Veterans Day Masterclass: Leadership, Service, and the Conversations That Shape Us | Negotiate Anything

Welcome to this negotiation masterclass edition of Negotiate Anything.

With over 1600 episodes featuring some of the world's brightest minds, we've carefully curated three powerful conversations for you.

What makes this so special is that you'll hear how different experts from different industries approach the same challenge in their own unique ways.

Our goal is to give you multiple perspectives so you can build your own unique style.

Success doesn't look the same for everyone.

And in this masterclass, you will see exactly why.

Let's dive in.

All right, everybody, we have a treat today.

We have Dr. and Professor Heiss Gibson, who's also a retired colonel in the military.

So, Professor Gibson, thank you for joining us today.

We really appreciate it.

No, thank you for having me.

I'm excited about the conversation.

Yes, likewise.

So how would you get it started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Not a problem.

And so I think the thread, the bomb on the front is service is a part of my background, having served the nation for a quarter of a century.

And then during that time, I had the opportunity to serve the next generation by teaching at West Point a couple of times, which leads me to what I'm doing now at the Harvard Business School as a professor, teaching the world's amazing future leaders and then also some of the world's most amazing executives.

And so service is a high point.

And then I really focus on what I would call operational leadership, because I really care a lot about people, how we manage and think about talent development processes, because everything's a process.

Big ideas are amazing, but if you don't have anyone who can actually do things, we're kind of challenged.

And then understanding in the current environment, because we're operating in a volatile uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment duca environment uh, technology integration is massively important.

Not only how do we integrate the, what i would call the new hotness, but are our people internally ready for it and are our customers externally excited about it?

And so those are the threads that leaders have to deal with, which is why I call operational leadership.

It kind of encompasses all things.

Incredible.

And thank you for your service.

We're honored to have you.

And I think you are the perfect person to come in and talk about some of the tough conversations we have to have in the business world.

And just any time you have people congregating today, because right now, as you would say, the new hotness is artificial intelligence.

And for most companies it's not a question of if it will be integrated, it's a question of and people are rushing to do this, but we've seen instances where it hasn't gone that well.

So I think what would be good for us to do is just set the stage.

When we think about AI integration into our organizations.

What is the opportunity, but then also what are the challenges.

I think that's a great start because there's a massive amount of opportunities with the integration of AI.

And AI is not new.

I mean, we all have iPhones.

There's AI has been operating behind the scenes with Google Maps and search engines for a while, but now all of us have access to it.

And so I think the challenge is that the people inside the firms sometimes aren't ready for it and are apprehensive, meaning scared.

Like this is going to take my job or this is going to cause me to be irrelevant.

What I would suggest is that, in those instances, organizations are tasked with ensuring that the people inside the organization understand, or train and develop to integrate with and understand the benefit of there's benefit to having just AI, there's benefit to having just people, but the optimal ability to optimize productivity is through the human machine interaction and partnership.

We saw the same thing in the military.

As we think about in the army, we have a platform called the A864 Apache attack helicopter.

Well, the newest helicopter that came out about a decade ago was able to not only fire long range, it could connect with multiple unmanned aerial devices at the same time.

And so, which meant the pilots, who already have a lot going on, had to train to increase their own cognitive capacity to manage multiple systems while flying, while being in certain spaces all at the same time.

Well, if we take what's happening today, that's all that's happening.

Some of our teammates, cognitive capacity, we're just not there yet.

So it takes training and development.

We can get there.

It just takes a lot of work.

And so all of us are becoming what I would say just really good prompt engineers, because we don't have to start with a blank canvas.

The downside is if you're a bad prompt engineer, you're going to get bad output.

If you're scared of the system, you are going to be irrelevant because you're not trying to understand what's going on.

And so in acknowledging everything does not need AI.

I don't need an AI carpenter just yet, i don't need an ai plumber just yet.

So there are things that are kind of you know, teflon to technology, but most things aren't, and so and, and those who will win will be those who are not only able to leverage the technology, but then also able to develop others who are better with the technology.

This is powerful because what we're recognizing is yes it's, it's coming And it's here.

It's been here in different iterations.

But now more people are recognizing the power and it's in everybody's hand with generative AI, whichever platform you decide to use.

And I think there is a lot of pressure on leaders to integrate it as fast as possible.

It feels like almost an arms race between these companies.

And so there's a tension within the decision makers of the organizations to say OK well, I want this as fast as possible.

Let's do it, do it, do it.

But then the people are like, we are not prepared, nor do we like it.

Like you said, there's a healthy dose of fear and skepticism.

So I believe for a lot of people, there is the, hey, I don't like this.

And also, if I could do something to kind of slow this down or frustrate this process, maybe I will.

And so there has to be a bit of a big challenge for the leaders is getting people on board, but then also making sure that you can demystify it, make it less scary and help them to understand that this is the pathway to continued progress and security, because you need to adapt and evolve or you won't be able to be part of the organization anymore, because somebody who might have a lower top level capacity but a willingness to utilize AI would ultimately be more valuable.

And so how do leaders take people on this journey so they can still move quickly and take advantage of the opportunity but, at the same time, bring people along in a way that's actually sustainable?

I think that's a great reality that we're dealing with is that it's an age-old problem.

From the dawn of time, since we've had people congregating and have someone in front and someone behind, is the reality that buy-in is required.

And the person responsible for communicating the buy-in is the leader.

And in order to do that, and I'll just pull off of Simon Sinek providing the why.

And if leaders are unable to communicate the why in a succinct way, there's massive skepticism.

If the leader is not invested in developing trust in the organization, there's huge skepticism.

And so there's a lot of pre-work that's required by the leader before you just come out in all hands and say we're doing X, follow me.

But do the people trust you?

Do they believe in you?

Have you illustrated anything? the ability to have a huge amount of character?

Do you take care of people?

Do you operate in a way that inspires others?

All these are non-technical things in order to integrate a technical solution.

And I think there comes a point that we all know is that you can be smart, but being smart is not enough when running an organization.

That's a part of it, but that is not enough.

We all know a lot of really, really smart people who should just be in a corner.

We also know a lot of intellectual folks who are amazingly inspirational.

So I think that the problem of gaining buy-in is what's required when bringing the technology, because will it eliminate jobs and positions and roles?

Yes.

Will it create new ones?

Yes.

So just being able to help others understand those realities.

I agree.

And I think when leaders are listening to this podcast episode, they're going to say okay, that makes sense.

I need to get trust in order to get buy-in.

And then they might at the same time be realizing, I should have started this process years ago.

Because I should have been building trust with my team.

And I think especially when bright, shiny new technologies are involved.

We focus so much on the tech that we forget about the people.

We forget about the human element and the power of just simple human connection and demonstrating that we care.

Because there's a lot of skepticism, like you said, when it comes to bigger businesses with AI, because you're saying well, they're trying to eliminate me, right.

So there is a healthy dose of skepticism.

So for the leader out here listening who's saying okay, I recognize that the reason I'm feeling a lot of friction and resistance is because I don't have trust and that's getting in the way of building, getting buy-in.

What are some steps that they can take today, that they can use to start to build true, authentic trust?

I think building trust is a challenge, because trust is something that you can't feel it, you can't see it, but you know it when you have it.

And you also know it when you don't.

So I think for leaders, it's really, one, doing some self-reflection.

We all believe we're good people.

We all believe we're amazing.

But we fail to ask the hard question because we don't want to know the answer.

How do others experience us?

Again, we believe we're amazing, but we really don't know how others experience us.

And that will tell you a lot.

And so I think for leaders really doing some reflection on how they are, how they operate, how they need to adjust is first.

And then, as they go out on their walkabouts and engage with people, do they notice themselves talking the most, or are they asking questions and learning?

You know, they may know what's going on in the factory, factory context.

They may know exactly what's going on on the line.

But how about go down on the line and ask someone, hey, so what are you doing?

How do you do that?

How did you learn how to do that?

What's the impact of what you're doing down the line?

And so just having someone explain to them what's going on.

It's powerful when others are feeling that they're teaching the boss.

And sometimes they actually are.

Because if we're honest, most bosses don't know what's going on at the tactical level.

Many leaders will say, I know what's going on on the line.

There's only some organizations where that's actually true.

Mainly a factory context, sometimes a team's context. and definitely in a militaristic context.

In those areas.

The leaders generally have grown up in the organization so they can actually say I understand what's going on on the line.

Other than that, most people need to go and learn, when they show up in an organization, what's going on.

Are they willing to learn?

Are they willing to be vulnerable?

And are they willing to acknowledge, I don't know?

And so the best leaders can acknowledge when they don't know, and that's a very powerful statement.

Let's go deeper into that, Ice, because I think...

A lot of people are terrified to admit that they don't know.

And so why is that such a powerful statement to make as a leader in really tough situations?

Well, I think as a leader, the best leaders, I'll just say, will always make this statement.

I always hire people better than me.

All really good leaders will say that same thing.

I have a lot of great mentors.

I read one or two books.

I know a lot of great folks who are leaders.

And every one of them who are really good make that specific statement.

They will always hire people who are better than them.

And if they feel they're the smartest person in the room, they move to a new room.

So because that one allows vulnerability, there's an acknowledgment of what you don't know.

It's also acknowledgement that you understand your personal gaps.

And it also acknowledges you're willing to fill your gaps with someone who's better, which means when you're in rooms because everyone is smart too, you're listening.

And so a group like that is probably going to come up with, on average, better solutions, and it creates massive amount of alignment.

Leaders who don't believe that will always hire people and be in situations where where folks are not as good as them.

They're just like one step down.

And an effort for those people to need them to be inspired by them specifically, who will always reinforce how their thoughts like that's great boss.

You know, that's a great idea.

You're the most smart person, smartest person in the world.

That's great for your ego.

But that might not be good for the firm.

I agree.

And tell me if it's fair to wrap all of this up into one word.

It sounds like humility is what we need in these leaders.

Absolutely.

The best leaders are those who come across that way.

And some of those leaders can be in a room and you don't even know they're there.

How many times have you seen a picture of Tim Cook or Bill Gates like in a coffee shop and no one knows who they are?

They're just like, you know, hanging out.

So the ability to kind of blend in is also a skill.

Yeah.

No, you're absolutely right.

And I remember I saw that clip of Tim Cook and Odell last week.

It was like invisible.

That was mind-blowing.

So which one's the billionaire?

Exactly.

No, this is great.

And I also want to talk about something that you've mentioned before, which is the interpersonal deficit since COVID and the fact that we have yet to recover.

I think this is fascinating and also fascinating.

It's almost like one of the biggest liabilities that we have, not just within our companies, but also within society as a whole.

We haven't recovered the skills that we lost during COVID.

So can you tell the listeners about that too?

Well, I think every generation has a thing, has an inflection point, a pivot point.

And so I think for us who all experienced the world shutting down in 2020, we're going to feel this for the next 40 years, primarily because The kids who are in school are going to grow up.

And a lot of children were hit at a critical developmental point.

But not only.

Kids teenagers, young adults, folks in college, folks who went into their first jobs all hit this inflection point at the same time.

And think about managers in their 30s or later, or leaders later, who had an idea of how work would be done and then had to pivot to this new way of work and are now slinging it back to 2019 with return to office.

And some of the gaps that we've experienced.

And this is all like published and researched already interpersonal interactions.

So the ability to communicate face-to-face, the ability to have phone calls, the ability to share, the ability to walk into a room and not look on your phone, the ability to go to a restaurant to have dinner And put your phone away, because it's unfortunate that we have a group of folks who really don't know how to what to do with undirected time.

Remember when you before the Internet.

You know there was a time for the Internet when you would go on a long ride across the country or to somebody's house for two hours, two hour ride.

Just sit in the back, just sit there and look outside and be with your thoughts.

That was normal.

There's a generation now who are digital natives, who've always run up with an iPhone or device, who've always had something to take their time.

So they really don't know what to do with this.

That translates into the workforce and individuals unable to go into a room, engage with a leader and not touch their phone.

So I think leaders who are senior have to acknowledge that we're not going to go back, that we're.

We have folks in the force and our team who operate that way.

And it's their job to help develop them around basic corporate behavior.

You know, it's similar to every industry has a uniform.

If we go out to California, you know, it's going to be hoodies and jeans and bands or something.

If we go into private equity, it's going to be a great.

You know some chinos, a vest and cojones or sneakers.

If we go in the Goldman Sachs, it is still a suit.

I mean, I have many friends at Goldman.

So investment banking is still a suit.

So every industry has its own uniform.

Well, that's one.

Every industry has its own way of interacting.

And there's just certain norms that there's a two-year gap.

And so folks have to relearn what those norms are.

But the reality is those norms were learned by observation in an office setting.

That disappeared for a while.

So I think now we will see if leaders will take on that mantle of reminding people about their cultural norms, their corporate culture and what they expect.

Yeah, I agree.

And I feel like that's one of the hidden opportunities hiding in plain sight.

It's just not as like, sexy and interesting as artificial intelligence, you know, but it's so important because, as technology improves, our ability to communicate has plummeted.

And it is one of the most challenging issues of our time.

And my belief is that the biggest challenge to humanity as a species is our inability to resolve conflict.

We're getting significantly worse.

And then, when you think about the big issues of today, there are a lot of difficult conversations and negotiations that have to happen, that are either not happening at all or happening at a very, very low level.

And so we're thinking about as we go into these organizations, we need to be able to solve problems.

We need to be dynamic.

And the ability to communicate effectively is going to be part of that.

But then when you expand it and think at higher levels, when you're thinking about the government and the military, things like that, there are incredibly difficult conversations that need to happen.

And as the world gets more polarized, our ability to address those just goes down.

And For me, I'd be interested to hear your perspective on that particular issue, given your background in industry, government and military.

How are you seeing things?

And is there a path forward when it comes to that?

Well, I think, one, the world is very dynamic, definitely polarized.

But the polarization is amplified through the echo chambers of our own FYPs, our own for you pages.

What we search, how the algorithms are built based on what we look at, can take you down the rabbit holes.

Whereas before there was a time where we all got the news at the same time, at six o'clock and ten o'clock we all got the news from the same place the local paper or, if you're really crazy, the new york times it was delivered in your location or the wall street journal, so.

But now we all get news and people are creating their own news.

So i think at least i would suggest in my personal view, is that don't take things so personal is you can't have a hard conversation if you're going to be like triggered by someone who has a dissenting opinion.

We just call that a debate.

And so if you operate in fact and don't take it personal, you can have a much more fruitful conversation.

And so folks are able to acknowledge facts listen, understand and are mildly pliable, meaning they're not so affixed to their view that there's no other view.

There's a little bit, you can actually reach a, uh, a solid solution.

And so, when we think about all of the challenges that we were dealing with real time now that we've dealt with over the last 10 years, at least for me, I've always been able to operate, in fact.

But that goes back to the education I learned at West Point that has a deep, a lot of history, a lot of civics, a lot of world of policy, type classes that and then reinforce the through professional military education.

Because as a at least a US, United States military officer, you have to be exposed to a lot of stuff, because you don't know what part of the globe you're going to be dropped in.

And you need to have some kind of context with the space that you're in.

It's not just do it our way.

You have to understand how the folks in Afghanistan operate, how someone in South Korea operates, how someone in the Indo-Pacific operates, how people in Europe, across all those countries, how folks on the continent, which a lot of people think Africa is a monolith.

It's like 52 different countries.

In Egypt, on the continent, they're massively different from sub-Saharan to the northern portion, middle to the southern, east and west.

That's a massive continent.

And so I think operating in fact is the most important part.

I think unfortunately, because of polarization, a lot of folks are operating in their own facts, which is bizarre to me personally, but they are.

And when presented with undeniable information... are not willing to change.

That's hard to debate and negotiate.

And so you always have to like put those folks in the corner and focus on those who are willing to get on boards.

I agree.

And it's becoming more challenging because I think there is an increasing level of fragility when it comes to our ability to stand firm in a difficult conversation in the face of somebody who has the audacity to think differently.

And then I also think we're kind of transitioning to a post-fact, post-truth world where there are so many voices putting information into the world of differing levels of credibility and influence.

And then we also have with artificial intelligence.

Now we used to be able to say hey, I'll believe it when I see it.

And now you can see whatever you want with the ability to generate realistic images.

And so when we're in this situation, I know when we think about in military we have, sometimes the opposition might withhold information they don't want you to see, but then also sometimes they will provide you with false information to lead you astray.

And so, when you think about it with your military lens, how do we as a nation, as a people, start to get to a point where we can align on what is real and what isn't, so we can operate from a base of common understanding to build a foundation of an effective conversation?

Well, on that one, I think the interesting part is that we have cameras everywhere.

Everyone is a sensor.

Every person is a sensor, meaning we all have iPhones and devices that can record.

So there's really not any sense in arguing, like, what is, because you can see it.

You can hear it.

It was recorded.

It was videoed.

And so in that realm, I think we're sitting in a weird situation scenario where there's a portion of the population who is unrelenting and will only believe what they believe, even if it's against what is helpful to them.

And so again, I think that we're in an unfortunate place where we will be challenged to move them, but there are those who are on the bubble, and that's where the focus should be aligned with those folks on the bubble, because you can waste a lot of energy on folks who are not going to change and And not to say you just need to dismiss them, but focus on those who are willing to be part of the solution versus part of the problem.

And the reality is, once that happens, everyone's going to benefit, even those who are on the extreme ends.

And that's okay.

Right.

No, that's a great point.

That is a great point.

Before we wrap up, I want to finish up on the idea of not taking things personally, because now I'm recognizing we've had over 1500 episodes of the podcast and we have not explored that topic enough.

And I think you're the perfect person to talk about it.

Not, I think that people would think the obvious example is the military background and the yes, quarter century of service.

That's 100 percent the truth.

And then also your time. playing D1 football, right?

Because you have to have some pretty direct conversations there.

And so, when it comes to not taking things personally, that's something that's very easy to say, but how do we actually operationalize it so we can have a little bit more grit and resilience in these conversations, so we can actually listen to what the other person is saying and understand them, rather than getting triggered and turning it into a debate?

I think we have to all acknowledge that we're a We're all a combination of our own individual experiences, whatever those are.

You just don't wake up one day and say, you know what?

I have grit.

Like, do you?

Did you ever do anything really hard?

And hard is relative.

You know, one person's hard and someone else is like really easy.

And so when I think about my own personal background, I mean the folks who coached high school, high schools in like the late 80s, early 90s.

If we really started to unpack it, there's going to be someone on that coaching staff who has some kind of Vietnam background.

You can't move it.

And those folks' parents were part of World War II.

Their grandparents were World War I and the Depression.

Some of them were born just after the Korean War.

So they're in a very different space and time, which translates to how they were communicated with, which means it translates to how they communicated with kids.

And so the way in which I was coached in high school would not fly today.

You can't do that.

It's not bad.

You just can't do it.

You can get away with it in college a little bit, but you definitely can't do it in high school.

So, but that builds resilience when, when we think about and then my parents always said I remember my mom asking, telling me once uh, when I said I couldn't do something, or uh, I couldn't go somewhere and say well, why not?

Well, why not you?

So this almost, so this idea of why not, like you at least give it a try.

So she didn't say take risks.

That's what she meant.

Or or or my father always saying put yourself in.

If you want to do well, you need to play with the A players.

Now we don't like to say there's A players and B players, but there is a varsity team and there is a junior varsity team.

So if you want to be on the varsity, you need to work out with the varsity players.

And so at some point, you have to... So me, you need to be around people to elevate your game.

But in that elevation, think about it.

Folks who are better than you are going to tell you you suck.

They're going to tell you you're not good, and then you have to respond to that.

And it's not really... It's never about...

How you take it is always about how you respond.

That's what you can control.

And so my idea, if I take it personal, is that I have agency in how I always respond.

And so that has translated over years, even being in combat.

I've been in a lot of crisis in my life.

In a time of crisis, those are the times when I'm the most calm.

It's like, okay, well.

Let me assess everything.

Let me deal with what's happening and let me then move with things I can't control.

Will I mess up?

Yes.

Have I been told I've messed up?

Yes.

But instead of taking it as a personal assault on my personal character, like you know.

What can I learn from this?

You know, I really didn't mess that up.

How can I do this better?

So it's almost how you flip and think about feedback, because we have a lot of people a lot who take everything they're told as not they're amazing and personal as a personal affront to them.

When actually you did poorly, you did not meet the standard.

You did not do well relative to others.

Now the ticker is, what do you do with that information?

If you take it personal, you go down a rabbit hole.

If you take it like an ability to improve, it's a very different thing.

But again, every individual has agency to determine how they respond.

We're seeing more and more in current day, many people from teenagers to adults are who are taking things very personal, which means their ability to take feedback, develop and grow is limited, which means the folks who are in positions of power will not spend time with them.

So, in effect, by taking things personal, you're actually cutting off the ability to be developed by someone who can really help you.

You know, win.

And you don't even realize it.

Right.

Oh, this is good.

Heise, I could just keep on talking to you about this, especially this topic.

It will turn into a rant at some point, so we have to cut it off here.

But I appreciate you coming on the show, my friend.

Before you go, can you please just remind the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more from your work?

Well, one, I'm very Google-able.

I'm one of the few Heise Gibson's on the internet.

And so that's all my information.

Or you could look me up at... the matugi.com.

So M-U-T-U-G-I.com if they need help with anything.

But I'm publishing stuff all the time via LinkedIn, via Harvard Business Publishing.

And so happy to help in any way I can.

Amazing.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Really appreciate it.

No problem.

Awesome.

That was the first part of today's masterclass.

Up.

Next we'll hear from another expert with a different approach, giving you even more strategies to add to your toolkit.

Let's keep it rolling.

Everybody, we have a very special guest with us today.

We have Michelle Flournoy.

She is the former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in the Obama administration and the co-founder and managing partner of West Exec Advisors.

Michelle, thank you so much for joining us today.

It's great to be with you, Komi.

Yes, it's great to have you.

So, We went over your resume a little bit, but let's go a little bit more in depth.

Tell us about a little bit about your career before we jump into the episode.

Sure.

I have spent my career across three different sectors.

The first part of my career was mostly in the think tank world doing policy related research and analysis, trying to come up with good ideas for the US government and national security.

And then I had a chance to serve in government first in the Clinton administration.

And then later, as you mentioned, in the Obama administration, both times in the Pentagon working on defense strategy and policy.

And then I've also had some private sector experience.

I spent three years with Boston Consulting Group trying to understand what good looks like from a business and change management perspective in large organizations, because I certainly didn't see that in the Pentagon in terms of how the business enterprise was run.

And then I started WestExecAdvisors about three years ago with a group of partners really trying to kind of bring a new approach to geopolitical risk and strategic advisory work for mostly US companies working overseas.

That is fantastic.

Fantastic.

And the word that kept on coming up was strategy.

And that's one of my favorite words.

And I can see throughout your career how you've been able to implement that successfully.

And then here in these conversations that we're going to analyze in this episode, I can see as well how strategy played a big role.

And so for the listeners, this is just a little bit of an outline of what we're going to do.

We are going to go through four case studies of difficult conversations that Michelle has gone through throughout her career.

And so we're going to analyze what was done well, what could have been done differently, and we're going to learn a lot through this.

And so the first story is really exciting.

It's the difficult negotiations and difficult conversations that occurred around the bin Laden raid and the decisions that had to be made.

So Michelle, can you tell us a little bit about that?

Sure.

When the intelligence community identified information that said they might have located bin Laden.

One of the things that's important to remember is almost all of that intelligence was circumstantial.

There was no direct evidence that it was, in fact, bin Laden in the compound.

But a lot of different things, kind of suggested that or pointed to that or made it clear that it's hard to explain it any other way.

But there was a lot of debate about whether he was really there.

And so when, President Obama, it came time for him to make a decision, he did not have a unified recommendation from his cabinet.

You had some people saying, don't do it.

It's too risky.

We're not sure he's there.

You have some people say, we think he's there.

You should do it with the SEAL team, you know, the raid.

Others that said that's too risky putting Americans on the ground.

You know they could get stuck there.

What if the Pakistanis respond, blah, blah, blah.

We should use a small experimental drone and try to strike him if he if and when he comes outside to to walk, which was his habit.

So anyway, Secretary Gates, in weighing in along with the different cabinet members she was in initially in the school of

We should take the risk of doing the doing going after him.

This is our best shot, but too dangerous to put the seals on the ground.

We should use this experimental drone.

And when he came back from the White House and I and my colleague Mike Vickers, who was then undersecretary for intelligence, heard that that's how he advised President Obama, we were both really confused.

Concern because we felt that there was a lot of risk using a system that had never been used before, had to be perfectly accurate the first time, and that a lot of work had been done, buying down the risk planning you know, plan B, plan C, plan D, all kinds of contingency planning to buy down the risk associated with putting the seals on the ground.

And so we sort of looked at each other and said, okay, this is why they pay us the big bucks.

This is one of those speak truth to power moments.

He's not going to be happy, but we got to go talk to him.

So we asked to see the secretary.

We went in.

We laid out in detail again why the raid made more sense would give us higher chance of success, all the ways in which the risk had been bought down to a reasonable level.

And he listened.

This was a great leadership trait he listened, he took it all in.

He changed his mind.

He picked up the phone.

He called the national security advisor to say i want to change my advice to the president.

So that was a moment where, you know, taking some risk to, you know, have a conversation that was not going to make your boss very happy initially, um really was the right thing to do and um, you know, i felt uh, um happy in the end that we did it, um.

But also, i think you know there's a lesson there, though sometimes you really have to take the risk to have those hard conversations, particularly if you think someone's gonna, you know, a consequential mistake is about to be made right.

And so when i think about negotiation, we often i recognize that a lot of times we focus on the external conversation with the other person even before that we have to have that internal negotiation.

And so we're thinking about it from a national security perspective, risking in that regard.

But there's also risk to you personally in having this conversation at all.

And so for you, before having the conversation and broaching this topic how did you get the confidence necessary to take that risk personally?

Well, I think I sort of personally catalog the risks that i felt.

You know, obviously there's the risk of making your boss angry.

Okay, that should be, man.

You know you gotta stand up and be willing to do that.

Um, if it's for a higher cause, there's the risk of you know what, if we advocate for putting the seals on the ground and we're wrong, and you know they get into trouble and you're the one who helped push for that position, you know what what?

That's a lot of weight on your shoulders.

And and if you hold yourself accountable for that,

But there's also the risk of the incredible all the capital that President Obama was putting on the line to do this, even in the absence of absolutely conclusive intelligence.

This was gonna be.

If this went south, it's gonna be a terrible blow to his presidency, terrible blow to US credibility and perception around the world.

So this was a high risk operation, and also high benefit, if we were right, and if it went well.

But at the time, you know, you had to figure all of that.

But, at the end of the day, to me, doing what was what I really believed was the right call for the president and the country, what outweighed everything else in terms of, in terms of including my own personal discomfort of walking and having an angry boss.

That makes a lot of sense.

And now let's actually go to the conversation.

When you talked to your colleague Mike Vickers and you came up with the strategy for this conversation.

What was that discussion like?

What was the strategy that you used?

And then how was the execution?

Well, we first both heard about the decision or the meeting that had happened at the White House.

And we got together and sat down and sort of went through checking each other out of like how do you feel?

Do you feel the same way?

Yes, you do.

Okay.

What can we do together that might make a difference?

Should we go in to talk to Secretary Gates?

How will we make our case?

You know, what are the critical persuasive points that we want to make?

You know, what's best coming from you?

What's best coming from me?

We sort of coordinated a game plan, if you will.

And then to collectively ask for some time on an urgent basis, which is very unusual.

I can't remember another time where we ever did that together.

And so that was like raising the OK, something's going on here.

They really need to see you urgently.

And so, but it helped to have a wingman you know have is have someone by your side who is going to go in and and share the burden of that conversation together.

Absolutely.

And so with this strategy, there are a couple of important layers here that we can all learn from.

So the first one, you had a strategy.

We did have a strategy.

We didn't just go barging in, right?

Exactly.

You have to take some time and think about it.

Secondly, you recognize that it's more likely to have an impact when you came together, blending your political capital and your reputations to say both of us need some time, urgency.

So that in itself created a And I just say, I mean, Mike, he had years in intelligence.

He's a former special operator himself.

So the credibility that he could bring to speak to the intelligence, to speak to the operational details, was higher than mine, for example, as the policy person.

So we really tried to sort out where who should speak to what, based on that extra measure of credibility for each of us in different areas.

Yeah, that's so smart because in those types of situations when you're essentially tag teaming a negotiation and a lot of people can relate to that situation where it's you and a colleague or maybe several colleagues in a meeting trying to push forward a specific agenda or something like that

It's so important to have that alignment so everybody knows who is saying what at what time.

So we're not stepping on each other's toes.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

This is fantastic.

Well, I feel like we could spend all the time on that story alone, but we still have three more stories to get to.

This one is honestly my personal favorite.

And so this is advocating for what you need at work.

So can you tell us about that conversation with Secretary Gates?

Sure, sure.

So I had co-led the Obama transition team at the Department of Defense.

I

Didn't know Secretary Gates well before, but through that experience working on the transition team and when he was selected to stay, I was really excited that he asked me to stay on and be the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.

At the time, a couple of things were going on.

One is I had three children under the age of 10.

So lots of demand at home.

I also have a husband who has a career in his own right and he was being asked at the same time to be the deputy secretary of the VA under General Shinseki.

He had run the veterans policy group for President Obama when he during his election campaign.

Anyway, so I really wanted to take this job.

This was a dream come true.

But I also knew that my family couldn't survive me never being home.

And so, with a little bit of trepidation, a lot of trepidation, I walked into the job interview with Secretary Gates.

And after you know all the substantive discussion, you know what the job is, you know what he would expect of me.

All that

I when I said look, I really, really want to do this.

But I have to tell you, you know, I do have a family situation.

That means I need some support for you to occasionally respond, be able to count on being home to actually see my young children.

And it would be great if we could create some predictability.

I can either come in early and then have you know to start the day with you and your intelligence brief or whatever, and then leave by a certain time so I can actually get home when I'm not traveling, to have dinner, read the bedtime spell dory, put them to bed, and then i can be available again.

Once they're, you know, go to sleep, i can get back on the phone, back on the video conference, i can drive to your house if you need me.

I mean, like i can, i can be present to work in the evening again um, or we can do it, you know, i can come in later and stay later, but like what would work, you know i i need some help in managing this.

And he was great.

I mean, he immediately said, I've been there.

You know, when I was deputy national security advisor for Brent Scowcroft, my kids were young.

I had the same conversation.

And I was like, wow, that's awesome.

Meanwhile, my husband was having the same exact conversation with General Shinseki, who was becoming secretary of the VA.

And again, it went much better than either of us anticipated.

And that Clarity and understanding really enabled us to manage these two very big jobs while having young kids at home.

Obviously, we had a lot of help as well.

But I was really glad that we both had the courage to speak up because it made all the difference.

Absolutely.

And I think this is such an important point story to focus on here because a lot of the people in the audience are busy professionals.

And I think a lot of times we create this false dichotomy.

Either we could be really great career driven professionals or we can have time at home, meaningful time at home with our families.

And what this story shows is that it doesn't need to be an either or in that extreme of a case.

If you want to have that kind of balance, you can use the tool of negotiation to with your boss in this case to set aside those barriers, those boundaries, so you can protect that time with your family while still demonstrating your commitment to the organization.

Yeah.

And it wasn't ever really balanced, but it was limiting the degree of sacrifice I was asking of my family.

It made it sustainable for a longer period of time that we could count on you know that predictable time together in the evenings.

And the fact that kids are incredibly resilient.

You know things that I remember as traumatic moments, where I couldn't make the school event or someone was in tears.

Now that they're young adults and teenagers, they have no recollection of that whatsoever.

It's heartbreaking for me.

I'm scarred for life, but they don't even remember it.

Well, that's good.

That's good.

Now, here's an interesting question for you.

Let's say the conversation didn't go as well as it did.

Let's say there was resistance and maybe he said no.

Would that have been a breaking point for you?

I don't know.

I would have had to really think about it.

And you know that gets to the point of when, if you're going to have a conversation like this, you have to start by sort of assessing the person you're going to have the conversation with, because there are certain people who you could probably guess from the outset this is not going to go well, they're not interested, they're not going to be helpful.

And in that case, you have to ask, you know, is that a boss I want to work for?

I always say choose the boss, not the job.

And sometimes we choose that.

You know, an opportunity is so important we're going to tolerate a suboptimal boss.

For me, again, I was lucky in that I thought Bob Gates was going to be a great boss.

And this just elevated my opinion of him even higher from the get go that he was willing to have this negotiation with me.

That's fantastic.

And I think this also gives us a good opportunity to transition into the work that you did at the Pentagon, specifically with the human capital strategy.

Right.

Yeah.

And so with this one, the interesting thing was addressing culture within the Pentagon.

Can you tell a little bit about that, too?

Sure.

So when I came into the Office of the Secretary of Defense I found a workforce.

I had about 1000 people plus oversight of three defense agencies.

And I found a workforce that was incredibly mission driven, but also incredibly burnt out and exhausted.

You know, no one had been to professional development or training for years.

You know there was all kinds of very uneven management practices, no real effort to ensure people were getting feedback and support, and support in managing just incredible hours and demands.

And so we did a survey really trying to identify what the pain points were.

And one of the things we found was that there was no predictable time off.

There was just no...

People felt that they were just at the mercy of the demands of work.

And granted, I mean this was a very intense time in the Pentagon, where the Obama administration inherited both the Iraq and the Afghanistan wars.

There were global counterterrorism operations going on all over the world, very high uptempo.

But what we, what I realized, is that we needed to create a culture that started to invest in the people, take care of the people so that they could occasionally get a break, even if they're still going to be working long hours.

They could know when they could count on that time off to recharge or to take care of a family priority or what have you.

You know, in one case it might be they have a sick parent and they need every other Friday to know that that's when they can schedule the doctor's appointments that they need to take them to.

For a young person who you know their passion is burning off steam.

Blowing off steam, it's running marathons.

And I just need two mornings a week where I can get my longer run in so I can train for my marathon or No judgment on what it is, but the key was having team leads sit down with their teams and say for each person what is that?

One thing that, if we could deliver it for you, would make all the difference in terms of your morale and sense of well-being and your ability to sustain this very high tempo.

And then the manager's job was to make sure the team was flexing to cross-cover each other.

So that, if you know, the Egypt desk guy needed those two later morning arrivals.

Every week somebody was cross-covering that desk, you know for those two mornings.

And you know if they needed the Friday afternoon off every other week for the parent and the doctor appointment that you know the team was covering them to do that.

And so it took a lot of management, took a lot of communication, took a willingness of people taking the risk to say what they need.

But it was magic.

It was like watering the flowers and the seemingly dead flowers in the desert and then watching them bloom.

And you know.

Back to Secretary Gates, I remember sitting in his office about six months in and him putting down a memo and say this work is amazing.

Did you like fire everybody in this office and hire a bunch of new people?

I said, no, we just started taking care of them and investing them and giving them a break.

So it really had a very high impact, not only on morale, but actually on performance.

That's impressive.

That's impressive, especially when you're coming from inheriting a culture that is so driven, so work-oriented, and then causing people to realize hey, there's some actual value in pulling back.

And some of this was, a lot of people thought, oh, this is like a mommy thing.

This is like for women with children and we're gonna try to be more flexible and blah, blah, blah.

I knew that we had arrived when a former Marine, who was now a civil servant, had gone with me to a speaking engagement on a Friday morning, And I offered him a ride back to the Pentagon when we were done.

And he's like actually ma'am, I'm taking my predictable time off to go sledding with my son this afternoon.

And see you later.

And I'm like a former Marine telling his boss's boss's boss that he's taken the afternoon off to go sledding with his son because he knows that it's actually OK to do that.

Because I know that he worked.

You know he's working his butt off and he's delivering and he just created this successful event.

Now he was going to go take his time.

I thought, wow, if we've got that person changing with the culture, then we have arrived.

We have truly arrived.

Wow.

That is a great story.

And it also goes to show just that culture where people feel more comfortable expressing themselves more.

It's more resilient in the face of difficult conversations for him to feel comfortable saying that to you.

And I tell you, when you think about the change management, a lot of organizations are going through a lot of change.

I think that's pretty obvious, considering the pandemic and everything that we've been through over the past year or so.

And yes, we can create these strategies and And yes, we can give it to the leaders to execute the strategies.

But if you don't have a culture that is one where there's fertile ground for these conversations to happen, then the change is going to struggle to be implemented.

Yeah.

And to change the culture and the behavior you really have to realign the kind of incentive structures.

And so one of the things we did was we did these – sort of spot surveys, where five minutes survey the organization down at the lowest levels to say is you know what's happening in your office?

You know, have you heard about predictable time off?

Is your team leader sitting down to, has your team leader sat down and asked you what you need?

Has that need been met?

You know like and, and so you could very quickly get the data with.

You know the response sources were anonymized, but I could cut the data by office and see which offices were actually walking the walk and which ones were just talking the talk.

And so where it wasn't working in an office, then you could focus some management attention to coach those leaders.

Okay, what do you not understand about this process?

And then to back that up with clear incentives that you really recognize the people who are doing it well and hold them up as examples, but you also hold accountable the people who are not and help supervise it and understand that look, if you can't get with this program, that's going to affect your performance evaluation.

And so what can we do to help you get to where you need to be?

It's smart.

So you have incentive structure, but you also have real accountability.

That is, that's governed by the feedback of the people on their team.

And again, that speaks to the follow through, which is an important part.

And it's really hard in a large, highly layered hierarchical organization.

It's very hard to see more than like two two layers down.

So you've got to find out whether it's management by walking around or pulling junior people into your office and almost like focus groups on occasion or doing surveys.

You have got to find some way to get ground truth, because it won't necessarily come to you.

People manage up very well.

They know what they should be doing.

So that's what they tell you.

That's what they are doing.

But finding out whether what's actually happening takes some other methods sometimes to really get a picture of ground truth.

Absolutely.

And this goes back to what we talked about at the beginning.

Strategy.

Right.

You're.

The quality of your strategy is contingent upon the quality of the information that you receive.

And so if we come up with this great strategy, of course, we're going to execute.

But then the strategy is going to shift or evolve as we get information through execution.

And again, we have to get high quality information.

And so I really admire that you had that built into your strategy how to get ground truth when it's difficult to get the real information organic.

Yeah.

Fantastic.

And so this gives us time to address the last difficult conversation or negotiation.

And this was a really interesting one, the post-Iraq drawdown negotiation.

And so before we get into the nitty gritty of this, because this one's pretty complex can you tell us just a brief background of what's happening?

Sure.

So the Bush administration had started a phase drawdown in Iraq and Obama continued it.

One of the things we had to think through was what's the end state in Iraq?

And not only from a military forces perspective, but from, you know, will we have an embassy?

Will we have consulates?

Will there be an intelligence presence?

Will there be trainers?

Will there be other military folks?

Like, what does the sort of normalized U.S. presence in Iraq look like?

And so...

We, the National Security Advisor, tasked the deputies committee, which are all the deputies of the agencies, to work together to come up with some kind of plan.

So it started by really kind of putting the State Department in the center.

You know, the core of the post drawdown relationship was going to be diplomatic.

And so what is the State Department footprint need to be in Iraq? going forward.

So they came up with a design that had an embassy in Baghdad and then three consulates sort of spread throughout the different regions of the country.

And we said, great.

So now you're going to have the intelligence community that's working with their Iraqi partners, kind of fall in on that structure.

And then you have the question of how does the military posture that will be for security assistance and cooperation and training and potentially some contribution to protecting the American presence, how will that be designed based on this State Department and intelligence community lay down?

So we have this beautifully integrated plan that we are all very proud of worked very, very hard on in all these interagency meetings.

And then we took it up to Capitol Hill as part of the budget request to say we need this, you to fund this.

And at that point, given the way the Congress is structured, they broke the plan apart into the different agency pieces.

So the Defense Department piece went through the Defense Appropriations Committees and got 100 percent funding.

The intelligence piece went through the intelligence committee, uh committees and got I don't know 90, 95 funding.

And then the state department piece went through the state department committees um who had to our very budget constraint and they got like 50 funding.

So now we're like the whole plan falls apart because now we can only have one or two facilities.

And we've just done this whole plan based on a country ride presence of four.

So, uh, So we had to go back to the drawing board.

But it just was not only an interagency negotiation, but then this very complex Hill negotiation where you had to negotiate different parts of your plan with different committees of jurisdiction, which made it very hard to get something coherent out of it.

This is interesting.

And I think there's a lot that we can take from this, just in our everyday lives, whether people are in the business world or nonprofits or education, because we come up with plans all the time.

And sometimes it's us and our team.

We're working on a project.

We say, this is it.

This is gold.

And then we take it to the person who has the budget or the person who makes the final decision.

And they're like, I don't think it's gold.

It's something, but it's not gold.

And then they start tinkering there.

And that's really frustrating, especially when you spend so much time doing that, putting it together and creating a cohesive strategy.

And so now when you look back on it, in hindsight, what strategic changes would you have made?

I think there are times when it's really worthwhile to bring some representation of the ultimate decider, that person's perspective, into the planning process.

So if we had I mean maybe if we had consulted the different Hill constituencies earlier made them sort of feel that they had more input to the planning process, maybe they would have had a greater sense of ownership or Or at the very least, maybe we would have had some early indicators that there's no way you're ever going to get support for four facilities.

So don't plan for that.

Plan for two.

You know, I think so.

Bringing in stakeholders earlier in the process would be one thing.

I would have tried differently.

And then, you know, you also had.

This risk of always things being overtaken by events.

So you know, ultimately the decision was made to pull out of Iraq entirely in terms of the military piece.

And we didn't anticipate that fully when we were planning for this.

We had assumed some kind of residual presence.

So I think getting maybe...

More engagement from stakeholders at the start would probably be my principal takeaway.

Yeah.

And you know what's interesting?

I'd like to get your thoughts on this, too.

If we blend this story, some of the key elements from this story and your previous story talking about the human capital strategy at the Pentagon, it seems like getting that ground.

Truth seems to be a major part of it, because in the first story,

You had more of that information.

And then in this one, it seems as though there wasn't as much.

We were really doing kind of a blank sheet of paper exercise.

That did not.

That really started from.

What are the needs going to be?

What are our interests support?

What what what is the ideal situation?

And you do want to have that.

There's room for that kind of unconstrained thinking as part of a planning process.

But I think we might have done a better job of trying to anticipate and explore what are some of the constraints that are going to be and how do we develop different versions based on those different constraints.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

It makes a lot of sense.

And then you could have planned for those contingencies, adjusted the strategy accordingly.

And then, like you said earlier, too, getting those stakeholders into the discussion.

And the thing is, I tell people all the time with negotiation, there's no way to guarantee victory, right?

So even through this exercise of hindsight, it's still there's probably nothing that we could do to guarantee that we would have gotten those four posts instead of two.

But still, it's a useful case study because, when it comes to any kind of strategy, what we're trying to do is put ourselves in the best position for success, because that's all we can do, given our positions.

Yeah.

And one of my favorite quotes or ideas, as someone who's done a lot of strategies and a lot of plans, is from Eisenhower, who used to say something like it's not the plan, it's the planning.

I mean, the real value in the process is often what you learn in the process of exploring the decision and option space, because that gives you a certain agility to respond to whatever the world throws at you, which you know kind of coupled with this notion of no plan survives contact with the enemy in military parlance or reality in general parlance.

And so the value of it is this process of having thought through a lot of the issues and being able to adjust quickly to deal with new circumstances as they arrive.

That is fantastic.

And Michelle, we really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your wisdom and experience with us.

And listeners.

If you're interested in getting in touch with Michelle or her team, make sure to check out westexeccom or send an email to info at westexeccom.

And of course, both of those are going to be in the description below.

Michelle, thank you again for coming on the show, my friend.

A really fun conversation.

I enjoyed it.

You've just heard one powerful perspective and now we're moving on to the next.

A fresh voice with a new angle on the same challenge so you can keep expanding your skills.

Let's dive in.

Brian.

Thanks for joining us again, my friend.

I appreciate every time we have an opportunity to do this, Kwame.

Yes, likewise.

And so, for the listeners who might have missed your first second, third or fourth appearance on the podcast, can you tell them a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Sure.

My name is Brian Ahern.

I'm the chief influence officer at Influence People.

And I work with individuals and clients to help them hear the word yes more often, through social psychology and very specifically teaching them about the science of ethical influence.

Amazing.

And Brian, today we are here to talk about a very exciting project, and a project that I know is very close to your heart, which to, I think, a lot of folks who know you might seem like an odd deviation from what it is that you typically do.

So can you tell the listeners about your new book and the reason why you felt so compelled to write it?

Sure.

The book is called His Story, My Story, Our Story.

And it's about my relationship with my late father, Brian Ahern Sr.

My father was in the Marine Corps from 1962 to 1969.

And during that time, spent 13 months in Vietnam.

And it had a profound impact on him.

People weren't talking about PTSD back in the 60s.

And ultimately, I think his struggles in trying to cope led to the downfall of the marriage with my mom.

Lot of turmoil growing up.

And when he passed away in the year 2020, I decided to write a book about our relationship because we had overcome a lot of difficult times and we were actually in a good place at the time of his passing.

And as I wrote the book, I learned a lot about PTSD and was able to have a lot more grace and empathy for my father, not dismissing the bad things that he did, but still having grace in terms of thinking how would I have been if I was over in Vietnam at 22, 23?

And I don't know how I would have responded coming home.

So that's what the book is about.

It follows our relationship, but it also kind of looks at my life and his life separately too.

And he also wrote a lot about his time in Vietnam.

So you get firsthand account of his time in the Corps and the time over in Vietnam.

Wow.

Yes.

And, from my perspective reading this, it was really interesting to see how different but, at the same time, how similar it was to some of the things that you've written in the past and the work that you do.

Because, for you, as somebody who is a master of sales, persuasion and influence, I can see so many of the methodologies, but also your heart-centered approach in so many of the conversations that you're having in this book with your father.

And one of the things that I know you've mentioned you want to have as a goal for this book is helping people who have folks who are in the military that are in their lives, helping them to understand how to empathize and connect with those servicemen and servicewomen who are serving their country.

But there's an emotional disconnect sometimes that makes it tough for people to connect and truly understand and empathize.

So can you tell the audience a that people might have in these types of conversations?

Well, I think, human beings first and foremost.

We are always more concerned about ourselves than we are anything else.

I mean, that's just the reality of how we live our lives.

How is this going to impact me?

When you have somebody who has served in the military and in particular you know you ratchet it up a notch when it's the Marines, because of that whole culture they have.

And now you bring it up another notch because of the experience in combat.

You can't really understand that.

You can kind of know about it, but to understand it at the heart level you're not going to, unless that other person begins to open up and you really allow yourself to start thinking.

How would I have responded in those situations?

And so the disconnect I think Kwame is growing up.

It would have been really easy for me to just think man, my dad's an ass.

And he was at a lot of times, but I had no understanding of what he had been through.

And then, of course, I think, for the person who is served.

They go through some things that they don't want to talk about.

And I can understand, you know, when my dad finally opened up and some of the things he shared, I can understand why he did not want to relive those.

He wanted to put them in a box and put them as far away as he could and try to enjoy the life that he was having after Vietnam.

But the reality was it was still there and it was still impacting him, which meant it was impacting my mom, me and my sister.

And as I grew up and I understood that, I started pressing.

I wanted answers.

I wanted to know some things.

I might have pressed a little bit too hard.

Hindsight's 20-20. but I am glad that I started moving in that direction.

So the disconnect can be, well, this is all about me, dad, and about how it affected me.

I wasn't thinking so much about how it was affecting him.

It was just too hard at that time.

So my advice is the more your listeners can step outside of themselves and try to prioritize that other person in terms of understanding them, then I think if they respond, you'll start getting what you want or what you need out of those conversations.

I agree 100%.

And when you think about it, that's central to all of the difficult conversations we have, right?

Just naturally inherently, we are a bit egocentric and self-centered in terms of what it is that how we navigate these conversations.

So in these conversations, these interactions, we're often just wired to focus on what's in it for me.

What is it that I want?

What is it that I need?

Now, when we take it to these conversations, there's an additional barrier, Because this is much easier said than done.

And you've chronicled that in the book.

Because yeah, it's easy to say, focus on the other person.

But we also have to recognize that the person who served, who might be dealing with PTSD or other forms of trauma they are feeling it emotionally.

But then the person who is their family, their friend, their spouse, their loved one, their child, whatever it happens to be, they're also feeling it too.

Because this is a situation that... impacts everybody involved.

So it sounds like there's a lot of self-work that needs to happen in order for us to prioritize the other person in the conversation.

So, when you look at your experience, what was the self-work that you needed to do to even get to that point where you could prioritize your father in that way?

One of the big things and I wrote about this in the book is I was reading a book called The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kerk.

I think it is.

And that's what really started to drop things from my head to my heart.

Things that I intellectually knew, like I knew my dad was in combat and I knew certain things.

But somehow, having read that book and him talking a lot about Vietnam vets and their inability to express what was going on inside of them,

And so it still would come out somehow, some way.

Sometimes it came out in my dad's case.

It was abusive behavior towards my mom.

It was infidelity.

It was violence. staying out late, shooting pool, drinking beer, getting in fights, stuff like that.

Others use it, they channel it maybe through art.

And I don't know about you Kwame, but there have been times I've looked at art and thought whoever made that must be whacked.

What's going on inside of that person?

And now I have an understanding like that is the expression of something they cannot put into words.

And the more I started to understand that, the more empathy I started having for my father.

And You know the book opens up with an unfinished letter that I was writing to him.

And I say, you know, as I was reading the book and I would think about my dad, I would just cry because I just thought 23 years old.

Think about when you were 23, Kwame.

For me, that was a long time ago now.

At 23, we think we know what's going on and we really don't know much.

But at 23, for him to have experienced what he did and come home and have two young kids and the responsibilities and all the stuff that was going on.

I have no clue what, how I would have reacted in that situation.

And so for me, that really started helping me tremendously to to have more empathy for him.

Let's actually talk about the letter Brian, because that's one of the things that started off the book.

And just can you tell the audience a little about the letter and the impact it had on you just going through that process of writing it?

It's I mean, just imagine this, Kwame, if you were to sit down, you know, you love Whitney.

And you can talk about that.

But if you sit down and really begin to focus, to put your thoughts about your feelings for her on paper, you start feeling differently.

And you probably would have tearful moments.

You'd probably have moments of elation and how happy you are.

Well, now let's take that and just shift over to something that's not so enjoyable maybe, but to try to ponder that other person and what they went through and seeing friends killed.

All the things that you go through in combat, It's really hard.

And it's hard, I will say for me, it's even hard, the good things.

There are times where I have difficulty expressing how much I love Jane or how much I love our daughter Abigail.

I can do good things for them.

And they're rooted in that love.

But sometimes trying to verbalize it can be almost overwhelming emotionally.

And so again, if we think about somebody who's been through the trauma of the service and combat, how much harder must it be for them to start talking about some of those experiences?

Because most of the time they're very painful and nobody wants to voluntarily move into that pain again.

You lived it once.

You don't want to move into it voluntarily again.

That's real, because that helps us to understand why sometimes the way that people choose to process this is by not sharing.

And one of the things that you recognized is that it took years to get your father to a place where he could share.

But based on what you said in the book, you felt like it did help.

And there are challenges there, right?

Because it's like you want to encourage somebody to share, but at the same time you want to respect boundaries and not push too hard in a way that's almost disrespectful.

So, in your opinion, how can somebody balance that, that desire to be there, with also the respecting of somebody's boundaries?

If I had it to do over and knowing what I know now and having those conversations with my dad, I would have tried to frame them a lot more in dad, I love you.

I am so thankful for all that you've given me in terms of discipline and teaching me right and wrong and all of these things.

But there's parts of me that I don't understand and parts of me that I'm struggling with.

And I know that being raised by you some of that.

There's something there that I need to understand.

And when you're ready, I hope you'll be willing to open up and start talking about some things.

And I know they may be painful, but they will do so much good for me to help me be the man that I want to be, the husband I want to be, the father that I want to be.

And that's how I think I would have approached it.

And I really hope Kwame, that the other person would be thinking about.

Well, There's not many people in the world that I love more than my son.

If I'm going to do anything for anybody, why wouldn't I do something for him, even if it's painful?

That's how I think I would approach it differently.

When I was 30 years old and we started having those conversations, I wasn't thinking that at all.

He just did some things that angered me to the point where the lid came off.

And I was just all of a sudden I started thinking and feeling all these things that I hadn't thought or felt when my parents were going through their turmoil.

And I just was kind of demanding answers.

And so the conversations were pretty hard.

But fortunately, he stuck in there.

He didn't give up.

He could have easily written me off.

Ultimately, I think he started to recognize it was good for him to think about the past.

And that's why, about 10 years before he passed away, he started writing the document that's included in the book.

He started to realize it was therapeutic for him to think about his past and the time in the core.

And so we wiggled our way to a good place.

And it took some time.

But I think yours.

Yeah.

And the point is, though, you took that time and you did not give up.

And I think a lot of times we have this microwave mentality where we say, all right, there's an outcome that I want and I want to get there as quickly as possible.

But when it comes to sensitive situations like this and when it comes to people, a lot of times the desire to do this quickly and get to the conclusion quickly is exactly what makes it take much longer than it needs to, because the person feels disrespected.

They feel as though you're taking away their autonomy and their agency, forcing them to do something that's uncomfortable.

And I love the reframe that you have now.

If you were to go back in the past, the different approach that you would have used, it's more, and tell me if I'm conceptualizing this the right way, Brian.

It sounds like, first of all, you are framing this by clearly stating your positive intent and clearly stating how you see the person in a positive way and exactly what it is you hope to accomplish with these interactions.

But you're not forcing him to engage in these conversations.

You're just setting the table and extending invitation and letting him know that you're there whenever he's ready.

Yeah.

I wrote in the book about how much I admired my dad growing up.

I mean, he just was a stud of a person.

He was the kind of guy that when he entered a room, you knew he was there.

And I should have been able to express some of the things about how proud I was that he had served in the Marine Corps.

When I see his picture and I think about what he did.

How proud I was, you know, when I would see what he was doing in business and his intelligence, and So I could have expressed a lot more of that.

Of course, when you're growing up and you're young, you're not really thinking about that again.

You're just the whole world revolves around you.

So I wish I could have.

If I had expressed some of those things, it might have made it easier for him to open up.

But, as I wrote in the book too, when we finally got to this point where the lid blew off for me, I mean I intellectually knew all these things, like he was unfaithful and he had hit my mom and certain things like that.

But it was when I was 30 years old and we had a conversation on the phone and he blurted out something.

He just goes, look, I'm a good person and I don't care what you or anybody else says about it.

And I know more about GD religion than you'll know in your whole effing life.

I mean, he just exploded with that.

And it caught me off guard.

I was like, where is this coming from?

I said, I've never called you a bad person.

And he said, well, in so many words you have.

Now, I think he was feeling conviction himself.

But if I had been able to express that I loved him and how proud I was and all those things, I don't know that he would have probably responded that way because he wouldn't have had any basis if he had known that I was always saying I love you, dad.

And gosh, I'm proud of you and things like that.

That's powerful.

And, you know, it reminds me of some of the episodes we've done with Mike Reddington.

If I haven't connected you with Mike yet, I need to.

You two would vibe for sure.

He does interrogation work.

And one of the things that he talks about is how important it is to let the other person know that you do not see them as a bad person.

And in that extreme scenario in the interrogation, he's even going as far as providing excuses.

I know this might have happened and I know you're under this pressure and I know you probably felt this.

So you're giving them excuses and seeing which one they latch on to.

And I think the psychology is somewhat similar here, because what you're doing is you're anticipating the kinds of defensive responses that you might have.

And although you might know the positivity of your intent, we can't assume that the other person feels that exact same way when they are recovering from trauma, and they might feel as though they are being targeted and picked on when in fact you're just trying to be there to help.

So I really like this positive momentum that we're starting with the conversation by reaffirming the fact that hey, I love you, I care about you and I admire you.

Taking it to the next level.

Because loving and caring, that's like baseline for a family.

But admiration and respect, that's next level.

And I don't think we say that enough.

Yeah.

If you think about like a coach.

Coaches say and do things that when you're playing can piss you off.

And yet you get away from that situation.

And I look back on my high school coach, who I'm still in touch with more than 40 years later.

And I know that everything he was doing was for our in our best interest.

And he, having grown too, says right motivation, wrong methods, that he recognizes he could have done things differently as a coach.

But the bottom line was still, his intent for us was to make us the best players we could be and the best young men that we could be, so that we could be good citizens fathers, et cetera, because most of us didn't go on to play ball beyond high school.

So if we were to more assume like hey, coach is yelling at me, I don't like it, But I know he has my best interest at heart and he's trying to make me the best player possible.

Probably wouldn't rail against him like we did in the locker room with our buddies.

And the same can be true of our family, that we may sometimes say or do things.

We're not intending to hurt somebody.

We're a lot of times just intending the best for them.

But the message gets the translation gets lost in that messaging to that person.

And there can be a lot of hurt feelings.

For sure.

And I think about that coach example as well, because back in my day, and I'm sure in yours, the coaches sounded very different.

Very, very different.

And I think the word we're looking for is criminal.

Some of the things they could say back then.

But again, the delivery matters.

The delivery matters.

When I think about these conversations that you had with your father, I'm sure there was a part of you that was probably thinking you know what.

It is better that I don't have this conversation.

You know what?

My dad does not want to talk about this.

He'd rather just bury it deep in his soul.

Maybe that's the way I should do this too.

And I'll just try to process this on my own.

And sometimes we find ourselves in a situation where, even though we try our best, the other person doesn't want to open up.

We can't force them to.

But then there are other situations where we don't allocate enough effort to or intentionality to the conversation.

And we give up too quickly.

Like we try one time, it didn't feel good.

So I'm going to leave it for the rest of my life.

So when we think about our motto at ANI, we say the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations.

And so a lot of times people don't, they can't really imagine that other side of the conversation.

So they don't feel properly motivated to have the conversation.

So for you, Speaking as somebody who has gone through it, who has dedicated years of your life to trying to break through and then having made some inroads,

When you're thinking about the people who might say it's not worth it.

What do you have to say to them so they can understand that there is something worth it on the other side?

I look at it from the perspective of faith.

And there are a lot of times we go through things in life.

We don't have a clear path.

We don't know what's on the other side.

But we know it's the right thing to do.

And so we persist in that.

I will say as a personal example early in our marriage, Jane and I struggled a lot and it would have been easy to bail.

And if somebody would have said hey Brian, you know you got to have faith because this is what it's going to be like on the other end?

And I will tell you, Kwame, our marriage is amazing now.

The way that we get along, how much fun we have, just the two of us and things that we do together.

I would have missed out on.

The best experience of my life would have also included the birth of our daughter and now soon a grandchild.

I would have missed all of that if I would have said, it's too hard.

I'm not going to put in that effort.

If there's anybody or anything that's worth too hard in the effort, it's family.

It's the people that we love.

We don't get to choose our parents, but they are our family.

And so I think doing what we can to work on that relationship with my dad it was.

I wasn't hammering him all the time, but I also knew, until we kind of get this elephant out of the room, I can't just be happy-go-lucky, have a few beers, play some golf, tell some jokes and act like everything is good.

This was hanging right in front of me and I felt like I needed answers.

So the difficulty was over the years, we still continued to get together, but it wasn't the same.

And sometimes I didn't look forward to it.

And Jane could see when I was changing.

If I was getting all bound up, she could just see the changes that were happening.

And so I wasn't about to let it go, but I wasn't.

Every time we got together, I wasn't like okay Dan, we got to talk.

We got to talk.

He started opening up when he was ready.

And it was probably about 15 years ago, somewhere around then, when we were on vacation and he gave me the document that's included in the book.

And he said, I think this might answer some questions.

Maybe it'll raise some more.

We can talk about it when you finish it.

And it was the document about his time in the Corps.

So if I hadn't opened that up and if I hadn't pressed a little bit, he might've just kept going on the way he was, which was not even thinking about his own past.

Wow.

So this is the part that is a little bit art and a little bit science too, because I think it's very important to that.

We explicitly articulated the fact that you're not badgering him every time.

Oh, yeah.

For the last, you know, 17 years, every time I talk to my dad, I bring this up.

That would be borderline abusive, really just like forcing somebody to talk about their deepest trauma.

But you kept the door open and i think that's really important.

And also too, because i know there are going to be some people who listen to this who might say well, that might have worked with your dad, but you don't know my dad, you don't know my mother or whatever it happens to be.

But it sounds like and i'd love for you to speak to this because it sounds like, as you were preparing for these conversations, as you were getting into the right mindset, as you were trying to be more empathetic, that process of preparation was cathartic and healing to you in a sense.

So even if the conversation never happened, you would have been a better, more self-aware person as a result of just preparing for the conversation.

Yeah.

I learned to temper my expectations.

I got to a point where I thought, you know, he may never end up being the person I would like him to be, at least in terms of like his openness and things like that, but I can still enjoy being around him.

And so we would go down on vacation and we would spend time together and I would enjoy the time.

And I knew that he really looked forward to it.

I could tell by the way he hugged us and how happy he was when we first got there, that he so appreciated our time together.

So just over time, you have to adjust your expectations.

People will not be who you want them to be.

We have to learn to accept them for who they are.

And I appreciated that he at least had tried that.

To the point about somebody thinking, well, you don't know my dad.

I would say you don't know my dad.

Again, think about this.

Seven years in the Marine Corps and how hardcore you become with that and being a combat veteran.

And I tell you, Kwame, I never saw my dad back down to anybody.

If he thought you were cheating him out of a dime, he was going to be in your face.

I will share this story too, that when we got to the point where he finally we sat down to have this conversation, we kind of met in a neutral place between where he lived where I lived.

It was a restaurant.

And he could not understand why I wanted to rehash some of the things of the past.

So I said, Dad, what would you do if I hit Joe?

That's the lady he ended up marrying.

He was married to for 38 years before he passed away.

I said, Dad, what would you do if I hit Joe?

And he leaned across the table and he looked at me and he goes, I will.

And you can bleep this out if you want, but he goes, I will fucking kill you.

And I said, What if he found out it was five years ago?

He goes, I don't care when it was.

If I ever find out you laid a hand on her, I'm going to fucking kill you.

And I said, well, good.

Now you know how I feel about the divorce.

Even though it was 12 years ago, it's right now for me and I want to talk about it.

I share that story because there aren't probably too many parents who will say what he said to me and mean it.

That's the thing I could see in his eyes and the intensity.

It didn't matter that I was his son.

Most important person in the world was her.

And I don't, I do not fault him for that at all.

Again, as I look back, she helped him get through the trauma that he was dealing with.

Now, she says she doesn't know what she did.

She probably was just the empathetic ear.

She was removed from the situation.

But nonetheless, his world revolved around her because of what he felt she did for him.

And so I don't look back on that and feel animosity toward him.

I understand why he felt the way he did in that moment.

But my point for this is just my dad was as intense as they come.

And yet he did change.

And I think it's available for anybody.

It does take two to tango.

But I think he started getting to the point where he did want to change and he wanted to understand things and he wanted a better relationship with me and all the things that come with that.

So, again, you don't lose faith.

You do what you know is the right thing.

And then you trust God that he will be working on that other person as well.

Whether or not they choose to respond, they still have free will.

But that would be my advice for people.

That's so good.

That's powerful.

And again, when I think about your life, your relationship with your father and then the healing that came from this, not just for you, but this is a generational type of thing.

And this is something you talked about in the book as well.

The healing.

Really, in many ways and the work that you put into yourself prevented a lot of negative generational momentum that had been passed down.

And so the return on investment that we have for this type of conversation is much bigger than what we ever think it could be, because the ripple effects of the conversation will reverberate for generations.

And that gives us an opportunity to talk about the bigger picture here, because this wasn't just written for the sake of sharing your story.

We think about the last part of the title, his story, my story, our story, right?

There's something bigger here.

So when you think about the impact that you want this book to have, what does that look like?

My hope is that when I first wrote the book and I put in there that the hope was that a Marine might read it and make better choices than my dad, that maybe he would learn some things that took my dad a lot longer to learn, that a family would read it and maybe have more empathy and understanding for the Marine in their life sooner than I had it.

More broadly, fathers and sons, and just having that natural tension that's there.

Because I think Fathers, we want to be proud of our children, but we also don't want to admit when we're on the decline and they're on the rise, and that you know what they can do things better than we can.

And I think that was tough for my dad as he got older and I was on the ascent.

But then also the family aspect.

And for me, the family aspect was family wanting to, as I said earlier, be the best husband and father that I could so that when we're raising our daughter, life has enough challenges.

I don't want to lay any more burden on her because I'm not thinking about who I am.

And same with Jane.

And so we were very intentional in terms of how we raised Abigail.

And you've had an opportunity to meet her.

She's a wonderful person, special and, And the best confirmation I could have got on me was a few months ago when we had been walking around uptown.

And then she stopped by the house.

We were just sitting out on the front patio.

And she was thanking us because she said, I've had a great life.

She goes, I love this house.

This is the house I grew up in.

I love this neighborhood.

And I know I'm loved by you guys.

I'm loved by God.

And she said, I wouldn't change anything.

And it's not to say we didn't make mistakes along the way, but...

Everybody will, but for your son or daughter to say you did it right, man, that meant a lot.

That means everything.

Wow.

Brian, thank you so much for joining us.

It's powerful.

Powerful as always.

And again, before you go, I always want to make sure to give you an opportunity to let folks know again about the book, where they can get it and how they can get in touch with you too.

So the book's available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, places like that.

If you want to learn more about the book, the website is brianahearnbiz B-I-Z.

If you go to that website,

You'll read some testimonials, see a short video.

There's a lot of information out there about the book, but you can get it directly on Amazon.

You'd get it at Barnes and Noble.

In terms of getting in touch with me.

If you liked what we talked about here today, LinkedIn is probably the best place.

No, just reach out to connect on LinkedIn.

I connect with everybody.

I will ask you how you found me.

And if you tell me how you found me, I'll still send you a personal message.

To keep the social in social media.

Amazing.

Brian, thank you again for coming back on the show.

Man really appreciate it.

Well, appreciate you having me on.

I look forward to number seven or eight or whatever the next one, many more to come.

I'll write a book just so i can come on the show again.

I love it.

Oh, this is good.

[Mastering Negotiation: Leadership, Strategy, and Human Connection]-[Veterans Day Masterclass: Leadership, Service, and the Conversations That Shape Us]

📋 Summary

Negotiation Masterclass: Bridging Strategy and Humanity

The Operational Leadership of AI Integration

Strategic Agility: Lessons from the Pentagon

The Power of Empathy in Difficult Conversations

Conclusion: The Art of the Possible

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Mastering Negotiation: Leadership, Strategy, and Human Connection]-[Veterans Day Masterclass: Leadership, Service, and the Conversations That Shape Us]

📋 Summary

Negotiation Masterclass: Bridging Strategy and Humanity

The Operational Leadership of AI Integration

Strategic Agility: Lessons from the Pentagon

The Power of Empathy in Difficult Conversations

Conclusion: The Art of the Possible

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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