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Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
Shannon, welcome aboard to the show. Thank you so much for joining us here today.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me. Glad to be here.
Speaker 1:So Shannon, I know you have kids or at least a son because I saw one of your posts and you are the master or guru of grit. And here's my very very selfish question. Great. Maybe before you answer, know, just explain what grit is because some years ago I didn't know what it even was. But here's my question.
Speaker 1:How do you teach, train, gift, whatever grit to your kids?
Speaker 2:What a great question. We could spend the whole podcast on this if you like, and I'm constantly learning. I think the first thing to do in terms of a definition is to go, to the expert. Angela Duckworth is of course the sociologist who made this a lot more of a popular term, and she defines this as passion and perseverance towards a long term goal. I have called it a dogged determination in the face of difficult circumstances.
Speaker 2:And I've found that for myself to be true more often than her definition, but I'm certainly not going to argue with the expert. In terms of kids, you know, it's an interesting thing. It's every child is different. Every parent is different. And the first thing I would do is to say that sports are excellent for all children to learn grit.
Speaker 2:But there are some kids that aren't particularly sporty or not early on, although I also think you should continue to try. And they'll naturally learn Brit, right? You naturally have to get uncomfortable. You have to push yourself and coaches will help with that. I would also say going outside as a family.
Speaker 2:Like we do a lot of backpacking, whether it's even if you started out with car camping or hiking, all of that requires you to be in places where you don't control the environment and you kind of need to make it through. And so those are great training grounds for grit and resilience. But the third thing I would say is really the way that you talk about things as a family at home, and this is something that literally is every single day. What are the questions that you ask? What are the stories as parents that you share about when you failed and overcome something for yourself?
Speaker 2:All of those ways of communicating around grit and resilience are ongoing and I think absolutely critical to the upbringing of our kids.
Speaker 1:So I love your examples. We, as a family, hike and my wife doesn't know what the ladder of efforts is. I don't know if that's a good translation, but the concept of slowly increasing effort, I'm sure there's an equivalent in the American military. You get to this hard spot. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is it just that experience and that's enough that you're doing hard things together as a family or is it there's something about managing the moment where you're experiencing that difficulty and how the parents or maybe manager, executive or team need to respond in that moment to really create the grit.
Speaker 2:Yes. And if your child is out on their own, and I have some great stories about that if you're interested, but if they're on their own, they're going to have to figure it Right? So that is that's where I would say give your child more freedom than you might otherwise be comfortable with, and they will figure things out. Kids have had so much more freedom in the past than they do today, and they will figure it out and they will learn those lessons on their own. If they're very small or if you happen to be with them, not immediately rushing in to protect them, I think, is critical.
Speaker 2:And I where I live, I live out in the country. People just don't do that anyway. But it's interesting as a contrast to friends who are in the city where they tend to jump in and say, oh my gosh, let me help out. Let me help out. Don't don't do that.
Speaker 2:Just let them let them be. They'll be fine. And, and say, don't obviously leave them to the wolves or or let them think that they're not cared for, but say, you know, hey, I really love seeing how you worked through that. And this can be, again, an employee at work as well as it can be your kid of any age. It was really great to see how you worked through that challenge and you got through it.
Speaker 2:And now if it's a kid, give me a hug. If it's your employee, hey, take the day off or, you know, whatever it is. But rewarding that effort and complementing the work that is required to get through or even saying in the middle of something hard, I know you can do that. I know you can do it. You know, we even do this with math and or or spelling.
Speaker 2:And my son who's the youngest is now 13. I have a 16 year old too, and he'll say, well, how do you spell that? I was like, I don't know. What do you think? I never answered the question for him ever.
Speaker 2:And I think that's that's what you want to do, whether you're out on the hiking trail or whether you're in the middle of writing the essay. I don't know. What do you think? What would you do? What would you do in this circumstance?
Speaker 2:So putting it back on them gives them a chance to kind of wrestle with it and then say, wow, that's so interesting. I really like seeing how you think about it.
Speaker 1:I love the approach, you know, just enabling people to kind of go through the failure and kind of stand up on their own as opposed to rushing in to, you know, help them get up. Yes. You know, obviously to the limit that, you know, if they need actual real help, medical or otherwise, then of course you'll be there. But, you know, it's kind of as parents, you know, we would be like, you know, a child, a small child would fall and we'd be like, walk it off. But three different strangers would rush to like, ah, you okay?
Speaker 1:Kind of turning the situation, which was really mild into catastrophe which I think is you know would align with your philosophy. You don't need to to turn things into more than what they are. If I may I want to ask a personal question. How did you come into this world of grit? What was your learning moments?
Speaker 1:And I'll make an assumption here. Keep me honest if it's true or not. You didn't necessarily have somebody to guide you through it. You had to learn the hard way.
Speaker 2:Let's say both and. I grew up in Alaska and Alaska is a pretty good place to develop grit. They always say that Alaska is where men are men and where women win the Iditarod, right? I mean, at the end of the day, everybody has got to pull their own weight and it's got to be full on. So I think that was a great place in terms of the environment.
Speaker 2:My dad was from the Midwest. He was, he was an attorney. He's passed now. He's been gone for twenty one years almost. But he was an attorney and had that very kind of puritanical sort of a, you know, Midwestern sort of sense of of grit and resilience.
Speaker 2:And the story that I tell often, I have two of them from when I was a young kind of, tween, I guess, probably, or or even just before that. One was on the soccer field. I'm playing girls club soccer, nothing like these highly select teams now. You know? And I was defense, and I was a good little soccer player.
Speaker 2:But, there was this forward on the other team, and she would always come charging down the field and we would part like the Red Sea and she would score on goal every single time. And finally, the end of one game, my dad said very nicely, I mean, not not not in a pushy way. He just said, you know, seems like, Megan really came down the field hard again today. And I said, yeah, she did. He what would happen if you ran back at her?
Speaker 2:And I just looked at him like he was crazy. And then the next game, somewhere, something inside of me was prompted by that, and she came charging down my side of the field. And I went charging back at her, and we collided midfield at full speed, and all the soccer parents were silent, which never happens. And she never charged my side of the field again. So I like to tell that story because I think those are the types of ways that parents can can help to encourage their kids without being pushy, without being, you know, another example.
Speaker 2:And my stepmother, who's also gone now, was very upset about this, but I actually really appreciate it as I was a I played piano when I was little and I played this adjudication when I was 12 or something like that. And I won. And I remember when I came home and my dad said, How'd you do? And I said, Well, I won. And he said, You didn't deserve to win.
Speaker 2:You didn't practice enough. And he was totally right. And I knew he was totally right. And I really appreciate that because it is a helpful reminder again and again. And it wasn't mean.
Speaker 2:It sounds mean. It wasn't mean. It was just sort of a reality check of, listen, this takes practice. Winning is not what really matters. It's the effort that you put into it.
Speaker 2:And so fine that you won, but if you didn't deserve to, then maybe pick up the work that you do the next time. And I think about that all the time, with my own kids and with myself.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you that feels really good to hear because it makes me feel a little better about things I've said to my daughter with the hope that, you know, twenty years later, she might not resent me as much. So I appreciate that comment And keep me honest here, but I think there was a story with a bear when I was doing my research.
Speaker 2:Yeah. My, when I I was, just out of the military, just out of business school, and, I had been working at Microsoft for about six months at that point. And I had a call on a Sunday morning when I was visiting my brother in Portland from the police in Cactobic, Alaska. I grew up in Alaska, but I grew up in South Central Alaska, which is where over half the population lives. My dad and my stepmom had been in the Arctic and they were on a kayaking trip on their sixteenth anniversary.
Speaker 2:And the police called and said a bear came into the campsite last night and they were both killed. And so that began a journey. And for anyone who has had a phone call like that, you know what that journey is like. It doesn't ever end really, you know, but that's, that was twenty one years ago and that's when I lost my, my dad and my stepmom. And, my dad was bigger than life for me, always.
Speaker 2:I mean, we definitely did not get along when I was a teenager. So don't worry if you have one of those because I I adored my father. And and that has been something that has that that I will always carry and will always be a source of great sadness in my life.
Speaker 1:First of all, I appreciate you sharing that story and I'm sorry for your loss. How did that affect you? What was that a turning point for you? Did that kind of change your perspectives like, is this where the grit philosophy kicked in? I'm sure this had an impact.
Speaker 1:What wasn't?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say the grit thing has been a part of my life since I was a child. I mean, my dad used the term too, so I didn't get it from Angela. I got it from my dad. And certainly my time in the military, which was ten years, you know, on, eight of them on active duty as an attack helicopter pilot, that's probably where outside of sports and debate and those sorts of things in high school, but that's probably where I would say was the real of a lot of things. But at the same time, grief in this way, and especially what they call complex grief with more than one person in this kind of a situation, certainly requires another kind of grit.
Speaker 2:Grit is part of what we have to do to get by, right, and to live and ultimately hopefully to thrive. Sometimes we don't thrive, sometimes we thrive, but it's just keeping going. And I would say that the way I'm sure that it has impacted me in many more ways than I even know yet today. One of those ways is making sure that you're always aware that we don't know how much time we have and living that time to the fullest, loving fully, taking risks even when there's consequences and costs, doing the things that you are called to do to contribute your best in the world. And the other part of it, of that is my dad definitely, and my mom, taught me very much that we are here to give back.
Speaker 2:We're here to give back to the world. I believe that. And I believe that in my own family and in the work that I do and in the work that I support them in doing. And so I think that heightened that awareness and that commitment to all of those things for sure. And I won't tell you in the day to day when I'm dealing with two teenagers that that's always what I'm thinking about.
Speaker 2:But but without any question that has has put into relief those lessons that are so important to take with us in our lives and work.
Speaker 1:I love that you mentioned kind of the aspect of service. Do you see that aspect of service, especially when it comes to your kids, kind of help with grits and kind of shaping them of human beings? This is, is almost a hack that I've heard from a few people. What's your perspective on the combination between grit service and child rearing?
Speaker 2:I think absolutely. I think some of it is likely to be something that they are internalizing and that we'll see later. We have, you know, we have done service in many, many different ways. I think the most extended kind of period was a we lived in France for a year. That was definitely grit building in them.
Speaker 2:We loved it. We love France, but they didn't speak French and we just plopped them into the public school and said, good luck. And, and, and they did great, but it was definitely one of the harder and the most wonderful years of our family's lives. And at the end of that time, realized like we haven't been able to give back in any way since we've been here because we were just trying to keep our heads above water. And so we went to Morocco and, lived with a family for a week in the Medina and worked at a creche.
Speaker 2:And so that opportunity, I think, was, incredibly eye opening. I mean, we've done things. We work at our local food bank. We, you know, lots of other things that are kind of one hour here or two hours here, more discreet. This was more immersive, more intense.
Speaker 2:And I think that there's not any question that it opens their eyes that, however bad they think they have it, they actually are doing pretty well and should be very grateful for that. And not only grateful, but also have that sense of this is a gift that you've been given so that you can give back. And I would not say that right now, just to be clear. They're 13 and 16. But but I do think that they have appreciated it at times and they've pushed back at times.
Speaker 2:And I do think it's part of that, that overall broader equation for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, this is a huge challenge for us as parents, my wife's parents, they stood in food lines with food stamps. So we've had these very strong experiences impact our parents and then our lives in turn and yet our kids are living to a large extent a relatively shielded life, so we're thinking like how do we provide that appreciation. I appreciate your comments and I agree service is a huge part of it. I want to change the topic a little bit.
Speaker 1:Still service, but not the type of service we were talking about a moment ago. Yeah. At some stage in your life, decided to enlist. What were you thinking? What made you make that crazy decision?
Speaker 2:Well, I was a student at Duke University. It was the late eighties and college was expensive for my family. So it was not an easy thing. I was the eldest of three. And so I knew that it was a stretch, even though I had been required.
Speaker 2:And this goes back to kids, but it goes back to everything else. I had been required to work since I was old enough to work and required to save as part of that working for college. So that had been part of everything I'd done since I was 12. And at the same time, you know, it was expensive to go to college. So when I arrived, I had two jobs.
Speaker 2:I was working at the East Campus Housing Office and working as a waitress. And then there was a college fair and all of the ROTC departments were there. And I figured, you know, my dad had been an army JAG officer. He was really proud of it. And I'd never thought about it for myself, but I just went and talked to the they're not really recruiters.
Speaker 2:They're really the faculty essentially of these programs. Both Air Force and Navy required me to be an engineer, and I knew that I wanted to be an English literature major. And so the Army was the only one that let you be a humanities major. And so I joined Army ROTC. Figured I could try it.
Speaker 2:If I didn't like it, I could quit and say that I tried it. And I loved it. Like I loved the sense of serving something bigger than myself. I really loved all of my classmates that were a part of it. All of us had come from the same kind of a background, unlike many of our other Duke classmates, where all of us had worked growing up and had to save and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So so I think it was a group of people that I related to a lot more. And the concept of serving something greater than ourselves, I think resonated for all of us.
Speaker 1:Looking at your service, what was the worst and best moment that you can recall?
Speaker 2:Geez, there's so many of all of them. I mean, the reality of military service too, is it's such an insular experience that the highs are high and the lows are low, right? I think all of those things are true. Wow. It'd be tough.
Speaker 2:You know, in many regards, I would say that deploying, like, for example, I had the opportunity to deploy to Bosnia, and I had to ask for that deployment because it was our sister battalion that had been chosen to deploy, not the battalion that I was assigned to as an Apache pilot. And so I was leading a flight platoon. There was another platoon open in the other battalion. I went to the battalion commander and asked for the opportunity to take that empty platoon because I wanted to deploy. Now if you have a chance to do the thing you're trained to do, you wanna do it.
Speaker 2:And, fortunately, I was able to take that platoon and we deployed to Bosnia for six months in 1997 as part of the stabilization force supporting the Dayton peace accords. That experience, I think it was, I mean, it might be funny to say that that was one of the highs, but it was so mission focused, you know, my mom at the time I was single, my mom was doing my finances for me. So I had no, no required administrative in my life. And it was just, just focused on the mission. And we just flew and we focused and we were very good at what we did.
Speaker 2:And we had the chance to get even better at what we did because we flew all the time. And we got to know our area of operations, which was called MND North, Multinational Division North, and the opportunity to work. I mean, it was part of a NATO effort. So we were working with, you know, the Brits and the Scots who don't like to be considered parts of the Brits and the Norwegians and the Germans and all of these different people. And it was just fascinating, right?
Speaker 2:The entire operations was interesting from the tactical perspective and then also from the kind of the more strategic perspective. Not that we had a huge look into that at the level that I was working, but, I loved the mission focus. I loved the all in aspect of doing something. And we were really lucky because I served at the time I call it between the deserts. So I was I did peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and in Korea.
Speaker 2:Both of them had some really tense times, but they were ultimately not the things that have happened since since time. In that way, I have no conflict in my mind, my own experience about my service that I know other colleagues have had to wrestle with a bit more. We were doing something good, and we were making people's lives better. And we really were. And I think that was a pretty incredible honor to be a part of.
Speaker 2:So that ability to be so focused on a mission, I would say, was the best part of the military, the worst part. I mean, there's various components of how you could define that. Certainly, I mean, some senses, and this might be the reason that I left in large part, was at the end of this period of time that I was committed and I was committed for eight years because I had gone to flight school. Once you go to flight school, once you do additional advanced aircraft qualifications, you have a longer commitment than others would. And at the end of that time we were in Kuwait actually as an exercise, not for war.
Speaker 2:And I remember at that point I had just sent in my applications to business school and I remember waiting on like our fifth call to manifest. They'll manifest you to fly out, you know, many times before you actually fly out. And in order to meet that manifest, you pack up all your duffel bags and you or your one duffel bag and your one, you know, helmet bag or whatever. And I was sitting out on this tarmac with everybody else waiting for the airplane that didn't end up coming again. And I looked to my right and there's a colonel.
Speaker 2:And I looked to my left and there's a private. And I think this is never going to change. And I don't want I don't want that life. But, you know, I didn't want the life that I saw people that were senior to me living at that time in my experience. I will say again, there's many wonderful people doing many wonderful things all the way through, the military.
Speaker 2:But, but that was, I mean, the low point that really for me was a helpful prompt that, Hey, I think I need to be contributing my best somewhere else and in some other way.
Speaker 1:When you look over, I think you mentioned eight years of service. What was the big lessons or takeaways that you still find yourself applying today in your kind of civilian roles? And I would say even let's explore beyond the framework of grit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, great. I would say the most important lesson, and this has been true working in corporate America at medical device companies and at Microsoft. This has been true in my role right now as a keynote speaker for companies and organizations. I also teach at the Tech School of Business at Dartmouth twice a year as part of their leadership and strategic impact course. So for all of these sorts of examples of what I'm doing now in the world, it's really about how do we make organizations work well?
Speaker 2:How do we help leaders do their best? And it's very tempting whether you're in the army and you're working with cool, sexy things like Apache helicopters or tanks or artillery, or if you're in the civilian world and suddenly AI is on the scene or whatever new technological invention is something that you're incorporating into how you do business. The most important thing that you can do as a leader, and this has always been the case and it will always be the case, and it will not change no matter if you have half robots under you and half people. It doesn't matter. The one essential rule for leaders is that the most important thing that you can do is to take care of your people.
Speaker 2:And it's because of that that I have had that knowledge, that understanding, the willingness to do the hard things in order to do that work that I've had the opportunities that I have had in the civilian world, both working as a leader myself and now advising leaders, both through the Tuck School as well as through my keynoting and other training through the GRIT Institute. So that is the key takeaway. The military knows this really well. It doesn't mean that the military always does it well, but if anyone does it exceptionally, when it's done exceptionally, I would say it's the military. And I'm really grateful for that lesson more than just about anything else.
Speaker 2:If you take care of your people, they take care of the mission. It's the one non negotiable.
Speaker 1:It's not always as a, as a officer or a manager, it's not always easy to take care of your people. Sometimes it's actually the hard thing to do. Absolutely. Is there any specific story that you can kind of recall to share that paradox to a certain degree? And you know, just referring to Adam Grant's Givers and Takers, Yeah.
Speaker 1:It sometimes does pay off to be the asshole and it sometimes does. We see the assholes succeeding in life unfortunately. Yeah. But we see the good guys succeeding in life as well. So when you're at that fork and you have to decide if you're going to be the asshole or you're going to do the thing that's hard, but is the right thing to do.
Speaker 1:Talk to me a little bit about that decision point as well.
Speaker 2:Well, I would say those things are not as black and white either as they seem to be. Right? I I have always thought that when I am doing my best in a leadership role, when I have worked for leaders who are excellent, sometimes they're kind of assholes, but they're not assholes at anyone's expense. They are absolutely committed to you and as an employee or as a as a subordinate or as a coworker and to the mission, and they're they're going to get through it. Right?
Speaker 2:So I I guess a couple of examples where this would maybe appear to have been in conflict. One of them is something that I'm more proud of than almost anything else I've done. Actually, both of them, I'll use the two examples at Microsoft, and they both relate to being this one thing that I'm incredibly proud of. And it's not even on my resume, right? So one of the jobs that I took at Microsoft was a group manager that had to turn over a team.
Speaker 2:I knew in advance that the team had to be turned over. The team had not been told this, but most of them were in the wrong places and they were had either overstayed their abilities or they weren't able to work within a new system or something. Right? And so that's pretty much the worst thing that you can have to do as a manager. I've had to do it in a nonprofit world and I've had to do it in the for profit world.
Speaker 2:And I've lost years of my life, I'm quite sure, in both. But in that example at Microsoft, what I was able to do, I believe, and in fact, know, was to take care of people as we turned over the team. And so the question was, as you turn over that team, how can you take care of people if you know? And I will say there's a couple of things that I regret having had to do because of other specifics around HR. But at the end of the day, what you have to do is help people see that there's a better opportunity for them to contribute.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you help them find that opportunity. Sometimes you help them see that that is the case. In either case, it can be difficult and awkward. And sometimes it doesn't feel very good. Many times, in fact, it doesn't feel very good.
Speaker 2:And at the end of the day, once we had done this work, once I had done this work of turning over this team, everybody was in a better position, more suited for their skills that needed to leave. Those who were still there felt good about those who had left, who had been their friends, right? You can't do this with people staying on the team and have the rest of the team feeling good about it unless you've done it well. It's really tricky. And at the end of that turnover, we had the highest-
Speaker 1:If I may just interrupt you for a second. That's such an important point. Think it's maybe one of the key points that most executives miss is that how you treat the people that are leaving has a massive impact on the people that stay. In fact, it can demoralize the whole company. So if you're like oh we're just gonna cut them loose and gonna do a shitty job about this and it's gonna have no effect because they're leaving anyway.
Speaker 1:No no no this has a huge effect. Potentially you can completely cut your productivity of the remaining team. So so that that's a really important point that I that I just wanted to highlight that you mentioned there, I apologize for for jumping in there.
Speaker 2:No, I'm really glad that you did because you're absolutely right. There's there's a couple of things that the people that are still on the team know. Number one is they can be cut too. Right? Anybody can be cut.
Speaker 2:And so the way that you treat people first of all, it shows your character. Think it really does. It demonstrates your character. And so people who are remaining on the team don't want to work for somebody who doesn't have good character. And they also know that however other people were treated is a way that they will ultimately potentially be treated.
Speaker 2:And so all of those things factor into the morale and and the well-being of the team. And and at the end of this turnover, we had the highest operational or sorry, organizational health rating on in the entire division, even though we had just done a turnover. And I'm incredibly proud of that opportunity to knowing that we had to do this work, that I had to do this work, that we were able to take care of the people that left, take care of the people that stayed and hire on the right people that could help to then round out that team. Part of the work that that followed from that and the team was even more loyal and motivated than they had already been. And and it was it was a joy to work with them.
Speaker 2:I realized in that process that, you know, my purpose in the military had been more straightforward from a strategic perspective and at Microsoft a little less so. But my purpose as a leader, any leader's purpose is in part and perhaps most importantly, to take care of the people that work for them. Full stop. And so I had a guy that, you know, had one week of leave that was built up. He had a honeymoon coming up.
Speaker 2:He said, you know, I'd really like love to take two weeks with my wife if there's any way. I said, Listen, I'm going to write you two leave forms. Nothing happens the first week. You you were never gone. And then and then we're going to use the second leave form.
Speaker 2:And you take care of your people. When you do that, they will do anything for you. And, and I mean that in in all of the best ways. And so that is, I guess, a couple of places where you you work within a system. Sometimes you have to do things that are, you know, the creative in order to take care of your people.
Speaker 2:But but you never allow anything to be an excuse to get in the way of taking care of the people that work for you.
Speaker 1:Anybody who's been in the military army knows how to really understand the policy in order to work between the policies. Yes. So I deeply empathize with that. Okay, so two points. One is this is not only about the morale of the people who stayed and about treating the people who are leaving with dignity and helping them get to the next thing.
Speaker 1:This is also about hiring. Yes. Because I will even say in the hiring process I will explain what's gonna happen. Either we're gonna fire you for reasons that were not up to you. You did well, and we're going to help you find that next job, or we're going to promote you.
Speaker 1:Whatever happens, we're going to help you be successful. I have seen the huge resonance that that happens. Now, maybe you say that as an executive, maybe you don't, but I'll tell you what for sure is happening. They're hearing the word-of-mouth from other people in the company, out of the company, how you treat your employees, and that's going to impact your salary requirements and if people even want to work for you. So it's so narrow minded not to have this perspective and I say this with great pain because I've seen so many people who do not have your perspective.
Speaker 1:So I just had to kind of beat one more point on that, but I wanted to go in a different direction. As a senior executive, we see other executives who do not have this philosophy, whether it's our managers, whether it's people who work for us. What are you doing in that situation where there's a gap in the culture?
Speaker 2:I mean, it depends on what your position is. Right? If you are in a position to influence the culture in some way, I think that's a great thing to be able to do. You have to weigh the cost and the benefit of that influence. And I think this really is one of those questions that is it depends.
Speaker 2:There are people that I have talked to who are working for somebody who is never recognizing their ability to contribute over years, for example. So if we're talking about somebody a little bit younger, which is not your question specifically, but I always say that you should stay in a job long enough to learn something of significance and contribute something of significance. Then keep looking around. My old boss at Microsoft used to say, should write your resume every year and decide that you want to be here in this position. And if you don't, then go interview somewhere else.
Speaker 2:But write your resume every year and look around and make sure I'm in the right place for me right now to to do my best, to make my best contributions. If you're a senior, I mean, I think our role really is the more senior we get to influence cultures in a way that take care of both meeting the mission and the people that are involved. And so again, the specifics of that are really going to depend. But I think that is the role of a senior person at any company is to do their best to make that work. And I'm sorry that that's a bit of a that depends answer, but I think the specifics would certainly depend.
Speaker 1:Hey, I asked you a question that I have no idea what the answer is, so it's no surprise that we're all struggling with this. Kind of the hope for me was that you need to think about this because you kind of said this, you're going to spend a little bit of your capital in order to influence somebody who doesn't necessarily agree with you and that has some personal risk. You kind of need to think through that before you take a hard stance. Think that's a very fair answer. Shannon, this has been an absolute delight and let me just say before, thank you for your service, I didn't say that before.
Speaker 1:We have one last question, the only question that's really the only question we ask every single guest. It's a difficult one. If you had to go back to the most difficult moments of your life, whether that was two years ago, twenty years ago, what piece of advice would you give yourself in our audience?
Speaker 2:You know, would give myself opposite advice personally than I would professionally. This is maybe sound a little bit odd. Personally, I would say go with your gut a lot more. Don't look for others to validate. We ultimately know what's right for us and for our families.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking actually specifically about having young children and being unsure. Be sure because you're the parent. Actually know better than anybody else does and don't let them tell you otherwise. So that would be my advice to myself then. I think professionally, and you know, part of part of the military and part of the culture of the branch that I was in, which was army attack aviation, had a lot of hubris as a part of it and a lot of ego that was a part of it.
Speaker 2:And there was a piece of that that I had to live into in order to do well. I did both of those things. And at the same time, I think that and this goes back to trusting myself more too. I think I played that game too much at the expense of my own wisdom, and lost opportunities as a result. And I'm thinking specifically of a time that I was asked to interview to be a general's aide when I was a commander.
Speaker 2:And I turned it down because I was working in this operations framework where I was like, the only cool thing to do is operations. I would never go do something like this. And that was an absolutely stupid and shortsighted thing for me to do. It would have opened up many other doors. Now I'm grateful for how my life turned out.
Speaker 2:It would have been very different had I stayed in and done that. But, I think it would have been an incredible opportunity. And I think I was really shortsighted to turn it down because I was trying so hard to play the game of this army attack aviation stuff. And so, and I did play the game and I did it well and I contributed well in that field. But I think I did that at my own expense at some point, which in a much more broad way is, is really why I ended up leaving the military was, I think I understood that I was working against myself and that's just my own, my own experience.
Speaker 2:Others have had quite different experiences. It's not a necessity. It's just was my inability to disentangle those two things. So at the end of the day, I think it comes down to know yourself and trust your gut and then make the right decision as a result.
Speaker 1:Shannon, thank you so much for joining the show today. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Ari. It was an absolute pleasure.