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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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[00:00:01.960] - Kevin Miller
If we put our values front and center and we let those be our guiding light, that be the compass that directs us to make decisions, make choices, act in our lives, we can't go wrong. But when we forget our values, when we compromise our values and allow our choices to be made with those values in the background, that's when all of the problems begin.
[00:00:27.440] - John S. Berry
Welcome to Veteran Led. I'm your host, John Berry. Today's guest is Kevin Miller, the founder of Know Power Know Responsibility. And he has an accompanying book and another book coming out this spring. Welcome to the show, Kevin.
[00:00:44.260] - Kevin Miller
Thank you, John. I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:48.160] - John S. Berry
Well, it's an honor to have you here. For many of us officers that had to go through Command General Staff College or ILE had to take that pain, you were behind the pain. Tell us a little bit about that position in the military where you got to direct some of that training.
[00:01:04.020] - Kevin Miller
Well, so, John, I understand you went through the most painful variation of CGSC, as we love our acronyms and our abbreviations, right? Because you were doing it remote. And back when we couldn't do Zoom meetings, we couldn't do virtual classes. So, while obviously the pandemic pushed us to that at one point, The best way to do that, the whole point of Command and General Staff course, is to make leaders who can work in a collaborative environment, who can problem-solve. It's a critical thinking course. And so, when I started out as an instructor and worked through the point of eventually becoming the director of instruction for half the country, the course that is run on the reserve side. I taught it as a critical thinking course. Everything that we did, I tried to push the instructors, I tried to push myself to draw out from the students that skill set that you have to have to think critically. It's really difficult because to think critically, you have to set aside your biases. You have to know your biases, and then you have to be able to acknowledge and account for them when you are going through the problem-solving process.
[00:02:25.510] - Kevin Miller
That's one of those things that is very difficult because our biases are so locked in. They're like bad habits that are ingrained inside of us. That is something that, in fact, that's reflected in all my books and my organization. It's all about getting people to be effective critical thinkers. But for me as an instructor, and eventually a director of instruction, it was one of the most rewarding things in my entire life, let alone my military career, because the impact that I could have on up and coming leaders, and watching them progress through their careers and seeing them move on to higher ranks and higher levels of responsibility. So just a phenomenal experience. And another thing I was just honored and blessed to be able to do.
[00:03:14.700] - John S. Berry
I thought it was a great course. It sucked because I was a practicing lawyer. I remember 2-3 times a week, we'd get on these remote calls for classes. Then we had projects and homework in between. But you're right, we really learned how to work as a staff. And so a lot of times what would happen is the project would be due the next day. And so we would have some guy who was actually an active duty soldier, just came back for deployment, did not have time to go to ILE or CGSC. So he ended up... We would send the slide deck to him that he would format. He was the format. He was the lowest-ranking guy, but also because he was on West Coast time, we could send it to him at the end of the day, and it was only the afternoon. So I remember that. And I remember also getting hit with that operations course afterwards. Some of us had to take, in addition to ILE, to be eligible for a promotion to Lieutenant colonel. And I got to tell you, I hated that class, but I love what I got from it in terms of learning how to better visualize the battlefield, really understanding operations and explaining the vision of how you want things to move forward.
[00:04:18.320] - John S. Berry
That was one of the greatest gifts I got. This is a painful gift because doing the class after-hours and coordinating with people, this was before Zoom, it was very difficult. But I made a lot of great friends, learned how to work with peers, and you're right, learn how to think critically. We all had our own biases, our own ways of doing things coming from different organizations, different staff specialties such as logistics or Intel, or we had a veterinarian. You come together and you have to create a plan and incorporate everyone's knowledge. I will tell you that the gift of that was, as I have built out my staff at Berry Law, one of the challenges was everything seems siloed in that if it was a let's say it's an IT issue. Well, only IT was solving it, right? Where in fact, it was affecting sales, marketing, operations. Everybody's affected, and yet just one person is trying to solve the problem. And that's the one thing I learned in ILE is like, no, it doesn't matter whether you're the logistics person and it's a logistics operation. Everyone contributes. We're all problem solvers, and we use the military decision-making process or whatever.
[00:05:23.340] - John S. Berry
But I really found value in that. And so, thank you for teaching that class, even though I badmouth you every day.
[00:05:31.320] - Kevin Miller
You're more than welcome. And yeah, AOC, that is a lot of people would say that. So that's the advanced operations course. And when that came into being, people were told, by the way, you're not done with Command General Staff College until you've also completed AOC. It's like, wait, what? It's like, where was the fine print? I don't remember seeing that in my contract that I signed. But it is, and I think the course has actually improved over time Because it now is an MDMP course. So, it's very focused on getting all these groups of students. And in fact, when we created our ILE, CGSOC classes, one of the one of the things we tried to do was we went through all of the branches of the students, and we tried to make sure every individual cohort of students had a mix of branches in it. So you'd have logistics, you'd have combat arms, you'd have the service and support because you had to have that so people understood why it was so important to have everyone involved. Like you said, even you see it reflected in your current business, your civilian business, I was going to say the fact that you did all that through collaborative phone calls maybe laid the groundwork for your podcast today.
[00:06:53.680] - John S. Berry
Well, definitely did for my remote team. I'll tell you that you learn how to lead remote when you have to work with peers remote. But I want to now talk about you've got over 30 years of military experience, and yet you've been able to parlay that into your next position, your book, your organization. Tell us about that. Tell us about the book, the organization, and what you pulled from your military experience to build this.
[00:07:18.780] - Kevin Miller
Absolutely. What's really interesting. I spent most of my time in the National Guard and Army Reserve, 37 and a half years. But I started out enlisted for nine years, went to OCS, got my commission, and eventually retired as a colonel. When I got in, I got in for money for college. Like so many other people, it's like it was a means to another end. I never saw a lifetime career. But eventually, I saw the rewards of the service, and I said, okay, I'm going to stick around until I don't enjoy it anymore. And low and behold, I enjoyed it enough. They had to kick me out, and I turned 60, and they said, Sorry, you're too old now. So I was like, All right, so we'll move on. But on my civilian career, I was in K-12 education. I worked in many different roles in the public education arena, from the local to the national level. At a certain point, the military and the education started to come together and coalesced in my head, and I started to realize that the problems we're facing in education are the same problems we were always facing in the military.
[00:08:25.670] - Kevin Miller
I mean, there are systemic problems. They're not the things that you could just, oh, we just, well, we just fixed this and everything's going to be better. So, I started to realize, and so the book and organization, no power, no responsibility, but it's K-N-O-W. So do you know the power you have? You understand the power that you have within yourself, and do you understand the responsibility that goes with that problem. And once I started to play around with how that all played together, I said, Wait a minute. If we change the way we do education, and we put kids in charge their own education, which is to say they take ownership. So we don't just put the inmates in charge of the asylum. It's a lot more than that. But if we could put our children and give them the power to be in charge of themselves and their education, they will take responsibility for it because they have pride. They have that desire to be effective when they know that they're in charge. That led to my first book on education reform, reinvention. But I also started to realize at a certain point that those same principles are what are going to save us as a nation from a lot of the chaos, a lot of the hatred, a lot of the divisiveness that has become so common, again, at the local up to the national level.
[00:09:48.740] - Kevin Miller
And so the book I've got coming out in the spring, which is called Superhero Nation, is all about helping people live their best lives, giving them the tools to live their best lives, which, interestingly enough, a lot of the same things that I taught in Command and General Staff College, it's all about critical thinking, but it's also about understanding the power we have as individuals and then being responsible for that power and not, and this is one of the most important, in my mind, lessons that are contained in the book is we take responsibility for things we don't have power of or we try to. So it's how I feel responsible for that. And it's stressful. It creates anxiety because we feel like, Well, I'm responsible for something, but you're not because you don't have power of. You can only be responsible for things that which you have power of. So, everything else you have to negotiate. So, if you want me to do this, what am I going to get out of it? It could be a personal reward. It doesn't have to be financial; it doesn't have to be material. But there's negotiating, and then there's personal power.
[00:10:51.980] - Kevin Miller
And once we take back our personal power, then we become responsible for the things which we have power over, which includes how we treat people and how we respond to new and different situations. And underlying all of these things in both books, in these principles, are values. One of the most important things I learned in the Army was the Army values. I live by those values today. If we put our values front and center and we let those be our guiding light, that be the compass that directs us to make decisions, make choices, act in our lives, we can't go wrong. But when we forget our values, when we compromise our values and allow our choices to be made with those values in the background, that's when all of the problems begin. So the organizations, the book that's coming out this spring are all about bringing those things together, helping individuals live their best lives by living their values, adopting the power, responsibility, principles, and then doing that as part of a supportive community. Those communities then become stronger, and we as a nation will all benefit then from each of us living our best lives.
[00:12:11.860] - Kevin Miller
It's a win-win situation that is going to benefit all of us.
[00:12:17.020] - John S. Berry
Well, I like what you said in the beginning about we worry and we have anxiety about things that we cannot control. And it's always in dealing with conflict, if someone is upset with you and they're going off on you, it's a reflection of them. It is not a reflection of you. And their inability to control their emotions, that's not you. It's always like, what you think of me is none of my business. How you feel about me is a reflection of you. And to the extent that I control what I can control, great. But where I, and I'm sure a lot of leaders have felt this, I always thought of myself as like, I'm never the victim because if I'm the victim, I have no power. Whatever the circumstance or person is, they have power over me. So I'm not the victim. And then I run into a scenario where it's like, okay, legitimately here, I am the victim, but I don't like that narrative. I'm not comfortable with that narrative because it makes me feel powerless. So instead of saying, I'm the victim here, and look at what the other person did, I say, No, what did I do?
[00:13:22.700] - John S. Berry
I did all the things right. And so I did the things that I felt were morally right. I did the things, took some courage. I'm very happy with my actions. I am not happy with the other person's actions or the outcome. I look at it from the perspective of, Well, I'm not going to allow myself to be a victim. This is, yes, I suppose it's very easy to say In this situation, I was the victim, and someone else took advantage of something. But that being said, I can't control that. All I can control is my actions. And so instead of looking at the situation from a feeling sorry for myself, feeling like, Oh, woe is me, I realized really quickly, no, I have to change the narrative to look at what I did. I'm very happy with my actions, even though I'm disgusted with the results in somebody else's actions. I think that is the key, because if you beat yourself down with things you can't control, your life will be miserable and you will be powerless.
[00:14:17.440] - Kevin Miller
Absolutely. Actually, a person I've gotten to know over the last couple of years through an organization that he started is Arnold Forzenager. One of the things he says, and so he repeats this on a regular basis, is if I see something that I know is wrong, it's frustrating. I think, Hey, somebody should do something about that. I look at it, and if I can do something about it, I'll do it. But if I can't, I let it go because otherwise it just becomes that baggage. It just becomes that stress and anxiety that I'm carrying around, and I have no control over it. That's just a very simple way of looking at this whole philosophy. If there's a problem and I can fix it or I can at least improve the situation, then go for it. That means I have some power and I have some responsibility. But if I don't, if it's out of my control, let it go and just move on to the next thing over which I do have power and control and do what I can there to make a difference.
[00:15:22.380] - John S. Berry
I think what's interesting on this front is you're also involved with Veterans for All Voters, a great organization. One of my friends and heroes, Todd Connor, is very involved in this, and I think it's a great way to get Veterans involved in politics. But the other side of the coin is you don't want to be watching CNN all day long. You want to break from that news because there's things you can't control. And I can remember, I think it was Ronald Reagan who said, Are you better off now than you were four years ago? And my response to that is, If you're not better off now than you were four years ago, it's your own damn fault. And I think if you're waiting a politician to fix your life, to fix your situation, it's not going to happen. Now, can government make things better for us? Absolutely. But can government make things better for you? That's an individual responsibility.
[00:16:13.980] - Kevin Miller
Absolutely. In fact, you stole a line that I repeat throughout the new book coming out because I say, our country is not going to be safe. It's not going to prosper. It's not going to live up to its potential because of anyone in elected office or because some rich person decided that they're going to use their wealth and power to do something. It's only going to get better if we, as citizens, each take our own responsibility for ourselves and our communities. If we don't do that, then there's nothing else. In fact, if we do that, we become less reliant on people with power and wealth. We become less reliant on the government to take care of us. We say, hey, you know what? We can reduce our federal spending because we don't need all these programs because people are taking responsibility for themselves. Granted, there's a lot of people with a lot of challenges that they've got to overcome, but that's where a community comes in, and We bond together so that we can address those problems collaboratively, cohesively. We help each other out. We put our values forward, and then we live those values, and we will make this a country that is always the envy of the world.
[00:17:32.240] - Kevin Miller
We don't have to worry about what's happening in Washington, DC, or in Hollywood, or any place else. We worry about our communities.
[00:17:41.540] - John S. Berry
As you said in the beginning, what you have learned is how to think critically and how to teach others to think critically. I think we all come into situations with different biases, different preconceived notions. I think the great thing about the military is we're stripped that pretty quick when 16 guys getting the shower together with four bars of soap, you've got five minutes for everybody to shower. These are people you just met on the bus, and they come from all over the country, all different races, religious beliefs. It doesn't matter because you learn really quickly we need to cooperate to survive. And so all of a sudden, we're open to learning and listening because we know we're all in this together. When the drill sergeant's screaming at us and we're all doing push-ups until our arms are about to fall off. It's like, wow, we have to be a team here, and I've got to get over. If I don't like you, I got to figure out why I don't like you. And let's talk about it. And as that develops, a lot of times in the military, you figure out, Well, why don't I like this person?
[00:18:46.100] - John S. Berry
Sometimes it's, I'm jealous, they're a better performer than me, or, I don't like them because they're a low performer, and they're dragging the team down. It's just being able to reflect and think, Okay, why do I feel this way? Why do I agree? Why do I disagree? And be willing to be vulnerable enough to have a conversation.
[00:19:03.800] - Kevin Miller
And a vulnerability is so critical. I love the fact. If you read Brené Brown's book on vulnerability, and a lot of people might say, Well, what does she know? She's great. It's all theory. But in her book where she talks about vulnerability, who does she talk to learn important lessons about it? U.S. Special Forces, military personnel. Well. And what they told her was, when we work as a Special Forces team, we have to be vulnerable with each other because that's the only way for us to trust in each other. And we have to be able to have that vulnerability-based trust, which is a Patrick Lencioni term I love, because it's all about that I can be who I am. I can make choices. I can take risks and fail. And I that you will have my back. You will be there with me. And that's the only way to have a team that can do the kinds of missions that Special Forces teams do. But that is the same for all of us. We have to be able to, whether it's with your spouse or significant other, with your children, extended family, your neighbors, your community, your organization, whatever it happens to be, you have to get to a point where you're willing to be vulnerable.
[00:20:25.700] - Kevin Miller
And once you get to that point, it's amazing how free you feel because you're no longer always looking over your shoulder to wonder, Oh, who's going to see this and say something about it? Who's going to criticize me? Who's going to not like me? Which you mentioned before. It's like, I can't do anything about what anybody else thinks. But I do want the people close to me to have faith and trust in me, to respect me. That means I have to do the same for them. It's a two-way street.
[00:20:53.400] - John S. Berry
Yeah. I find when we get upset, we want to just lash out. We want to tell this person how wrong they are, and we want to just burn them. But once again, that's where it's a reflection of us. And so I found that where I've been disappointed or been upset, I want to go off on people. And I've done that, and it hasn't been too successful. Usually, When you do that, you become the bad guy. And it's almost better to sit back with your thoughts. And usually, the best course of action is no course of action. And I've said this before. When I was a criminal defense lawyer, I would say my clients, for various reasons, generally would understand that they had a right not to talk to law enforcement, and yet they would. They'd always say, I understand I have the right to remain silent. I just don't have the ability to remain silent. I think a lot of us have that same problem where we know the best thing to do is to shut our mouths. And yet we want to launch into somebody, and it never does any good. And it usually harms us more than it harms the other person.
[00:21:59.190] - John S. Berry
So it's one of those hard lessons learned where you feel it. You know how you're feeling and you want to act on it. You feel this compelled to act, but you have to have the restraint to pull yourself back from saying or doing something stupid. But that being said, I want to push this into, who is your ideal candidate? Or who are the people that are involved in the Know Power Know Responsibility, I guess, workshops? Who's reading your book and what are they getting from it?
[00:22:31.820] - Kevin Miller
Well, so I'll tell you first and foremost, I'm the world's worst self promoter. And I'm great at being in leadership positions, in part because I never want. I've ended up in all kinds of leadership positions because I was the best person for the job at the time. And it's great. I'll jump in there, I'll do what needs to be done. But I've never been about blowing my iron horn or talking about what I've already done. It's what am I What am I going to do? And so, when I wrote the book, my first book, Know Power Know Responsibility, I had a lot of grand plans. Right as the book was getting published, I ended up going essentially on two years of orders with the Army. And so the book went into the background and I got doing other things. And that led to getting interested in doing the new book. And I was doing other things as well. My career just took different paths. And that was a bit narrow focus. So it's still for anybody who wants to figure out why do we have so many problems in schools? The first thing I do in that book is I talk about why do we have all these problems?
[00:23:49.020] - Kevin Miller
Why do we have achievement gaps? Why do we have so many kids not performing well? Why was the pandemic so disastrous for academic achievement? All these kinds of things that we talk about. Why is absenteeism a problem? And I identify all those, but it all comes down to the same thing, which is kids are not in charge of themselves. So that means everything we do in a school is a negotiation. So the book talks about why we're where we are, how we got there, and now how do we move forward? How do we actually create a new education model that will be effective? Anyone who's got an interest in that, that book is for you. The second book, the new book, it's really for everybody. Now, when I started it, I was looking to figure out how to help Veterans and servicemembers, especially those who are struggling with mental health challenges, suicide ideation, a lot of the challenges that we see coming out with Veterans on a regular basis, even though that's still a small percentage of the total number of Veterans. Those are the ones that need a lot of assistance. But what I figured out was the same things that will help them are the things that will help anyone live their best lives.
[00:25:02.670] - Kevin Miller
If you put it in that framework, because one other thing we know is as Veterans, we don't like to ask for help, and sometimes we don't even want to accept help because we say, oh, that's a sign of weakness, which we all know it's not. Most of us who are in the roles that you and I have now, John, we recognize that. We know that asking for help is a sign of strength, but it's very difficult for a lot people to do that. By looking at, Okay, if we frame this as, how do we help every soldier, every sailor, every Veteran, live their best life and give them the tools to do that, it will also help them develop the resilience and the ability to overcome the challenges they're facing. Then I turned that into a book that's for everybody, but it has a lot of military lessons in it. It really is a self-help book, but it's also a leadership book because if you adopt these principles, you will be a more effective, better leader of an organization, and nobody can live their best life in isolation. We have to have a community around us to live our best life.
[00:26:14.840] - Kevin Miller
And so by being a part of a community, living our best life, we make the community stronger. Then that community starts to spread the message. Everyone starts to get stronger. Everyone becomes more resilient. People take back their personal power. They become less prone to manipulation. They become less a victim mentality and now understand, what can I do to make my life better? What can I do to make my community better? When we do that and we spread that message, that's what's going to give us the strength as a nation to thrive for the next 250 years, to live out the vision that our founders had when they signed the Declaration of Independence. And to me, that is as important a work as anyone can be doing. So that's what the book is all about that's coming out in the spring.
[00:27:10.020] - John S. Berry
All right, let's go to the after-action review. Your examples of great leadership and horrible leadership. You don't have to name names. I'll start with the great.
[00:27:20.280] - Kevin Miller
The greatest leader that is burned into my memory was, and he Unfortunately, he passed away early in my career, but he was one of my instructors in Platoon Leader Development course when I was an NCO. He was one of my instructors when I went through the Officer Candidate School. He ended up being my company commander and Mentor going through that. He was one of the quietest, most thoughtful instructors and leaders, but he was so powerful in the messages he sent. One of I still remember to this day, he talked about how... He said, You want to show respect for your country and your flag. How many of you walk past a flagpole every day and don't salute it? Because it's just become that flagpole. It's just part of the background. He said, you know that our regulations in the Army say that when you are six paces from a flag, you present arms, and when your six paces pass, you order arms. It's like those kinds of lessons just sank in. Then again, he passed away. It was actually a civilian job accident. But to this day, Major, he was posthumously promoted to Major from Captain Vern Langehoff.
[00:28:48.570] - Kevin Miller
So, I don't mind sharing that name at all because that was just phenomenal. And another great leader, much more recent, was a four-star General Brown. He was the USERPAC, US Army Pacific Commander. He came and he talked to our CGSLC class about Mission Command. It was a class on critical thinking, MDMP, but he was also very vulnerable. He talked about the fact that as he's talking to us about Mission Command, he said, I've got three-star generals in my command that don't get it, and I can't figure out how to get them to adopt this. They want to micromanage. They want to be, they've got this old-school idea of leadership, he said. So again, it was setting an example of vulnerability, talking about challenges he's facing, while also talking about what is it That's going to make us successful in the future. Incredible stuff.
[00:29:49.040] - John S. Berry
I have a story about that because I think he was the same guy that was in charge at Fort Leavenworth when I went through my battalion command school. He was a three-star then.
[00:29:57.120] - Kevin Miller
Probably was, because that's where he started.
[00:29:58.860] - John S. Berry
Here's the story. I was a new lieutenant. I arrived at Fort hood, and we were going to deploy to Bosnia, but our sister battalion was going to deploy before us. I link up with some guys I knew from the Infantry Officers' Basic course, I'm going to live at their house while they're deployed, and then I'm going to deploy. I'm just sleeping on their couch for the last two weeks that they're there. Dan, one of my roommates, comes home. He's the platoon leader. His platoon sergeant, who was the Range NCOIC, hadn't slept in a couple of days, went outside the Range fan, shot an Apache longbow that was hot from... There was an Apache Range right next to it. And there was a huge investigation. And he was the lieutenant. I remember him saying, My career is over. And what happened was, so he was called, I think, in front of the... At the time, I think it was General Onerry.
[00:30:54.320] - John S. Berry
And then there was the two-star. I think the division commander's name might have been Burns. I can't remember. But as the story goes, The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Brown at the time then said, Look, this is on me. I am responsible. This is not about the lieutenant or the captain. They did their jobs. I am the battalion commander. This accident is on me. That was a hero moment with the troops because they saw him stand up and protect them. But also, it was interesting because as General Brott told the story, he said, well, then when we did the RIPTOA and the new battalion came in, that's my battalion, the battalion commander said, Man, you did such a great job here in Bosnia. It's too bad your career is over. And yet that battalion commander retired, I believe, as a lieutenant colonel, whereas General Brown got four stars. So, there's something to be said for in the military, you can survive mistakes. When you make mistakes, own it and protect your team. Protect them in way that, hey, it's on... Look, we might have all made mistakes. Negligence, protect them. Don't protect them if they do something willful.
[00:32:07.380] - John S. Berry
Mistakes of skill, that's okay. Mistakes of will are never okay, and we can never tolerate them. But that being said, yeah, so I know. Great leader. And that was the back story. So I knew when he was a battalion commander, that he was going to be a great leader. And then there you go, makes it a four stars despite having what looked like a career-ending accident early in his career. So let's go to the bad leadership.
[00:32:35.880] - Kevin Miller
So, John, unfortunately, there's enough of those to pull up to. So, I'll bring up one because this one, the lives were at stake, lives were lost. I commanded a police mentor team in Kunar province, Afghanistan, 2008-2009. So first, I'm going to do a shout-out because the guy who was my deputy on that team in Kunar, in two weeks gets promoted to Brigadier General in the Wisconsin National Guard. So, I'm so, so proud. I'm so glad he stuck around. He was a captain at that time Should have been a major, which was its own leadership problem, but he was phenomenal. But we worked with a gentleman by the name Captain Will Swensen, and We worked with the Afghan National Police. He worked with the Afghan Border Police. When we ripped out, he was still there. He still had, I don't know, maybe six months left on his deployment. A few months after we left, he ended up in a significant tick, firefight in a little village called Ganjgal, which every day on our intel reports, Ganjgal had come up with threats, something bad going on. Well, Captain Swensen was there with his team, border police, but there was a mission being led by the Afghan National Army for a key leader engagement.
[00:34:13.400] - Kevin Miller
And there's a lot been written on this. There's books that have been written. But so, Captain Swanson stayed back, was in the back where all the vehicles were, and the other team went forward. And not surprisingly, they got ambushed. And again, I won't point fingers, but they weren't getting support. The person who probably should have been in charge of everything that was going on was not on the scene. And Captain Swensen is like, We got to do something. So one, he starts calling for indirect fire. Oh, they won't approve the indirect fire. And part of that was there was nobody, I think, above the rank of captain back in the talk. And they were like, Oh, we've got these rules of engagement. Can you see the enemy? Yeah, but are you directly eyes on? Will you get that? That kind of stuff going on. So, he starts to go in and out of the battlefield bringing people back. In first, a US Army armored vehicle. I can't remember if they had an MRAP of Humvee, help me. But then when that was no longer serviceable, they're dropping in the Afghan's pickup trucks and driving in under fire to bring back wounded.
[00:35:32.640] - Kevin Miller
And unfortunately, the Army mentor team that was with the... It was actually a group of Marines that was with the US, the African Army, all were killed. He pulled all of them out to recover their bodies. His NCOYC, Sergeant First Class Ken Westbrook, got shot in the neck and he put him on a helicopter to get him out of there. Unfortunately, he also didn't survive. And when all was said and done, eventually, they got helicopter support that allowed them to at least withdraw without more losses. But in the end, Captain Swensen does his report, submits it, and of course, he's very honest about everything that happened, the lack of support, and he sends this after-action report. So, if you're familiar with Dakota Myers, he was a Marine corporal who was there, who, in a relatively reasonable amount of time, he gets awarded the Medal of Honor. Same person who submitted for him submitted for Swensen. But Swensen's pack had got lost. Three times, I believe, if memory serves me correctly. And of course, the conclusion that I would maybe draw is that he was critical of the leadership that was happening there. So eventually, though, he did get awarded the Medal of Honor.
[00:37:06.240] - Kevin Miller
And so, it's just there's leaders not taking responsibility. In a similar situation, I had to do an investigation of a unit that returned from Afghanistan. When they returned, their leadership started to hear all kinds of reports of problems when they were in country. I got assigned the investigation and I did that. And when all was said and done, I pointed at the higher headquarters leadership because that unit should never have been deployed to begin with. But of course, the commander of that unit got fired and other people got in trouble, but nothing happened. Despite my findings. It's like nothing else happened with that. And those are the things, again, not taking ownership. The example that give of then Lieutenant Colonel Brown saying, hey, that was my responsibility. That's the kind of leadership that we need. We need people to accept when they are responsible or sometimes even step up in this case and say, Yeah, I wasn't there. I didn't make any of the direct decisions. But ultimately, those are my units. Those are the people that I'm responsible for. And so I will accept that on their behalf because that's what good leaders do.
[00:38:30.480] - John S. Berry
Yeah, I found that if you really want to have values in your organization, core values, like you talked about the Army values, at Berry law, we have core values. And what I found is it's not just about giving an attaboy when people follow the core values or giving out awards for them or mentioning them and recognize them publicly. It's about sometimes as a leader saying, Hey, these are our core values, and this is the way we used one to make a tough decision, or in the alternative, this is a moment where we failed because we did not follow our core values. And to call yourself out like that and say, As a leader, I made this mistake because I didn't follow this value, I think shows that... Well, it prevents that People going up, like the packets getting lost, things happening because people are critical of the leadership, right? Because if the leadership doesn't know who's critical, or I should say, doesn't hear the criticisms, then they don't get the gift of feedback and they can't improve. Now, that being said, I'm sure that you've probably been involved in what used to be the command climate surveys.
[00:39:37.660] - John S. Berry
I had two company commands and battalion command. The one thing I noticed about those surveys was a lot of it might have had less to do with the leadership and more to do with, were we deployed at the time? Were we going into a deployment? Were we coming out of a deployment? A lot of it was, has the leadership been in place for a long time? Is there new leadership? When you do a change of command, you'd do those surveys. It always struck me as, this is great data and great information, but you have to be cognizant of where the unit is. What have they been through and what are they feeling right now? If they distrust the leadership, then it's your fault, and you have to rebuild that trust. I think it was General Dusty Schultz, she said, I think it was, Results happen at the speed of trust. If we don't trust our leaders to do the right thing, we're never going to get where we want to go.
[00:40:38.040] - Kevin Miller
I love that. I love that. Living your values is its own reward. It's amazing how good it feels when you know you've made choices for the right reasons, and you feel then that gives you that resilience. And it's even almost like a little shield of armor that, Hey, if things don't turn out as well as we hoped, at least I know I made those choices for the right reasons with my values out front. But then the other thing is we often don't know what the fallout will be of making poor choices. A unit that I did the investigation on, I think I interviewed 60-some enlisted soldiers. Some of them, you could just see the future leaders that were sitting there. I mean, these were people that it's like, Man, these would be great lifelong soldiers for the Army. And yet almost every one of those soldiers that I interviewed couldn't wait to ETS and get out. And the reason was because they didn't want to be part of an organization where what they experienced in a combat theater was what they understood that unit and that the Army was. That cost us so much Because a number of leaders in that chain of command didn't make values-based decisions.
[00:42:05.780] - Kevin Miller
They made convenience-based decisions. They took the easy decision. So, yeah, that's just so important.
[00:42:15.960] - John S. Berry
Yeah, and I think the other side of it as a leader, I have noticed that the things that have propelled our organization the furthest, most of those decisions were not popular. None of them were unanimous. So that being said, Kevin Miller, where can our listeners learn more about Know Power Know Responsibility, and your upcoming book?
[00:42:40.260] - Kevin Miller
I have a website, and simply, it's know responsibility knowresponsibility. Com. It's an author site. It's got from stuff. When I wrote the first book, I put a lot of resources there for people wanted to start doing education reform. So a lot of it's still based on that. But as the new book, it's scheduled to come out in the spring. In fact, literally yesterday, I finished the first round of revisions on the 18 core chapters. So my editor is going to be moving it to the next level of editing, my publisher, I should say. So again, the name of the book is Superhero Nation. So you can look at that. Look for it next spring. I'll have more information coming out. And certainly, when we get to meet the Military Influencers Conference again in the fall, I'll be there with the book talking about it and hopefully doing some sessions that share a lot of those same principles.
[00:43:44.700] - John S. Berry
Outstanding. For Veterans that want to learn more about you and your journey, Kevin Miller, where can they find you?
[00:43:53.940] - Kevin Miller
You can find me on LinkedIn. Reach out, say you saw me on John's show here on the podcast, and I'd be happy to link up with you. Kevin Miller. And of course, that's a fairly common name, so you may have to look for the one with the pretty head. Not the pretty face, just the pretty head. Other than that, I'm on Instagram as well. But as I said, I'm really bad self-promoter, so I don't do a lot of social media. That's one of those things I'll have to change is Because this is an important message to get out. That's why I also really appreciate you having me on top here to talk about all these ideas.
[00:44:38.680] - John S. Berry
Well, it's an honor, and I wish you well at the launch. The problem with writing one book is the second one has to be better. I wish you the best of luck with that. Thank you so much for sharing your journey on Veteran Lead.
[00:44:50.220] - Kevin Miller
You're welcome. Glad and really thrilled to be here. Thank you.
[00:44:58.560] - 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.