Tales of Leadership
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Tales of Leadership
#106 Anthony Randall - Practicing Excellence: Aligning Passion, Purpose, and Precision
Dr. Anthony Randall is the President and Founder of Vanguard XXI, where he specializes in leadership development and executive coaching, transforming leaders and organizations across various sectors. With over 28 years of high-performance leadership experience, Dr. Randall has coached more than 17,000 professionals in the U.S. Army, Special Operations, Major League Baseball, NCAA Division 1 Athletics, and Fortune 100 and 500 companies. A retired Lieutenant Colonel, he served in six combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and has held roles as an Army Combat Arms Officer, Army Ranger, Chaplain, and Ethics Instructor. Dr. Randall is a certified executive coach with seven certifications, and his thought leadership, combined with his expertise in character development, culture, and strategy, has made him a sought-after speaker. He has authored three books, including the international bestseller Practicing Excellence, and is a graduate of the United States Military Academy and Fuller Seminary, with advanced degrees in Divinity, Theology, and Leadership.
Connect with Dr. Anthony Randall:
-Website: https://www.vanguardxxi.com/
-LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vanguard-xxi/
🫡 My Why: I’ve seen the cost of poor leadership — how it can destroy morale, break trust, and in the worst cases, lead to lives lost, including through suicide. That’s why I’ve committed my life to helping others lead with purpose. Through Tales of Leadership, I share real stories and actionable insights on how to overcome adversity and become the kind of leader people remember for the right reasons.
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Yeah, what I have learned is that it's hard to put the chaplain into the ranger and it's even harder to get the ranger out of the chaplain right. And so you know, I had to learn that it was okay that I could actually be both right and how to bring that identity full circle, your view. But when I was at the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade, when I left the battalion chaplains and religious affairs specialists they gave me that shepherd's crook and they said you've been a shepherd to us and down. Each side of the shepherd's crook is four words, and what I try to teach chaplains all the time is like listen, you've got four roles.
Speaker 1:You have to be a pastor. So whatever religious faith group you come out of, you've got to be able to preach and teach the truth of your scriptures right and understand that and be a theologian. Second, you've got to be a priest. You've got to be able to bring the holy. You've got to be able to bring that sacred presence right. You know we're the ones that can baptize and marry and bury, and so how do you bring that priestly presence into those times and spaces?
Speaker 2:priestly presence into those times and spaces. You're listening to the Tells the Leadership podcast. This podcast is for leaders at any phase on their leadership journey to become a more purposeful and accountable leader what I like to call a pal. Join me on our journey together towards transformational leadership.
Speaker 3:All right team. Welcome back to the Tales of Leadership podcast. I am your host, josh McMillian. I am an Army leadership coach, I'm the founder of McMillian Leadership Coaching and, most importantly, I am the host of the Tales of Leadership podcast, which you are listening to. And I have a mission to be a better leader, the best that I possibly can and I plan to do that by bringing on other pals what I like to call purposeful, accountable leaders those who lead with integrity, intention and create an impact. And I also plan to use this platform to continue to self-study the leadership habits that will help me be a better leader, which I plan to share with you all absolutely free. Why? Because I want to build better leaders that this world needs now what I like to call purposeful, accountable leaders, with the goal of impacting 1 million lives in the next 10 years by creating powerful leadership concept. And before we start again, I want to provide you some free tools. You can go to mcmillianleadershipcoachingcom slash tales of leadership. You'll be able to find every single podcast episode that I've ever filmed to include leadership articles, and you'll find specific podcast articles for each one of the episodes that I have a purposeful, accountable leader on, like today and it distills down the key facts. So maybe you don't have time to listen to the whole podcast episode, but you can read that single page document essentially and get the key points out of it. You can go to talesofleadershipbuzzsproutcom and you can listen to any of the podcasts there, or you can find it on any other major platform that you listen to. And then always make sure you subscribe to McMillian leadership coaching so that way you get notified whenever I release a new podcast episode or a new article.
Speaker 3:But on today's episode we are interviewing Dr Anthony Randall. He is a transformational leader, speaker and and the president and founder of Vanguard 21, where he drives leadership excellence through executive coaching and development. With over 28 years of high performance leadership, he's coached more than 17,000 professionals across the US Army, special Operations Command, major League Baseball and Fortune 500 companies. He is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel with six combat tours. He served as an Army Ranger, a chaplain and an ethics instructor. His international bestseller Practicing Excellence, restoring Civility, faith and trust, leadership in the public square reflects his passions for ethical leadership. He loves martial arts. He's also an ICF professional accredited coach for PCC, a keynote speaker, and he's just inspired every day to help build other leaders by aligning passion, purpose and precision. So let's bring on Dr Anthony Randall. Anthony, welcome to the Tells the Leadership podcast. Brother, how are you doing?
Speaker 1:Good, josh, great to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. So. A mutual connection connected us and I think this is going to be a great episode because you really do have a very interesting story, not only from the military, but also in a faith based leadership and a very successful entrepreneur author. So, kind of like, try to get all of that in one episode is going to be a challenge. We're just going to have fun, yeah, fun, yeah. So I think I always love starting off with the same two questions for everyone, because it kind of sets the tone is if you could provide, just like an overview of who you are and then set the barometer of what you believe leadership is.
Speaker 1:Okay, so hey, my name's Anthony Randall and spent about 30 years in leadership. So started out at the United States Military Academy, west Point, graduated from there I barely got into West Point, I barely got out of West Point I always tell people that, so that's my academic prowess there but privileged to go to the 82nd Airborne Division, spent several years there and then decided to get out of the military that's part of my story, if we get into that tonight. Went in the corporate world, did very well there for a few years and was called into full-time ministry. So went back to seminary and pastored a church for a few years, came back on active duty and spent 15 years as an army chaplain in conventional and special operations units and then had the privilege to do some ethics teaching and character development as well and retired as the garrison chaplain at fort benning about four years ago this month actually. So, uh, it's been a great journey.
Speaker 1:Uh spent a lot of time in professional sports, college sports, and uh built a leadership development executive coaching company called vanguard 21 and that's what we do today. So today we've got a great team of 13 folks and we're a full spectrum, world-class leadership development and executive coaching company. So we kind of have three pots we do corporate, private, public sector, we do dod and then we have our own international coaching federation coaching academy where we actually run five different professional coaching certification courses. So people come to us to get certified as professional icf coaches. So I want to think about the Army operational concept. We're in that institutional, operational and personal development domain. So I guess doctrine hasn't left me after all these years.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So that's awesome too is that you're certifying ICF, international Coaching Federation. So I was part of, I think, the Army's first cohort when they if you're familiar with that the Army coaching program and I had the blessing of having a job that allowed me some flexibility to actually do that and it's paid dividends. I think it just like my leadership development, not only like for my own personal growth and like me just being passionate about like learning the science of leadership, but leading civilians. So I left. I was an infantry guy for like the last 10 years of my life. I was a hammer. The world was my nail um, as as most barrel chest and freedom fighters are Right. And then I had to go put on a different hat and lead civilians for the first time and you don't have influence or any authority. How do you do that? You do that and going through that army coaching program. It would have made me such a better company commander and a platoon leader if I had that opportunity earlier in my career I agree.
Speaker 1:I think that goes to your second question of how do I define leadership, and I define it simply leadership is influence. I mean, I still operate off of the, the leadership definition we were all taught in the army 30 years ago when I was a leader to pride. You know purpose, direction and motivation and, and you know, accomplish the mission, take care of people. But leadership in its most simplest form is influence. You either positively influencing people, negatively influencing people, or you have no influence on people. So I think, barrel it down to one word right there.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So ADRP and I always have this pulled up because this is like one of the key policies that I always go back to influencing people by providing purpose, direction and motivation to accomplish the mission and improve the organization influence. And when I started this journey of trying to become the best leader that I possibly could not just like for the army right, but like for my own self and for my family I kept going back to that word influence, influencing and how do we influence others as a leader and that's very hard in my terms I always kind of go back to you inspire people. Of John Quincy Adams. He has one of the best quotes I've ever heard A leader, if you can help others see themselves to become more, do more, be more, then you are a leader, and that's not an exact quote of his, but I always kind of go back to that. If I can inspire other people to go, push beyond their comfort zone, that's leadership. So I love your definition of leadership as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that goes right back into coaching. Right, I mean most people. The number one comment we get after the first day of our coaching course, which we do, by the way, in person 50% of our coaching courses are virtual and asynchronous, but we do a one week intensive in person because the magic is in the room when we bring high performance to the room. Man, it's just magical. You can't do that with 70 people on MS teams stabbing themselves in the eyes with a pencil, but so we love getting people in a small group. And the number one thing people say all the time after that first day is oh I definitely wasn't coaching before.
Speaker 1:I was calling myself a coach, but I was not coaching. And once you go through a transformational coaching program and process like ours, your leadership style will shift and grow and change. And it is because coaching is truly about drawing potential out of people. And to draw potential out of people you have to do that through creativity and curiosity and be invested in people. And so a lot of people think coaching is telling you how I did it 10 years ago and you should do it my way. That doesn't work so well.
Speaker 3:You always go back to like the three Cs and it's funny we haven't even dived into like your backstory yet, but this reminds me of when I was in OTC um, uh, jrtc a bunch of acronyms for non-military listeners is joint readiness training center, uh and observer coach, trainer and I had. This was the best job, hands down, that I've. I ever had the opportunity to do one because the army messed up and they gave me a keys to my own Humvee and that was just the best time of the world. Never getting the chance to drive myself around and then basically getting full reign in the box at JROTC, but being embedded with platoons and companies, especially before I had a company, and just being able to observe. And I wouldn't say I was very good at the coaching part, but I knew doctrine pretty well so I could help train and I could provide mentorship.
Speaker 3:And towards the end of that time I really started mastering the coaching aspect of like hey, I'm here, I'm embedded with you, I'm going to sleep with you in the field. And I agree to your point where you just said is that there's just an intangible lessons that can be learned when people are pulled into a room and we're not seeing each other through a screen because you can pick up on the emotion. There's a level of like, just energy, that you can pull off of people, especially like-minded people when you're in the same room together yeah, it's a level of understanding heuristics, and we teach heuristics in our course.
Speaker 1:We teach that active listening is part of also reading tone and tact and tempo of voice, eye, movement, body language, and so we teach a transformational coaching approach that actually helps people listen to people's physiology, to their mindset, to their bodies, their emotions, and so that's why we really believe that you coach the person, you don't coach the problem, uh, and so you have to do that transformationally.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So kind of starting back at like your career. Um you, you spent, you know, over 20 years in in the military. What pulled you in to go serve? Because I think everyone has like a really good story of why they chose to serve.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, april 19th was just a few days ago. So my eighth great-grandfather was at Lexington and Concord. He was a Massachusetts militiaman. That was part of the first skirmish there that started the Revolutionary War. And my fifth great-grandfather was a POW, was also a Massachusetts militiaman, captured by the Confederacy in the Civil War and spent most of the war in a POW camp. So we've got a long lineage on my side of the family of serving our nation.
Speaker 1:My father served in the Air Force. He was enlisted in the 1960s in Europe and so I always kind of had that sense of service, like our mutual friend Brabs. I grew up in scouting and so there was this sense of um. We had a really strong scout troop really, you know, centered on values and character development and training boys to be men right through through character development and um, and so it was that sense of service. And so I'll just never forget, uh, two, two things.
Speaker 1:During desert storm I tried to enlist when I was 17. And I think my dad about locked me in the house you know, he's like finish the night and I remember a recruiter came over and this was back in the late 80s, early 90s, 1990. And this recruiter gave me that classic be all you can, be trifold. And he opened it up and there was airborne some dude jumping out of a plane. There was Ranger, you know, some poor Ranger sucking it through a swamp, you know. And then there were special forces and that guy was just doing something cool, because they always get to do that stuff.
Speaker 1:And I asked the recruiter I said I want to do all three of those. How do I do all three? And he's like well, let's just slow down there a little bit you know, I was like I'm not interested if you can't tell me I can do those things.
Speaker 3:So it was uh that's how you went to 82nd first, so that's like your right.
Speaker 1:So, uh, working my way through high school, I started looking at the service academies and, um, I want to go to West point. I'll never forget the marketing package they sent back in the day where I have I still have the poster of the States and eight by 11, and it had four, you know, great generals, a couple of presidents on there, like President Grant and President Eisenhower, and it said much of the history that we teach at West Point was made by the people we taught. And I said, oh well, that's where I'm going to college. So, so that's how I started my military career, through the academy and, very blessed, my daughter's a cadet there today. So, and then, and then, my son just accepted an Air Force ROTC scholarship to college. So we're continuing that path. Josh, how about you? What got you into it?
Speaker 3:So it's an interesting story and it's going to tell you a lot about younger Josh. So I had a torn ACL and lateral meniscus. It was during football season, right September, I decided that, hey, my knee's. During football season, right September, I decided that, hey, my knee's just hurting too much. Today, mom, I'm going to take a sick day. That happened to be on September 11th and I remember sleeping in that day, kind of just feeling sorry for myself, like, hey, I just had this major surgery. And then my mom wakes me up at eight o'clock and I was like, mom, what doing? I was like you need to come see the tv, you need to, you need to see this. And I never felt, um, like that before.
Speaker 3:I grew up in rural west virginia and appalachia and if you're part, come from there. It's very small knit community, uh, a lot of like local relatives, uh, in a good way, a very good family, traditional community. And it was like, hey, a personal attack. I felt that someone outside my sphere of influence that I could affect just attacked my family and that started pulling me towards a sense of service, towards something greater than myself, and then I was dead set on. I was going to go be a Marine. That's what I wanted to do.
Speaker 3:Um, I was like, hey, I want to go challenge myself the most that I possibly can. And which branch of service can do it? Uh, not the Coast Guard, not the Air Force. I don't like swimming. So it was between the Army and the Marine Corps, and Marine Corps just had better uniforms in my mind. Uh, and then last minute, I decided to go to the army because I wanted to go to ranger school. I was like, well, you can't do that as a Marine. Um, but that's why I chose to serve and that's why I always love hearing people who have served like what their story was, what drove them to that.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yeah, I was about 30 seconds away from becoming a Marine, so I was like I like I said I was, you know, I barely got into West Point and I barely got out, so I was a third alternate and so it was the last day that you could find out from the academy if you received an appointment. And I was out playing baseball in the yard with my brother just playing catch and I had my four-year Marine ROTC scholarship to Boston University on the countertop and I was going to go run it to the 5 o'clock mail and I was just waiting, waiting to see if something came in the mail for us, and, uh, my dad came out on the phone. He's like, hey, he's like there's a phone call for you. And it was actually our Congressman who, like, personally, called me, Wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:And he was like hey, is this Anthony Randall? And I'm like yes, sir, it is. He's like, well, he's like the two guys in front of you have turned down their appointment. So I'm offering you an appointment at West Point and I'm sitting here with the car keys in my hand and the envelope in my hand as I'm talking to him, you know, and I'm like well, sir, you know, I really appreciate that, but I've got this.
Speaker 1:And then I had like that Ferris Bueller's Day Off moment, you know, and Ferris B Rooney. My dad slaps the phone out of my hand. He's like what are you doing, man? He's like pick up the phone and tell the congressman you're going to West Point. I was like yes, sir, so you know. So that's how I almost became a.
Speaker 3:Marine. But I've always had a great deal of respect for the Marines. They've never changed their mindset around the recruiting is like hey, it is a privilege to be a Marine, it's not a right. You can try out. You may not make it, but what? What really sets them apart is their standards and discipline.
Speaker 3:And if you look back at the Korean War right right after World War II, hey, this was the greatest war ever fought. We're never going to need standing armies again. We've invented these things called nuclear bombs, which allows for strategic deterrence, so we're never going to fight another land war. Well, about another 10 years goes forward, give or take, and then the Korean War starts off and army brig brigades, like tire combat brigades, were getting wiped off the face of the earth. But the Marine Corps had the least amount of casualties during that time. Why? Because they never allowed their standards to drop, and I think it's holds through to today. I've never. I work with a good buddy of mine. He's active duty Marine within the special operations command and I have never seen someone who's more driven and hardworking than he is. But I've never seen a bad Marine If that's a if, if that's even possible I've never seen a bad Marine.
Speaker 1:Yep, I think you make a great point and I think any of your listeners that are active duty today in that tactical or operational, even strategic space, if you have, if they haven't read this kind of war by TJ Fehrenbach on the war this is going to be, it's not near peer, it's a peer. And the PLA does not fight by the same rules that we fight under. They don't fight under the same just war principles and they don't have the same concept of war. We have a Clausewitzian perspective of war. They have a Confucius perspective of warfare and combat and you need to read Sun Tzu. So if you've got listeners out there that haven't read this kind of war and they haven't read Sun Tzu and they haven't read Musashi's the Book of Five Rings, and if they haven't got into some classical thinking from the eastern part of the world, they're going to sorely be in a bad spot, you know. So I a hundred percent agree with you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and they, they culture, not even from like a warrior ethos level too, but like just from a civilian side, within like fortune 500 companies. Right Like theft. We'll just go from there. Do you think it's morally and ethically right to steal someone's intellectual property? And then there's a great book at war If you've got a chance to read that which essentially talks about like a lot of the intellectual property that has been stolen over the years. But if you look at it from like a cultural perspective, like from Asia, hey, it's your fault that I stole that because you did not protect that well enough. And to me, like that just blows my mind because it's a red line. You don't. You do not lie, cheat or steal. That's just things that we don't do as leaders, or is like good Christian men.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's important to understand our cultures, right? I mean, did you spend time in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Speaker 3:Yeah, more in Afghanistan and a little bit in.
Speaker 1:Afghanistan. You know it's different than talking to a leader in Iraq, and they think differently than we do, and it's just. It's their worldview, and so understanding those concepts is incredibly important. As a warrior, don't even get down that road, wherever you want to take it, josh. But you've got me on the warrior ethos now.
Speaker 3:Well, that's something that I kind of want to start digging into too is like, before we do that, I want to kind of like prep the battlefield, Like so you go, you join the army, you become the brand new second Lieutenant. I think that the army does a great job of helping build leaders at a very junior age and you're given so much responsibility, especially in other branches, Like I was given a platoon in Afghanistan with 28 soldiers, four strikers, four mat Vs my own cop, that I had to run and I was 20, 22 years old. That's a lot of pressure, like riding on people. So you graduating West Point and you getting ready to start your army career what was that like?
Speaker 1:So I have a lot of stories that Lieutenant Colonel Randall would like to tell Second Lieutenant Randall, you know, and now, unfortunately, my daughter gets those right. So sometimes we have daddy-daughter conversations, but sometimes we have like Colonel Randall, cadet Randall conversations, right? So you know, I would just shake my head at second lieutenant randall about a million times over today, right, we all, we all learn and grow and have opportunities to be transformed. I think one thing that the us army does incredibly well uh, probably our entire military does incredibly well is I can I can attribute my transformation as a young lieutenant to a captain and starting to figure things out because of non-commissioned officers and I can pinpoint that on two non-commissioned officers and I can pinpoint that to two platoon sergeants that I had that grabbed me by the back of the scruff and said, hey, you're a good dude and you got a ton of energy and you want to do this the right way, but you need a little shaping right.
Speaker 1:And you know, those guys became lifelong friends and unfortunately, I buried one of them in Arlington 13 years ago. But those guys became lifelong friends. So I think that's what our military does best and that's why I think we need to invest so much money in human development and talent development and leader development in our NCO Corps, because NCOs make great officers and I'm very thankful for the NCOs I've always had around me. I mean just not as a platoon leader, but you know, throughout my entire career I can probably name more NCOs that have impacted me in my life than officers in my military. What about you?
Speaker 3:No, it's the exact same. So when I joined in 2008 to where I'm at right now, I am the leader that I am today solely based on non-commissioned officers. Not based on officers Cause I will tell you that I've had some that have had horrible examples and if I would have followed them, I would have went down a transitional mindset of viewing people as stepping stones to get to where I wanted to go, because, unfortunately, sometimes that is the nature of the culture within the officer ranks because we're only there for a year or two, ncos stay there. They they're like Thanos If you're a Marvel fan, they're inevitable, right?
Speaker 3:But when I first showed up and took over my platoon in Afghanistan, my platoon Sergeant at the time was a Sergeant promotable and, to kind of give you a little bit of backstory, we probably share some trauma, right Is that they deployed to 44 soldiers.
Speaker 3:When I took over, there was 28 and I met my platoon at their Memorial and I remember meeting him and just how stoic he was and then how calm, cool, collected.
Speaker 3:He was asking me questions, but very good questions, about things that I should have thought through before I was getting ready to take a platoon to combat and I just stepped back to myself and I really started reflecting on like, who am I as an individual and a leader and what do I actually bring to the team, especially this team right now?
Speaker 3:And he mentored me. Sometimes exactly like you just said, he would pull me out of the talk and we would have very stern words with each other, because sometimes Second Lieutenant McMillian can be very stubborn and headstrong, probably much like Second Lieutenant Randall was, but it has shaped me, of who I am and you can clearly trace that of who I am today because of key individuals and non-commissioned officers that I've had throughout the ranks. And that's a great point of like as a leader, and I think it's universal of in business to find those people who have influence within the organization and gravitate towards those individuals. Don't try to pave away, because whenever you show up somewhere, you're never going to be a subject matter expert and if you are, then you're letting your ego take control, because that's just not how it is, unless you're just a natural born Douglas MacArthur. But that's a key point and 100% I fully agree with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's five principles that any young leader if they're a young platoon leader, a company commander, a young NCO out there that I've always tried to practice, and this is what I would tell Lieutenant Randall today, right, if I had that chance to grab hold of him. The first thing is observe, right. I think that's why emotional intelligence is so incredible. When you get into your first organization, you need to understand organizational awareness, and organizations have written rules and unwritten rules, and many times the unwritten rules that get you in trouble, right? So you got to have EQ, you've got to use empathy and you've got to use social awareness to really learn what the written and the unwritten rules are. And the only way you're going to learn the unwritten rules is by earning the trust of people around you and them sharing with you. Hey, we want to see you do well here.
Speaker 1:I think the second piece that I always share with people understand the difference between influencers and those who lead with influence. I mean, there's all sorts of influencers out there on social media, right, there's people that can post 15 posts a day on Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever, and they're influencers. But what I'm really interested in is who is the leaders of influence. Who are those influential leaders that get things done? And there's a big difference between the, the barracks lawyer, right, or, or the NCOs, or the NCO that's been there forever and you know, oh, he's so-and-so, she's so-and-so, and then there's the influential leaders to get things done. That's two, I think. The third one is and this goes back to observe is find your terrorists early. Right. Every organization has terrorists and they will do anything to destroy your organization. So I think one, one piece of of learning a new organization is man, find the terrorists and get rid of them, because they will, they will take you down. That's their whole mission in life.
Speaker 3:I love that and I wish I would have known that, like I always kind of dig into the parental principle is that wherever organization you're going to take control kind of dig into the parental principle is that wherever organization you're going to take control, there's a 20 of your population that is going to absorb 80 of your time. And if you can find them unfortunately that's the nature of the beast it's going to happen, it's inevitable, and root them out early. It will save you so much time.
Speaker 1:And I love how you say find your terrorists, yeah find the terrorist man and you're talking about trout fishing over the weekend with your daughter. I think leadership's a lot like fishing you're're going to pull 20% of the fish in the boat and they're going to do everything for you, right? They are going to think you walk on water, you do everything great. There's only 20% in an organization that they think you do everything wrong and they're going to do everything they can to destroy the organization. The person that wins the organization is the person that gets the other 60% of the fish. So you have to and I had a friend of mine, rod Olson, who shared that with me. He's a great football coach and does leadership coaching with folks, so you've got to know how to fish that 60%. 20% are always going to be on your side. 20% are going to do everything they can to stop you. It's whoever wins the 60% right and that comes through. Just you know leading well. So I think the fourth piece to that is I always tell people find your knight to the round table right. Find the four or five people that are going to, you know, draw that blade and lay it down on that table and you know that they trust you, they respect you, you trust them, you respect them, you've got their loyalty. Find your mountain. And then the fifth one that I've learned the last few years of doing coaching the last 10 years or so is create a coaching language and a coaching culture, just like you did as an OCT. When we can use a coaching language and a coaching culture that asks powerful questions, that empowers people, that flattens out the organization, that that encourages people to become better decision makers on their own because of who they are, I think that's super, super powerful.
Speaker 1:And you know, you mentioned being an OCT. We've had the privilege to run a couple coaching courses for for First Army and and the OCTs that from First Army that are coming to our courses. They're like this is the way we should be doing OCT across the board, like your guys' coaching language, your coaching model, your coaching process. This is how we should be training units, and so I'm just a big believer in transforming organizations through more coaching and less directing. There's a time and a place for the knife hand. There's a time and a place for authoritative command that saves people's lives. But if you want to develop teams and work yourself out of a job, implement coaching into your organization. Come, get coaching certified and build your leadership kit bag. You know, those are my five principles. What do you think?
Speaker 3:What are yours. So I'm going to steal your principles. So I think that with me it's all about a linear path, right? Leadership's a marathon. I think, really, for me it all starts off at yourself, like self-leadership, like being able to wake up every morning, fill your cup up, go do PT, do the things that serve you so you can have a clear mental mind, and then creating feedback loops within the organization. So I think what you just said is absolutely critical and I like how you laid out the methodology.
Speaker 3:For me, whenever I take over an organization, the first thing that I want to do is to clearly lay out what the goals and expectations are, not just even for the team, but like for me. This is what you should expect for me. I'm laying out all the cards on the table. This is how I lead. This is how I communicate.
Speaker 3:I had a great boss as a little side story. Share I won't say his name, but share a picture of him with each one of the emotions in his face. He has a resting something face right. So he's like here's a slide of me angry, here's a slide of me mad. That was the best ever, because it broke the ice, because he wasn't very personal. He was an introvert by nature. But I think having that up front and then, like you just said, I call it, stop Silence my mind, I take a tactical pause. I'll observe my surroundings, I'll understand where there's friction points within an organization and then I'll pursue with purpose but then strengthen, build relationships within the organization, understand who can I lean on, who can I not lean on, and then start working together to build that type of coaching culture. But as a feedback loop, and what you just said there I think is absolutely critical and I really hope that this gets implemented larger in the army.
Speaker 3:I do too Is that when we create a coaching culture, really what we're doing is we are separating from problem makers to problem solvers, and what we want especially going back to what you just talked about before as NCOs, we want more problem solvers as seeds. So when they begin to grow into those trees, those ranger buddies, those accountability trees, they grew up the right way, if that makes sense, because it's only going to build more leaders and, like you just said, the goal is to put myself out of the job. And how do I do that? I do that by creating more problem solvers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean I've got blood in the game. I mean literally, you know, I want my young lieutenant here in a little more than a year to have great NCOs in her platoon, you know, and she wants to be a combat arms officer. So she's, she's a BA, she's a, she's a strong kid. So you know, I think she's going to do just fine wherever she goes. But but she, she's going to need good NCOs around her, and so I'm I'm a big believer in developing.
Speaker 1:Developing NCOs and, and you know, junior officers is incredibly important. And I think you know tip of the cap to my friend, bob O'Brien. I don't know if you know Colonel Bob O'Brien, but I've known OB for several years. No, yeah, we were in Ranger Training Brigade together, but he's the one that's doing the command preparation program for Battalion and Brigade Command and the way they're doing that assessment and selection process now is just absolutely world class and he's done a fantastic job leading that. So it's good to see that we're starting to can to realize what to continue developing senior officers and senior ncos at field grade level.
Speaker 1:And, uh, you know, they've taken a lot of ans principles from the soft community that you and I familiar with on how we do ans right. So, uh, you know you don't. You're not looking for the most qualified person, you're looking for the right person, you're looking for the right fit, and I think that's incredibly important. But when I talk about character development, one last thing on the leadership piece is I share with organizations all the time. You have two choices you can either hire for character and build a high performing organization, or you can hire a bunch of characters and they will destroy your organization.
Speaker 1:Right, and that that goes from the locker room to the team room, to the C-suite, you know board room, and that principle is true anywhere.
Speaker 3:So I kind of want to start circling it back to like one of your new books that you just recently released and I know you wrote a couple of books. We'll kind of dig into those. But, like, from your army time with the different types of warrior ethos that you were raised in, not just even with a conventional army but also being going through ranger school and then serving as a chaplain in the soft community, what lessons did you learn that helps you build this practicing excellence type framework that inspired you to write that book?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I already heard you say part of it, and it starts with leading yourself every day, right? People used to always ask me you know, how do I get through Ranger School? Chaplain, like, what's the secret to Ranger School? You know, and it's just three principles. I mean, ranger School is the premier leadership school for the army, right? And if you want to graduate ranger school, you do these three things well, every day. You got to lead yourself, you have to lead your peers and you got to be able to lead a team. And if you can lead yourself and lead your peers and lead a team, then you can graduate ranger school barring some sort of injury or whatever else.
Speaker 1:Um, so I think that's the key to Ranger School. But it starts with leading ourselves, understanding who I am as a person of character, right, how do I think morally? And how do I think then, ethically, within some sort of ethos? And then how do I lead? And I'm a big believer in emotional intelligence and Dan Goldman's six different EQ leadership styles, primal leadership we teach a lot of that stuff. So I think for me, josh, that's, that's the, that's where it begins, um, and you have to remind me of where you want me to go with that question but so I think, kind of like building you know warrior ethos, you, you because I wanted to pull back on that thread you spending time within the Army.
Speaker 3:You have a very unique background within the Army. A lot of people don't become chaplains after being in the combat arms and I think I've only met maybe three chaplains that have Ranger tabs and two of them were in Ranger school with me, one of was going through as a stud with me, a student, and the other one was our chaplain and the other one was our chaplain and, uh, the other one was a chaplain that when I was a company commander in third brigade, 10th mountain. You have a very unique background between being the lion and then being the shepherd too, if that makes sense. Walk me through that like as a warrior ethos. How do you blend those two together? And I think it kind of comes back to like gentleness or empathy, meekness maybe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what I have learned is that it's hard to put the chaplain into the ranger and it's even harder to get the ranger out of the chaplain.
Speaker 1:I love that and so you know I had to learn that it that that it was okay that I could actually be both right and and how to, how to bring that identity full circle. And so I actually have a shepherd's crook over here. It's out of your view, but when I was at the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade, when I left the brigade, the battalion chaplains and religious affairs specialists they gave me that shepherd's crook and they said you've been a shepherd to us and down each side of the shepherd's crook is four words. And what I try to teach chaplains all the time is like listen, you've got four roles. You have to be a pastor. So whatever religious faith group you come out of, you've got to be able to preach and teach the truth of your scriptures right and understand that and be a theologian. Second, you've got to be a priest. You've got to be able to bring the holy. You've got to be able to bring the holy. You've got to be able to bring that sacred presence right. We're the ones that can baptize and marry and bury, and so how do you bring that priestly presence into those times and spaces? And the third one is you have to be a person right, so you have to be a ranger for me or be a paratrooper, right. So you've got to be willing to do whatever your troops are doing every single day. So if they go on combat patrols, you want to go on combat patrols. If your company is going on a you know 20K ruck, then you better be on that 20K ruck, right, and be a warrior, right. So that's the third one, and then the fourth one is to be a prophet, and you know as much as I did. You know 4,000 plus hours of counseling.
Speaker 1:As a chaplain, I probably enjoyed much more the times where I had to put on that prophetic hat and speak truth to power. I had to call out the moral and ethical choices that were being made, the immoral and unethical choices that potentially could happen. And speaking truth to power to commanders, to NCOs, to people that outranked me, to people that were my same rank, to people that were subordinate to me. Because, as a chaplain, I don't think we should carry rank. I think there's too many chaplains in the military that hide behind their rank.
Speaker 1:I think chaplains in the US Army should not have rank. You can give us that pay grade, so you can pay us what we are, but I think the only thing that should be on a chaplain's uniform is whatever your religious affiliation is, because when I'm talking private, I address them as a private. When I'm talking to a four-star general, I talk to them like a four-star general, and and I think that's part of being a shepherd. Going back to how you blend those two together, uh, our last name, randall, comes from from what we know, the 15th century saxon area of england.
Speaker 3:Uh, the best name ever it Our name was.
Speaker 1:Wrenwolf. It means runner of wolves, it means wrangler. Yeah right, wrenwolf, right. So we were a tribe of shepherds but we actually our tribe hunted down wolf packs and killed them before they got to the sheep. So I've had that story and I think that's why legacy and I think all of our stories are so important. It's so important to tell your story from West Virginia. That's why legacy and I think all of our stories are so important, so important to tell your story from West Virginia. It's so important to find out every soldier story, because our stories give us foundation and give us root in understanding who we are. So that'd be two. The third piece is martial arts. I've done martial arts.
Speaker 3:Got a little cauliflower here going on.
Speaker 1:And so you know I don't know if you can tell by my ears, but you know I was. You know, oh yeah, I got both of them going. So you know, I've been on the mat for 30 years training and rolling and some of the best ministry I've ever done is doing, you know, jujitsu and doing BJJ and that kind of stuff with soldiers, and so having that warrior ethos has always been part of who I am. I've been a martial artist for 30 years, so that's always been part of it. For what I learned from the soft community is, you know again, you mentioned the word meekness Meekness is not weakness and some of the most humble, soft-spoken, gentle people that you've ever seen, with their spouse and their kids, and you know even the way they lead their soldiers. I'll tell you what they're the last dude that you want to be on the pointy end of a spear on. You know what I'm saying Like you are going to get diced up, and so I think it's that. I think it's that, that warrior ethos, and that's why when you look into any different martial art, you know, or any any different warrior class throughout history, there's these virtues of courage and wisdom and justice and temperance and faith and hope and love, and you get into the martial arts, the martial way, and there's integrity and respect and honor and self-discipline, you know, and proportionality. Last plug here and then I'll shut up.
Speaker 1:I think every single formation in the army should be doing combatives at least once or twice a week. There are too many warriors out there in our army today that have not been punched in the face enough and, and you know, you've got to know what it's like to get punched in the face and you've got to know how you're going to respond after you get punched in the face. And if we can teach our warriors how to fight hand to hand, that will help them with just war theory. I mean, jiu jitsu is proportionality? I was rolling with a blue belt today, right, and so my proportional response to what he did was based upon what kind of threatening situation he was putting me in. But he's a blue belt, you know. I'm a brown belt, you know. And then I'm rolling with a black belt today, my proportional response to what he was doing with me was completely different. And so I think, when you understand time and space physiologically, any weapon system that you put in somebody's hand is just an extension of understanding the time and space of how we move.
Speaker 1:The IDF has demonstrated that with subterranean warfare.
Speaker 1:I helped write the Subterranean Doctrine Manual a few years ago and I wrote the psychological-spiritual piece spiritual peace and they in combat that the study of Krav Maga made their soldiers more confident and more competent and more trusting in a tight fighting force in a subterranean complex, because they were confident on how to fight and win hand to hand. And as all the technology that we've seen in Ukraine, all the technology that we've seen in in the Middle East, all the technology we know coming out of PLA, at the end of the day, when you watch those videos in ukraine or when you watch the israel, gaza hezbollah fight, what wins close combat overmatch? What still wins to this day, even with all the great technology, all the stuff brabs is building, you still have to win close combat overmatch, which means you're going to have to kill, potentially, another human being at close range and you're going to know how to respond after that. So, anyways, I'll get off my combatives soapbox, but I'm a big. I'm a big fan of of combat arts, combat sports. Everybody should be doing something like that.
Speaker 3:Team. Let's take a quick break from this episode and I want to share an additional leadership resource with you, and that is one-on-one leadership coaching through McMillian Leadership Coaching. So what do I do? I help leaders discover their purpose, create a long-term growth plan and take inspired action. I believe everything rises and falls on leadership and, regardless of where you are in life, one fact is true you are a leader of others, you are a leader of your family and, most importantly, you are a leader of yourself. To lead others well, that starts by leading yourself well. If you want to learn more, you can go to mcmillianleadershipcoachingcom and schedule a free call today. Back to the episode.
Speaker 3:So it's funny. I think we share a lot of similarities, one of which is that my daughter shares a lot of the same characteristics and traits as your daughter does, and I know she may follow me down the road of being in the military. So I'm so passionate about one of the reasons you know why I run this podcast is that I know she listens and that she will listen. So now she can hear other influential people talk about leadership and understand hey, there's better ways to lead out there. And then what you just said, too, about like within the soft community, like especially at the top level tier. Some of the most dangerous people that I've met like have a body count higher than you could imagine are some of the most passive people in the world. Why? Because it kind of goes back. What is that guy who wrote 10 rules for? I can't think of his name right now. It'll come to me, but it talks about being a monster and then learning how to control it. Oh, I think a lot of that kind of comes down to a warrior ethos, but having a direction or a funnel towards that. So when I do need to turn into a monster and I do need to open that Pandora's box, I'm going to unleash it on something with purpose and not just wield it as a flaming sword and cut everyone. And I think that the special forces community does an excellent job and I think part of that through is just the ability to train and also to continue to build, like that adaptive mindset and the agile mindset through their selection process. But I agree with you too is like there's so many people out there right now and I always say like deeds, not words, you can say everything you want to me at the end of the day, when it's time to go and one of us is going to get punched in the face, I guarantee you I will win.
Speaker 3:I remember here's a here's a funny story when we were doing like KLEs with a Taliban, uh, and I knew that there were new military age males that will come into our sure is. And we would just be sitting there and I was talking to the village elders and I'm like hey bro, do you know this guy? He's like Nope, never seen him before. He's like so he's never grown up here before in his life. Like no, okay, interpreter, come here. I want you to tell him that this is my battle area, that I am the HDMI FC of this area and that if he steps out of line, I will put him in the ground.
Speaker 3:But I wouldn't do that normally with other people.
Speaker 3:Right, like I had a very functional, a very directive force, but I kind of go back to that was something that I've had to learn to control over the years, because I've always been filled with like passion, especially when it comes like service my country, or something that aligns with who I am and my values, but being more meek, and the Bible, to be honest with you like has done tremendous and kind of helping me learn what meekness truly is and you also sum that up beautifully is that it's not weakness.
Speaker 3:It's actively listening to people on your team, then moving out with purpose, it's evaluating the environment and making sure you're making informed decisions and, at the end of the day, it's keeping a servant heart, understanding that as a leader, right, I make decisions that are unpopular, but I do it for the greater good and I do it to make sure that my son and my daughter have a generation that is better than the current one that I'm in right now. So all of that kind of goes back to like the warrior ethos and you summed that up beautifully and I think that the warrior class that we've grown up in, those lessons learned, need to be injected into the civilian space. So how, how do you do that Like within your coaching company, vanguard 21, of teaching these principles that you learned in the military, through both combat arms and as a chaplain, into transitioning into the civilian world and like a Fortune 500 company or even sports?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to take a couple steps back because it might answer the question going forward. But you mentioned, you know, scripture. I just spoke at the Maneuver Center of Excellence's Preparing the Soul for War Symposium a couple weeks ago, great conference. The chaplains that put it on did a great job and Seventh Ranger Regiment did a great job with it. And one thing I talk about is that you know, there's four aspects of the warrior, of forging the warrior soul there's preparation, there's practice, there's protection and there's perseverance. And the preparation piece is a spiritual, theological, existential, philosophical grounding in how do I respond to evil? There is evil in the world and there's also good, and so every warrior has to understand how they're going to resist evil and how they're going to respond to it. Asking the question in the midst of combat, or asking the question preparing to go to combat, or asking the question dealing with and I write about this in Restoring Faith and Trust of Leadership and Civility to the public square, going into the public square and trying to restore civility in our public square and in our social environments. Understand evil's real right. There are terrorists out there that want to, you know, disrupt the public square. There are people in this country that want to destroy our democracy and our constitution and our way of life. There are people around this world that want to disrupt what everyone wants, which is, you know, I just want to, you know, peace, happiness, love a spouse, have kids, you know, have life right. They want to flourish as human beings.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, let me back up real quick. So we all need to understand how to address the problem of evil, right? So I do that through my christian faith. I understand that I serve a God that is all powerful, he is all just and he is all loving, and that evil has tried to destroy that ever since. Evil fell, right and we just celebrated Easter yesterday, right so I think good and evil actually interacted and meshed with each other on the cross and it was the perfect goodness of Christ, the son of God, taking all the evil of the world, the most evil that could ever come upon it, and he defeated that.
Speaker 1:Now, that's just my view. You have to find your own religious, theological, spiritual, philosophical, existential view of understanding good and evil. But I know this view of understanding good and evil, but I know this Good will never be defeated by evil, because evil is a derivative of good, and so if I know that I am created in the good image of God and God's perfect image, then I know I've been created with a purpose and so that helps me understand how to resist and respond to evil. So the two great virtues that come out of understanding that one comes from the Stoics so Cicero very much influenced Augustine and Ambrose, who were Christian theologians that justice is the greatest virtue and understanding an all just God. A thousand years later, when Aquinas comes around says wait a minute, and the apostle Paul talks about this in scripture. So Augustus and Ambrose are riffing off of Paul and Jesus.
Speaker 1:No, love is the greatest virtue. So my understanding of how I address the problem of evil is that I serve an all just and an all loving God. How does that impact me as a warrior? That allows me to resist evil, because I know it can't overcome good, and allows me to respond to evil in a just and loving way. So what does that help me do? It allows me to love myself, which means I'm gonna leave myself, leave my peers and leave my team every day. It means I'm gonna love my fellow warrior. We wouldn't have sexual assault issues in the military if we recognize that you're my brother and she's my sister and we're all taking care of each other here, right and and. So that love helps me love my fellow warrior, which is why I'm willing to sacrifice for my fellow warrior, my left and my right. Right. It allows me to love the innocent right, the soft principle of de oppresso liber to free the oppressed.
Speaker 1:So understanding God's love helps me free the oppressed. It helps me love the oppressed and the coerced and the manipulated and the imprisoned and the downtrodden. It allows me to love the oppressed and the coerced and the manipulated and the imprisoned and the downtrodden. It allows me to love the innocents on a battlefield and make sure that I use proportional response, that this is war and war is hell and sometimes innocent people are going to die. But if I understand that I can respond proportionally and discretionarily, I'll do my best to do that. And then it allows me to be just. It allows me to be just. It allows me to justly kill my enemy with surprise speed and violence of action, and I can do that justly and I can do a surprise speed and vital action and I can do it with audacity. And I can do it to impose my will, to use Clausewitz to impose my will on the enemy and defeat them.
Speaker 1:And and I would just one last thing I'll say on that I'll turn back to you is that I think the number one thing that our military leaders have got to get around is that sixth principle mission command, which is accepting prudent risk. What what you as a commander in Afghanistan and what commanders at every level, from platoon leader to to general officer, is we were, we weren't told to accept prudent risk. We thought the six principle mission command was to mitigate risk altogether, to be risk averse, and guess what? You can't do that in a peer threat, large scale combat operation. You have to do the other five principles of mission command to build a high performance team.
Speaker 1:Because all of those six principles of mission command are is six principles of how you build a high performance team to win on the battlefield. But you've got to accept prudent risk to win in a peer-to-peer fight, not be risk averse. And that's a huge paradigm shift that we've got to get people to understand that you can through justice and love, through just war theory, through proportionality and use and bellow. You can kill with speed, surprise and violence of action. You can do it audaciously to defeat the enemies of our nation and to protect the greatest assets that we have, which is our blood and treasure. The American soldier, the Marine and the sailor and space person and Air Force guy and gal and coastie and all that. There you go, I'm done, there you go.
Speaker 3:I don't know if this is like the right term, but I'm calling Space Force Space Rangers just because, like Buzz Lightyear, I think that would be the coolest thing in the world. Like to be a Space Ranger. If I'm Ranger qualified and I joined the Space Force, does that make yeah, it doesn't make me a Space Ranger. I love what you framed there at the end. Honestly, everything you just said is deeply. There's so much wisdom in that, accepting prudent risk and mission command I see not only within combat arms but really across all DOD, especially when it comes to innovative new disruptive technologies. If you ever read Innovator's Dilemma of how these big Fortune 500 companies die, they die because they don't accept that disruptive technology and when it's there it's too late to act.
Speaker 3:I think drones me and Brad we jam on this all the time right, like I build them for SOCOM. He writes the requirements for the world. But one of the biggest things that I see now is that the DOD is hesitant to embrace these new technologies. To kind of give you like an unclass level of how disruptive a small little fpv drone could be. One pilot, uh, in ukraine could potentially take out an armored brigade um one one person if he's equipped well enough with the right drones and assets, could take out an entire brigade, that's a entire uS Army mechanized or armor brigade that would have to go defeat that threat. Now we just have one person to do it.
Speaker 3:So from there, but when you look at it from an innovative standpoint, from the training standpoint, from range command like this is an unknown. We have to mitigate all the risk. Well, you can't mitigate all the risk because that is physically impossible. If we're going to mitigate all the risk, that means we're not taking action. Mission command is getting at the heart of understanding what the risk is, mitigating it to a point where I am physically, mentally, ethically okay with moving forward with this. And here's the question I always ask myself if I were going to do this, would I not do this with my team? And the answer is no, then I would relook at it and I would try to mitigate the risk. And now a better question is would I allow my son or daughter to go do this if they were serving, especially being a father now? But it also allows us to make more rapid decisions, exactly what you just said. It builds greater trust within organizations and it builds leaders faster because you're giving them more influence, you're giving them more tools, you're giving them the autonomy to make those hard decisions at the point of friction. All of that is absolutely beautiful and I really, really wish and I hope that our army and our country as a nation can learn to accept risk and understand that you can't mitigate it to absolute zero because it's physically impossible.
Speaker 3:We have to understand what it is and move forward, and a great example of that, too, is SpaceX. If you've ever read Elon Musk's book about how he started all these different companies, he failed so many times with his rocket launches and he just started deleting things, like with the heat shields. He took over like eight, 20 pieces of a heat shield because he's like, hey, these are just redundant parts, they aren't needed, and because of those he was able to basically assume the risk right off the risk and continue to fly, and he was able to make the Falcon nine and all these other Raptor engines actually work, where NASA has been spinning their wheels. We went to the moon in the 60s and 70s. What have we done since then? In like 70 years? We should be like having cruises in space like fifth element by now, but we literally haven't been back to the moon in time, and it's all because of risk, and I get it like every life is as precious it truly is, and I view it from that way. But fortune favors the bold.
Speaker 1:You have to take the action so I think, just transitioning to the second part of your question is how do we do that in a corporate space? Right, if you've got civilians out there listening to go, that's, that's great, until that warrior stuff. But you know, if you know, if vanguard came and worked with our company, you got to tone it down a little bit, right? So I think it's the same. It's the same approach, with it with a different, a different lens. And restoring civility to the public square is is all about raising up leaders of character who think for themselves. You know, our public square has been overwhelmed with educated derelicts, right With bully pulpits and with talking heads Square has been overwhelmed with educated derelicts, right with bully pulpits and with talking heads, and they want to consume that information space to tell everybody what to think and what we do to restore Civility. The Public Square is we help organizations build high character, high culture, organizations where people matter, where human flourishing is part of their baseline values, where their talent development process is about drawing potential out of people at every level and allowing people, empowering people to grow into who they can become as leaders. And so you restore civility to the public square by teaching people how to think, how to think critically, how to think, how to think, how to think morally, how to think ethically. You create high trust, character, individuals, by by you know, aligning with certain values and principles of your company or organization, and then you teach them how to lead well, you teach them how to lead with emotional intelligence, you teach them how to coach the person and not the problem, right, and so we restore the civility of the public square by raising up leaders. And I'll tell you what when you raise up leaders of character and you build high-character, high-culture organizations, your terrorists will stand out all day and they have a choice either continue to try to destroy that organization or leave, or they do something that allows you to exit them out the door right. And so that's what we need to do. We need to do that allows you to exit them out the door right, and so that's what we need to do. We need that collectively. We need to restore the public square and again, everyone has a seat at the table, everyone has a voice, but you've got to do it with mutual respect and trust. It goes back to Tocqueville, who wrote a great book a couple hundred years ago. People should read it. But it goes back to Tocqueville, who wrote a great book a couple hundred years ago. People should read it. But it goes back to Tocqueville and it goes back to some of the founding fathers.
Speaker 1:And this concept Os Guinness talks about it this golden triangle of freedom. And the golden triangle of freedom operates off of three principles freedom, virtue and faith. The problem with our public square today is most people just exercise all the freedom they want to you right, without, without virtue, or instead of being leaders of virtue, they're virtue signalers right, and faith has been completely cast aside. You know, we put more faith in ourselves and in politics today than we do god. So the golden triangle of freedom is actually a principle. You can take from toteville a couple hundred years ago that the golden triangle of freedom is actually a principle. You can take from Tocqueville a couple of years ago. That this golden triangle, it holds itself in tension with freedom, with virtue and with faith. So that's what we do in the corporate space, man. We build high performance, high culture, high character teams and we teach organizations how to transform leaders, how to forge excellence and win. There you go.
Speaker 3:I have to ask educated derelict? I love that term and I think I know what you're going with that, but could you kind of quickly elaborate on that term? Sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, an educated derelict. I mean I just saw some reports in the Wall Street Journal about this that these Ivy League grads that can't, you know, put two sentences together. Right, it's. I mean, I'm an academic, I guess to a degree. I have a doctorate, I've got two master's degrees, I've gone to some really great universities out there outside the classroom and apply what you think you're learning, and I think today we have a lot of educated derelicts. They are too smart for their own good. Right. We say in the church you know, you're so heavenly minded, you're no earthly good. And so I think that's what educated derelicts are.
Speaker 1:I mean, when we send our kids to some of these institutions and they're brainwashed with, you know, primarily Marxist and other philosophies and ways of thinking that killed hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century, when people want to debate certain things in the public square about democracy in America and the Constitution and our way of life here, the first question I ask them is have you ever been outside of the United States? How many countries have you been to? What countries have you been to? How long have you ever been outside the united states? How many countries have you been to? What countries have you been to? How long have you lived there? Right and and, uh, I would tell you, folks that have traveled around the world typically have a much better understanding. Whether I agree or disagree with them, they at least have a better concept or understanding because they've been around the world. But we have a a lot of a lot of folks that you know are educated derelicts. I can explain it, man.
Speaker 3:I agree a hundred percent is that title certifications, all of those things are not going to make you a better leader. It's not going to make you better at your jobs per se. There's a part of being educated which is good, but that teaches you book answers right. The only way to like truly learn is through experience and, like I have learned this throughout my military career I'm an infantryman they put me in po aviation as my first job as an acquisition officer on avionics for different aircraft. I've jumped out of helicopters and that's about the extent of which my experience lies. But I jumped into it fully and I learned and I went to the people with influence. I asked open-ended questions to elicit that feedback that I needed and I relied on my team's strengths to cover my weaknesses and I focused on my strengths and then I went to in the drone space and I've been in the drone space now and I continue to succeed with those same types of principles. I have a master's degree in systems engineering. I have all of these things, but those lessons that I learned in the school only helped me be more of a critical thinker.
Speaker 3:I think that education helps you because it provides you that wisdom and tools, but when you only rely on education to lead, it's a crutch. And I think it kind of leads back to what we were just talking about before is accepting risk, like if you lead on education, well, the book says you can't do that. Okay, what was the actual problems that show me in a policy or regulation that says that we can't do that? Is that just an assumption or is that something that you've read in some textbook? But I'd love now to kind of like transition, because I haven't even got a chance to ask you about your book yet, because I feel like I could have a conversation with you for like three hours. But Practicing Excellence. So it's a new book that you just released now and I think this is a beautiful transition point too as a society, right? First of all, what just inspired you to write the book?
Speaker 1:I think, because, like most people, I just got fed up with what our public square looks like today and you know, left, right and indifferent. You know you go to Europe. The public square used to be that center point in town where people could bring and express their opinions and read declarations, and fellowship and gather and fellowship and gather and make laws and pass laws and do all of these things. And so, for me, practicing excellence is all about helping people understand how to live life a more excellent way, and what I have found is that you can live a more excellent way in life when you align your passion for life with your purpose, which is your gifts and abilities and skills and your precision. So our passion is what gives us that fire, that fuel, that calling right To go out there into the public square and find out what our true potential is. We do that purposely. When we take the skills and talents that we've been given, either innately or the ones that we develop or learn or, you know, gather through experience and education. We purposely use those gifts right to fulfill our passion, and then we find the most precise way to do that. We find our wheelhouse. How do you do that with precision in any environment that you get placed in. So even for you, you're an infantry officer, you've got a master's degrees in system engineering, you're an acquisitions guy and you get thrown into. You know PEO avionics, that's okay, guess what? You can still operate, josh, in there with your passion to serve. With the gifts that you've been given, you can passionately and purposely serve with precision in that space. You just need to learn some technical things about that space. But who you are as a leader of character, how you think critically and how you lead is still going to transform that space, brother, it's just you being willing to be coached. Hey, coach me up on avionics, man, I just jump out of them. You guys teach me how to fly them right and being humble, showing up humble and hungry to figure that out. So that's what practicing excellence is.
Speaker 1:People read that book. They're going to. You know the most basic sense. It's about aligning your passion, purpose and precision, understanding who you are as a leader character, how you think and how you lead. Uh, but you know there's, there's great stuff in there, some a lot, of, a lot of funny army stories in there. There's great corporate stories. There's stories about my time with the Pittsburgh pirates and with working in college basketball with national championship teams. Um, there's, there's a lot of stuff in there on leader development and coaching and how to coach. Uh, there's, you know, a chapter in there on beach jiu-jitsu and epistemology. If you like big words and big doctoral level constructs, there's a couple chapters in there for you. If you just like great stories, there's chapters in there for you too.
Speaker 1:Very blessed, it was an Amazon bestseller and then it just won the 2025 International Impact Book Award for Social Change. So I believe that, yeah, I'm very blessed to receive that award and I have a keynote for that. I have a keynote called Practicing Excellence that I give. I'm giving it next Monday to a school district awards ceremony for about 300 people, but I'm also giving it in two weeks to the American Hockey Coaches Association for about 500 D1 to D3 college hockey coaches and talking about how you practice excellence, build a high-performing, winning team. So, yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3:Are you ever going to find yourself in the national capital region? Like giving one of those speeches.
Speaker 1:I hope so. Yeah, I would love to come give the Forging a Warrior's Soul keynote. That keynote is specifically for the DOD enterprise space and talking about war fighting and winning our nation's wars. But yeah, I'd be happy to come up and speak on practicing excellence in the NCR.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'd love that. If you do get a chance, like in the near future, please let me know, because I want to come be a part of that, 100%, absolutely. So I think you've had such a long history and I think that you're very disciplined. You've always practiced excellence. Because you practice what you preach right, we have to lead ourselves before we can show up and lead our family, organization, lead teams. What practices have you learned that you continue to sustain today? Like, how do you continue to work towards excellence in your own mind?
Speaker 1:Well, I just want to make sure everybody understands that you know, learning to practice excellence comes from a lot of failure. So you know, again, I made a lot of mistakes as a young, as a young officer, as a young leader, right, things that that I'm thankful. People help me adjust and make changes. So you know, that's the other book I wrote. Practice Makes Permanent, Practice does not perfect, practice makes permanent. So make sure that what you practice is excellent, right? So you know, when it comes to leading yourself, I think I'm about transformational coaching. So you know, I'm about coaching the whole person mind, body and soul. I mean my morning, from my tradition, again, other people have their tradition, which I respect. My morning tradition begins with meditation, it begins with prayer, it begins with the studies of my scriptures and figuring out how does that apply to my world? Right, you know, I don't let my calendar control me, I control my calendar. So there's even tonight my wife and I are talking about negotiables and non-negotiables, right, there's certain non-negotiables that I have that are surrounding my family, that it doesn't matter what our company is doing. That's a non-negotiable with my family. So I think also and I spoke on this last week in Austin to the CFO leadership council there in Austin, that this difference between work-life balance and work-life rhythm, I think work-life balance is a complete fallacy. If you're trying to do work-life balance, then work or life is always stealing from each other and there's this constant negative tension of stealing from one to pay the other. And so what I found and again this might probably come from my martial arts background or from my faith background, but I really, you know, love the study of nature, study of water, study of wind, but our lives should be like work-life rhythm, right, and like it, just like an ocean wave.
Speaker 1:We were in New Zealand at Christmas. I was teaching my kids how to body surf and the, you know, south Pacific Sea is pretty epic and I was teaching them how to read the waves right. How do you read the waves? Read the resonance of the waves, read the strength of the waves and watch the resonance. There's a rhythm to it.
Speaker 1:I grew up skiing in Colorado. You can to this day, man, I love jumping in a good mogul field and I can pick a zip line and go, you know, a couple hundred yards just pounding through moguls, because you read the terrain, you read how the moguls are shaped and formed and you find a rhythm. Jiu-jitsu is the same way. There's a rhythm to training there's there's an ebb and flow of giving space and taking space, you know, with your opponent. And so work-life rhythm there there's times of high intensity, there's times of rest, there's times of high intensity, rest. You've got to find your resonance. All of us have a different resonance, right? Some people like jazz, right, some people like grunge metal, like I do, right, so he's kid, you know. So we all have a different resonance. So I would say that I hope that answered your question there. Work-life rhythm, yeah.
Speaker 3:I think it did. And it's funny, like you and I share the same thing, typically, like, morning routines aren't going to make and break you right, like, if you wake up at four in the morning or you wake up at 4.30 in the morning, it's not going to make you more successful in the day, just because, like you've had this shared hardship of waking up early in the morning. Morning routines are personal and I think they should be personal to you, like how you do meditation and prayer and scripture. I like to start my day off with the worst thing I could possibly think of and that's to sit in my cold plunge at 40 degrees. Why? Because it fills me with dopamine. And then two like, I'm immediately awake, I'm alert, and it's the one thing that I don't want to do every morning and it helps me kind of start my day because, like, hey, I'm in deliberate discomfort. I chose that and I always question it every single morning, but for me that starts off my morning routine and then I'll go read.
Speaker 3:But I love how you like talk about balances, fallacy, and I a hundred percent agree with you, and it took me so long to learn this because I was trying to be the best army officer I could be. I was trying to be the best father that I could be, trying to be the best husband that I could be and I never could. Uh, and like the level of like cortisol and stress that was just building up in me, like it was to a point of where I'm getting out of the army, I'm done with it. And then I, my wife, my accountability partner, ranger buddy, the love of my life, it steered me back onto it and then I really started like looking back and like, okay, how can I do this? I have to reframe it as the harmony and that's how I kind of see it of like I have these areas of my life. They're all spinning plates, each one spinning in a different cycle. Some need attention, some are good where they're at and I just have to be okay with that. And I have to learn how you talk about reading the water. I have to understand which area of my life is starting to wobble and needs to be intentional, and then I'll move out with purpose. There's cycles to it and if you can understand that, then you can accomplish more, especially with more responsibility. So I think you nailed the question, brother, and I guess one of the last questions that I'd love to do, because we talk about harmony, right.
Speaker 3:So tomorrow I'm going to chaperone my son's field trip into DC and I volunteered for that so I have 10 little munchkins that I'm going to be walking through the natural history museum, so that should be pretty entertaining. What's next for you? So you wrote two awesome books, you have an amazing coaching company. You've had such a historic career within the military, especially the non-traditional path. What are you working on now? What keeps you inspired?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's on a personal level and I think it's being a good adult parent. So, you know, we've got you know, my daughter will graduate the academy here in a year. My son's about to start, you know, college, and then we've got a younger son who's about to start high school. And one thing that my wife and I have really always talked about is, you know, we love being parents and I pray and hope that we've been, you know, kind of good, okay, parents, you know, with these kids. But now I want to be a really good adult parent and I want to. You know, how do we make that transition well, and how do we continue to have a loving and trusting and respectful relationship with our, with our children, as they now become adults and they become their own decision makers and and you know people and and whatnot. So I think, uh, on the horizon right now, that's the big one for me personally. Professionally, we're continuing to scale our company. We would, we would love to scale our company in the next level. Uh, one of my desires is to help veterans get into the business space and become entrepreneurs. Uh, and so you know, we just it's a blessing to be able to bring on people on our team who are veterans, who want to get into coaching and leadership space. We've been able to do that. So to continue to scale the company would be important.
Speaker 1:And then, on my personal level, next 12 months is to get my black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. So I've, you know, I've got a black belt in Taekwondo, I've got a black belt in Japanese Jiu-Jitsu, I've got a black belt in Judo, and none of those compare to the seven surgeries and the five back procedures and the 15 years I've had of doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. So that's one of my non-negotiables. I can skip my road march, I can skip my lift, but I'll tell you what man, from 1130 to 130, mondays through Fridays, I am on the mat doing BJJ. That is my, that's my resonance, and so that's one of my lifelong goals, because it's about practicing excellence, it's about mastery, right. And you know, as we say, you have a white belt mentality and you just keep rolling until that white belt turns black. So we're almost, we're almost there, so there. So that's kind of some of the things I've got on on the horizon oh, that's awesome, brother.
Speaker 3:that's inspiring too, of like understanding clearly what you need to do for your family, business, and then personal too, like we just talked about work, family, self, a harmony, a resonance between it, and you blended that perfectly.
Speaker 2:It's time for our final show segment that I like to call the killer bees. These are the same four questions that I ask every guest on the Tales of Leadership podcast Be brief, be brilliant, be present and be gone.
Speaker 3:Question one what do you believe separates a good leader from an extraordinary leader Practice? Question two can you recommend one book or a resource that has helped shape you on your journey?
Speaker 1:Primal Leadership by Dan Goleman.
Speaker 3:Okay, awesome For someone just stepping into their first leadership role. What should they focus on now to be successful?
Speaker 1:Character.
Speaker 3:Last one, this is the hardest one when can listeners find you and how can they add value to your current mission and also find your books?
Speaker 1:Yeah, wwwvanguardxxicom. You can find my books on Amazon. And if you'd like to come to one of our professional coaching courses, if you'd like us to come in and do leader development and executive coaching with your organizations and teams, or if you're looking for a great keynote speaker, then just head on over to the website, wwwvanguardxxicom. And again, we're here to serve, so that's our mission. We love to transform leaders, forge excellence. Andcom. And again, we're here to serve, so that's our mission. We love to transform leaders, forge excellence and win, and we'd love to do that with you, and I appreciate you having me on, josh, thank you.
Speaker 3:Anthony, this has been an awesome opportunity. I'm glad that Brabs was able to connect us. I feel like I could have a much more of a bra conversation with you, but that's the best conversation. It's one of the best podcasts, I think, that I've filmed recently. So thank you for taking the time with me. Please tell your wife Thank you for allowing her to share you with me for this podcast. So I appreciate it, brother.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Well, I'll bring the bourbon and cigars, and you bring the fishing poles and we'll go catch some more rainbow trout and set up a fire and tell stories.
Speaker 3:Awesome brother. Hey, have a great night. Thank you again All right, Josh.
Speaker 1:thank you, Take care.
Speaker 3:All right. Team Phenomenal episode with Dr Randall. The only reason that I kind of cut it a little bit short is because I have a chaperone trip with my son and looking at the clock right now, it's about 10 o'clock at night. I have to be up at four in the morning, so I need to get some level of sleep. But time for an after action review.
Speaker 3:What are the top three takeaways that I took from this podcast episode? There's a lot. Some of them correlate with other episodes that I've had, and that's okay because I think that there are themes or threads within leadership. But this one stands out through a couple things. The first one was the five principles.
Speaker 3:Leaders, specifically in this case junior lieutenants, come into an organization and kind of quickly understand what they need to do the five key principles to make an impact as quick as possible. And the first one is to observe, understand what the written rules are and what are the unwritten rules. That's paramount and the dichotomy between those two is also critical. Every organization you work in there's bylaws, right, there's a culture, and those are written down somewhere. You know what they are. But there's unwritten rules Like don't eat Shirley's pudding in the refrigerator because she's going to get absolutely mad, which you should never do anyway. Right, because you're a purposeful, accountable leader. You would never do that. But understanding what those are. Number two understanding those who have influence. Read any John Maxwell's books. One of the easiest ways to learn to make an impact quickly in an organization is to really silence your mind, take a tactical pause, observe your surroundings and what that O means. Observe your surroundings, and the stop acronym is look around and see who's talking and who's listening. Uh, when people are talking, find the people with influence and then gravitate towards them and then pursue with purpose.
Speaker 3:Number three is find your terrorists. I love that. Every organization exactly what he just said is going to have 20% of the people who hate you, 20% of the people who love you and 60% of the people that are indifferent. Your goal is to capture as much of that 60% as possible, because the last 20%, no matter what you do, is never going to trust or respect you, and that's okay. That is the burden of leadership. You need to understand that. It's not a popularity contest. What you are doing is tough, it is challenging, requires complex decisions to be made, sometimes in the split decisions, and there's always going to be people mad at you. That's the burden of leadership. But understand who those terrorists are in your organization and weed them out as quickly as possible because you can make a bigger impact. And number four find your knights. I think those two should be hand in hand. Who are the people in the inner circle, and not in a bad way, right, the inner circle means people that you trust with your life.
Speaker 3:Me, as a combat arms background, I looked at everyone in my platoon as a knight. We would do individual soldier training. We would do squad level training. We would do platoon level training. We would do company level training, brigade all the way up to battalion, live fires and joint readiness training, center sessions for 30 day fake deployments, right To go to be deployed. So when the time came, everyone that was on my platoon or everyone that was in a company of mine I trusted with my life. That's what I mean by find your night. Don't find yes, people that you can put in your circle that will tell you what you want to hear. Find people that will tell you when you're messing up, that will hold you accountable but will also be there and have your back, especially when challenging times come up.
Speaker 3:And then the last one is, and probably the most important, creating a coaching language and ethics within your company. Creating a coaching culture is absolutely critical because if you can do that, it does a couple things. First of all, it shifts the mindset from a company of there's a problem, how am I going to solve it? To a problem solving organization. There there is a problem. Here are three ways I think I can solve it. Let me talk to my leadership and see which one is best.
Speaker 3:When you coach, you're coaching individuals, you're not coaching problems exactly what Randall just talked about. And number two, you're helping to foster new leader growth. When you coach people, guess what? They're going to fail. Everyone is going to fail. But when you come in with a very hard hand and you just start nailing everyone to the ground, right, that is going to create a culture and a climate of fear. You're not going to get anything accomplished. So what do you need to do? You need to have a coaching culture, allow people to fill in an incrementally iterate on that meaning to continue to improve, and that's tongue twister. So say those two words three times fast. And the last two major takeaways I had and I'll kind of keep these short is mission command Bottom line.
Speaker 3:You cannot mitigate risk to absolute zero. The only way to do that is to sit in your nice climate controlled room covered up in a blanket, watching the great British baking show, because that's probably what I would do with my wife, right, like there's no risk in that. Maybe we could potentially overeat some nice pastries. But what I mean by understanding risk in life there's so much risk that we do in a given day. If you're in a leadership role, understand. Your job is not to mitigate down to absolute zero risk. Your job is to understand which ones are critical and what are the likelihoods of risk and what are the consequences of the risks. Track those, mitigate them down to an acceptable level and then go move out. Go do your job, move the needle and move the company towards success.
Speaker 3:And the last one is balance. I hate the word balance Because it is impossible and it only creates a dopamine-infueled culture where we're always trying to chase those 50-meter targets. Balance is impossible. If anyone tells you that you can have balance in life, they're lying to your face. What you need to do is find harmony, and I always think of this metaphor that I learned from Ula, david Braun and, I think, troy Amdahl they coined this metaphor, and it's beautiful of a circus, right? So you have this clown who's spinning seven plates. My plates happen to be centered around seven F's of faith, family, fitness, fun, finance, field and fulfillment. Those things, things are important to me. And understanding that every single plate is spinning a little bit faster or a little bit slower than the others, there's a point in time where those plates are just spinning alone. You don't need to do anything, you don't need to focus or be unintentional, it's doing its thing. And there's times where those plates begin to wobble and they require you to begin to spin again. That's the purpose of harmony understanding that and building it. Understanding those cycles is going to make you so much more successful, especially when you gain more title and influence. Stop chasing balance, start chasing harmony and understand in which areas your life is critical and where you are within those given spaces.
Speaker 3:All right, team, do me a favor If you like the content that I'm pushing out there. It would help me immensely. If you like, share, subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen. I love to hear feedback from you guys. So if you're listening to this right now, go to tells the leadership on buzzsprout or McMillian leadership coachingcom and leave me some feedback. Follow me on social media at tells of leadership. If there's any other Josh McMillions out there, I promise you that is not me. Apparently, people like to catfish me. I don't know why. I am not that successful in life. I'm just very passionate about leadership. But go follow me on social media and if you want to support the show, you can do that by going to tells, the leadershipbuzzbrowncom, and I'm always looking for a show sponsor that aligns with my core values. As always, team, I am your host, josh McMillian, saying every day is a gift. Don't waste yours. I'll see you next time.
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