i went to 200 kids 200 of us listening to this person and it got me excited listening to him and and talking about all the things that you could do and back then the the slogan was be all that you can be that was the army slogan that lasted for decades um i i kind of bought into all of that right there in that speech he was giving that and uh i i had known that i'd never really talked to them much about it both of my grandfathers were world war ii veterans in the army um never really talked to them about their time in the service my my father was in the navy in vietnam so there's some military history in the family but i decided that was it and i was going to raise my right hand and and join um so i joined what's called the the army national guard which is basically a part-time soldier one weekend a month two weeks in the summer had the opportunity to go to boot camp right after my junior year of high school so in between junior and senior year of high school i'm in basic training i was in 17 years old parents had to sign off to allow me to do it but that was the time in my life guy where i learned discipline i learned commitment i learned what it was like to get up at 3 a.m in the morning every single day so looking back i feel very fortunate that at a young age i was learning some very critical didn't realize it then but i was learning some very critical life lessons not just how to be a soldier but just how to stick to something how to be disciplined how to be committed how to um be part of a team as a follower right i had no leadership abilities whatsoever in bed right how to make your bed the importance of making your bed and how to clean your weapon and the weapon won't shoot right if it's not i mean just so many different principles i could do a whole we could do hours just talking about the principles from those that one summer of my life but um you know that kind of pushed me forward i stayed in that i went to college um after i graduated from college with my bachelor's degree i uh i was working for a little while and then i missed the uniform and i'm like well if i'm gonna do this i want to do it full time i don't want to just do a part-time so i did it again and it was it was always easy for me in those scenarios starting out to say yes to say this is an opportunity it's available i'm gonna do it i'll say yes i'll sign the contract and go do it uh so so that's what i did and then i i was 24 years old at the time and i went on active duty uh full-time and 20 years later uh i retired which was just seven years ago but the point is um throughout that even throughout that 20 years and i like to do this as part of keynote addresses that i do uh it's the it's the power of saying yes uh when doors open and looking at things not that it's an automatic yes but really really uh looking at opportunity first with what are all the positives of this what could happen with this do i say yes versus versus the negative attitude of no i'm never going to do that i'm not i'm not going to take that opportunity i'm not even going to consider it i had just the opposite attitude mine was always think positively keep an open mind and have a tendency to say yes and i did that this was another pivotal moment i did that um 1998 or so i had only been in the service for about um four and a half five years at that point and uh i got a phone call one day and it was just an individual i had no way there i had no way to verify who the person was but it was just a phone call while i was working and he said hey you want to jump out of planes we have an assignment for you as a military type of assignment i can't tell you i can't tell you where it is what it is who's who it's with but if you'd like to do it um i need you to send me all this paperwork about yourself so i just said this is a movie moment isn't it yeah it is and i said yes and i sent him all the paperwork and the next thing you know i'm part of this amazing unit i went to airborne school got to jump out of planes just like he said okay it got me my security clearance that i needed which and then that's where i met the individual who would later recruit me to go to the white house so all of those things started to align and i started to learn the value of network um even within the military having them having the network uh support you and be there for you people you can reach out to professionally you know and so forth so i was in that for a few years and the gentleman was my supervisor he was my boss and he went to the he went to the white house uh through his network and then the next thing you know he's given me a call one day and he says bo i have a once in a lifetime opportunity for you i want you to come work with me at the white house there again yes i'll do it right uh so i got in and then i was there for a few years i left i went to germany for uh for three years uh but we kind of you know informally had a plan that i would leave and then the timing would be right and he would retire and i would interview and try to get his job so go back to the white house again uh and this time go back as the boss um who i used to work for you know take his position and that's exactly how it worked um i interviewed with the uh with the command and got the job so i went back was the chief of hr and got to train as a presidential communications officer and start leading teams communication teams for both president bush and then president obama so some very defining moments in the power of saying yes i believe staying positive there's something exciting there's something there about the more dominoes you knock over right the more the more the roots open up and the more possibilities occur if you stay static wondering why nothing's going to happen to you well because you're not moving i guess is what i'm hearing yeah no i think that's a perfect analogy if you're not moving if you're not moving forward yeah you'll stay static and then you'll always be wondering why the doors did that come into you because you know some people just i've got two boys and you know the different characters so was that inherent in you or do you think there was a an experience from within the family where there was somebody that kind of gave you that mindset i think it was just people that i interacted with inside of the military there was looking back there was no one um and this isn't any type of you know shot over the bow at any of my family members uh but it was it was all inherent as to what i was learning and and so forth inside of the the army itself uh that and the people that i was meeting and i just met some amazing individuals uh and you know you start emulating right you start hey this leader i really like working for this guy's or girl has really great leadership talents or yeah they work really well with people and you just start watching and learning and listening and emulating and start building your own toolkit your own professional abilities and the next thing you know like you said you've knocked down some dominoes and the next door opens and you walk through it yeah i had major general he's retired just recently but major general paul manson from the uk and he was uh commandant of sandhurst which is the leadership college in the uk and we were talking about those formative years about how critical they can be it doesn't matter if you're playing football soccer i used to do martial arts it doesn't matter what it is yeah but if you're in the right you know you're in something positive then there's always going to be peers and people older than you that are showing you the way um about it's okay to fail and you know get off your ass son and you know whatever it is it doesn't matter right that's right absolutely yeah no that's fantastic yeah i i definitely see that as i speak to people during this process of speaking to people on podcasts it's sometimes as a critical moment but usually it's because at that kind of you know 13 to 19 area they were exposed to something that had its own momentum to it yep you know and the and with the nature of the people in whatever it is they were doing you know sort of drove them forward so i definitely see that and um something i i i definitely recognize so being in the uh the white house that comes you know with its own sort of kudos and no doubt its own uh there must be a million stories i'm sure i'm gonna talk something you can talk about and some will go with you to your grave yeah most likely i'm sure all right but what's the uh and we just we touched on it slightly when we were talking just before we we started we pressed the record button organizations are a machine and then there's people that come and go who are the figureheads maybe could be the ceo can be the president and i just wonder how much of an influence somebody coming in at that level makes to the inherent process that's within already in in situ yeah and i don't know if that's something that's that's uh something that you note or or have an opinion on or observing i i think um uh i'll put it into three buckets so the you know the president goes on a trip he could go to london he could go wherever or she and uh three main elements that that make all that happen in that machine one is the white house staff of course and they're the ones setting the agenda um doing some event coordination you know wherever the president's going to go who who he's going to speak with those types of things and then you have the united states secret service and they're the big machine taking care of security and then you have uh the other main machine is the communications aspect which was i was part of to make sure that everybody can talk that the president and his staff can have the same uh the exact same type of capability where regardless of where he's at in the world um as if he was sitting in the white house so whether secure telephones non-secured telephone secure video conference all of those capabilities have to be present wherever he is period that's the there is no other option that's when we talk about zero defect like that that's it right he's gonna ask you about that so you beat me yeah that means yeah we can get into that yeah it's got to work right it has to work 100 yeah yeah um so so the machine of let's say two-thirds of those three pillars security communications um they're they're they're so driven and system-based and checklist and regulation and um process uh that uh it really doesn't matter who the president is that that machine hums right insert name here if they want to go to china to to wherever china then that machine can get them to china right exactly that's that's it's that machine is going to get them to china that machine is going to allow them to be to be seen and heard on the media and the television and everything else and um and then it's the other pillar in the piece that yeah that changes and there's different different leadership philosophies uh and so forth but their overall impact on the machine itself is minimal um is minimal to the operations of of the white house so i wouldn't look at it any differently than um a large you know i think today you're probably talking i mean that machine and i think this always surprises people there's there's around 33 3500 500 people that are running that machine and supporting that on a daily basis i mean that's a that's a large company um large companies have operations you know you have chief operations officers going to make that company run that's the same thing happening there and i think that's what's interesting you go in the white house on the weekend maybe giving somebody a tour and it kind of feels like a like a museum and you're walking around and there's artwork on the walls and nice furniture and that's all fun and dandy but go in there monday through friday and it's it's a business it is there's people working you know the place is humming uh and so forth yeah i'm always fascinated because when you get businesses that you go and talk to and do work with yourself you know five thousand ten thousand twenty thousand thirty thousand people in an organization and then that senior team you know they can be there long standing or they can have a level of rotation you know so again i'm always quite interested by that um that legacy mentality of how much do you care about the rest of the pyramid in the context of depending on what your plan is and if you're going to be there for the next 10 20 years maybe you'll take a lot more but if you're on a three four year career rotation or or voting rotation that's right you know yeah where do people's thoughts go it's quite you know that that's a bigger topic but i i guess you notice that yeah for sure um and that's yeah so you just kind of look at that as um i always found it fascinating and that yeah the the the higher-ups can change it can be a few years it could be eight years max and then there's going to be that leadership's going to change uh but the the foundational items that are so concrete and set in stone um on those other pillars uh it's truly fascinating to watch all that work together uh and and so forth so when you're talking to groups and you're working with organizations and you talk very much about being somebody that can help take the maybe the esoteric the ethereal and the big idea and the dream and turn it into something that's a fundamental output yeah what is it about that line of sight that you have what are you bringing that is beyond a a process map or something that is just hey i'd like to introduce you to a model and everybody goes oh good god not another one so what are you what are you bringing into that that comes from your experiences yeah i like to break things down for people as as in my new detail as possible and i i think one of the and i'll i'll see these even today all over the place and and it's really talking about i call it battle rhythm and i'll place the military aspect to what a battle rhythm is but then i'll take it into a company and talk with folks say what does this actually mean to you and your daily work right how do you perform better and so forth and i i start them i literally start them from the beginning of the day because in the military that's where it starts it starts at the very beginning of your day when you get out of bed in the morning and what time that's going to be and where you have to be when you have to be there what you're going to do when you actually get there um it's all it's all laid out and it's all planned and it's all all executing according to that plan so i often talk to people you know and they'll say and i'll say well you gotta you gotta start your day you really need to get up early right and you can see those types of things floating around let's build a battle and get up early do the best you can during the day focus on you know calendar block your your day build a system and i say okay all of that is great but if you've never gotten up early before how are you going to get up early and i'm using this as an analogy right how are you going to do that right you got to have the tactics in place to actually make yourself um start something new or start this process and so forth so it's the it's the analogy of all right well if you're gonna get up early you need to put an old style alarm clock across the room so that when it goes off you have no choice but to get out of bed to shut it off that's step one make sure that you have whatever you're going to do ready whether that's a glass of water or you're going to read your book whatever however you're going to start your day let's talk through that so make sure it's placed and it's ready on the table for you to to do that set it up the night before so you're not worried about it in the morning and you um you go back to your standard and you say well i'm just going to shut off the alarm and jump back in bed you know you got to have it all you got to have it all planned out and you've got another one downstairs so you've got to go down the stairs whatever that's right whatever it takes um and then if you know if you're going to put um if you're going to use calendar blocking uh you know to help set up your day and what it is that you need to work on so you know if you needed to have me a meeting in the morning with your team right you can't just put on your calendar team meeting from 9 am to 9 30. that's fine but define what that meeting is what are the expectations of the people attending the meeting right i mean you've got to get into some some detail uh and help people really work through that uh in their minds yeah so they're prepared they get the most out of every event of their day uh and that's that goes back to what earlier about a zero defect environment if you're if you are working in an environment not all environments are like that but if you're working in an environment and you know it's very performance driven uh you have to be meticulous and purposeful about what you're doing uh you can't when it's time to sit down and do something um you can't then be thinking about what it what am i going to do yeah you just said that ridiculous yeah that meticulousness and that purpose i think is something that um i always talk about the creation of habit yeah and you know the analogy somebody once gate gave to me was when i was trying to deal with fitness some years ago he said you know what your issue is guy he says you're trying to get fit i went well no yeah he goes yeah what you want to do is create the habit of fitness oh work out he says so every morning just do one press up and do one sit up and do that till you can't not do it i love it yeah he said that's much better than trying to do 30. yeah and then you go oh making and then you have two days off and then you've lost the habit so he said create the habit through what basically what you're saying process yeah and then when you can't not do one yep you've got the habit of fitness and i thought the man's a goddamn genius but that's exactly what you're talking about that's exactly it and it's so some of the most simple things like create the habit they guy to me they sound so simple right and to many they probably do sound simple but then you have to go back to okay so then why why do so many people not do it yeah but everybody knows how to give feedback right but they've got at least three people we haven't given it to so that's that's right um yeah i think that is yeah i think that is perfect i love that so that creation of habit and that creation of um all that process that creates habit i guess for me one of the interesting things is when you're dealing at a senior level people have got there because they're they're not daft yeah you know i'm i'm of an age i've you know i must have achieved all of this by being halfway intelligent and you know when you come in as an external person i guess the process and the story that you've got to offer is one thing but i how do you get people who are basically at the top of their game maybe positionally even if they're not top of their game in terms of their performance to look inward and to really take up the challenge i guess of doing stuff differently is that something that you know you think about a lot yeah for sure because they they uh and it's a barrier to try and break through because of the because i think of the success that they've obviously had and that they currently have because they've made it to that they've made it to that level right um but i think there's a lot of uh a lot of different um points that you can look at with them and it's always coming across in a way i think um that pumps them up gets them gets them uh excited to take themselves to the next level uh right i i had a client recently and we were talking and he's like you know i think i think i'm doing i think this is you know going pretty well it's going good i'm like maybe it is but let's make it great right and if it's great let's make it exception like let's keep pushing don't don't just stay stagnant you know stay stagnant and great might feel great uh but it could really you could really take it to the next level because if you're doing great you probably have a lot of attributes and capability already now let's keep working on those and make it exceptional or phenomenal or just like keep pushing them forward because they probably have probably the kind of individual that has even more to give to their people their teams their companies their you know their stockholders or whatever the case might be um yeah and it's just does that make sense it does i'm always interested by that you know so again i often again you know being of an a being 15 now i get to say things with an element of hopeful insight or wisdom you know that would do that but i do sometimes think you know getting fit isn't your issue i mean it's something that you've got to wrap your head around but being very fit that's a different that's a different kettle of fish right yeah it is yeah and being being good at leadership and management is one thing but being great at it you know it's in the detail it's in the subtleties it's in the elegance yeah and i and i sense that's what you're you're talking about it really is right so you can you hear people um i also use the analogy you know you can go out and play a great game of golf like you say i played great today doesn't mean you're a great golfer ah right yeah you you can have a great game or a great day doesn't mean you're a great golfer there's a difference between that um yeah yeah yeah so that's that's really pleasing that creating the patterns creating the habits yeah actually say are you willing to put the hard work in to what might be incremental steps i guess that uh i think yeah absolutely and i literally just was reading uh because i also believe in reading reading is a good thing for professionals that just read as much as you can um i know it was along the lines of fitness because i too i mean i have the habit of fitness i have that habit i love it uh but you know it was kind of something that humbled me in the moment of reading it the other day that said you're not going to get where you want to go in in your fitness journey in five months maybe five years but not five months like the the bod no matter what the body just doesn't work like that um and that that kind of humbled me for a minute and like yeah it's hard work continually over and over incremental steps you'll see your improvements but you gotta the habit has to continue and you've got to keep pushing forward to truly realize if you want to get to that next or maybe three levels ahead of where you are today yeah it's when you read somebody like david goggins that you think yeah you know maybe that level of aspiration that i could you know what david i'm going to leave that to your territory yeah maybe just some people operating at such a level where i go you know it's yeah yeah and i think that's another thing when you're working with leaders and something like that there is something about sometimes the the vision on what great is is that person is the one percent that you're looking at and that can be weirdly enough its own demotivation it's not about setting your sights low but contextually high for you and maybe not at a level of aspiration that is if you're not perfect or not as good as they are then it's a failure and i think that's an interesting one that um comes into it a lot yeah i would agree with that completely so when you talk about values based results what does what is what is that feat what is that for you just bring that alive for me just for a few moments do i get a sense of because people talk about it but they have a kind of a subtly different slant on what it is oh sure saying that yeah so values values-based results uh for me uh started started with the army um the army has and this is where i learned uh values and what they mean and how they're pushed uh it the army had seven values and what was truly done exceptionally well and of course you're talking about a 250 year old organization uh was all of the all of the behaviors from top to bottom to top uh from every single individual person uh had to be there had to be certain behaviors that you can say the way these people act the way they behave every day are aligned with what our values are vice versa if you don't have any established core values in your organization you could look at how everybody's behaving and and then take all those behaviors study them and say oh these are what our values are because this is how people act every day so values-based leadership goes into the heart of beha personal individual behaviors and what it is that you need for on a daily basis from from your team that should then define or align with your established core values all the way to um it kind of um kind of makes me chuckle sometimes when i see books like you know here are the two here are your 20 interview questions that any interviewer could use to to interview an employee like okay maybe those are foundational there's some foundation ones but if you really want to find talent that's right for your organization you need to craft questions that would elicit responses that are aligned with the types of behaviors you'd want to see that equal your core values in your company because if you don't get that you're going to find people that aren't a match for for your organization because they're not going to behave or they're not going to think that the behaviors that you want are the ones that they believe in uh and so forth so i'm i'm really i really try to focus people on you got to get all the way down to how you ask interview questions how you do performance management in your company and how leaders inspire people to behave in certain ways and everybody needs to be on the page with what your core values are as a company and that has to start with the ceo at the top um can't just be can't just be words on the wall you know when you walk into the reception or words on a website uh and so forth because in the end i drive this all home in my book and i'm like how am i going to explain this to people in a way that makes sense so i actually put it in a formula like just follow this formula and i put you know behaviors behaviors over time time multiplied by all the employees in the company it's going to equal your culture your corporate your company culture uh and and if something's wrong in your culture or you don't like how things are the environment of your company you've got to go back and look at the behaviors on that side of the equation because something's not something's not right and how people are behaving and they're not either aligned with your core values at the top and maybe they haven't been communicated well maybe it hasn't been shared well across the organization and there's tons of studies that organizations that actually get this right they have they have higher profit margins they have higher sales revenues they just have it all they have they have much better opportunity to excel as a company than companies that struggle with it less turnover higher retention uh and so forth it's just anyway now i'm fascinated by that because i think when you're a startup and you've got 10 20 30 40 50 you're all in a room you're in an office you know you're all there for the same reasons these things almost maybe don't get thought about too much or maybe they do but it's relatively easy because you're attracting at a local level or you're attracting top talent but when you go into the thousands and the spread demographic the nobody doesn't get it but it's the um it's the drive to say i need a bum on that seat yeah and i haven't found anybody who's the right i've got some really competent individuals and they can get it done versus yeah but do you want them in your organization you know yeah but i need that workload done because i'm getting pressurized to do it yeah that's the biggest battle for a lot of people and i talk about i don't know if you do but i talk about tolerances if you allow the tolerances to grow all of a sudden you're tolerating things and it kind of creeps up on you by accident yeah it does yeah and you must see that i guess and i guess in the military and in the white house and stuff like that that i don't know is there um yeah how is how is performance tolerated i mean is it is is it held to you know yeah i'd love to help to high standard right so when you think um um oh in the and uh when you take it from a military perspective you know in our in our services we talk about special type assignments special units and you can say you know being assigned to a special assignment like the white house or um you make it to a navy seal team or the army special forces uh us army rangers those are super high performing uh organizations and so low performance is not tolerated is the point right you don't accept there's no such thing as accepting mediocre average or low performance that's just it just is not because it doesn't fit with the organization um and what the organization has to accomplish many of those organizations are there's life and death taking place on a on a regular basis and somebody even uh you know take even somebody who's on the logistics or the supply chain side right if they didn't check or double check and triple check that all the supplies were in the container that are going to get shipped with the team it could be food it could be you know water bottles it could be ammunition whatever the case might be i was expecting more bullets yeah yeah i needed hey you didn't give me a full load here this is not good um that's that could have detrimental impact to the to the team as a whole so you would not accept any tolerance for anything less than doing your best so this is an interesting one i'm just alert to time but i'm i'm just aware of when you have that emergency services when you have the military when you have whatever whatever that might be and there's a um as you say there's an outcome where it it does it's fundamentally critical not just as a financial outcome but as a life outcome the and of course not of course but what i notice is that there's um there's a lot of um rhetoric about giving people time to develop there's a lot of rhetoric about doing the right thing by people which of course is correct yeah it's that line between giving somebody the opportunity to get good enough right versus that oh no it takes up to a year to get rid of somebody here you know and i'm like and i find that fascinating where that drift where and again you with your hr background and what you do is that some people talk about best practice as if it's the law and i kind of go is it the law or is it just that that's the way it would be if it was an ideal world and i just i just wonder if you come across that kind of having to put reality back into a workplace yeah no 100 and i think the the the reality is when you bring you have to re this goes back to me for me to the heart of leadership and caring about your people so even if you're in high performing and and i'm saying that tolerance you know you don't tolerate low performance um it doesn't mean that you take away the component of caring 100 caring about the people that you lead and then in part of that when you're bringing somebody into your organization i i you know what you just said takes a year to get rid of them there should be it takes a year to develop them to get them to that to where you want them to be then if they're not performing where you need them to be and you've given them every opportunity all the training all the development all the motivation that they need the resources that they need uh to really be at the top of their game at the end of that year then then maybe they weren't a good fit right and then that's when the okay now we've given you every opportunity uh maybe you're not the best fit for this organization um so yeah you have to do all those things guy i think it's or you're it's not really leadership at all for me uh you have to you have to 100 care about the people that you're leading and you got to put them on a path to success and give them every opportunity to get there um if they if they fall they fall but it's on their accord not yours um yeah that makes a lot a lot of sense so if i i've got two more sort of main questions for you and the first one for me is you know again you know if we were sitting down with a with a steak dinner and you know whatever you know we i'd go on with you for forever i think to the point where you go guy i really do need to go home but i'm just alert to the fact that um is there anything for you that is you know guy if i think about um you know i think a lot of what we do is that the mentor we had or the role model that we had or you know what even if he or she wasn't a role model or a mentor i just saw this one person i never saw them again but they just did this one thing and it really struck me do you have anything in your kind of cannon of steps forward that you go that was a real deal breaker for me when i saw that or i was told that that really accelerated or reinforced your thoughts on leadership yeah i do i think it was another pivotal moment from a leadership perspective and it wasn't just a moment i had the opportunity um this individual was my my direct supervisor if you will commander of our organization that led us into iraq um he was a u.s army uh military academy a west point graduate um and and from the moment the moment i got off the plane in germany and i and i met this individual and he exemplified everything and caring about me and my family at that from that from moment one everything he had everything ready because this is the first time i mean that wasn't my first time but bringing the whole family to live in a foreign country i had accommodations i had uh food in those accommodations i had transportation set up somebody to pick me up and get me to where i needed to go and all of these things he had the housing office ready so i could find a permanent accommodations had everything lined up that was taking care of me and my family even though he has all of these responsibilities on his shoulders and oh by the way four months later we're deploying to combat right i mean just a ton of responsibility it did it didn't phase him whatsoever that in that moment i have bo and his family they're new here i'm going to do what i would do anyways and take care of them and that type of leadership didn't stop i mean i saw that for the next almost two years that i was under this individual's um leadership and and and the man was 27 years old at the time wow but yeah i was like wow that's if i'm going to emulate anybody with the core concepts of leadership and how to take care of people and how to take care of your organization and how to get your organization ready and be a high-performing team i'm watching him right i'm going emulate what he does really learn what he's doing and see if i can develop that in myself uh yeah it's the best example i have and you don't always have to look you know to the tony robbins or the john that you know the pies in the sky type of people that are you know popular almost celebrity like sometimes you can find that right around you um yeah i'm i'm fascinated by that that capacity is one thing i see in leaders which is who are i think doing it right which is that capacity to hold multiple truths yeah the the capacity to of course some things are urgent and important but to still to not let other things drop off the table right and you know there are people where i go oh i should have done that for you i'm sorry you're on my list but you never make it to the top i hear myself saying that yeah isn't that fascinating which isn't what your fella did right he gone no it's done guy yeah considering what you're dealing with he could have delegated that to yeah any one of 70 other people right he could have absolutely but he didn't yeah he was my direct i was his direct report and he made that he made that a priority uh didn't let it fall off the fall off his checklist of things to do if you will so bo what is that and this is a bit of a it's not a sneaky question it's a great question but you're going to go back but what's the best and it's not about you being you know arrogant about yourself but what's the best bit of advice you think you've ever given somebody oh wow that is a great question the best bit of advice that i have given somebody um man i i think it's i think it's along the lines of um wow guy you stumped me you'll have to put some pauses in here i will delete those out um i i think i think it comes along the lines of um to and i did this with multiple people because i try to keep the same mantra about myself and what i try to encourage and inspire in others it's to it's to not be fearful of trying right try try try and even if you fail see what you did wrong try to figure out what you did wrong and try it again keep going after it keep going after your dreams and don't don't quit um i had a young had a young person that that worked for me i'll just give you a real quick example and um he would always see people uh outside my office you know coming in and wanting help and he came up to me and uh he said people would call me chief but because of my ranks informal term he said chief how do you stay so calm all these people they want your help they need they need something from you they know you're the expert at what you're doing um and you just stay calm and you smile and and whatever and and my response was i said well you know i just i'm not afraid to talk to them there's no fear in in helping somebody uh and they know that i'm gonna treat their issues like their mind and and that's that maybe that's another one it's i've always looked at it um so even from a from a work perspective guy i think it's uh if we take it in the corporate in the corporate sense if the ceo came into my office and he needed something i'm going to give that person a level of effort to make sure that they that i'm taking care of the ceo if i had someone from the mail room come into my office and need something from me i'm going to give them the same level of effort i gave the ceo because that's what that's what's important to them and that's a differentiator that is yeah yeah that's one thing so that's the piece well in hindsight i think that's the piece of advice i try to tell people especially if you are in um if you're in a service industry right if you can get yourself to a level where you're if you're really bringing your best and bring your best it really doesn't matter who's on the other side of the phone the table the computer screen give it give it your all treat them all the same and if you treat people in their issues or problems or concerns as if they were your own it it will produce a different result okay so bo um i'm going to leave a link in the description to your book which is from the battlefield to the white house to the boardroom yes thank you which is um just a great um a great title uh leading organizations to values uh based results so i i think that's going to be an absolute corking read for anybody um and you know just for me personally um you know when when i meet somebody with a depth of experience i i feel myself on the precipice of going on and on and on and talking and talking yeah i i do the same so i have to respect your time um but maybe they'll be around two or something like yeah along those lines but just for me i'm gonna ask you to stay on for a few moments uh thank you so much for your time it's been an absolute joy we've done an hour almost so just thank you so much for for taking the time to come on the podcast thank you guys appreciate it