Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast
In this podcast we discuss mentoring in cybersecurity, information for those that are looking to get into cybersecurity, and tips for those that are looking to advance their careers.
Check out our community: https://www.skool.com/the-cybersecurity-mentors
Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast
From Technician to Leader: The Missing Skill in Cybersecurity
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Cybersecurity doesn’t just have a talent gap — it has a leadership gap.
In this episode of The Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast, we sit down with Dave Berke, retired Marine Corps officer, former Top Gun instructor, and Chief Development Officer at Echelon Front, to talk about why leadership is missing across IT and cybersecurity — and why technical excellence alone is no longer enough.
Dave shares lessons learned from combat aviation, military leadership, and years of teaching leadership alongside Jocko Willink — and explains why leadership is a skill that must be learned, not a trait you’re born with.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why the “best technician” often struggles as a leader
- The leadership gap across cybersecurity and IT teams
- Why leadership isn’t about titles or authority
- How introverts and technical professionals can still become strong leaders
- The role of humility, ownership, and teamwork in healthy security teams
- How to lead from any position — even without a leadership title
- Why developing leaders is the ultimate test of leadership
If you work in cybersecurity, IT, engineering, or any technical field — this conversation will change how you think about your career growth.
Come hang out with us in the Cybersecurity Mentors Skool community. It’s free to join.
A leader's job is not to create followers, a leader's job is to create more leaders. And that's the ultimate manifestation of your leadership is did you create other leaders that can not just survive but thrive when you're gone? Because you don't get to decide every time when you're gone.
SPEAKER_00:Could you teach me? First learn stand, then learn fly. Make your rule, Daniel son, not the mind. I know what you're trying to do. I'm trying to free your mind, Daniel. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it. What is the most inspiring thing I ever said to you? Don't be an idiot. Changed my life.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to another episode of the Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast. On today's podcast, we've got someone really special who has lived leadership in some of the craziest and highest pressure environments on the planet. We're joined by Dave Burke. Dave is a retired Marine Corps officer, a former top gun instructor and fighter pilot. He's led troops on the ground in combat, and he's even commanded the first operational F-35 Squadron. These days, Dave is an instructor and the chief development officer at Echelon Front, where he works alongside Jocko Willink and the team teaching leadership to people in every industry you can think of. He just released a new book called The Need to Lead, which breaks down what leadership really looks like and mindset and behaviors that we can all apply today. And we wanted to bring Dave on to talk about his book, but also talk about what we see in IT and cybersecurity as a real leadership gap. We've got incredibly talented technical people who always don't see themselves as leaders or don't see the need to lead. But the reality is we need leadership at every level. So today we're going to dig into why that gap exists, how we can close it, and what it looks like to continue to grow our leaders and grow ourselves as leaders in this journey. So Dave, thanks so much for being here.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, man, thanks for having me. This is awesome. Thanks, Dave. So can you tell us a little bit about what Echelon Front is and uh why you decided to write this book?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, Echelon Front is a leadership consultancy. I mean, we are a company that teaches the skills of leadership. And I think Leif and Jocko, when we came back from our deployment uh in Iraq years ago, you know, almost 20 years ago now, uh, and they started training SEALs, they obviously understood the value of the lessons we had learned in training men and women for combat. But very quickly it started to become apparent that those same lessons applied in every aspect of life. And when they got out of the military, they realized they had uh a little bit of an obligation to do it, but uh also the tools available to take the lessons that we learned and started to teach them in a way that could help everybody, not just the people in the military. So they started this leadership consultancy, and we have grown uh incredibly, uh, certainly the last six or seven years, that we go around to companies, every industry, every sector, all over the world, at every layer of leadership to teach them the skills of leadership. A lot of times leadership is either overlooked, like you just alluded to, John, or they think it just sort of comes naturally based on your job. Leadership's a skill, you gotta learn it, and that's what we do. We teach it. And the book is an extension of that. We had been teaching from the foundations of extreme ownership and dichotomy to unbelievable uh books. Extreme ownership is absolutely the foundation of our curriculum. But as we had grown and reached more and started to teach more broadly, uh, I was lucky enough to be asked to write another book in our essentially our series and capture lessons that we had been teaching. And so I took those lessons and put them into a book. Uh, and it's been out for a little bit. It's been a pretty wild ride, man.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it it's great. It I do feel like it's like the extension of those other two books in the series. So, um, and great stories. I know some of that we're gonna get into it, but there were not all always the most they were humbling stories, but that's that's when you learn the lessons, right? Indeed. Yeah. So about this, you know, this gap and kind of moving into this, just talking about the gap in IT and cybersecurity, and I'll start with a quick short story, my story, of how I got into IT, and you know, I I definitely didn't think about being a leader at any point. It was like, hey, I want to be the best computer security person, the best engineer possible, and find cool things, solve cool problems, and be that kind of technical person. And then around 2015, they started talking about at the university building a student-run security operations center. And I was like, well, okay, that's great, but who's gonna run it? Like, there's nobody else here, and how's that gonna work? And so I started to kind of think through, I was like, well, maybe they're probably gonna tell me to do it anyways, but I've never done this before, I've never been a leader, never been a manager. I don't even know what that looks like, but I'm gonna go ahead and put my name in the hat. So I told my boss, I was like, hey, I I think I wanna I wanna be the lead for the for the sock. And he kind of, okay, okay, whatever. And but I you know, it worked out, and it was fortuitous timing around that same time. I'd heard I didn't know anything about leadership. And I always thought leadership was a you you were born with it, it was a thing that you're born with. So I heard Jocko on on Tim Ferris' podcast, his first interview, and then heard about extreme ownership, and I was like, what? This is so different than what I would think of with leadership and what I had seen as as leadership. So dove into that, dove in extreme ownership, and I was like, this is the manual, you know, here it is, right? Um, and just lucky that I came across it. And when I big things that stood out to me was like, oh, that is it is a skill. It is something you can learn, it's something you can get better at and continue to grow. And and it was the best decision I really ever made, even though I didn't really want to be a leader, like that path that put me on the path that I am now, and working with students and then growing from there and moving into our organization that we have. But I didn't, you know, I I really didn't understand what it meant to be a leader and what that encompassed, but definitely having that as a fortunate for me, that foundational concepts of these are the things that you need to be thinking about. And I think that's a lot of technical folks that we see you know in IT, especially in cybersecurity. But the question is, is you know, what with with your experience, you guys are so many different industries. Why do you think maybe that they don't consider leadership as a path?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. First of all, I love that story, man. It's a great story, and it really is representative. I think your story is an anecdote that applies to most people. Uh, and obviously you can see the very clear connection if you go in an industry like you're in. You you want to be a great operator, want to be a great technician, you want to really understand the nuance of the data or the technical side of things. You could picture that in construction. They want to be great at a particular skill or a particular trade. You can see it in healthcare. They just want to work with patients and help people. There is no industry, first of all, there's no industry where leadership isn't the most important thing, but there's almost no industry either that over time, as you grow in experience and capability and capacity and responsibility, that your leadership is going to come to the forefront and the need for your ability to lead is going to be revealed. And in most industries, what we see is the best technician, the best at the trade, or the best at the skill, then becomes elevated to be a project leader or some sort of person, uh people manager or people leader. And being really good at your skill in no way prepares you to lead other human beings. Uh, and so we see that, we see that all the time. And you emphasize one of our four core beliefs. It's one of the things we had never written down before. That is the very beginning of my book, is the four core beliefs. And that fourth one is that leadership is a skill. There is no such thing as the natural-born leader. That person doesn't exist. And a lot of times we'll look at someone, we'll take Steve and like, you know, Steve has been my mentor, Steve's been my boss, I've worked for Steve for years. He's a great leader. I will put him up on a pedestal and I'll draw the conclusion that, like, must be nice. Steve was born being a great leader. But if Steve's a great leader, he learned all those things. And so we have to dispel the myth that somehow leadership is bestowed upon us, or leadership is in our genes or our DNA. It's not. It's it is a skill no different from any other skill. You want to learn how to code, I can teach you. You want to learn how to play an instrument, I can teach you. You want to learn to play a sport, I can teach you. You want to learn how to lead, I can teach you. And you have to embrace that, and leadership eventually will always be the most important thing deciding our success and our failure. Always.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And there's one thing too, I agree with that wholeheartedly, and and I'm I'm living proof of it. It's like, wow, okay, I can keep improving this. Um where we see technical folks that there are different right there are folks that come into the technical field that are very technically minded, but they're not people skill focused, soft skills and people skills. Right. And so when you look across the the group of like, okay, who could be a potential new leader, and you're thinking about the the the the move up of somebody's gonna retire at some point, and you're like, well, I don't know, like it's tough because you they don't necessarily stand there, they're they're timid, they're introverts, yeah, they're shy, and some of that, like, how do you guys what do you think about that? Like, how do you think about that when you're looking across your organization?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and you did get to something I think is important. There are certainly some attributes that we might be born with, some tendencies, people a little more outgoing, they like to talk in public, and you could see how there's a little natural segue towards leadership with that. But when you're talking about that person who who maybe is an introvert, who is shy, who's maybe a little reserved or resistant to the idea of maybe people interaction or people leading, one of the things that we see, so you do a better job of really calibrating who might be the ideal candidate to be a leader is you really have to have the concept of leadership development embraced and embedded in your in your organization really from the beginning. So if I can bring in a brand new person onto my team, I'll keep using Stephen as an example, but if he's my brand new guy, just hired him, graded his skill, graded at what I hired him for, but quiet, reserved, uh introverted, doesn't want to talk, that doesn't mean that I can't introduce him and engage with him on the on the behaviors and mindsets of good leadership. Even if I'm not telling him, hey, you know, in next month or next week, next year, whatever it might be, it's just, hey, this is how our organizational culture is. We value these things. We want you to be build good relationships, we want you to be a good communicator, we want you to be humble. All those things that we talk about, we can embrace and embed those early on without it being, by the way, you know, this is our litmus test for your ability to be an organizational leader down the road. And if I see Steve quiet, introverted, doesn't like to speak in public, he's not very loud, maybe doesn't look like he wants to command a room, but he demonstrates all the real attributes of good leadership and he's invested in the idea of improving as a leader every bit as much as his technical skill. I now know that he has the ability to do it. Maybe it's a little bit of a slower process for Steve. Maybe I don't just put him in front of the the company party and have him give a presentation, you know, to a thousand people, but I might have him take a project with one other engineer or one other technician and say, hey, you're gonna be the lead for this project. And I start him slow, and he grows and develops at a timeline where one day, three, four, five years from now, he's managing a team, he's managing managing a division or a department. There's a way to do that, and it doesn't come from the natural tendency, it comes from the embracing of the leadership behaviors and mindsets that are required across all organizations from the very beginning. All organizations need to make an investment in their people as leaders.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, perfect. And do you see yeah, do you see, and yeah, I know you guys are all over the board, is it a uh just a big prevalent issue of the gap, this gap? Like it's not just I know it's not just IT and cybersecurity. I I see it heavily here because that's my world, but but what does it look like across industries?
SPEAKER_04:It's everywhere. It is, it is, it is everywhere. Uh and and listen, I I cannot think of an industry. I can't think of a segment of leadership from CEOs, founders, uh, to brand new frontline individual contributors and every layer in between that we haven't worked with here and abroad. And the there are certainly some segments where it's a little bit more prevalent, but it is prevalent everywhere. And I think where you where you see it, um, and the reason I think I can appreciate your story is that I think oftentimes you have to think about what gets people into certain industries. And I mentioned healthcare before. The common thread amongst healthcare, and it probably isn't too different in terms, you know, the motivation is different, but probably no different to your industry, is they really want to work on something they're very passionate about. And in healthcare, oftentimes it's about helping people. And in your industry, it might be the unique technical components and the and the engineering challenges or or whatever it might be, and you can see how those industries are, and that's what the draw is. And maybe the leadership part is somewhat overlooked or not really considered as the primary motivator, those are the industries where you have that gap. Now, all that gap is is helping them recognize how those behaviors and attributes, even if you're not in the organizational leadership role, still help you. If you're in cybersecurity and you have to communicate the objectives, the goals, and the timelines of your project, even if it's an individual project, you have to have good relationships, you gotta be a good communicator to get attached from your emotions, and you're gonna need some help along the way. Those are those are the leadership behaviors that we teach. And so I think sometimes the biggest hurdle is getting to the recognition that they are just as equally applicable, because oftentimes in certain industries, the drive to enter that industry doesn't have leadership at the forefront. And so that gap I think comes from exposing it. And I think you started the conversation really well, which is when you read that book, you're like, oh wow, this totally applies to me. That probably wasn't a thought when you decided on your initial career path moving towards you know this world that that would be. But once you see it, you go, oh my God, this is totally obvious. And that's what makes everything the same, even though the industries are certainly different, but the leadership aspect of it is the same across all industries.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and you hit on something there that we we talk about, we think about is the the biggest risk, and we live in the the world of risk with cybersecurity, is someone that is a cybersecurity professional that has identified a risk and how to mitigate it, but they don't know how to communicate it. They're talking technical jargon and things, and they're not like able to communicate it well.
SPEAKER_04:Yep. I have worked with uh I can't say it, but probably the largest IT organization in the world who worked with them for six years. And what you just described, we see it, we saw it, and that is a leadership problem. Well, all problems are, but that's a pure leadership problem. So uh I think we are absolutely seeing this the same way. Your illustration and your personal story, it's exactly what we see across all industries. We work with a ton of different industries, it's all the same stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Excellent. Well, let's jump in more to how we work through we've talked, we've already talked about this, but let's jump into how do we close the leadership gap.
SPEAKER_03:So, how do we help technical professionals, technical-minded individuals balance their technical skills and just that human leadership? Like what can we do? How do we do that?
SPEAKER_04:I'm thinking about one of the chapters in the book uh where I and I think you probably, if you read it, there's a component of me working with an IT professional in there, and and it was kind of centered around some feedback. And he was one of his elements of confidence came from he was actually really good at his job. He was technically really, really smart. He was right most of the time. Uh his data was tended to be very accurate. And in that sense, there's one component about the blend of those two, and like kicking that thing off the way you described is you do want to be really good. You really want to be effective in your role. And we don't want leadership to be looking at something as supplanting your lack of technical skill. But if you talk about the scenario where John just just illustrated that is assuming you have a good reputation of being technically good, at some point your responsibility will extend beyond just the technical work that you're doing. And if sooner or later, it will involve another human being. In in even if it's just communicating what you're doing. And of course, you can imagine that's the lowest level of interaction, is just me communicating. You can see in any industry over time, it's gonna be much more of that. I have to get buy-in from you, I have to get your support, I have to get your department's contribution or the elements that you're gonna support to my part of the product or whatever it might be. And that's collaboration. And if you can illustrate how growth in your contribution, even though it's it's centrally focused on how technically smart and capable you are, and you start to illustrate how the need of other elements inside the organization will be required for you to be successful, you can start to do what we call it just a mapping exercise. It's just can we map the thing that you're trying to achieve, the outcome you want, to a leadership behavior? And we use words like cover and move, simple, privatized, execute, decentralized command, but there's a thousand synonyms for them. And so if I've got to get Steve and you're you've got your individual project that you are working on, maybe it's a coding for some sort of um shopping software for some sort of application that a client is buying from us, and John is gonna work on another component that by the time we deliver this product to a to a client, it requires multiple things. Eventually, Steve and John got to get on the same page to make sure the client that's giving us a bunch of money gets what they want. We call that cover and move. That's the relationship between the two of you. And we kind of illustrate, like, Steve, you can't go in, it's not an arm wrestling contest between yours and his. You guys have to create some synergy between those two components. And then John will say, Well, nothing Steve said made sense to me. And he came in and kind of bulldozed and tried to force this on me. I'm like, oh, that sounds like a communication problem. That's what we call simple. Did you guys ask Ernest questions? Did you use the readback? And like, well, no, I didn't do that. Like, well, let's try that. And like, oh, it got better. And then Steve comes back, it's like, John yelled at me because he was super upset because we were a couple days late on this. I'm like, oh, it sounds like we need to do some detachment. We call that prioritize and execute. And that mapping is part of the process of the awareness of how those skills are central to the outcome that we want to achieve. What we see, Steve, and a lot of people that are really smart, really have high technical acumen, they want to be successful. They want to win. They want to have the best, whatever it might be. That doesn't happen by yourself. Or or eventually, and and and and I hate to say it, but if you're really, really good on the technical side, you're gonna get more and more responsibility, you're gonna get more and more growth opportunity, and that is a synonym for more and more leadership responsibility. And if you struggle with that, you're gonna have to expand your horizons beyond your technical skill and start to work on those softer skills, like you were alluding to, and those people skills. Those are leadership skills, those are gonna be central for your success. And most hard worker, passionate people do want to be successful, and if you expose it to them the right way, they embrace it and they're willing to grow and do it, and they all of a sudden leadership becomes central to the to their to their daily life.
SPEAKER_01:One thing from the book was um that that concept of feedback, and we we definitely have many times where you're like, okay, you know, how does it feel when someone gives you that criticism, right? I was thinking about Dale Carnegie's uh principle from his how to win friends and influence people. Don't don't criticize, condemn, or complain. Like, how do you how do you feel when you get that? Oh, yeah, great.
SPEAKER_04:Like that story, that anecdote came from. I mean, it's actually I can I can picture one client. I mean, I we make a little adjustment because I don't ever want to reveal exactly who it is. And I say that in the book because I don't want Steve to go, oh my god, he's talking about me. But in that regard, where there's that part of like, hey, that's on them. They don't like my feedback, that's on them because I'm right, and the feedback was correct, and they need to just listen to it. And the point was like, well, you might be right, but if they're not listening to you and they're not getting any better, what good does it do? And he's kind of well, that that doesn't matter to me. And then he had gotten his feedback, and his feedback is really negative. I'm like, Well, how'd that make you feel? He's like, Well, this is terrible. Well, and he's like, Oh, that's and and it seems somewhat obvious, but actually it's not. This is stuff we gotta learn. And so you gotta give even senior people some grace in in that and some patience in their own personal exploration, uh, exploration of this, is they go, Oh, I never really thought of it like that. And that's his leadership journey, and he's gonna get and he got better. It and he made some small changes and it improved the relationship, and the the team improved. I mean, it's simple, that's how it works, but it's not this is not easy stuff. It's simple stuff, but it's not easy to do.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So giving feedback and asking for feedback is something that I've actually tried to start to do in my own leadership journey with my team. And it is it is interesting because sometimes you catch people off guard when you say, Are you open to some feedback? You're kind of asking them if they're willing to listen, you know, they're if they're open to it. But when you also ask them, Are you willing to give me feedback on how I'm doing or or what I'm working on? And you kind of catch people off guard because they may not be used to that. Um, so it's one thing that I've been trying to work on myself. Um, but going back to kind of what you were how you answered our question was we see it all the time. You have been in an organization for so long, and you're doing good work, and the only next step for you to go into is kind of a manager role. So that's kind of what's expected. You you're you started, you know, you moved on, you're a senior engineer now, and the next step is just management. And some people may not be ready for that, or some people may not even want that, and sometimes they have no choice, they're just kind of put in that position, and they're like, okay, now what? No leadership training, no managerial training, nothing at all, and now they have to manage a group of five, six, seven people, and they're still so focused on trying to find the problem and fix it, not letting you know, others uh and my team help me and kind of work with the team instead of trying to still take everything on by yourself, but delegating more in a sense.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, that's a classic, classic illustration of a leadership problem. And you're right too. I mean, there are certain folks that simply don't want to outgrow their position. They want to just sit and work on that particular project in perpetuity. Uh, you know, even in the military, I was thinking about, you know, I've talked about this with the Jocko in aviation. A lot of people join the military because they just want to fly. I want to fly, I just want to fly airplanes. In the Marine Corps, it's very, very understood that part and parcel to flying is leadership growth and opportunity and command and things like that. The Army has something called a warrant officer where they really just have a relatively narrow track where some of their pilots won't go down a leadership track. They just fly. And I think that speaks to the idea that there are certainly times where if you got folks like, hey, I'm not here for the organizational leadership roles and responsibilities. I just want to do my trade or my skill. You can make room for that. But I think it's important too to make it clear to that person there is a limit to their progression. There's the it's you're only gonna get just so far. And by the way, most of those organizations, if I take John and I limit him, like, hey, if you you don't want any of this leadership stuff, that's fine, you're gonna work in these things. But as I start to see Steve and the organization grow leadership-wise, John's opportunities are gonna come narrower and narrower and narrow. And eventually those opportunities might go away. I have to make that very clear to him before he completely opts out of the leadership growth opportunities. Most people, not all, most people are willing to accept some of that leadership growth. So I don't want to begrudge people that don't, but I think organizations have an obligation to share with them the limitations they're gonna be placing on themselves if they choose to do that. And what we have seen is not exclusively, but most people will look for some growth opportunities because it's really allows them to contribute and do what they want to do. If you put someone in that leadership position with no training, with no resources, with no preparation, they're probably gonna fail. Because what got you, Steve, to being my best technical guy, my best coder, my best writer, my best welder, whatever it is, my best guy in that industry, and I now put you in charge of five, six other people, the last thing in the world that's gonna come naturally to you is delegation. It's the last thing you're gonna wanna do because you're gonna look at something, and the other four people are doing it differently, you're gonna be like, that's all wrong. And the proof that you know that their way is wrong is that you're in charge of them. I got promoted for a reason. I know what I'm doing, we're gonna do it my way. And now to take Steve's technique that got him to that responsibility level, and you got four of the people knowing to do it his way, and all of a sudden you got conflict. And Steve's natural tendency, because he's a human being, which is all of us, is when there's conflict, is you're gonna start mandating and forcing them to do it your way and telling them what to do, and they're not gonna like that. And you're gonna start giving him feedback and how their process isn't the same way and all that, and all of a sudden, Steve's gonna come to me and go, Dave, my team isn't doing what I told them to do. We're gonna be late on this project, and there's a bunch of errors, and they're not listening to me. And I'm gonna be like, Well, that sounds like a leadership problem. And if I'm a really good leader, I'll say, Oh, this is all my fault because I didn't train and prepare Steve for that job. So if you're gonna put people in leadership positions, which you're you need to, you gotta prepare them for that because our natural behaviors are almost always wrong when we get resistance. And by the way, you know when we get resistance all the time. Because human beings don't like to be told what to do, and they don't like to do things other people's ways. So that's the first leadership challenge is you have to get other people to get on board for the success of the team, and they're gonna want to do it their way. And when they do it their way, and it's different from your way, you're gonna want to push back and resist and mandate and micromanage, and you see where this is going. You can see where this is going. And I I can guarantee you, I'm talking about your world right now because it's all of our worlds, it's how it works everywhere. You gotta set them up to lead. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. So, so I wanted to kind of flip it on you now. How do we encourage those in IT to lead from where they are if the mindset is, hey, only people with certain titles are leaders or or you know, and and they are the the authority and we're supposed to follow what they say, but you know, how how do we do that? Because it's hard, right? I mean, you're you're kind of uh made to believe that, hey, this C-level person, you know, is the leader and I need to listen to what they say and I need to stay in my lane.
SPEAKER_04:So how do how do you think that's what you're describing why Echelon Front exists and what we do every single day? You have you've got a great read on this, Steve. It's exact this is exactly what the problems are. First and foremost is, and we would certainly explain it maybe a little bit differently to the C-suite, the managerial frontline supervision individual contributor, but we're essentially saying the same thing is that that's wrong. That's wrong. You being in the C-suite doesn't bestow some sort of brilliance and wisdom upon you that's absent another human being because of your title. And the very first slide in any presentation from Echelon Front, before we even get into the content, when I hit click on the very first button, the first slide says, everybody is a leader. That's the first thing we say. And it's a reminder to the C-suite, executive leadership, mid-level management, frontline supervision, individual contributors, is this applies to you, to everybody. So I don't care who's in the audience, they should look up and go, oh, he's talking to me, because we are. And part of it is to break that natural paradigm that leadership means authority, wisdom, dominance. That's all wrong. It just means responsibility. And then if you really dig in, we go, oh, actually, there's responsibility everywhere, we call it ownership. It's just roles and responsibilities of what those things might happen. But the and this is a long arc to that. The the ultimate thing is what a good leader does who's in charge of the team says, Hey, John, Steve, listen, I know I'm in charge, but you know, I'm not exactly sure how to how to do this project. And John, you've done this for like three years. Steve, you we just brought you over from another company specifically because of this expertise. Hey, what do you think we should do? How do you think we should do this? And Steve and John go, uh, oh, um, no one's ever asked me that before, but since you're asking, I've got some ideas. And I go, hey, I would love to hear those ideas. Oh, that makes sense. Okay, John, do you have what you need to get that done? And Steve, how's the timing for this? Or what can I do to contribute? And and I'm paraphrasing, but you can see how this operates. Is that good leadership? The higher up you go, the less decisions you should be making, the less leading down you should be doing, the more you should be setting your team up to lead. And one of the best ways to do it is ask them what they want to do. And then help them and resource them. And I'm kind of getting it out of order because we've really gotten to this concept of decentralized command, empowering your people, pushing decision making. That's our fourth law. That's our last law. But decentralized command, that last law, is built on good relationships, good communication, and working on things that really impact the company. That's cover, move, simple, and prioritize and execute. So decentralized command is really just a culmination of those four of those three other things. And that's what those four things are. And I think the hardest part in that is that what we haven't really gotten to, that's really central to this, is that our human nature doesn't lend ourselves to doing that. The thing we just described, the thing we just illustrated, those questions, that empowerment, it does not come naturally. In fact, Ego, ego and and human nature. And I'll just close with this thought is like when I think of the idea of we call it decentralized command, the word that most industries use is empower your people. That's it, you've heard that from Carnegie, you've heard that. It's a everybody believes in it. Should we empower people? Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_04:What we say it means is empower them to make decisions. Well, the root word of empowerment is power. And what we're saying is if you're in charge of the team, you have the power, what you're supposed to do is give that power away to them. And the reality is that that just doesn't come naturally to us. Human beings do not naturally relinquish power. In fact, most human beings, when they get it, hold on to it. So I'm just saying, oh, Steve, this is very simple. Just give away your power. And I'm shocked when you can't do that naturally on your own and it doesn't work. And organizations build that culture that you described earlier, which is the people in charge tell us what to do. That's kind of normal. It's wrong, but that's what we should expect. So when we're breaking that down, we have to go, hey, that's expected. Steve is gonna hold on to his power. Let me show him and teach him and train him and help him understand why that's bad. And over time he goes, oh man, this is really hard, but I guess I should relinquish a little bit. And we gotta be patient, it takes a long time. But we're fighting human nature and fighting our ego every step of the way. That's what makes leadership a thousand times harder than any other skill. These technical coding cyber problems, we can solve those. Leadership, damn, that's that's a that's a hard problem to solve because it's human nature and ego in the way, not math and science and engineering. It's human nature and ego. Those are infinitely more challenging. That's why leadership is so much more important than anything else. Sorry for the long run, but that was a great question.
SPEAKER_01:That's great. That's why also you need to, and we'll talk about this in the next section, but like you have to work on it every day. You have to, it's never ending. You have to because it's the hardest problem ever. Ever.
SPEAKER_04:Ever.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So just one thing I wanted to add, and this just off my my own experience. I moved into a managerial role. I was managing students, but still coming from a technical background to then managing students and then moving on to managing full-time staff. One of the biggest things that affected me was people problems. Moving from technical issues to like, he doesn't like him, or he said this about his work, and I'm like, guys, we're adults here, like we're pretty much over 18 years old here. Let's let's let's behave like adults. But and I thought, okay, maybe it's just because of this generation I'm working with, younger folks, you know, starting their professional careers. I moved to uh managing full-time staff, older gentlemen older than me. The same things. Like, guys, we're all adults here. Let's let's behave like adults. And just the people problem aspect took so much of my mental capacity and power that I would be even more exhausted when I became a manager at the end of the day than when I was solving technical problems. I just was so drained, and it was a whole it was a different side of just working for me. So it is unique to be to be a a leader, and you know, I I I I am glad it's a skill that you can improve and get better, but it sometimes is hard because there are certain people that don't have all those skills just yet, and you're like, this I don't know if this person's gonna work out in this role.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, well, that story, what you just described, like that anecdote, is it's perfect. Because, and I'm I think it's chapter one. You guys correct me if I'm wrong, but the first story is this guy's like, these young kids don't get it. And it's he's like, like, how do I lead these young kids? And I'm like, the same way you lead anybody else in the world, they're just there's nothing different about this next generation, they're not like genetically modified, they're not, they're just human beings. And you will find that problem. So I the way you describe that, you will find that problem anywhere, up, down, and across. I think one of the hardest things for me, and I have to constantly remind myself of this when I and I I I am I am introduced to people leadership challenges all the time. Young, middle, old, whatever. I have to constantly remind myself and tell myself, this is normal. This is what to expect. There's nothing wrong with this person. If I got a conflict between Steve and John and they're 18, 28, 38, 58, or 68, I shouldn't, I I I want to draw the conclusion like, well, the older they are, this should be easier. Like, no, no, no. This is just normal. And when you go, okay, that's normal to be expected. You can maintain a more positive outlook of how do you get to a solution and not attribute to something being wrong with them. The same way that my kids don't get along sometimes. It's just how we are as human beings. And if you look at that, I go, okay, all problems are leadership problems, all leadership problems are people problems. I go walk in with a more open-minded and expect, and and I can expect this, I try, I, I, I become less frustrated, I get less resigned. Like a lot of people, like, I can't keep this up anymore. Like, no, man, this is this is this is how it is. Don't don't don't get caught off guard, don't be surprised by that. And the solution is when you build a good relationship with someone, you get to know them better, understand what drives them, what motivates them, you learn more about them, there it's easier to work with them. And you contribute to the generational, you could attribute it to background, to all the differences. And it really gets to a key thing that one of the job of a leader is to keep an open mind. You gotta be open-minded. If you only see the world through your set of eyes and you only see it through your own perspective, you'll never understand. Steve will come in and complain about John. I'm like, oh, this guy, John, must be a real issue. And John, come in here, and he'll tell me what's going on. I'm like, wow, maybe Steve's the problem, and John's good to go. Because amazingly, their version of the story is totally different.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And I have to be open-minded to all of that. And what's amazing about that is when Steve comes in and complains about John and I'm open-minded to that. John comes in and complaining about Steve and I'm open-minded to that. Over time, what they'll see from me and hopefully from each other, go, oh, Dave's open-minded. And if he's open-minded, then the relationship's a little bit easier to interact. And I could say things like, Hey, hey, John, what do you think Steve's getting at? He's like, Oh, I just, he, he, he just wants us to fail. I'm like, well, I mean, I understand why you say that, but but you know, Steve's working on these things too. You know, he's got these other projects and he's he's super busy. Do you really think Steve wants to fail? And he'd be like, Well, no, but man, boy, he he's really frustrating me. And and I and I know he doesn't want us to fail, but boy, it's tough sometimes. That's a great point. And all of a sudden, like the temperature comes down a little, just a little bit. And all of a sudden, if you do it really well, Steve and John are like, all right, they don't want me to fail, but but hey man, can you help me? He goes, Yeah, I'm sorry. I can, yeah, let me help you with that. I can, and and you can see where this goes. And that open-mindedness and that willing to listen and to get people to see it through other points of view. That's all people. That's all human nature. That's all, that's all leadership. When you do that well, those problems, when they get better, the technical stuff is it's the easiest part of it. It's the easiest part of it. And it's when John stops thinking Steve is there as a secret, nefarious, evil plant to destroy him and his team and the company. He's just another person working on a project with the same challenges and struggles. They get on the same page, they see eye to eye, they're open-minded to each other's point of view, they build a better relationship, things get a little bit better, the problems get solved a little bit faster, the company grows, and you can see where this goes. That's what we do all the time. And it happens at every layer of leadership. We see CEOs going crazy on their executive leadership team. The same way we see young kids on site, you know, going at each other for little things too. Happens everywhere. People are people, man.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. And now, Steve, I you know, one of the things I gave him in his new because he came back, he was my very first intern. So he was a student intern, and this was 2014. He he graduated, and then I tricked him, is what I say, to come back to work for me as this as my role as a stock manager. As I talked about how my first leadership role, I was his first leadership role, was my first leadership role. Now, one of the things I gave him was extreme ownership. I said, This is Daniel. I don't know if he read it completely. He did say he told me he read it.
SPEAKER_03:I I did. It was just, you know. From someone who you know never been in a leadership role before, had had a few like true managers, right? A few true leaders to really compare and learn from. The idea of like it all comes back to you. If something goes wrong, it's on you. That was hard for me to swallow coming in from like not really having much. I'm like, what? No, it's not that was his assignment. He messed it up. How like that's not me. So that was like my biggest thing. But once I started working and I started seeing it and thinking back to what I read in the book, I'm like, oh my God, this is true.
SPEAKER_01:It really is. I will say, uh, Dave, if you could talk about that a little bit, because I think that's what people they see extreme ownership, and every every problem is a leadership problem. Just I know this is I'm setting you up here, Dave. I know this is this is like the first chapter, right? Um but if that and you and your story in that is perfect, but let me let you talk about the ownership piece of it, because people may take that as like uh what do you mean? I didn't that's the Tom, Tom is the problem.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, for sure. I I mean we if there's one thing we get more than anything else, it's that. And so Steve's illustration of the natural resistance, and that's a hard pill small, that's exactly right. That's and by the way, also correct, normal. We understand that. Like that's exactly how you should expect you and your team, your kids, your people around you to react to that concept. That's that's right. That's that's what you're gonna do. That's what you're gonna expect. And if you think someone's gonna read that and go, oh yeah, makes perfect sense. Everything is my fault. You're setting yourself up to fail. That's not how people are gonna react to it. You know, when I wrote my book, I was writing a leadership book. It's not a memoir, it's not a story life about me. My stories are in there, and John was nice enough to allude to the fact that they're all just embarrassing failures. So the whole book is about all these things that I screwed up. There were three chapters that originally we were wondering, are they repetitive? And it was their chapter on humility, there's a chapter on ownership, and there's a chapter on teamwork. And what I came to the conclusion is you cannot write a leader, I don't care who you are, you're not echelon front, anybody in the world, you cannot write a leadership book without the concepts of humility, ownership, and teamwork being in there. So I wrote three chapters that on paper, at least title-wise, were repetitive. But as you know, if you've seen Extreme Ownership and seen my book, they're very different perspectives on the same topic. And I think the reason that's so important is that those are probably the most critical of all of them. And the ownership one is very likely the toughest of all of it, is to do what Steve did, which is come to the conclusion, oh man, this is my fault. And is how are you supposed to get people to accept that? And the worst way to do it is to say, Steve, this is all your fault. So ownership is a is something that has to be delivered very carefully, very, very carefully. And if you if you've looked at my book, and I don't want to put Steve in the spot, I guess we got him to admit he read ownership. I'm not sure if he's read my chapter on ownership yet, but the way you get other people to start to be willing to take ownership is by doing it yourself. And I wrote a chapter about my biggest failure to take ownership of something and how that impacted me as an illustration for hopefully other people to go, well, if Dave can take ownership of this, maybe I could recalibrate my perspective on other things I can take ownership of. Because the scenario that I was in was obviously the worst thing that's ever happened was losing a Marine in combat. And that was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. And the ownership didn't come naturally. I didn't just openly embrace my personal responsibility for that. I resisted it because that's what human beings do. And part of that is the recognition that on this journey of ownership, it doesn't happen overnight. You don't just read the book or read a chapter and go, everything is my fault. But if you can repackage the concept of ownership, and I talk about the concept of ownership differently in my book than Jocko did in his, it's the same thing, but it's a different point of view on it to specifically to reveal it in a different way to make it, again, more palatable or maybe more understood, is when you do take ownership, what you're not getting is the blame and and the finger porting and the burden. What you're getting is the control and the power and the autonomy to solve problems. And so part of it is just understanding what ownership really means. But most people, especially human beings, when they're younger, I'm thinking of my kids, when they hear the word ownership, they hear punishment, they hear blame, they hear getting in trouble, they hear fault. And obviously there's some truth to that. Owner, you know, you can't avoid that. But what really we want people to see and hear is go, oh, ownership means I now can influence the outcome. I now have an ability to contribute. I'm not a victim, I'm not powerless, I have freedom and autonomy and control, things that we love, that human beings crave, go, yes, you have now the ability to help solve this. All of a sudden, the concept and the word ownership has a much different meaning that we're much more willing to embrace, and that's what we want. That's what we want. Is people go, you know what? If I'm being honest with myself, I could have done a little bit more here. I could have worked a little bit harder, I could have asked some more questions, I could have gone on John sooner, I could have taken a little bit more ownership. And if I do that, I'll contribute a little bit more, the problem will get better, my life will get better, and I'll go, oh, that ownership thing wasn't so bad. And then maybe take a little bit more ownership on the next one, a little bit more of the next one. And to John's point, by the way, this never ends. This isn't just, you don't just end, get to the end. This goes on forever. Forever. Ownership is something we want to take because it gives us the thing we want the most, which is the freedom to solve the problems and make our lives better for us and the people around us that we care about. That does not come naturally. It is automatically resisted, it is the hardest thing in the world, but without it, nothing else happens. We have to learn to do it. And that's what these books are all about. And that's what Echelon Front is all about. It's helping people learn to embrace that. Not easy.
SPEAKER_03:Not at all. So I wanted to touch on culture because you talk about it, you mentioned it earlier. So, what does a healthy leadership culture look like? And if we're trying to think about a technical team or a cybersecurity team, in your opinion, like what does that look like?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Well, is there any way to just summarize my rants for the last 35 minutes? I mean, that's the questions you've been asking, I think, are great questions because really underneath all your questions are all about, it's all about culture. It's the culture of leadership that starts with I, and it doesn't matter who I am, I the CEO, I the manager, I the the supervisor, I as the individual contributor, I am responsible. That's the first thing in the culture to start with at. It's about me and what I need to do to help. And then the natural segue is to culture is this is about the team, not about me. And it looks like those things are kind of like opposite. I am responsible for everything, but this is not about me. John knows this. There's a chapter in my book that says, it's not about you, it's about the team. That's the that's the teamwork chapter. Can't write a leadership book without teamwork. And the culture starts with recognizing I am responsible for my contribution to the to the success of the team, and I blend it, it's all on me, but not about me. It's about the team, not about me, but I am responsible for helping that. And you take all of a sudden you take the me part and the team part and you blend that and we go, hey, we're all in this together. And the more we're willing to take ownership and the more we're willing to work together, the more likely we are to be successful. That is the foundation of everything. And so if you want to have a culture in an organization, and I read John's resume and I put him through an interview, and I he's got these amazing great technical skills, he's got this great experience, he's a cyber expert in this field, he's preeminent in this operation and this work. I have to also let him know that if you're gonna come here to Burke Industries, to Burke Cyber Industries, you're also gonna need to be a good leader. And I'm gonna give you tools and resources to do that, and I'm gonna give you education and training, I'm gonna give you opportunity, I'm gonna evaluate you based on that. It's gonna be part and parcel of everything you do. And I say, that's just the culture here. And then John shows up, and John kind of is like, well, I don't know. John shows up a little bit late, his paperwork's not tight. And instead of Dave policing it, Steve goes, Hey man, I know you're new here. We love having you, but just so you know, we don't really do that here. We show up on time and we do this and we work well together. John goes, uh oh, is that just kind of how it is? Like, yeah, man, we love it here. It's great, but let me help you with that. Let me all of a sudden the culture's created at at that level. Not from me saying, be on time. It's hey, this is how we operate. And John goes, Oh, okay, well, yeah, that's cool. That's an easy thing to acclimate to on day one when your peers are just saying, Hey, this is how it is. We take ownership of things, we work well as a team, we make sure we're all successful. John gets on board. If you can do that, the culture will take care of itself. And over time, it'll just get better and stronger. And what you'll get is you'll get these preeminent organizations. Some of the ones that I'm familiar with are Navy SEALs, top gun. Those things don't happen by accident. They happen by culture that just sustains itself year after year after year. Any organization can do that. And it starts with ownership, it starts with teamwork, and and the other piece, John's already said it, is the piece that's required for that to happen is humility. Those are the big three. You have humility, ownership, teabrick, and organization. You'll create the culture, then later on top, all the principles we teach, the behaviors and the mindsets, and what you'll get is culture. And then it's kind of hard to lose. You're gonna be, you're gonna win if that's your culture, and it sustains itself. Uh, and that's what you need. And and I don't care what your skills and technical acumen or what your industry is, you gotta have it from the beginning, you gotta build it, you gotta create it, and you gotta sustain it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, two things. That's awesome. Um, one is is one of the things we do with our, well, we used to do, I need to incorporate it back in is when we would do interviews, Steve knows I love to put people in in what we call the gauntlet, right? Yeah. And the reason I did it and do it used to do it more, is because I didn't care how technical you were, right? I mean, you could be the smartest person, but we put you in the fire because I want to see how humble you are. Like, are you oh you're not gonna solve the problem. You're your prop it would be surprising because what we throw you into, you don't have all the information, right? And so how do you communicate? We would actually put them with students and put them in a real incident. And the student knows more information than them on purpose and they're and they're good. So that way the student, if they use the student, the student is the key. But if they're humble to say, Hey, what do you what do you think about this? What do you what is going on here? I don't really understand this, right? And then how do they communicate that back? We would kind of pause in midway and say, Hey, could you give us a re you know recap of what you've done, what you're doing, how it's going, right? Tell us what's going on as if it was a real briefing to us of of an incident. And I really like that because you can have a five-page amazing resume. But number one, it shows us, it does show us kind of where you are technically, but those we can train those. But how if you're not humble enough to say, I don't know, or I don't understand, or this doesn't make sense to me, or you're asking for help, phone a friend, then we've it's probably not gonna be the best place for you.
SPEAKER_04:You gotta run through that gauntlet, man. I John, I don't why'd you stop? Like that humil and and and again, you've you've if you've followed Jocko and you've listened to Echelon Front, the absolute the title, the title of chapter two is humility is the most important attribute in a leader. Not humility is important, and not humility should be part of you. Uh, not that it says learn to be humble. It says it's the most important thing. Now, listen, that isn't a uh an offset for like being terrible at your job. Of course, you should be good at your job. And being technically proficient and tactically proficient, those of course are important things. I have to be good in the airplane, I have to be good at my skill, but the most important thing isn't how good I am in that. In fact, humility is not just the most important thing. Without it, even being really good at your skill isn't enough. Because of the scenario you just you alluded to. So you should put them through the gauntlet and help people understand is that what we value here, of course we value your your skills, of course we value your knowledge, your intelligence, your experience. But you know what we value more? Humility. How much of it? We value that the most. Because if you're humble, you can listen. If you can listen, you can learn, and if you can learn, you can get better. And so if you've got some deficiencies, it'll improve. But if you're not humble, you won't listen, you won't learn, and you won't get better, which means nothing improves, even if you're really good. And that is a recipe for long-term failure. So a little humility test, hard to do, but you should do it. And I'm compelling you, John, get back on that gauntlet path, and not to embarrass and humiliate them, but to reveal, hey, this is what we value here. We value that humility. And and by the way, if they're not humble, don't be surprised, don't be mad, and don't be upset. Be expect that. Most people have to learn the skill of humility. You go, okay, hey, John, if you're gonna come here, you know, one of the things we value is this, and this is how we teach it, and this is why it's important, and we want you to be on that journey to be successful. Your humil humility is central to that, and and help them. Yeah, nobody's born humble. Nobody. Right. Let you talk to my three kids. You think you're born humble? The humility chapter is like the most embarrassing chapter that I wrote. It's like the most embarrassing story. It's Dave, 21-year-old Dave Burke, and 21-year-old Dave Burke, not humble. He's a jerk, he's not a likable guy, he's not making friends and influencing people. Dale Carnegie would not be impressed with 21-year-old Dave Burke. And I wrote that story in there because I had to. I had to let the world know, like everybody else, I was not humble, and it was causing me real problems, and I had to learn humility, and I explained where it started, and it's sucked. It's embarrassing, but it's all of us.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. Absolutely. And I think this back to the culture piece is like when you look at these concepts, and and I, you know, I have like I have this in my head, and I'm trying to share it, but a lot of people they get the you know, oh, it's a leadership thing, right? Oh, the eye roll, okay, here we go, you know. And it is uh how you weave it in. And it's and it hey, it's on me. As a leader, it's on me to continue to try and bring people into the fold, but just here here are the things that work for me. And they not everything that I that I do or that I've learned from you know from you guys is is necessarily your your jam or it's works the most for you. Find what works for you, but here's what works for me. But it there is that challenge of sharing this information, sharing these leadership principles, tenets, the laws of combat, that people were like, this is a military thing. This is a I'm not a military guy, John. I'm not I'm not into that kind of thing. So I get some of that pushback sometimes, right?
SPEAKER_02:And yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So how do you kind of introduce it to help shift the culture?
SPEAKER_04:We we try to package it if there's some first of all, there's no problem, like you should welcome resistance. Someone that's revealing resistance is also telling you that they care. If, and I see this in my kids all the time, when they don't care, they don't resist. They like, whatever, meh. That's not great at all. In fact, resistance is like, oh, you've thought about this, you've got an opinion, you've got some ideas, I can work with that. So don't have a negative reaction to resistance. In fact, resistance is a little bit of a gift going, oh, I see Steve's not super keen on this. He's kind of pushing back, he's frustrated, he doesn't like this. That means he's thinking about it, it means he's cares, he's got an opinion. It's a little investment there. And I go, oh, hey, Steve, I think I'm missing something. Hey, let me hear what's on your mind. What are you thinking, man? And he goes, Oh, okay, well, I'm glad you asked. So resistance is fine. We don't mind resistance, we like resistance, and that is an attribute, is a can be turned into a positive thing. You don't want compliance in your organization, you don't want people to just nod their head up and down and say yes, everything. Resistance is a good thing. And then if I get a little sense of like, just like you said, Steve's like, I'm not a green beret or a navy SEAL. Look at Jocko's face. That guy looks like a serial killer, which he kind of does. You you can package it a little bit differently. Instead of packaging it with Jocko and the SEALs and fighter pilots and bombs and guns, you go, Well, you know, I had the exact same first impression, Steve. I the first time I saw this guy, I was like, who is this guy? And it really struck me the same way that it struck you. And then I started to think about what they were saying, and I and I started to write down in my own words what they were talking about. They were like cover and move and machine guns. And really what I wrote down was just I wrote down working together. And then I was watching this thing on decentralized command, and it was all like military and subordinates. And when I was really kind of taking my notes, I just wrote down everyone leads. And I wrote down, letting my people make decisions. And all of a sudden the language becomes less about the four laws of combat and about, hey, Steve, do you think you know here it'd be a good idea for us to take care of each other? And Steve, there is no scenario in which Steve doesn't say yes. And by the way, if Steve says no, we shouldn't take care of each other, you need to think really long and hard about whether Steve should be here. Because if he's like, nah, man, let's ruin our people's lives. This is a great chance to screw people up. You might have a problem. But Steve's gonna say, oh yeah, no, we should, we of course we should take care of each other. Yeah, no, sort of, same thing. I think the same thing. Hey, in communication, one of the things I really took away my notes were we just want to make sure everybody at every level understands their role. What that that what do you think? And he's like, Well, yeah, I mean, of course. Why would we not want that? I'm like, ah, of course. And then I do the same for all the things we teach, but it's just delivered in a little bit different language, maybe my language. I empathize with them, go, yeah, dude, I was totally put off by that guy and their initial language. I translate into my own words, this is what they're saying. They're saying build good relationships. They're saying be a good communicator. They're saying make sure people understand. They're saying work on things that help the company grow. They're saying let your people lead projects and be in charge. And Steve goes, Oh, yeah, no, that actually kind of makes sense. Uh, I could kind of get behind that. Why don't we come up with our own four words? And instead of it being the laws, we'll call it, you know, how we lead or taking care of our people or putting our people first. And all of a sudden it becomes your language, and it's the same thing. Nobody at National Front's gonna come in and police your language and say, no, you gotta call it cover and move. I don't care what you call it. Just take care of each other. Build good relationships, take care of each other. You're winning. That's the principle. And so you get that resistance, embrace it and acknowledge like, yeah, makes sense. I know why you're saying that, I know why you feel that. I felt the same way. Here's what I've learned that they're Saying that really is in our voice. How do you feel about that? I don't know of any company that have I placed, and and really almost any human being, that I say, take care of each other, communicate so people understand, make sure we're working on things that help us grow and get better, and allowing people to grow and develop on their own to become leaders. There should be zero resistance to those concepts.
SPEAKER_01:Zero. Right.
SPEAKER_04:And if there is resistance, and I'm like, oh, Steve, like you, you don't, you don't want to take care of your people? We have a different problem. Let's solve that problem. That's a much bigger problem than whether it likes the word cover or move or Jocko's face. That's how we that's how we approach that resistance. And it's valid, it's fair, there's nothing wrong with that. And and 99.9 times out of a hundred, the answer is, oh yeah, no, I can get behind that. And every now and then you got someone who can't. I'm not sure they should be in your company if they don't want to take care of the team.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, excellent.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Well, we want to move on to our last part, uh, just becoming a better leader and just continuing on that journey.
SPEAKER_01:We kind of have hit on this in different ways about this concept, and you hit and and talked about these topics. Um, I think humility and having to start there, it is the most important because then you can realize that you do need to continue to. As I was listening to I so I listened to the audiobook, and I'm like, dang, I need to. I've heard it before, but man, it's so good to hear it again. And again, and as I mentioned earlier, it's like it I need to hear it more often. I need to get back to it because when I hear it again, um, I'm like, gosh, yes, that's right. I gotta think about that. And I can, and it's probably gonna happen tomorrow. I'm gonna be in the office, I'm gonna be doing something's going to happen. And I'm like, man, I'm glad I just heard this because I would have probably reacted differently and said something that I maybe wouldn't have said it differently if I hadn't had this recently in my in my mind. And um, I think that my my favorite chapter was probably the hardest chapter that you wrote for you, was just that preparing to leave, right? And just thinking about that's something that recently I was thinking about. And how can I make sure that I'm not the bottleneck, I'm not the all-knowing, everybody has to come to me for answers, and that I can be I need to develop my leaders so that they don't need me, right? And that it's that's really you're building yourself out of a job so they can be there, and when you're gone, that's the reflection of of you as a leader is how well they're able to operate and how well they lead. But I think that's the overall, like those kind of concepts from this, you know, obviously get the books and read them and apply them and go back to them and then keep going back to them, right? And I think that's for me the challenge is to make sure that I do keep re refreshing myself on these topics and on these concepts so that when the next thing happens, I can, yep, okay, I know, I know what to do here. I know how I should operate. But I think that's it's a journey, right? We are all on this journey, different strengths, different weaknesses. But I think that's a big part of it, is just you got to keep going, keep at it.
SPEAKER_04:Could not agree more. It is it is a skill, like any other skill, is you have to practice it all the time. And I we make these illustrations, we take, you know, we talk about sports and the you know the best athletes who, you know, people say that, oh, Shohei Otani's the you know, the best baseball player, the best hitter. I'm like, you know what he does every single day? Every single day, he hits a baseball. And he doesn't hit off a hundred mile an hour fastball, he hits it off a T. He goes to his gym every day and works on his skill. And if you're a musician, you can be the best drummer in the world. You know what the best drum in the world does every day? He plays the drums. And that's what we all have to do. And the best leader in the world, you know what the best leader in the world should do every day is go to the leadership gym and practice every day. Read a chapter, whatever it is. And I thought you explained it and highlighted it extremely well. You know, that chapter you were talking about was as I made it the last chapter in my book for a reason, which is called Prepare for Your Departure. First of all, a very hard chapter to write. The first part is that a very hard story I had to write about my daughter getting sick. And then I write a section of a great leader we worked with that that very unexpectedly died. And what was left was the ability for his team to either succeed or fail without him. And the ultimate measure of your leadership is what happens when you're not there. And in this case, it was a wonderful story that came from an awful example and an awful experience, because the team was able to thrive without them. But eventually the lesson comes out is that a leader's job is not to create followers, a leader's job is to create more leaders. And that's the ultimate manifestation of your leadership is did you create other leaders that can not just survive but thrive when you're gone? Because you don't get to decide every time when you're gone. Sometimes we have no control over that. And that's a hard thing for us to think about and internalize as leaders if we go, you know what? I don't get to make all these decisions. I don't get to decide when I come and go. Things in my life will happen that I have no control over. I don't want my team and my family and my kids and my subordinates and my company to fail because I'm gone. Being a single point of failure is terrible. Because if you're gone, the team fails, that's a reflection of your leadership. You don't want that. And how do you make sure your team thrives without you? Is you help them become good leaders as well. And that means they got to get to the leadership gym too, every single day. You gotta invest in that, you gotta make the resources available, you gotta make the training and the time. You've got to put them in a position to grow as leaders from the beginning all the way to the end, because we don't know when the end is coming. And I'm not trying to be morbid, I'm not trying to be negative about that. It's just a reality of life. Prepare your people to lead without you, and they will be successful when you're gone.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think it is freeing in a way, right, to think like I don't have it's it's the humility part, it's not about me, it's about the team, right? So I don't have to be like, look, everybody, look at me, I have all the answers. It's like, all right, how can I shift my focus to my leaders to help them be better leaders? It it if you take it and you are humble about it and you do like, okay, it's not take the ego out. I'm not the leader, I'm the leader, but I'm just it's not about me. How do I shift that focus? So that's why it hit me. I was like, I need to be, I need to be doing this more. And and I'm trying, but I I know I could do more, right? I know I could do more. We could all do more. Um, so I think that's what's was perfect about it is as a leader, as the leader for your organization, guess what? Your job is this is your job. This is how you help your team, this is how you help your your whole whole organization. Here's the way, right? Versus, man, I gotta come up with all these answers. I gotta be the guy that has all the all the problem solved, right? We know the answer, right?
SPEAKER_04:You know, yeah, you don't, and you can't, and you don't have like no human being does.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_04:That's the beauty of humility, is like, oh, maybe John knows, maybe I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So we want to be respectful of your time. Thank you so much for being here. I do have one one question I'd like to ask, and this is for our audience and our listeners. So, what is one challenge you would give our audience that they could start doing now, this week, this weekend, to help them grow as leaders?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I think a cool thing that we think about all the time is if you could do a little self-assessment, requires some humility, of where in your life could you take a little bit more ownership? And I'm talking a little. Uh, there's a little is an anecdote in a book that corresponds to one of the chapters about like the hardest thing ever had to take ownership of was losing a Marine in combat. The contrast to that was a was a story about a guy putting gas in his car for his wife. And you kind of look at that like, what could these two things possibly have in common? Like, one is literal life and death, and one is like gas in the car? Are you kidding me? And the whole point of that is like, nope, that's where it starts. That's where it starts. Can you look around and be like, can I take a millimeter of a step of a little bit more ownership of the smallest thing and find a way that I can do a little bit more here to have a minimal impact for the positive to the people in the world around me? Taking out the trash. I mean, you look at that and you think, come on. That's that's the start of that journey. So if you're looking for a way to like, where do I start? Where do I begin? Start small. Just take a little internal evaluation, a little self-assessment, a little reality check of where can I just make a little bit more contribution? You not need to dive in headfirst into the deep end and completely revamp every aspect of your life because you read Jocko's book and you're all fired up and motivated. Just start with one little thing. And I think what people will realize is the gasoline chapter, the whole illustration was he's like, man, if I had just done this one thing, these 20 other things wouldn't have happened. Late for soccer practice, my my wife being mad at me, and my kid getting all these things. It's like, hey, just start small. Ownership does not need to be a light switch 180. It just could be a little thing. And I what I've discovered is that there is not a human being alive, myself included, that if you just take a little bit of an internal um, you know, inventory, you can go, eh, I can do a little bit more here. A little bit, and then just do that. Just do that. Don't look for the credit, don't look for the acknowledgement, don't look for the, hey, hey, John, look what I did over here. Just take a little bit of ownership, solve a little problem. That problem gets better, problem goes away, things improve, and then just build on that step by step by step. Start small. Small. And if you can be honest and humble enough and introspective enough to do that, that will start to build and that become a little bit of a habit. It's no different than anything else. You know, learn one chord, you know, learn one little skill. Um, you know, start with one body part on your exercise, or it's just start with something small and it'll build. And days, weeks, months, years, lifetime, that's how this stuff works.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Small victories. Yeah. One last, one last fun question. Okay. How cool is it to fly you know F-18s and F-35s and be part of. I mean, come on. Like, that's I know we all I saw Top Gun, right? I was like, listen, I know that's how you you're like, hey, I'm here, but how really tell us, tell us, Dave. It's cool. How cool is it?
SPEAKER_04:Whatever the highest degree of cool is, it was. That's how it was to me, it's like the coolest thing in the world.
SPEAKER_01:All right, awesome. Well, everybody check out Dave's book, The Need to Lead, right? We're gonna have links in the in the show notes and everything. Take it, take a look. Go listen to the episodes on Jocko's podcast where Dave is on, he's on many episodes, but there's a couple recently that he was on there. Goes through the book, tell some behind the scene kind of stories. I thought that was great. You kind of gave the the behind-the-scenes view. Check out Echelon Front, right? And um, thank you so much, Dave. Thanks for being here.
SPEAKER_04:This was so fun. You guys are awesome, man. What a great time.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of the Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Remember to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform so you get all the episodes. Join us next time as we continue to unlock the secrets of cybersecurity mentorship.
SPEAKER_03:Have questions, topic ideas, or want to share your cybersecurity journey? Join our school community, the Cybersecurity Mentors, where you don't have to do this alone. Connect with us there and on YouTube. We'd love to hear from you. Until next time, I'm John Hoyt. And I'm Steve Higgeretta. Thank you for listening.