Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple that you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is General Ray O'Dierno, the former Chief of Staff of the United States Army, which is the Army's top job. He retired in 2015 as a four-star general and now does private consulting on minor little subjects like country risk and cybersecurity. Honestly, I could fill up a whole hour just introducing this guy. But there's so much good stuff in this conversation and I want to get right to it. Now listen, it's one thing to talk about trusting a leader in the workplace setting, but trusting a leader in the military really goes up a whole other level where the stakes can literally be life and death. And boy, after 39 years of military service through three tours in Iraq, Ray is absolutely a leader people trust and he knows how to help others become trustworthy leaders too. He believes there are three key qualities of a trustworthy leader and we're going to dig into each one of these in this incredible conversation. We're also going to talk about the current division in our country, how to avoid toxic leadership and so much more. So here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to the years, General Ray Oderno. Ray I'm so excited to learn how you lead, but first I have to ask you given everything that's been going on lately. You know, you spent years leading our troops in Iraq and fighting terrorism. What went through your mind when you saw the insurrection on our Capitol? Well, it was one of the most disappointing days of my life. I spent, since I was 17 years old when I entered West Point, I've spent my life dedicated to protecting the Constitution of the United States. When I swore in as a cadet at West Point, when I got promoted every time, every rank I took an oath to defend, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States can solve enemies foreign and domestic. And when I saw that, it was something I thought I would never see in this country and it was incredibly disappointing to me. I never thought that we would have individuals react so violently to what is the fundamental foundation of our governmental structure. You know, many are saying today that the biggest threat to our country is now domestic terrorism. How do you see it? Well, I think terrorism remains our biggest threat, both international and domestic. And that's one of the things that has changed. And I think because of what's going on inside of our country, we have to pay much more attention to potential domestic terrorism. And it has to do in my opinion with the rhetoric and the fact that people don't talk to each other, they talk at each other. We don't have dialogue anymore. We have people who take very hard positions. We take people who don't listen to others. They're not willing to listen to others' positions. And it's leading us where I found in other countries where this has happened, when people get frustrated and believe nobody is paying attention to them, they turn to violence. And I'm afraid what we saw play out here is people are turning to violence. And so we have to be able to unify and discuss these issues in a way. And we need our leaders to demonstrate that. When you think about the challenges we have today and the need to focus, you know, probably even more so on domestic terrorism than in the past, what would you do as a leader to the multitask, you know, to make sure that we're also not taking our eyes off the foreign threats that are out there because they're still there? Yes, we have systems in place to do that. So as the chief, in order to deal with domestic terrorism, it's a multi-layered solution. And it's got to start. You got to be connected from local government, through state government to federal government. And you have to be connected with your intel collection. You have to be connected with your information sharing. And you have to really understand that and work very closely together in order to defeat domestic terrorism. In addition to that, we have to have and maintain our systems that we have abroad in collecting information and building relationships and maintaining relationships with our partners. And one of the things I think we have to be able to do is rebuild some of those relationships with our partners to ensure we're able to share all the information necessary to sustain our protection against international terrorism. Were you surprised, Ray, that we actually had a peaceful inauguration and there weren't additional riots? No, I knew that once that had happened, that the protection that would be placed around the Washington, D.C. and the capital, that the inauguration would go off. But I think there's still threats out there. And I think we cannot say, well, we got through the inauguration. Everything's fine. I think we have to stay very, very alert. And we have to make sure that we're ready for another potential incident that could be happened at some state capital or in Washington, D.C. What do you think we should be doing to reinforce the fact that the Army should be apolitical? I think it's in the basic training of everything we do within the military. Again, as I mentioned earlier, we all take an oath of office and we take an oath to protect the Constitution, support, defend the Constitution, the United States. And that's the basis of who we are. It's apolitical. It doesn't matter who the President is. It doesn't matter what parties empower. We take an oath to the Constitution. And we have to make sure that people realize this. When I say you can't have your own individual views, but when you put that uniform on and when you're representing this nation, it's absolutely critical that you understand that we're here to support the Constitution of the United States. That's what we're here for. And that's what we've taken our oath for. And so we have to continue to talk about that. We have to train our leaders in that. And we have to train all our soldiers in the importance of that. That's what makes us special. And that's why people look at us and favor, and we have such high favorability ratings, is because we maintain our apoliticalness. It's so key to the success of our country. Ray, were you surprised that Trump's words about a rigged election and taking the fight to the Capitol would carry so much weight? I'm a little surprised at the violent nature of what happened from his remarks. But the one thing I'll say is I go back to what I said a little bit earlier. The problem we're having in this country is the rhetoric is so negative. And people don't have lost trust with each other. And so what we're having is an overreaction to comments and people think they 're disenfranchised and now they turn to violence. And we've seen it on all spectrums of the political spectrum, with the riots we had earlier this year in our, in, around the country. Now these riots we've had in Washington, D.C. And so again, as I said before, I believe it's up to our leaders now to show an example that we have to work together. We have to have some bipartisanship. We have to listen to each other, not just talk past each other, just not yell at each other and get angry right away and don't listen to other people's positions. Because that's what's driving people watching this and it's driving them to that they have to do something that's even more, that can have more impact because they believe people are listening. And I think it's important we do that. The president has a challenge. The president has to be able, and he did a great job in his speech, unifying the country. It's commons that he wants to unify the country. And it's important that he follows through on that and listens to all sides. One of the things I've learned in leading is understanding the why. Why is this happening? And you've got to figure out why is this happening and then you've got to go after that. If you just ignore why it happened, you can make it much worse. And so if we continue to have these discussions that people aren't listening to each other and they're arguing with each other and they're so negative and they're name calling and all this other things going on, potentially as we can make it worse. I used to work for PepsiCo and one of my mentors was the late Wayne Callaway, was chairman. And I met with him every quarter and he had this spectacular office and you looked out at these PepsiCo sculpture gardens which are redound. I said, "Gee, Wayne, what's it like to be the CEO of a company like this and look out and see what you see every day." And he said to me, he said, "Well, David, you've got to be very careful what you say. One day I said the grass was a little brown." He said, "The next day they were plowing the fields." And I just reminded me of the power, the words of the leader. Was there ever a time where you said something and you saw that there were unintended consequences? Oh, yeah, all the time. And the problem I both had is the chief of stuff in Army and I was the overall commander at Iraq. I tell everyone, you have so many different audiences listening to you. So when I was the commander in Iraq, when I do a press conference and I'd say things, my troops would hear one thing. And I always used to laugh is that whenever I did a press conference every day, every afternoon I met with the president of Iraq, and he would critique my press conference. And he would tell me everything I said wrong that he didn't agree with in the press conference. And then of course Washington would have a view of what I said. So people have different viewpoints and agendas when you're talking. And if they don't hear what they want, it has unintended consequences. And so you have to be very careful to know that many people looking at what you 're saying and they will take your words to use in very different ways. And so it's absolutely true of any leader. And again, in the example you said, I always had to be careful as the chief that when I said something, how would that got interpreted? I might mean it as a joke or I might mean it as something completely different, as somebody takes it and puts out a policy of so executing something that was absolutely not what I intended. And that happened a couple of times as well. That's why I think leaders should be very careful what they say and not think out loud. You know, Trump, he claimed that two of his biggest accomplishments were rebuilding the military and revamping the Veterans Administration. How do you see it? Well, I think talking to the people that are there now, you know, rebal, I don 't like the term rebuild. I wouldn't say rebuild, we saw the best military in the world. But he did provide them the resources to do some things that we had not been able to do for a while. And that is really significantly improved some of the readiness areas that we had. And more importantly, invest in future systems. Give us the dollars so we can invest in developing our systems that will help us to stay competitive with China and Russia as we move forward. So I do agree that he did that with his budgets that he put forward. And all I've read about the Veterans Administration is we made great strides there and the confidence level is much better than it was. So I think he did make some improvements in those areas. I think it's recognized that he did that. Now he kind of balanced that by some of the things, his words and other things that he said, which probably had an impact on our safety and security. But in those two instances, I do believe it's for the most part, correct? Now going forward, which everybody in our country definitely wants to do, what do you see as President Biden's biggest challenge for the military? And if you were the Army Chief of Staff today, how would you go about working with him to make it happen? Yeah. Well, first I had a chance to work with President Biden when he was Vice President very closely. But the first thing I would tell him is internationally we need to rebuild our relationships. We can't do this alone. We don't want to do it alone. We need assistance. And so I think we have to make sure that we reinvigorate our NATO relationship. I think we need to reinvigorate some of our relationships in the Middle East. I think we need to reinvigorate some of our relationships in the Pacific. And so I think it's important that he takes that on right away. I tell everybody there's three tools you have as President. You have diplomacy, economic policy, and military capability that you have at your fingertips to use. And I would advise him that he needs to have a synchronized, coordinated effort between those three as we deal with the problems that we face. They can't be independent of each other. You can't have an economic policy. It's independent of your diplomatic efforts and your military policies. They got to be intertwined where we build a strategy that allows us to be very successful in dealing with all of our really important partners. That'd be number one. Secondly, I would say is that he has to make sure you maintain our readiness to respond. I always really believe the reason we have a military and we spend money on our military. Number one, we want to deter others from doing things that we don't want them to do. And if we start to look weak, our deterrent levels go down. So I would strongly encourage him to make sure we maintain the capacity and capabilities to continue to deter those out there that want to gain power and do harm to others. I probably shouldn't ask this, but I'll ask it anyway. There's a lot of great generals like yourself who went into politics, became President of the United States, and had a huge impact on our countries. Is that something you've ever considered doing? Well, a few years ago, some people came to me and asked me if I would be interested in doing that. And I think about the sad part as I thought about it actually, I realized that I couldn't get through the political process because I'm not far enough to the right or far enough to the left. In order to meet the criteria to probably make it through the parties, I'm in the middle. Probably right center, by the way, I'd categorize myself. And that's one of the sad parts today is somebody who wants to be worked together, be bipartisan. It's hard to get nominated from your party because you've got to kind of go to the far right or left. So as I calculated that, I felt like it'd be very difficult today to do that. Well, you've taken on a lot of difficult challenges before, and this may be the time to do it. So I hope you reconsider. You know, General, we first met just after you retired from the Army, and you were kind enough to come to Louisville, Kentucky, where my family was hosting the courage and honor invitational at Valhalla on behalf of the Foles of Honor, which provides scholarships for kids and spouses of fallen and disabled service members. And I remember you giving just a fantastic speech. And you're a hell of a speaker. Has that always come natural to you? No, absolutely not. And in fact, I've grown into that. And you know, I was one of these people who had to speak. I worry about it a lot, and I would over-prepare. And when I first started, I came over too much as a road speaker. I spoke kind of read some of it. But over time, I learned that you just speak from your heart. I tend to, you know, I always told myself, I know more than the audience does about the subject I'm talking about. And once I overcame that, it enabled me to open myself up, which allowed me to have the ability to really get my message across in a much better way and ways that people appreciated and liked a lot better. So I grew into that. Absolutely, it's not something that comes natural. Yeah, a little time in great, really helps in that subject. Yeah, it does. It sure does. I want to get to how you got to where you are today. But first of all, can you just tell us a little bit about what an army chief of staff does? It's the top job in the army. What do you do? Yeah, well, I equate it to a CEO of a company. And really what you do is you're responsible really for three things. One is you're responsible for manning and equipping the army to make sure they have the manpower necessary, they have the right equipment. The second thing is you're responsible for readiness to make sure that the equipment is ready, to make sure that the people are ready to do their jobs on a moment's notice. And so we always call kind of three lakes of the store. And the third thing is to decide how you invest in research and development for the future. So how do you then develop acquisition programs that allow you to be prepared for whatever future surprises are out there and that we stay ahead in that kind of development? So it's an incredibly broad but incredibly interesting job. And what you have to remember is in the army you're in 140 different countries around the world and you have to do all those things while you're maintaining readiness and deploying soldiers all the time. And to me it's really incredibly difficult but fun and rewarding job. What was your favorite part of that job? Oh, always being with soldiers. I mean, you know, just I got to visit soldiers in Asia and Middle East. And so I got to see how proud they are of what they've accomplished and that they're so and what's important to them is being part of something that's bigger than themselves. And that, so when I have it a bad day, I always think about it. I got to go visit soldiers because it makes me feel a lot better about what's going on. I always felt that way about getting out in the field. You know, I'd go into the restaurants and talk to the people. Yeah. Now you went to West Point. Yeah. What did you learn about yourself there? Well, well, first I learned about resiliency. I mean, West Point's a little different than it was when I went in the early 70 s and back then the thought process was they tear you down and then they build you back up into the person they want you to be. Today it's more we're going to take what you have and make you a better person. So we went to tearing down part was incredibly difficult. And what I learned is I learned a mental and physical toughness that I didn't realize I probably had. I also realized I could be resilient when things weren't going well. I could do things that I didn't think I could ever do. And the other thing is is the what they try to do is they make you manage your time because they overwhelm you with academics, military training, athletic endeavors because everybody has to do all three of those. And every minute of every day thinking, in fact, you really need about 30 hours or 42 hours to do what they ask you to do in a 24 hour day. So you got to figure that out. You got to prioritize. And so what I learned is about prioritization, you know, prioritizing what's important and what's not and it really helped me. And I also learned a lot about leading by example and trying to do the right thing all the time. General, I was going to ask you about that stereotype of the military tearing you down and building you back up. Do you think we need more of that today or do you think we've moved in the right direction or have we gone too far? I think it depends. I think I think one of the things we learned actually while I was chief with the millennial generation who actually I found to be very brave and do all the same things previous generations had done. But when they came into the army, they were different. For example, they didn't know how to communicate with each other. They could text with each other. They could send emails to each other. But we found there wasn't a lot of face to face verbal exchange. And so one of the things we had to do was really focus on that and focus programs to kind of get them reinvigorated into doing face to face meetings, face to face interaction, building relationships face to face. So it's things like that you kind of have to kind of tear down certain things and build up certain things. But I think today the kids are so smart. They're so much smarter than they were when we were younger that you got to take what they have and build on that because really that's what we want. And what I found over time is we want that diversity of thought. We want that diversity of personality. It makes us a better organization. When did you get your first command general and did you have anxieties about being a new leader and how do you overcome them? Yeah. So I mean the first time I commanded was in 1981 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I was a young captain. I've been in the army five years. I was a battery commander/company commander, commanded by 150 soldiers. And yeah, it was first you say, okay, can I do this? You kind of been trained. You've been able to attend it where you have a platoon leader and kind of work for somebody and you watch them do it. But when you actually get in the position, it's can you do it and how do you go about doing it? And what I always felt one of my strength was my ability to observe and my ability to take tidbits good and bad from what I've seen and then apply those. And so I think over time that helped me to do that as I got my first command. You know, General, how would you describe the army's culture when you became chief of staff and what changes did you make to it? Well, it was a time of significant transition. So in 2011, we were just now, we would been in Iraq for eight years. We'd been in Afghanistan for 10 years. We'd been an army at war for the longest period of time or heading towards the longest period of time in our nation's history. And we were now just starting to look at what would come after that. And so that was the biggest transition because I had captains and even some young majors who had never been in a peacetime army. They'd always been at war. And so what they didn't understand is how to maintain and sustain readiness inside an army that's not at war. And so we had to really adjust and adapt what they did in order for them to understand what are the things you have to do to train your unit, to be prepared for a variety of missions because you never know which one you're going to get to do. Instead of just focused on one very specific mission. The other thing is there was a lot of social change going on during this time. When I took over as Chief of Staff, about six months later was the discussion, maybe not even that long, the discussion about ending Don't Ask Don't Tell in the military. People don't know what that is. That was we had a policy of Don't Ask Don't Tell for homosexuals and others in the army. So if you didn't talk about it, you could do it. But if we found out about it, we'd throw you out of the army. And so there was a lot of big discussions about that. But one of the things I felt over time was actually we were asking soldiers to not live up to our army values, which is about honesty and integrity. So we were telling them that you couldn't be honest and you couldn't have integrity on who you were if you wanted to stay in the army. And to me that became hypocritical. Society was changing quickly, so we made the decision to open it up and it's worked out great. We never had any issues, never problems. And I felt much better about it because now people didn't have to hide. They didn't have to kind of tell half-truths. They could live up to what we believe is the most important army values. And then later on, the other thing, a social challenge we had is opening up more and more opportunities for women. We didn't allow women in combat positions when I took over as chief. And the problem with that was, is it was harder for them to get promoted to the higher positions because most of the people, 75% of the people that get promoted, are in combat positions. But not only that, I found, as I went around and talked about this, and this was probably more controversial than the don't-ask don't-tell. Because there's a lot of people just feel women cannot do that. But what I found is I went around and talked to women and men. All they wanted was the opportunity. They don't want standards lowered. They just said, "If I meet the standard, I want the opportunity to do it." And to me, that sounded fair. And so for me, we really started putting programs in place to test this. So for example, I would tell you, David, that we did a test that said, "Put women in combat positions in a unit." So we did that. We did a survey. And only 20% of the men said we thought women could do the job. They stayed in there for six months. We did a survey. After that, 80% said they thought women could do the job. And so it was very interesting as we went through all of these studies. And so for me, it was a really important decision. Because I feel what you want is the most talented people. And if we don't allow women to do this, we're eliminating 50% of the talent pool. And we don't want to do that. Absolutely. And you had two tours of duty in Iraq. Can you tell us the three? Okay. Well, tell us about the unique challenges you faced with each tour and how you handled it. So the first one was I was the division commander 2003 to 2004, part of the initial invasion force. What was interesting for us is I had loaded my equipment, all the equipment of the fourth infantry division on 35 ships. And they were in the Mediterranean Sea. We were actually supposed to come south through Turkey and attack from the north into Iraq. And about, you know, a week before we were supposed to do this, the Turkish government voted not to allow us to go through Turkey, even though they had initially agreed to let us do that. So the first challenge was now what do we do? We had to very quickly move everything from the Mediterranean Sea and bring it all the way around to Kuwait. And we actually did one of the one of the things that's most proud of. We did one of the fastest downloads of equipment off of ships and right into combat. So we downloaded, we, luckily we had it organized in unit sets. They don't normally do that. They kind of do it to get the most out of the ship. And they got off and they went right in to the combat role. So it was one of the biggest challenges. And then the second challenge was we, you know, went very quickly. This was, you know, February, March and then by June, we had overthrown Saddam Hussein and his government. I was north of Baghdad. And we were told, okay, you get to go home now. I think we've done all we're going to do. We're going to turn it over. And then about two weeks later, they came back and said, hold on a minute. We're going to stay. There's more things we're going to do. The transition from what we initially thought was our job was to come in to feed the army. And then now we turn it into we had to rebuild the nation and put into place other things. So that was a big adjustment that we had to make during that time. And oh, by the way, I was given the mission. Nobody thought that Saddam Hussein was in my area. So we were tracking him for six months and finally in December of 2003, we caught him. And I quit, quated to finding a needle in a haystack. And I had to do with great work and ingenuity of soldiers and working together with a bunch of different groups that allowed us to understand better how he was moving, what he was doing and finally we captured him. The second time was in 2006, right at the end in November, December 2006. The war now was not going very well. The insurgency from al Qaeda had taken hold. And frankly, there's a lot of discussion. We just pull out and let it go. And I was then going to be in charge of all ground forces in Iraq. I was the core commander, the multinational core of Iraq commander. And when I came in in November, this was the first time I ever went into a job thinking, I don't know if I can accomplish the mission I've been given. And the strategy we were kind of doing was we were kind of staying back in our bases. We weren't really making a lot of progress. And that's when I got a visit from several senators, Senator McCain, Senator Lieberman, and others. And we talked about a surge of forces. And I recommended that we have a surge of forces laid out what they would do. And what really changed everything is Secretary Gates was then taken, just took over in December from Secretary Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. And he came to visit us on his first day as Secretary of Defense, which General Pace, who was the chairman of, joined Chief Stapon. And everybody laid out the strategy. And this strategy still was to pull out and go home. And I laid out a little different one that said, I think we should bring more forces in. And I walked them through why I thought that would make a difference. Because what was happening is we go in and we defeat people. And then they were just, it would only last for a couple of weeks. And we had to stay there. We needed more people to stay there. The other thing we had to do is we had to get off our big bases and get back out into the cities and living with the Iraqi people so they would trust us. So we chained. So I briefed all this. And Secretary Gates nodded. He didn't say yes or no. And then about a month later, the president and others approved that. And we went on with the surge, which became very, very successful in eliminating violence. This was a mission that you felt uncomfortable with at first. And then you changed the name of the game. How did you as a leader go through that process of saying, hey, I got a problem , I got to turn it around, and now I got to convince these guys to do something else? Yeah. So what happened is I was preparing to go over what I learned in May, I was going to take over in November. I had made a trip in August to Iraq. I realized I was seeing what was going on. And it wasn't the fall that people in charge. They were executing the strategy. They were told to execute. I just felt like we needed a new strategy. What I did is I started bringing people in every week that had different thoughts. So I got a diversity of opinion on how this problem could be solved. And through that, I started to think through, okay, what can we do? I talked to some of my colleagues who had just come back out of Iraq and division commanders and asked them what they thought. So I really had a good thought. I just didn't know if they allowed me to do it. I knew what I wanted to do. And I knew the only way we could be successful. And that's why I'd mentioned earlier, when I went over, I wasn't. This is the first time I was unsure when I could actually accomplish what I've been asked to do. The generals above me, I was a three-star general at the time and there was four-star generals above me. They didn't agree with me. There's two lessons out of that. First, but I told them, I just felt differently and this is why I laid it out. But when the secretary defense came over, they briefed. But then he asked me my opinion and I gave them a different opinion. And the two, the four-stars above me, they allowed me to do that. And they didn't get angry with me. They didn't hold me. They didn't hold me in contempt because they allowed me to say it and then he went back and approved it. And it's not that easy, but it took some time, but they approved it. So that was the toughest challenge I had as leader. But I realized that this I felt like in order for me to look myself in the mirror every day, this is the only way I thought we could do it. And if this means I'm ending my career and I'm not going any further, that's fine. It doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is accomplishing the mission and really taking care of the soldiers that are on the ground and giving them the opportunity to be successful as well for everything they've sacrificed. So what happened in the third tour? What was your big learning? So the third tour was, I was, I know why you said two tours because I was here from six to eight and a one, then eight to 10. So it was like a two month break. So it's almost like one continuous. That's over right. I'll go with three. And then the last one, I was the overall commander. So I got promoted to four star general. I was now in charge of the whole thing. But now is a different challenge because we had been successful in the surge and it was now about how do we transition to the next phase of the operation? And so we had to get a kind of a status of forces agreement with the Iraqis, which was very difficult. I had to work with the ambassador in order to try to achieve that. We never really got exactly what we wanted. I always remember we did a VTC with President Bush and myself and the ambassador. And we talked about it and I said, well, we didn't get what we want and there's some risk. And President Bush says, Ray, what do you think? Can we make this work? And I said, we can absolutely make this work. And he goes, OK, we'll do it then. And to me, that was another time where I said, oh boy, I hope I didn't put my over my skis, but it worked out and it worked very, very well. But the second piece on that tour was I did a transition of presidents. So if you remember, the election was in late 2008 and in 2009, President Obama came in and I think everybody knows he had run on. He's going to pull all the troops out of Iraq immediately. And the first day of his presidency, we did a VTC with them and we laid out. What's a VTC? I'm sorry, General. A video teleconference. OK, gotcha. And so, you know, kind of like a zoom. So we did a video teleconference with all of the leaders back in D.C., the cabinet. And the president kind of asked me to give him an update with the ambassador on where we are inside of Iraq. We gave it to him. He just listened. You know, he was just kind of taking in information. But I had prepared for this. I knew that when we transitioned, we'd have to get up to speed, a new president . And I listened to some of the things he said, so I tried to take into account what he was saying we had to do. And we tried to make sure we put that in our strategy. So we talked about how can we reduce the size of our force, how we would do that over time. And we talked about that. And of course, he didn't make any decisions that time. We went back and forth probably two or three different sessions. And ultimately, he asked me to -- myself and the ambassador put together a paper with three different courses of action. And we did that and submitted it. And I found out later that nobody changed a word on it. Usually it gets changed up the chain of command, but it didn't get changed. And I recommended one course of action. The president ended up going with a different course of action. But the lesson for me as a military officer in supporting the commander-in- chief president is you got to give him options. You can't just say it's black or white. You can't just say, okay, either you do this or I'm not going to agree with you . You got to give him options. So I thought the one he picked was maybe a bit more risky. But when he said to do it, we executed it. And we went from there. So that's kind of another lesson learned is that you can't back your bosses into a corner by saying it's either this or nothing. You know, if you're a good leader, you got to provide some options for them so they can make a choice. Because ultimately they're the ones held accountable. You know, you were faced with a lot of budget cuts. And you know, that's not a, in any business, it's not good when your budget gets cut. And you know, you have to kind of go back to your troops and say, here's what we got to do. How did you motivate your troops once you had to make those tough calls? Well, it was hard. So yeah, three months into my time as Steve was 25% budget cut in the army. We were told we had to take that to huge budget cut, 25%. And I told you this kind of three legs of the stool, it's manpower, which is about 60% of your budget. And then you have readiness and sustainment. And then you have R&D and procurement, securing new systems R&D. That's where the money is. That's, and so you have to decide where you want to take a cut and where you want to take some risk. And there was a lot of people in Washington at the time that really wanted us to slash the size of the army, almost by two thirds. And frankly, I just didn't agree with it. And so what I had to do was, first I had to make sure everybody understood what we were being told to do. And we did some rigorous analysis on, you know, what risk can we take in sustainment? What risk can we take in R&D? What risk can we take in manpower? And we went through several iterations and had to come up with some sort of a plan. And oh, by the way, we were still engaged in Iraq. We were still engaged in Afghanistan. We were actually starting to be engaged in Eastern Europe, Korea. So nothing was really stopping. So we still had to do everything with, with Central large budget cuts. And that was my worry about manpower cuts, because you wouldn't be able to do all those things that we're doing with the manpower cuts they were asking for. So I try to come up again with several course of action that would allow to take some manpower cuts, but not all. And what I did is I phased it over a five year period. And to be honest, when I left, because, you know, when I left, it was about a year before the election, I told the my staff when I left, I said, when I developed this strategy of five years of cuts, I said, we will never get to the fifth year. Because whether we because we knew we could get a new president, because it was after President Obama's second term. So no matter who the new president is, I believe that they're going to realize they can't continue to reduce the size of the army, because things were starting to boil up all over again in different places around the world. And the assumptions that were made by some were just bad assumptions. And so I predicted that if we can make it to the election, I think things will change. And that's exactly what happened. So I took some mitigation there. I mitigated some risk by understanding the political environment and understanding the operational environment on what we're going to have to deal with. And so I didn't make drastic cuts. I made smaller cuts every year that we could recover from if we had to. So that's kind of how we went about doing it. Now we took some risk in R&D, which I didn't really like. And I think we paid the price for that for a couple of years, because we weren 't investing in the type of things we needed to be investing in. But I thought it was more important because we couldn't lose the manpower, because it's so hard to recruit manpower in the army. You just can't bring in sergeant. You just can't bring in majors and lieutenant colonel's and colonel's. You got to develop them. So if you cut them, it's 10 years to recover. But that's how we went through that process. So basically you developed a plan to, you follow the order, but you did it in the best possible way you thought you could that would protect our country. Yes. How much time did you spend strategizing and envisioning the future needs of the army? A lot. One of the things that I found out when I came in is I felt like we were too focused on the here and now. And rightfully so. We've been involved in Iraq and Afghanistan for 10 years. And it was our sole focus. And it took up so much of our resources. But I felt like we weren't thinking about 10 years from now, 15 years from now. So what I did is I established a strategic initiatives group where I bought in 20 people. You had to apply. I bought in 20 people, military and civilians who had certain capabilities that would think through for me future problems. And for example, one of the things I gave him was urban warfare because I felt like the future is going to happen to be a lot of the cities are getting bigger and bigger and more people in all the cities around the world. How would we deal with that as a military? Was one thing. What is the type of strike capability do we need as our technology? So they would then think through this, they would do projects and they would come to me with recommendations on where the army needs to go. So I felt like we had to start thinking more and more in the future. As a leader in my mind, you really have two responsibilities. One is to hear it now and it's whether you're a business leader or a military leader. Are you taking care of your people? Are you taking care of your customers, your stockholders, whatever? And then secondly, are you looking to the future to make sure the company can sustain this or the army can sustain their responsibilities over time? And sometimes we get too dragged into the current. I don't think enough about the future. What's the coaching session like with Ray Odeer now? So my first evaluation, when I coach a leader, as always in any leader, it's about outcome and are you achieving the outcomes that we want you to achieve? But then the second piece, which is actually really important, is how did you achieve that outcome? And do you have, I found it was so easy to understand. When I walk into a unit, I can tell when a leader has empowered his support, he 's actually a board that's because when the briefing are involved, they understand exactly what's going on. They're not afraid to say things. And it's just an open environment, it's a happy environment, and they come up with such innovative ways to solve problems. And then I go into a unit and I find a leader who nobody's allowed to talk, only the commander can talk. Everybody looks like they're falling asleep. They're really not, you know, they're not really happy. They're not involved. And I start questioning, you know, how well this unit is operating. So that's kind of a leader assessment that I do. But what I really look for is I look for how competent you are as a leader. Do you continue to learn every day? Are you keeping up with the future and what we need to do? And do you show your competence and your craft? Secondly, is are you committed? How committed are you? Just not committed to the mission, but committed to the unit, committed to the people that work for you, committed to the army, the greater institution. Do you commit to those? And finally, do you operate with character? Do you treat your people with dignity and respect? Do you have integrity? Do you live that? And the other thing is team. Do you build teams? Do you build strong teams? Or is it all about you? And so that's what I talk to them about. I talk about how well they're doing it. Because what this all is is it builds the foundation of trust. Trust is a foundation of any organization and any good leader. And the way you build trust is through your competence, your commitment and your character. And if you show that over time, you will earn the trust that is necessary. And you need that in any leadership position. But in the military, it's more important because you're making life and death decisions at times. And so they got to believe in you. And when they trust you, if you make a bad decision, they're okay with that. Because they know that you're trying to do the right thing. And they understand that everybody makes mistakes. But if they don't trust you and they believe your risk of verse and other things, then they really start to lose their confidence. I did a study in the army about toxic leadership. And what I thought I was going to get back, I did it with captains. So I felt like that was a good deal. How do you feel about your leadership? What I thought would come back, well, he micromanages, he doesn't treat us right or she, you know, and does all these other things. And that came back. But you know what the number one thing was for toxic leadership? An individual who was a careerist, out for himself and risk of verse. They saw that as a toxic leader because they felt like that he came before everybody else. He would make decisions that were best for the mission and the unit. And so they felt like the environment that they operated in was one that was unsafe and would not allow them to do the things they need to do. You mentioned just the difficulty of asking people to go into combat. You know, you had to put people in harm's way. What advice did you give the soldiers on how to deal with that? Well, I'm not sure I ever gave many very specific advice on how to do it. But what I would tell them is, what's a fine line, what are the fine lines you have as a senior leader is, you know, I still want to press. And it's making sure that I try to tell the story what's going on by still maintaining I have lots of confidence in the young men and women that are doing the mission . And I believe in who they are and what they're doing. So there's two things about soldiers going into combat. As long as they believe they're doing it for the right reason. So I tell them one thing is this is why we're doing this. And this is why it's really important. And you're going to make a real difference when you do this. The second thing is you're the best trained military unit in the world. There's no better. We train you better than anybody else in the world. So you're better. But what it takes is attention to detail. And what you can have is complacency. And so what I really talk about is that. So it was more about telling them this is why it's so important. You're really good at what you do. That will limit them. That'll mitigate some of the risks that you face going into combat. And that's how I intended it. Because I find if you start dwelling on, well, you know, what's in your really tough situation. They start feeling sorry for themselves. They start being feeling like, well, maybe we shouldn't be doing this. So as a leader, it's up to you to keep them motivated and understand why we're doing this. And if you do that, they'll be fine. I hear exactly what you're saying here. And you know, General, I know that your son Tony lost his arm in combat. How's he doing? I wanted to ask you. Oh, he's terrific. He's doing great. He actually works for JP Morgan. He lives up in Connecticut. And he's doing terrific. He's my inspiration, David. I've watched him. How he handled this was incredible. He never looked back. He decided early on that he's going to make do with what happened to him and he 's to do the best he can to make his life a successful. And he's gotten married. He has two kids. You know, and so you know, you make choices in life. His choice was I'm not going to allow this to bother me. And I'm going to move forward and be the best man I can be. And he's been inspirational to me. General, we have thousands of veterans going into the public sector each year. You know, what should our country be doing more of to help them succeed? Well, all they want is an opportunity, but you can't just give them the opportunity. You've got to prepare them for that opportunity. And so they can do anything. I mean, they have the traits of they show up on time. They're hardworking. They want to be successful. But you've got to prepare them for success. The one thing coming to the moment that they are used to people helping them to prepare and be ready to do whatever job they are. So can't just say, OK, here's a job where you go do it. You got to train them a little bit. You got to kind of help them to be prepared. And if you do that, they'll feel really more capable of doing it. What I found is I spent a lot of time in this area, frankly, since I've been retired. The issue is not veterans getting jobs. The issue is veterans keeping jobs. Normally, it happens as they pick a job and it's not the right one, which is OK . But they need somebody to help them then to either stay in the job they're in or figure out where should they go. So what I tell companies I'd like them to do is you got to track them. So when they come in, if they're not successful in the first year or so, it's just something else they can do. Why are they not being successful? Help them because they're good people. And they want to do the right thing. And I think if they get a little more help, they can do that. They have all the right characteristics you want as somebody who's in part of your workforce. Right. You know, this has been a fascinating conversation, General. And I want to have a little thumb with you with the like and round of questions here. You know, what are three words that best describe you? Oh, gosh, I would say committed, competent, and try to do everything with the highest character. But I have to say four and a team player. OK. What you get after 39 years of service I get for. OK, what's your biggest pet peeves? I call it careerism. But what I mean by that is somebody who puts himself above the unit and the mission. It just makes me angry when I run into it. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be and why? I always wanted to be a pitcher for the New York Yankees. Which is pretty good. For today, it'd be Garacole, I guess. That's a pretty good choice. What's your favorite general and why? George Marshall. Because of what he did, he sacrificed himself for the better of the country, not only as running the Army during World War II, but then becoming Secretary of State. What's something about you that few people would know? I was drafted in the 37th round of the Major League Baseball draft. Oh, wow, that's great. I thought it was what you what you get your masters in? Your engineering. That's pretty good too. You lived all over the world. What was your favorite place to live? It's Fort Ord, California. I was at the time and commander then Monterey Peninsula. I could have never afford to live on Monterey Peninsula unless I was in the Army of Fort Ord, California. I remember you sitting at our kitchen table talking to Wendy and I at Louisville. We were having breakfast. I remember you talking about your wife Linda. Tell us about the role her partnership has had with you and your success. What a lot of people don't realize is it's changing a little bit today. My wife didn't work, but I put that a very different. I commanded so long and so many different positions. She took on a responsibility of ensuring that our families are taken care of. And frankly, in my last three or four jobs, I would say she was like a CEO developing programs across the broad spectrum of the Army and making sure that soldiers and families were taken care of. And she did this while raising a family a lot of times on her own because I was gone. An incredibly strong woman, capable. I couldn't have done what I've done without her. I tell everybody when I was in command during combat, she attended over 500 memorial services on her own by herself. And she'd deal directly with every family. She just knew how to do that. She organized women and men spouses in a way that would allow them to support soldiers and their families while we were deployed. And she did much more than that, but she's a credible woman. That's awesome. It's great to have a partner like that. You're an avid reader. I understand you have a reading list. What are you reading right now? Well, I'm reading about, I don't care if I'm entitled, but it's about Churchill and the speeches he made in the US following World War II. And it talks, it's about recognizing the iron curtain and what Russia is doing. And he's trying to make everyone aware of very controversial speeches. One he made in Missouri, one he made in New York. Very interesting about the times and what he was trying to do. It's really a great book. I'm almost finished with it. It's very, very good. I remember you telling me when we had a discussion that you're like a pattern thinker. You like to read and then try to apply what you learned from the history of others into what you're doing. Yeah. There's one book, there's a book I read four, I don't know, 50 years ago, whatever it was. When I was a second one, it's called Once an Eagle. I'm not the ever heard of it. Pretty famous book. What it's about is it's about it traces two military leaders who grow to be colonels in the army, but it traced them to their career through peacetime and wartime. One is a careerist and one is not. And I read that as a second lieutenant and it shaped me as I went forward. I hated the title, The Individual Who's A Criticist, his name is Courtney Mass engale, a perfect name for that. And for me, I always think back to that book. I always used to think back to that book and what he came across like and how we should never want to come across. And I've read it three times over my life and it's a big book, but it's just such a great book about understanding how it's important to be part of something bigger than yourself. And I just really enjoy it. Oh, I'm going to get that, check it out and learn from it. That'd be fantastic. Well, General, thank you so much for taking the time to do with me today. It's awesome. And by the way, I want to tell you, and I'm not saying this, I love the book Oh Great One. Thank you. I love that book. And the reason is that I actually used it and I had some people read it, I made some people read it because it's about recognizing those who do things. It's about recognition. And sometimes we have people that do have to do a lousy job of recognizing what people are doing and their contributions. And that is so important as a leader is recognizing others. And so I appreciate you writing that book. I tell you what, getting recognized by you is a heck of a highlight. It's a great way to have a good day. So thank you. I don't know about you. I don't know many people that have advanced degrees in nuclear engineering and got drafted as a pro athlete. But with Ray, you got to pull it out of him. It's not even close to being at the top of his resume. And he doesn't talk about the things that he did. But you know, Ray is just that kind of an extraordinary guy. And he's an extraordinary leader. And he gave us the list of three traits we need to hold ourselves accountable to if we want to become a leader, people trust and want to follow. So let's break it down quickly. First, there's competence, just being good at your craft. Second, we need commitment, showing that you really want to be part of this thing that's bigger than yourself. And finally, the really big one, character that you hold yourself to doing the right thing even when it's hard. So this week, as part of your weekly personal development plan, write down those three words, competence, commitment and character. Then reflect on this past week. Can you recall specific circumstances where you showed each trait? Where are you strong? Where do you have an opportunity to improve? Keep those traits in mind. And I know you're going to take your leadership skills to the next level. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders become trustworthy by developing competence, commitment and character. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead, where every Thursday, you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be. Since we heard this podcast, General Ray Oderier and O passed away after a struggle with cancer. The general was obviously a great leader, obviously a great man, and he touched so many people and made such a fantastic, positive difference in so many people's lives . His legacy lives on. The thoughts that he has on leadership are timeless. The impact that he had on this world is enduring. I thank the general for his tremendous service to our country and appreciate everything he has done to make the world a better place. This episode is dedicated to General Oderier and his loving family and all those that had the privilege of serving under his leadership. [BLANK_AUDIO]