 General Jim Mattis, 40 years in the U.S. Marine Corps. Okay, all set. All right. Marionette Young asked me a question about the toughest decision that I've ever had to make while I was in the Marine Corps. Do you regret the decision and would I have done anything differently? You know, Marionette, when we go into the Marine Corps, we swear to obey orders and carry them out to the best of our ability and defend the Constitution. So I've not regretted those decisions and one of the toughest that I could mention to you was after being ordered to attack into the city of Fallujah, I was ordered to halt the attack deep inside the city and during that first and ultimately aborted attack ordered to withdraw our Marines and sailors out of the city they had fought for and they had lost some of their buddies in that fight. So it was a difficult decision. It was a decision taken for reasons that had nothing to do with the tactical situation on the ground. I was concerned to a degree if the Marines would lose confidence in their leadership because of it, but they didn't. I still recall a young SOG gunner being interviewed by a television crew talking about how terrible he must feel that he was being ordered out of the city and he was a slow talking Marine from down south. He just calmly looked into the camera and said, It doesn't matter. We'll just hunt him down somewhere else and kill him. And I bring this up because ultimately it's about the spirit of the Marine Corps that nothing, nothing really can stop us. And we just don't take refuge in self-pity or any of that kind of stuff. And so as a result, the Marine Corps remains a very feared organization in this world as it should be. So tough decisions, tough times and sometimes things don't go our way. It doesn't have anything to do with the decision we make about how we feel about it. Every Marine makes their own decision about how they're going to react, what happens to them. And that's what sets the Marine Corps apart because when the times get tough, the Marines get tougher. Phil Claiborne wants to know, how did I continue to stay motivated throughout my Marine Corps career? That's real easy. Phil, I'll tell you right up front there were some jobs in the Marine Corps I didn't care for. I learned to hate minefields at age 21 when the Marine Corps trained me as a second lieutenant in the infantry to go through them. And I continued to hate minefields as long as I had to encounter them throughout my career. But the reason I stuck around the Marine Corps was the spirit of the Marines. I knew I could make a lot more money doing something else and I knew I could live a lot better quality of life and not be deployed all the time. But it was the spirit of the Marines that kept me motivated. I never went to work feeling like woe is me, that life is tough for anything else. I look forward to every day and it's simply because I stuck around the Marine Corps for the right reason. And that was to serve alongside young Marines. Joel Delph wants to know, how do you keep improving as a leader to meet the demand of each role in your career? We all get promoted, you have different roles to play. How do you stay teachable as a leader? I think the most important thing here, Joel, is that you have to assume you must keep improving. If you make that your decision that you must improve, if you look at every week in the Marine Corps as your last week of peace and you must be better at the end of this week as a warfighter, then you'll push yourself on your three mile run down to 18 minutes and you'll accept no excuses. You'll push yourself in 21 pull-ups and you'll accept no excuses. You'll push yourself to read the Commandant's Reading List. You'll push yourself that when the things are going tough in the field, you keep your spirit up and you're the man everyone can turn to, no one that you don't give up. And you just keep improving every day with the assumption that if you're going to lead more Marines in the future as you get promoted, they expect you to be the physically toughest, the mentally sharpest, and the spiritually just the most undiminished person, that nothing, not cold, not rain, not enemy situation, not frustrating rules can get you down. And you just maintain this body, mind and spirit improvement at all times. You stay teachable most by reading books, by reading what other people went through. I can't tell you the number of times I looked down at what was going on in the ground or I was engaged in a fight somewhere and I knew within a couple of minutes how I was going to screw up the enemy and I knew it because I'd done so much reading. I knew what I was going to do, because I'd seen other similar situations in the reading. I knew how they'd been dealt with successfully or unsuccessfully. And so long as you continue along this line, so long as you remember somebody on the other side is watching, hoping that you're not at the top of your game, that you're not reading, that you're not working out, you're not strong spiritually, then they're going to think they've got you. You want to always be the toughest, the sharpest out there. I've got a question here from Raul J.R. from Camp Rhino in 2001. It was in southern Afghanistan right after 9-11. Raul, when you and I were out there and you asked about a cold night in Afghanistan when I was walking the perimeter by myself, greeting a bunch of young Marines and what was I thinking about? Well, I think I remember the night in question. If you'll recall, the mortars were firing in one direction and we had a lot of shooting going on at one side of the perimeter. And the reason they keep some of us gray-haired guys around is because it's not our first war, it's not our second war. And what I was doing was walking to the opposite side of the perimeter, just suspicious if the enemy was perhaps fainting on one side and they were actually going to attack over on your side of the perimeter. So I was over there knowing full well that the Marines at the position we were being attacked would handle the enemy. I wanted to make certain we were ready for any surprises. So I was over there just checking on the Marines, seeing how they're doing, and all of them wanted to get over to the other side of the perimeter and get in the fight. And I said, oh, you boys just stay right here. There'll be plenty of fighting before this is done. So that's what I was thinking about that night, Raul. And thanks for being out there. It was a cold night. Jonathan Herrera wants to know what is the one leadership lesson you learned as a general grade officer that you would wish you have known your whole career. You know, you learn all the way through, Jonathan, at each rank you're learning more. And if there was one lesson that came more and more into focus over the years, it was one I learned by watching similar side units. For example, I watched dozens of platoons go through certain ranges or I saw companies, dozens of companies in fights. I always wondered what made one unit better than another. They were all well trained. They all came through the boot camp. All of them had been recruited from America and they were quality young men. So what made them different? It was the junior leadership. The junior NCOs, the junior officers whose coaching, whose animating spirits brought out the best in their troops who had admired leadership. We all know that earning the trust and respect of your subordinates is critical. You simply have to earn that trust. You have to earn that respect. You have to earn that every day because when it's all over and done with, you're not going to win any fights as a leader. Your troops are going to win those fights. But there was another word I learned to prioritize as I evaluated units. And that word was affection. It's not popularity with all the favoritism that comes with trying to be a popular person as a leader. That's a road to failure. But affection that you create in a unit is affection so strong that the troops will stick by one another. They'll carry out the mission even in peril. And I bring this one up because I believe that that kind of affection brings out self-discipline where people don't want to let down the unit. And I think that if there is one lesson I learned along the way that the more you can build that kind of affection in a unit, when the going gets tough, when people are getting shot down around you, it'll pull together, it'll pull through. And it'll be a lot smoother organization. It'll move more rapidly against the enemy, more fluidly against the enemy. And it will, generally speaking, have fewer disciplinary problems in garrison, whether it be DUIs, sexual harassment, or all that stuff that you see some jerks do. And on the other hand, when you're in combat, you'll find that they really play hell with the enemy because of what they sense about each other and the conviction they have to supporting one another, their commitment to one another. Philly Best 36. Where do you guys get these names? Wants to know what leadership books do you recommend? It's a great, great question because the Commandant's Reading List is designed specifically to identify the very best reading there is on leadership. If you go to that reading list, you'll find Gates of Fire. And when you read Gates of Fire, you find you as a young leader will never face anything worse than what fighters have faced in the past. If you read Eugene Sledge's book about with the Old Breed at Pelaloo and Okinawa, you'll find the spirit of the Marine Corps overcoming the most difficult combat conditions. And again, you'll find that you will face nothing new under the sun. You will be able to overcome it if you keep your Marine Corps training and your Marine Corps spirit foremost. It requires you to do a lot of reading because there are many different styles of leadership. You must stay authentic to who you are. But at the same time, we expect you to lead in no uncertain terms. In the Marine Corps, you're not paid to have a mid-life crisis or ask people to help you through your mid-life crisis. You're there to give the enemy a mid-life crisis. And that means you put your Marines together into a good, tough team. And by reading from the Commandant's Reading List, you cannot go wrong in getting different leadership ideas that will serve you very, very well. Sepia, all the things, wants to know what did you look for in your NCOs and how should the relationship between an NCO and an officer complement one another? You know, Sepia, for all NCOs and petty officers in the Fleet Marine Forest, I looked for two qualities. I knew I could trust Marines. I made that assumption. I could trust Marines. So what I was looking for was initiative and aggressiveness. I wanted them to have the initiative to take charge, the aggressiveness to carry out whatever the order was. I wasn't interested in them saying that something was difficult. I wasn't interested in the difficulty. Difficulty is an excuse that the Marine Corps will never accept from its sailors and Marines. It's petty officers and NCOs. So I looked for the initiative and aggressiveness and the ability to bond with their troops. So that their troops looked at them as the admired leader, the toughest leader, the most capable leader that they could hope for. As far as the relationship between an NCO and an officer, there are some things that rightly belong to NCO leaders. These are things that have to do with the daily functioning of the unit while the officer should be more concerned with being the sentinel, looking further out, making certain his unit is ready for whatever is coming down the pike, when the missions are coming. So he's always on the lookout for an enemy, for an ambush, this sort of thing and creates that kind of combat hunter mentality in the Marines. But the NCO has got to make certain the petty officer has got to make certain that the sailors and Marines look and act like Marines and they're ready for whatever is coming. Whatever the officer brings down is the mission. They are ready to embrace it and they're ready to fight for it. Hey Delbono wants to know again, where do you guys get these names? You know, I'm going to come up with a few good ones for myself after this. Hey Delbono asks what in your opinion is the most important leadership trait and why? There is no way to separate out the leadership traits because if you prioritize one over the others then you actually become a weaker leader. You've got to look at all of them and how they come together that make you into the kind of leader that your troops want to follow and are willing to follow knowing you have the skill and the enthusiasm you have the passion you have the compassion that makes you the full package. Remember, what we want to do is make Marines and win battles and you do this by creating a Marine Corps that is no better friend and no worse enemy. You can't be strong in one leadership trait and lack luster in another and be a good leader. So the answer to the question about which is the most important leadership trait I think it's how you put it together in your own authentic way so you stay yourself but at the same time you recognize the ability to put all the leadership traits together in one complete package. Roy McVeigh asks what is the kill casualty radius of my knife hand? Well, Roy, I would tell you that when you get to be a high ranking officer the kill casualty radius is whatever your Marines make it and by the time I got up to a senior rank it was hundreds of miles but I would just tell you that I remain humble that I was able to stay in the Marine Corps so long when young Marines like you would make that kill casualty radius very deep in enemy territory and carry out the Marines mission in a way that by the time you're a high ranking officer basically your reputation is carried made by you young Marines who went into the fight with the enemy so the kill casualty radius as far as you can throw it there young man, thank you