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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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[00:00:01.15] - Don Bacon
I believe Veterans provide a great voice in politics, whether it's at the state or local level or federal level, because I believe there's what is best for our country mindset, because that's what we did in the military. We gave an oath to the country. Most of the people we served with, I didn't know if they were Republican or Democrat, and we were given a problem, and we worked together to solve it.
[00:00:24.02] - John S. Berry
Welcome to Veteran Led. I'm your host, John Berry, and today's guest is congressman and retired Air Force Brigadier General, Don Bacon. Welcome to the show, congressman.
[00:00:35.14] - Don Bacon
Thank you. It's good to see you again.
[00:00:37.19] - John S. Berry
Great to see you again. I love the fact that you have served in the military for over 30 years and continue to serve. I want to ask this first question, which is why go into politics after a long military career?
[00:00:54.19] - Don Bacon
I got interested in politics at the age of 13. Ronald Reagan ran for President in 1976, so I was 13 years old, and he lost to Gerald Ford, but I became a follower of Reagan. Then I got involved in reading National Review of Human Events in Junior High and high school. I was campaigning for people in high school. I was a driver for a state senator. He's also the county chairman at 16. He had a Cadillac store, so I was driving Cadillacs. Then I worked for a congressman at 20. I've always had an interest. Really what motivates me is I love Abraham Lincoln. I love Winston Churchill. I love people who are statesmen. Something that excites me is when someone takes unpopular but principled stands, then later everybody says, that guy was right. Those are the people I like studying, and that's Lincoln and Churchill for sure.
[00:01:47.21] - John S. Berry
Yeah, definitely leaders of conviction. I think that's where the transfer happens. In the military, I'm sure you've been there. I was there as a Company Commander and a Battalion Commander. I had to make tough decisions, and I had to be discerning to make the right decisions and the right judgment. But I had to have that conviction that I was right because there are times when you hesitate, there are times when you can doubt yourself. But when your team is looking at you saying, This is my leader, this is my commander, or this is my congressman, you have to have that conviction to get stuff done. I admire those leaders as well. Let's take you through that. That experience, I suppose in your early years, did that help form your military career?
[00:02:28.08] - Don Bacon
It did. I made me a different military leader. When I went through officer training school, they trained you to be hard. You're the boss. Be firm. I learned different leadership talents in my junior high, high school, and college years. To be a good listener, take people's input. In the end, it is about conviction and doing the right thing, but you want people to think they're part of a team and that they have input and that they have a stake in your team. I led with that principle of we're a team, I'm the boss, but I want to make sure I know if I'm doing something wrong, tell me. I'm going to take your input, but in the end, we're going to execute violently once we get a good plan. That was my mindset, and I got to command five times. I feel like I was a little bit of a unique leader. I wasn't a dictator by no means. I guess I've always saw representative government good, even in the military. I wanted your input. I want to know how we can make this better, and I tried to take it.
[00:03:29.08] - John S. Berry
So Five commands. I think from my military experience, I had three commands, and I love being in command. Now, I got out as Lieutenant Colonel because when they told me, Well, when you go to Colonel, then you'll be a staff officer again. I said, No way. No, I'm out. But obviously, as a brigadier general, you had more opportunities. But Five Commands, I want to talk about that because to me, that was the fun part. The staff work, though, taught you how to go peer to peer as a leader, how to do that, not just vertical leadership, but horizontal leadership. I'm not going to get into that. But by someone who enjoys being a commander, like a congressman, how long did it take you to get to DC? From the time that you retired, or the time you figured out that you wanted to go into politics and become a congressman, how long did that process take of, I guess, post-military service involvement in politics?
[00:04:18.21] - Don Bacon
I retired 1 November, 2014. I already knew, though, I was on leave, indefinite leave from August through on November because I had 90 days of Leave time built up. But I knew I wanted to be involved. I settled down in Papillion, Nebraska, Sarpy County. I thought, this is like September, October, time frame, that I'd love to be a county chairman for the Republicans, maybe run for a local office. If I saw a need, I didn't want to run against a good Republican. I wanted to see, is there an opening? Is there a need somewhere that nobody's filling? Can I be that person? That was my mindset. So I was thinking county chairman, local race. On 1 November, Lee Terry, this is the day I retired, I had a rally, and he invited me to be the first speaker on my first day of retirement, where I was legal, that I could do this legally. I spoke, but so did the future speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who had the governor there, who had the mayor of Omaha. This was my first day of retirement. I really worked this speech really hard. I tried my best to come out of the gates, swing and try to go fast.
[00:05:25.12] - Don Bacon
Two weeks later, Lee Terry lost. I did not see it coming because I was... Well, he'd been in there for 16 years. I didn't know the polling or anything like that. I just assumed he was going to win again. Out of that, I ended up getting, Hey, people come in and said, Don, do you think you could run? I prayed on it. I prayed on it every day for three months. I ended up announcing in March 24th, I believe, of 2015, that I was going to give it a try. It was an uphill battle. Not a lot of people knew me, though. I was the commander off it. I didn't have a lot of connections, business connections, and things like that, but I had a story to tell. Served in Iraq, been to Afghanistan, deployed four times, commanded off it. I worked with nuclear weapons, served in NATO. I thought I had a good story to tell, and I knew we had some needs. I did it, and really, against all odds, we won the primary and the general when a lot of people didn't think we could. In the end, I was the only challenger for the Republicans in 2016 to win in the House or the Senate.
[00:06:33.15] - Don Bacon
Shows you how hard it is.
[00:06:36.11] - John S. Berry
You've been doing this now for nine years. You've been a congressman for nine years, correct?
[00:06:40.11] - Don Bacon
Right. I'll finish up at 10.
[00:06:42.19] - John S. Berry
Okay, so here's my question to you then. Look, as the leader of Berry Law, I've got my 220 team members. We've got thousands of Veterans that we represent nationwide. Those are my constituents, and I know how to serve them because our mission is very clear, it doesn't change. But in DC, it seems a little bit different. How do you know how to best serve your constituents?
[00:07:05.07] - Don Bacon
Well, I guess it's top down and bottom up. I got to do both. From my vantage point, I sit here and listen what's going on, what the needs are in our country. I serve on the Armed Services Committee. I serve on the Ad Committee. I have put a lot more of my attention in those two areas because that's just reality when you're on those committees. But so I see needs myself. But then you go around the district and I would average six meetings a day when I'm back home. You go to the Filipino American Luncheon, you go to a Catholic thing, the Rotary Club, whatever it may be. Do six of these a day. I had a really good feel for what constituents were thinking. Just don't hang around the Republican Party. You got to get out. Even go to a restaurant, people come up and start chatting with you and let you know what they're thinking. You got to listen to the people, the 700,000 that are in the district. But serving in the Congress, you see where the needs are at, too, whether it's budget, whether it's military requirements, Veterans issues. I go to the VA, I know we need a new VA hospital in Omaha.
[00:08:11.15] - Don Bacon
That's going to be a priority here. You see it in DC, and you also hear it from your constituents, and you got to put it together.
[00:08:20.05] - John S. Berry
You got to have the battlefield circulation both with the constituents that obviously have elected you, but then also to serve them, you have to know what's going on in DC as well and make the rounds up there as well. It's a lot of boots on the ground.
[00:08:33.18] - Don Bacon
Sounds a little like the military. You got to hear what your commanders and your fellow commanders are saying, and then you need to be circulating within your unit, just like you were just saying. You got a good point.
[00:08:44.01] - John S. Berry
Okay, so let's talk about that. So once again, you've had five commands. You like being a commander. And it's great because you have a commander that tells you what to do. They don't tell you how to do it. You execute, and then you're taking care of the team. But now let's talk about that peer-to-peer leadership. I've been on some staff in the military. It was a great staff team, and I've been on some that weren't so great. Now, the thing that would scare me about DC is that peer-to-peer leadership, that horizontal leadership, where you've got bosses, your constituents, but you also have to play well with others. It's like doing a joint service stunt, where you got to work with the Air Force, Marines, and Navy, or you're working with third-party nationals, or you're working outside of that straight line of command. How do you find that you have success in those peer-to-peer engagements in DC?
[00:09:38.19] - Don Bacon
Just like in the military, a lot of people in the military I saw knew they had to get along well with their boss, and they surely worked their relationship with their subordinates, but a lot of them failed with their peers because they were too competitive, too abrasive. I saw a lot of folks who were otherwise pretty smart people, but didn't know how to work with their peers, and it hurt them, and it hurt the team. You can't that way. In Congress, we have a few oddballs who are not team players at all. It's all about, I don't know, being the center of attention, how many clicks they can get on social media. But the best, the most effective people in Congress are those who have built relationships all over the House and the Senate. I'll give you an example. Tom Cole is probably the premier example. We call him the godfather in the Republican Party. He has relationships with so many people He's the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, widely respected Republicans and Democrats. This man gets things done. He is really the prototype, what you want to see in this way. But my job is to have strong relationships within our party.
[00:10:47.05] - Don Bacon
I'm on these various caucuses that help build these relationships. But you're not going to get a lot done if you don't have relationships on the Democrat side either, and you got to do both. Now, I've had 38 bills signed in the law during my nine years. It's the most of any Republican, by the way, over the last four years. So we've been pretty effective on this. But I attribute much of this to being bipartisan and having broad support Within the House, Republican and Democrat.
[00:11:17.16] - John S. Berry
So I heard a joke from a lobbyist, and I want to know how true this is. He said, There's a young Republican staffer, and he goes to the Senate, and he's so excited. He tells the senator, he's We're going to do some great things, and we're going to win the Senate. We are going to just show those Democrats who's boss. We're going to make a difference here. The senator says to the young staffer where he says, Well, the enemy is not the Democrats. It's the Senate, or it's the House. And so how much truth is there to that? Where maybe within the House, you guys actually get along better, but it's getting things through the Senate. That's the challenge. Or is it more party-aligned?
[00:11:59.05] - Don Bacon
Well, that joke is well said, and people, I've heard it quite a few times, Our real enemies are the senators. I really don't buy that. You know what? What it is is James Madison writing the Constitution, set it up to make it hard to get legislation passed. He didn't want it to be easy. If it would have been easy, we would have had a Unicameral like we do in Nebraska. We can make it easier. But here they wanted the House and the Senate to have friction. They were trying to protect the minority, and they wanted to ensure that the majority wasn't walking all over the minority. So they built this bicameral and then three separate branches of government. It was made to be hard by design. The federal papers really stressed that. It's just hard to get things done. I have to drop a bill It's got to get in committee. You got to get it out of committee. You got to get it on the floor of the house. Then you got to find a matching bill in the Senate, somebody willing to pick it up and do the same thing and get it both passed into the President for signature.
[00:12:58.15] - Don Bacon
Now, we've been able to do this 38 a few times, but frankly, what I've been able to do for not all of them, but I would say two-thirds of them or so, I write a good bill that I know has bipartisan support. It's going to get something done in the House or the Armed Services Committee or the AG, and we attach it to a bigger bill. I also coordinate with Dub Fischer and Pete Rickets a lot to make sure we got support on the other side there. But I've been able to pass most of my legislation using the annual defense bill and attaching to that that other people also like.
[00:13:33.12] - John S. Berry
We've started to get into this, but what are the biggest leadership challenges of being a congressman?
[00:13:40.00] - Don Bacon
Well, I think for me, and everybody probably have a different maybe perspective on it, our leadership, for the most part, I hate to say this, but there's largely true. I want to say there's nuance here, but what I largely see is our leadership, they're most interested in being the majority next election. Our House leadership, our Senate leadership, probably the President to a degree, the Democrats of the House and Senate, the leadership, their number one goal has become the majority or the state the majority, which means issues that we should be solving get put in the back burner. For example, I think we need legal immigration reform, but neither side wants to let go of this issue, or if they compromise, it becomes an issue in the primaries. But a lot of the big issues are put up with the lens of, is this going to help us win next election or not, or is it going to jeopardize next election? To me, I see that as one of the biggest problems. So, case of point, we got a $36 trillion debt. It's very simple to know what we need to do. Three quarters of this spending is mandatory spending.
[00:14:55.05] - Don Bacon
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, retirements, interest payments, and The biggest problem we have is more people are retiring than are entering the workforce. Our outlays in Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare more, are just exploding, and there's less money coming in. We got to make the math work, but nobody has the political will to do it because it's fraught with political risk, and both sides would rather use this against the other party. But yet a good leader knows we got to intervene now and fix this while we can. A lot of But even the President right now says he will not talk about these two things. But it's a huge issue, and it's going to hit us like a railroad train. If we don't figure this out now, it's going to just get worse each year.
[00:15:46.04] - John S. Berry
Yeah, I think that's one of the challenges of being a leader. I've seen this happen where some leaders will put their head in the sand on some issues or go to other issues they're comfortable solving, but they avoid the tough ones either because they don't know how or it's going to be difficult, or This is the one thing that I'm very curious about, or it's their careerists. As a one-star general and as a congressman, I know you've seen this. I saw it as a young lieutenant, but it seemed that there were leaders who were so much more concerned about their career than they were about doing their job, that somehow they were able to, I think, move up the ranks or maintain the positions they wanted, but they never really made a difference as a leader. Like I said, I saw it was prevalent in the military. We all know those people, but does that happen in big government in DC as well?
[00:16:35.16] - Don Bacon
It does. I'll come right back to it. One of the things that you point out in the military, I'm talking about the debt again and legal immigration. In the military, I always tried to solve problems early. In the five commands, I would look at a year out, two years out, six months out. Okay, we got this inspection coming up. We have a deployment coming up. I would say, Okay, let's plan for it now. In Congress, they don't worry about things until about two weeks before it's due. It's the most foreign way of thinking that I've ever seen. In military, we get fired for thinking the way Congress does, how we delay answering problems. Now, your question about careerism, there is careers here. There's people here that's all they've ever done is politics. A lot of congressmen, they've served in the state legislature, or they were mayors, city councilmen, and there have been elected leaders all the way up. That surely hasn't been my case. I retired in 2014 after 30 years in the Air Force. I do think we miss having people that had careers outside of politics in Congress because we bring a valuable perspective there.
[00:17:45.18] - Don Bacon
But a follow-up to your question would be, a lot of folks are more worried about getting reelected than solving a problem. In this case, about 90% of our districts are hard Republican or hard Democrat. And so the majority of the folks, both sides, are worried about a primary. They're not worried about the general election. So therefore, they're worried about compromising or working across the lines to get a bipartisan bill done because they're afraid of being attacked from the right or left in their primary. And to me, that's a bit of the career-est aspect of what you were talking about there. We need some people that will say, Hey, we got to take the best... We got to chip away at these problems and make progress. Just leaving an issue as a hot potato so we can run on it in two years. It just doesn't work for the American people. It doesn't work for the greatest country in the world.
[00:18:40.13] - John S. Berry
So, congressman Bacon, for like-minded individuals who really like that answer, who are either currently serving in the military or they're Veterans, and they're thinking, How can I serve my community again? How can I serve more? They're thinking, Maybe politics is an avenue for me. Maybe this is how I can continue to serve. What should they consider? If they decide to do it, how should they get started?
[00:19:00.11] - Don Bacon
Well, I just endorsed two Veterans that are running for the Unicameral in the Omaha area. They're both... One's still serving in the reserves, and one's retired now, and I think they're both outstanding. What they like about, and I don't want to over generalize this. We got some people that don't fit this. But by and large, the vast majority of Veterans are not as partisan. They're used to working for their country and trying to, okay, what does America need? How can I do that. Yeah, I come in with an ideology. I'm a conservative, a Ronald Reagan conservative. I have those values. But in the end, I know that I got to try to get the best deal I can, and I could come back next year, try to make it better. A lot of Veterans feel this way, but I think we're abnormally that way. Most others are much more partisan. I just want to throw that out there that I believe Veterans provide a great voice in politics, whether it's at the state or local level or federal level, because I believe there's what is best for our country mindset, because that's what we did in the military.
[00:20:05.11] - Don Bacon
We gave an oath to the country. Most of the people we served with, I didn't know if they're a Republican or Democrat, and we were given a problem, and we worked together to solve it. It's that mindset that is so good about the military. If we could bring more of that spirit in the Congress or in the state legislature or mayors, whatever it may be, it's good for our country. If someone is thinking about getting involved in politics as a Veteran, I'll give them some tactical advice. You got to be able to tell your story in one minute. If you get a better time, you can do it in five. You got to be able to say, Who are you? What made you who you are in one minute? Then you got to have about one minute to say, this is what I want to do for our country. Then, in some speeches, you'll get five minutes. But more often than that, you're going to have two minutes. One minute, who am I? What do I want to accomplish in whatever job I'm seeking? I got a lot of other tactical advice It's out there, too, but that's good for starters.
[00:21:02.07] - John S. Berry
I think a really important distinction amongst the Veteran community is it didn't matter what your political affiliation was. You serve under the Commander-in-Chief, and the Commander-in-Chief ultimately was the head of the military. It didn't matter how you felt about politics. You're a service member, you have an obligation, and you have to discharge that duty. Now, that being said, one thing that really frightens me, and I hear about this quite a bit, is lawyers. Lawyers and members of the government are going around telling active-duty service members, well, if an order is illegal, you don't have to follow it. Of course, these People are completely ignorant of the UCMJ, right? So, they have no idea that, yeah, it's true. If an order is illegal, you do not have to follow it. However, if you are wrong and it is a legal order, it will probably destroy your career. It seems to be with the current political climate, especially for me, an active-duty soldier who went in the National Guard, I'm seeing on social media, lawyers and politicians telling National Guardsmen, you don't have to follow these orders. It's simply wrong and it's dangerous. It's the ignorance of people who think they know the law, who have never studied the UCMJ, who don't know what a lawful order is and what isn't a lawful order.
[00:22:26.20] - John S. Berry
I'm listening to this. Once again, I've had three commands. You've had five commands. You know what a lawful order is because you were put in a position where you had to do that analysis sometimes. I was a company commander in Iraq. Like I said, sometimes leaders make mistakes. Sometimes leaders aren't clear. Sometimes we have to step back and say, Sir or ma'am, this is what I understand the order is. Am I understanding you correctly? Then we have to have the intestinal fortitude to say, Here's my concern with the order. The leader may say, Well, that's my order. But it isn't like, Oh, I heard something on social media, so I don't have to follow a lawful order.
[00:23:00.21] - Don Bacon
So, if I may, I know the big video that you're talking about, there's probably others as well, was six Veterans in Congress. I know some of them, some of my friends. It was a mistake. It was a mistaken judgment, I believe, to put that video out. Because really what it was doing was politicizing the military. As you know, John, we are taught from day one. We follow lawful orders. We give the oath to the Constitution. We don't give our oath to any individual. We're trained on this. We're routinely. I thought it was provocative intentionally. I saw the video and I really went to it. I said, This is not going to go well. I would also say, though, I thought the President coming back and say, We're going to charge him with sedition, made it worse. He should have just, This is a wrong video. It's dumb. It's politicizing the military. These guys shouldn't have done it, and they should have left it that. Our Secretary of Defense is talking about bringing back a senator on active duty. He's retired, so he could court martial him over this. Again, I think that's the overreaction. That's what that worries me right now in our country.
[00:24:05.05] - Don Bacon
We overreact. It's not just do the right thing, it's pummel the other guy. You got to pummel the other side and run them over. On our side, our Republicans own the looms mindset, and its own the looms mindset. It's not very helpful. I think this video was wrong, and I wish they would have asked for my advice if they put it out. But we got to be careful. The overreaction isn't good either, in my view.
[00:24:30.08] - John S. Berry
I think that's one of the toughest parts of leadership is that temperament. We have to be discerning. We have to make the right decisions. But we also want to inspire our teams, but sometimes we can get a little bit more too emotionally involved, and we just need to back off and understand that we have to be the voice of reason.
[00:24:47.05] - Don Bacon
By the way, I would recommend read a chapter of Proverbs every day. It helps.
[00:24:53.02] - John S. Berry
You got to stay grounded. That brings us to the after-action review, congressman. I'd love to hear your one or two examples of great leadership, and then one or two examples of poor leadership. Don't have to name names.
[00:25:09.00] - Don Bacon
I give advice on leadership, good leaders, strive for excellence, even if you're an outstanding unit, there's ways to make it better. You want someone with moral courage, you want someone that's selfless, you want a great mentor, and you need someone that's resilient. I have those five things I talk about because I saw a lot of leaders who embodied these, but I also saw leaders that were the opposite of these. I remember one of my first... One of my commanders, who I was a lieutenant colonel, said, Don, your whole job is to make me look good. That was not very selfless. I'm thinking, my money jobs to make our unit good. I'm the number two guy in this unit, but having the number one guy tell me that. He capped out because that was his personality. I had another guy that was totally just satisfied, but wasn't pushing us to be better. I talked to my squadron commander as a captain. I said, Sir, what's your vision? What do you want to do? He goes, I just want an aircraft accident. I go, Well, that's not aiming too high. That's where I got this thing. I want a commander striving for excellence, always pushing us to be better.
[00:26:21.18] - Don Bacon
I had another commander that I replaced, and I had five squadron commanders working for me as a group commander, as a colonel. He had told eleven other lieutenant colonels, they're going to be the next commander. I had to be the guy to clean this up. So I said, Well, there's only five squadrons, so we got to get this out. It's not going to all happen at once. If I could maybe get seven or eight of you in over time, if I need to find two or three of you other jobs where you take command. And there's one guy, I don't think he should be a commander. But that guy lacked a moral courage to tell people honestly what their opportunities of command were. Those were maybe not the right ways to do it. I saw some other guys I worked for two guys who became generals, had such terrible tempers, screaming. This one guy had a call sign called Antichrist. That was his calls card. They could see, act alike. He was loose Control, screaming. Another guy that was around the same time frame. I said, I don't want to be that guy. I got self-control.
[00:27:22.04] - Don Bacon
You can get feedback in a nice tone. You don't have to scream and yell. But on the other side of this, I worked with, I'll say some names now. I worked for a guy, it was Major General Dave Clary, one of my first superstar bosses when he was a colonel. He told me, Don, why don't you have your master's degree done yet? I go, I got two more yours. He goes, Don, get it done now. You got a record that could be below the zone. You could be a general, but you got to get your master's degree done right now. No one told me that. I had no idea that I had that opportunity. He was a great boss. I learned from that guy, watching him every day, how he had self-control. He had vision. I had another boss. He ended up being a four-star general, General Tom Hobbins, was my mentor, multiple assignments. What he had, he had a serious dose of emotional intelligence. I liked how he read people in the room and understand where they came from and what was their motivators. I love being around him. I feel like I was in sync with him.
[00:28:28.04] - Don Bacon
I forgot a great guy named Gerald Breedlove. He became NATO Commander. People would follow that guy to Helen back because he was such a good person with a good character. And finally, I'll just say, Gerald Gorts, another four-star. That was his deputy. And he made work fun every day. He got things done. But man, I was laughing and having a good time. He just had that ability of... Work should be fun. And if you got a boss that doesn't like to have fun, well, then it's painful. But this guy, we got the good things done. We had a good time doing it.
[00:28:59.02] - John S. Berry
Outstanding. Well, congressman Don Bacon, where can Veterans or listeners learn more about you and what you're doing?
[00:29:08.09] - Don Bacon
Well, my X is rep Don Bacon. My personal one that does more about family is Don J. Bacon on X. My staff will share with my Facebook a little bit. I do a lot of my own X media. But I'm in Omaha. I got a small district. I try to get out and about, and I love meeting people. If folks want to meet, let our office know, our official office. I love going to lunches or breakfast or meeting with small groups. If I can talk to a small group. I love talking about leadership. I studied leadership since I was a young 20-year-old kid, and I studied every commander I had, the good, bad, the ugly. I tried to learn from it.
[00:29:46.20] - John S. Berry
You're actually still a leadership professor, correct?
[00:29:49.11] - Don Bacon
I was at Bellevue. I hope to do more that when I go back to my third career here, do a little bit of mentoring on leadership and teaching leadership. It's fun to teach leadership. I learned all these leadership theories when I had to teach it, but I didn't really study that in the Air Force, but I knew exactly every theory. I said, I've seen this. I had more of the application and the experience, but it was fun to study in the theory, and it made sense then of 30 years of service, all these... Each theory... What I learned is, what, 20 different leadership theories? They're all right. It's like touch, feeling an elephant You feel the leg, you feel the stomach, you feel the... It's all an elephant, but they're a little bit different parts of leadership. That's what all these theories provide.
[00:30:37.18] - John S. Berry
Yeah, I think that's a great point because I think in the military, we define leadership as the art and science of influencing and directing others to achieve an objective or a mission. I always just say leadership is the art of getting results because there's about 30 different styles, and you have to be adaptive, and there's so much to it. But what I really like about it is leadership is being taught by someone who has actually done it, both in the military and in government. Even in law school, there were some amazing professors who had amazing legal careers then taught. Then there were some legal professors who really didn't have a lot of experience. It It's harder to learn the concepts from someone who had never put it into practice. I appreciate what you've done as a leader. Thank you for your time today. Thank you so much for your continued service to not just us here in Nebraska, but to the entire Veteran community. Thank you.
[00:31:32.02] - Don Bacon
Well, thank you.
[00:31:32.12] - Don Bacon
I hope I didn't say anything today that gets me sued. If so, I'm going to hire you. Yeah.
[00:31:37.13] - John S. Berry
Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we seek to help Veterans build an even bigger, better future after military service. Unfortunately for some of our Veterans, the roadblock to a better future is that they are not receiving all of the benefits that they earned. If you need help appealing a VA disability decision, contact Berry Law.