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In this podcast hosted by the trailblazing founder of RE/MAX, Dave Liniger, we discover the secrets of those who have overcome challenges, pushed past their own limits, and experienced the best life has to offer.
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Unknown
You.
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Unknown
You.
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Speaker 2
challenges to achieve success. I'm your host, Dave Lineker.
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Speaker 2
Today we have the honor of welcoming a true titan of leadership. General Stanley McChrystal.
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Speaker 2
With a career spanning decades in the United States military, general McChrystal has led troops through some of the most challenging environments imaginable. Now, he brings his wealth of experience to the civilian world, showing invaluable insights on leadership, resilience, and the relentless pursuit of excellence. Join me in welcoming General Stanley McChrystal.
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Speaker 3
Well, it's an honor to be here. And please call me. Stand it.
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Speaker 2
Oh, I thought of your general. Your general forever.
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Speaker 3
No, at least not in my mind.
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Speaker 2
Okay, great. So, Stanford, first question. How do you personally define grit, and why do you believe it's critical quality for individuals, especially in leadership roles or individuals,
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Speaker 3
Yeah, I think there's a pretty broad definition, but I'll tell you how I think of grit. Most of the elite military forces, the ones I was a part of and the ones that I led, had a selection process. The US Army Rangers, Delta Force, the shield. And that selection process is misunderstood by people on the outside. They often think that they're looking for the smartest or the biggest or the strongest or the fastest.
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Speaker 3
What they're really looking for is the people who won't quit. And so they increase the level of pressure and they get people of pretty average capabilities except above average persistence, willingness to to work through adversity. That's what I think grit is.
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Speaker 2
I think that's an outstanding. I think that's an outstanding explanation for our audience. Can you share a specific moment or experience from your military career experience where grit played a significant role in overcoming challenges
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Speaker 3
Yeah, I can think of a number of times during my career, but I'll go back to one. When I was a captain and I was a mechanized infantry company commander. You command 14 armored vehicles in this company of 100 and some, troopers. And you want to be very successful, but you're not always very successful. And we were on a big training exercise out of Fort Irwin, California, near Death Valley.
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Speaker 3
And it was winter. And so it was uncomfortable. It was windy. And you go almost 24 hours a day and the idea is to stretch a unit near to the breaking point. And of course, that stretches all the people, particularly the leaders. And I planned all night for a dawn attack. And so I got my company ready, and we did this dawn attack in the early morning light, and we got wiped out by the enemy, literally in about 30s.
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Speaker 3
And, you know, of course, that's not the outcome you want. And I had to go to my battalion commander and, and sort of put my heart out in front of him and said, I failed you. I failed the unit. And I had and he was really good about it. He sort of pulled me back up and he said, I thought you did good.
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Speaker 3
But the reality was, in that moment I felt like a complete embarrassment. I to my self into the unit. I felt like a failure. And those are the moments when if you have grit, you go on. It's not just when it's hard. It's when you're not doing as well as you think you should or you could, and suddenly you have self-doubt and you have to reach inside and find something in you that despite the fact that you're having all these questions about your own ability, you push on.
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Speaker 2
I agree with that. As a military leader, you faced numerous challenges. How do you maintain your resilience and determination at face of adversity, and how can individuals apply those lessons to their own pursuits?
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Speaker 3
Yeah, there are a number of ways you face adversity in the military. And when we were in combat and I was there for an extended period, it could range from an operation that doesn't go well and some of your people are killed or wounded and you feel responsible, or it can come from higher, commanders putting pressure on you because you're unhappy with something you're doing, or it can come from something at home, to be honest, something in your personal life that reaches forward and and just makes life a little bit more complicated for you.
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Speaker 3
The way I dealt with it was I'm a creature of routine as much as possible. So every morning I get up and I work out and I work out hard. And the reason I work out is because it it lets the pressure off my emotional side. It makes me just more centered and more calm for the day. I also have some people around me in most of the places I've worked who aren't.
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Speaker 3
Yes people. They aren't sycophants telling me that I'm powerful and handsome, but there are people who will tell me the truth, who I know are concerned about my best interest, and they care enough to to tell me the hard truth when necessary. And then I have a really good marriage. I've been married for 47 years, and my wife and I have a partnership that is, it's mutually dependent.
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Speaker 3
But at the same time, when I'm needed, when I need that support, I know she's there. And so those things, all those moments when you feel unsteady or unsure, you've got those different aspects of your life that can support.
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Speaker 2
Awesome. How do you strike a balance between ambition and humility and ambition and humility? Can ambition sometimes hinder effective leadership? And if so, how do you mitigate that? And if
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Speaker 3
Yeah, it's a great one because everybody's got some level of ego, got some level of ambition. You want to succeed in whatever field you're in. That's certainly true in the military. My father taught me years ago and he was a career soldier. He says, you should be ambitious, but you should be ambitious for your unit, ambitious for the organization that you represent, have great goals for them, great ideas on what they can do if you start to make it too personal, your personal promotion, your personal celebration by people or or any other metric, then I think it starts to be egocentric and I think it starts to be harmful, not just to you, but for
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Speaker 3
the organization. It doesn't come simply. You got to keep reminding yourself this because we're all human beings. But I think the more I do, the more I find that I'm comfortable with what I'm doing.
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Speaker 2
In your experience, can, experience how can leaders inspire grit in the teams or organizations? And are there specific strategies or approaches that you found effective
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Speaker 3
Yeah. when you're trying to build grit in an organization, I think it must be intentional. at the beginning of World War Two, the U.S. Army stood up Ranger units, and one of the things they did for physical training was log peat. And that log peat with these great heavy logs, that it took 5 or 6 rangers to lift, and they would do physical training, all lifting the log together.
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Speaker 3
And one of the key points was they had to do it together. Nobody could let down the group or the group couldn't accomplish the task. And so one of the things you do in an organization is you created a shared commitment to each other, the idea of a shared mission. You're all responsible not just for the outcome, but for or for the outcome of the individual.
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Speaker 3
You're right for the outcome of the group. I also think you pressure test people in organizations. I find that if you push individuals and organizations literally to the breaking point, they often find their breaking point is further than they thought it was. They can do more than they believe that they could, and they come back from those events with renewed confidence.
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Speaker 3
And I think that translates into grit.
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Speaker 2
The military, often requires adaptability. how do you balance ambitious goals with the need to adapt to the changing circumstance? Needs adapt. And what advice do you have for those navigating ambiguity and their pursuit
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Speaker 3
Yeah. the military always needs adaptability because nothing ever goes the way you plan it to. And so we find this temptation to come up with a fancy plan for a military campaign or, or any event. And then we're very disappointed when it doesn't go exactly as we desired. But as the military says, the enemy gets a vote and they don't always vote the way you want them to.
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Speaker 3
And so the first thing a military leaders got to do is not be too wedded to that plan, be wedded to the outcome, achieving it. And so you come up with a plan, you brief it to your people, and then you say, but when this thing goes bad, when everything starts to fall apart, here's what we're trying to do.
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Speaker 3
So everybody just adapt. Until we accomplish that mission, two things happen. You, you said in your own mind an expectation, okay, it's going to get a little messy here. And you create your organization. And that expectation, particularly young soldiers, won't get rattled if you tell them this is going to get confusing, it's going to get frightening. It's not going to go the way I briefed it, but we're going to come out okay.
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Speaker 3
Then they get confidence.
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Speaker 2
So how can organizations, whether it's military or civilian organizations, cultivate a culture that, encourages and rewards grit amongst its members,
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Speaker 3
Yeah. I think that you need to require a lot of people, but you also need to understand that they are human beings and they will stumble and they will fail. And so I think that you create an environment where what you're demanding of the individual is maximum effort, best possible effort, but not perfection. and so then they start to learn that if I'm climbing up the hill and I trip, that's okay.
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Speaker 3
As long as I get up and get moving again. And sometimes we create organizations where a single blemish tarnishes that person's reputation or opportunity. And then I think people quit as soon as they believe that that's the case. They quit. If you tell them, no, that's not the case. We're really looking to see what happens after you fail.
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Speaker 3
And I think that builds grit in the individuals who are experiencing and everybody that's watching as well.
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Speaker 2
That's a great point. pursuing ambitious goals can sometimes lead to burnout. How do you personally manage stress and prevent burnout while maintaining a high level of ambition and commitment? High
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Speaker 3
Yeah, and this is always hard, both individually and organizationally, because you want the organization, have stretch goals. You want them to really try. But at the same time, if people are sprinting the entire time, it's it's pretty hard to get a good pace that they can retain. I think in that particular case, you've got to watch those goals.
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Speaker 3
You've got to always keep the goal there, but keep it attainable. If you put something out that people think that they've got to sprint constantly pretty quickly, they'll realize they can't keep that up. And so I think that leaders, this is where leaders, have to constantly adjust. And sometimes leaders have to get in front of the organization and said, we want to do 100, we're going to do 80.
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Speaker 3
And that's okay, because the conditions are now this other times the organization gets to 100 to easily and the leader has to raise it 120 and say, you did that without sweating.
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Speaker 2
Okay. what advice would you give emerging leaders who aspire to develop written ambition and their personal and professional lives
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Speaker 3
Yeah, do things that they're not good at. Do things that they're not comfortable with. Do things that frighten them. Because if you do things you're already, effective, that you're already comfortable you'll you'll do and you're probably doing pretty well. Find something that you're really uncomfortable with. Step out and do it. You'll survive, and you will come back with the realization that you will survive.
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Speaker 3
Many people remember the first day of high school football. Every year you go out in the high school football and you put your pads on. You're a little worried about full contact and somebody creams you, and yet it hurts. But then you get up and you realize, well, I'm not dead or hurt, okay? And then from then on, it's kind of all right.
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Speaker 3
And so I think that's sort of true in business, in life.
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Speaker 2
how does an individual grit and ambition impact the dynamics of a team, and how can leaders ensure that those qualities contribute positively to collaboration?
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Speaker 3
Yeah. You mentioned two things grit and ambition. If individual ambition is too focused on me, then I think it can detract from the team because people will look at that and they'll say, well, he's all about himself or she's all about herself. Grit, however, is different. If you're with if you're working with people that have grit and you realize no matter what happens, they're not going to give up, then suddenly you look at yourself and you say, well, that they're not going to give up.
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Speaker 3
I'm not going to give up. Then I served for many years in the U.S. Army Rangers, and there was a creed that that basically required everybody to to continue the mission, though I be the lone survivor. And it's it gives this idea that no matter what happens, I'm going to stay at it. And if you feel that way about the people you're with, you have a lot of trust.
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Speaker 3
and you ask more of yourself.
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Speaker 2
Interestingly enough, that goes back to your men trying to lift along together, repeated like men
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Speaker 2
so since leaving the military. So how have you applied the principles of grit and ambition and your post military activities? what else have you learned in the transition from military to civilian
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Speaker 3
Yeah, if I could write a book on that. I left the military, like most people who leave the military after a lifetime as a soldier. My father was a soldier. My father's father was a soldier. I went to West Point at age 17, so I was just under 56 when I left the military with literally no, no time in the civilian world.
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Speaker 3
No, interface with business. And suddenly I'm out there and I start with a friend of mine, a business. And it's frightening because there's a profit and loss which you don't have in the military. You got to pay taxes. Who knew that? you hire a bunch of people and we built a firm that now is 100 people, and you're responsible for those people, and you're responsible for developing all the systems that take care of them, all the things that train them.
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Speaker 3
you've got to provide the product that you've promised to your clients. You've got this range of things, and you've never done any of it before. I don't care that I was a general. That doesn't matter in the business world. There's no points for that. There's only points for being able to do what you say you will do for clients and take care of your teams.
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Speaker 3
So it was like starting over. It was like taking a whiteboard and wiping it clean and start my life at age 56. And now some people would come up to me and they say, well, Stan, you got it made because you were in the Army and did all this great stuff. That doesn't matter in business. Business doesn't care.
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Speaker 3
And that was actually really good for me, because once you realize you can't be who you were, then you should keep your values. You should keep the things that the traits that you built up. But you don't get points for that. You have to compete in a new way. And I actually found that very energizing.
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Speaker 2
I agree with that. the information you've given us today, lots of, golden nuggets for our fans and people to listen to. I sincerely appreciate your effort. And, congratulations on a fabulous career. Both the first one and now the second one, both
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Speaker 3
Well, and I'm a great admirer of what you've done to and are still doing so. Thank you very much for having me.