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Unstoppable Teams 101
Alden Mills
Hello, I’m Alden Mills and I’m here to talk to you about unstoppable teams 101. Today I’m going
to go through 10 big ideas, but I’m going to chunk them into two categories. The first category
is called leading yourself. And that’s going to have four big ideas. The first one is under, I’m
going to call, the first thing they teach you in Navy Seal training. Number two, X division.
Number three, the platform. Number four, mirror effect. The second category is leading
others. That’s going to have six big ideas. Number one, the single most important emotion.
Number two, three, four and five are going to be defining the care loop. They are connect,
achieve, respect, empower. And number six is the 10 X advantage. And if you stick around, I’m
going to give you a bonus for the end of this. But it’s a surprise. All right, so what are we
talking about here? It’s unstoppable teams. And teams today is something that’s such an
overused term, that I think it’s important to call this master class out for what it is.
Because so many people use the word team like, hey, let’s team up and go get a cup of
coffee. Hey, let’s team up and go do the car pool. No, that’s a group. Almost everything that
people are involved in today are groups. And the huge distinction between a group and a
team at its highest level has to do with moving from the human selfishness to selflessness. It
may sound like a small movement, but it’s a huge bridge from getting people to focus on
themselves, to getting them to focus on something much larger than themselves. When you
can get people to shift from their personal wants and desires to something that’s greater than
themselves, then we’re moving in the direction of a team. And that’s what I want to talk to
you about today. But to do that, we first have to learn to lead ourselves. So I want to start
with a story, kicking off with our first big idea. And that story is when I first showed up to
Navy Seal training. To get there on average takes about two years to enter in to the front door
of Navy Seal training in Coronado.
And once you get there you’ll walk around the corner and there’s this creature. It looks like
the creature from the Black Lagoon. It’s a Hollywood movie set caricature from that 1960s
horror film, and it’s got a little wooden plaque hanging around its neck. And it says, “so you
want to be a frog man?” Frogman is a World War II term for what’s now a Navy Seal today, that
operates in the sea, air and land environments. And to get to see the creature, you had to
have done a physical training test, push ups, pull ups, sit ups, a swim and a run three times.
And once you show up to get to see the creature, they don’t even put you in Navy Seal
training. They put you in this pre phase training and let you marinate for about seven weeks.
And at the end of that pre phase training where they teach you some basic things like how to
be a sugar cookie, running into the water, rolling around in the sand afterwards, a highly
uncomfortable experience when you spend the rest of your day coated in sand.
At the very end of that pre phase training, they make you do this PT test one more time. And
right before they do it, they brought my class out in front of the creature. And as they
brought our class, which had about 122 candidates in it, this character comes out from first
phase. Navy Seal training is broken into three phases. Very creatively called first phase,
second phase, and third phase. And this character, he walked with a limp, and because I can’t
move that much, you’re just going to have to think of this person walking with a limp. And he
had a deep Southern accent. And he walks right in front of that creature and he says, “class
181, gather around here. I won’t take up much of your time. I just want to let you in on a
little secret. Y’all interested to know the secret to making it through Navy Seal training?” We
were all like, oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we want some of that. “Come on in a little closer
then.” And we were like kids to a campfire, around the creature.
And then he says, “you know, it ain’t complicated. You see, you just have to decide how much
you’re willing to pay. See now, I know for a fact, 80% of you ain’t going to be willing to pay the
price. You know why?” We’re standing there, I don’t know. “Cause you all want to be a Seal on
a sunny day. And that’s a problem, because your country, she don’t need Seals on sunny days.
She needs them on scary days, when it’s cold, and it’s dark, and it’s wet, and that crack over
your head, that ain’t thunder. That’s somebody want you dead. How bad you want to be a Seal
on that day? Now I know for a fact, 80% of you ain’t going to be willing to pay the price. You
know why? Because there’s a conversation that goes on between here and here. And
somewhere in this conversation you’re going to decide if you really want to pay that price.
And that’s my job. You see, it’s my job to create that conversation between here and here.”
Instructor Memphis, he gives us that conversation.
Some guy, by the way, he had a half a butt, that’s why he was limping so much, because he
had his left buttocks blown off by a rocket propelled grenade in Vietnam. And he loved to tell
us that he could do more with his half butt then we could do with our full butts. But the point
that he was making is the point that I want to kick off with big idea number one. It’s that it’s
the conversation inside of you between your head and your heart. I call it the whiner and the
whisperer. Lead that conversation first, and that sets up a cascading effect of helping you
inspire and lead others to something greater than yourselves. Now, you know the whiner,
right? The whiner. What’s the whiner say? “How do you know you can do this? You know how
hard that’s going to be? Oh, I don’t have the time of day for that. Oh.” Complain, complain,
complain. Right? The brain only knows what it knows, and it loves to keep us in the comfort
zone. And then there’s the whisperer What’s the whisperer say?
“Get up. Try again. You got this. Try it differently. Keep going.” That’s the voice you want to
find, and you want to focus in on. So remember, the very first step in creating an unstoppable
team is big idea number one. It’s the conversation, and leading the conversation between the
whiner and the whisperer. Because very soon it’s going to bring you to the second big idea.
The second big idea is what I call X division. And one of the biggest conversations they create
in Navy Seal training happened for me in the sixth week of training. In the sixth week we
went through hell week. Hell week is where it starts on a Sunday evening and goes until a
Friday afternoon. And they give you a total of about three to three and a half hours of sleep
for the entire week. And during that time, our lead instructor of the very first night was a guy
with a thick Boston accent. We’ll call him Instructor Boston. And Instructor Boston, he was
talking to me, because I was the class leader. And he’d say, hey, Anson Mills, why don’t you go
get in that water?”
It’s the middle of the night. “With your class. It’s time from my first quitter.” And he’d walk
outside. He goes, “yeah go ahead, walk out a little further.” And he’s got this electronic
megaphones slung over his shoulder and he’s talking into a little handset. “About face. Link
arms, take seats. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’s guys are gonna sit out there until one of
you’s breaks ranks, walks right here in front of me and says the magic words. You know what
they are. I quit.” That was the very beginning of two hours of what was called surf torture.
And he put us out in that cold water in the middle of the night, where you can’t see the sun.
And all you can end up focusing in is how cold that water is. And when you’d hear that next
wave. You could hear the wave before you could even see them. It was so dark out. And the
wave would just kind of, you could feel that suction just … And it was winter time,
December. And the wave height was around six to seven feet.
And we’d be singing our song, she’s a grand old flag, she’s a high flying flag, and we were
getting pounded. And he just kept going back and forth, until finally he got frustrated and he
brought this doc over in this big ambulance. He’d say, “doc, come on over here. I want to
teach them about hypothermia.” And doc, not a Navy Seal He’s cold. He’s got his collar up and
his gortex hood on. And he says, “doc tell them about hypothermia.” The doc goes, oh, it’s a
clinical drop, which is a four degree drop in your body core temperature from 98.6 to-” “Yeah,
that’s great doc. How long they got to be in the water before they get hypothermia?” Doc
looks at a chart, and he comes up with an answer. “Oh, that would be about 18 and a half
minutes.” “18 and a half minutes? You know how long you been in the water?” And he looks at
his watch. “You been in the water for 22 minutes. Doc, tell them about the symptoms.” And he
starts telling them about the symptoms.
What do you think happens when he tells us about the symptoms. Well, we get them, right? I
mean shaking unconvulsively. We start shaking. Our focus totally shifts inward. We start
focusing in on ourselves. We stop singing our song. And now we start asking each other, “hey
man, you got hypothermia. Do I have hypothermia? Oh, what’s that mean?” And then, he
lowers the boom. Doc, tell them, what happens if they stay in the water longer?” The doc
looks at him like, I don’t even need to look at a chart for that. “You could die.” “Say it again,
doc.” “You could die.” “Come on, you really want to die for this?” Got them. Petty Officer
Smith walks out of the water, stands right in front of him, puts his head down, and he says
those magic words. And then Instructor Boston taps him on the back says, “hey, take him to X
division.” And he said to our class, “class 181 you listen to me real clearly. Do you think you
get anything for quitting? You get nothing. The only thing you ever have is each other. That’s
what this is all about. Working with each other.”
And that’s the beginning of hell week. But the reason I’m telling you that, and leading you up
to that story was Petty Officer Smith was sent to a place called X Division. X Division is the
one place that actually makes Navy Seal training easier than being in a civilian environment
starting your own business. Now, of course Seal training is way more physically demanding.
And in many cases there’s some mentally demanding areas too. But the big emotional
challenge is that in X Division, all the quitters are removed. All the whining voices are literally
physically removed, and they’re not allowed to speak to anybody that’s still in the arena.
That’s still suffering and still trying to make it. And that’s why it’s big idea number two.
Because X Division isn’t just for Seal training. It’s for anybody that’s starting off to look to do
something bigger than themselves, and create others to join him in that unstoppable team.
And so, when you start thinking of an X Division, I want you to start thinking internally about
an X Division of these two voices that come back and forth at you. The whiner and the
whisperer.
You need to start taking that whiner and putting it away. You will never get rid of the whiner.
We have those passengers our whole way through. But once you start to learn to put the
whiner in its own little X Division in its own little box, then you can start helping others be
aware of that conversation as well, and taking their whiners, putting them away, and getting
the focus of what the real task at hand is. Now the real task at hand and why I told you those
first two out of Navy Seal training, because the whole thing about Navy Seal training isn’t
about giving you any kind of fancy weaponry or techniques. It’s about working on your
platform. Which is big idea number three. Your platform, as Instructor Boston would call it,
your weapons platform. You ain’t no good to us if you can’t take care of your own platform.
Now, I call it the action platform. But your platform is made up of three things. The mental,
the emotional, and the physical. Or from the action point of view, how I think, how I feel, and
how I act.
That’s our trinity. Those three come together to make something happen. They become and
form our actions and attitudes. And your actions and attitudes are what are going to initially
set the table for building the team. How I think. You know about the growth mindset versus
the fixed mindset, and how damaging a fixed mindset can be. Where, oh, that’s my limit.
That’s as far as I can go. Or the growth mindset, hey, wait a minute. Let’s look for the silver
lining in this. Maybe there’s another way to do this. Which one do you think is better if you’re
trying to create a team to do something that is really difficult, that people are not even sure
could ever be done before. Fixed mindset is no place for an unstoppable team. Then, there’s
the emotional component, the positive or the negative in its basic forms. I’m not asking you to
be the super cheerleader, but I am asking you to keep your focus on the silver lining and
staying in that positive realm. The negative is what can be so destructive.
In SEAL Team they had a place for that negativity, and it was called Old Misery. A huge log
with the name burned into it called Old Misery, with a saying underneath, misery loves
company. You want to remove those bad miserables and stay focused on the positive. The
third element of your action platform is the physical component. Trust me when I tell you,
they all come together with your physical stamina. You are only as good as what you have the
stamina to create. If you start to blow off sleeping, eating, or moving, over time, it’s going to
make a direct impact on the chemicals that are released in your brain and for your emotions.
If you’re not careful, you can spiral very quickly into depression, if you don’t take care of your
body.
Now, I’m not asking you to go out and be an Ironman triathlete, or an Ironwoman triathlete,
but I am saying, that’s the trinity, and keep balance on all three of those. Watching what kind
of good sleep you get. Watching the good foods for you. And, doing exercise that keeps the
body in shape, so you can keep going because you’re going to need a lot of energy in corralling
a whole bunch of different mindsets to build an unstoppable team.
Now, once you know those three things about your platform, then we can get down to the
mirror effect. I saved mirror effect for the fourth and final piece of the first chunk of leading
yourself because that big idea, the mirror effect, is what this is all about. You, as a person, as
the leader, reflect your intentions on everybody else. In its simplest form, show up late for a
meeting, what do you think is going to happen to other people over time? They’re going to
start showing up late for the meeting. Focus on something that is important to you, and if it’s
not important to the rest of the team, they’ll shift their focus to where your focus is. That’s
what leading is all about, is you have to think of it as setting that example. Teams are a direct
reflection of their leaders. So, when you think about the first three ideas, which is, the
number one thing they teach you in SEAL training, about that conversation and leading the
conversation, ex-division, putting that conversation in the right place and focusing in on the
whisper that gives you the right information, and your platform. You have all three of those
put together, and then the mirror is going to shine bright and will start to help you in
attracting the people you’re looking for to build the unstoppable team.
Now, speaking of the unstoppable teams, let’s move to the second section, which is leading
others. The first big idea in leading others is the single most important emotion. To get there,
let me tell you a brief story. Petty Officer Michael Monsoor, it’s September 2006, he’s on a
routine patrol in Ramadi. He’s got a couple of Navy SEAL snipers with him and a handful of
Iraqi special forces that they’re training up so they can start taking over the defense of their
city in Iraq. What started as a routine, quickly turned into a combat situation. They came
under enemy fire. They scramble up onto a roof top of a second story of a small building.
Michael, as a sniper support rifleman, helps the snipers set into their position. If you know
anything about snipers, they have a very closed, focused vision, so they need somebody
checking behind them, to their left and to their right, while they can go to work. Michael took
the Iraqis and moved them off towards the back, so they could stay out of the way of the fire
fight. He’s calling on the comms, while at the same time, he’s guarding the exit.
Over a period of time, while he’s trying to get some more help in, and they’re engaging the
enemy, Michael yells out the one word you never want to hear in a closed space, grenade. A
combatant threw a grenade up, hit Michael in the chest, and it rolled right over by the exit.
He had about two seconds right then and there to think about what he was going to do. What
do you think he did? He did something that we all thought we might do, but he did the most
selfless thing that anyone could ever do in the combat field. He jumps on that grenade. He
covers the grenade with his body. Now, why would he do that?
And by the way, that’s not unique to SEAL Team. In every branch of service, you’ve heard of
somebody doing something selfless like that, sacrificing themselves for others. There is no
standard operating procedure for jumping on a grenade. There’s no bonus that you get if you
jump on a grenade. No. The reason Michael did that is that he cared so much for everybody
else on his team that the idea, the very idea of letting them down, was worse than dying.
That’s what the single most important emotion is, and that’s what is the foundation for
building an unstoppable team. It’s care. Care becomes the building block, that over time,
what I call care squared, turns into love. But, it all starts with care.
Teddy Roosevelt, I think, has said it best when he would say, “Nobody cares how much you
know until they know how much you care.” That’s what this is about. You see, the big idea for
this second section is all about care. How do you show somebody else how much you care?
Well, that’s what these next four big ideas are all about. You see, at the premise, showing
how much you care is what I call a care loop. Think of it like a flywheel. They spin, and they
connect, and they can spin even within themselves. But, the second big idea that kicks off
the care loop is called connect. When you’re first starting off and you’re building out a team,
people connect with each other. Why do they connect? What’s the point of connect? The
whole point is to build trust. Trust starts with care. Trust, it comes from three different things
that I call the three Cs of connect. They are, communication, credibility, and commitment.
Now, just briefly on communication. You’re going to use your platform for communication. Did
you know that 55% of how you communicate is your body language. Are you leaning in on the
person? Are you looking at them in the eyes? Do you drop to a knee when you’re talking to
somebody that’s at the desk? Do you stand up when somebody comes in to meet you in your
office? That simplest form, before you said anything else, represents a huge portion of your
communication. They say on average, 55% of all communication first starts with body
language. The next 38%, tone. How do you express yourself? Do you have vocal variety or do
you kind of mumble? And this is what I want to do, and yeah, let’s go for it. Hooyah. Or, do
you say, hey, let me tell you how exciting this is going to be? It’s so great to have you. That’s
critical. And, the last 7%, it comes down to what you’re saying. But, if you don’t get body
language and tone right, people are going to tune you out when it comes to what you want to
say.
Now, credibility. Credibility is made up of some key things like accountability. Are you
accountable for your actions? Are you trustworthy? Do you have integrity? And, do you have
what it takes in the proficiency of your job? Now, that one, at the very end, the proficiency,
there are many time we’re thrust into leadership positions and we are tasked with leading
others that are way more proficient at their job than we are. I’ve run into that my entire life.
So, that’s the least important on the credibility spectrum. The most important on the
credibility spectrum and the simplest way is, do you say what you’re going to do? Do you mean
what you say? I have been in SEAL Team, in every platoon I’ve ever led, almost everybody in
that platoon was way more experienced than I was. You have to be willing to reach and learn
from others, and you’ll build more credibility from that.
Now, the third C of connect is commitment. You can have all the credibility in the world, all
the ability to communicate, but if you’re not fully committed, how do you think you’re going
to expect everybody else to be fully committed on your team? Like they all say, “It’s a team
sport.” Building out a team requires boatloads of commitment. And, somebody’s got to set the
tone for how much they’re willing to pay on the commitment level.
A quick review, the three Cs of connect are, communication, credibility, and commitment.
Now, moving on to the third big idea under leading others is achieve. Achieve is what a team
is all about. You see, achieve sets direction. Teams come together to do something specific.
And, real teams are designed to go after something that’s much greater than themselves. I’m
not talking about walking from dealing with a little project, and doing a timeline on it, and
just going from one thing to the next. I’m talking about achieving something that most people
don’t think could even be achieved. Maybe it’s something in sport, where you want to go and
become the winningest team in history, or maybe it’s something in business, where you’re
launching a product that’s new to the world that no one’s every seen before, something that
requires a lot of faith in each other to go past anybody else’s expectations.
Now, I call it the five As of achieve because when you start achieving, it’s not a straight line.
It’s another series of slinky spirals, that hopefully are going up or they’re going down,
depending on how you’re executing on achieving, and depending on how much trust you’ve
built on. Because how much people are willing to achieve are going to be directly dependent
on how much you’ve done in building trust through connection. You see, the five As of achieve
are, aspire, assume, assess, assure, and appreciate.
Now, I’m not going to spend a lot of time on each of those. But, the first one, aspire, really
picks up where you left off with connect. Rallying people to say, here’s what we’re going after
and why it’s important, not just to you, but more importantly to them. You see, you want to
connect with them, not just mentally, but emotionally, and that requires aspiration. Getting
them to envision what that outcome will feel like and what kind of impact that will be for
them and the people around them. From there, you’re going to do something that most
people really make a mistake on when they lead, and you’re going to let go. You’re going to
assume to a level that they know what they’re doing, or at least give them wide enough
boundaries to go try. There’s nothing worse than somebody stands over somebody like a hawk
and micromanages them. Start to micromanage, and you’ll crush the creativity. You don’t have
to worry about it.
The reason you don’t have to worry about it is, the third A of achieve is called assess. You’ll do
weekly or maybe it’s bimonthly check-ins with team, but it’s not checking in to see what
they’ve done wrong, it’s assessing the overall team’s progress. Assessing is about giving
everybody that perspective and letting them know, hey, we’re making headlines. We’re moving
forward. Or, here’s what we’ve learned, and don’t do this again because we don’t need to
relearn that failure.
Then, from being able to assess, you’ve got to assure because there will be lots of times
where you’ll dip down into that valley while you’re going through and it’s just failure, after
failure, after failure. By the way, I have failed way more than I have ever succeeded. Having
somebody that puts their arm around you, looks you in the eye and says, “Hey, it’s alright. We
just learned another way not to do it, but tomorrow, it’s going to be better. We’ll figure that
out.” Right? That’s what the leader can do, and getting them to assure that we’re on the path,
to keep moving, or maybe we’ve got to pivot and go in a different direction, but, it’s a key
element of starting the achieving process.
The final piece, again, these don’t happen all at once, and sometimes they go out of place,
but the final piece is appreciate. Appreciate, not just the person or the team, but appreciate
what they’re going through. Are you appreciating what they’re dealing with when they leave
every evening to go home? Do you know enough about their background to know that, hey,
this person’s got Type I Diabetes? We’ve got to give this person a break. They’ve got this
medical malady. Or, maybe somebody’s having a hard time at home. Do you know what they’re
dealing with outside of the confines of the team that you’re building? Those five As of achieve,
I’m going to go over them one more time, just briefly. They start from the top, aspire,
assume, assess, assure, and appreciate, which takes me to big idea number four, and that’s
respect.
Once you’ve built out trust, and you’ve set direction, so you built trust with “connect,” and
you’ve set direction with “achieve.” You’re now starting to move into a new phase of team
building. This is a critical phase, and that’s respect, but it’s not respect like you just think of
like, “Well, you’re a human, and I’m a human, let’s respect each other.”
No, this is mutual respect. And why do you want mutual respect? What’s the point of real
respect? Is it just to make everybody feel soft and cuddly? No. No, no. The real reason of
respect is to get people willingly to contribute.
You see, respect leads to contribution, and what you really want, and I would say this to my
teams all the time, “Hey, when you’re out in the middle of the night going to the bathroom, I
want you thinking about this problem! Help us figure this out!”
No, real respect is that when somebody speaks, everybody listens. They don’t just jump to a
conclusion and say, “That’s a terrible idea!” That’s what respect is all about. It’s about
creating everybody on the team to be contributors, and that’s a hard place to get to because
a lot of people are scared.
A lot of people have that conversation, the one in their head saying, “Oh, no, no, no. The last
time I did that, people laughed at me, they made fun of me for my stupid idea.” But that
very stupid idea could be the exact idea that your team needs to find success.
Now, there are three Rs to respect. The first one is “realize,” second one is “recognize,” and
the third one is “require.”
Realize. Realize that respect comes from two places. First respect comes from authority, from
your position. “Congratulations, you’re now the VP.” You’re the CEO, you’re the founder, you’re
the general, you’re the lieutenant, whatever your rank is, that authority will get you respect
depending on where you’re operating, anywhere from, if you’re in SEAL team, about a minute,
to maybe a month.
Or, you can get respect from the place you really want it from: from your actions. Those are
the only two places respect comes from: authority, and actions. The respect you’re after is
from your actions, and where you do think your actions come from?
Your action platform? Remember? That’s why these things are … they build on each other.
From your ability to commit, from your credibility, from your communication, from doing
what you say you’re going to do, for listening to other people and honoring their ideas.
And then, recognize the fact that these actions are going to happen throughout and around
you, and you need to be able to discover individual people’s superpowers. Everybody’s got
something that can add to that team. Recognize that, and find it, and celebrate it.
The more people get honored and recognized for their own, individual contributions, the
more they’re going to be willing to give.
And the final piece, is “require.” You have to require this. Respect isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a
requirement. You can have trust and set direction, but if you don’t have respect, you’re not
going to get into the unstoppable team category.
That brings me to the next spot, and that’s “empower.” Empower is the fifth big idea in
leading others. Empowering is about developing owners, owners that everybody feels
responsible in the team, everybody’s looking forward. They’ve now shifted their focus to
worrying about themselves, to thinking about how they can help this team go to the next
level. And the three Es of empower, educate, enable, engage.
As a leader, I often say, “To lead is to serve, to serve is to care.” And if you truly care, you
will educate your people to be better than you. You will educate them in every different
facet that you can find for them. Sometimes they’re not even going to like the education.
Sometimes they’ll say, “Oh, my brain is full!” Well, you’re going to have to inspire them, and
aspire them to be better than when they first came to you, because that’s part of a leader’s
job: helping them go beyond what they originally thought was possible.
And after you start educating them, then enable them. Give them tools to help them
succeed. Nothing says, “I care about you,” more than someone that says, “Here, I’m helping
you get to that success level.” That’s what your job is.
People often say, “Oh, leaders, I don’t want to be a servant leader.” That’s redundant. All
leaders serve, great leaders serve, and if you’re truly serving, you’re caring. And after you’ve
helped that enablement, engage! The more you engage with them and coach them, mentor
them, get them to stand on your shoulders and go beyond!
And then, guess what happens? Eventually, your team will achieve that obstacle, and they will
get that opportunity, and they’ll get the achievement that you’re after, and they’re going to
break apart, and they’re going to take what you taught them, and they’re going to develop
their own care loop, and build out their own teams.
As a leader, that’s the greatest gift you can ever receive, is somebody taking some of the
actions that you’ve done, and gone and emulated it, and taken care of others; because care is
so important. We’re wired as humans to reciprocate with care. We’re wired.
Somebody opens the door for you, what do you do? You turn around, and open it for the next
person. That’s the same model of the care loop. There’s very few people in the world that
don’t get care, like a psychopath. You know?, the amygdala doesn’t fire there, so they don’t
get the emotional thing.
But once you start embracing the care loop, people will start daring for you. First, you’ve got
to dare, you’ve got to dare to go beyond and give more of yourself so they’ll start to accept
you, and start caring back. But once you do that, they’ll start daring for you, and that’s
moving from being selfish to selfless, when they start daring, because they know you’ve got
their back. And that’s what it’s all about in building an unstoppable team.
Now, I did say there was six big ideas under leading others, and the sixth one is about what I
call the “10X Advantage,” because once you’ve started developing your team, and you may
think of your team as your specific teammates.
There are actually three Cs out there. The three Cs in the team. The contributors, the
coworkers or customers, and the community. And I want you to start thinking of a team as
anybody that supports your team in some direct, or indirect way.
When I was building out my business with Perfect Fitness, some of my teammates were my
UPS, and my shipping and logistics, external suppliers. They were people in my communities,
where we ended up donating units to every ship in the Navy. I looked at them as part out of
our team. I looked at police officers, and first responders like firemen as part of the team.
Every customer that ended up purchasing our product, we viewed as a team member.
And when you start thinking in that way, and expanding the care loop not just to the people
right around you, guess what happens? They do the same thing, and that’s when a forcemultiplying effect occurs, and you become a force multiplier, where a small company, like
mine, that started off with just a handful of people could go out, and have such a dramatic
growth rate, and take on the biggest and the best in the industry, because we were
unstoppable in our care for each other, for our customers, our community, and those that
contributed with us.
Now, I did say there was a bonus. So I gave you those 10 big ideas, and before I give you my
bonus, I’ll give you a little recap. Remember, two chunks, leading yourself. Right? What did we
go through? I went through the very first thing they taught you in SEAL team, that’s the
conversation.
X Division, your platform, and the mirror effect. Then, when it came to leading others, we
talked about the single most important emotion: care. The care loop, which was the next
four: connect, achieve, respect, empower. And then, finally, the sixth one was the 10X
Advantage.
Now for the bonus. My single most terrifying moment in SEAL training, was doing my first
military free-fall jump. I’d done lots of static line, they call them “dope on a rope,” some
professional rigor, packed my parachute, I’d click up, I’d jump out.
Many times they’d call it a “night water jump,” that’s when you close your eyes, and you pee
in your pants, even if it’s broad daylight. That’s the night water jump. Right? Most of us are
instinctively scared of heights. But military free-fall is a different animal, because now I had
to pack my own parachute.
And the reason that sounds terrifying, or maybe it doesn’t sound terrifying to you, but it was
terrifying to me, is that I was that guy who went to the Naval Academy who failed almost
every room inspection.
I couldn’t get the quarter to bounce right on my bed, I couldn’t make my socks smile, couldn’t
get my towels. Basically, I sucked at folding. No, no. I suck at folding, I know this. And now,
for the first time in my life, folding is going to be directly responsible for my life.
I had these 15 folds just right. Three weeks: folding, folding, folding this parachute. I was
totally terrified of doing this first jump, because I had to pack my own parachute. So here it
is: the day of this jump, I packed the parachute, put it away.
The next morning, they wake you up at three o’clock in the morning, you’re jumping in
Arizona, it’s … going to jump right at first light. You come in, and they, like, “Oh, did you
sleep well?” I’m like, “No, I didn’t sleep at all. It was terrible!” Right?
You’re just totally thinking about the worst-case scenario, which is an awful worst-case
scenario when you’re jumping at 14000 feet. I put the chute on, get load up under the C130,
they take you for about 20 minutes of flying around, and then there are these two lights.
There’s a red light, and a green light. And once the ramp goes down, the red light goes on.
Bright red light. Being in the Clydesdale Division, that’d be the 220-pound division, I get to
jump first. Master Sergeant from the Air Force comes out to me.
It’s really loud when that ramp goes down: 14000 feet. And he says, “Sir! Stand up!” “Oh, my
God. Here we go, here we go.” I stand up, “Back up to the ramp!” I’d move, but I can’t really
move, and not be in this camera with you here.
So I’m backing up to the ramp, “Sir! Put your heels over the ramp!” I’m like, “Oh, God!” And
I’m just looking straight at him, “Sir, look down! Pretty high, isn’t it?” That’s funny, real funny.
“Will you jump?” “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll jump.”
Light goes green, and I’m like, “Oh, okay, here we go,” I’m rubbing my hands, and my thighs,
and he goes, “ Sir, I have one last thing to tell you!” “What? What?” “You have the rest of your
life to figure out how to open your parachute, sir! Good luck!”
He pushes me out! I’m like, “I can’t believe he said that to me,” and I’m flying down, and he
comes flying down, we’re falling at like 120 miles an hour, and he looks at me, and he goes,
“Did you figure it out?” He’s laughing, lips are flapping in the air. “You have to pull this, sir! I
can’t do it for you! I’ll watch you!”
And it opens. I want to end you with that story for a couple of reasons. Number one: we are
all packing our own parachutes, and we got the rest of the life to pack those parachutes. And
you’re going to have to make a decision, if you want to make that jump or not.
You see, what’s really terrifying about making any of those jumps is you’re jumping into the
unknown, it’s something new. I have no idea how it’s going to pan out, but it was so important
to me to achieve that goal, to serve my country.
To do that, I was willing to jump through my fear. Building an unstoppable team can be a lot
like that. Being something different than maybe you were raised to be. Maybe you were
raised to say, “No, people work you.” Instead, they actually work with you. That’s what
unstoppable team leaders do, and you’re going to have to take that jump.
The last piece of that story is the real reason I told you this story, is how you leave the ramp.
You see, there’s three ways you can leave the ramp. You can be pushed, kicked, shoved, but
eventually, if you keep getting pushed, kicked, or shoved, the person who’s doing it is going to
get bored and be like, “Forget it. This isn’t working out for this person.” And the person
getting pushed, kicked, or shoved, doesn’t like it any more, either.
The second way, and I’ve seen this happen, somebody walk up to the ramp and just dip a toe
over. Try and get like six inches closer to earth. You know, like a little kid walking over a
diving board. No, no, the way they want you to go is head-first, all-in.
That’s what you have to do. Leading people is not a perfect science, but when you go all-in,
all the time, and you commit, and you keep trying, and you don’t give up, the right people are
going to join you, and that’s what it’s all about, but you’ve got to take the first jump.
You’ve got to take the first jump, and maybe the second, and maybe the third, and then
people will start going with you, and they’ll start going all-in, head-first, all the time. So get
after it, make up some big, hairy dreams, and form that team; because God knows, we need
all kinds of teams to solve all kinds of great opportunities we’ve got out there.
Good luck, and enjoy your jump.