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Veterans know how to lead. The lessons we learned in the military form the foundation for bigger successes in business, entrepreneurship and community.
Host John S Berry, CEO of Berry Law, served as an active-duty Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army, finishing his military career with two deployments and retiring as a Battalion Commander in the National Guard. Today, his veteran led team at Berry Law, helps their clients fight some of the most important battles of their lives. Leading successful teams in the courtroom, the boardroom, and beyond, veteran leadership drives the firm’s rapid growth and business excellence.
Whether building teams, synchronizing operations, or refining tactics, we share our experiences, good and bad, to help you survive, thrive and dominate.
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[00:00:02.16] - John S. Berry
What is the one thing that your team wants to hear from you?
[00:00:08.01] - John S. Berry
Welcome to Veteran Led. I'm your host, John Berry. And today we're going to talk about that one thing that you have not been saying, the answer to the question, what is the one thing your team wants to hear from you? Well, the answer is, you already know. It's the one thing that you're scared to talk about. It's the one thing you don't feel you have the permission to talk about. You can remember back to your time in the military where policies would come out and people wouldn't really discuss them because they were afraid. They were afraid that if they discussed the policy, that they may somehow be disloyal or they may not be following the policy. That was absolute garbage, and that was terrible leadership because in order to fully follow a policy, members of the military needed to understand the policy. With a lack of understanding came a lot of questions. Those questions were stifled, and it just led to more problems. I found this to be completely true in the civilian world as well. Early in my career as a lawyer, we had a highly credentialed executive on our team who was completely incompetent.
[00:01:17.21] - John S. Berry
Now, this person had all of the attributes of a successful executive but was a bureaucrat in an entrepreneurial company. At the time, we did need some governance, but this person was choking our growth by his own manufactured red tape. Now, I had my suspicions that this was the case, and we did all sorts of exercises through EOS like GWC, right? Got it, want it, have the capacity to do it. And nobody wanted to say that this highly credentialed leader did not get it, did not want it, and did not have the capacity to do the job. Now, as a leader, I didn't want to be disloyal to this team member, and I didn't want to have conversations behind his back with the rest of the team. So, who he wasted several quarters tolerating incompetence because I thought we were a tight-knit team, and I waited for someone else to bring it up. And then finally, as our growth started to slow to a halt, good people started leaving the organization. And during exit interviews, everyone started pointing to the bureaucrat. And at that point, we learned a very important lesson that most people would rather leave your organization than tell you what's wrong with it.
[00:02:37.07] - John S. Berry
This is why it's so important as a leader to address the things that are not being addressed. If you don't know what they are, just ask yourself, what am I afraid to address? Where are the slippery slopes that I don't want to go, where I don't want to have a discussion because I'm worried it's going to go bad? Because here's the thing, people are already talking about it. You can remember when you led soldiers or sailors or marines, you knew that the junior, those junior soldiers, marines or sailors, were always talking about those issues, whether you were there or not. It's better that you discuss them as a leader amongst the team and lead that discussion, frame that discussion, than let it happen without you. Because when we did a postmortem as a team, we came to the conclusion that we had not been open and honest about this executive's performance, and that the metrics that we set for him at his urging were meaningless. We followed his lead. He was highly credentialed. We believed he knew what he was talking about, but he didn't. And we paid the price because we set meaningless guideposts for him, and all it allowed him to do was to create more red tape that slowed the organization down.
[00:03:45.04] - John S. Berry
Now, in the military, you were taught to complain up a chain of command, but never down. In other words, you may disagree with your commander, and you may voice that disagreement. But once the commander gives that lawful order, whether you agree or not, you execute. When you execute, you don't complain down the chain of command to your subordinates about what a horrible decision the commander made. No, you embrace that decision and you support it and maintain a positive attitude in front of your team. Mission first, and people always. But I have seen leaders who thought that because they had to support a commander's policy, they had to shy away from openly discussing it with their teams. Now, this logical fallacy suggests that you cannot support a policy if you openly discuss it. The problems come when the unit starts to blindly follow the policy that they think they understand, only later to violate the policy because they did not fully understand the policy because you, as the leader, failed to have that dialog about the policy. This is what happened with our bureaucratic executive. He kept adding sound legal policies, but they were preventing us from achieving our goals.
[00:05:07.07] - John S. Berry
So yes, on the surface, he was doing the right thing, but it was preventing us from doing our mission. So, he wasn't doing anything nefarious. It wasn't like he was mean-spirited or evil or he was trying to... Some type of subversion. No, he was trying to do his job. He was trying the best he could, but he wasn't the right person for the job, and he didn't have the right skills. But none of us had the guts to bring it up. That cost the organization a lot of time and a lot of great people. The funny thing is, as much as the military beat know the commander's intent, I say again, know the commander's intent into our heads, we didn't spend much time on commander's intent for policy. As an army officer, this is probably where I failed the most. I took the position. It doesn't matter whether you agree with the policy. Your job as a leader is supported so long as it's legal. But here's the thing. No one respects a policy that they do not understand. What's worse, the policy that you don't understand may be preventing you from accomplishing your mission.
[00:06:15.00] - John S. Berry
So, whether it's a policy, a procedure, or an unresolved issue, everyone in the room knows it's there, and they're waiting for you, their leader, to give them permission to address it. One great lesson I learned as a trial lawyer was that prior to a jury trial, you want to list all of the danger areas or reasons why you should lose the case prior to selecting a jury. And then during jury selection, talk to the jury about all of those reasons. Because it's better that the jury discusses the issues in front of you before the trial begins than behind closed doors after it's over. The same lesson applies to your team. The truth is there in leadership as well. Is it your team will discuss the things that you don't want to discuss behind closed doors. Those conversations are happening, whether you're there or not. Same way with me as a trial lawyer. I knew that the jury was going to go back and deliberate and talk about all those things, so it was better that I'd bring it up in the beginning and have a dialog during jury selection to find out who might not be a good juror.
[00:07:22.04] - John S. Berry
Same thing on your team. Having those discussions openly, you might find out that some people may not be a good fit for your team because they really don't believe in the mission, or maybe they just don't have the skills. But that's going to come out in the dialog. If you're not willing to discuss it, you can't control what's being said. You have no input whatsoever. While the dialog itself is never completely controllable, what you can control is whether you are a part of that discussion in broad daylight or whether they have those discussions without you behind closed doors. Your job as a leader is to shape the narrative. If you try to stifle the dialog, two things are going to happen. Number one, the dialog will continue without you. Number two, your team will shape the narrative of the issue without your input. Look, as the leader, your job isn't to have all of the answers, but it is to ensure that your team is getting the right answer. And without inviting dialog, you're less likely to ever get the right answer. More importantly, you're less likely to get the team to fully buy into the mission.
[00:08:38.05] - John S. Berry
That one thing that you're afraid to discuss, that is what your team is waiting to hear you address.
[00:08:55.00] - John S. Berry
Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we pursue our mission of promoting veteran leadership in business, strengthening the veteran community, and getting veterans all of the benefits that they earned. If you know a leader who should be on the Veteran Led podcast, report to our online community by searching at Veteran Led on your favorite social channels and posting in the comments.
[00:09:15.16] - John S. Berry
We want to hear how your military challenges prepared you to lead your industry or community, and we will let the world know.
[00:09:23.01] - Speaker 2
And of course, hit subscribe and join me next time on Veteran Led. An Lead.