Why Trust Matters More Than Talent with David Bickel

What happens when trust is the difference between success and failure, or even life and death?

In this episode of Commander's Intent, Derek Oaks sits down with retired Air Force JTAC and business leader David Bickel to explore why trust is the foundation of every high-performing team. Drawing from combat deployments, close air support missions, and leadership experience in both military and business environments, David shares powerful lessons on communication, accountability, credibility, and decision-making under pressure.

Discover how elite teams build trust through competence, clarity, honest feedback, and a culture of continuous improvement. Whether you're leading a business, managing a team, or navigating high-stakes decisions, this conversation will challenge you to rethink how trust is earned, maintained, and leveraged for success.

Because when the pressure is highest, trust isn't just important.

It's everything.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Have you ever frozen in the key moment of making a critical decision? Whether it's in business or in life, it can cost you everything. Commander's Intent will teach and inspire you how to lead with clarity, courage, and purpose. So here's your host, retired Air Force Colonel, fighter pilot, and your leadership mentor, Derek Oak.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Commander's Intent. Rob and I are here with our special guest, Dave Bickle, and I'll have him give a quick introduction. But the reason I wanted to have him on the show is because I don't think there's anybody who understands the word trust more than a joint thermal attack controller and what that means for the effectiveness of a combat unit. I'm going to have Dave describe a little bit about how you grow up as a JTAC, which is what we call them. They're some of my greatest heroes because these are guys who often come off the street, they score high, and they say, I want to do the hardest thing in the Air Force that an enlisted man can do. And so they get in the Air Force, they go through basic training, they go through, you know, free-fall training and basic airborne training. A lot of Army schools, they learn how to be a joint terminal attack controller of how to control aircraft. They learn how to talk to the Army. They learn how to represent the Air Force while they're amongst, quite honestly, a bunch of Army folks that outrank them and are trying to tell them what to do and knock them off their game. The JTEC's like, well, I'm here to help you. I'm here to do what you want. But a lot of these guys, we were talking before the show about married, not married, having kids. And I know a lot of them personally who they're living below the poverty line. They're getting paid pennies by Uncle Sam, and yet they're putting their lives online on a very regular basis. They're missing big milestones, family milestones, because they really believe in what they do and they really believe in being a key part of the team. And I always ask myself, you know, unfortunately, I know I did it more than once, you know, complain about how much I can't make ends meet with my paycheck. And then I'd look at a JTAC or somebody like him and go, I need to shut my mouth because they're doing it almost for free and they're loving it and they're fantastic at it. So, Dave, I want you to go ahead and introduce yourself a little bit and talk about how you become a JTEC. What does a pipeline look like to become a JTAC? And what made you decide to want to be a JTEC?

SPEAKER_02 2:17

So a JTAC is a qualification. A lot of people think it's a job, but it's actually a qualification across all the services, actually, has a JTAC qualification, but it stands for Joint Terminal Attack Controller. I was a TAC P in the Air Force. And as a TAC P, you strive to be a JTAC. Back when I came in the mid-90s, it was a qualification now, and not everybody was a JTAC. And now it's mandatory that everybody in the TACP career field is actually going to be JTAC qualified. And what that is, is you were the Air Force liaison to army maneuver units, special forces teams, rangers, even be attached to SEALs, that you are their fires guy. By fires, I mean you control air-to-ground fires, surface-to-surface fires. We're qualified to do motors, artillery, naval gun fire, helicopter, you name it. We do it. We are supposed to be the fires expert. And a lot of times, especially when you work on the special operations side, is you are the sole Air Force representation for that Army maneuver unit, or even sometimes, like I said, that Navy unit. And other times, even Marines. We've had guys that cast in the Marines. So with that, I'll start out with my career if you want. I'm only senior in high school. I was, you know, all boy as we most are, you know, just rambunctious. Uh played sports, loved the team concept, had good enough grades to go to college, but knew I needed some discipline. Um, and my mom worked for an Air Force Comet Controller, actually, as a nurse on McCord Air Force Base up in Washington State, and kind of learned about what a combat controller was, what a TAC P was, what a JTAC was, you know, this well, I didn't know the term JTAC by then it was called an ETAC, enlisted terminal attack controller. And signed up for the Air Force, took a pass test, a physical stamina test to be a combat controller, actually, initially. Ended up, you know, so came in out of basic training with a combat control contract. And about week eight out of the 10, I ended up, wasn't very good at math, and I ended up failing a dive physics test. You had to get 80% out of 78% twice, and they were going to recycle me, and I was gonna be like a cook or a bus driver or something like that. And I was like, hey, I've also heard this very similar job called the TAC P. And luckily, the head instructor where I was at in the course at the M Dot course at that time called the TAC P Recruiter, and the TAC P recruiter came over. You know, there's me and a couple other guys and gave an army pass test. So two-mile run, two minutes of push-ups, two minutes setups, and pull-ups. And we smoked it. Um and that was Tilbury, December, yeah, about November of 95. And ended up going to Herbert Field for TAC P Tech School, got put on a team, Eagle 40 initially. And what that is, the TAC P most people think JTACs or TAC Ps is just basically we call on airstrikes, but that's only about 10% of the actual job. Our pipeline's not too long, it's about a year or so, depending on back-to-back school. Now you go to airborne school, survival school, and stuff along with that, but you're gonna go through a selection that washes most of the people out before the real training even starts when you get to your unit. And what they're doing in your first like initial couple weeks to a month of training is you're building that physical and mental durability. They're trying to weed out who's gonna quit when it sucks, when the going gets tough, when you're tired, when you're hungry, when you're you're thirsty, who is gonna quit? Because it's so easy to quit. And they let you know, you know, just quit, just quit. You can just raise your hand and quit. So once you make it past the first, you know, a couple weeks of like really physical hard stuff, they actually start your courses get a little bit more on the technical side. And it gets kind of complex. You're learning how to read terrain like a map, and you try to understand different, like very, very basic stuff about radios because that if you can't make a radio operate and fix what's going on with the radio, you're useless to the army. You're useless to anybody. So you learn how, you know, very basic how terrain affects your radio signals, how to fix your radio and figure out what's going on with it and know the symptoms of what's going on. You also learn how to talk to different aircraft, what actually to say on the radio, how to say it at a very rudimentary basic level. You also learn about fire sport coordination to ensure that you're putting the correct munition on the correct area and that you don't kill somebody on your side. So you start learning about aircraft or sorry, airspace deconfliction. So when you do have stuff flying through the air that you don't fly a plane through that, you learn about different what I want to call threat envelopes. So you learn about very basic, you know, when I was going through, it was like usually Russian and Chinese threats and how far they can reach. You don't really learn about, you know, the secret level of it yet, but you just learn, hey, you can shoot this far and it's very bad. Keep them away from this bubble. Yeah. And it's not really a checklist yet. It's a perishable skill that you're learning that yet constantly needs to be refreshed. And what people really underestimate in our training that they really emphasize when I went through is the army side of it. You have to understand the ground maneuver aspect. You have to learn how the 82nd is going to maneuver on the ground as light infantry versus an armor unit like fourth ID is going to maneuver and what their techniques are. You need to learn how to like, you know, you've been in maybe six to eight months at this time, and you're just learning how the Air Force works and how to speak Air Force. And now you have to learn how to speak Army and how the Army works and the differences in there. If you can't speak Army, you're useless. And if you can't figure that out fast when you get to your new unit, you're going to be a liability. And the danger is real and in specific. You're typically, you know, as attack pee, depending on what echelon you're working with or what unit you're in, you're going to be the forwardmost element because you need to usually have eyes on, at least back then, you needed eyes on a target with the radio, talking to, you know, either really fast aircraft or possibly slower aircraft. And you're going to need to know the differences in that. You're going to need to know your enemy, what they know, what they don't know. How does the enemy fight versus, you know, how are they going to react to what you're doing? And you also need to realize that you are the person who, if you make a mistake, that mistake could kill friendly people and people you're not supposed to kill. And the weight of that is very powerful, but the feeling never, ever goes away from that. And a lot of people rolling into kind of the relationship between your CAS air crew, your JTAC, and your ground force. A lot of people think of it as like a triangle. You got your Air Force, you know, your aircraft up here, got your army here, and then you have your JTAC that's parallel to that. But it's more like a relay race where everybody's running different laps at the same time. It's constant. And one of the analogies I like that we got at the weapon school, especially with the cast checking, is like a game of almost like catch. Like when you're a kid, it's like, okay, I have this, I pass it to you. Now you take it and you pass the ball back to me, and we're each trading information at that point. And that's the biggest thing.

SPEAKER_03 8:42

In your explanation of how you work through your, you know, your place on the team as the liaison through the airport and the army. And since we're talking about trust today, it seems to me that you really have two really difficult places to build trust that are so important to the way you carry out your. So, like, as you said, the friendlies or the people that you don't want to get hurt don't get hurt. People in the audience may not understand this because they also say, Oh, you're all military. Okay, there is a deep-seated like distrust between the army and the air force over what we're trying to achieve. Yes, we're all one team, one fight. It's easier said than done. So I'd like you to discuss a little bit about how you build the trust on the team so that they will trust you to be a part of their team and to put things on target. And then the second piece, and we can hit a Blake here and do that. But the second piece, the trust, but I think is to me a more interesting one is the trust that you have to have with the guy that's on the other end of the radio dropping the bombs. Because these are folks that you, you know, the guys that are on the team, you're living with them. You're you know, humping rucks with them all over the mountains and whatever else. The guy in that airplane is a voice on a radio. You've probably never met, you've probably never seen, and really you both are expecting each other to be 100% professional. That's a different way of trust and building talking. So can you talk to really those two pieces and how you manage that part of your job?

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Absolutely. So the ground force commander, for those that may not know, owns the fight. He owns a terrain, he knows where his guys are or should. He knows where the enemy should be or was, and he typically doesn't speak aviation like we do. That's where we come in. He doesn't know what the aircraft can do, he doesn't know what ordin effects can do, he doesn't know the radius of those effects, you know, he doesn't know what deconfliction actually requires. And then you have the pilot, and completely separate, the pilot knows his aircraft, he knows his fuel state, he knows his weapons, he knows his sensors, he doesn't know the ground picture as well as I do. He is trusting me at that point that what I'm telling him is accurate with my grid, my marks, my talk on, because he's about to make a weapons release decision based on trust on my word. So, me as a JTAC, I sit in between all that and I translate constantly both ways, down to the commander. Here's what the aircraft can do, here's the timeline, here's the weapon effects. And he's trusting me that I know what I'm gonna do and I'm gonna kill the bad guys and keep the friendly guys alive. And then it's up to the pilot because, you know, here's where my guys are, here's the threat, here's where I need you to put the weapons effect and where. And that relationship only works when all three parts trust each other, just like you said, and the other two are competent, honest, and not gonna freelance, we're gonna strict, you know, stick to the script. And that's where it comes in. I think initially um there's different situations I've been in where, you know, I've gone to a when I first deployed, my first deployment was with First Ranger Battalion. And I was coming in off the heels of Operation Anaconda. You know, I was sharing Charlie company with Kevin Vance, who got the silver star for Operation Anaconda there at Tikargar. And the Rangers loved him and they worshipped Kevin because he saved their lives. And then I come in and they're like, whoa, you don't even have a ranger tab. Yeah, you're not A, you're not Kevin. B, you don't even have a Ranger tab, which that goes back to the schools and the training. Hold some trust and some competence. And I didn't have either. And they would try well, you know, I'd go out on different missions with them. This was the initial invasion of Iraq at this point, early 2003. And they're like, well, Kevin does it this way. And I finally had to say, I'm not Kevin. I am not Kevin. I'm never going to be Kevin. I, you know, I held I still hold Kevin up here. This is who I am. I am fully competent and qualified until that first firefight, they still had some kind of things. And I think it was that that nine line brief, um, which standardizes our format precisely so that when things are in high stress, degraded comms environments, all the parties communicate in a complex targeting picture under 90 seconds without any ambiguity. And I think that's where it starts is structure. And I think that format of the nine line itself is a trust scaffolding. You and I, so you're checking on, you know, we've never talked before, you just know my call sign. And I've learned from some different, especially A10 pilots or F-16 pilots that have worked, they're very familiar with JTACs that when they hear a certain call sign, they kind of expect a different level of proficiency or competence in that JTAC. And you know, we're both, no matter if we've spoken before or not, that we're going to both be speaking the same language right now when you hear that. And I think within that structure of the nine line, this is where the trust starts going, is we are both reading signals at that point when I'm reading that. And you're thinking possibly, is this controller calm? Is he precise? Is he using correct terminology without fumbling? And I'm thinking the same thing. Is my situational awareness picture coherent? And I think is a good pilot and the ones I are listening, not just to what I'm saying, but how I'm saying it. You know, is there hesitation in my voice? Is there vagueness? And this goes into the civilian sector. Are there conflicting information? All those red flags that make you slow down and start asking questions rather than just executing, you know, and you're going to be able to hear that, I think, in the inflection and what I'm saying in the voice. And the flip side, like I said, I'm evaluating you as a pilot the same way. Are you acknowledging correctly? Are you giving my readbacks of the right information? Are you asking smart, clarifying questions or just executing blindly? And I really think a pilot or in the civilian sector, a supervisor or boss that doesn't push back when something doesn't add up is actually less trustworthy, not more.

unknown 14:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

You know, I need that. I need you, not so much to second guess me, but just be like, I don't mind you clarifying me, you know. I would rather have you clarify me. And there's also that community dimension where in the JTAC world, the cast pilot community, very small, your reputation travels, you know. Yeah, see the naughty. Yes, it definitely travels. Obviously, you've been at Ellis, you've been through the weapon school, done real world work, and that information has a way of preceding you, just like we're in the weapon school patch. There's that credibility that comes with it. And you know, the check-in's going to be fast because your groundwork was often laid somewhere else. And the first couple of rides, students who have never been out to the weapon school on the JTAC side see that. When they come out there and they've worked in with the top five to top 1% of the pilots in the Air Force, and they hear how on top of it, and accurate your almost pushing that JTAC is it's an eye-opener. And I learned that when I came out to the weapon schools. I, you know, I had a good decade, a little over a decade of JTAC's hundreds of controls. And by that time, I was on, you know, I had nine combat deployments, executed, you know, real world missions. I thought I knew I was on top of my game at Cass. And I got out to the weapon school, and I was like, I know nothing. I know nothing. And that was great eye-opening for me. And I think a lot of that communication is it's a lot of pattern recognition that becomes intuition after enough repetitions. And it almost turns into second nature for us. And your brain's doing rapid, unconscious triage, and it's usually right. Like I could pick up in the first probably couple seconds if this pilot's going to be on it or not, just by his tone and his voice, if he's checking all, you know, if he's fumbling, like, oh, hold on, stand by, you know, and he's doing something like, no, no, no, I need weapons effects now, you know, and you have to push that. And it, and we are all, you know, meat eaters for the most part in our job. And hate to say it, but when we see that weakness, we like to explode it. And especially at the weapon school, because we know at the weapon school we can push, we can push them through their breaking point, and we do.

SPEAKER_03 15:50

And I think they're go ahead, Sergeant. I liked what you said. I think it was perfect. And I see this in a lot of environments, and I think people understate how important it is for that unambiguous communication chain that you're talking about. I did some of the same work that you guys have done, but I also did a crew aircraft. I flew C-130s with a rather large crew. I could tell as the aircraft commander, I could tell from the way we ran checklists whether we were on our game that night or we weren't. You know, is that guy paying attention or is he not paying attention? And I think, you know, that's even on teams or like I flew hard crews. We did that on purpose because I knew how my co-pilot talked on a normal flight. And if his voice was higher pitched or he was, you know, something's going on, there's something going wrong. And I think we understate that a lot about how important it is for a well-run team to operate inside of the script you talked about with the nine-line, those brevity codes, the things that we use to try to help us shorthand. You see that in the civilian world quite a bit in their businesses, but I don't think we talk about how important that is to the trust and team building of knowing that yes, I can trust that person's gonna do their job because they're on their game today or they seem to not be distracted. Where when you get on the radio with a pilot and goes, Oh, hang on, stand by, you know, that trust is really low at that point. So I appreciate you pulling that piece out of there. So how do you handle it though? Because you don't get to choose what pilot is sent to you, right? And so when you get a somebody like that that seems hesitant and you are in a life and death situation, how do you, in that situation, how do you manage that that individual to try to build up your trust in them? Or you know, how do you handle it?

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Rob, let me uh interject here for a second because that's a key question. And I was gonna say something earlier when Dave was talking the communication, the professionalism, the cadence, the using correct communication, your reputation beforehand, all that it initiates the trust or it destroys the trust. You know, and one of the key things that I don't think in the civilian world you can really understand is that you can trust or not trust, but the real indicator of whether or not this guy's on his game is when he drops that 500-pound bomb where you want him to, or all of a sudden that thing explodes 200 meters closer to you as the JTAC, and you wake up and go, this guy isn't as good as I thought he was, or he killed, and you've probably been involved in situations where the crews, the pilots, you know, killed friendly forces, or you've been around it or heard about it, and that's a devastating thing. And I remember that nine line, you talked about the nine-line. Nine line, I always said that's an order, but it's also a handshake. That is the ground commander through the JTEC telling me what they want and what kind of effect they want on the battlefield, but it's a handshake understanding of how that's gonna happen. And I always felt like how that nine line is crafted, how specific it was in the instruction was an indicator of how much that JTAC and the ground force trusted me as the pilot. And sometimes I would always push back because I wanted more trust because I was better, you know, at it. But then I had to step back and say, okay, if he doesn't fully trust me and he's handcuffing me and telling me how to do my job, maybe I haven't shown trust to him. Maybe I haven't given him a reason to trust me. So how do I get to that point? I think and you translate that into the civilian world of when do I trust? Do I go into a situation assuming they don't know what they're talking about? Do I go in, let's say I don't have a reputation to go on, I haven't worked with them before. Do I assume they don't know what they're talking about? How much trust do I give them until that first bomb hits the ground? Or how much trust do I give them until that first project, you know, is brought to conclusion? And I think it's a million-dollar question for every business owner, for every supervisor.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

I think the military doesn't have a monopoly on micro-desk situations. Everything that we've learned and that I've learned translates directly to what I'm doing now. And trust is universal. Clarity, a role, demonstrated competence, a shared language, depending on what job you're doing, and consistent honesty under pressure. I think what changes is the stakes, obviously the timeline, but not underlying dynamic, which you just stated. And I think in any high-performing team, military or civilian, whether you're in a surgical room, an aircraft cockpit, a well-run sales organization, you know, you see the same pattern. Your roles are clear, your expectations are explicit, and there's a defined protocol that people execute reliably. And it's the protocol isn't a bureaucracy, it's that trust scaffold that goes back to that nine line. And I think we touched on it in one of our other conversations is the debrief culture is probably the most transferable thing and the most underused in civilian organizations. I like to use it after every single one of my sales calls or what after I talk to you know a customer or program manager, immediately want to get on the phone with my team and be like, okay, what did I do wrong? What could I have done better? What did you see that I may not have seen? Because you know, in the military, especially in the flying and JTAC community, we debrief everything. Not to assign blame, but we're there to find the scene where the process broke down. And we're only going to get better by that. And most teams that I found, most corporate teams that I found, don't do this at all. So each job that I've held since I've been out, I try to bring a little bit of, you know, obviously not a weapon school, six-hour debrief, but at least a 15 to 30 minute immediate hot wash. And I've been lucky enough that most of the people I work with are veterans. So they're kind of used to kind of a good debrief. And I think that's where civilian organizations really differ is they don't really pressure test the trust before it matters. You find out who people really are when something goes sideways. Everybody has a plan going into a meeting, but when that goes sideways, and I've seen it, you know, in my current organizations and former organizations, and that you could tell that's the first time that they've received that data, and it's too late to course correct, and they still go with their plan. And I can usually tell who has some kind of military background or form you know training because they adapt on the spot and it's almost seamless in their training and their planning, and in the mundane execution of daily operations, you know, one kind of Or from you know the CEO or their superior that they're not ready for. And I've seen it, you know, play in real life. And I'll try to jump in and kind of write the ship before it goes off keel. But I that's one of the biggest things I've seen is that that debrief. And I always go back to what is a ground commander's intent? What is our intent out of this meeting? And it's simple. And then I backwards plan from there. What do I need to do? Who do I need in this meeting? What do I need to be prepared for? And then I always have the contingency plan. What if they're completely they don't like what we have to say or they have questions about this, or they've heard something bad about our radios, how they perform in different environments and all that? Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

No, I was gonna say that you mentioned debrief, and we're here we're talking about trust, and I have my own answer, but I want to hear your answer on why is debrief so critical for trust? I mean, that's kind of after the fact in many ways, but why is that debrief so critical for trust? And what can you do to enhance the trust of the team with an effective debrief?

SPEAKER_02 22:56

So I think a debrief, what I've seen, especially at the weapon school, is there's two kinds of trust failures that I've seen. One is a mistake, and then one is actually dishonesty. And what I love about the weapon school debrief is you can bring up the film and the film does not lie. And so I think it really breaks everybody involved in that situation, you know, that mission, it breaks it down to the rawest data. And you have to be vulnerable. You have to let yourself be vulnerable and take the, I don't even call it criticism. Sometimes it's criticism, but be open to, hey, I'm not perfect. And you have to build that toughness, like, okay, I made a mistake. Here's what I'm gonna do. And I think the most common trust breakdown isn't a lie, it's the inaccurate like essay picture. Like a JTAC who gives a pilot a grid that's slightly off, a pilot that doesn't confirm his mark before weapons release, or give you know the proper rebacks or not read back at all. Those are honest mistakes. And luckily, our system has safeties built in place to catch them. But they do erode confidence and they make the next check-in slower and more cautious, definitely more cautious. And I think the harder failure is when someone tells you what you want to hear instead of what's true. Like the ground commander that tells me friendlies are 500 meters from the target when they're actually 200 because he wants a strike on there and thinks, you know, I'll wave the attack off or I won't bring him in. It's like, no, I know how to get him in that. But that's the one that gets people killed because I am trusting him that they are 500 meters. And that one just doesn't break that relationship. It breaks my ability to trust almost anyone in that role until they prove themselves again to me. So it works, you know, me as an Air Force guy rolling into an army unit or, you know, a special forces team, like if the ground force commander breaks that trust and then we do split teams offs, and I'm now with the team sergeant. How do I know he's not gonna break my trust? And I almost have to vet him too and double check him. And I think the recovery from that trust failure, especially in a kinetic environment, is brutal because when you're deployed, there's no time for a debrief and a handshake. You have to adapt to that in real time. Just like in a meeting, you have to adapt in real time. You add friction, you slow the process, you demand more readbacks, and you verify instead of assuming. And that goes with the customer you may be talking to as well. You know, if you give them false information, you know, and you don't have your numbers or your data correct, and they're like, well, I thought your radio could go to this, you know, this many gigahertz, and you're telling me it can do this, it's gonna create that dishonesty as well on both sides. And I think the debrief culture, especially in aviation, is really how you rebuild. But I also have seen it on the civilian side too, it's how you rebuild. It's like, hey, this meeting didn't really go as planned. What did we learn? What can we do next time better for this next customer? And I think if both parties can't sit down afterwards with no rank, and that's the first thing they usually tell, you know, tell you in the debrief is hey, no rank, no ego, leave it outside. Here's what broke down and why, that's where that trust gets rebuilt through demonstrated accountability. And the guys who couldn't do that were the ones lost in the room permanently.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

No, I love that answer. And as you're talking about the trust factor and the honesty and taking the rank off, that is so critical. Because if, you know, in the civilian world, if a vice president is involved in a debrief and the lowest project manager, the lowest ranking team member isn't able to say to that vice president, this was a mistake, this decision hurt the team, then it's not a debrief. Then it's just a it's a meeting to make everybody feel good because that vice president needs to walk into that meeting, that debrief, fully accepting any negative feedback that he gets. He can't walk in protecting himself, he can't walk in insecure about being pointed out to be wrong because he's the boss. And the same was true in the Air Force. I mean, I'm many times where I'd sit in a debrief and I'm the flight lead and I'm a you know many ranks above the wingman, and he would say, You missed your cue there. Did you recover immediately off your abort cue? And if I kind of quibbled and said, What doesn't matter, or you shut up, you don't know what you're talking about. I've been doing this a long time, that's when I'd run into trouble. Then so and the debrief was instantly over with, and I was not going to get anything out of it. I had another question that I think is pretty critical for people to understand as we were talking about your role as the JTAC. You know, you've got the Army and the Army's language and the Air Force and the Air Force language, and then your own language in the TAC B community. I was thinking about being a project manager or program manager in a civilian company, and you're managing a bunch of engineers, and everybody knows that engineers have a certain way of talking, certain way of approaching problems. And then you have your production team, and they have a certain way of whether it's manufacturing or you know, sales, any of those things, they have a certain way of talking and they have standards and requirements. And then you have the customer, which also has a different approach. Then you have the marketing team, and you're stuck in the middle. Yes. And as the project manager, and then you also have the finance guys, which are demanding results, and you're stuck in the middle, and you have your expertise as a program manager, but you need to be able to speak finance, you need to be able to speak engineering, you need to be able to speak marketing and production. And if you can't take all those and cluge them together, they're not going to trust you. They're going to say the project manager's not listening to me. The project manager, I give him inputs and he's ignoring it. And they don't understand that what he's trying to do is marry all of them. So being able to do that is so critical. I don't care what business it is. You, as the JTEC, you're the program manager. You're the one who has been entrusted by the Army and the Air Force to safely execute close air support, safely execute and marry the Air Force capabilities with the Army's capabilities. And if you don't have those clear communications and understanding of the different communication, different tribes, then people aren't going to trust you as much.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

That is true. And it's a great, grid analogy for a meeting I had actually on Monday. I briefed Global Strike Command leadership about their nuke program. Won't go into the, you know, obviously can't go into what the meeting was about, but I was briefing two and three stars, one stars, colonel. Nobody was below an 06 in that meeting. And the meeting, you know, the person who introduced us was an intermediary who was a retired three-star Marine General. And then he introduces me and these, you know, and I've worked with enough, you know, big Air Force generals, you're probably like, well, who this guy's just a sales guy or BD, you know, business development guy. So I immediately let them know my background, let them know that I was a weapon school graduate, let them know that I spent 25 years in the Air Force. And I, while I didn't walk in their shoes, I understand their problems with the Air Force, understand the problem with security, and understand the problem with communications and security. And I think anytime we walk into a room of senior military leaders, general officers, program managers, like you said, I brought a sales engineer with me who speaks the ones and zeros, who could get down on the weeds, but I also knew at that point that I was talking to flag officers who didn't have time to know about the ones and zeros, who just needed, hey, this is our problem. This is what we're up against. How can you guys help us? So immediately I think you need to go in just like any mission. You go in and you read the room. Who's gonna be a skeptical? Does this ground commander know you? Did the Global Strike Command team know me? Who's an ally? Who do I know in there that is a fan of, you know, Sylvis? Who's my company? Who's got equities at stake? I did a complete study on every individual that was gonna be in there to know if they had involvement in the program I was gonna talk about, if you know, if it was near and dear to their heart. And I adjusted that in real time. Just like I did on every mission, I always had a backup plan and a backup to the backup plan. The air campaign, they didn't care about my feelings about the situation, and the Global Strike Command leadership didn't care about my feelings about the situation. So I think as a JTAC, it really bowed well when you're in, especially for sales and business development, because I'm always a translator between the ground guy who's in the dirt and the pilot who's at altitude. And BD, I'm translating between the warfighter who has a capability gap. So I was talking about their security forces members out there at the missile fields, and an acquisition system that speaks to program management. And if I can't make those two worlds understand each other, and that capability doesn't get fielded. And the guys in the field don't get the equipment they need. And like I said, the stakes are different, but the function is identical, you know, and it is. And in the terminal attack control, or to go back to your credibility as currency, your reputation was everything. And it was built on accuracy, calm, honesty when things went wrong. In the defense sector, and especially in business development, I walk into offices with people who've been deployed, who've been downrange, who know what the gear is they need to do in the worst conditions. They can tell immediately whether I've been in their shoes or whether I'm reading from a data sheet. And I really hate to, you know, brag on accomplishments and name drop, but it builds that credibility. If they don't know me or know my background, I have to build it. And so I will name drop you. I've dropped Johnny Bravo's name a couple of times, you know. My operational background is not a resume line. It is actually a difference between a conversation and a sales pitch. And that's what I think really has bowed well for me in my career, especially in the civilian sector, is it turned into a conversation because then they bring up different Air Force stories because they don't have to, I don't say dumb it down, but really translate it to civilian speak because they know I know the Air Force. I'm intimately familiar with it. And then I found out in business, people really treat uncertainty like it's an anomaly.

SPEAKER_03 31:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:54

As operators and pilots, we treat it as a baseline. You know, as you were, I was trained to make the best possible decisions with incomplete information, accept that it might be wrong and adapt when it is. That's directly applicable when you're navigating a conflict acquisition environment where program requirements shift, budgets move, relationships matter just as much as performance. Just as you're cascading when you're conducting a close air support mission, you need to know when to go fast, when to slow down, when to talk about something, when to not. And I think that is one most people don't talk about. The most dangerous thing you can do in a cast scenario is rush when the picture isn't clear. Take a step back. But hesitation when the picture is clear also gets people killed. So that's the judgment with us. When the situation warrants speed and when it demands deliberate patience, that translates directly to deal strategy, competitor engagement, stakeholder engagement. And I think moving too fast on a relationship that isn't ready or moving too slow on an opportunity that is closing can cost you the mission or the deal.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

You know, as you're sitting there talking, what flashed through my mind is a number of times while deployed, I get the nine-line, we go through the briefing, we do the talk-on, and I roll in and my hands up, my fingers above the pickle button, you know, the weapons release button, and that last minute did I get everything. You know, because it's like this instantaneous panic that I'm about to hurt the wrong person when I let 500 pounds go in the wrong way. And so you I used to always say, as a cast pot, you're grasping, you're scraping and clawing for all the information to make sure that you really understand what those guys on the ground are going through and what they need from you, and always assume you don't have the whole picture. And that's what you mentioned, and this kind of made me think about that. You're never gonna have 100% SA situation where you're never gonna have the full picture, but you have to reach a point where you say, Do I have enough to make a decision? Do I have enough to go with this particular solution? And then you have to go with it. Because if you don't, that can be maybe more detrimental. Like me delaying dropping a weapon when people's lives are at stake, all of a sudden I've just lost some of the initiative and I've lost. Because I didn't deliver it at the right time. I hurt the ground forces by not doing so, my hesitation. The same happens in business. I miss a target of opportunity in a market window that closes on me because I was waiting for that perfect solution. I was waiting for that perfect awareness of everything that was going on, and I missed the opportunity because I'm never gonna get it. I didn't act. Yeah, you're never gonna get it. You always have to assume that you don't have it. A friend of mine used to say total situation awareness is knowing you have none. And if you approach it that way, but knowing still you have to make a decision, I think that's where you're gonna be much more successful on it. And so you've got all these different parties that you're pulling together, all these different, sometimes conflicting interests, and yet you have the same overall objective. And so, how do I meet those objectives when I don't have all the information that I want to have or think I have?

SPEAKER_03 34:56

Well, you know, that brings up something, you know, Dave, you mentioned earlier on the scaffolding that we're building trust on. And, you know, I did construction as a kid, and I remember that, you know, scaffolding is awesome. It helps me get where I need to get and build up things quicker, but it also has to be based on a really, really solid base. And I think one of the solid bases that we're all kind of talking about here through the debrief and through, you know, the training and through all these things is that there has to be a commitment from the team to getting better and to working together to be better, to not make those mistakes. And that has to be everybody on the team because I've seen places where I've worked, they didn't have that as a baseline. It was whatever, I'm getting a paycheck, who cares? I I want to keep my position. If that is your end all be all, you're gonna probably fail as a team because your scaffolding that you're trying to build trust on doesn't exist. And I think that these things, it's been seared into our brains because we've had to do it through you know, some of the most difficult environments, the most dynamic, changing environments where life and death is right there. It's hard to get that across to people sometimes that that haven't lived in those environments. This conversation, Derek and I have had this conversation a lot, but I'll bring in Derek and I have talked a lot about how I feel civilian organizations undervalue the impact that military folks that have been trained in you know in the military for their lives. You are a perfect example of that, Dave. I mean, just listening to your talk, your understanding of the business environment, of the role that you play in that environment is, I think, well above where I've seen most of the civilians that I've worked with who've been in business forever. But I think it's born of the fact of two things. One, you were trained in the crucible of combat. You learned how these things that we kind of take for granted as leadership and trust and debrief and take the ego away, all those things you've learned and internalized them to the point where they are just part of you and the way you do business. And I think that those are qualities that I think sometimes again are lost on people that have spent their lives either in a business environment or in books studying leadership and management. They become just words, not what I'm seeing, you know, in this conversation of a true understanding of what it means to trust and be accountable and make the team want to be better. So I mean, these I don't really have a question there, it's just this is an observation that that kind of reconfirms things that Derek and I've been talking about for the last six months.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Yeah. You know, that trust thing that's a really a good question as a retired person. And you know, Rob just hit on it. How do I establish trust with any company that I'm trying to work with? I've experienced this, I don't think there's a veteran out there who hasn't experienced this of unless they stepped into a job that was exactly similar, or they're working with all people who understand them. Like for you, say, I don't know you from Adam, you show up in a room and you're applying for a job. If you said to me, I've run a CasDAC and I've managed, I've handled multiple danger close employments, I'm like, I got it, you're hired. Because I don't have to think about that. But that's my background. I know the complexity, I know what goes into all of that. And I know that running a project is going to be second nature to you. And I know that you do well in stress and all those things. So that helps me with stress. You talked about certifications like having a ranger tab. In the civilian world, you look at having an MBA or having those kind of certifications, those are ways you can build trust, but then you actually have to go and execute. You know, okay, I did that, but I have to go and execute. How do I use those skills, use that initial trust that I gained from having an MBA or having a Ranger tab to then maintain that trust with them? It's a lot of topics, a lot of things to talk about. And I've loved this conversation. My big takeaway from this is that if you don't value trust, you're screwing up by the numbers. If you don't think that is like the number one thing you need to establish in your organization, you're screwed up by the numbers. And you need to figure out how whether it's uh you know a common language or shared experiences or honesty, a debrief culture, how do I establish trust in my organization? How do I establish trust with my customers? And if that becomes one of your early objectives, you can be successful in everything else. Because once you establish that trust and credibility, and credibility is part of that trust, then you're gonna be so much more successful. I love that your daughters have joined us in the show here. You tell them thanks for talking with us. We were talking before the show about, you know, he started early in life in terms of being a warrior, but he started later in life and being a father. And so he's experiencing the joy of having young daughters right now later in life. That's awesome. He gets to appreciate it more when I didn't appreciate it as a younger individual. So that's an awesome experience. If you have any questions, I appreciate you being here, Dave, and I appreciate uh everybody who's joined us on the show. If you have any questions about some of the things we talked about in military terms or just about trust in general, we'd love to have a greater conversation with it. If you want to talk directly to Dave, reach out to me at asterisknow.com and I'll put you in contact with him. If you have any suggestions for topics or you want to further this conversation, then again, reach out. Enjoyed the show, then join us next week for another episode of Commander's Intent. Subscribe and follow, and together we'll become better decision makers for better results. Thanks. Awesome. Thanks, guys.

SPEAKER_00 40:19

So that's it for today's episode of Commander's Intent Podcast. Head on over to Apple Podcasts iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will be entered in the grand prize drawing to win a $25,000 private exclusive leadership coaching package with Derek Oaks himself. So head on over to Commanders Intent Podcast.com and pick up a free copy of Derek's Leadership Guide and join us on the next episode.