This is the JoCo De-brief podcast, Episode 10 with Rafe Babin and me, JoCo Willink. Now, I got hit up on Twitter about wee wee someone to listen to the de-brief and we talk about things that happen at Echelon front or on F online. And someone said, oh, they must be violating some kind of confidentiality agreements with their clients to be telling these stories. Here's the deal. The stories that we tell on this DE-BRIEF podcast.

Are we change them so that they are completely unrecognizable, even to the client, that the that the event is about there based? Look, we changed it just it's kind of like what we did for extreme ownership. We change things so much to tell the story.

No one can recognize who the client was or what the client was. But the principle, the point of the principle gets made. And so that's the same thing we do here. So we consider our client information top secret with that life.

Let's debrief what he got. Let's get some here.

All right. So the first first lady we're working with here, this question was the boss was asking for feedback.

They have a boss was asked for feedback, and when the leader gives them feedback that they don't like it. And so the question from this leader was, hey, what do I do? I mean, they're asking for feedback and they don't want to listen to feedback. And then they just push back and they make excuses about it. So so they don't really want feedback at all, you know? So how do I deal with that? That's that was the question.

And so the first first thing I had to ask was, OK, well, how are you giving that feedback?

And of course, as we started digging into it, you know, the feedback is like, oh, you you you want some feedback from me? Let me tell you how screwed up you are. And, you know, so and that's something I think oftentimes where even if people mean something that's constructive, they just they have a hard time seeing it from someone else's perspective. And you talk about this all the time. No one likes feedback. No one likes to hear.

We even do this. We give presentations, you know, we run workshops and training.

And then we get we say, OK, how can we do it better? And the moment people like, you know what? You know, if you focus on this, I can feel myself start like wrestling against that feedback. I think it's just human nature. Everybody falls into that. So what I had to help this leader understand was like, hey, think about it from your boss's perspective.

Like what and what are you actually providing feedback on? Like, how are you providing that feedback? And you say, well, I'm doing in a professional manner. So we went back and forth on that a little bit. And so what I what I actually had to finally get across to him was like, OK, if if you're doing if you're giving constructive feedback that's valuable to the team and you're doing it effectively, you're not going to get pushback from that.

And that's the test for whether or not you're doing that.

Right. So we finally had to get them to take some extreme ownership of, OK, I need to be more cognizant of my tone of the things that I'm actually pushing back on. Are they really important? And then maybe I need a little little indirect approach instead of that direct approach of just being brutally honest about. They asked me for feedback.

When people ask you for feedback, they're lying there. You know what they're doing.

When somebody asks you for feedback and they're fishing for a compliment, that's what they are. They don't want to improve. They've got their real and rhod out and they got a big worm in the worm says, hey, can you give me some feedback there? Want you to say that I was blown away, especially your boss. Your boss just wants to hear how great they did. So just keep that in mind. When that happens, then, you know, it's a good thing.

And we do this a lot of national front. I don't if you did it in this particular case, but all the time I'll say, OK, cool. Now you understand what I'm talking about. They said, yeah, no, I'll do it next time. It's cool. Let's role play. I'm your boss. Give me some feedback. And they, you know, it might take them two or three tries before they start doing it in an indirect way.

That's not going to be offensive and it's not easy to do, but it's impossible to do if you don't get the right mindset. If you don't if your mindset is, oh, they've just asked me for feedback, great. Now I can unload on him.

It's like. Probably not the best attitude to go into this thing with I wrote about this in leadership strategy and tactics.

And it's just talking about basically it was it was talk of this whole thing about how to how to give the truth tactfully, there's a whole section on that.

This is like just talking about weak bosses, weak bosses or indecisive bosses.

How do you handle them?

And I wrote Be cautious. Of course, I'd be cautious. As with micromanaging, bosses are indecisive, boss. With a weak boss, you have to be careful when you step up to lead. Even the feeblest and weakest of bosses have egos, and if you offend them, they may lash out. You could translate that right to even when somebody asked for feedback, they can get offended and lash out.

So don't be offensive or overly assertive when you start to do this. Use soft language and frame things in a way that it does not diminish the boss's ego, but actually boost it quote. Here's some examples.

Hey, boss, I know you have a lot going on. So I was thinking it might be helpful if I jumped in on this project over here to move forward with it. Would that be all right? Hey, boss, I'm sorry for being slow on the uptake, but I just want to make sure I fully understand your vision. Do I have it right when I say, you know, whatever. Hey, boss, I'm trying to step up my game.

Would you mind if I took a crack at planning this next project so I can get some experience? Like all those are ways of me saying, hey, I'll run this for you. You know, instead of saying, hey, boss, you know what, I think I could do this better than you. Why don't you let me handle it? What's that going to do? It's going to offend somebody. Well, I cut you off what you we can say.

No, I was just going to echo what you're talking about with ROLEPLAYED, aren't you? And Dave talked about that, you know, on the DE-BRIEF podcast here extensively about how effective that isn't.

Dave does an awesome job of that of roleplaying this, because it's I think a lot of times it takes that role to realize, like, how you're actually being interpreted, you know, and you're like, OK, let's let's role play that. And when someone realizes that how they're like, OK, how is the boss going to perceive that?

And they get to detach from it, they get to analyze it and then they realize, OK, that's a problem. But what you just those examples you just laid out there really powerful because you want it to be the boss's idea. If it's the boss's idea, that's the best case scenario for you. Hey, you know, not like, oh, leave came in the feedback and told us we saw, OK, do we need to fix this?

We need to we actually want if you're my boss and you ask for feedback and I want to I want to I want to lay it up there for it to be your idea.

You're running with it. That's a great that's a great idea, boss. I'll go make it happen. Good call. I don't care because I want the team to win and I want us to be able to move forward together.

And it when it comes so. So if it comes to criticism, if I want to give you criticism, if you get done with your brief, you get done explaining your plan to me or you get it done explaining your plan to the team, and then you pull me aside afterward. You say, hey, joker, you got any feedback? You know, how is that brief? And I go, well, actually, you went over everything too quick and no one could follow it.

Right. What are you going to do? You're going to get defensive at best. You're going to get defensive. At worst, you're going to say, you know, that's your because you're stupid. So instead I say I take that away from them. I say, you know what? Life as far as I could tell, it was solid. I'll tell you what, though. I know I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. And for me, I need to review it because it was just I was a little bit too much information for me too fast.

I apologize for, like, not following everything. I'll I'll try and take better notes next time so I can ask more specific questions. But it was hard for me to fall. I'm sorry. Right.

So now I'm taking ownership for being stupid, but I'm actually hinting to you that maybe it's a good idea to slow down a little bit again.

Would it be in an ideal world, great for me just to be directed to. Oh, you want some feedback? Cool. You go too fast and no one understands what you're talking about. That would be great if it didn't offend you. Now you got mad, so here's another thing. I talk a lot about understanding other people's perspectives, right? I want to know what someone's perspective is so I can see it from there, from their view.

There's one more thing to add to that. And lately I've been talking a lot about the power of a story.

And then Daryl and I did a podcast about how people formulate stories to exist in the world. They actually put together in their minds a story that is them.

So if I'm dealing with you, I don't just want to know what your perspective is. I don't want to just understand your perspective. I want to know what your story is. And I want to think about this not just from the perspective of this moment, but from the perspective of your whole story. You ever hear somebody and you meet somebody and you know, you and I are we meet somebody and it's somebody that I knew. And, you know, the guy walks away and say, hi, how are you doing?

Good to meet you. And then he walks and you might say to me, what's that guy's story? Right. That's a real question. It's a real question. What's that guy's story? So when you're dealing with your boss, don't just think, oh, I want to understand their perspective in this moment. Think to yourself. I want to understand their perspective and their story, how they get here. Are they insecure about their leadership position or are they overconfident about what is it?

What's the story? And then apply that to their perspective and then apply those things to how you interact with them.

I think if you understand that at a deep level, you can predict their behavior for sure. You know, if with pretty pretty amazing accuracy. One.

One final thing I'll say about this kind of situation is the it's really important to prioritize and execute. And there's some I struggle with. Sometimes when people ask for feedback and you're trying to like, well, you need to do this, you do this, you do this.

And I it was it was something J.P. and I were just talking about with a leader here working with, you know, and it was like, hey, OK, let's really focus on, OK, what really matters here and is it that big of a deal?

I think a lot of times for folks that get spun up about something, if the boss is asking for feedback, like if you're giving feedback to the boss about something that's screwed up, it's something I learned from you. And talking to Bruiser it you didn't push back on anything until it really mattered, which then gave us the leadership capital to be able to do that. And I think so many people don't think strategically when they do that. So they're they're pushing back a little minuscule things that don't matter at all.

So then when they need to push back on something that really matters is like, oh, it's just Babbette again, complaining about something. And they're not even really accepting that feedback that so they don't they don't take that on board.

I think it's sound advice to close this one out to say don't nit pick your damn boss, Jack. All right, what's your next next scenario? So the next one we had we had two different team leaders that actually two assistant team leaders on a team. And so the team leader got promoted up the chain. So to assistant team leaders, one of them had been on the team for many years who had, you know, 12 or 15 years experience on the job.

And one of them who had been on the team for maybe seven or eight years. So about half the experience of of of the more experienced assistant team leader and.

Obviously, there's now a gap the team leader got promoted. So who's going to get the promotion? The the most experienced guy expected it was going to happen and the more junior assistant team leader with half experience of really experience is as a team leader, the more junior guy got promoted to the team leader position.

And so obviously there's a lot of issues with this because clearly it's a big blow to the ego of the of the individual that expected to be promoted. And he's you know, he was a talented guy. He had obviously a lot of experience. And I think it almost caught the other assistant team leader off guard. And he said, hey, you know, how do I handle the situation?

Because I don't want to lose this. I don't want to lose this. This is the team leader. He's a critical member of the team. We need to move forward together. So what do I do in this situation? And obviously, that's a that's a that's a tough problem to have. You're taking over the situation that now you're stepping into the role. So what does he do? How does he move the team forward and how does he keep that guy on board to be a part of the team?

So would you tell him so I told him. I said, well, first of all, you're going to have to do a little ego massage in a big way, which is a term used a lot.

And I love that term because you've got to massage this guy's ego. He's obviously upset. He's over there thinking like that team leader got promoted. That's just wrong. I've got all the experience. So clearly ego massage by going in there saying, you know, but but also being humble right off the bat.

So so to humble himself and do ego massage to say, listen, I don't know why I don't know why this decision got made that I got promoted. You've obviously got way more experience than me. I was totally surprised by this. It should have been you get promoted. I don't know why it promoted me. But I'll tell you one thing.

There's no way that I can possibly be successful without without your experience.

And I'm going to need to lean on you heavily in order to guide this team.

So do it by a little self-deprecating, you know, checking your ego and then going forward to actually do a little ego massage there and just address that that issue and.

That was that was the guidance we gave him. I wrote about this in leadership strategy and tactics and leadership strategy and tactics is like all the questions that I get asked all the time. I finally got sick of answering them all the time, so I just wrote them all down.

Well, there's a section literally called Transitioning from follower or peer to Leader, and it covers this exact thing.

And I actually go through the two scenarios that I went through in a couple of your platoons where upir got promoted, not me, but a peer got promoted in two back to back Silberman's one of them. The peers did it well, elevated, stepped up. The other one didn't do it well. So that's one part. But the other part is literally what you're talking about. There's another section in here called Overcoming a Grudge, which is this exact thing.

And, you know, it's it's you know, there are times in your career, will you be, one promoted into a leadership position and placed above your former peers? Right.

This can be challenging, but one handled correctly, the challenge could be mitigated many ways to some ways to mitigate a bad attitude.

Don't try and force your rank down their throats. It's everything you just said. Tell them you appreciate their experience. Let them come up with plans and ideas. Ask them for their input.

If they come up with a good plan, run with it. And by the way, all these match the 12 things that I say to do in page one fifty eight of this book or 157, one of the eight, which is like how to take over as a new leader. So these are all things to to appreciate and do. And as you as you mentioned, immediately it comes down to subordinate, subordinating my ego, elevating your ego.

Let's make this happen.

I also say this, but also be advised that some people will be hypersensitive and see you putting them in charge of something as condescending or as proof that you didn't know or that proof that you don't know what you're doing and that they should have been happy that they should've been promoted.

So you might have you just have a horrible attitude. And I say, hey, you know, why don't you run with this? Why don't you run this? You know, you've got a lot of experience.

If you're just a horrible mindset, you could say, oh, you see, JoCo doesn't even know what the hell he's doing. I should have been the one that should be promoted. Or you could see it as, oh, now JoCo thinks he's going to make me run everything lasic. Both those are opposite attitudes. They're both equally bad.

When they're pouting and bad attitude, become a parent, recognize that the likely reason they were not promoted is because they likely lack the humility, maturity to be a leader. That's why they didn't get promoted in the first place, is because they're they act like this. If that's the case, continue to be cordial, treat them with respect, try and build a relationship with them, but don't expect any rapid improvement. This will be a long process. You're going to have to be patient and make sure you don't let them distract you from the mission or from the rest of the team.

It's definitely a challenging situation.

I did it. I mean, I became an officer. I was in the SEAL teams for eight years as an enlisted guy and then became an officer. And all of a sudden a bunch of guys that were my same rank also.

And I was above them. And I guess part of the reason why I say it like that is because I didn't really think it was that big of a deal. I knew I had a different job. Now, my job was a little bit different, but they everyone's job on the team is important.

So I think what's interesting about the question is that people don't know what to do. And you obviously laid out, you know, exactly what you need to do in leadership strategy tactics. But it's something that people really struggle with. And I think, you know, no one likes to have the hard conversations. And so what what's interesting to me and where I've seen this fail drastically, you know, with leaders we worked with is they don't even address it.

They just it's a big elephant in the room. They don't talk about it.

Maybe they try to put them in charge, like when that negative ads kind of process is when they they don't actually have the conversation and pull pull the the other leaders aside and say, hey, I don't know why this happened. You know, I address it and just talk about it because it's always going to be there and it's going to create problems if you don't actually address it. And I think that's one of the times where, you know, we talked about indirect approach is great.

But you we also talk about being default aggressive to our problems. And if you ignore problems, they only get worse. So I think that's one of those things where you you got to be have take a little direct approach to say this problem is not going to get better. This guy is going home over the weekend stewing about this thing. As soon as I can actually reach out to him and connect with him and talk about this, the better it's going to be.

I need to do it as soon as I possibly can. And one conversation is certainly probably not going to solve the problem and the dichotomy there is.

Saying, hey, we need to be default, aggressive in solving our problems doesn't mean that the tactic or technique that we use to solve the problem is default aggressive. Just because I say, you know what, I can see Laveaux pissed off that I got promoted and he didn't. I need to confront him about it. No, that's not I don't need to confront him about it. I need to have a conversation about it. I need to, you know, put some feelers out there and see if I can understand what he's mad about, see if this is like we'll see where this is coming from.

Doesn't mean I need to call you up and say, look, I can tell you by your attitude. Yeah. What's your problem? Because then that's not at all it's not helpful.

But to say, you know, what you said earlier is an approach. Hey, look, I'm not hundred percent sure why this decision got made, but it got made. And listen, I know that you have a ton of experience, more experience than me.

And I absolutely want would would love to get your help and support as we do this. And for me, this doesn't mean anything other than I got a different job now and I'm going to do the best I can. Something along those lines, it's not an aggressive attack. So it's an aggressive meaning. I'm going to go solve the problem, but it's not aggressive, meaning I'm just going to be default aggressive and attack you because that.

Is not your first option. Can it be an option later? Yeah, I mean, if and you know this actually yeah.

I guess a better way to say that is. Yeah, I'm telling you to be default aggressive in deescalating the situation you go. That's what I mean. Not not in confronting and be like, what's your problem. Yeah, but I'm going to, I'm going to. Oh you're storming out of the room. OK, well let let me as soon as I can go intercede to say Ajaka.

Look man, I don't know why this happened. Like, I mean, default, aggressive, a de-escalation. That's good.

And. That's that's solid and it's great advice to that's what we mean by default, aggressive taking action that's going to solve the problem, not taking action, that's going to escalate the problem. And this actually ties pretty well. Those are your two scenarios for my turn. You know, I got a question the other day and this really does tie in. Well, I had a question the other day. About how to handle insubordination. How do I how do I handle insubordination?

And I think as you as you go to answer that question, you actually have to think through some things you have to think about. You have to think about this. What is insubordination? What does that mean?

Is it. Is it oh, they're not following my instructions. Is it that they're asking some pointed questions, is it some level of sabotage that you can see happening? I think you have to I think you have to clarify what you mean by insubordination, because when we hear the word insubordination, when I hear it, when I hear the word insubordination. What we think of is some outright mutinous behavior or just defiant rebellion. Right, when you let me ask you this, when you hear the word insubordination, you're not thinking they're thinking something pretty extreme, right?

You CMJ violation, right?

This is a major deal.

And I think I think that that type of insubordination doesn't really happen that often.

I mean, it just doesn't really happen that often, I think most of the time.

When people use the word insubordination, what's really happening is what I said earlier, maybe someone's someone's not following instructions. Exactly. Maybe someone's asking questions in a group where it's like, why are we doing this? You know, that type of thing. And I don't think that's I don't think that's insubordination. I think that's resistance. I think that's what I'm going to call resistance, which I think is a normal thing that's going to happen to you as a leader.

There will be resistance from your team. You have to expect it. You have to embrace it. And when I feel that type of resistance.

I have to think to myself, guess what, I'm getting this resistance because of me, it's my fault. That's what's actually happening. I haven't explained something cronut correctly. There's some part of this that they don't understand or that I haven't explained. Well, there's there's there's why am I having a problem convincing them of the plan? Why, that's got to be on me. Why can't I communicate properly? Why don't I why haven't I built a better relationship with this individual?

Are they giving me this resistance because I've become too familiar to have I do have a relationship that's too close, have I become a friend instead of a leader?

So all those things require me to ask myself, OK, what what mistake that I make and how can I fix it? How do I fix it? Do I build a better relationship or if I've got too close relationship, do I slowly reinstate boundaries? Do I if I feel like they are not buying into the plan, do I let them come up with a plan so they get buy in? If if they're not understanding my communications, how do I make my communication communications more simple and clear?

So all those things are. My fault and all those things are a way to stop what and that's that attitude, that resistance is what I think people often refer to as insubordination. Now, like you said, if you're talking, you know, uncontrollable terror inside your team, then you have to take actions to discipline and remove them.

This isn't even really that much of a question, right? If you've got someone that is in the subordinate.

Then they need to you need to discipline them and you need to counsel them and you need to remove them. Either they fix themselves or you remove you need to, like, escalate the escalation of counseling very quickly.

OK, in the SEAL teams, for example, it is very seldom that someone gets kicked out of the SEAL teams for insubordination. I mean, I can think of maybe one or two examples in my whole career.

Bad behavior. Yes, but bad behavior that they did something stupid and they would come back and they were insubordinate. They just did something stupid. Very seldom would someone actually have straight up insubordination. But there's one more area right between resistance. And insubordination, and I believe that this other area is disrespect. Right now, we have another area of disrespect. You got someone that's throwing comments at you. You got someone that's undermining you, you got someone that's making you look bad, so and I think that can be mistaken for straight up insubordination.

Those Babitsky is, you know, try to call me out right in front of everyone, like, you know you know, your team guys would do dumb things to each other, like it's dumb.

And sometimes they could be disrespectful.

And if someone sensitive, you can that can that can sting somebody. I'm just thinking of what for some reason I thought of vehicles. You know, we're always doing dumb things in vehicles. But like, let's say you had one of your guys and they're going to pick you up at a restaurant or or pick you up in front of the barracks. And so, you know, they're sitting there waiting for you walk up and they pull ahead a little bit.

You walk up to the door and they pull, right, that could be you're joking around cool. But there could be a level of hostility there that actually makes that disrespectful. So we can have situations where people are being disrespectful. And you, yes, you have to address it now, once again, as we just talked about when we address it.

The initial. Approach. Shouldn't be on attack. I mean, you know, to start out, to start out with, you better stop disrespecting me if that's where you start, you can win that tactical battle, right? You can you know, that person might you know. Roger that, sir. Where do you end up, though?

You end up when you demand respect, you lose respect. When you demand respect, you lose respect.

So when someone's being disrespectful to you and you just demand respect from them, the respect for you doesn't go up. But if you were to say, hey, listen, man. Obviously, I must not be doing something right, because I respect you and I respect your experience, but I'm not feeling any mutual respect back in my direction and I'm thinking there must be something I'm doing wrong. What do I need to do different? That I can earn your respect.

That approach is going to be infinitely better then you better just give me respect and then when they to respond to you to your first. Well, you know, to the first topic that you brought up today, when you ask them what you can do better, when you ask them for feedback, you better listen to it.

You listen to it, nod your head, listen, and then actually make adjustments.

Whatever that thing is. Now, is there a dichotomy here, can we go too far with this? Yeah, I am. I sitting here saying, hey, you just let people walk all over you? Absolutely not. You have to listen to them. But you got to be confident. You've got to take things on board.

And then once you've taken these things on board, you've got to see if you can actually start building a relationship.

If they start to if they start to come in your direction or do you have an actual bad apple, right. Which you can you can have a bad apple.

And if you have a bad apple, then you start the escalation of counseling and you either win them over or you have to get rid of them. And what's interesting about this, and you've referred to me multiple times in this particular topic, we'll know a guy who is a seal who maybe got in trouble, you know, a troublemaker, a problem causer.

And you've said to me, like, hey, if that guy work for you, this wouldn't happen. And I actually have documented cases where I had guys that actually worked for me that were freaking awesome. Guys would do absolutely anything I asked would do were totally professional in training, totally professional in combat. And when they worked for me, they were freaking awesome. And then they work for someone else and they would get in trouble. And I had pretty significant punishment administered to these individuals.

And that means that that leader, instead of developing a relationship and trying to make adjustments and trying to get them on board and and and showing respect. They didn't do that. Those those particular individuals you're talking about, we were talking about very strong willed people who are default aggressive and they're not I don't have time for someone, they say as a weak leader they don't respect.

So, yeah, I, you know, reacting extremely poorly. And what you're talking about is just deescalating the situation with these. Whereas if you demand respect, you're escalating that situation versus actually let's de-escalate it.

I'm thinking about that, as you're saying. And, you know, we have to correct this misperception all the time.

And I think a lot of people, when I hear those kind of comments from leaders that we work with, which which happens a lot, they think they think that in the military it's it's just a bunch of Terminator robots are going to just carry out orders and do exactly what you say with no pushback whatsoever. And so they don't know how to react to that. They just need to do what I say rather than, OK. They're human beings.

So I need to actually explain it to them. And, you know, if you can turn that around, I mean, that's the power of extreme ownership and recognize, OK, I need to do something better to actually get that person on board.

You know, one of the things I've learned from you is like when somebody is complaining, you should actually listen to them.

And it's amazing how you can either defeat their arguments very you know, if you're complaining to me and you're just saying something totally off the wall that makes no sense whatsoever, then I can very easily explain why we should do that.

Or maybe I you know, I don't think it's the right call for the team and I should be able to make that very obvious, if it is that obvious.

But but also, you might be bringing up something that's and very often is the case. You're bringing up some very valid points. And if even if you just give me three points and one of them is valid, at least now, you know, like I'm listening to you, you know, you leave that conversation with like five finally, like they understand, you know, what I bring to the table. So it feeds your ego. And I can make some little small change, a minuscule thing that that could help you.

It's crazy. But I'm sure there's someone thinking, yeah, but sometimes you've got to just and oddly enough, I'm trying to think through my entire mean. I was only in for 20 years. I'm trying to think through all those years of the times that I just had to, you know, get rid of somebody because they were insubordinate or they were disrespectful or whatever, whatever you want to call it, someone that I couldn't get through to to get them on board.

And I can't think of any I think the number is zero. So try a little bit harder.

Probably a good place to stop. If you want to dig deeper into all aspects of leadership in any arena, you can join life.

And me and the rest of the Echelon front team at EFF online dotcom, where we solve problems through leadership. If you want leadership guidance inside your organization, come and check out our leadership consultancy at Echelon Front Dotcom. We've also written some books on the subject of leadership, extreme ownership, the dichotomy of leadership and leadership, strategy and tactics as some other podcasts. One is called the JoCo Unravelling podcast. One is called Grounded and one is called the Warrior Kid podcast and also have another podcast, which is simply called JoCo podcast.

And if you want to support any of these podcasts, including this one, you can get some gear. From JoCo store, dotcom or Origin, Main Dotcom, thanks for listening to the debrief now go lead.

This is Leaf and JoCo out.