 Slowly. Our next speaker is a leader of many talents. Dr. Dondie Costin is the president of Charleston Southern University. Before his current duties, leading more than 500 faculty and staff in a 3,400 strong student body, he was Major General Dondie Costin and Chief of Chaplains of the US Air Force. It's kind of hard not to be impressed with somebody who clearly made the most of their transition assistance program as they prepared for life outside the workshop. So let me make sure I get all his titles right, because I'm going to welcome to the stage Dr. Chaplin General Dr. Dondie Costin. Have you ever worked for Dr. Francis? Oh, yeah. He's OK. Just OK? Guess who just got reinstated? Well, not officially. Nervous? Yeah. Yeah, me too. Don't worry about it. We'll figure it out. I'll see you in there. Just OK is not OK. For those of you who are fans of American football, you were regaled by AT&T's commercials. And I found myself seeing that this was the only set of commercials I couldn't take my eyes off of. If it applies to elevator operators and tax preparers and tattoo artists and skydivers and surgeons, then certainly it would apply to leaders of men and women as you are. So if you are looking to find your purpose at the intersection of leadership, strategy, and innovation, the message for the next 20 minutes is simple. Just OK is not OK. Now, I learned this lesson first in the eighth grade by a teacher who I will never forget. Now, I was probably the only one who appreciated the value of this teacher. Her name was Mercedes J. Newsom. And she was as scary as her name sounded. In fact, in the halls of Trask Junior High School in North Carolina, she was referred to as Gruesome Newsom. Now, Mrs. Newsom's opportunity, her job, as she understood it, was to pull out of every student as much excellence as she could muster. And so here's the way she did it. At the end of every single graded event, it could have been a paper or a project or a speech. She would have all of us all around the room pick up everything that we owned and stand at the back of the room. And then she would reseat us from lowest grade to highest grade after every single graded event. Now, as she did this, she certainly affirmed my personal worth and dignity, which I would encourage all of you to do as the case comes. But what she also did was say to me, and she said it to me personally, that you can do better and more than you're doing, because I found that it was quite okay to be right there in the middle. I had no problems being in the middle of the class, and she said to me, in the middle is not good enough. And she did that for every single student. Now, it was significant because it didn't just work for me. Now, I found myself slowly but surely moving up the ranks because what I found is if I said to myself what she was saying to me, just okay is not okay. Then if I worked harder and thought bigger and did more than anybody else, then perhaps I could move up to the front. And over time, she made sure that I was at the front. The good news is that it worked for everybody else as well. A rising tide lifts all boats. I love the way that the US Air Force Academy thinks about leadership. The Air Force Academy thinks about leadership using four letters, P-I-T-O. It's brilliant maneuver because these four letters describe how leadership development works and every time it's dried. Because leadership comes from the inside out. It never comes from the outside in. The P in PEDO stands for personal leadership. And here's the news that all of us already know. The hardest person you will ever lead is yourself. As you look in the mirror, what we tend to do is we, we tend to evaluate other people based on their actions and we evaluate ourselves based on our intentions. If you're a personal leader, then you understand that your personal competence, your technical expertise and your character are the most important things, the most important building block of the whole enterprise. Toxic leadership occurs later down the road because people think they can rush through personal leadership. They think they can rush through I, the interpersonal leadership aspect and then rely upon positional power at the higher levels. That's how toxic leaders make it through. When it comes to personal leadership, you have to ask yourself this question, am I good enough? Is my character good enough? Because the fact is just okay is not okay. When it comes to interpersonal leadership, do you have the skills that it takes in a one-on-one experience to see somebody, not as somebody who can do something for you, but as a leader that you can serve in ways that will rise them up, raise them up. Personal, interpersonal, then team leadership. Team leadership is you, when you get finally to a point where you get to say to other people, listen, we can do this. We can make this team succeed regardless of how big the team is, what the size of the mission is. Team leadership says we can do this together. And if you master these all the way up, eventually you'll get to a point where you lead an organization all along the way for your person and interpersonal relationships, for your team and for your organization. Just okay is not okay. Now I learned this firsthand in my own doctoral research. When I was here at our university, I was completing a PhD. And so I did a research project in which we surveyed about 1,100 officers and enlisted members in the United States Air Force. And the focus of the research was very simple. Let's look at the leadership skills and competencies, attitudes and other things related to those who were squadron commander equivalents, Lieutenant Colonel's mostly. And I simply asked three questions. I asked of those squadron commander equivalents and I asked the same thing of their subordinates. The first question was, how prepared do you think you are for the job that you have just been given? The second question was, how well do you think you perform in this leadership role? And the third question was, tell me about your job satisfaction. How well do you like your job? I asked the same question of their subordinates. In other words, how well prepared is this squadron commander equivalent for the job? How are they performing in the role of squadron commander equivalent? And how well do you, as a subordinate, like your job being led by this person? Now it will be probably no surprise to those of you who have been led before, and that's all of us, that there were statistically significant differences across the board in every category. In other words, the squadron commander equivalents thought they were more prepared than their subordinates thought they were. The squadron commander equivalents thought that they were better performers than their subordinates thought that they were. And it will be no surprise to you that the squadron commander equivalents enjoyed their job a whole lot more than their subordinates enjoyed their job underneath their leadership. What I discovered by looking strictly at the data, which I had already knew from common sense in my own experience, is that leaders without question have blind spots. They have blind spots in their personal, interpersonal team and organizational leadership. The fact is that in so many ways, leadership is leadership. And if you can lead in one context, those same principles will apply in any other context. With no exceptions that I can think of at the moment. No exceptions. But here's the challenge for military leaders. And it's an additional challenge. The challenge is that most of our individuals, most of our airmen, and this would apply across the board in the other military services as well, most people live and work in squadrons or their equivalents, which means that most people's front line leadership is a squadron commander or their equivalent. Here's the challenge when it comes to finding your purpose at the intersection of leadership, strategy and innovation. In the military, at least the last 30 years, we have been in no kidding war since August of 1990, which means that for nearly my entire career and probably all of your career, you have had to toggle between wartime leadership and peacetime leadership. And those are two very different animals. But what we've had to do, and especially as a squadron commander, what you have had or will have to do is you'll have to do peacetime leadership for a bit and try to prepare not just for the war that you're about to go into, but at least think about the next war. And then you'll do that for six or eight months and then you'll have to go to war and do that. And what you find yourself doing is going back and forth and back and forth. And the best that you can do if your experience is anything like most squadron commander's experience is that you do all you can to keep your head above water. You're focused mostly by necessity on tactics and not so much on strategy. The other challenge that I think we have at the squadron commander level is a challenge across the military as well. And that is command assignments, by and large, are two years or less. And what tends to happen is a new commander comes on stage and what she wants to do is make a name for herself or he wants to make a name for himself. And so he comes in and instead of taking the baton in many cases from the one who came before, that person says, well, I only have two years to make a name for myself. And so what tends to happen is much of what was innovated and done before is undone or undermined so that the next person can have OPRs, performance reports that say good things. In the end, what happens is this. The viewpoint of many squadrons is not long-term and strategic, it's more short-term. And so from a bird's eye view, the typical squadron, the typical organization at this level is going to look like it is stuck in a traffic jam on the road to nowhere. The third challenge when you have a system that only has two years in leadership is this. Many squadron commanders, in fact, all squadron commanders have never failed in anything in their profession. That's why they become squadron commanders. And so many squadron commanders come to the stage, their time in the spotlight, and their number one job is to not get fired. If I can just maintain the status quo long enough not to get fired, then I will get to go to the next level. And so many of them, it drives into the organization from my experience, it drives into their organization a risk aversion that is not helpful. My message to you is as you think about your own leadership at the personal level, at the interpersonal level, at the team and organization level, continue to ask yourself this question, are we doing as good a job as possible? Because the fact is at all of those levels, especially when national defense is on the line, just okay is not okay. And it never will be. This is an interesting time because exactly 40 years ago, the United States of America's hockey team was an underdog big time against the Russians. And many of you would have seen on ESPN in the past couple of weeks, the 40th anniversary on February 22nd, the 40th anniversary of the USA hockey team's very unlikely victory over the Russians. Now you know the story. The Russians were all professionals. The Russians were highly trained and they were a team. And the United States was a bunch of college kids who didn't think much about team. All they thought about was their own last name, how well they could do as individuals and the school that they came from. And if you've ever seen the movie, you understand that coach Her Brooks, his job is to find the team's purpose at the intersection of leadership, strategy and innovation. And what he has to do is take this bunch of individuals and form them into a team. And in the most crucial scene in the movie, he calls them together after a very difficult workout after they haven't performed very well in a game against Finland. And he says to them words that I will never forget. He says, guys, if you're going to win and you can, despite the impossible odds, if you are going to win, you have to realize this one thing, if nothing else, that the name on the front of your jersey, USA, is far more important than the name on the back. You see, that same truth should confront you every time you put on your battle dress uniform, your ABUs or whatever else they're calling them these days, and you look in the mirror and you see on one side of your uniform is your last name and one side is United States Air Force, or Army, or Navy, or Coast Guard, or whatever country that you are currently serving for. And you have to ask yourself this question. Today, what's going to be more important? My last name or the organization that I have called to be a servant leader in, the fact is just okay is not okay. And in this context, when national defense is on the line, regardless of resource constraints, regardless of bureaucracy, regardless of personal challenges, you have to find a way to win. And in this era, it's even more true than ever. But one thing I can guarantee you, there is genius in the title of this conference, because you can find purpose, personal significance and meaning and long lasting reward as a leader, especially as a leader who finds purpose at the intersection of that leadership and strategy and innovation in which you always ask yourself, am I as good as I could be? Is this organization as good as we could be? Because we need to be. Because national defense depends on it. So when it comes to your leadership, don't ring the bell, don't settle for status quo, don't succumb to the thinking that there is such a thing as good enough for government work because there isn't. Don't muddle around in mediocrity. Instead, understand that you are a winner and you have been called to lead your team to win. And if you remember nothing else from these 20 minutes, you remember this, just okay is not okay. Amen.