 Good morning, everyone. How's everyone doing a little better? I see my people in the back row have moved up. Well done, because I had my eye on you guys. I would like to welcome to the stage to kick this off the honorable mayor read Good morning Thank you all for being here today This is a great opportunity for Leaders like yourself to get to Montgomery, Alabama and learn a little bit about what we've been doing here But I know most importantly We're just glad to offer Our presence and our thanks for you for your service and for your leadership Not only to this community and the communities that you reside in but also to this country in this world So we appreciate everything that you do. We're glad to have you here in Montgomery, Alabama This has always been a place of change. This has always been a place That challenge and push the envelope so to speak and we've always been a place where people believe in strong leadership Strong Air Force leadership like former retired general Bernard Randolph, who is my wife's uncle who's retired four-star general in the Air Force Leaders like that have always created change all the way through civil rights leaders such as Edie Nixon Ralph Abernathy Joe and Robinson Why am I bringing up these leaders because these are leaders that you don't probably know But you wouldn't know this last one. That's Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Those were the leaders that helped spur him as a 26 year old pastor right here in Montgomery, Alabama to lead civil Protests for 382 days Something that was supposed to be a one-day protest lasted 382 days that changed this entire nation and the world But the leaders that I mentioned to you are probably people that you've never heard of because they weren't out front So leadership we know starts Not just with the people who are out front like me But often with the people who are beside you and sometimes behind the scenes that are pushing for that change One of the reason why I ran to be mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, which I've done now for a robust 115 days is Is because I want to be the thermostat and not the thermometer We wanted to set the temperature as opposed to take the temperature and one of the things that we'll talk about And I want to hear from you as well as other speakers is what does that look like in your mind? What does that leadership look like often that we confuse? Management with leadership. I was told a long time ago Management is maintaining the status quo and leadership is changing it and so as leaders We expect you all to do that within your own capacity and what we want to do here Montgomery, Alabama's be a partner with you and be a continued partner with the Air Force But leadership isn't easy. You can't leave with it into the ground and a finger to the wind It's an undignified position So you're gonna lead you have to be willing to step out there on faith and you have to be willing to trust your moral Judgment about what it is you're doing and I believe that's important whether you're in the military or whether you're someone like me That's in an elected office because not all elected officials are leaders. I would say most of them are not Most are managers, but those that are leaders actually look to influence and impact change in a positive way That's what we're doing in Montgomery, Alabama We look forward to continue to do that with you and we're glad to have you here and we hope you enjoy your stay Thank you so much. I Have to say thank you so much for spending your 115th day in office with us, sir So it's nice to have support outside the wire, but it's also nice to have the support inside the wire So I'm gonna welcome to the stage now the Air University Commander and President Lieutenant General Hecker Please please sit down. Come on. Come on. How's everyone doing today? Got some great weather for let X 3.0 There were some great stories. I was traveling back yesterday and of course we were delayed a little bit But it wasn't as bad as some I heard that two of our guest speakers got on the airplane in Atlanta flew into here Weather was not good Their gear wouldn't come down So then they did an emergency gear extension They got the gear down, but guess where the maintenance to fix those gear are back in Atlanta so they got to go back to Atlanta and Then get the airplane fixed and at that time they just got a rental car and came here So it added some time, but they'll have some good leadership I'm sure stories about how they remain calm during that time didn't use curse words and all that stuff So that's good But thanks to the mayor for coming out really appreciate that mayor read And then thanks for everybody else coming out. This is a this a big deal, you know on behalf of air University I'd like to welcome everyone here some of you have been here before for some of you This is your first one for me It's gonna be my first one and I'm really looking forward to it But it's an important venue that we put on here and I'd like to thank the Air Command and Staff College Leadership team for putting this thing together. This doesn't just kind of come together. It takes a lot of work And then when he gets here if it's rainy it puts a lot of you know Stress into the environment on how we're going to do this But the weather is going to get better this afternoon. It'll be good for tomorrow for this two-day event And we're really looking forward to it the the theme for this one is going to be strategy leadership and innovation and how those converge and how we work with those things and we have over 30 guest speakers They're going to be coming out and talking about those themes and I think it's going to be great You'll hear some things that you've heard before You'll hear some things that are new. You'll hear some things that maybe you disagree with What I ask you is keep an open mind Leadership's about taking inputs from everywhere Kind of simulating them and then determining how that fits into your leadership style Some of the leaders will be exactly like you some of them will be a lot different than you I think that you'll probably learn a lot more from the people that are different from you than the people that are like you So enjoy this conference. Thanks to acsc for putting this together and without further ado. We'll go and get started. Thank you All right, so thank you to major reed and general hecker. So now it's time for the fun to begin My name is moe baird. I don't know why I had to look at my notes to say that and I will be your polifka Auditorium guide my counterpart Mr. Jason womack will be guiding us through things in the wood auditorium. So when we do some split ops, that's where he'll be Welcome to the third year of leadership education and development I was lucky enough to be here last year and i'm so grateful And a little curious as to why they invited me back But uh, I am very very happy to be here Polifka's looking really great some great set designers and they have really up leveled their game So this is a big deal and i'm so glad that we can all share this together I might be one of the speakers that you disagree with but that's okay Sorry my life. All right. So based on registration information. We have more than 400 dedicated and oh so salty air command and staff college students Yeah, you'll yeah You only laugh because it's true. Okay More than 200 air force rotc cadets from across the country. So we got public private ivy and hbcu institutions So thank you so much for being here and we also have more than 80 local And regional and national business people from organizations like river region united way Leadership montgomery and chick-fil-a among some others So we are also pleased to have senior air university military leaders and local elected leaders with us today So some quick updates before our first speakers military members if you run into colonel pat carly the 42nd airbase wing commander Thank him for authorizing a no hat no salute area and that's between this building acsc in the auditorium So that whole area in there if in doubt put your hat on and salute somebody that goes for civilians too if you want If you feeling left out Feel free to jump on to the conversation at twitter the handle is uh the hashtag is ledx 2020 and ledx au is the twitter handle Or you can visit the ledx website at ledx au.com or you can download the acsc app That's got a ledx schedule and all the bios on there If you have any questions find somebody who's got a ledx lanyard or a t-shirt or uh, I don't know they have longs this year But um, just find somebody who's wearing ledx gear and ask them and they will be more than happy to help you and answer your concerns Yes, cool All right for the four people who answer. Thank you. So that's the housekeeping business Uh, so now we'll just get down to introducing our very first speaker to kick off ledx 3.0 It's vice admiral william dean lee. He is u.s. Coast Guard retired He led for nearly 36 years with his final assignment as commander of the Atlantic area Having operational command over 21 000 active personnel from across five coast guard districts and 40 states from the rocky mountains to the arabian gulf He's a private consultant specializing in corporate leadership development But his most passionate and self-satisfying work is volunteering with the heroin addiction recovery program in virginia He works with inmates who are victims of the current opioid epidemic Ladies and gentlemen vice admiral william lee Thank you Good morning. You know what I hate about them bios You know, they they never tell you what you really want to know Things kind of like vice admiral dean lee graduated second From the bottom of his class Or vice admiral william dean lee severe case of self diagnosed adhd has an attention span about three minutes long And these are all true things There's a whole lot of things and all of our bios and our backgrounds that we don't put in those public announcements But i'm not ashamed to tell you that i'm a flawed leader The most unlikely probably of that of people in my graduating class from officer canada school to ever make it as far as I did Nobody was more surprised to get the call than I was Because I never considered myself worthy But I learned something a long time ago back when I was a lieutenant jg that stuck with me the rest of my career As I was swimming around in that pool of competing colleagues that I had graduated with all of whom were focused on Looking good for the boss I figured out that I was never going to be able to compete with them And so I didn't So instead of focusing on my boss, I started focusing on my few people that worked for me Paying attention to them and a miracle happened When you look after your crew They'll look after you Then you don't have to look good for the boss They'll make you look good to the boss So let's talk a little bit about leadership today Um If I can make this thing work First off it is a great honor to have been asked to come here I can't tell you what an honor it is for a coast guard officer to be asked to come to an air force leadership institute And be the kickoff speaker truth the matter is I spent 36 years in on active duty and I just assume That everybody else in the world all other corporations and organizations of land that didn't put on a uniform every day Had the same sense of value for leadership And honor and integrity That we do in the uniform services I just assumed that it was all the same and that they honed it And then I retired and I went out into corporate and there's a corporate world teaching a series of lectures on leadership That I call conundrums of leadership, and I found out that they are nothing like What I experienced in the u.s. Military They'll say in you you don't know the value of something until you've lost it There's no true or saying I really didn't understand the value Of being part of a leadership culture such as that that we have in the military And if you're anything like me you don't understand that yet But you will value it immensely when it is no longer there And the bottom line is I would give anything to be you again To go right back out into the world you're in And start over as an o3 o4 and try to work my way up again There's a saying by an old wise man in my favorite book of leadership If you care to know what it is you can ask me afterwards, but He said there's nothing new under the sun It's all been seen and done before Well, there's no there's it's really true There is nothing new under the sun because those kinds of things that motivated people human beings Two three thousand years ago are the same things that motivate human beings today And we would do well if we went back and we studied some of the things that our predecessors had learned and taught us And by the way this week we lost an icon in the leadership world jack welch died at the age of 84 If you have ever read any jack welch's books or if you have and I encourage you to do so But there was one specific phrase in one of his books that caught my attention years ago And I've never forgotten it so jack was sitting at a corporate board meeting one time And he was getting pressure from the board members because the investors were angry because one of his senior vps had made an error That they cost the company general electric a lot of money And things were starting to get heated in the boardroom discussion And so one of the board members asked jack welch The ceo says all right when you're going to fire so and so And jack looked at him says well, i'm not going to fire him Well, he kind of said back. What do you mean you're not going to fire him? I'm not going to fire him He is now my most experienced vice president Now I want you to think about that when you make mistakes and all the people make mistakes All of us are going to make a litany of leadership mistakes as we work our way up that ladder to wherever it is You've set your goals on attaining You're going to want people to forgive you those mistakes And you're also going to want to learn from each one of the mistakes you made I want to remind you that you are in a unique club There's 330 million people in the united states of america And at any given time there's less than 1 percent. In fact, it's point it's 0.5 percent of the population united states of america Is wearing the uniform of a member of any one of the five military services You guys are one percenters. That's a unique club And if you added up all of the men and women who had ever served in any branch of the military for any length of time Be it two years or 32 years That's some total would add up to a little less than eight percent Of the total population As a former member of that club, I want to thank you for volunteering to do what you do Many of you may feel underappreciated sometimes Many of the people out there and sitting in their armchairs in Nebraska watching the evening news have no idea what it's like to be you To have to pack up your household goods every few years and move your family the places that you never Probably never wanted to go to And to repeat that process Tour after tour until many of you retire from active duty. Thank you for your service So why are we here? You know, there's a fact that wasn't in my bio, but I'm gonna share it with you I hadn't told many people this but I'm gonna tell you Uh, I used to be a subject matter expert on parenting I mean, I could tell you everything you wanted to know or needed to know about how to raise a child how to get them to behave correctly Until I had kids And then them two little hellions that I produced just went bonkers every time I took them to a restaurant Every time I took them into apartment store. They're under the clothes racks. They're everywhere And there was somebody else over there in the corner who used to be like me They were subject matter experts on how to raise children mumbling under their breath The fact of the matter is every single one of us in this room have at one time or another been subject matter experts on leadership Have we not? We can all tell you what a good leader looks like what a bad leader looks like What that might that leader that you work for ought to be doing that they're not doing right now It's so easy to do it until you land In the leadership seat Then we get the epiphanies But if you don't get anything outside of what I'm going to tell you in the next 20 30 minutes I want you to get this one bottom line fact upfront My daddy used to have his way and he wanted me to get something He would look at me and he'd say make eye contact Make eye contact Everything in this country everything we do in our families in our organization in our squadrons On our ships in our airplanes on the ball fields rises and falls on leadership And leadership rises and falls on integrity And integrity Rises and falls On the decisions we make Mostly when nobody else is looking How are you going to make those decisions Leadership and management. I mean we hear those terms all the time. They're used almost synonymously I went on amazon.com last night and I wanted to find out how many books I could order On leadership and management. So I put into the search engine boom leadership And I was thinking that you know amazon's a big organization And I know they carry a lot of books But I would have guessed that at most there might be 200 books that I could order and have delivered the next day By that man in a little brown truck we've all grown to love so much I was shocked to find that There's over 40 000 books on leadership Available on amazon Then I put into term management. Woa it almost exploded It wouldn't even give me an exact number. It says there's over 100 000 books available for order On management Then there's a third category you could go leadership and management and boom there's even more books I mean we're inundated. We're saturated With literature out there on how to lead and manage, but what's the difference? What's the difference between great leaders? and great managers Well, I go around if I really like it when I get to to lecture at college campuses to all the new fresh aspiring future leaders and I ask them this question, you know, and there's no wrong answer to what A great leader or a great manager looks like but but I always give them my definition and my definition is no better than anybody else's but here it is We all need great managers I certainly needed those great managers in my world because those great managers are the people who are going to Dot every eye and cross every T They're going to follow corporate policy and the sop To the letter of the law. They're never going to deviate We need those people especially when you're in a command position Because those are the people who are going to keep us out of trouble when the surprise auditor show up Or god forbid when we have that mishap And now we've got the investigators around and they're poking they're turning over rocks looking into the training records and this and that and the other These great managers who follow the policy and do everything right will keep us Out of trouble. We can keep our job But while great managers will always do things right A great leader Will always do the right thing and sometimes that will require us as leaders To swim upstream against the court of public opinion To break policy and in some cases to break the law itself So I ask you Who give me an example Who in your lifetime have you witnessed Who was a great leader who actually broke the law and it was the right thing to do I always let people think about that. I let that sink in In my lifetime. I was born in 1954 and I was raised in the turbulent years of the 1960s The 1960s Was a tough time in american society We had unrest in the streets from a litany of issues We had riots. We had marches against the war We had the civil rights movement going on If you ask me Well, my opinion of the greatest leader I ever personally saw not in person but on tv There's a dr. Martin Luther king And dr. Martin Luther king Led his calls right here in this very state The man of courage He's breaking the law he was swimming upstream against those old legal But morally unjust jim crow laws Of post civil war reconstruction. He was a man born for such a time as that He was a leader Not only was dr. King A great leader He was a masterful orator And a strategist Those are the kind of leaders that we should aspire to be When called upon to perhaps throw our stars on the table There's a lot of talk these days about trust Who do you trust? Who don't you trust who you're gonna deal with and Now books have been written about it You know, there's an old saying that I used to hear when I would go over the briefings at the pentagon You know operations especially when we were gearing up for the for the war effort post 9 11 Operations move at the speed of trust You've all heard it We've even made a litany of different kinds of Little models learning models on that But what is trust? How important is it? Well every two years the gallop pollsters they go out across the land And they'll take a poll of the american public Trying to figure out Of the top 10 Institutions in the united states of america who are listed above What's the pecking order? Who does the american public trust trust most and trust least? And they narrow this down by a series of questions designed to get to the confidence factor in the leadership associated with those organizations So I asked you if you look at all of those organizations, what would the pecking order look like if you had to guess? Who's at the bottom? Who's at the top? Let's take a look It was congress They're the least trusted organization of all of the top institutions yet. We will re-elect 85 of them next go around All right big business Big business has lost a lot of trust because of Scandals such as that that we saw with wells fargo banking and volts wagon when they were putting faulty sensors on their On their automobiles, etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Can you trust big business any of you can't trust them? Are you going to do business with them? Oh, we don't even have to talk about the tv news media criminal justice system We going up to the banks and the supreme court and the presidency But who are in the top two? If you guys can count cards, you probably know there's only two left There's the church and the u.s. Military So who's in the top position? How many people say to church? How many people say to u.s. Military the question is why is that? Now I went back and I did this research all the way back up into the 70s And the united states military armed forces as an institution has remained at the top consistently Year after year after year and i'm waiting for the 2020 data to come out again this year And i've gone online and i've tried to research and find out why has anybody written an article about this Why is the military people who are trained To go overseas And do our nation's business and kill people Why are they trusted more than the church That many of us included myself for a part of A church whose very foundation is built on morality and ethics and love Nobody's addressed it Well, i'm going to postulate that this is the reason right here It is because leaders like you And those that followed you whole people accountable For breaches Of confidence Is because at every single one of the accession points for all five military services We start hammering home into their brains from day one these core values Every single service has embedded in its core values the concept of honor and integrity Integrity first Well, the church does that too So how come they're not number one? I mean it's not like We don't draw Our members from the same population that the church does It's not like we have some kind of a draft where we just get to pick the best and the brightest We kick we pick regular americans That come in where there are same flaws everybody else does But here's the difference We set rules and we set standards and we hold them accountable I mean it's hard To pick up a copy of navy times air force times Army times on any given week you can pick them up in there It's hardly a week goes by that there's some admiral some general some colonel some captain or somebody that hadn't been relieved for cause For some breach of ethics somewhere It's not like we don't sin like the rest of them But it's because when we do We bring it out in the open And we don't try to cover it up And we do the right thing we hold them accountable and we move on And those are the types of behaviors The courses like this Are designed to hammer home so that you too will carry that legacy forward And so this is your job. This is your mission We Have been number one On the top rated most trusted institution scale For over 50 years You are standing on the shoulders of many leaders that preceded you And now it is your turn To hold your people and yourselves accountable to the same high standards The decisions ahead of you Are going to be vast. They're going to be many Now I sense that almost all of you are mid-grade officers in here 04s 05s perhaps a few 06s You've already had some tough decisions some very difficult decisions that you've had to deal with But trust me, there's going to be more because the higher you go on that ladder the Vaster your span of control becomes And the more opportunities you are going to have to fail How many of you guys ever saw The movie forest gum All right, what is uh What's old forest saying to that woman sitting on that bench there somewhere here in alabama? What what is he about to say what is coming out of his mouth somebody give me the Give me the line Life is like a box of chocolates You never know what you're going to get Oh man, is that so true that fits us in our world of leadership You never know what you're going to get You never know what kind of challenge you're going to have when you come to work tomorrow Or who's going to be transferred into your unit that is going to be your worst nightmare And you don't get a choice you don't get to pick them That's one of the things I loved about being in the military You just got to play the hand you're dealt Oh, I used to hear officers say well, I just inherited this misfit bunch Yeah, I'm good Deal with it I inherited you I dealt with it So being a young man when I was a young man and suffering from undiagnosed ADHD I remember that the only sermons or the only lectures that I could ever remember From school or college was those when the professor the teacher or the preacher Drove home a point with a story I'm gonna tell you a kind of long-winded story here All right, and you're gonna You're gonna be scratching your head as we muddle through this story going. What is this got to do with leadership? Well, just hang with me for a few minutes. It'll become crystal clear in the last two minutes Now I want you to pay particular attention to the characters And all of the superfluous details associated with a story because it matters You never know when you get out of bed on any given morning when you're going to be taught a lifelong lesson Or you're going to encounter somebody or something That's going to have an impact on the rest of your life Now most admirals they are just full of sea stories I mean, I got a litany of sea stories. I could tell you but unlike most of my sea stories This is a true story. So here we go Back in 2012 I was in charge of the fifth coast guard district So I had responsibility at that time as a one star for everything from the south carolina line up to the new jersey new york border I was on the road a lot. My headquarters was in porchmouth, virginia and so As a younger man, I used to run a lot. I wasn't very good at it But I used to run and train for marathons and uh, you know, I never won anything I was just competing with me. All I wanted to do was beat my last time And every day at lunch I'd go running four or five miles on the beach Little that I know that running on the beach was bad for you and ended up having a bad or killage tendon one of my Tendons of my right leg froze up on me and the doctor I started limping I got lame it hurting It was hurting bad. And so the doctors wanted to operate on that leg But I wouldn't let them because I couldn't take the time off Basically, I didn't want to get operated on so I took the ride in a bicycle for my cardiovascular exercise So every day I'd ride my mountain bike from that big old giant mansion. They let me live in at the Norfolk naval base to my office and um, so one afternoon august 3rd 2012 I've come to the end of the day and and I'm I'm I'm shifting colors I'm going to put on my cargo pants My t-shirt and my ball cap and a pair of those goofy looking little plastic crocs that some men wear Not real men, but me And I lit off from home from my quarters on them on my bicycle And so it's starting to get dark and this is a section of town where you didn't go in during the day Much less when at night time, but I want to take a little shortcut Through this little park over there between me and the in the base And so I'm zipping up through this park and it's one of those parks where the city of port smith had kind of Had had made a deal with the with the navy they were going to Donate the land And the navy was going to donate a bunch of nautical artifacts and make a park out of it And so they had out there they had a lot of these things a submarine conning tower and some big old giant Anchors and some guns off of this thing or that thing a little sidewalks are wide around And they'd be a little brass plaque up there, you know And you could take johnny or surly up there and you'd say look that's a cannon off the uss whatever Well in the middle of this park right dead center The nucleus of it there was this big giant propeller off of an aircraft carrier Now I don't know if you've ever seen a prop off an aircraft carrier, but they're big I mean this thing was laying flat on its side. It's about the size of a three-bread broom brick rancher You can't see over it. You can't see around it And the sidewalk goes up to this thing and then it splits it goes around it and joins on the other side and keeps on going So i'm riding up this i'm riding up this sidewalk there And unbeknownst to me On the other side of that prop A portsmouth police officer had parked his cruiser And led his big old shackle slovakian bread german shepherd named joe out to pee well I didn't know this joe didn't know this Joe doesn't finish his business and he's laying out on that cool Concrete in that evening hot sultry Heat cooling his belly And I come whipping around that blind corner and at the same nanosecond that I saw him He saw me and his ears go up Now me being higher species I deduced instantaneously. Uh-oh I'm about to get eaten And so I sent joe a mental telepathic text message that said i'm sorry mr. Dog I didn't mean to get in your territory I'm getting out of here fast as I can and I turned that bicycle to the right and I started humping that thing fast as I can Hump hump hump. Meanwhile, joe sends me a text message back Oh, I'm sorry. I've been waiting for this all day You're mine Joe takes three leaps jumps on my back and drags me off that bicycle and commences to eat me alive Now i'm on the ground and i'm looking up at this dog And he's about the size of a small woolly mammoth And he got teeth about yay long And i'm telling you today is slobber and growling and blood flying everywhere and meanwhile his master the police officer is over there 30 yards away sweeping dog hair out of the back of his cruiser and he turns around listening all his commotion And he sees his dog eating up a citizen and he ain't got no idea who it is So he runs over there Meanwhile, let's break right there for a second Let's back up that take about 10 hours 12 hours that morning eight o'clock Every morning at eight o'clock every admiral and operational command and coast guard goes in their command center and they get a brief from some lieutenant And about what's going on the last 24 hours what's going to go on the next 24 hours? And so we got this these things last about 15 20 minutes and sometimes One of the junior officers who's sitting on the sidelines in there grab me or some one of the other seniors And go hey, sir, can I ask you a few questions? I'm working on my master's thesis or whatever And so hypothetically, let's just say that on this particular morning one of my lieutenants says sir, can you give me five minutes? I'm working on a dissertation on Animal behavior. I just got one question for you if you ever found yourself pinned to the ground by a man eating dog What would you do to get out of that? And I would probably looked at him and said well bill I imagined that I would reach up with my Right hand grabbing by the ears And with my left hand grabbing by something out squeeze hard as I can until he runs away in fear And the fact of the matter is I curled up in the fetal position and screamed like a little girl get him off get him off So here comes the police officer. He's hearing all of this. He runs over there and the bad thing about joe was he was a trained killer The good thing about joe Is he was a trained killer Because as soon as his master told him to let loose he did So as the officer is getting his dog secured over there in the back of his cruiser I'm able to set up In my adrenaline is through the roof I got 18 holes in me That dog started on the small of my back drugged me down worked his way down my right leg My lame leg Right down onto my calf that the surgeons wanted to operate on and it is spewing blood every time my heart beat And it hurts And here comes the owner The master He's running over there. And as he's running up towards me I'm letting loose every sailor word I had ever learned in my life on him and some of them are hyphenated and I eat proud Now as he's running towards this guy lighting him up He's going sir sir calm down calm down. He says this is totally my fault I got an ambulance on the way. We're gonna get you to the hospital quick Ain't nobody seeing this That wasn't a single human being anywhere in sight that saw this Just me and joe And his master Now that police officer had violated policy I mean had he been living within the policy That dog never would have got me I knew that because we had canines in my organization So he gets over there and Within five minutes here comes the ambulance And almost simultaneously His sergeant shows up and so as the EMTs are tending to me over there get me all patched up putting bandages around me and all of that stuff They they get my name and all they got is I'm William Dean Lee. I'm active duty Military I need to go to the Portsmouth Naval hospital. That's all they know They don't know my rank. They don't know my title. They just know I'm a guy Who needs to go to the doctor and I need to go to a military doctor Meanwhile, I see the sergeant grab the police officer and he drags him over there Well, they're patching me up and getting me in the litter and and they're having a conversation over there by the cruiser outside of earshot But I can see him. I can see the sergeant. He is just lighting into him. You know, they haven't wanted him conversations Then as I'm getting loaded in the back of that that that van there I see when I'm grabbing my bicycle throw it in the back of their cruiser and off we go We've got a convoy going to the emergency room 10 15 minutes later we pull up at the ER entrance It's just like any other hospital entrance anywhere in the land, you know The glass doors and a little overhang says emergency blah blah blah Well, they got a little wheelchair waiting out there for me, but I'm too proud when they open them doors to To get in a wheelchair. I'm gonna I'm a man. I'm gonna I'm gonna walk in walking wounded on my own So I get out and I start walking I start limping in there Flanked one each by a police officer on each side Now by now all that blood that had run down my leg had started to coagulate inside that little plastic sissy croc that I was wearing so every step I took that thing and go squeeze Squish Squish, so we walk up to them two goers and them things them all to make doors. They go swoop And they're gonna walk in and there's a sea of people in there waiting to be treated for this that or the other Now they're looking at me and I'm just focused on that little window I got to get to over there that you got to check in at and I start walking in But I catch out of the corner of my left eye over there in the corner. There's a young guy I know he was a marine. You know how you can just tell a marine I mean had the haircut. He's a marine I see him. He looks at he catches He makes eye contact when in police officers and he goes Good job. I said I got it So I squished my way up to that window over there and You know the window it got that little hole in it with that little that little metal tray. You put your ID card in so I walk up and sit behind that window and one of them them plushy government chairs. They give those folks was was this this corpsman and and I can only describe her body language as Little miss attitude I mean she looks up at me And she's already sized this up. She uh, can I help you? I go. Well, yes, ma'am. I say uh, I got bit by their dog And I think I need to get treated back there. Can you help me out? She's ID So I reach in my pocket I pull up my ID or put it in that little tray She gets it little miss attitude. She looks at it Now what happened next Was worth the dog bite and all the pain She shot out of that chair like a Polaris missile. Boom up. Don't you worry admiral. We're gonna get you taken care of right away Meanwhile, I'm looking in that glass that glass thing there It was a glare coming from the back windows and it created almost a perfect mirror image reflection I could see everybody behind me Particularly the two police officers So I see the serge he turns to the police officer He looks at him without saying a word all body language. He goes Wraps him in off they go outside them little doors in there there and he is lighting him up again, man They're having another conversation Meanwhile, they take me back to that special room where they put admirals who've been bit by police dogs Which is just wooden little rooms with little curtain around it, you know So I I'm back airing about five minutes later. Here comes the police officer And I said well officer, I'll tell you what I says I'm good to go now. Appreciate you getting me over here I got my aid on the way Why don't you go back on patrol? He looks at me and he goes Mm-hmm I'm here as long as it takes So I look at him. I say, oh, I got it. We might as well have a seat So for the next three and a half hours While I was waiting my turn in the queue. I don't care if you are admiral heart attacks Proceed you I get to know this police officer pretty good. We get we strike up a conversation I learned a whole lot of things about the value of police dogs. I learned about his family his kids I got to talk to him about how many people is joe put in the hospital. He goes seven Six bad guys one admiral, but you the worst bleeder About the 14th or 15th time that brian. We're on a first name basis now that brian Started to apologize to me. I looked at him and said you got to stop I said, I want you to understand something. I don't blame you. I don't blame the dog You've out of been you and I know there's a policy says he's supposed to be in this but given that situation I'd have done exactly what you did. I'd have let my dog loose to go pee with freedom I want you to understand. I'm not suing you the department. I'm not going to demand to joe be put down And I'll make sure this don't get in the paper to make sure your boss understands that How about you bring the police chief over to my office for lunch tomorrow And so that furthermore You know brian, I was supposed to ride my bicycle 100 miles tomorrow It's part of a coast guard team that had signed up to raise charity More might have been my day to get run over by a teenager talking on a cell phone Or worse yet tonight might have been your night to get shot breaking up a dispute somewhere So when you look at it in that context a little dog bite ain't no big deal So I got It's about the end of it I got sewed up and I got released And there's a postlude to the story that I'll tell you in a minute. That's More important than the story itself And so at this point you're going so what? What in the hell has that got to do with leadership? So when I go to the college campuses and I tell them the jota dog story I always ask them I say what's the most important takeaway That you get from that story and they'll start scratching their heads and they'll come out and somebody will go well sir, it's it's It's about forgiveness It's good to forgive other people when they've aired and I go out. That's true That's true, but that's not the most important takeaway And somebody else will go well, it's about policy if he had been following the policy That dog never would have bit you and that wouldn't have been in the hospital. I go. Yep. You're right That's also an important thing, but it's not the most important takeaway Then somebody else will go well It's about judgment Don't judge other people because of the way they look Because of the color of their skin or what's on their bumper sticker Or their headdress So well, that's true too. That's an important takeaway But that's not the most important When now they're scratching their heads. Well, what else is it? The most important moment in that whole long-winded story Occurred at that precise moment When that police officer Who is responsible for all of this turned around and ran Not walked over to the citizen who had been harmed by his dog And owned it Sir, this is totally my fault I'm gonna take care of this He owned it And he owned it for two reasons number one. He was a man of integrity that I found out later but number two He lived within a culture of integrity Passed down by the leadership in his police department That was the culture of ownership that they had created Whereby the men and women who served under that police chief knew that I know you're going to make a mistake When you do make a mistake Take responsibility for it And I will take responsibility for you So Here's the epiphany here And here's the lesson This is the takeaway that I got from this whole torrid dog bite that I'm so grateful for having A dog bite that my own lawyers who served on my staff told me would have been worth at least $25,000. All I had to do was file a complaint To the police department and they were written a check No questions asked just to make it go away But I couldn't do that I have to work with the Portsmouth police department And it would have been going against the grain of what I felt was the right thing to do So here's the fact of the matter Every single one of us in this room are going to be each one of those characters in that long-winded story at some point in our life If we haven't already We're all going to be that police officer who made a mistake and somebody else got hurt either physically financially or emotionally We're all going to be the sergeant Who's responsible for somebody in our organization or in our squadron who made a mistake and somebody else got hurt and perhaps Your own brand is being attacked as a result of it Every one of us is going to be that emt That shows up to pack somebody up who's been hurt some way in your family in your unit in your community And we're all going to repeatedly And I mean repeatedly Be Those guys that young marine and that young woman corpsman behind the window in the emergency room Who's passing judgment down on somebody else and we don't have all the facts We're all going to be me We're all going to get hurt by somebody else's negligence or any irresponsibility And then lastly and most importantly We are all At one point another going to be joe the dog We're going to tear right into somebody we're going to light them up. We're going to draw blood Only to find out later. We got the wrong guy How are we going to handle that? What are you going to do When life lands you in each one of those roles? Are you going to sue you're going to judge You're going to forgive these or the decisions That will separate men and women of integrity from those that don't two years later I had been transferred. I got a second star and I'm now assigned to coast guard headquarters. I'm the deputy chief of operations for our entire force One afternoon my My admin assistant comes in says admiral I got a A gentleman on the phone from porchemist police department. His name is brian davis. He says he'd like to talk to you Can you accept the call? And I said Well, sure put him through so I pick up the phone and He says admiral this is officer brian davis porchemist porchemist pd. Remember me Hey brian, how could I ever forget you? How you doing buddy? We catch up we See finally he gets to the point. He's the sort of reason I called you Is because We retire our dogs when they get eight years old Joe's birthday is coming up and I've got to retire him and I got a new alpha male coming in and they're they can't cohabitate together He's a you were so kind to me and joe I'd like to offer you Joe Man, I'm totally unprepared for this I replayed that tape in my mind with all that blood in him slobber flying And I say brian, uh He says before you make your decision. He says just ain't no joes were 25 000 dollars He said we got 25 000 dollars invested in his training He is an obedient dog when he goes home with me at night. He don't hurt anybody. He plays with my kids He thought you were a friend. I got it. I understand Remember 25 000 dollars is what my lawyer said that dog bite was worth I declined it because I traveled so much But I concluded the conversation with this I said brian. I'm so glad you called me. I've been meaning to hunt you down You ain't gonna believe this But the reason I was on a bicycle that day was because I could no longer run I was riding a bicycle which was my second choice for staying cardio vascularly fit Because I was limping I explained to him how the surgeons wanted to operate on my leg I said and that dog on dog of yours bit right into my lame leg couldn't get my good leg got my bad leg Six weeks later after that thing healed I don't know how this happened somehow that dog bit right through that frozen tendon that the surgeons wanted to operate it on Freed that thing up and now I'm running like a banshee Thank you for that dog bite I firmly believe That all things work together for good You just got to find the good and the ugliness of life When it says all things It doesn't say some things. It doesn't say most things It says all things The good the bad and the ugly We're all going to get an equal dose of each one And the question I'll leave you with As you go forth into this seminar Is how are you going to deal with each one of those categories? God bless all of you. It has been an honor. Thank you