[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jamie Cochran.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Life Bavin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lead win.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Extreme Watership podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our topic for this episode is leadership as a skill.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is one of our core beliefs that Asheline Fright.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've done an episode previously on one of our other core beliefs that everyone is a leader.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we want to focus on if everyone's a leader they now have to learn the skill of leadership.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what does that look like?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is an earth-shattering concept to some people, because a lot of people just have the idea that leaders are born and not made, and that's just not true.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've learned that through experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's certainly a people that have innate qualities.
[SPEAKER_01]: that enable them to be more effective as leaders or give them a little bit of advantage, maybe they're charismatic, maybe they're an extrovert that likes to talk to people or have a loud kind of booming voice that people gravitate toward or they're really funny or they're engaging with people.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's some people that have that quality, but that doesn't make them a good leader.
[SPEAKER_01]: they still have to learn the skills of leadership.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people want to believe that you're either a leader or you're not a leader, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're born not made a leader and it's just simply not true.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've seen that over and over again in my experience in the SEAL teams, when I was learning leadership training.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in my experience in the last 13 plus years now of Eschlan front, we've worked with thousands of companies and tens of thousands of leaders, across the United States and around the world,
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, leadership is a skill.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a skill that you have to learn.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to develop just like any other skill out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, the military in just about every nation that I know of has a very long tradition of training its people on how to be leaders because we've known for a very long time that it's not something you're born with.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no such thing as a person that emerges from the womb with all of the traits, tools and characteristics that they need.
[SPEAKER_02]: to be a good leader.
[SPEAKER_02]: And to your point, there are certain things that can make it easier for some people.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I am a good communicator and I like having conversations and I'm a little bit extraverted, it's probably going to be a little bit easier for me to gain influence with people.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it doesn't mean just because I have those things that doesn't mean I'm going to be a good leader.
[SPEAKER_02]: And in our community, the SEAL teams, we really didn't did not put a big premium on leadership training for a really long time.
[SPEAKER_02]: It really wasn't until the early, early 2000s when we started to kind of codify what it meant to be a leader in the SEAL teams.
[SPEAKER_02]: one of the first people that had the opportunity to really take that and run with it with the junior officer training course that you put me through what I was a young leader and I took away tons of things from that course about what it meant to be an effective leader and one of the biggest things that I took away was there's not a personality trait that equals good leadership.
[SPEAKER_02]: Every single person has the ability to be a good leader.
[SPEAKER_02]: It just means doing certain things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something else I learned recently for my son.
[SPEAKER_00]: He went to a wrestling camp at the Naval Academy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I went one night to watch them wrestle.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I noticed that he kept picking sort of big bearded and much stronger wrestlers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I asked him afterwards, kind of why he did that, because there were definitely people that were at his skill level at his size.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was like, well, I'm not very good on the bottom.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got to get better there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to pick bigger, better wrestlers, who force me to get better on the bottom.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought that's what we as leaders should be doing every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be looking at and we've been talking for the last couple episodes.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's been a little bit of a running theme on taking that on a self assessment.
[SPEAKER_00]: But part of this is us understanding what our strengths are and us really understanding what our weaknesses are and training for those weaknesses.
[SPEAKER_00]: And putting ourselves in that position to say, hey, I might be a good communicator, but I lack a
[SPEAKER_00]: empathy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I need to do a better job of showing empathy in these scenarios.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our might be really charismatic and people like me, but I'm not very good at the details.
[SPEAKER_00]: And knowing for ourselves what we're good at and then recognizing where we need to put some effort into training the skill of leadership to get better in those areas so that we can be a strong leader across the board.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you really see this in your kids and my oldest son is 10 and he said it's a very high standard for himself, which is a great quality.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said it's a high standard for himself, he wants to perform well, but you know as a young man over the last few years he'll just start to he'll play
[SPEAKER_01]: Like his first year playing flag footballers first year playing baseball or he's playing like the second ever chess game He's ever played and when he doesn't perform at the absolute highest level possible then he's like, oh, I just I'm just not any good
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've really had to try to explain the same of like, looks on, no one is born, learning how to play chess.
[SPEAKER_01]: You actually have to learn how to play.
[SPEAKER_01]: You just played your cousin who's played 500 games.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you've only played two.
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, she's going to be better than you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, she has every advantage.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why does he have advantage because he's learned the skills required for that game?
[SPEAKER_01]: He understands the strategies, he's got experiences, he's got repetitions that you don't have.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the only way you're going to get better is that you continue to play.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you stop playing right now, you will absolutely never get better.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have to learn that skill.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the same thing that was sports.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I watch his progress in baseball and in fact football and in other sports that he plays and he's made great progress and he started to recognize that, okay, this is a skill and by the way, if I practice harder and I work harder and I ask people who have more experience than me who have been around and when I talk to my coaches and I work on the things that I need to be better at, I get better.
[SPEAKER_01]: and I get better and I perform better as a result.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's someone that it was a hard thing for me to get across to him that this is a skill, no one is born with a skill.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even though you might have some an eight quality, it gives you an advantage in playing sports or playing chess or whatever it is that you're trying to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Playing musical instruments, learning how to drive a car, no one is born with those skills.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to learn those skills.
[SPEAKER_01]: And leadership is absolutely the same way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I,
[SPEAKER_01]: Definitely saw this in debt in color running the junior officer training course, which really for me was an incredible leadership laboratory because I put 130 something junior officers to do training like yourself and like Jamie's husband.
[SPEAKER_01]: a flan who had gone through that course, she graduated from buds, our basic seal training program.
[SPEAKER_01]: So all these people are highly screened.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're on the path to be seals.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not yet seals.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're still seal candidates.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're still seal students.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I got to, I got to see in four weeks of classroom, and one week of field training exercise, where you actually got to go out and run some mock combat missions in a training environment, I really got to see.
[SPEAKER_01]: a whole bunch of different people with different skill sets.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got to see what works and what doesn't work.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what was fascinating to me is if I lined all of those junior officers up and said, oh, that guy's going to be a great leader.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a charismatic guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's got all the qualities that are going to make people kind of gravitate toward him and I picked someone else out of the crowd that maybe was
[SPEAKER_01]: to stand up in front of the group and present an idea and they really were terrified at doing that and there were a handful of officers in that course that had that issue.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is terrifying to stand up and present an idea to give a presentation in front of your peers to some people.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a very, very hard thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously a critical skill required in leadership,
[SPEAKER_01]: So I might say, like, hey, that person's probably not going to do well, I was completely wrong most of the situations.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I learned was that if regardless of what they're in eight qualities, where that might give them advantage as a leader, if they couldn't learn, if they couldn't listen, if they couldn't accept feedback, if they couldn't take notes, and they couldn't implement ways to get better as a result, I would see those people with all these in eight qualities fail and not do well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then later on in their silk careers,
[SPEAKER_01]: They got fired from positions when they didn't, they did terribly.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd see the introverted, you know, timid terrified to stand up at front of a group and present information.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd see those officers as long as they were willing to learn, as long as they were willing to learn the skill of leadership, get better as a result, take notes, implement solutions and fix problems that they had.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would see them get better and better and better as a result, and go on to have highly successful careers.
[SPEAKER_01]: in the SEAL teams.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was a absolute, and that showed me with absolute certainty that leadership is a skill.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and something to build off of there is, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: We didn't just have the junior after training course, and then that was it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was the only leadership training that you got throughout your career in the SEAL teams.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was a clear progression that we developed for our leaders, and they were constantly going to these different leadership courses of instruction that were built to prepare them for the next level of leadership.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you go to junior officer training course as a young officer.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then, before you can take command of a platoon, or before you can be a platoon chief, which is the the highest ranking and listed person in a platoon, you have to go to the platoon commander's course.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whether they're teaching you how to apply that skill of leadership to a platoon commander's spot.
[SPEAKER_02]: you want to be a troop commander, got to go the troop commander's course.
[SPEAKER_02]: Want to be a commanding officer of a seal team or a command mass chief of the seal team, which by the time you're a commanding officer, 16, 17 years in, by the time you're a command master chief, 20, 22 years in something like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were still sending them to these courses to continue to define their leadership skills.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what I saw was this clear progression of a deliberate focus on teaching people how to lead and teaching in the skill of leadership they dividends for our community.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because my last tour, when I was running the training command, I got to put every single putton commander and putton chief on the west coast through their training.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what I can say with absolute certainty is, those young leaders that we had coming through in 2019 through 2017 through 2019 when I was running training were infinitely more prepared to be a putton commander than I was when I was a putton commander.
[SPEAKER_02]: our selection didn't change, our wartime tactical training didn't change, the only thing that change was we continued to develop them as leaders and continued to pour into them what we expected from them as leaders in our community and it made a huge difference.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the point here is that leadership is not only a skill, it's a perishable skill.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just like any skill that we learn, whether it's learning a musical instrument or learning a language, you can lose those skills over time if you don't continue to put the practice in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I actually have seen this, my husband, he was fluent in Iceland at one point in his life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was conversational on Arabic, very random languages here.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the point is is like,
[SPEAKER_00]: the further away he gets from speaking getting, using it all the time, the more that he loses that skill.
[SPEAKER_00]: I grew up singing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a skill that I had that I practiced at home when I was young, and the further away I get from that daily exercise that I used to have when I was younger, and for the further away I get from the training, the less I am capable of controlling and doing some of the things that I used to be able to do, and leadership is the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like
[SPEAKER_00]: really dedicate your time and you get to a point where you feel strong and healthy and you're happy with that effort.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you just say, well, I've accomplished it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm done now and you stop going.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to look up in six months and see that you've reverted completely back to where you started.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so leadership is no different.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like any skill, we have to be willing to continue to put
[SPEAKER_00]: the effort in towards honing that skill.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think too often for leaders and we certainly see this with the clients that we work with.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have leaders, particularly in senior positions, who get to a point of, well, I'm now the CEO, I'm now the president, I'm now the Chief Operating Officer and my job is done, I have shown that I am this capable leader and I don't need to continue to improve.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is just not the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to be looking at
[SPEAKER_00]: in what area in our life are we getting complacent and putting our focus in effort towards continuing to build those skills.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and there's so many different reasons why that's true.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, just because you've seen it done right one way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe you applied a certain leadership tool to this one scenario and it worked out really well for you does not mean that that tool is going to work.
[SPEAKER_02]: with a different scenario or a different person.
[SPEAKER_02]: Generational differences.
[SPEAKER_02]: We all like to joke and complain about them, but for the most part, there's every generation is kind of the same, but there are generational differences.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if I think as a leader, that I can lead the exact same way with a 20 year old,
[SPEAKER_02]: who has no experience on the job, who this might be the first real professional experience in their life.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I think I can lead that person in the exact same way that I can lead the person that's been on the job for 20 years in a subject matter expert.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm setting myself up for failure and I'm setting that new employee up for failure as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's just a leadership challenge.
[SPEAKER_02]: I need to take the tools and skills that I've learned not get complacent and try to figure out how I can apply those correctly to lead this new generation and that takes constant evaluation and constant assessment.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's what makes leadership so hard is that human beings are all different.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of similarities in some ways, but there are differences.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every single person is different.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's what makes leadership so incredibly challenging, but also so rewarding as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Jaco and I were at an event a few years ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: And someone asks us the question, when were you at your best?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought that was kind of a funny question, because the answer when it comes to being a leader, the answer is never, I'm always trying to get better.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm always trying to improve.
[SPEAKER_01]: The moment that I feel like, I've got it all figured out, I've got all the answers.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is when you go full, like Ricky Bobby, Talodeg and Nights, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're, you know, I'm just the best there is and no one could touch my stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're never gonna make any progress.
[SPEAKER_01]: in the direction of getting better, and to your point, Jamie, it is a perishable skill.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're actually setting yourself up for failure, because if you don't see leadership as a skill, and a skill that has to be constantly worked on and developed and honed all the time, then you're actually not going to do what you need to to constantly be on this continuum, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The training when it comes to leadership development is not in an accumulation.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a continuum.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't just read a book, you can't just go to a seminar, you can't just take an online course, you can't just listen to a podcast if they go, I got all the answers.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something that you have to be thinking about all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's one of the reasons that we're doing this, so that people can listen to this podcast and short duration.
[SPEAKER_01]: Leadership can be top of mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can think about ways that you can get better and you have to do that all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you can't do it every day, you definitely should be doing it at multiple times a week if not weekly, at a minimum, because if you don't do that stuff, and if you're not investing in your people to step up and lead, then they're not gonna get better either.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's one of the biggest things that we see, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Where people complain about that their team is good enough, and I don't really trust the leaders on my team to step up and lead, and we say, okay, well, let's look at your leadership training program.
[SPEAKER_01]: How much time are you spending training and developing and mentoring people?
[SPEAKER_01]: And for the people who tell us that, they're not spending any time.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not spending any time in developing their people.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not looking at leadership like a skill.
[SPEAKER_01]: They think they can just go out and hire someone, and they'll be great, and plug them into a job.
[SPEAKER_01]: Regardless of how great someone is, you have to invest in them.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to invest in their leadership development.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that is why it's so crucial to recognize that leadership's a skill.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we, you know, there's a way to develop your leadership capabilities.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's the exact same way that you would develop any other skill that you're trying to learn.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whether it's an instrument, whether it's a language and kudos to Flynn, because I'm still trying to get a basic grasp of English down, whether it's
[SPEAKER_02]: When we were in the field teams, you know, Marksmanship, if I wanted to be a good shot, it didn't happen by accident.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had to go to the range and I had to practice all of the different skills that when you put them together makes you a good shot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Your stance, your draw from your whole story, your presentation, your trigger squeeze, all of those things we had to practice over and over and over again.
[SPEAKER_02]: if the goal was to be a good marksman, and it's the exact same thing with leadership.
[SPEAKER_02]: Step one is you have to learn about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to learn what it means to be a good leader.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to learn what leadership is, what's the purpose of leadership, how do I lead effectively, what are the tools that I should be using to be a good leader, and then you have to practice it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And look, if I want to be better at the guitar, I know how to practice that.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I sit down, I get some deliberate practice and it can be a little intimidating for people when you say leadership practice.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, what is my leadership practice?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, if you're a teammate at a company, that's your leadership practice.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is interacting with your teammates, interacting with your chain of command, trying to build influence with him, trying to get things done.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I'm a leader at a company, that's my practice.
[SPEAKER_02]: Lead my team, point them in the right to direction, accomplish the mission.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I'm a parent, that's my leadership practice is with my kids, how am I doing, leading my family and developing them and the things that I think they need to lead us successful life.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's your practice as your day-to-day role that you're executing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the last piece of this that's the most crucial is also the one that we don't like doing, and that's the assessment.
[SPEAKER_02]: The very brutally honest, deliberate assessment of what did I do right, what did I do wrong, what do I need to correct for tomorrow?
[SPEAKER_02]: And if I follow that loop of constantly learning, constantly practicing, and constantly assessing, you're going to develop your skills as a leader, and as long as you do that, you're not going to allow yourself to slip into that complacency.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to make sure on that path though, you don't get hung up on a bad day.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like any skill, whether it's training you just to or learning a new sport or an instrument or a language or any of those efforts, you're gonna have days where things don't go as planned.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a bad practice, you have a bad day on the mat.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can't let that derail your progress.
[SPEAKER_00]: The same thing happens in leadership.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are on the path of learning these principles of applying them effectively of becoming better leaders.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we make a decision that wasn't the right decision or we cost friction with a teammate or we say something we didn't intend to or someone takes something that we decision we made in the negative way and we sort of, well, okay, and we, it derails our progress.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember there was a gal who had been a
[SPEAKER_00]: a connoisseur of our content.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had read the book multiple times.
[SPEAKER_00]: She has notes written in every, you know, margin of all of the books.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had been joining the Academy, the live sessions we run every week, participating and engaging.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's been a multiple musters and she went to an FTX and the FTX, our field training exercise program.
[SPEAKER_00]: the entire intent of an FTX is to expose your weaknesses.
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole point is to put you in a position where you get to recognize what your instincts are as a leader and usually the negative instincts of your leadership qualities.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what this was doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was putting her in that pressure test.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember there was one particular run.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you were at this event and she was struggling.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was just having a rough time because that's what the FTX is intended to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she took a break during one of the runs, and she was outside, and she was telling me, you know, sort of frustrated with herself, I've done all this work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I read the book, I've joined the sessions, I've done the homework, I know this, and then when I get to put it to the test, I feel like I'm failing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I'm a fraud is what she told me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember thinking like this, you were on the right path of learning the skill of leadership.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because A, you have enough humility to recognize that you feel like a fraud and guess what?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're all frauds.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I told her.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're all frauds.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a leadership instructor here at Eschlan Front.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I would be lying if I told you, I didn't fail at this on a regular basis.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so,
[SPEAKER_00]: The effort comes from the continuous practice of these principles.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the skill, not doing it perfectly, but continually practicing and getting better, even when we make mistakes, and not letting those mistakes derail us from that progress.
[SPEAKER_01]: no one's going to do it perfectly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's going to get a fall short of the market.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think this is what you're trying to work toward, chief.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I love about that field training exercise program where we put people out there, participants with laser tag guns, and we put them these mock style seal missions, is to, as you said, expose this weaknesses and put them outside of their comfort zone.
[SPEAKER_01]: because there's no growth in the comfort zone if you're never going to learn to be comfortable in an uncomfortable situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't get put in that uncomfortable situation and the thing that stood out to me about her, particularly she's, she is a great leader that we love working with and has dedicated the study in skill leadership, very proud of the progress that she's made and the impact she's had with her team.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, I recognized that she was listening, taking notes, and thinking about things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, she had the knowledge of leadership, but she had not applied that knowledge of leadership.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's the thing about a field training exercise, is that that's what's so cool about that FTX program, is it's hands-on training, it's hands-on training, and you have to apply that knowledge.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's forcing you to apply it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that applies to any leadership program or training that you have.
[SPEAKER_01]: you need to put people in uncomfortable situations.
[SPEAKER_01]: They can learn to be uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the ways we do that Exxon Front is to use role play as a leadership tool to train people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that if I'm working with leaders and they're gonna have to go have a tough conversation with their boss or another department head, in the organization, we role play that scenario.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, particularly if there's a clash of egos and there's been some frictions in that relationship before what we can role play that.
[SPEAKER_01]: who do terrible in the first or second iteration.
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the third or fourth iteration of just a brief few minutes of a role play exercise, they get infinitely better, infinitely better.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's exponential progress that's made with each iteration of just a leadership role play exercise where I'm playing the person that you have a professional relationship with, how are you dealing with me, how are you approaching me?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do we can stop, we debrief, we implement the feedback from that debrief we do it again, we maybe we do it again, and just by that third iteration,
[SPEAKER_01]: conversation out of the park.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a great leadership tool that we use is the role play and that enables people to get in uncomfortable situations because no one likes having those tough conversations.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're very hard to do, very hard to do well without escalating and creating expressions of relationships.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is a great example of how you work on the skill of leadership and you improve and you get comfortable and what otherwise would be an uncomfortable situation, then you can go and successfully execute.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the point that I love your making is putting it into practice.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've given some of these examples of other skills.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're going to learn a language, you have to go out and speak it and get feedback on whether or not you're accent the way you're saying things is accurate.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I grew up learning how to sing, I had to go put that into practice and actually get in front of an audience and sing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Same with you, just do or a sport.
[SPEAKER_00]: You do all the practice, but then you have to go test yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: in the game scenario or in the tournament scenario or whatever it might be putting yourself in those opportunities to get some actual experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: What prevents us from wanting to do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, feeling like we're gonna fail, a hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is our ego, all day long, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's our ego.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we say in jujitsu, the mats don't lie.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we can't get out of the mat and pretend that like all I have all the skills and I've been training for a long time, you cannot pretend, you can't hide, just like in the FGX program, you can't hide where you have some deficiencies.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that becomes very apparent.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's, it scares people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what's funny about these roleplay exercises
[SPEAKER_01]: that won't go into the role play, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, okay, Jamie, you and I role play that, and you're like, well, in that situation, here's what I would say.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, no, no, we're in the situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're talking to me, right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you don't want to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to stay in the third person.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't want to dive into the role play.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so much more comfortable there, and you're like, no, get in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to practice this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what's fascinating about it is in a role play, you will see someone who, in the third person, will absolutely say, oh, yeah, you know, I should definitely take ownership of that and, you know, I get deep certainly do better.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the moment that we start role playing it in the first person, they can't say that anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you should have done a better job, and it just immediately goes downhill, and it's very, very hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think we don't want to be in those situations because it's uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you don't put yourself in uncomfortable situations, just like if they didn't put seals into really tough challenging chaotic combat situations, they wouldn't be ready for the actual chaos of real combat.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the, the last thing that I would say on this topic is just that constant need for assessment.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's how you improve, because I can practice all these things, but if I'm not assessing, I'm not going to improve.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I can do all these things, but if I'm not assessing, I'm going to become complacent and eventually, like within a skill, I'm going to plateau in that skill and not progress beyond that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's that constant cycle of
[SPEAKER_02]: Learning about what it means to lead, practicing that, whether it's at home, whether it's in the workplace, and then those brutally honest self assessments that help us develop and keep us from getting complacent.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is a perfect segue to our immediate action drill for the week, which is you need to take that time to assess your weaknesses as a leader and then look for some opportunities to train that skill.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a lot of different resources and tools out there, little plug for the echelon front academy.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a lot of different ways out there you can practice the skill of leadership.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look for that opportunity and put yourself in this position to either learn or hone the skill of leadership.
[SPEAKER_01]: Recognize that leadership is a skill, and you have to work on that skill all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, when you could take that honest assessment to yourself, you can evaluate your weaknesses and focus on those weaknesses because that's the only way that you're gonna improve.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you do that, you'll be able to lead and win.
[SPEAKER_01]: So until next time, lead yourself, lead your team and win.