The World Is in Chaos, Now What? | Retired Major General Robert Mixon

The world feels unstable, wars expand, economies tighten, division grows, and headlines are engineered to trigger fear faster than facts. But as Frank Zaccari reminds us in this episode: chaos doesn’t destroy real leaders… it reveals them.

In Episode 23, Frank sits down with retired Major General Robert Mixon, a lifelong leader who has had a front-row seat to national and global turbulence since 1973. Together, they unpack what leadership must look like now—when uncertainty is constant and the pressure is real.

General Mixon shares practical, battle-tested frameworks from both military and corporate leadership, including how to become the calm in the chaos through what he calls Adaptive Leadership, anchored in clarity, discipline, character, and relationships.

What you’ll learn in this episode

• Why clarity beats speed when stakes are high (and how to communicate what you know vs. don’t know)
• How to avoid “paralysis by analysis” and find the decision point with incomplete information
• The leadership power of setting your azimuth (true north): mission, intent, values, and behaviors
• How to build a culture of commitment vs. compliance, and why celebrating small wins matters
• Why leaders must kill rumors fast, establish boundaries, and protect credibility
• The simple leadership command General Mixon would give every leader today: “Listen before you act.”

About the guest

Major General Robert Mixon (Ret.) is the author of The Power of Being All In: Why Today’s Transformative Times Demand Transformative Leaders and works with leaders through coaching and team development to create high-performance cultures grounded in trust, empowerment, and accountability.

Contact General Robert Mixon

• Email: robert@level5associates.com (spell out “five”)
• Website: level5associates.com (spell out “five”)
• Download Chapter 1 of The Power of Being All In for free
• Substack: robertmixon.substack (listed as “robertmixon”)

If you’re leading a team, a business, a family, or just trying to stay grounded in a noisy world, this episode will give you language, structure, and tools to lead with calm, clarity, and conviction.

Share it with a friend and subscribe so we can keep finding the “rocks” together, and bounce back better than ever.

#BounceBackPodcast #Leadership #AdaptiveLeadership #LeadingThroughChange #CrisisLeadership #EmotionalIntelligence #HighPerformanceTeams #CultureOfCommitment #DecisionMaking #CommunicationSkills #ExecutiveLeadership #VeteranLeadership #OrganizationalCulture #Resilience #TrustTheProcess

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever felt stuck in pain, loss, or failure? Wondering how to rise when life knocks you down again, then bounce back is for you. So gather your resilience, hold tight to hope, and get ready to reimagine what's possible in your life. So here's your host, Frank Sakari.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Folks, welcome to Bounce Back in Business and Life. The world is in chaos. Now let's be honest. The world feels very, very unstable. Wars are expanding. Economies are shrinking. Division is growing. Headlines designed to trigger us. Fear is moving faster than facts. But here's the truth. Chaos does not destroy real leaders. Chaos reveals things. The question isn't whether the world's in chaos, the question is who are you going to be in the middle of it? Because when pressure rises, clarity matters more. Discipline matters more. Character matters more. Relationships matter more. Leaders don't amplify fear, they project stability. They don't react. They respond. We need leadership now, more than ever. The standard NBA training that I went through years ago doesn't play anymore. What should leaders look like today? Well, fortunately, my guest is retired Major General Robert Mixon. He had a front row seat protecting the nation through all the turmoil since 1973. He's the author of the book The Power of Being All In: Why Today's Transformative Times Demand Transformative Leaders. General Mixon, welcome to Bowser's Back in Business and Life.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Yeah, thanks, Frank. Uh, it's uh an honor to be here and join you in an important conversation, I think.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Very important, given the status of the world. General, when you hear people say the world's in chaos, what what do you see from your vantage point with all the experience you've had?

SPEAKER_02 2:19

I do see that chaos, Frank, and I I think it permeates every aspect of our society. You know, business, our social environment, our political environment, our global interactions. I mean, we are at war today now, at a level we were not at war just a few days ago, in the case of Iran. And the uncertainty that's out there is evident everywhere I go and with all the leaders I I deal with. You know, no one likes uncertainty, and yet there it is. We are living in a world of chaos. And so today's leadership, which I call adaptive leadership, is that power of being all in, is that calm in the chaos? The challenge is how do you get there?

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Exactly. And you've you've over 40 years, you've seen the world change dramatically in this 40-year period of time. How did you find and what are you teaching to leaders when everything feels so unstable? You just you just don't every day we wake up and we're we're waiting to see what the next crisis is.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

What I work with leaders uh in in individual coaching and in team development is really a lot of the lessons I learned in the military. And as Frank, as you know, that that transition is an important part of the our lives, those of us that are veterans. And one of the key things I learned is the first person you have to lead is you. So I work with leaders on developing a personal mission statement and a personal leadership philosophy. I say, okay, let's look in the mirror and figure out who am I and what do I represent? Let's put that on paper. Let's put that out in front of our team members and say, okay, this is who I am and what I want to represent. Now let's do the same with our team and set our azimuth and really establish stability in this chaos and not let the chaos dominate us. We're going to be the calm and the chaos.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

General, when you're in a crisis or when you're in an uncertain world, should they prioritize stability, speed, or clarity? What do you think is most important there?

SPEAKER_02 4:19

I think most important, Frank, is clarity. People need to know what we know and what we don't know. If we move fast, but we don't have tactical patience in that movement. As my good friend and a great leader, General Martin Dempsey said, you know, is that move quickly but don't hurry. And we have to learn how to do that. And tactical patience is part of that. So I call it situational understanding. You have to be able to see yourself, see the environment, and see our competition or the enemy, if you will, if in military context, in near real time. And if you look for that clarity and being able to have that situational understanding, then the people around you begin to gravitate towards that sense of calm. And they don't let the chaos dominate, or that emotional roller coaster dominate their purposeful lives, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

In general, there's so much data, and it's impossible to absorb and understand this avalanche of data that comes at us. How do you make high-stake decisions when you have incomplete information?

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Well, first of all, you have to understand that perfect is the enemy of good enough.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

So, you know, Frank, guys like us, we've we've sort of got that scar tissue, but for a lot of young leaders, boy, they're looking for data, data, data, data. Well, I want to know more, I want to know more. Pretty soon you get into that paralysis by analysis. And even if you make a great decision, if it's not made in time, it's not great. It's not even good. So where's that tipping point? What I call what we call the decision point, where you have enough data and enough information, and you know that it's time to make the decision based on what you know. A lot of that is art, not science. I mean, that's what leadership is, it's art, not science. It's it's trained, you know, a lot of leadership is learned. But I think at some point we have to commit. Commit to a pathway based on what we know and based on what our mission is, what is our task at hand, and then we'll adjust from there. But chaos is magnified by hesitation, paralysis, by analysis. It just magnifies chaos.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

How transparent should a leader be about the risks that an organization is facing?

SPEAKER_02 6:29

I think we should be transparent with a certain amount of reestat, if you will, a certain amount of judgment here. Not everyone needs to know everything all the time. What we need to share with people is of the key aspects of the world around us, what do we know? What do we not know? And what can you count on from me, from us as leaders? I think you can count on, we're going to share with you what we think is most important. We may not share with you every bit of data in the organization because first of all, you don't need to know. Secondly, it just slows down the our operating system. And again, in that transition from military to corporate, I learned that you know you as you establish courses of action in the mission analysis, then you present the courses of action with the pros and cons, and then you make a decision and you move out. But everybody lines up behind that decision, that loyalty. There may have been a lot of dissension in the room during the course of action analysis, but once you go out the door, we're all in. And that's where I think our corporate lesson can be learned here. We need to be loyal to that decision process, and when we go out the door, we're all in.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Exactly. I was uh when I was in the Air Force, we had to take a course in rumor and propaganda. And the idea was not the outside world rumor and propaganda, but the inside world propaganda. Okay, and every day conditions are changing, and there are people talking, there's a water cooler talking, all those type of stuff. What do you mean to change your credibility when the situations are constantly changing and people are creating and people have more and more doubt?

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Well, first of all, rumor, rumor is very destructive, internally and externally. And you know, one of the flat ass rules I used to have as a commander in the military and in my corporate leadership as well, is that one of the flat ass rules we had was we don't tolerate rumors. We don't spread them, we don't accept rumor as a source of information because it's really a source of disinformation. And if you don't have that rule, if you don't have the boundaries set, then people you know make up their own rules. And that's part of the ingredients of chaos, Frank. If you don't have boundaries, then the chaos monster just roams around your organization and promotes the rumor spread, and that again that creates that uncertainty and that chaos.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

When I was in the service, I was enlisted, and I was always impressed with uh I worked for Colonel Frank Zimmerman, and I was a medic in the hospital. And Colonel Zimmerman never seemed to get upset. Never. He was very calm, no matter what was going on. Okay. What role did that play? That that steadiness.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

It's essential, Frank. You know, when I worked for General Colin Powell, who was one of my true heroes, and truly a level five leader. I mean, he absolutely uh walked the talk. One of the things he would say to us when crises were rampant and chaos was at the door was that, okay, you all have the right to get mad, but now you get over it. And we're gonna figure out what's important. You know, it's like the Eisenhower quadrant, too, if you remember that. What's urgent, what's important, right? What's not urgent but important, what's urgent but not important. You know, we're gonna put all of our uh challenges into one of those quadrants, and then we're gonna deal with them calmly. Again, the calm and the chaos is not only a state of mind, it's a state of being. We as leaders, if we get to be like Yosemite Sam and run around with a hair on fire and all that, then everybody else will too. They're gonna emulate our behaviors. Pretty soon we got 150 Yosemite Sams running around the room at our nation, you know, and everything's broken and nobody knows what's going on. And boy, a dog ate my homework, and you know, and then the the chaos continues to fester. We have to be that steadying influence. That's essential to people having a sense of purpose and understanding that we're gonna get through this.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Absolutely. Leaders strengthen relationship. How do you strengthen a relationship when people are afraid and divided? Like this this this uh attack in Iran a couple days ago. We're just seeing, okay, we're finally out of 19 years of war. Oh my god, here it comes again.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

Yeah. It's it's disturbing to you know have have the level of uncertainty rise again here on the global stage. I think that until we know more about what we're trying to achieve, that uncertainty is going to be pretty well ubiquitous here. Uh we're gonna have a lot of uncertainty. I my concern here, Frank, and you remember this from my military uh careers, is that when you had a mission, you also had a leader's intent, a commander's intent. And the intent was, okay, what was the end state? What does success look like when the mission is accomplished? What are the key tasks we have to do to accomplish that end state? And what's the why? Why are we doing this? So you had a mission and you had the intent that goes with it. Right now I'm looking for, I think all of us are looking for that intent. Okay, we have a mission now, at least I understand the mission, is to change the regime in Iran. All right? If that's the if that's the mission, what does success look like? I would think, as uh you know, person now pretty much on the outside to some extent looking in. A definite success would be a stable, compatible regime change, where that stability and that compatibility have essential key tasks, right? Regime change doesn't mean there's somebody else there. Well, there are obviously somebody else there. Okay, so what? Well, the so what is what is that somebody else and that entity that replaces the regime in Iran? What does it look like? What is success of that regime look like, and how do we know that successful transition is occurring and has occurred? Those are the conditions I think that we're we're looking for, Frank.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Exactly. When I was coming up, I worked for some big organizations, and it seemed like every quarter there was a new mission. They were always constantly pivoting. Yeah. We're gonna do this. Oh wait, wait, no, no, we're not gonna do that anymore.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

Here we go. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Okay. Given your role uh as general, when you talk to these business leaders who many of who have never been in the military, what do you tell them? What do you what do what do you tell them?

SPEAKER_02 12:27

Well, you know, Frank, I have six principles of leadership, and they are basically the pillars upon which adaptive leadership is built. One of those principles is set the azimuth. As an organization, we have to set our azimuth. Our azimuth is our true north, our cardinal direction. What's our mission? What's our intent? What are our values? What do we believe in? What are our behaviors that are going to hallmark our culture? Setting the azimuth is a fundamental task of executive business leaders. And if you don't set that azimuth, you're going to end up with, like I said, more and more chaos, more disruption, more uncertainty. But when you set it now, it becomes your true north, it becomes your beacon that you and the team follow. And you don't do it, you know, it doesn't say, okay, Frank, this is our intent. No, this is our azimuth. Love Robert. That's not how it works. You get a team together and you develop the azimuth. Then you go back to it. It becomes your touchstone, right? I had many of the best corporate leaders uh did what my military leaders did. And when I came in there and I was hair on fire, and I couldn't figure out what quadrant we were in and all this, and say, okay, well, Robert, what's our intent? And if you know the intent, if you know the definition of success, and you know the key tasks have to get there to be to accomplish that mission we talked about, why are you coming here and you know, wetting down my leg about such and such and such? You know what to do, do it. And that I think restores order in some ways.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

And I love that about being in the military was figure it out. I heard I can't tell you how many times I heard that.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Yeah, you know, what's our intent, right? Right, Frank? What's our intent? Let's let's orient on the intent. And that's that to me uh creates more of the calm and the chaos, and it has gets us back on track when we start to wander off and you know, flavor of the month, and you know, shiny object, and oh my goodness, so here's a good idea. Well, all the good ideas don't necessarily contribute to the mission and to our definitely success. Let's get back on it. Now, one of the key elements, Frank, that I think we're missing in corporate leadership is we don't review the assumptions upon which the plan is based. You know, if the assumptions change, you have change the plan. In the military we learn that, but in the corporate world it's oftentimes, uh, well, you know, like everybody knows what the assumptions are. No, they don't. You have to set those, again, in writing as part of your planning process to set your azimuth. What are our assumptions upon which this plan is based? And if the assumptions change, then we have to change the plan. You know, I've written some great plans that didn't survive the first shot, like the old adage said. But I insisted on sticking with the plan, and sometimes I got my ass whipped because we were out there executing a plan that was no longer relevant. And so I've seen that in my corporate experience too. I'd go out there and we'd have a great plan and we'd run out there and you know try to execute it, and then the assumptions would change, but we wouldn't. And so failure usually results from that failure to adjust your assumptions.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

One of the things I found general, I did turnarounds of failing companies for many, many years, um, companies in distress. And you would go in and say, This is what we intend to do. Now nobody says nobody disagrees with you, and nobody follows you, right? That's what they just sit back and watch to see how committed you are. And are you gonna go back to the old way at the first bump? So we used to try to have one company I thought it would they were just dying, and they were losing forty thousand dollars a month. I come in and uh first month we lost 36. And I had a party. What are you doing? And I said, We're improving. Stay the course, we're improving. How important is that for a leader to stay the course? Not not as you said, assuming assuming the assumptions haven't changed.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Right, right. You know, it I think you gotta celebrate small wins here, Frank. You know, if if you're in a situation where the company's failing, if you've re-examined your azimuth and you feel like the azimuth is sound, then executing that azimuth, those key tasks, becomes paramount. And you have to celebrate the small wins, like from 40 to 36 as you talked about. Even though that seems like what are we celebrating? You're still celebrating some progress, some win, you know. And and and I by that I think what you do is you build more buy-in. You know, when people buy in, you go from a culture of compliance to a culture of commitment. I grew up in a culture of compliance. I think you and I both did. You know, do what you're told when you're told to do it, don't ask any questions, have a nice day. It's like, you know, salute, move out, drive on. We're not in that world now. Now, there are times I in every organization I've been in, where as leader of the team or as an advisor to the team, I would say, look, there are times when we just gotta settle up. Let's go. Settle up. We're not gonna debate this, we're not gonna have a course of action discussion, we're not gonna have a group think or, you know, some type of focus group, we're gonna move out. Everybody understands that. But you don't have to do it all the time. You need to do it when it there's an urgency in that quadrant we talked about, you know, urgent and important. But I do believe you celebrate small wins if you want people to buy in.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

You have to. It it it it's if as long as there's hope. If people have hope, they'll continue. And we also used to try to engage them and say things like, if there was one thing you could do to fix the situation, what would it be? And a lot of times you got the deer in the headlights. And I said, Well, you've been here five years, I've been here five minutes. What do you think? And some good examples. We say, good, do it. You run it and we'll monitor it. Is that giving authority, not so much agency to to staff? How important is that?

SPEAKER_02 18:05

Yeah, you you can delegate authority, Frank, but not responsibility. We learned that in the military. I've seen it in the corporate world many times over. Delegating authority is part of what I call my principle three, trust and empower. You've got to trust and empower people to bring recommendations forward, to support some of those recommendations, and to fail forward sometimes. And one of the one of the key questions that I've posed with executive leaders is when something goes wrong, you can take it one of two ways. The first way is, okay, Robert, what were you thinking? The second way is, so Robert, uh, what did we learn here? Think of the difference in those two questions. And in terms of trust and empowerment, if you're reflecting positivity as a learning organization, you're gonna make a hell of a lot more progress than if you're trying to find who to blame. And a lot of failing teams, Frank, as you know better than anybody, a lot of failing teams have just been looking for who to blame, or to distance themselves from ownership and responsibility, if you will, or owning some of the authority that goes with uh being part of the team. And you know, as leaders, we've got to bring that back in. We've got to bring it in, bring it to bear, and underwrite learning, not failing.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Exactly. And an opening is a door for people to participate. I sat in on one thing, General, and the CEO was pretty much pontificating, and no one was saying anything. And then he gets done and says, Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. Well, what are you gonna say?

SPEAKER_02 19:34

I know. What are you gonna say? No, no, boss, that's really stupid. You know, no, yeah. Let me see.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Afterwards, he says there's no dissension in the ranks. Oh no. And I went, no, you didn't give anybody an opportunity. What would you do? Right. I would probably say something like, What have we missed?

SPEAKER_02 19:52

Yeah. And you know, in a lot of leadership sessions with executive teams and form, I think the leader should speak last, not first. I mean, if the leader speaks last, now others are having the opportunity to promote their ideas or their concepts, their lessons learned, and you're not pontificating, you're listening. The second principle is listen. God, my my mom tells me this all the time, she's 93, God bless her. And she says, Robert, God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason. I know, Ma. I'm still processing this, Frank. I have not mastered it. I'm just processing it. But you know, in in terms of how leaders conduct themselves in in meetings, I think leaders should speak last. And I think you should rotate the facilitation of the meetings so that people have some res you know, some responsibility, if you will, right? Some authority, right? You're still responsible, but they have the authority to uh design and implement some agendas in the meetings, and uh you might learn something as a leader. You might not be, you know, the single point of light.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

I haven't discovered that. If I'm the smartest guy in the room, we've got a good problem here.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

I agree with that, Frank. Uh that's what the Groucho Mark said. I resemble that remark.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Yeah. General, uh, one of the things I saw in in the military, and I saw with the best leaders in the corporate sector, was omnisci. Is that a learned skill or do you just have it?

SPEAKER_02 21:13

I think it's a learned skill in many ways. You know, we as young leaders, whether we're enlisted soldiers or officers, we tend to employ the fire ready aim technique. Right. Uh that's not very uh effective. I've I've lived it, I can tell you, it doesn't work very well. And I was trained, I was coached and mentored by uh a lot of great soldiers and and leaders, both non-commissioned officers and officers, and then in my corporate world by those who were doing real work, and then they were the you know the management team to be calm and take two minutes to process what's going on around you before you launch off and before you undo what may be a uh a promising scenario by allowing your emotions to take you know, take ownership. And we can't be the emotional trigger. I think we You've got to be the the calming influence. But it is a learned skill, I think, Frank.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Yeah, it uh I mean an Italian from Buffalo.

SPEAKER_02 22:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Learning the consist was a big challenge for them.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's a learned skill and it's one we have to practice and we have to audit ourselves. You know, Frank, I think a lot of leaders don't really employ the audit tool. If you audit yourself every day for about ten minutes and ask yourself what you did today to bring your personal leadership philosophy or your personal mission to life, and what did you not do? And what can you improve on tomorrow? I think one of those tools that will come to you as you do this audit habitually, and I started with three days a week, ten minutes a day, until it became a habit, where they say you have to do it twenty-one times, I think, to be a habit. What I found out was that as I learned to dial back some of my emotional triggers in the audit, I became more effective. You know, I I listened with the intent to understand, as Stephen Covey says, and not the intent to reply. But the audit process is essential for us as leaders to track ourselves, to lead ourselves, uh Frank.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

I think that self-assessment's important, but I think having someone who a mentor is also critical. Seemed to like me.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

Good. That's great.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

And he had me run the pediatric clinic as an E4, which is unheard of.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

Wow, that's impressive.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

And I didn't run to his office. He's a colonel, full colonel, but he would stop by periodically and just say, How are you doing? Is it going okay? Or are you struggling? Little little statements like that are so critical.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

Yeah, I I agree with you, and I think that you know the best leaders were out there where real work was being done. They are not in the ivory tower. They're out there where people are doing real work. And they can do it that virtually now, too. You can dial up someone. You know, I like to set up, you know, talk about flat ass rules earlier. I like to have certain times when my leadership team makes themselves available for spontaneous check-ins. And that's talking virtually here. You know, you can go out on the floor by the coffee pot or whatever and find people in when you have that physical presence to do that leadership by walking around. In other cases, I think you do virtual leadership by checking in at certain points in time. Establish boundaries of what times they're available to check in with. You know, that's Sunday morning at 0200 is not not the ideal time to check in. It's not the ideal time to text them or call them either, unless it's uh you know absolutely urgent and important. But you know, have virtual times you can check in and say, Oh, uh Robert, what's the biggest challenge you're facing today? I like power questions. Not just how's it going, but what's the biggest challenge you're facing today? Uh if you had one more resource, uh Frank, to do what you're doing on this project, what would it be? And how would you use it? And just, you know, do that spontaneous check-in. Uh have those boundaries where they're going to be available during this window, dial them up, and usually I'll text them and say, Robert, I'd like to get you up on the Zoom for a five-minute discussion if you've got time the next 30 minutes. Well no, but I'll be ready at uh you know 245. Okay, then you dial them up. And you take the time to dial them up, ask them a power question, listen to the response, and then give them some feedback on whether you were able to utilize some of their information or you know what value it had for them. Think of that buy-in that's going to occur when you include folks that may not be physically in the, as I say, in Hamilton, in the room where it happens. They can be in the room where it happens if you make that so.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

Right. That's outstanding. General, what should leaders in in given the crisis that we're in financially and economically worldwide, what should they avoid? What's the biggest thing to avoid right now?

SPEAKER_02 25:54

I think the biggest thing to avoid is a lack of authenticity. If you're not the person that you indicate to people that you are, you know, if you're not walking the talk, if you're not authentic, you lose credibility, you lose your reputational uh I'd say influence, and those around you will begin to distrust you. And I think that's toxic. It's lethal, Frank.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Absolutely. Now, if you could give one leadership command to leaders in in America, government, military, anything today, what would it be?

SPEAKER_02 26:24

I think the the one leadership uh piece of guidance I would give to leaders uh of all ranks is listen before you act. Listen before you act. If you simply act spontaneously, unless it's absolutely essential, I think you're going to probably make some mistakes you don't need to make.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

I used to hear uh when I was at ATT by Rod Gray, the senior vice president who moved me up to vice president, he always had to pause. And what anybody said, whatever, he never he just paused. And you were wondering if he was listening. But then he when he spoke, it was he had thought it through.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

Oh, it's uh I call it the two-second rule. Uh before you respond to anyone, wait two seconds. And and you know, I don't recommend you count out loud, but I do think that that two seconds will give you again that listening capability before you respond, listening capability before you decide, that listening capability before you act. And that's what we need right now in all walks of leadership in all of our professions today. We need that thoughtful pause.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

General, how do people get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_02 27:41

Well, certainly you can you can write to me at Robert at level5associates.com, spell out the five. Um I'd love to hear from you and establish a dialogue on how we might work together to help you grow that culture of commitment that we've talked about here with adaptive leadership. You can reach me at my website, uh www.levelfivassociates.com. Again, spell out the five. You can download chapter one of my new book, The Power of Being All In, for free. And I encourage you to do that and uh let me know what you think. The third way is on my Substack platform, which is RobertMixon Altogether, Robertmixon.substack.com. And I'm publishing articles there. I think it's a wonderful opportunity for interchange. So reach out and contact me and let's start the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

Ladies and gentlemen, I encourage you to do this. I read the first chapter of his book online. Oh, right. I already didn't, and it was like, oh my god, this is this is right on target for today, the world that we live in today. Not the world that we were in before, the world that we're going to. What's going on today? So, General, let me say we're about out of time. I want to thank you again for coming on and showing us that chaos does not create leadership. Chaos reveals leadership. Real leaders, like General Mixon, understand that creating high-performance culture depends on the clarity of your vision and your mission. Well, let me leave you all with this. None of us are in this alone, and the secret to walking on water is to know where the rocks are. General Mixon showed us where many of those rocks are. And together in this podcast, we'll find more of those rocks and bounce back better than ever. Share this with a friend. Please subscribe. General, again, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

Yeah, it was a pleasure, Frank. Good for you and what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

So that's it for today's episode of Bounce Back. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance the grand prize drawing to win a$10,000 private VIP day with Frank himself. Be sure to head on over to Bouncebackpodcast.com and pick up a free copy of Frank's gift. And join us on the next episode.