 Cook, I'm the Stockdale Chair of Ethics here at the War College. Our next speaker is Dr. Clinton Longnecker. He is the Strahan Professor of Leadership and Organizational Excellence in the College of Business and Innovation at the University of Toledo. He is author of over 160 articles and papers in leading academic and professional journals. In the Navy, and now increasingly in the military, he's by far best known for an article he wrote a long time ago called the Bathsheba Syndrome, which I believe you've read. That article has a very interesting history in the Navy and eventually in the rest of the U.S. military. It first surfaced when a student at the major command course here on base drew our attention to it during a class over there, and we passed it to then President Christensen, I'm going to start with Wisecup, who passed it to CNO, who passed it to all the flag officers in the Navy, said, we think you ought to read this. And when the IG was investigating the various detachments for cause that have gone on in the Navy, there are two major studies of what's up with that. And the hypothesis that they settled on was that the Bathsheba Syndrome seemed to be the best explanation of why people who'd been squared away officers for 20 plus years were losing it in such spectacular ways in the Navy. So we invited Clint to come here about a year ago, I suppose, which I think was your first major military audience. But since then, he's been invited to Air University and to Carlisle, and has begun to learn more about the military, whereas his earlier work had primarily been with senior business executives. So you'll find him a very dynamic speaker, I'm sure he'll engage you, and it's my pleasure to introduce Clint. Thank you, sir. Well, folks, that's a privilege to be here today. I absolutely have great respect for all the work that folks in this room are doing for our country, and equally as important right now for your professions. And I greatly, I really want to say thank you very, very much, Dr. Schneider, for your terrific remarks. You spoke to me, I think you spoke to a lot of us, about a number of very, very important issues. This morning, we just looked at the big picture of the profession. Now we're gonna talk about you as an individual leader and some of the really important things that need to be part of your DNA, if you would. I have the privilege of speaking and working with business leaders across the country in virtually every industry in America, and every level of organizations, and the issues that people are up against right now, regardless of where you work, what you're doing are very, very similar. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go for a walk. Thank you for moving down. We're gonna have an intimate conversation about some rather important things, kind of like some of the discussion that you might have around the dinner table, around important, thought-provoking issues, if you would. So first order of business, thanks for looking out for the rest of us. I am, I think, the only non-military speaker in your lineup here, so thank you as a private citizen of America for the sacrifices that you make on behalf of the rest of us. It's a terrific thing to be able to come and spend time with you and invest time, effort, and energy with you, and it's been, as Martin said, very much a learning experience for me along the way. My father was a World War II veteran. My dad is 90 years old. He was part of the 81st Chemical Mortar Battalion that was assigned to the 21st Division, and they were there at D-Day, the second wave of Omaha Beach, and he is a great military historian himself. He's done a lot of different things, and he fought through the entire war, so I was raised the son of the greatest generation, and I have a great respect and appreciation for all the folks out there looking out for the rest of us, so thank you so very, very much. My dad, by the way, will be 90 on December 1st, and he's alive and kicking and still doing some great stuff, so I wanna say on behalf of the Long Necker family, thank you. I'm very fortunate to work at an institution. Many of you, we have some Ohio folks here. People from Ohio? Ohio folks out there? Very net buck eyes, very good. I saw Michigan people out there? Michigan folks, yeah, I'm really sorry about that, but we will talk a little slower for you folks this morning. Now, I'm just teasing. But the University of Toledo is, I teach in the College of Business and Innovation, and we heard Dr. Don talk about the importance of keeping on top of your game well, now it's no longer business administration, it's all about innovation. Our business school is one of the top 100 programs in America of 1650 plus programs listed in Business Week. We are one of 20 comprehensive universities in America that have all of the professional schools, from medicine to law to engineering, business, pharmacy, you could go on and on, but the catch here would be we're very much an innovative institution and it's a privilege for me to be able to come and share and represent my institution with all of you today. Recently we played Navy in a football game at the Glass Bowl and I put this in here. This is a MIA POW seat that we have now put in a very significant place in our football stadium. We dedicated it October 19th, when we played the Navy men's shipment at our institution and it holds special reverence. Our institution is very military friendly. We have a large ROTC program at our institution. We also do a tremendous amount of work with veterans organizations and a quick story, had an opportunity to meet Shoshana Chaffield, a captain in the United States Navy who was a aviator in the like. She came and spoke at the University of Toledo recently at a women's conference, did an awesome job. We took the money that companies had given to her for an honorarium. We've turned them back into a scholarship for Navy veterans at the University of Toledo. So our connections with the Navy continue to grow and thanks so much for having me this morning. So let's get started. Our goal right now is to get everybody to think and I have to apologize right now that I don't do well at a podium. I kind of roam around if you would. So here's what research shows about thinking. That most of us do something at least 50 times we don't have to think about doing it anymore. It just becomes rote and we kind of go through the motions. We do it almost automatically. If you talk to a psychologist they'll tell you there's something called a controlled information processing mode and an automatic information processing mode. And many of us have done something again and again and again and again. So we don't have to think we just go ahead and do. But professionals, Don, they think, don't they? They think long and hard and they look at each situation as being unique. So there's something to that, the importance and the power of thinking because a lot of researchers will tell you that if people are thinking they tend to make better decisions than if they just react in some way, shape or form that comes automatically. My theory as a student of leadership and as a Prachem addition for the last 30 years is very simple. That if you're in a leadership position being an effective leader in the 21st century for most people is an unnatural act. It requires doing something that doesn't come naturally for most of us if you would. So our superordinate learning objective for the next hour and some change is to get us to think about some important things. Now, most of us like to think about things moving up and moving in the right direction. So we have a room full of adult learners right now and many of you are embarking on an awesome educational experience this year. So we do a lot of research on how people learn and how to accelerate the learning process. So here we go. Most research and most academic experience is focused on information. Let's generate the right information. But here's what we found. The information is the foundation for what we're gonna do in leadership development but it really is not the game because if the person getting the information does not have motivation to do something with that information, then it's not gonna go anywhere. It's just gonna be information. And there's a leap between information and knowledge. Huge leap in many cases. Now let's say you get the information, you're motivated, now it's imperative that you would integrate it. There has to be integration. Integration is where the information now becomes part of your intellectual DNA, your emotional DNA. It becomes part of who you are. And after that takes place, now we're in a position for application. And isn't the end of the day, isn't it about applying the things we know to be true, that are the difference between an average person and a great performer? We have to apply the material that we know to be true. We're gonna come back to that before we're done today. And at the end of the day, if we go through this process, we will hopefully be able to get at something that's really important called transformation. Would you say it with me, everybody? Transformation. One more time. A little more enthusiastic, come on, give it to me. All right, I like it, thank you so much. Now, who feels manipulated? I'm just kidding. Put this in context, transformation. Now what we wanna see in a lot of environments is we're gonna give you information, now you go and be transformed. We think that the possession of information about ethical rules and regulations and legal rules and regulations and moral codes of conduct, information is what's gonna get people to be transformed into behaving differently as leaders. And we all know, for candid with each other, that it doesn't work that way. So if we wanna transform people and make people different, it is serious and it is heavy and it is intellectually diverse and it is intellectual heavy lifting for that to take place. And so what we wanna do today for an hour and some change here is talk about this process as it applies to the issue of ethics in the workplace. Now, I've been teaching at the University of Toledo for 30 years, I grew up in a family-owned business. My background is thick with business stuff and all different kinds of industries, as I mentioned earlier. So my career question has and continues to be, how can leaders get better results more quickly for their organization? Now, if you give anybody five years to figure something out, there's a good chance with help they'll be able to get through it. But what if you said to that person, you've got a quarter, maybe two, to figure this out and to move things forward? So the question will be, how do we accelerate adult learning? How do we accelerate getting better results for companies more quickly? And I think the military is in the exact same spot that the business world's in right now. There's no question about it. So in my background and in my travels, I just threw up a collection of logos from some of the companies we've done work for in recent years. But if you look, you've got manufacturing, you've got service, you've got financial services, you've got healthcare companies, you've got professional companies like SSOE and Architectural Engineering Company. Our drinking glasses are from Libby Corporation, which is headquartered in Toledo. People that make yard machine and cub cadet, lawn mowers are up there. And here's the question, what do these folks all have in common? What do they have in common? They're operating in ultimately competitive environments. They have all just gone through terrific pangs, growth pangs. Really big ones here. And they've all come off on the other side of things, out on the other side of things, better than they were when they went into it. What was the difference? What made the difference in these organizations? And the answer is leadership. Now, everybody's got a definition on leadership. I'd be willing to bet you if we had a little more time I'd ask you to write a definition of leadership. Yours would be better whenever I've come up with. Why? Leadership is people affecting the behavior of other people. And if we look at our definition, there's someone who influences others towards the achievement of goals and desired outcomes. An individual who causes others, and this is important, to do things that they might not otherwise do. And we all know that that can be good stuff. Help me now. It can be bad stuff. True. Follow with me. A person who demonstrates prowess in a given endeavor, so a person who's excellent in a discipline, whatever that discipline might be, is a leader. And then finally, someone who makes things happen and gets results with and through people. Key point, achieving performance improvement and outstanding results requires strong, effective, and I'm gonna go back and use the word that Dr. Don used. Trustworthiness. When we lose trust, we lose much. We lose much. It's incalculable the amount of influence that trust plays, but I'll share with you in just a second. Now, with that backdrop, we're gonna do something to get everybody up since this is a symposium and a conference, if you would. Conferences confer and symposiums we create, so I'm gonna ask everybody to look at the four questions on the screen right now. Question one, why do people wanna follow you? I want you to think of what you would consider to be the two primary reasons why people would want to follow you. Secondly, name one leadership skill that you're better at this year compared to last year. And what is that leadership skill and you wanna be real specific? Number three, name one leadership skill that you need to improve upon and or develop. And then finally, name your favorite all-time movie, okay? And there's a reason for that as well. So everybody has 30 seconds to prep your answers. Now, didn't that seem like a long period of time? 30 seconds. All right, here's how speed interviewing works. Everybody hops up out of their seat. You have 10 seconds to find someone that you do not know. You're going to face each other and each party will have 30 seconds to share their response to these four questions. Go in one way, you're gonna turn and you're gonna go the other way if you would, okay? You'll hear the whistle. You'll have 10 seconds to find a new partner. We will repeat this three times. Please hop out of your seats and find a partner right now in the next 10 seconds. Everybody up, out of those seats. Everybody up, up, out of those seats. Begin. How are you? Great to see you again. 10 seconds to switch, everybody. New partner, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10. Begin. Because you don't have time for movies. That's probably part of it. Switch, everybody. 10 seconds finding a new partner. Now let's go, everybody, everybody, hop up. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10. Begin. Great part, great part. Okay, everybody, the last one. Now I want you to look around there and pick out somebody you want to get to know. 10 seconds, last one. One, two, three, four, five, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10. Begin. How's it going? Nice to meet you. Good to meet you, sir. It's a real pleasure. Okay, everybody, grab a seat if you want. Thank you. Okay, as a person who had an opportunity to kind of observe, here's a couple of quick observations. The first time he did it with a person, it took a little bit longer and there was a little bit of sluggishness. You could see people kind of like, hi, how are you? And not knowing what to say too much. Second time around, it got a little easier, didn't it? Third time, it's pretty smooth. By the fourth time, you're like, yeah, here we go. You're telling the story very quickly, very well. Did anybody notice what happened to the sound levels in the room? Started here, second time louder. Alinda, thank you, professor. It got louder each and every time, why? Because people became more comfortable. How do adult learners learn? They learn by doing. So it starts with information. It starts integrating the questions and then applying them. And the catcher would be you gotta be motivated to do any of this stuff. Do we get any transformation? No, but it was a start at a very simple level about meeting people and saying hello, okay? Just to illustrate the point. We'll look at the content in just a minute. Now, in this context, Martin mentioned the fact that we've got a couple of books floating around out there and articles and stuff like that. There's two books and the important point to raise is this, the book called Getting Results. We published it in 2001. It's been translated into nine languages. It is a study of 2,000 high performance business leaders across every industry who were identified by their companies as high performers. And we made it very simple. What do you do to get superior results for your company? And one of the key cornerstones is leadership. These were people identified by their companies as being the best of the best. Here's what we found. We found they practiced the fundamentals of leadership more effectively than most other people and they have tremendous people skills. And oh, by the way, character plays a significant role in their ability to generate the trust for the things that they do. Secondly, anybody from Cincinnati? I know we've got Dr. Tom Gibbons as a Cincinnati boy. We've got some sincey people here. Skyline Chilly, Lone Star. Skyline, okay, thank you. All right, yeah, I had a feeling. Four ways, three ways. What are we talking about here? That's the local thing, if you would. Marvin Lewis wrote the introduction of the book. We used the metaphor of a football two-minute drill to tell the story about how organizations achieve rapid performance improvement, rapid change. Thousand companies that are part of the study. I bring it up in this context. The key, we can look at a leader in charge of a change initiative in an organization, look at their background, look at their recent track record, do some profiling on those folks and we can predict with fairly good competency how effective that change initiative is gonna be based on who the leader is. If you get the right leader in place, good things happen. We know this though, that leadership comes from a couple different places. Now in business terms, we talk about leader trustworthiness. And I think we heard Dr. Tom talk about that. That trust issue is gigantic in business circles. People talk about competency, interacting with character and that's what makes people feel trustworthy about their leadership. In my travels in military circles, a couple of people including Martin have helped me with this one though. The issue of professionalism times integrity. Those two things interacting or what create officer trustworthiness. And if you go back and look at the terms here, competency is possessing the requisite skill, the requisite talent necessary to successfully lead people and get desired results. That means you've got the skill set for the job at hand. Here's the key though, these days we can all find ourselves being dropped into positions, new things within our profession where we have to quickly ramp up our skill set because we don't have the requisite skills right then and there. The constant in all of this discussion can and should be the issue of character. Possessing the moral and ethical underpinnings necessary to do the right thing and to lead in a principled fashion. And what's fascinating to me in my world, I've seen a big shift in recent years that companies used to say, well they got the competency, we'll look away from, they wouldn't say it, but they would look away from some of the issues of principle and character. And that's changing very, very quickly in the modern workplace because of the long-term consequences of unethical leadership in the workplace. Lots of bad things happen to people all the way. Now with that backdrop, I know a number of you have had the opportunity to read an article that was published in 1993. And on behalf of my co-author, Dean Ludwick, we say thanks for using the article, looking at it, we're excited to have the conversation. But for me, the study of ethical business behavior has always been kind of a secondary issue. I assume that when a person gets in a leadership position that they've got the character and the competency to do the job until proven otherwise. So we're focusing on equipping people to have all the skills so that they can get in there and do great work for their companies and serve people with great effectiveness. So now, every time there was an episode of some ethical meltdown over the last 20 years, usually within a week, we'll get a phone call from a news agency, pick an episode and we'll get a phone call from somebody to talk about the Bathsheba Syndrome. So this article keeps coming and going and coming and going in the business circles that's made the rounds. And for me, it's something that I did a long time ago and only recently in the last five years been pulled back into the discussion. So we started a couple of years ago doing temptation mapping sessions with business leaders and with people in professional disciplines like lawyer in or accounting or physicians to say what are the ethical temptations you face in your job? What's that all about? How do you handle it? So we're gonna talk for a few minutes now about dealing with the ethical temptations associated with success. Here's what I know about you. A lot of O4s in the room, a lot of very successful people in the room, intellectually above the rest of us by and large, physically strong, intellectually disciplined, a lot of great people in the room, you've had very successful careers. And I'll tell you what, I think success is an awesome thing, but I also can tell you that there's great peril if we're successful and we can't handle that success. Now, does anybody here like know an accountant? Who knows an accountant? Put your hand up. Accountants? All right, this is a quote from an accountant. And this is an awesome quote. This is one of the best quotes I've ever read about this. Look at this, any business leader worth their salt needs to lead by example, which is not an easy thing to do these days. All of us need to be reminded on a regular basis, a regular basis, that a leader's reputation and lifetime of work can be destroyed in an instant by making unethical or immoral decisions in the workplace. It is imperative to guard your heart. This is not Sally Jessie Raphael. This is not Oprah talking. This is not Dr. Phil. This is an accountant saying, you need to guard your heart from going down the dark paths that confront us all. Now let's read that last line together. Just to confront us all. That confront us all. One more time. That confront us all. And a lot of folks are, you go to a company and say, all my people, we're not gonna talk about temptation. My people are leaders, they're effective, they're successful. Oh wait, they're successful? Okay, yeah, good. If they're successful, then they're, if you're having a serious intellectual conversation about this, you're gonna have to admit that they face temptation like the rest of us human beings, if you would. Now, we can go through and please make note, I'm giving some cover here. I'm putting the black eye patches over folks here. But you know what though, these are pieces out of the newspaper, stories, folks, and we can relate to a lot of folks. Up there, we know their story. I could go on, I could, by the way, I could stand here for an hour and just keep clicking the button. Kind of like looking at folks that we've seen and heard about, pictures out there. But here's the question. What do all these people have in common? Well, let's stop for a second. Most of these folks up here, I should say to the person up there, if you read their biographies, background information, these were good people. These people started out with good intentions in their careers. They were good people. They did the right thing. They were moral folks. All right, now what happened though? They experienced not just average success, but rock star awesome off the chart success. All right, so now the success is there. They've got all these good things going on in their life. Suddenly there's an ethical failure of some sort. Oh, by the way, most of this was by a decision-making process that put them on the wrong side of the issue, whatever it would be. It was a decision. Now they may pretend, well, it was an accident. We may pretend I didn't know what I was doing, or I really didn't mean it. But at the end of the day, everybody up there has a common ground here in that there was a failure and it was a conscious decision. Now, along with that came a cover up. In every one of those cases, there was an attempt to cover up. And by the way, when you're successful, all of us can believe that we control the agenda, the resources, the information, the flow of the people. And maybe we have the potential to cover up our wrongdoing at some particular point in time. Finally, there's almost in every one of these cases a horrifically negative aftermath. And the question that everybody's asking these days is can you see it common? Do you know if the person's heading in the wrong direction? Are there warning signs? So I'm gonna share a few things that I've learned with you in the last year on the subject. Now, big question, and everybody knows the answer to this. When you ask any group of people, why do business leaders do unethical things? The answer is, who said greed? Who said greed? Hand of person, somebody said greed. Okay, it is greed. Now, for those of you who do PowerPoint presentations and you wanna make a point, that's 350 font. Okay, just for those of you who keep track of these things, okay? And you use 350 font when you don't have a lot of letters, but when you wanna get a point across. So the catch here would be, well, business people do it for greed. Now, the traditional argument in business schools is, well, this is very simple. It's competitive pressure that causes business leaders to make wrongful decisions. And in some cases, that's quite true. But how do you look at a company that's doing well and a person out in front and they're doing well, and they make some horrifically negative decision that causes the company all kinds of grief? And the question was, was that greed? Well, it sure was. It wasn't competitive pressure because the company was doing well. Now, if you change one word and I look at this, just one word, look at if you go back and you say, why do business leaders do unethical things? Why do successful business leaders do unethical things? Now we're talking about somebody who's there, arrived doing well. Now watch what happens. The response is arrogance, followed by ego issues, hubris, followed by the rules don't apply to them. And then greed comes in absolutely a distant fourth in the discussion. So now when you find somebody who's already successful, why did they do wrongful things? It comes back to very simply, it's about the ego and who they think they are, who they believe they are in this discussion. Now, here's a quick question. You wanna be successful, you wanna be more successful, you wanna build on your success, you wanna climb to the top of the profession. Don, I'm slow, but I'm teachable brother. And I think it's awesome that you have a profession in place with some guidelines to think about. And I love the table where you contrast profession versus the other one, very, very well done. Profession versus bureaucratic behavior, wonderful stuff. But if you put this, what's the upside? Look it, if you're in a position and you're successful, you're gonna have a better title, you're gonna have more influence, you're gonna have increased status. You will have better perks and rewards, additional recognition, greater latitude in a lot of ways. Is that fair? Okay, thanks. All right, now, you're gonna have larger associations of people, expanded access to all different kinds of stuff. You're gonna have the ability now to set more agendas and you're gonna have more control over decision-making. Now, let's couple that with less direct supervision, which it can be a very good thing, right? Additional resources and greater influence over lots of stuff all around you. Now, the question becomes, is that all good stuff? Absolutely positively. But if we take the good stuff and we couple the good stuff with some of the bad stuff, we have to ask ourselves the big question. The big question is what could possibly cause a successful and principled leader to engage in unethical slash illegal activity? If they're already there, they got all this good stuff going on. What could possibly cause them to quote unquote get involved with this? I want you to look at a person next to you and we'll do this twice, but I want you to take somebody around you and I want you to ask this question to them and then they're gonna ask this question to you. So would you do that right now? Take a minute, look at the screen, look at the question, then ask the person around you. We need to be done at 45, 11, 45. Thank you. With 15 minutes for questions? Good, perfect, thank you. It's the question. Now, if you've asked the question, ask the person to give you a couple answers to the question, okay? So take another minute and get a couple answers. What's the answer? Talked about rationalization. Justification. Man, I like this guy's haircut too. He's part of the men's hair club. I'm Clint, hi. Will, I'm Clint, hi. Yeah, I'm Clint, hi. John, sir. Nice to meet you guys. It's a pleasure. Okay everybody, thank you. I think there's lots of ideas floating around this room very quickly about why this takes place. Let's look at a couple things and we'll come back to you. What's the downside of success? Well, look, here we go. We've got inflated ego and hubris, which we've already spoken of. Secondly, something called being emotionally expansive starts to kick in in people's lives. And if you ever have an opportunity to go hang out with people that are really powerful and really successful in the business world, you'll see that whatever people have in many cases is not good enough. They want more, and they want more, and they want more. That's what it means to be emotionally expansive. Whatever you have is just playing not good enough. You want more. Follow with me. Self-gratification, mindset. Now, what can I get for myself if you would? Unbalanced personal life, fewer real friends to confront us and help us keep our feet firmly set on the ground if you would. There's a focus on self now versus our organizational mission. There can be a sense of isolation because people say it's lonely at the top and most of you know that it is can be very lonely at the top. There's increased stress, a sense of emptiness, fear of failure. What can creep in at many levels is what we call strategic complacency and then finally, a lack of accountability. So we kind of have free reign to do some things. And you could say, well, wait a minute. Now, I'm in the middle here. Well, if you're in the middle, there's a very good chance that you have pieces of these things on your plate if you would. And you can go to a manufacturing facility and find a frontline supervisor. He or she could be the king in that space. If you want a machine fixed, they're gonna make it happen. They wave their hand. They have complete control, complete authority. They deal with outside vendors. They control budgets. They have all that stuff on their plate. They are a king. And we recently had a meltdown in a company that I've done some work for where they had a frontline supervisor that had walked off with almost a half a million dollars worth of equipment. And they found it in his home. And he had basically done this under the noses of the people around him because he was the king. And people wanna know, how does this guy get a 800 pound stamping machine out of the building and do his house? So obviously the guy's pretty creative, pretty ingenious. But I don't believe he thought that he was gonna get caught as well in this discussion. Now, if we put this in context, there's a warning here. Don't let your success outrun your character. So now if we go back and we ask people, hey, what's one skill you're better at this year than a year ago? What do your people say? Who are listening? Planning. Time management. Team building. Data mining. What'd I miss? Yell it out. More patience, okay? I'm with you and I want it now. I mean, I'm all over that. Patience, what else? Empathy. Empathy, good, all right, good. A lot of emotional intelligence frequently creeps into these discussions very quickly if I may say so. All right, what's one skill you're working on? Well, put the same list out there. Patience, emotional intelligence, planning, time management, goal setting, team building, and all those kind of things. All right, now, if we go back, it's rare to hear somebody say, look, I'm working on being a better person than I was last year. I haven't heard anybody offer that up without a little bit of prompting. Most of us are not setting competent, excuse me, when we typically think of improvement, we think of competency improvements. Our skill set, our talent base. But let's think this year, you've got a great year in school here. What are you gonna do this year to improve your character? That's the question that I would pose. What are you gonna do to become more principled and a stronger and more trustworthy leader on both counts? From a military perspective, professionalism and integrity. And the question would be, a lot of people say, well, I don't know how to improve my integrity, and we're gonna talk about that. But I would come back and say there's some very specific things every one of us can do to take that game up a notch. And oh, by the way, development in that arena will last you a lifetime. Absolutely. Okay, so most people in the room have read a piece of the Bathsheba Syndrome or you've skimmed it. I'm gonna try to do this very, very quickly with a background in King David. King David has very successful from a young age. We know that if you have read any of the Old Testament or the Hebrew scriptures, you'll see that he was the guy who slew the giant whose name was Goliath, okay? We knew that he had a tremendous career in his company that his enemies were fearful of him. We also know a number of other things. He's 50 years old. The nation of Israel is at the pinnacle of its success. He's in its 10th year of its reign. He's a warrior entrepreneur. He is a visionary. He's a poet, musician, strategist, charismatic leader with a career of principled faith-based leadership and behavior. He's a king who has it all. All right, so there we go, there's David. Now, put this in context. We also know he's popular among his people. He has vast amounts of resources under his control. The nation is out there and they're doing great. We also know that he's feared by his enemies because of his military prowess. He did not mess around in his strength. We also know that David already has over a dozen wives before this incident takes place. And we also know that Bathsheba was the wife of your ride, the Hittite one of Israel's top military leaders who was the front during the time of this incident. All right, now here we go in a nutshell. Here's what it says. In the springtime when kings go off to war, David stayed in Jerusalem and he was on the balcony of the palace. He looked down below and he saw a beautiful woman bathing. He called the servant, the servant came to him. He said, I want you to go find out who that woman is. The servant ran, obediently so. Got the name, came back. That's your ride, the Hittite's wife. Her name is Bathsheba. David looks, continues to look, go and bring her to me. Now it says more than one people because it's plural. It says servants went to fetch her. Now a couple of people know on the company, they go, they fetch, they bring her and they have an illicit sexual relationship. David already has a bunch of wives. This isn't about the sex, I believe. I think there's much more to this. He then in turn finds out several weeks later that she is pregnant. Now he attempts to perpetrate a cover up of his wrongdoing by bringing Uriah back from the front to Jerusalem to hear the story of what's taking place at the front. False pretense. He says, well, okay, that's good. Now go spend the night with your wife. Uriah is such a man of principle and of leadership says if my men in the field cannot be with their wives, I cannot have my wife. So he sleeps on the front steps of his house. The next night, David gets him drunk, sends him back to his wife, he sleeps on the front steps of his house again. David's attempt to cover up is not working well and people in the castle in the palace are talking. They have to be. Now what takes place next is wrong at every level. David now sends Uriah the Hittite with a note to his general Joab back at the front that says have Uriah the Hittite killed? He carries the note, hands it to Joab, Joab opens it up, reads the note, sends Uriah the Hittite into battle and lanes siege to the city up close to the wall where he and a number of his fellow warriors die in battle. Joab writes a note back to David that says David don't worry. I hate to say this bad stuff's happening out here but Uriah the Hittite was killed. David comes back at him and says don't worry, these things happen in war and he thinks it's all over. Later on, a whistleblower shows up. It's a great read if you get a chance to look at it but embedded in that story are a host of questions that I have that we have come to call the Bathsheba syndrome. Now if you look at the definition of the Bathsheba syndrome we're gonna get slides to everybody's possession to be able to get at this information. When successful leaders with track records of hard work, effectiveness and integrity reach a point in their career where they throw it all away by engaging in an activity which is wrong, which they know is wrong, which they know would lead to their downfall if discovered and which they mistakenly believe they have the power to conceal or cover up. And it's a very straightforward way. I had an English person, a professor come and say Clint, that's one sentence. It's a sentence, that's not good grammatically. There's too much in there for one sentence. We've tried to put periods, we've tried to put semi-colons and the like in there. We just left it alone. It's one sentence because it's pretty powerful. It comes out and says look, if you are caught up in stuff and you're successful and you try to perpetrate a wrong doing you know it's wrong, the key is he knew it was wrong and yet he went ahead, he made a conscious decision to do that in this discussion. So I would come back and I'd ask everybody in this room, have you seen somebody that you saw fail that was really impressive in your own mind that really struggled and maybe stumbled? Well, a lot of people say look, I'm not a king, no wait a minute here, I'm not a king, I'm just a, and then they feel in the back, I'm just a frontline supervisor, I'm just a middle manager, I'm just a director. You could say I'm just an NCO, I'm just a first lieutenant, I'm just a captain. All right, but at the end of the day, what we're gonna talk about for the next couple of minutes are what I would describe as being nuclear or atomic ethical meltdowns. These are the kinds of things that get people fired, demoted, discharged, court-martialed, maybe even in jail, and oh by the way, everybody who's in a successful position of leadership has to contend with these issues. Now, here's what people say, well that could never happen to me. That could never happen to me. And we wrote this article in 1993, a dear friend of mine went on and he was talking about this, we had lengthy discussions, and he went on and he's had an exceptionally successful career and he's been caught up in a Bathsheba syndrome himself. And this is a guy who knew about it, all these other things, and the question would be, how did this happen to this guy? This guy is awesome, principle, you know what, if you were to talk to a spouse or people around him, they could say there were warning signs all over the place that people didn't tend to look at, including him. Here's what we found, success can change our ego, our access, our control, our resources, our expansiveness, and our levels of accountability kind of in a nutshell, to put it all on one page. So there's kind of a pyramid here, please make note at the top of the pyramid is ego, and at the bottom is the lack of accountability. Those two wrestle with each other. Find somebody who's not growing intellectually, who's doing the same things they've always done, it's usually somebody who's not held accountable for their own development or encouraging themselves. And Don, your comment about depending on the institution to develop us, that was no smarter words have been spoken in the arena of human development in the workplace. If we're sitting back and waiting for our organization to tell us we need to be working on something, we need to be developing a particular area, we're probably late. That means people in the organization know that we have a deficiency and or a flaw. The most important person for your development and for my development is you and me. We have got to have a game plan to get that done, and oh, by the way, it ought to include character in addition to the competency skills of things that are being talked about. Now, when you take all that stuff together, success and its consequences can open the door for ethical temptation and failure for all of us if we are not diligent. And the thing I really have great respect for around military folks is diligence. Over the years, I have had many, many military veterans as students of mine, and they're always the very, very best. A year ago, I had a captain who had just returned from Afghanistan, he's a helicopter pilot by the name of Captain Trent Miller. He just spent a year at Fort Leavenworth, and he was promoted to major. But we would talk at great length about all the experiences as a helicopter pilot, the importance of his flight crew being diligent and paying attention to detail and all these things. And the question would be why? And the answer is because his life and his livelihood depended on the diligence of the people around him, and that required him and Tern to be diligent. Well, you know what, when we talk about this kind of stuff we're about to speak of, diligence becomes really important. We recently did a survey at the Air War College with a dear friend of mine, Colonel Rob Abernathy, who's a remarkable educator, leader, helicopter pilot, and the whole package. We asked a series of open-ended questions. It's kind of an introduction, if you would, to try to get our arms around some of the issues that they are wrestling with. We asked people to respond to this very simple question. Identify a leader that you've looked up to and respected basically a person that you believe is a great person, both principled with competency and character, who had a major ethical failure in their professional life. What was the ethical failure? Now remember, these are people that we're working for. These are people above us. They're successful folks. They're principled, they have great character. Well, the nature of their ethical failure, one, inappropriate, resexual relationships covered a tremendous amount of ground, and basically people filled in and handwrote the descriptions of what had taken place. Right behind it was the misuse of financial resources, followed by dishonesty and falsifying data, alcohol and drug abuse, and direct disobedience of policy or procedures. All right, so now this, right out of the gate, we're asking them to identify a great leader that they looked up to that fell. This was the big five that came out of that discussion. Now, nobody here is surprised, but you know what, the folks who saw this were because the responses that they had were quite remarkable. The second part of the question was, how did it affect their career? Well, 35% of them turned into forced retirements, 26.4% relief of command, 17.1%, they knew about it, but nothing formally happened to them. And where's Dr. Gibbons? He here, Tom, made a comment, but the people in his command knew about it and that that damaged his ability to work with those folks and get results because his trustworthiness had now been called to question. Loss of grade, formal judicial procedures, and then there was a smattering of other kinds of things. But now if you just look at this, this means by and large, 82.9% of people that got caught up in doing wrongful stuff got caught. And statistically, the odds are not real good of not being caught, is that fair? All right, so at the end of the day, here's what we know to be true, though. Facts like this do not change the way people behave. Awesome, well, great read, change or die, written by a fellow by the name of Alan Deutschman a couple years back, and if you like the subject matter of change, it's great. Here's what they found in a big research study about why people don't behave differently. They found that facts and fear and force do not change long-term thinking or behavior. What they found did change behavior, is reframing relationships and having a rapid and radical plan that you're moving through. So speed is a good thing when you're going through the change process. Now, if you put this in context, what happened to the people who were following these folks? Well, their response was they were shocked. And there was some discussion about they were, and I'm just using their words, right? If you read the essays, these are quite remarkable. I was devastated. The credibility of that person was gone forever. There was now a big loss of trust. I was troubled. This hit me in my very core that this person could get caught up in doing this stuff. It devastated me. They felt hurt. There was sadness in the discussion. There was a loss of respect, disappointment, not surprised. Interestingly, well, I wasn't surprised. I look up to them, but I wasn't surprised because they were moving in the wrong direction. There was forgiveness. There was validation for opinions held, disgustedness, and along the way, people said, I am just plain confused because how could this person possibly get caught up in doing this? Now, here's the question from where a lot of us sit. Were there warning signs that this person was going down the wrong path? And remember, we talked earlier about ego, a hubris, and lack of accountability in some of these other issues? Well, if you look at the lineup here, demonstrated arrogance. Now, the person was becoming arrogant, if you would, maybe more arrogant, or maybe confidence devolved into arrogance. There were unpredictable changes in behavior, and they became more secretive and more withdrawn from the people around them. There was questionable decision-making. Are you sure we want to do that? And in effect, if you work your way, there was a disregard for rules, selfish behavior. There was a demonstrated favoritism, preferential treatment of the people around them. There was an unwillingness to listen or accept advice from other people, disrespectful of other people, lack of honesty. We could go on, but there were warning signs. And at the end of the discussion here, what were the warning signs? The person was starting to believe, maybe read their own press clippings, and maybe start to believe that the rules do not apply for them. Now, the question is, if this is a little bit of the picture painted here, how do you avoid, and I get asked this question a lot these days, how do you avoid getting caught up in the Bathsheba syndrome, where you are confronted, by the way, everybody out there, and might as well just go to our next slide, everybody faces Bathshebas or temptations that they must conquer if they are to remain successful and build on their success, everybody. Now, what's interesting though is the word temptation is ignored in leadership discussions. It is by and large ignored in the ethical literature, if you would, because it brings with it some notion of a spiritual connotation. So the question would be, what temptations do leaders face, regardless of level of organization, when they become extremely successful? Well, let's look at our definition if we could of success. But now look at our definition of temptation. Temptation, a desire for something bad or unacceptable, a desire or craving for something, especially something considered wrong or to yield to temptation. Secondly, it's an enticement of a specific desire, the stimulation of a desire or craving in somebody for something usually considered to be wrong or not good for that person. Finally, it's a cause of desire, something or somebody, excuse me, somebody or something that tempts an individual or a group with something that is not in their best interest. So if you stop for a second, say, are there temptations out that raise your hand if you have experienced a temptation in the last week? Okay, most of us have had a temptation maybe to go over the speed limit, especially those fighter pilots. I mean, they drive pretty quickly. We can look around the room, we could say a temptation for this attempt, but here's the key though, a temptation's not the problem. It's the leadership is the answer to the temptation that we face because now we gotta say, what am I gonna do with this temptation? I have the opportunity to do wrong, what are we gonna do with that opportunity? Now, lesson number two, the higher you rise in any organization, the greater exposure to temptation. So as you control more resources, more people, more budget, more access, and a friend of mine always says, be careful. There's always access to access. The higher you rise, there's more access to access. So if we put this in the context, the higher you rise, the greater exposure to temptation. And if we look at the numbers, pretty straightforward. We did a study this past summer. Frontline supervisors focus group identify the temptations you face. Frontline people on average, 5.7 temptations. We go to middle management people, same focus group, same organization, same group, it jumps to 8.6%, excuse me, 8.6 temptations that people face. Now we go up to the boardroom, the senior people, and all of a sudden it makes a leap if you would to 12.4 because now there's things that people in the middle or down below hadn't thought about that are on their plate as well. Now, if you put this in context, the most important thing from my perspective, and I don't wanna bore you, but it's really important to develop what we've come to call a temptation map of the ethical and moral challenges that face you in your current position. When a person steps into a new position, we've gotta get our arms around that job description, don't we Doc? We gotta figure out exactly what we're being paid to deliver as a professional. Then we need to figure out the skills and how we're gonna allocate our time and what activities are gonna get us there if we're serious about delivering the right results. Well, along with that, every position has maybe a standardized set of temptations that comes along with it, but there might be some unique ones attached specifically to that particular position. So a temptation map, and again this came from Colonel Rob Abernathy, and I love it, that's why I love being around military people. You're trained to think, you're trained to solve problems, you're trained to accomplish missions. I've heard this in military circles time and time again, forewarned is forearmed. If you know that there's a temptation out there that could hurt you and you are vulnerable to it, what do you need to do? Well, you're gonna have a game plan to knock that temptation down or to avoid getting caught up in it if you would. This principle is key to conquering and preventing getting caught up in the Bathsheba syndrome. So forewarned is forearmed. Would you give it to me one time, please? Forewarned is forearmed. All right, how many people have heard that during your military training? Isn't it one of your credos that you live by? So it would make sense to me that we would take and apply that to the very issue of dealing with temptation in our position. All right, so here's some focus group feedback from 68 military leaders, and here's what we learned. We asked them what are the temptations right out of the gate that you face with, that you face, are confronting because of the position you hold, inappropriate sexual relationships, abusing position power, offering accepting bribes, misuse of funds, misuse of resources, favoritism, could be military nepotism, pick out whatever issue it would be. Violating policy for personal gain, alcohol and drugs, falsifying slash manipulating information, misuse of power and authority, blind eye. So looking away from stuff. Now, here's the question, and this is heavy stuff. This is serious stuff. But at the end of the day, if you were to engage or I were to engage in any one of these things and it were to be found out, would there be consequences? One would surely hope so. Don made a great point though, that one of the issues that the military and organizations as well are constantly wrestling with is self-policing, fair? So, and when an organization is unwilling to self-police, these kinds of behaviors can creep in to the situation. So when we did a temptation mapping session at the Army War College, back in September, a colonel who was in the room stood up and said this was really good for us to talk about these things collectively and to talk about the guardrails that we need to build collectively and the importance of looking out for each other in this regard. And he said, my next command, the first time I pull my troops together, my leaders together, we are going to have this discussion. So now I'm learning from these folks. He's gonna pull his troops in and we're gonna have a temptation mapping session about what temptations we all face. We'll do it anonymously so nobody will be embarrassed. We're gonna put flip charts on the wall, we're gonna walk through it and we're gonna coach each other. How do you keep from getting caught up in these kind of things that could be career-ending, family-destroying, life-threatening in many ways? So lesson number four, it is important, it is imperative to create a personal code of conduct and a mantra that you believe clearly articulates what you stand for. And if you go through and look at this, we've gotta have a greater purpose attached to it. My gosh, my friends, you're doing noble work. You're looking out for the rest of America. That, my friends, is noble work. So the question would be, do you have a mantra to remind you of that simple fact? Does this remind you of your higher calling as a leader? And I shared this before, I'm on earth to help other people be successful. And my mantra says that I'm here to serve my country, my family, my employer, and God. That's why I'm here, real simple. Those are the witness tests. When I ran a group of officers through this exercise, you had to write out your mantra. They were awesome. Some said, think, think, think, then do. All right, that's pretty good. The best one though, what would Marianne do? His mantra, what would Marianne do? We said, well, who's Marianne? He goes, that's my wife. He goes, what would she do in this situation? Now is that pretty wise? And she said, smart person, articulate person, intelligent person, what would my wife do in this situation? And he said, that has served me well for many, many years, because I've used it for a long time. So if I find myself in a ticklish situation to ask a simple question, what would my wife do? And he goes, he finds himself following the straight and narrow because of that mantra. The purpose of a mantra though, in a tough situation, is to remind you to trigger your thought process to say, I'm gonna do what's right, regardless of what the situation might be dictating. Now, it's really important to develop guardrails. So a guardrail is something that might prevent us from going over the edge and making a poor decision that could cost us our job, our career, our reputation, our family, and our livelihood. And over the last couple of years, I spent quite a bit of time reading the Navy news and Navy Times and other publications floating around out there. And I see some of these things and it goes back to the fact that these poor folks involved in these activities, I don't know how you go find another job to be honest with you. I don't know how you go back to your family and face your family or go to your community. But remember, the fear of getting caught or the threat of getting caught is not a deterrent for people according to a lot of the change literature and the change research. So the question now becomes, well, if they say, if I get caught doing this, I could lose my career. All right, that's probably not gonna stop people because I'd be willing to betcha that folks caught up with these kinds of things have had that thought, well, I'll just cover it up. The question becomes, what can help us? And the answer is building guardrails. Now, Lanell, I know it's been as a Air Force Academy alum, this is Pikes Peak and there's a picture of a guardrail. And please make note, the guardrail was actually brand new but a couple days before I'd come up on Pikes Peak, this is a year ago, lo and behold, somebody had hit it and I stopped and I asked a ranger and I think I shared this last time I was here. I said, how do you know where to put guardrails up? Who's been the top of Pikes Peak? Anybody driven up there? What do you think? Pretty awesome experience to drive up there, beautiful view. I said, how do you decide where you put up a guardrail? He says, well, we put one up usually when there's been some kind of incident. What do you mean by incident? I'm looking, it's like a thousand feet down, okay? He said, well, an incident. He said, well, usually somebody had an incident, we put a guardrail up because we can't afford to do them everywhere. I said, okay. So at the end of the day, somebody went over that cliff right there so that there was an incident to build the guardrail out so that we'll keep future people from going over the edge. And every time there's an ethical failing in the business community, I write some notes, I do a little write up on it and I use that information to build a guardrail for myself because I don't wanna go over the edge on some of these issues. Now, a guardrail is safety planning. It's preparation, in effect, what you've gotta do to conquer your temptations to avoid engaging in wrongful behavior. And so the guardrail could be something as simple as a policy that I never meet with a vendor by myself. A guardrail could be a policy that I never handle cash alone. A guardrail could be a policy that I don't have more than a glass of wine or a drink with a group of people on the clock if you would. Whatever that list could look like along the way. But when we asked a group of people in the big survey from the Air Force, we said, what is built into this discussion that's really important for us? Well, look, 74.5% of the people that responded said, look, you've gotta have a support system. You've gotta surround yourself with people that will hold you accountable. And I'm watching this program about Chief of Staff for the presidency and they made a very, very, very simple comment. They said, look, if you're the president of the United States, people open doors for you, people do all these things for you. You don't have to carry your wallet. Wherever you go, people are asking you what they can do for you. He said, it doesn't take too long for the person in that position to start to look at the world differently and to think of themselves differently if you would. So the catch would be, we've gotta surround ourselves with people that are gonna hold us accountable and help us keep our feet firmly on the ground. Continue. We've gotta lead by example and demonstrate servant leadership. People that responded to the survey built this set of guardrails with just a simple description. What can keep you from getting in trouble? What kind of activities should you engage in to keep from going over the cliff if you would? And what's interesting about this, maintaining one's faith, spirituality and religion 33.6%, establishing a personal ethical standard 21.8%, developing situational awareness and self-awareness 17.3%, accepting feedback and being coachable if you would. Anticipating the consequences of a decision, ethical training and education, having and maintaining strong ethical standards, maintaining transparency. But here's the catch. This is all factual stuff. If you're caught up in doing wrongful stuff, this may not mean anything to any one of us who's in the middle of a Bathsheba, if you would. Some of you have heard this story before, but there's three guys out from Ohio. We do a lot of deer hunting and I'm not a hunter myself, but a lot of people do it. So in the deer hunting process, these three guys go out, a lawyer, a head football coach and an ethics professor. They decide to go deer hunting. And so sure enough, they're all in the blind. They see a deer walk by. All three guys fire at the same time. And then the buck just drops right in and there. They all jump up, they're all excited and they start to move out and walk up. But they said, who killed the deer? I killed the deer. No, I killed the deer. No, I killed the deer. So finally, a game ward walks up saying, I just saw you guys shot a deer. He goes, yeah, could you help us identify which person shot this deer? He goes, sure. So he looks down at the deer. He goes, what do you do? He goes, I'm a lawyer. What do you do? I'm a football coach. What do you do? He goes, I'm an ethics professor. He goes, so the ethics professor says, well, who shot? The bullet to kill this animal. He goes, well, you did, sir. He goes, well, how do you know? And the other two said, well, how do you know for sure? He goes, well, it went in one ear and out the other. Still not there. Guys, it's still not there. We're working on that. At the end of the day, it's one thing to hear stuff. It's another thing to do with it. What is your reaction to that list? What's your reaction? Common sense? What do you think? Here's my thought. I think that if we practice these things and we build them into our life, you're gonna become a better leader. Put the ethics part aside for a minute. Don said, situations that require wisdom and input and smart thinking, if you would, really requires leadership. If we practice these things, we will be better leaders. And so coming along with better leadership will come the fact that we're building in some safeguards against our own personal destruction as leaders along the way. Lesson number six, rehearse how you will respond to each of the various temptations that you and I face when we are in battle. And the time to do this is before you are dropped into battle. Be prepared for what we've come to call your moment of truth. So your moment of truth could be somebody coming up and asking you to do something that could be questionable. The moment of truth could be you're by yourself, you're putting together reports, whatever that might look like, but the temptation might be there to falsify something. And again, the reason I'm having this conversation with all of you is because most of us don't talk about these things. It's out there, it's the elephant in the room, but at the end of the day, everybody faces temptations. Are you prepared for your moment of truth? Because it could be an impulse that changes the course of your life. It could be a collection of little decisions that very quickly turn into a decision of significant magnitude, if you would. But at the end of the day, here's what a lot of people will say, why did you do this? And as a college professor for 30 years, what were you thinking when you went off and did this stupid thing over the weekend? And they always go like this, uh-huh. Well, what were you thinking? And then they say, I just wasn't thinking. All right, so when we don't think, we know that bad stuff happens. Look at my friends, look what Socrates said. It's brilliant. He said, the ongoing challenges of life mandate supplying all our wisdom to daily situations lest we fall prey to our own folly. Folly is foolishness. Folly is foolishness. And if you put this in context, what do we know to be true here? Well, gosh, wisdom is what we want. What's wisdom? Collective experience and knowledge that we know to be true. Now, you're not gonna remember what Socrates said, but I'll predict right now you will remember what the famous American film actor John Wayne said. Now, look what he said. He said, life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid. Now, if you go back, look at what Socrates said. Look at what John Wayne said. All right, this is just me. I'm going with John Wayne. Okay, now I want everybody to stand up right now if you would. And we're gonna remind ourselves of the importance of this saying if you would. Plus, pedagogically speaking, Socrates also said the mind cannot absorb but the bottom cannot tolerate and I think he's right in that count. Okay, now raise your right hand and repeat after me. I'll say it, you say it. Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid. Now, I want you to scream it out. Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid. Okay, now I want this side of the room to face that side of the room, if you would. Put your hands down. And I want you to be in a listening mood right now. Okay, just absorb what's about to be shared with you. All right, this side of the room, I want you to look at them and repeat after me and I want you to really remind them of how important this is. Together, are we ready to go? I'll say it, you say it. Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid. All right, now one more time, a little more juice, come on. Ready? Life's tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid. All right, very good. Now, you guys get your listening ears on and let's go this way if we could. You ready to say the share, share the same thing with them? Are we ready? Okay, and again, you're saying, Claude, this is really stupid. All right, but you know what? I want you to remember this, because at some moment in the not too distant future, you might find yourself in a situation where you need to be wise and you need to be really smart about a decision and you're about to do something stupid. It wouldn't be awesome before you make that decision if you saw John Wayne's face pop up. Right, and you say, Duke, okay, I'm not gonna, are we ready to go? All right, let's give it to him. Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid. That's tougher if you're stupid. All right, one more time. Life's tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid. That's tougher if you're stupid. All right, good. Now, internationals, international? Who could give this to us in a second language? Could you give it, is there a speaker microphone down there? Go ahead and give it to us. That's what I'm talking about, right there. Let's give it up for him. Nicely done. All right, here we go. Admiral, would you do it for us? Nice and loudly? All right, that's what we're talking about. Grab a seat. All right now, all right, stupido. There are days when I have felt stupido. Okay, now, here we go. Number seven, this is really important. Foster accountability with persons who are strong and honest enough to be your mentor, accountability, partner, and watchdog. A lot of folks, if you go to the modern workplace, people say, I got to have a mentor. Would you be my mentor? Stop. People ask, mentor could be a coach who shows you the way to go, but it's not an accountability partner. Everybody I know who's doing well and is maintaining needs an accountability partner. Call it a foxhole partner, a fire team partner, a wingman in the Air Force, yet we all need somebody to hold us accountable that we can talk to about anything. This year, through this educational experience, you're in a great place to build an accountability partner that can last you a lifetime. Fair? And it's great to get it across services, to get people from different disciplines, to set up a mini board of directors for yourself with three or four people. And maybe you set up a conference call when you leave here once a week and you talk about the things you're working on as leaders to be the best that you can be. But at the same time, you're talking about dark nights of the soul, ethical temptations you are facing, difficult situations that are confronting you in your face right now, so that you and I have somebody to talk to because remember with success comes isolation, lack of real friends, lack of accountability if you would. In our research on high performing business leaders, we found this simple fact. 17% of the average population of business leaders in this country has some form of a mentor or accountability partner. When we have done our studies, continuous studies on high performance business leaders, on average, eight out of 10 or 79% of business leaders have an accountability partner that they meet with on a regular basis. These are people who are at the top of their game. What do they do? We talk about real life stuff, we have relationships, somebody can say you just ran a bad meeting. You ran a bad meeting, don't do it again. Somebody to coach us and give us feedback, this is really critically important that we all think about building out relationships with people. When you are confronted with an ethical temptation, a moral trial, quote unquote a conundrum if you would immediately tell somebody that you trust and seek their assessment input and guidance and seek out some support for them. And I share the story I think last time I was here about one of my MBA students called me and he clicked, can you talk? Yeah, what's going on? He starts work for a new company, a new company wants him to send instead of five units at $10,500 per unit, throw in his boss comes us, just send him a six one, no problem, we'll invoice it, no problem. He calls him up, he doesn't know what to do, he's new with the company, what should I do? A little warning flag was there and you'll never guess whose face popped up in front of him. John Wayne. Now, he didn't want to do anything stupid. What happens in effect was I said what are you doing? What are you gonna do? He said I'm afraid, I don't know what to do, I'm afraid, boss is gonna come down here. I said well ask it, this is real simple, real simple question. Just ask your boss since you're new, use your naivety and newness to the thing, say hey at my old company, we never did anything like this before so I'm just asking you to put it in writing. Would you put that in writing for me and then we'll be good to go? Well boss, never mind, just send five. All right, it was gone like that, why, because he was thinking, if he would have done what came naturally, what would he have done, help me? He would have wanted to please his boss, curry his boss's favor and he would have done it and the next time his boss came to him and asked him to do the same thing, what would have happened? It would have been ratcheted up a notch, he would have put himself in a difficult situation, he went and got an executive MBA so he could learn how to think and he my friends went from information to motivation to use it, to integration because he knew to call, to applying it and making a call so he could be transformed and not end up getting fired or terminated or maybe worse for doing wrongful stuff. That's what we're talking about here. So question, why do you wanna tell somebody? Because that's a moment of truth, you've prepared for it, you're gonna seek counsel from some other soul. Number eight, when making a decision about something that you consider to be, and look at the words we use, gray, questionable, well, probably not greater question but it's probably no only wrong if we have a question about it, ask yourself the question, what are the long term consequences of this decision to my character, my profession, my career and my family when others find out and I'm trying to get my arms from a research perspective on the number of people that get caught versus the number of people that don't get caught, well the very definition of the question makes it virtually impossible but for right now, I like the 83% number that came out of that study that we did with the good Air Forks people. If we've got 83% of the time people are getting caught, boy that is really something to build into your own DNA and your own thought process because at the end of the day, how do you live having that hanging over your head even if you don't get caught, there's always consequences attached to it in this discussion. You could take a 40 year career in that 40 year career according to research about 20,000 serious decisions will be made and what's amazing to me, 0.0005 or one decision could destroy a body of work just like that and the question would be how important is it that we think before we act, how important is it that we prepare? How important is it that at the end of the day we have thought about the ethical temptations that we face and how we are gonna push back and here's the good news in all this my friends. The factors that keep people out of trouble and make people do the right thing and encourage and motivate people to behave appropriately are the very things that cause average leaders to become good leaders and good leaders to become great leaders because we all need standards, we all need servant leadership, we all need people around us who are gonna push us to help us be the best that we can be and that's the blessing in all this. Finally, stay focused and humble by being a servant leader and regularly doing some of the lowliest jobs in your operation to send the message to the people around you that your feet are firmly planted on the ground. If you find a CEO of a company stopping going into the company's headquarters and picking up garbage around the trash barrel and putting it in there, there's a very, very good chance that that individual, he or she, does not believe that they have arrived or are God's gift to humanity if they're still willing to pick up trash. Demonstrating that kinds of behavior sends a powerful message to the people under your leadership command and at the end of the day, the most powerful message is sent to yourself that you're leading by example, the lowliest of jobs. Life's tough, tougher if you're stupid, last quote here. Anybody from West Virginia here? Is there anybody? And this is, sorry, just hang with me for a second. This is a newspaper article about West Virginia, a guy from West Virginia, so let's read this if we could. Princeton, West Virginia, a man accidentally shot himself in the right foot while cleaning each of three handguns, police said. All right, this is just like an FYI, okay? It was an accident the first time, okay? It was probably an accident the second time, but by the third time it's pretty much a lifestyle that he has developed about shooting himself in the foot, okay? But follow with me, it says the 30-year-old man was drinking beer Wednesday morning when he decided to clean his guns according to the sheriff's report, all right? Probably not a wise choice here. People always ask me, they say, could you make this stuff up? Everybody, you don't, you don't, you just read the paper, you don't have to make it up. All right, so here we go. The 32 caliber handgun went off, but it didn't hurt. Now if you're like me, I'm thinking how much beer on a Wednesday morning. But here's the key though, he's diligent. West Virginia people are diligent. He finished cleaning the pistol. Then he switched and began cleaning his three, three-eighty caliber pistol, which also went off, sorry, said the report, I'm sorry, which did not name the man. Now look at the typo up there. It should be name the man, the police report, somebody's typing, they're cracking up. You know, they're gathered around the machine at the newspaper typing, they're saying they're all cracking up. So it didn't know his name though. So here we go, but here's the key. He's using the same technique. Obviously he's shooting himself in the same foot, same spot, he's using the same technique, but he finished cleaning that gun too. That bullet stung a little, but not too bad. Now English grammar people know it should be badly, but he's drunk and he's gunshot, so we'll cut him some slack. So he pulls out now a 357 magnum caliber handgun, only to shoot himself in the same foot a third time. Now I was at this point, you're thinking I'm making this up, aren't you? It's true. The man finally called an ambulance, Deputy Catherine said that the man told him the 357 bullet really hurt because it was a hollow point bullet. Now, okay. So finally the dispatcher of the Sheriff's office confirmed the man had been taken to Princeton Community Hospital, but she didn't know his name and this is just FYI. If I live in Princeton, West Virginia, I wanna know who this is. I'd be very curious to see who's coming through the mall the next couple of weeks with an injured right foot. Now you'd say, well, this is kind of a silly way to wrap up the conversation and I would come back and say is it? Because if we have habits, new habits or budding habits, developing that could be destructive to us, then it's probably something to take note around. Here's the best part about being in an educational experience and being able to take a timeout for your career to learn and learn and learn. The best performers are the ones that make quantum leap, leaps in their thinking, in their thought processes, in their ability to solve problems and look at new situations and to develop themselves to meet the ever changing demands of the world that they operate in. So what a great opportunity this year to not only think about developing your competency as leaders, military leaders, but equally as important to focus on developing the character that will sustain that competency over a lifetime of your career in the military and post-military as well. So I just wanna say thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate all your efforts to look out for the rest of us. Learn and lead well and I'll stop right there and say God bless you good.