STAT Leadership Episode 6: Mindful Leadership Under Pressure

STAT Leadership: Mastering Mindful Leadership Amidst High-Stakes Challenges

In this episode of STAT Leadership, hosts Phil Moy, JR Pickett, and Chetan Kharod delve into the significance of mindful leadership. They explore the complexities of leading with a clear mind and purpose while navigating high-stress scenarios. The discussion includes practical strategies for maintaining mental, physical, and spiritual discipline, managing worry and regret, and effectively balancing tactical and strategic perspectives. The hosts share personal anecdotes and highlight both fictional and real-life examples of exemplary leaders to illustrate key concepts, emphasizing the power of humility, clear communication, and leading by example.

00:00 Introduction to STAT Leadership
00:08 Meet the Hosts
00:57 Mindful Leadership: Balancing Success and Self
02:49 Daily Disciplines for Clear Mind and Purpose
04:47 Handling Stress and Burnout
08:29 The Importance of Rituals and Routines
14:26 Embracing Emotions and Community Support
26:47 Core Principles and Ethical Leadership
35:59 The Complexity of Good and Evil
36:39 Understanding and Empathy in Conflict
36:58 The Story of the 442nd Battalion
39:47 Handling Stress and Pressure in High-Stakes Situations
40:22 Emergency Room Leadership: A Pediatric Case Study
46:54 Command Presence and Effective Leadership
55:03 Real-Life Leadership Examples
56:45 Fictional and Real-Life Leaders: Lessons in Leadership

Referenced in this episode:
Leadershift: The 11 Essential Changes Every Leader Must Embrace, by John C. Maxwell  https://a.co/d/6FpsKGq

Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World, by Admiral William H. McRaven  https://a.co/d/h1NeshT
University of Texas at Austin 2014 Commencement speech: https://youtu.be/yaQZFhrW0fU?si=JnvzECJzE25ahBMs

Stand By Me https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092005/

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee   https://a.co/d/4bYRrl0

Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein  https://a.co/d/7V7EExF

Band of Brothers (miniseries)  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185906/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

When the call comes in, leadership is everything.

SPEAKER_03 0:02

We analyze the data in real time, making the tough decisions under pressure. Welcome to Stat Leadership. Hello, podcast listeners. It's Phil Moy from St. Louis here, and I bring you our fabulous Leader's Code crew. I'll let them introduce themselves.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hey everyone, it's Jared Pickett from University of Utah up in Salt Lake City. Although my lawyers say that I have to say that I am speaking on my own behalf and not on behalf of the university.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

And I am Chet and Carod, and I'm definitely speaking on my own behalf.

SPEAKER_03 0:34

Very good. And I too am also speaking on my own behalf if we're doing these legal disclaimers here. But we uh Yeah, thanks, JR, for setting the tone here.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Well, you know what? If we're gonna get canceled, let's get individually canceled. Let's not also lose our income stream by getting fired. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 0:57

So listeners, we are not gonna be talking about really anything too controversial, despite the legal claimers, but nonetheless, not with that attitude or not. This episode is about mindful leadership, the challenges of delivering success without losing ourselves. So, Chad, could you just bring us in as to what's this all about?

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Yeah, absolutely. Any motivated leader or person put in charge of something is going to be dialed in on what it is they're trying to accomplish. And that's the upside. The downside is that sometimes in taking care of a business, we forget who we are, and then we get sometimes down the slippery slope of the ends justify the means. I'm in charge so clearly I can do whatever I want, those kinds of things. So our discussion today is all about how do we lead with a clear mind and a purpose? Like how do we make sure that we ourselves are in the moment, staying guided by our core principles, is being a certain way more powerful or effective than having something or doing something specific. And then we're going to talk a little bit about the challenges of being a leader in the moment because you have to have a strategic view from way high up in the organization, and yet you have to be able to walk the ground where your team is walking so that you can be aware and lead effectively. And of course, all this leads to stress, right? And high-stakes situations. So we'll talk a little bit about how we can be cultivating a mindset that helps us handle that stuff now and also in the future.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Awesome. Well, I why do we uh I got some notes here from what you sent out to us? And so why don't we start off with that leading with a clear mind and purpose? I think that you talk you mentioned in there the daily mental and physical and spiritual discipline. Let's talk about a bit more about that. How do you start that off with having your clear mind and your purpose?

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Yeah, so I'll tell you, it started with my first military deployment. And I was a uh a young flight surgeon for two years before I was accepted into a residency. And the military used to do that sometimes. They you'd have your medical license and they'd say, Yep, we need you for the mission, so you can come back into your specialty training later. So I found myself roughly six months out of internship in the middle of the Saudi Arabian desert, living this life of being one of the only American-trained physicians within 100-mile radius. So I felt a lot of pressure there with just an internship of training. I also found myself drifting away with the monotony of every single day. It was like literally Groundhog Day. You wake up, you do the same thing again. I felt like Bill Murray in that movie. And I after about two, three weeks of this, I thought, man, I gotta do something. So I started this practice of doing something grounding every day. So I worked out every single day with some rest days, but basically I had a something that was a physical discipline every day to focus and center me. Before the day got busy, I always had a mental moment where I would stop and say, all right, what am I doing today and how am I gonna do that? And then every single day, I just for me, it was useful to have a spiritual moment where I said, okay, what do I stand for? And what is my message to the world? So these three things, a mental discipline, a spiritual discipline, a physical discipline, really helped me stay centered in a world where it was either all mission or it was nothing. And then when I came back from that deployment, I found that if I kept something like that going, then I was able to manage the day a little bit better.

SPEAKER_03 4:47

Yeah, and I do want to make clear to our audience out here, this is easily said, more difficult to enact in real life. We all have our things that spurn us for the day, but man, I feel like right now, in in my roles as leadership, right now, I'm like in the dredges and man, I'm in and out of it. And this is hard, but this is very important because I constantly have to remind myself that the big picture and not to get burnt out. And I feel this week I'm pretty worn down to the nub, I feel like. But I just today I just said, you know what, today I'm just not going to the hospital to do any leadership stuff today. I'm gonna do it my other stuff and kind of rejuvenate myself today. But leading with a clear mind and purpose is so important because everybody is looking to you to take the lead. And if you've been in this role of leadership for quite some time, they are used to looking for you for points. So you always have to put that forward. And that's not to say you shouldn't be transparent about any vulnerabilities you have, but you do have that role. So for me, leading with a clear mind purpose, how I start off or how I get there, I think the one that I usually do most consistently is my physical thing. I always try to get one workout in a day that's easier said than done as well, but one sort of endurance workout a day, be that a swim, bike, run. Mental, I would say actually spiritual, I would say that this is something that I've been working on more. I wouldn't consider myself a religious person, but I get the spirituality that goes with religion. And I always tell people I could find spirituality sitting and walking through a redwood forest and seeing those huge, giant trees rather than in a pew, but that's me. And I understand when people find spirituality and awe and growth in a religious situation. But for me, that's not me. So for me, I've found that meditation 10, 20 minutes in the morning, quiet with my mind, really does help me get in touch with that side of my being. And then my mental aspect of it, in a perfect morning for me, I would start off with a workout. After that workout, I would do 10, 20 minutes of meditation for my spiritual discipline. And then for my mental discipline, again, in a perfect world, in a perfect morning, and anybody who's got kids knows that it never works out that way. I tried to journal for a little bit, a one-page journal, just free write a little paragraph, then write three things I'm thankful for, and then three things that I'd like to achieve throughout the day. And inevitably, those first two things are workout and spend time with family, because those are my two top priorities. And then the third one is something that has to do with work, get a podcast done, or record a podcast with Chet and JR. And then after that, I would spend another maybe 20 minutes trying to read something or study something that would help me improve. So right now I'm reading a book called Leadershift. I try to go for chapter. I'm a very slow reader, so it doesn't really work out that well. I get through maybe a section of a chapter, but I try to do that in a consistent basis. And in a perfect morning, that's great. And that kind of sets my compass for the rest of the day. But inevitably, if I get one of those three, I'm content there and I'll try to squeeze in the other ones throughout the day. That was a little verbose, and I apologize. But that that's my thoughts with leading with a clear mind and purpose and getting started is my getting my physical, spiritual, and mental being started in the morning. And we're shift workers, so that kind of varies throughout the day.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Yeah, I think that having some sort of some sort of ritual that one does that you you mentioned getting a workout done. I know that there are people who love to get up early in the morning, go running. I'll be like on my way to an early shift, and there's it's 4 30 in the morning, there's somebody like happily running. I'm like, you psychopath, what's wrong with you? But having some, but I find you know, I hate mornings. I hate them so much. But like when I have to work out in the morning for some reason, say my if my wife's out of town and I gotta get the girls up and going, and I've got a kind of a block of time and I'll get on the bike, I I do notice how much better I feel through the day. I've checked a box. And you know, Admiral McGraven, when he talks about make your bed, you start you're doing one thing right, you're starting the day off right, you're accomplishing something, even something small, you're checking a box. And that I think that there's a lot of value in starting with that positive attitude of, hey, I got something done today. And especially when it comes to exercise, which, as you say, our schedules are all over the place, and it's something that doesn't necessarily happen every day for me, and unfortunately. And I know I feel a lot better when I do. I know if I go a couple of days where it hasn't happened, then I get really pissy. Like my wife is just like, go to the gym, just go.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Like, all right, fine, I'll go.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

I come home a couple of hours later and she's like, Do you feel better? I'm like, Yes. And I'm sorry, that was whiny. But uh but also a prescribed sequence of things that you do in the morning. Uh, you notice how it gets, if it gets thrown off, how that throws you off for the day. I get up, I take a shower, I'm showering in a certain order, I am sitting down, having I drink a big glass of water right as I get up, I do the shower, then I eat a certain thing, I drink my coffee, I get my stuff, I'm ready to go to work, but it's a prescribed order. I'm not OCD at all, but I find that just having that, like I get uh get into a flow. Well, my wife said to me the the other day, she just loves to sit and drink coffee in the morning, and I find that too on the days that I don't have to be into work early that or at all, and I'm doing computer work, that I'll make breakfast and just sit there with her and drink some coffee. And if the weather's nice, just sit outside and uh drink a cup of coffee for kind of a meditation ritual almost uh, even though it's not uh what a lot of folks would consider a deliberate meditation, it's still just sitting there with my thoughts and enjoying a cup of coffee, and that's good.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

Yeah, I think some of the greatest leaders have some sort of whether it's a ritual or an order in which they do things, and this allows us to put some control on the chaos. And there's precedent for this in our medical approach, right? In the military, when we do trauma assessments in the pre-hospital setting, the medics are taught to use march, looking for massive hemorrhage, check the airway, check respiratory status, circulatory status, and then head injury, hypothermia, hypotension. So the there's we already know that imposing some order on chaos, having some sort of a structure is powerful. We also know, as practicing clinicians, that sticking too closely to a guideline or too rigidly to something and not adapting to the moment is going to cost us as well. So we have some structure and then we have to be flexible as well. But it begins with this idea of we try to the extent that we can to keep our mind clear and not bring old baggage or we don't. I used to love telling my medics that worry and regret they are the two of the most ineffective uh emotions in which we can indulge, and they're just opposites of the same coin. When you regret things, it's just retroactive worry. You're looking back on something and burning fuel on it. And worry is just anticipatory regret. It hasn't happened yet and you're already worried about it, right? Either way, net negative emotion, better to have a clear mind than to wallow in and soak in something like that.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

I love that thought of those emotions. I we can't avoid them. Like you you'll regret and worry both creep into our mind and and it happens, and to say that I'm just not going to worry, I I don't. But having done a lot of reading lately on resentment and bitterness and how to get beyond that, I think one of the most powerful things that I read on this was to not to not allow yourself to dwell in it for too long. And you can't, it's not gonna go away until you you heal enough time has gone by. But it's okay to just put it down, all right? It's a burden you're carrying it. And I tell myself that if I feel like, okay, I've been like ruminating on this thing for too long, hey, it's okay to put it down. I'm just gonna put it down. And it's still there. It's not it's not I'm not I'm not a monk, right? It's not gone away completely, but at least I can I can relieve myself, I consciously relieve myself of that burden of that. And it's the same thing with worry, and it's the same thing with regret. That yes, you do have to live with those emotions, you have to deal with those sometimes, but it's all right to just say, okay, I've I've had my little dopamine surge or whatever it is that you get by being angry, and okay, I've had that. Now I'm gonna put it down for a while. And I think uh Tyler Perry, in talking about losing his mother, said something extremely powerful, said, you cannot schedule grief. He said, I tried to, I worked through it, I drank through it, I did all this stuff. All it did was wait for me. And I think the same thing with the worry and the regret that you that comes at you, you can you can't really make it go away, but you can choose to embrace it for a manageable period of take a manageable bite of it and then put it away.

SPEAKER_03 14:22

Yeah, yeah. And I'll piggyback off this audience that when you get into any leadership position, or if you are the leader without an official title, you will feel anxious, worried, and regret. That's inevitability. That's just gonna happen. And I agree, ChatJR, and I, we all feel it, and probably we still feel it today, even with what we're doing. And whatever your spirituality is and everything, one thing I that I do to that I try to consciously try to address is when I find myself ruminating, I just mentioned mentally explicitly in my brain, I go worrying, and I just say, I'm worrying. And I just take a deep breath in and out, just a little bit of breathing in the box, not quite, but it's like that, and just let it go and everything. And it makes you feel a little better. It doesn't absolve it completely and it doesn't go away completely. Those feelings that not my stomach, that's how I my body interprets it. But that makes it a little bit more bearable. But as JR said, you're putting it down a little bit, you're acknowledging it, and then you're you move on with what you have to do during the day. Because let's be honest, we all could spend all day worrying and regretting about what happens. But I think the mindset I have is worry and regret. Either regret it's already happened, right? The most important thing after that is what can I learn from that and what can I do to move on. Worrying is it's good to think about the future because as emergency physicians, we do that. What's the worst case scenario that's gonna happen to this patient? I gotta prepare for that. Yeah, that's part of how we were trained. But at the same time, it hasn't happened and it may not happen. So you just have to be like, all right, I'm preparing myself for the worst case scenario. But as emergency physicians, we know most of those worst-case scenarios probably won't happen. But it's good to think about for a little bit and then let it go. But inevitably, those can ruin your day. And I had a nice conversation with my nursing leader at ER, and he's like, Yeah, I've walked out of the CR many a times in defeat. And the best thing you could do is just come back the next day, one day at a time, one step at a time, and just deal with the issues that happen, right? So, audience, you will feel these emotions. And I think you have to find what works best for you. And I'm sorry, I'm gonna go one little bit further here. I apologize. Peter Attila, he wrote a book called Outlived, and it's a decent book. He talks about how you have a good health span with your lifespan, a healthy life, and a good long life. He talks about cardiovascular, you have to be healthy. This is how you avoid cardiovascular disease, metabolic disease, et cetera, et cetera. But then the last part is more about community. And this is something for the guys out there, because I think we men are we need to work on this, is community, right? When you feel these overwhelming emotions and everything, it's okay to reach out to that one friend, right? To reach out to your JRs, your chat, be like, Hey, can I talk to you for a second? I just there's just something that's bothered me. That in itself, just talking to somebody, be it a good friend, would be helpful. And I guarantee you that friend will make time for you. If if one of your friends came to you and said, Hey, I need some help, you'd put down what you're doing and talk to them. So they do the same for you.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

I had a friend reach out recently, same thing. And she's been a mentor of mine since I was a medical student and she was an intern, and we were both on the OB rotation together. And she and I, and her husband and I, and my wife and her, we've been really good friends ever since for the past 20 years. And she she reached out, she said, Man, I just I I'm studying this, studying malpractice and this kind of stuff. And I am I calling this down from the universe into me by thinking about this stuff. Am I telling the universe to bring this into my life? And I'm like, no, you're not at all. It's we prepare for the worst, and that's okay. You're not bringing it. The fact is, we are emergency physicians. We know the universe will bring it regardless, whatever that bad thing is, the the malpractice lawsuit, the bad outcome that you feel was avoidable, the cut the conflict, the loss of a job, the the medical diagnosis that is life-changing in a bad way, all this stuff. Like it's gonna come. And but we certainly don't ask for it, and we don't the universe is not so cruel as to say, Oh, you were thinking about that, cool. Here's it, here it is. Yeah, I think thinking about those things is is helpful in preparing us. Like you say, we are emergency physicians, we think. Worst case scenario. I think one of the most comforting things that I tell myself is I can handle it. And during times of strife, like when I like when a day starts and I know it's going to be a difficult day, I know that there's like some expected meetings or some expected thing that I'm not looking forward to, or or I'm worried about what might happen. And I'm like, you know what, I'm adaptable and I will do the best I can and I can shift fire. And I think this is what I think this is what makes people a lot of people very fearful of change, because if you're like doing a new program or something like that, and it's oh, but you know, what if this doesn't work? Okay, we're gonna adjust. Like we will pay attention and we'll we'll work on it and we'll work on these things. So I think just reminding yourself that you have an incredible array of skills, that you are legal, moral, and ethical human being, and that you're going to be observant and try to make the best outcome possible. That to me is okay. I can say not everything I work, not everything I do today is going to be a success, but at least I know I can look for where it's failed and I can shift and I can adjust and bring it closer to success.

SPEAKER_02 20:21

And I think this is all of this that we're talking about. It's so hard to do in the moment. Like when the wave overtakes you is a tough time to be building the dike or preparing to swim, right? The idea is that if we do a little bit of this every day, we are setting a condition for ourselves. We know who we are, what we believe in, and what we stand for. And then, regardless of the event, your tools are handy and the sword is sharp and you're ready, as opposed to you're if you're constantly in a reacting mode and just taking on the kind of onslaught of each day, then you're unable to create because you're constantly reacting. If you take a few moments every day, just a few, to reframe what do I believe in? What do I stand for? You know, a small beginning like that. When the inevitable overtakes you, you are now at least grounded. You've most recently touched on who am I and what do I stand for? But another way to look at this, I had a great teacher who was here, what's happening to you is you're trying to grab the flying end of the whips. He was talking about a whip with many like ends. And he goes, When you walk into an emergency department or you walk into your life and you have 50 million things coming at you and you're individually trying to grab each one, he goes, You're gonna get hammered. There's no way to do that. You only have two hands. It's moving too fast. He goes, What you'll find is if you can take a moment every day and grab the handle of the whip, uh, you'll have a little more control. You're still gonna get nicked once in a while. But grab the handle, man. So that was our little thing. We would say, grab the hand. Grab the handle every day. So the idea that you can get to the source of something, meaning self-control, self-awareness, whatever that is, and then you're a little better positioned. Nobody's ever going to be perfectly positioned. It's just not going to happen. We're all going to have those days. Here's another thing that we often think about, at least I found myself in situations where I was like, if I could just have blank more people, more resources, if I could just have two more monitors, if I could have 10 more tourniquets, whatever, somehow the having of something I always felt was holding me back. Or I felt, gosh, if I could just do this or do that other thing. And I was constantly distracted by this until I thought about it. And I was like, gosh, resource constraint is going to be common, but I'm more limited by who and how I'm being than I am by what I'm doing or what I have. And that may take a minute to unpack, but I'm curious what you guys think about that.

SPEAKER_03 23:03

Yeah, so I think that's a component of the worrying aspect, if you will, that we talked about earlier is I wish I had 10 more doctors to fill shifts, or I wish we had infinite amount of money to make our ER to handle the loads of patients that are coming in, or more beds in the ER. I think that's that would be great. And yeah, I think you have to reframe yourself because if you do that, especially if you're in a clinical shift, because I'm bringing this up because we're like I'm assuming most of our audience will be ER clinicians, EMS physicians. But when you're in the shift and you're just lamenting about what could be if you had X, Y, or Z, the thing that needs to be done is not going to get done. And you are the key to doing that thing. That's so vague. I'm sorry about that, everybody. That's so vague. I and I get why our minds go there. Fair is a mile wide but an inch deep when you just have to delve into it and just be like, okay, I'm worried about that. And you just have to sit in the discomfort. And I'm gonna use a triathlon kind of metaphor here is when I'm doing a triathlon, when I'm doing a workout, endurance workout, I expect that pain to come. Everybody talks about a runner's high, an endurance high. There's the only high you get is when you finish. You're like, okay, I'm done.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Never spelt that runner's high ever.

SPEAKER_03 24:26

But when you're in it, you expect to deal with that pain. And I that that thought goes, I wish I was stronger. I wish my heart was bigger. I wish I was like Michael Jordan could run forever and everything. But you learn to say, no, I'm just gonna sit in this pain and just float down into it and just ride it out and just see where it takes me. And I think that kind of mentality, just reframe from being reframe your mindset from being, what could I have or what could be in the long run not really helping it. You just kind of have to be in the moment and deal with, unfortunately, the multiple whip things that are going to be thrown your way. That's my thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

And with that, you we talk about being rather than doing. Where you get hung up is that self-doubt. Am I good enough for this? The what am I doing in this role? How did I get here? Am I good enough? I think that that's the thing that'll hold you back more than anything when you're trying to when you're trying to be is that that feeling that you're not the one that should be there. And I don't know about if there's a ton of great advice as far as like how to get out of that mindset, of that self-doubt, you better than most do. And but at the same time, I find that meeting other leaders and getting to know them or really diving in depth into their not only their successes but their failures, like what I read about Churchill and his political career, which was fairly inauspicious before World War II, and and and talking with other leaders uh about where things didn't go right. Okay, like it doesn't go right for everybody, in even the people that I deeply admire and respect, then okay, then I know if they can do this, then I can do this, and I'm good enough for it. But it's tough. Like when you're the leader, as my father said, if you're if you own if you are an employee of a business, you're feeding your family. If you are the owner of a business, then you're feeling uh feeding all of these other people's families, and you feel the weight of that on you. That you know, your successes, as we say in emergency medicine, that other people pay the price for our failures. And that's true as leaders of organizations as well.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Yeah, and I think this goes back to our mindfulness thing, which is if a lot of our doubt, for example, when you start a new job, a lot of the things that we feel inadequate about are we don't know the operational environment. I don't know the order of things I'm supposed to do, I don't know all the forms, the rules, the procedures, right? It's almost never a am I good enough at the core? It's almost like I don't know enough stuff. I don't want to make a public mistake, those kinds of things. So for me, one of the great uh lessons has been, you know, if I can come from a place of best effort, of being honest with myself and the people around me, if I can speak the truth and genuinely try to do the right thing ever in every circumstance, that is far more reassuring. And along the way, you still have to do certain right things. You do have to learn the procedures, you do need to know what the law is, you know, those things. And but part of being a conscientious, hardworking person is you'll get that. You'll get to that. And you have to trust that you will acquire those specific job skills. But the mindful part of leadership, in my experience, is you need to be rock solid in kind of your underpinnings. What do you stand for? How do you approach things? You're not gonna throw your followers under the bus to make yourself look good. You're going to praise them in public, you're going to correct them in private, you're gonna be open to feedback. If you can have core principles, then you're more likely to be doing the right things as well. But if you just do a bunch of right things, you may never establish the core, and now you're constantly subject to the circumstance as opposed to stable and responding to the circumstance. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_03 28:41

No, I totally agree. And this will this is delving into what we'll say about the characters that we're thinking about this this episode that embody leadership. But I read this really interesting essay how J.R. Tolkien, the author of the Lord of the Rings series, wasn't a big fan of Dune or there's another fantasy series, but the reason why he wasn't a big fan with it was more of the core philosophy of it. I know we're now getting philosophy, but the core philosophy of Dune is the ends justify the means and make something morally right. So, for example, Paula Trades, if you've ever seen Dune, Paula Trades is the main character, and he's trying to basically win a battle against this huge federal government, if you will. And the way he does that is he institutes a jihad, more or less, of this planet of people and says, This is now a religious thing, and you guys are gonna help me defeat this federal government by going to war, and we're gonna kill a bunch of people, populations are gonna die, planets are gonna be destroyed, economies are gonna be overturned, but I'm gonna win. And because I win, I'm my decision to start this whole jihad was correct, and thus morality is fluid at that point. And J.R. Tolkien wasn't the biggest fan of that one because he was more of the fact that in the world we live in, there are rights and there are wrongs, right? So if you look at his character, there are certain things that are right, in the fact that you shouldn't enslave people, or Soruman's a bad guy because he just looks at death, destruction to achieve power, and Aragorn fights because it's wrong to enslave people and to torture people to do that, right? And so basically, if you were to put this further back into a superhero category, is like Batman will never kill anybody because he won't kill anybody because that's the wrong thing to do. There's a right thing to do in the fact that there's a due process, but that's the morality, and that's set in stone, and I will never cross that per se if you're Batman. And so J.R. Tolkien was more of that kind of philosophy, whereas the other philosophy is the ends justify the means. I know we're we go off on a huge tangent here, but I apologize.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

I don't think I would go to my I don't think I would go to the people in my organization and say, look, we're gonna start a war, people are gonna die, planets are gonna be destroyed, but we're gonna win, and so that's why it's okay. Yeah. I see where where token is coming from, but to the fact is that no villain ever sees himself as a bad guy. And you've got Sauron that wants to just wants world domination. Who does that? It's like that. The Emperor in uh the Star Wars, it's cartoonish characters, nobody likes that. Good.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

I can feel your hate.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

They're not the characters that we interact with every day, and um that's something that we too as leaders have to recognize that everybody has a perspective and everybody has some reason that they're doing what they're doing. I think that like Kylo Wren, if you want to use a fictional character from Star Wars, that he's a better depiction of flawed character, but believes in what he's doing, and his intentions are ultimately good. It's not just to subjugate people, it's like he wants peace. It's easy to take a moral high ground when you see somebody as a total villain, but the fact is that nobody you interact with is. And if we see them that way as individuals, to folks that we work with and have to encounter, and don't get me wrong, I've encountered, but I've encountered plenty of villains in career. Folks that I've worked with, and I had the misfortune of sitting next to one on the airplane recently. I haven't seen him for a decade, and so I got seated next to him like, oh my god, are you kidding me? Maintaining my composure, where I was still in an exit room, like it wouldn't be hard for me to open that window and just throw him out.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

It was inherently wrong. Like, not that it wasn't necessarily inherently wrong.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

I wouldn't pick the guy's mouth if his teeth were on fire, but still, like the fact that I could compose myself and I think is a sign of growth. So I don't know where was I going with this? Um but yeah, but anyways, I think when you see leadership, I'm gonna bring in a movie called Heat with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, just an incredible movie, incredible cast. They are antagonists to each other, but that they all have their perspective, they all have what they bring to like why they're doing what it is that they're doing. That's much more realistic for the people that you're gonna run into that are your antagonists as well.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

Yeah, and knowing that we're gonna interact with this variety and understanding that we also are not perfect. We have an opportunity. Sometimes the best you can do is withhold your impulse to strike back or to toss somebody out the exit door or whatever. Sometimes that is the best we can do in the moment, but it usually helps if we are not purely reactive. It helps if we've got a touchstone inside that says, all right, but this is who I am. So one of the things I encourage my medics, the residents I work with, others, including myself, to do is look, is the thing you're doing an act of self-expression? Are you, is that what you meant to broadcast to the universe that this is who I am? If we frame it that way, and honestly, like I said, when it's all flying around you, that's not the time to have this thought for the first time. So if we get used to thinking, am I projecting what I intend to to the universe? Is this my best message to the world? So a lot of times I will start that, start my day with that conversation. Today I'm gonna do my best to deliberately express something rather than react all the time. It does not always work. I'll tell you, people closest to me know it's probably not working half or more of the time, but it's getting better, right? So that's the other thing that we're never really gonna be perfect, but it's up to us to make even one step of progress today, a small change, 1%, whatever, is better than zero. Right? So that that sort of approach also that you're you may never be perfect, but you do want to make some progress.

SPEAKER_03 35:21

Yeah, and if this and we're just embracing our nerdiness in this episode, which I love it. So just bring out your inner loose skywalker. What I mean by that is remember in Return of the Jedi, he's sitting there staring at all the allies being declobbered by the Empire, and he's looking at the lightsaber that the Emperor is holding in his lap, and the Emperor says, strike me down and complete your trade or start your trading to the dark side. And Luke does not. He holds back as long as he can. He eventually tries to strike down, but an invader stops him essentially. But no, I think that's completely right. In the world we go ahead, Jay, are you gonna say something? At some point you gotta take the shot, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:01

Um think about it, think about it for a minute and say think it through. Don't if your default is fight all the time, then that's gonna be problematic for you. But sometimes sometimes you do need to.

SPEAKER_03 36:14

No, and I agree, and I agree, not everybody is clearly evil like the emperor of Star Wars, right? That's not realistic. That we all have nuance and depth to who we are. And in the world we live in today, I think the problem is that we've delved into that very simple. You're evil, you're good, and that gets rid of actual conversation, actual debate, actual agree to disagree. Uh a mento or a saying that I have in my mind that I read from Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey is seek first to be seek first to understand, then be understood. Try to understand the person who's causing you trouble or the person who is contradicting you, right? And then say, I understand this is where you're coming from, and then be understood. And an allegory or a story of that is my older brother, comic book artist, he's trying to, he's creating a comic book about the 442nd battalion in World War II, a battalion in World War II, the most decorated, I think, battalion, I would think, or the unit in the US Army in World War II. And they were an army, a battalion completely made up of Japanese Americans in World War II. And we all know about the Japanese internment camp. And he's trying to law them about the bravery about doing this and their reasons for fighting for America that put them in camps was we are going, we love this country, we are going to defend this country and its ideals. And a small issue my older brother has when he's talking to prospective buyers of his comic book or even just comic book fans, is some of them are, yeah, they did it just because they want to get out of the tournament camps. My older brothers, no, they did it because they understood something higher than themselves. They wanted to embody that. And my older brothers, sometimes those people just I just couldn't reach them, and it's really frustrating with me. And I'm like, Tony, you kind of have to understand is where they're coming from is they just I they just don't foresee or see something that defending something greater than themselves or a higher deal that's not practical to life. And so you shouldn't really get frustrated with them and just understand that this is just where those certain people are coming from. They just don't understand finding something for a higher deal at some point in real life. And so it's an interesting story, that kind of an interesting event that happened in my life. And I was like, no, that's it. That's unique that some people just don't see people saying, despite where I am in life and how I'm being beaten down by my own government, I'm still gonna defend it.

SPEAKER_02 38:43

That's a that's an amazing story. Just a quick side note that unit is widely considered the most decorated in US military history. 21 medals of honor awarded to this unit over the course of their time. Their motto was go for broke.

SPEAKER_03 38:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:59

And they were known for being this selfless and heroic group that was constantly uh inspired to put it all out there, put it all out there. And sometimes it wasn't even for the greater good. It was literally like they didn't want to fail the guy on the left and on their right. Their team meant so much to them. Or they're they did not want to dishonor their family by failing to do something that needed doing. It's a really inspiring story, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Absolutely riveting story. I would love to read that when a brother's done with it. That'd be awesome.

SPEAKER_03 39:36

I'll send it your way. Yeah. Very cool.

SPEAKER_02 39:41

So we talked about so many good topics. Let's touch on this. There are a couple other things we were going to look at. This idea of handling stress and pressure, particularly in high-stakes situations, something that leaders have to do. And then this other idea that we had mentioned at the opening about the ability to zoom down to in the weeds tactical level thinking and the ability to zoom all the way back out and keep a strategic perspective and stay above the fray a little bit. Any thoughts on how those two things relate? Or how mindfulness helps us do those things?

SPEAKER_03 40:22

Yeah, I could bring up a story that kind of develops this. And we're emergency physicians, so we believe we can handle stress and pressure. But stress and pressure, sometimes leadership is a little bit different. But as JR said at the beginning of this thing, you guys, if you're an AR physician or EMS physicians, you guys have the skills and the ability to handle that. What I'm saying is, my story is I was coming on to a 7 a.m. shift, and at 6 52, I arrived like 10, 8 minutes early. I hear critical patient going to room eight. And I'm like, all right, that's fine. I'll start the day off a little hot. So I wander over to room two and a room eight, I'm sorry, I handle room eight, and then I hear pediatric equipment to room eight. And this is a community ER that doesn't really see peds, sick kids very much at all. And I'm just like, oh crud. And as a community ER doctor with two children's hospitals and a big tertiary center that has a children's area, they handle most of those kids anyway. So I haven't dealt with a sick kid in a while. So I'm like, oh crud. Here we go. And as I peek out as they wheel this patient past to go around into the room, I look at this patient and it's this little girl, and she looks like we've all seen it, those patients who have overdosed on heroin, like wide-eyed, blank stare, open mouth, and pale diaphragmic. And I'm just like, oh God. So I go into the room and I'm feeling this emotion of, oh dear God, everything is high. This patient's life is pretty bad. It's a sick patient. And I go in there and I actually take a little step back and I realize everybody's gonna be looking at me, and I zoom in a little bit before they get this patient in the room, and I notice all the nurses are just quiet and staring at me because they don't deal with these sick kids at all. And they have probably gone through PALs, but that must have been like five, six, seven years ago. So I'm just like, okay, here we go. And so at that point I realize, okay, if I start panicking, or if I start losing my mind yelling, the whole room is gonna go to SHIT. Right. So I make sure that I know everybody is feeling the same way I do, so I make sure that every command I give or anything, any next steps I give is gonna be very simple but very deliberate. They wheel the patient in. I'm like, get this patient on the bed. Let's get the patient on the bed. They lift her up, they spin her around, and this 10-year-old is wearing a diaper, distended abdomen, but looking pale, blank stare. And I look to the RT, I'm like, get me a bag valve mask, hook it up to the oxygen, give me 100%, because the number one cause of cardiac arresting kids we all know is respiratory. So I'm like, let's get there. I look to the nurse and write of me, I'm like, get an IV, largest board you can get. Just concentrate on that. Let's get an IV. Look to my tech to my left. I'm like, let's get her on the monitor. That's your job. Let's get her on the monitor. And I'm trying to get the bag, hook it up, and there I'm like, pull out the bag until you can inflate it. And so we start bagging the patient. And then I'm looking at the RT and she's shaking. I'm like, just get me an oral airway. Can we get her on the monitor, please? And then I'm like, I'm trying to remember my pal's weight days. I'm like, can someone get me a binder that shows the weight based dosage for a 10-year-old? I get a history. The patient had diarrhea for three days, was fine yesterday. And then that morning, just looked like crud. And then I'm with the patient more, and I'm trying like, okay, go back to my basics here. Airway, I already got going on. Breathing. I'm breathing for I'm squeezing this bag, circulation, put my fingers in the pulse. I don't really feel anything. I look to the nurse who's a rookie nurse next to me. I'm like, could you feel a pulse? And she couldn't feel anything. I'm like, just start compressions. And she's not going hard. She's flittering. The rate's fine, but it's not really there. And then she just, and I said, you have to push harder. And so she eventually does. But fortunately, the patient starts pushing the hand away. I'm like, okay, that's good. All right. I can take a little break in that one. They do that, and I said, put an I.O. And I had to guide them through how to put an I.O. And eventually they start resuscitating with fluids. They get a Brazil tape out. And I was like, oh yeah, we need one of those. I forgot about that. I didn't say that at the time, but we were going to intubate an RSI patient who is in critical condition. And all of a sudden she starts saying, Mommy, what's going on? And crying. I'm like, all right, I'm going to make the hard decision not to intubate, continue to resuscitate. Let's swing her over the CT scan as quick as we can. And we do that. And she's got this wonderful CT scan where it's just distended bowels filled with stool and whatnot, right? So eventually continue resuscitating her, disimpact her, get her to the children's hospital, transfer her. But I think the key points of what we do in emergency medicine is to apply that to your leadership when it gets tough, right? When it gets tough, you have to be the one to take that step back and be like, okay, simple task that zoom in. This patient's critical. My nurses are scared, S-H-I-T-L-E-S-S, right? And then zoom back out, be like, all right, where do we need to go with this? We got to resuscitate this woman. And we, this little girl, we got to do what we can. So that continues zoom in, zoo out. You guys do it all the time, audience. And it's just to get that kind of calm. You are going to feel stressed. You are going to feel that adrenaline pumping, but it's your job to do that zoom in, zoo out. Sorry, I'm a little verbose today, so I will let other people know.

SPEAKER_00 45:49

You're a little verbose, but uh but reticent to use a swear word.

SPEAKER_01 45:55

This is your own fucking podcast, man. I'm just trying to see where we're gonna go and just click the little explicit button on there. And it's like, sorry, we're gonna open so the little kids aren't listening to it on that camera.

SPEAKER_00 46:08

I think that zoom in Zoom. In my opinion on this, is uh how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? And so uh a friend of mine who was Air Force re rescue doc that did some GMO time and um had done quite a few rescues on uh in combat conditions and snatched people out of bad situations and so forth. And when he was talking about some of these incidents that he had responded to, he said, when you're overwhelmed, when you're scared, when you feel inadequate, when you're confronted with this whole thing, when you see a thousand things come in your mind that have to get done, and he said, just get started. Just just get it started, whatever, whatever that is, because you're gonna start making progress and things are gonna start falling into place. So you feel exactly as you're saying with that resuscitation case where you come in, team's looking to you for leadership. And here's the thing as a leader, if you do not step up at that moment, it will go to shit if you do not display some command presence. And many people mistakenly think that command presence means yelling at people and barking orders and that sort of thing. And my my feeling is the opposite of that, that that quietly assigning tasks, getting people's hands busy is how you get through that crisis situation. All right, but there's a lot of stuff that needs to get done, there's a lot of stuff that you cannot control, and there's a lot of stuff that you don't know. Let's start working on those things, that 25-meter target, then the 50-meter target, then the 100-meter target, working our way outwards to that 300-meter target, which is the final goal of whatever it is that we want to that we want to accomplish. And as you are telling this nurse to get the IV, this nurse to grab the Brazilo, this nurse to do this tech to do this, all of those things. Now everybody's got a direction we're all moving in, and it's a very familiar place for us to be in. That's that was my experience, and I've given a talk on a mass casualty that that I was on, and it was a helicopter crash. And at night, and I was one of the first folks on scene, and I got there, and here's a this helicopter on its side, the tail rotor's gone, the main rotor's gone, there's bodies laying all around it. And uh like, fuck, what have I got myself into? And those words that Mark had said, which was Mark Shepard is the guy I was talking about, just get started. And so I'm like, okay, I started from the outside and just started doing triage and started looking for those immediate life threats to deal with. And so then it became more manageable as that as we went through that incident. That's my goal for being under stress and being in a high stakes or critical situation is start with those little things, but little things that matter, right? Not not the bullshit, but get and use a mnemonic like March helps a lot to when you're talking about a medical case. But what's the most important thing was the plane still flying? And as they say to aviators, or chat, you're the Air Force guy, aviate, navigate, communicate. All right, number one is keep the plane in the air. Number two is figure out where you are, where you're going. Number three is to like you know, communicate that situation and hopefully get resources as you need them.

SPEAKER_02 49:26

Yeah, those are great perspectives, and so true, right? The uh the leader who cannot be boots on the ground with their people is going to become ineffective or really not even needed very quickly. And the leader who cannot zoom out and be above the fray is also going to be missing the mark on the big thing they can do for their team. It's like running a code. You may be the one that has to do the difficult procedure, but you better not be the one doing all of the CPR because you've got a team of people that can push on the chest for you. You may need to step away from the bed, disengage your hands from the patient, and see the big picture. Where are we? What are we doing? That kind of thing. And a lot of this is, again, we've said it before in today's podcast. You're not going to be able to just figure it out on the fly, which is where mindfulness comes back in. If we've thought about this before, how am I going to approach this if it happens? What are my core beliefs? Am I as sharp as I could be? Those are realities. And then, of course, yeah, nobody is perfect. So many times, if I had a successful leadership moment, it was really because I understood what my team was capable of, and I got out of their way just enough that they could do their thing while staying involved enough that I could resource them or help them with whatever it was that only I could do for them. It's I don't think one size fits all at all, but a lot of these lessons sure do apply to many uh situations for sure.

SPEAKER_00 51:05

Yeah, um I had a thing that popped into my mind and then it popped out. I need more coffee. Good. Good. So I remember I remember what it was. Yeah, in in those situations, if you cannot master yourself, then you cannot expect anybody else to follow you. You you you have to have that control of your outwardly projected personality. And then if you're if you look stressed, if you look like you're not handling it, or you're you're uh favoring action over thought, then yeah, folks are gonna have a hard time following you. At the same time, if you are not really present in the moment, and by that I mean you're you may be physically there, but you're not providing guidance and kind of aligning the team to where it needs to be going, then other people will step up into that gap. Maybe maybe good, maybe bad. And problematically, you may have multiple people ste stepping into that gap or trying to step into that gap, and then they start uh inhibiting each other in in terms of getting a good forward direction. I saw this when recently I was at the judo national tournament, uh juniors national tournament, and I was just a scorekeeper for it. And we had a kid that got choked out on the mat. And usually you don't see anybody get choked unconscious. It's just the way it was positioned, the ref couldn't see that the kid had gone unconscious during this during this thing. And so kids face down, unconscious, drooling on the mat. And yeah, I'm not there in a medical capacity, I'm there in a scoring capacity. So the medical team, like one member, and then another member goes on, and then the coaches are screaming, or parents, and then the bystanders are screaming and everything, and not a lot is happening because the medical team is on the mat, they're evaluating him, and he's waking up and they're doing an assessment and so forth, but like people are starting to jump the barricades, it's starting to become a bad situation. I was like, all right, I went out and went in the middle of it, and I had introduced myself earlier to the teams, to the medical team, so they knew that I was there and who I was. And but I say, hey, let me take a quick look here. And then as I'm talking, trying to talk to this kid who's freaking out, he was in the middle of a match, and he wakes up with a bunch of people around him and a whole bunch of people screaming. And I'm like, hey, can you you know can we go to we go your fingers? Good, grab my hands here, how's your breathing? Doing this kind of stuff, but at the same time, like everybody around him is like firing questions at him, and finally I just said, Everybody shut up. And they all are I'm like, all right, got a quick couple of things. I'm like, all right, good, we're gonna get you up off the mat here and go, I don't know if you should stand up. Yeah, you should actually, because then that's what the player that's hurt when they stand up and they come off the walk off the field, like everybody collapses and everything. It's fine. That's exactly what I wanted to happen. I wanted to de-escalate the crowd with it by showing, like, yeah, the kid's okay. And uh so did that, and then later on I talked about, I was like, hey, usually I don't yell at people to shut up, but that was just a moment they're like, somebody had to take charge of that. And so I'm just glad that you did. But trying to make that's not the default place, but things were going sideways. So yeah, you have to step up into it, but at the same time, like barking stuff at people, especially things that they already know or are already doing, or the let's go people like that. It's never helpful. But they know there's they know somebody's sick if they're doing stuff like in your resuscitation case. So that's just uh nothing but nothing but noise clutter.

SPEAKER_03 54:29

I I can imagine you using your JR Dad voice with everybody shut up.

SPEAKER_00 54:35

It was just enough. You're gonna you know you do it to where it's like the tone of voice is unmistakable, but you don't scream it. You can't overdo it.

SPEAKER_02 54:49

These are uh great cases, and I love the all of the ones have captured a an ability to be in that moment and yet zoom out and have a situational awareness as well. I think you two are probably exceptional examples of operational leadership anyway. Over time, you've either developed these skills and now do them intuitively in situations, but at some point you were a novice at this and had to spend some time thinking about it to the point where it became part of your leadership practice, right? But the if you notice all of those examples, clinical and otherwise, captured this kind of high-level view, on-the-ground view, and your ability to go up and down that, as only a leader can do. If other people do this, it's a little out of place. But a leader has total ability to do this. And then I used to have a boss who, when we talk about real life leaders, uh, I'm gonna talk about one today and one next time, but one of them used to always say credibility gives you trust. And the more trust people have in you, the more freedom of maneuver you're gonna have, the more of your wanderings people will tolerate if it's all based on credibility. So you still have to hit the targets, and whether above you or people following you, people will give you way more room to maneuver and be patient with what you're doing if they trust you. And they'll trust you if you're believable.

SPEAKER_00 56:27

So we think I just want to talk about talk about our characters, our leadership examples. Rock and roll, man. All right. Phil, I know you were thinking hard about this. I'll still think. Go ahead. I'll let you go first. All right. Um so my my fictional example is from the movie Stand By Me. It's uh River Phoenix's character, Chris Chambers. He's the clear leader of this group of kids. And if you haven't seen the movie, you should. It's a wonderful movie. And it he's he's the the alpha, so the the popular kid that he's good at stuff, and but at the same time, he's he elevates every member of the group and and respects each member of the group. And uh Gordy, who's the narrator, the Will Wheaton character uh of this, he's he's the shy one. And so the fact that Chris really compliments his storytelling and uh keeps him within the group. But there's a moment where there's a conflict between the River Phoenix character and the the Corey Feldman character in there, they get into a fight, and these are guys who are really close friends, and Chris take he he takes the time to apologize and shakes his hand and says, skin it. And when he does that as a as a leader, if you feel that you screwed something up or you feel you need to take responsibility for something, you apologize. That's what makes things safe in relationships, your ability to apologize for doing wrong, and also to accept the apology of somebody who did wrong. That's what makes it safe to be yourself around them. And so I think that's that's really important as a leader. Anyone who serves under a leader, particularly one who's who's punitive or then may they screw up, they feel, man, I'm gonna lose my job, and I made a well-meaning mistake. I made a mistake while my intentions were good, but hey, I I did this, but I was wrong, I'm sorry. Then as a leader, you accept that, then you're telling me it's okay. It's all right to do that. So that's my fictional example.

SPEAKER_02 58:40

That was strong. Go ahead with your, unless Phil's ready, go ahead with your nonfiction.

SPEAKER_00 58:46

Oh, so my nonfiction, I'm gonna mention a professor of mine from college, a fellow by the name of Dick Block. He's a design professor. Yes, that really is his name. No, there's absolutely nothing you can say about his name that he's not already heard. And he's a really good teacher. And I had done a project, a design, and I it was something I'd worked very hard on and was really proud of. It was one of what I thought was my better, better pieces of work. And when I presented it, because you do all your designs, and everybody presents their design in class, and I presented it. He said, I don't agree with the choices that you made, but like with this, I don't think I would have done it the same way. But I totally I see how you got there. I see I recognize the logic in it and how it relates to the story and so forth. And that was the best grade I got in my whole time, I think, there. So it was his and being a teacher is being a leader. You're leading people to be better versions of themselves. But the fact that he was able to like recognize he could disagree with me and still recognize the uh that what that it was a right approach. And I think as leaders, the folks that if you're giving them adequate freedom of maneuver because they're credible, then they may approach things in ways that you wouldn't have or you wouldn't have thought to. And it's okay, there's multiple ways to approach a problem. And if you as a leader can recognize I don't want clones, I want people that that can approach problems in their own way, that can you recognize that that's great. That that creates a lot of safety for people to act.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:24

That's very cool. I feel fortunate that in real life I have had the opportunity to be led by so many inspiring or motivating people. There's a near-endless list. And after we started this podcast, I've uh gone out of my way to start a running list of real life people who led me well. And then at the same time, I'm not gonna lie, I had to make a list of people who taught me a lot by their exceptionally poor leadership ability, how they were constantly steering the ship into the ground, and it forced the followers to step up and do something to right the ship. Uh, because these people were so caught up in being self-serving or their ego or whatever. But thankfully, that list is not as long as the other, the list of leaders who were at the end of the day very human, in no way perfect, and yet to really resonate with all of us as our followers and somehow find a way to know where their the edges of their ability were, and then to leverage us or hold the door open for all of us who are also on their team to fill the gaps. So one of these is a retired brigadier general, special tactics officer, Robert Armfield, and he is an incredibly private person. He is not one prone to seeking the spotlight, and yet when he has the spotlight, he commands it and never misses the opportunity to deliver either a meaningful message or one that inspires. General Armfield was the commander of the 24th Special Operations Wing when it was initially stood up. So this group did not exist, and then they took all the Air Force Special Tactics personnel in the entire Air Force and aligned them under one person. And he was this person. What I found is there's a lot to say about it. There's probably an essay in there, but the reality of it is that a couple of things he did really stood out. So the first thing that I found outstanding was he was completely relatable. And when he spoke with you, he made it a point to focus entirely on the person he was talking to and be there in the moment. So he was he had deployed people all over the world, he had missions he was running all over the world, but when he was talking to you, everything else was turned off, his phone was sat down, and he was making eye contact. And another thing I noticed is his desk was always empty. If I was over there at his office talking to him as his senior medical officer, he did not fill up his desk with all his busy work. If we had, or we would step away from his desk and sit at a table that was totally empty, and he would have a blank sheet of paper, and he would be in the moment with me. So I noticed that right away. I'm like, wow. That was 30 minutes of his time that he gave completely to me. Another thing that he did incredibly well was he stated his expectations. You never left the interaction wondering what was he talking about and what did he want from you, and when did he want it by. So he had this great thing called he'd always say to newcomers, he's a team, my flash to bang time is 72 hours. So we all were like, what? So of course, flash to bang is a military or weaponry term. So if you toss an incendiary device, a grenade or something like that, it initially has a flash of light and then it has an explosive component as well. So flash to bang, many of these are set to have a delay, especially if they're non-lethal munitions. So you might toss one in a house that you're clearing or a building that has bad guys in it. So they toss this thing in, overwhelming illumination, and then uh concussive blast, but it really just incapacitates people, it does not kill. What he meant by flash to bang was when I ask you to do something, I have now told you what I expect, and you have 72 hours to give me some feedback. Either it's done, you're doing it, or it's not gonna be doable because blank. But it was the first time I've met somebody who said, here's my expectation, and it made it really easy to work for him because you knew exactly by when the clock was going to run down. And then his last piece was he was willing to, he was confident enough and secure enough that he could brook disagreement. So he gave me a huge tasking as my first job when I came on board with him. And I had thought about this before, what he was talking about. His previous medical people had advised him of this, and I disagreed with him with the opening salvo hi, you're coming on board. This is my flash to bang time, here's your first project questions. And I'm like, How married are we to doing it this way? And what I appreciated when I asked him that, he did not say, it's an order, carry it out. He was genuinely willing to listen to why I thought that wasn't going to be the best way to do it. When I asked him what it was he was trying to achieve, instead of just doing it this way, he had put some thought into it. So those reasons he was willing to focus on us in our interactions. He gave us clear expectations, and then he was willing to harbor disagreement or questioning of his thoughts in a peaceful way. All three were remarkable things in a combat commander, I thought. Robert Armfield, really an outstanding real life leader that I worked with.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:58

Got it. My mine will be. I guess they're stuck in the legal realm, but they're pertinent to this episode, Leading with a Clear Mind and Purpose. The first one I'll mention, I'm pivoting, JR. I know you told you, I know I told you somebody else before we started recording, but I'm pivoting in the same vein. So Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. Yes. Such a great character. Leading with a clear mind and purpose is some, as we all know, actions speak louder than words. And the actions of Atticus Finch to defend a black man in a time in America where segregation was very powerful, and the price and to win a legal case for an African-American man is next to nil. But he took the case for what he believed in, which is equality, and doing what's right as opposed to doing what's easy. And what would have been easy was for him not to take this really tough legal case, but he took it. And there it's such a well-written book. And if you haven't read To Kill a Mockingbird book, Mockingbird, I highly recommend it. But Atticus Finch, there's one quote in the book that really stands by me when I'm facing a hard time and trying to figure out what's doing whether doing the right thing is worth the effort. And it's always worth the effort, but he takes his daughter to see the to one of her neighbor's house who was dying of cancer. And she's why did you bring me there? And he and this quote just sticks in my head. He goes, I wanted you to see what real courage is. Instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand, it's when you know you're licked before you begin. And you begin, anyways, to see it through no matter what. And this neighbor, she had cancer, but she lived her life to the fullest. And obviously, this quote was more metaphorical of the whole thing that Atticus Finch was doing where he knew he was going to lose this case, but he went through it just to show the community he was in that what they're doing is wrong, and here's the evidence as to why it's wrong. But it's a fantastic book, and he's a fantastic character for that reason of leadership in that he led with a clear mind and purpose, and his actions spoke louder than his words. Now, that's a fictional lawyer, and let's go to a real lawyer that was that is also, I think, embodies leadership, these principles very well. The famous Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which I listened to a Radio Lab, more perfect. It's an offshoot of the Radio Lab podcast where they look at the Supreme Court about women's rights, and it all started with a case where it was, I think, in Oklahoma, Nebraska, women 18 years or older could purchase alcohol, but men, it had to be 21 years or older. And so it was a reverse gender equality case. But she harbored and taught the lawyer who went to Supreme Court, and she had another case after that, but basically manipulated so the Supreme Court would see that gender equality is important. But she there's this, what she's like, five foot one, five foot two, and she's got a voice like the old Betty White, which is meek and doesn't seem very powerful. But you see these pictures and you read her arguments and you listen to her arguments that are so powerful. And if you listen to the audio, she speaks in this very meek voice, but it's so powerful. And there's this quote that she says that kind of just resonates in my mind. She goes, fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you. What she cared about was gender equality and having women in the same leverage, the same standing as men are and everything. But she did it in a way that wasn't bombastic, that wasn't, oh my God, this was in what we see today in our world, it isn't nothing that's compelling. It's purely logical, but she did it in a way that led others, and the way she went about it with her logic and the way she understood what was going on in the world was fantastic. RBG is my real person this episode.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:17

Very cool. I love this segment because uh the perspectives and people you guys bring to light. I always have a note and it always gives me homework. So thanks for doing that.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:29

That example you just gave, one of the reasons that I love it is that she was good friends with Samuel Alito. So she was close friends with other judges on the court who are ideologically on the other end of the spectrum when she were from where she is, but can still argue argue for things, but maintain friendship. So it the it's the hey, look, we don't have to be we can feel very strongly about something one way or another, but we can still recognize and respect each other as human beings, and in this case, justices.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:04

Yep. All right, are we good? Yeah, I think we're good.