On What Got You There’s milestone 200th episode Sean talks with Chris Fussell who spent 15 years on U.S. Navy SEAL Teams and is a Partner at the McChrystal Group Leadership Institute.
He is the author of One Mission: How Leaders Build a Team of Teams, and a co-author of the New York Times bestseller Team of Teams.
Chris also served as Aide-de-Camp to Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal during McChrystal’s final year commanding a Joint Special Operations Task Force fighting Al Qaeda around the globe.
Since leaving active duty in 2012, Fussell has also served as a Senior Fellow for National Security at New America, sits on the Board of Directors for the Navy SEAL Foundation, is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and teaches at Yale University’s Jackson Institute.
If you want to know what it takes to lead and build teams then this is the episode for you!
03:45 Staying on Top of Your Game
Chris Fussell is a huge proponent of discipline in routine and a big believer in your “personal cocktail”
- The personal cocktail is what makes others or what they’re working on, work
For Fussell, he knows how much sleep he needs to be productive, the types of workout he needs, what distractions work and what don’t, leisure time, and so on
- Having the balance between all the things that make you work your best is key
12:30 – Culture and Legacy
Fussell attended Blair Academy where he was a part of one of the best wrestling programs in the country and he was able to draw similarities later on between that and the SEALs
- “Everyone is hyper focused, understood that the stakes were high, and you felt like everyday when you walked in the wrestling room, if you didn’t bring your A game, then you are A) Going to get your teeth knocked in because someone else is going to bring their A game but B) You are letting down not just the team, but the legacy of the team.”
- With Blair Academy’s rich history, Fussell understood the importance of not letting the team down and damaging the legacy that had built up by all the wrestlers before him
Even among the SEALs and as a mentor, Fussell understood culture and the Legacy behind different parts of the SEALs
- Fussell mentored a young SEAL going through their BUD/S training and explained the importance of the trident, the warfare insignia, that he would eventually receive
- “Remember that’s not your trident. That’s part of a decades long community of practice and you are being welcomed into that tribe, and you now represent what that organization shows the world.”
- It’s important to know that if you ever do something to weaken what you represent, you weaken every aspect of what’s come before you
- “Remember that’s not your trident. That’s part of a decades long community of practice and you are being welcomed into that tribe, and you now represent what that organization shows the world.”
23:15 Confidence
With going through BUD/S, and many other careers and even professional sports, confidence is at the forefront of most of your actions and is constantly adjusting
- “Your confidence going into BUD/S is physical and mental. I won’t quit.”
- Fussell understand that it’s important to have the physical strength, but the SEALs are still looking for people who have the grit and mental toughness to get through their programs
Being a SEAL becomes an area where you are able to have pattern recognition of those who are going to quit and “ring the bell” and who is going to persevere
This pattern recognition helps create “white space” of absolute confidence in what you’re doing, your situation, or whatever your actions are
- The first time Fussell jumped out of an airplane for freefall training, he obviously was trying to keep calm but of course this is an intense situation
- An experienced SEAL came over their radios running through instructions, very calm and clear, unlike Fussell, because he had the experience and the confidence
29:30 Self Trained Skills
Along with visualization and understanding pattern recognition, Fussell is a big believer in building things into your life that demand presence in the moment to be able to execute effectively
- These would be in scenarios like rock climbing, yoga, giving speeches, or other situations where you have to recenter yourself and your breathing and thinking
When using these self trained and easily transferable skills, being able to walk yourself through situations and be in the moment is a great asset to remaining calm and giving yourself the space you need to succeed
- “Putting yourself in the moment and walking through it multiple times, your body and mind think ‘I’ve been here before.’”
34:00 Nontransferable Skills
As a SEAL, physical toughness is a given. No one is going to show up without the strength needed to push
It’s the getting beaten down, facing harsh conditions, proving you have the grit to keep going that isn’t easy to teach or even to learn
- “It’s hard to interview for, it’s hard to test for. You wait for those moments where the pressure comes up and then you see quickly who has that and who doesn’t.”
Even at the McChrystal Group, these skills can only really be learned when their embedded into their tribe and when those skills are needed, they look to the leaders
- “Those that want to be associated with that brand, of course they’re going to look to their senior leadership.”
46:30 McChrystal Group
The McChrystal Group is essentially broken into three components: Analytics, Implementation, and Academy
- McChrystal Analytics
- They are the ones who understand the networks they are working with and how they will move forward
- There is going to be top down communication, but there is also networks within their company that they use to effectively maintain their trust and strategies to be effective and successful
- They are the ones who understand the networks they are working with and how they will move forward
- McChrystal Implementation
- From analytics, that information is taken to leaders within McChrystal to apply implementation thinking around communication structures, decision making authorities, etc.
- McChrystal Academy
- The academy is the one who takes that thinking and helps support the behavior change that’s necessary to support more effective, fast paced and transparent models
Within large organizations, McChrystal has found that it blends seamlessly and they focus on just one aspect within smaller organizations
57:00 Fussell’s Interview Question
“Describe the best organization or team you’ve ever been part of.”
- It might be your past company, your fraternity, your sports team, your college and so on
- What made it so great?
- What would you do to redesign it?
It helps identify those who constantly want to tweak and make things better to get the best results
- It could be that you have nothing to change and everything lined up perfectly, but Fussell is also looking for the people that can recognize the things that could be better to make the organization as a whole better
01:03:00 Lessons Learned from Fussell’s Brother in Law
Fussell’s brother in law was fortunate with his academic and career circumstances, but it was never something that got to his head
Fussell was in the military but still relatively young and asked, “How did you not end up falling into the pitfalls that 9 out 10 people, or more than that, in your life circumstances would have fallen into?
- “I think I realized at an early age that I would pay consequences for all my actions, and they might be good consequences or bad, but they’re going to be completely up to me because I didn’t have a safety net.”
- Fussell grew up with knowing he could make mistakes because of his upbringing as a kid, but that conversation with his brother in law helped shift his focus in understanding all his actions
It’s one of those things that are also to test for and interview for, but when someone has this mindset and knows that they have to make things right when the time comes, those are the people they want on their team
01:07:45 Mentorship
“Look up, look left and right, and look down. Always have people above you that you’re trying to emulate and learn from. Always be looking for peers that are doing better than you are. Share that with them and learn from each other and always look down at the people who are doing the job that you were doing last year that are doing it better.”
- With mentorship, you should be able to look in these directions and seen where your mentorship has made a difference
Fussell has come to see the importance all across the board where you can seek help from others and vice versa
- “Keep looking for those relationships and paying it forward”
