 All right, good afternoon So I'm a chief master in Tidwell from the Air Force senior in CO Academy So I have a pleasure of introducing to you today. Mr. Joe Henderson and Mr. Henderson Has come to you from Harvard currently But he started out years ago. I won't I won't give you the year if he wants to share that he can In the Air Force as an airman like a lot of us started He did his time in the Air Force and then he switched over to work for the Center for Disease Control where he worked for about 25 years And at the Pinnacle of his career He was an SES working for the Center for Disease Control and he helped lead the Center for Disease Control through The anthrax and our national response to that crisis. And so through that he Realized there was an absence of leadership And leadership Preparation for crisis and so what they wanted to do is is work with some professionals to create a Leadership framework and foundational education that we can help people to lead through crisis And and as we look at the future for the United States Air Force What do we anticipate having to do is is respond to all kind of crisis, right? So he went to work at Harvard is one of the senior fellows for the national preparedness leadership initiative Where they've created a meta leadership framework that will help guide people through a crisis and a lot of leadership tools like pop doc and This idea of the basement and some things that you'll hear him talk about today And so we have partnered through Air University with Harvard to help bring in the the rigor in the academic research And the time-tested models Into Air Force whether it be at the local base level or bringing that into professional military education So that we have a sound repeatable model to use for crisis leadership So Joe Henderson is going to talk to us about that today And he may if he doesn't touch on it make sure he talks to you about a book that they've been working on for the last ten Years called your it that explains a lot of these principles in a little bit more depth So without further ado, mr. Henderson floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you chief This is like you're doing the Vegas act But like it's 11 o'clock at night now and most of the people are drunk So is anybody really listening? Hey You're a winner It's really I'm glad to be here It's always tough doing back-to-back sessions and I don't want you guys to to suffer from that so But I also don't want to just keep repeating myself saying the same thing So I was thinking in my head. How do I change this up so that I'm still consistent with what we Teach I can impart what I think are the important little nuggets for you folks But I am going to take a different approach to this so At CDC for 25 years, and I was really proud to be a member of CDC and a variety of occupations I was the chief operating officer for a period of time the chief of staff. I stood up a center at CDC the office of public health preparedness and response and Did all kinds of other duties along the way, you know other administrative duties along the way I Testified for Congress many many times and really had the full suite of experiences That for a political scientist, I think rounded out a really great career, and I've had a great time doing that But but it's not over. I like to think that I transitioned after being in the government for 33 years And I spent some time at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I spent time working for certain corporations scientific technologies In addition to my Air Force time So I always tell young people that I mentor the way I think about my career It's it's a service career, you know move into any complex challenge and give it your best And what I found in the process of doing that If you want to be the best at that you have got to think and act like a leader Not a technical person which my wife loves when I say this shit means you really don't know anything Well, I know leadership And I know a lot about public health and I know a lot about infectious disease control and epidemiology But I'm not an expert in any one thing But what I'd like to think I the skills I have or what we're going to talk about today How do I take all those technical skills and combine them together in an organization? Help it reach its full potential to exceed mission requirements And that's what we're about as leaders We want to create these highly efficient high-performing organizations that can sustain their operations at that level, right? Now how many folks right now work in an organization like that? Yeah, well, why do you say that? Why do you say yes? Morales high that's a good sign Folks get their work done They have fun doing it. That's good. That's that's exactly what that would be the symptoms of a high-performing organization But when I ask this question whether I'm talking to folks in the US government or a global folks Very few people feel comfortable saying I'm in a high-performing highly efficient organization And that's totally okay because what you're doing is you're saying that the conditions in which we work are constantly changing And we have to be adaptable if we're going to be relevant in this problem-solution environment And so a lot of people don't feel comfortable that their organization has actually reached that pinnacle But some do and actually some organizations reach it don't even know it They don't even stop to celebrate the fact that they're at this high achieving level Because they should stop and think about it to make sure they continue to mimic that behavior because it's it's proving to be worth it so The way I thought we'd start this conversation is I want you to think about the big complex Systems you work in the big complex world you work in because if we don't talk about complexity and how complex things are Then you'll walk out of here with a bunch of little things Even whether even if I was Stephen Covey or Peter Drucker if he was still alive Malcolm Gladwell talking about emotional intelligence You can walk out of any seminar any Training education opportunity and something is going to resonate with you some little nugget right I want you to kind of rise above that For a minute because if you don't rise above it and really look down and see how Complex and how complicated things are you're gonna have a hard time navigating that complexity I'm sure a lot of you are struggling with this notion of leadership right when you're here and you're interested and you're curious About what you can do to be the better leader right generally you guys want to be the better leaders How many folks here think it's somewhat of a mystery like some people got it and some don't I can't tell the difference Right Is anybody think that way like the leadership's a mystery like some people got it and I want to follow them I'm not really sure what they're doing though But I want to follow them because they're doing something that makes me want to follow them And then there's this person over here. I don't know what they're doing, but I don't want to follow them All right, and in many cases you don't have a choice It's like damn it. That's the person I report to so I have to follow them right What I want to do is is in thinking about our meta leadership model, which is a tool We like to think help you navigate this complex world that you live in So at Harvard when I first started teaching her many years ago My gig was complex systems thinking and how do you look at complex systems and make sense of it And these to be jargon back then like sense making you guys have heard this before right like somebody will say I'm a sense maker in other words things are so confusing and complicated It doesn't make sense my job is to make sense of it and that to help you understand what it is So collectively we're making sense of what might be chaos, right? That's one way to look at complex systems and the way I think about it is I kind of oversimplified a little bit But as leaders and organizations Think about complexity this way And you'll see some literature out there now that I've seen Deloitte put some things out There's been some things in the Harvard business review about the disruptive leader. You guys heard this the disruptor It's a big thing in the corporate sector. They want people to get in there disrupt You know do those things that break the traditions so that we're putting this company in a place where it's going to generate revenue We never thought it was capable of generating. It's about making big money. So they like this notion of disruptors and in complex systems Disruptors are okay. It's what it's what I call colliders or collision So say you're a new chief master sergeant. How many who here is the command chief master sergeant? anybody Well, let me take I want to grab any chief, you know my what can you tell me what your job is? Security forces what's your leadership role? Squadron super it's all right. So you have big responsibilities. How many people work under you? Okay, so how long have you had this position? Year when you came into that position. What did you do day one? Right and people were curious as to what you're thinking was where you're going to take them. What are your principles? Are you right? So what happens when you're new in a position? You become a collider You're creating collisions because you're new and you're unpredictable Like there's been some leaders that I've worked for the first thing where I don't care. Whatever they did before was wrong We're gonna do everything differently Right and the problem that is you're actually going to break some things that are working pretty well, right? And that's a huge collision in complex systems collisions will happen no matter what you can be a disruptor and you can create a collision but the idea is you don't want the collisions to be Sort of your impromptu or like this is all he's known for is he just constantly get things to collide at some point You want to move your organization to what we call an absorption phase where things are starting to absorb You're starting to collect all this energy and it's called absorption because with all this energy now You get a group of people that are achieving more functioning as a group than they could if they function as individuals And in a high achieving organization you want a lot of that You want a lot of people that are working together to achieve more as a group than they could as individuals and that's that's absorption It takes a lot of energy to keep your organization in this absorption state The third part and it may be something you encounter when you were new in your role is you start to look at your Organization and and I'm you know kind of used to big organizations with billion-dollar budgets and thousands and thousands of people There's there's always this group over here that the organization has rejected. This is another element of complex systems is rejection Somehow that piece didn't fit in at CDC. I used to call it the penal colony It's like when people said well, I can't fire you because your merit system protected employees You're certainly not a high performer. I don't know what you're going to do I know what you're not going to do and by the way You're working over here when I used to call the division for the continual eradication of smallpox Think about that. Let us think in The division for the continual eradication of smallpox. We've already eradicated smallpox. Here's a division I'm just kidding that but it was a penal colony It was this group it was literally a laboratory science group had about four hundred people working in it and they were sent there by the rest of The organization that was high performing because they had to discharge and reject those individuals now what happened over years We had an entire organizational division That was rejected by the organization and it was extremely expensive to maintain that and so in order to if you think complex systems What I had to do coming in that was responsible for a big change management initiative at CDC I had to take that rejected piece and move it back into the organization to make it part of a high performing Organization they had to move back into the absorption phase and what I found was a lot of these people They were quite good. They had just been misled Mishandled and an abuse for years and years and years to the point where they were walking around almost like The red, you know the scarlet letter like this was damaged goods Nobody wanted anything to do with them and they were quite good scientists So we were able to get them moved back into the organization But this complex system notion is important for you to think about That to think about what are their times when as a leader? I have to create this collision if my organization is not performing in an acceptable way and you're clear about what your Future desire state is if you introduce the notion of think about the words change management strategic planning Reorganization those words come with huge collision impacts right your your organization's colliding now in an organization That's colliding. What do you start to see? You tell them you're going to do a reorganization. You're going to change the way they operate. What do they do? That resist right Even if you've made who said resist here Even if you've made the case around resistance They feel it is their Duty to resist Right and so you got to work on converting them so that they understand this power of importance of creating this absorption state and the way to do that is to Explain to them why the current state of the organization is not acceptable You help them understand why it's not acceptable and then you have to be very clear about what does that future? Organization look like for which they can be a part of and once they're engaged and the team is ready for that transformation It's amazing how much energy comes back to the table an organization that's been colliding for a long period of time Or even rejected there is no energy no energy. I went over to this division at CDC When they knew they knew that I was coming over to meet with them because we were going to try to get them back Into the organism because we're dissolving that division. So here's 400 people We're in this big hall like this. Do you know how many people were in the room? Take a guess 400 people were in this division. How many people were in the room? Yeah, about 25 25 people The other people had gotten to the point where they were the energy was so low They couldn't even find the energy to come to a mandatory meeting So I'd say what a lot more people came to the second meeting Because we started the process of defining the future state and they didn't want just the 25 to define the future state Or were they going to fit in your organization? They wanted to say and now that they knew we were listening, you know They're starting to move from this rejected group of people to a group of people that were helping us, you know In this notion of absorption So I tell you this Because the complex systems in the complex in which we do our work It's a very real thing and we have a tool at Harvard that we started working on many many years ago Which is the basis of a book that we're going to have published June 11th this year called you're it and I like the meta leadership tool and people ask me all the time How is this different from this method this leadership teaching, you know Stephen Covey's work Malcolm Gladwell? I think all those different schools of thought inform our theory But I like to think of our theory as being a theory of theories. It's really about a Tool a leadership tool to help you navigate the complex world in which we're asking you to lead in and it is Complicated and very complex you're never going to figure it out never but if you're dedicated to trying to navigate it You you will be a successful leader and you'll be successful because you're going to generate followers and generating followers is important If you think you're leading and no one's following you only you think you're leading right you need to have followers So so here's here's how our tool works There's three dimensions to meta leadership one is the person and immediately this is where it's complicated Because people are really complicated really complicated The way you think the way you behave how your culture reconditioned how your condition based upon your religious beliefs And I would even say it's fair that the degree in which your spouse has influenced you Makes you a very complicated creature right that the way you think the way you see problems The way you perceive those problems the way you tee up solutions related to those problems And the rigor associated with how disciplined you are in that process in its entirety Makes for a complicated component of our meta leadership model. So let me just give you some Basic pieces to the person dimension of meta leadership. So one is it it's about how your brain works and The brain is tricky, but we're starting to figure a lot out about the brain if If How many people here drive to work and you get to work and also you look up you didn't even realize any element of the trip Right, isn't that really freaky? Yeah You know I used to do what I used to have an hour long commute one way to CDC in Atlanta when I lived out in the suburbs And I couldn't believe how Harrowing it was to drive in Atlanta to know that I don't recall the last 35 minutes of my trip And I'm thinking I hope there's not bodies lying on the side of the road. There might be I don't know I didn't stop apparently right so so When your brain does that your your brain looks for opportunities to rest Because it has to you won't survive if your brain doesn't understand when there's opportunities to rest That's an opportunity because you're doing something so routine So rhythmic so the same that your brain's like you don't even need me You really do because what happens the minute something happens that disrupts your commute You know somebody drives in front of you or you get some kind of road rates By the way, this is the one positive thing about road rage row if you're a road rage draw how many people here want to admit it I Used to ask that question no one dare raise our hand now. I got hands going to pull over the place When you're in that mode, it's fight Your brain's active and on it's not going to go to sleep You're going to remember your commute because you're going to want to get every one of those SOB's that cut in front of you past you whatever right But most of us you don't have the energy to put to your brain to do that. So your brain kind of sleeps a little bit The same thing happens at work When when you come to work every day and your day is profiled by Microsoft Outlook calendar you guys use Outlook, right? Bill Gates he knew what he was doing when his technicians created that because what they were doing He's trying to find a way to paint your future damn him Because what do you do Sunday night or Monday morning? What do you do? Look at your calendar, right? Why? Why do you look at your calendar? What? You ready don't want to miss something right? So yeah, think about that for a second. So you're looking at your calendar Okay, I got a meeting with Bill not a big problem pretty routine. I got our staff meeting pretty routine Oh meeting with the lawyers here. There's a class action lawsuit that could be I had to be prepared prepared here Because I'm meeting with the director, you know my my commandant whoever You what you do is you look forward and you start to decide where am I going to put my energy? What meeting right you start to plug in little pieces of energy. That's how you prepare Okay, I really got to be on this day, which is kind of sad. I used to have people work for me So tell me that I got to be on this day and I used to think are you going to be off the other days? Really, I'd like to think you're on all the time But the brain doesn't work that way because the brain needs moments to rest when you have routine calendar Activities and even if you have moments in your calendar where there's nothing. Isn't that great? Like it here is a Wednesday afternoon from two to four you have nothing Now you're still busy But your brain automatically starts to put away some energy because it doesn't need a lot to do Whatever you're doing in that two-hour window, right the brain looks for opportunities to rest So so calendars there's one one challenge Think about what happens when all of a sudden your routine rhythmic pattern day is disrupted Some I mean, what's a good example of a serious crisis disrupts in the Air Force in your jobs anybody give me an example What is it? Any airman issue? Coming in crying Yeah, that's that's that's a good one because it happens in any in every organization Yeah, somebody comes in with some personal issue that you know you have to devote energy to it just won't go away on its own That that's one example give me give me another example. I'm looking for something a little bit more egregious Yes What's aircraft mishap who said that? There's a big one I would assume in the Air Force that's a big deal, right? I remember when I was at Dover Air Force base You know what they have all the C5's it was a C5 where the wings scraped along the top of a building It was like the end of the red run Easter times They're all all the C5 crews are coming back in and it was like the end of the world Because they had this damage on the C5 wing and it what happens then and the reason I'm telling you this is Your brain under those conditions where it was it was kind of in a semi Sleepy state doing the regular rhythmic things and being successful and leading people All the sudden now your brain immediately requires a ton of energy. You have to be totally on But the brain will trick you What happens under those circumstances for a period of time is what we call going to the basement You know there's a thing called the amygdala in your head, which is the fight fight fight fight type thing It's for survival. You're not supposed to do highly intellectual Calculus and that you actually can't But we call it in the basement and there's been a lot of studies looking at post-traumatic stress disorder When people who are exposed to things over long periods of time The brain starts to rewire itself to the point where the extraordinary becomes ordinary And then when you take that person put them back into this ordinary world the brain doesn't it doesn't fire right? It just doesn't accept those new conditions And so there's been a lot of things going on with therapies where they get the brain to rewire to the new normal It's really fascinating to look at this and it supports what we've been talking about as far as going to the basement Because when these crisis happen, so say an aircraft is damaged and say it's on the apron. It's on the ground It's not in the air It's like four-alarm fire that person who's responsible it could be the you know the Ground the group of people on the ground the aircraft maintenance folks They're all going to come together and they're going to try to figure out what the hell happened But for some people there's a few moments where it looks a little chaotic like nobody's really in charge Everybody's running around doing things right? That's because one or more people they're in the basement and when you're in the basement you can't do things Analytically, so you have to learn how to get out of the basement I told the story to the group prior to this when I was at skater for space I was a two-striper medic and we had a Pretty serious accident on the highway and involved a motorcycle driver. There's a couple of cars involved Commercial vehicle, but the word was we had to go first We were the closest hospital to that accident and we normally didn't do too many things all-pays But we had to go with it, you know cracker box and I'm thinking oh, this is awesome I'm a medic. I've been trained. I've been through technical school. You know, I'm really ready to do this I've seen enough people in the emergency department out. Let me let's go I get in the cracker box. I sit in the passenger side and this tech sergeant a woman looks over at me She says remember when we get there. I don't want you to touch anyone and don't even look at them You want you want to talk about the air coming out of my balloon pretty fast. I Literally got the sutures ready the saw I'm ready to take limbs off. I'm ready No, because she knew that I was in the basement I wasn't capable of really serving people and if I did I would probably do more harm than good because she Recognized I was in the basement And she also, you know, like I said, she took the wind out of myself. So as we're driving out It was probably a 10-minute drive out to the accident scene We get there and she says to me all I want you to do is go back open the doors up and read off these laminated sheets Like things like you know creating and maintaining an airway You know the basic first aid kind of stuff even though some of this stuff had no relevance on what the injuries were So you needed to keep me busy because if I wasn't busy I might wander over and start, you know amputating something. I don't know. That was my go-to move. So So she's like, yeah, we don't want you get why do you have that saw in your hand? Give me that And the funny thing was I was so in the basement and I never thought about at the time I'm you know, the cracker box are pretty big, right? So these things they're laminate eight 8.8 and half by 11 sheets of paper and there's probably about 15 of them Everything from burn victims to a variety of other snake bites and they're on this chain about this long So I'm having to read them like this She comes to the back of the cracker box to get the backboard out and she says to me You know, you can actually stand up in the ambulance to read this stuff. You don't have to be down on the ground I mean, I wasn't even capable of something as simple as that to be able to You know, it's like this we can't have this guy work at anybody. You know, he'll kill somebody today But I was in the basement and what she did which was important was Identify that I was in the basement and give me something to do You know follow a set of steps that lead to a predictable outcome to get me out of the basement read off those sheets And it worked and so by the time I felt I was able to do something the other You know the private ambulances have come they took care of most of the people we had one person we were bringing back to our hospital who had minor injuries and You know, they were already moving the cars So I had been in the basement for a long period of time for that to have occurred But I was very helpful in putting everything back into our cracker box that that's a US Air Force on it Because the tech started said to me we don't leave any property All the property has to come back in the cracker box, you know And that was my job to put everything back in the ambulance and go back to the base You know, this happens all the time in our workplaces You don't even realize it people go to the basement and they're stuck there leaders have to recognize this and as a meta leader in our person dimension this is important because The way the brain functions you spend most of your existence in the midbrain the mid-tier. That's like your thumb drive It's like your hard drive That's where you store all of your patterns of experience Everything you've done in your entire life is in your midbrain. By the way, if it's in your amygdala You're not evolved. You have some work to do to evolve. It can't be there. Trust me It's in your midbrain and as we get older what happens is we have difficulties retrieving things from the midbrain and we also Start to distort our patterns of experience and That's why a lot of people have asked annual goldman who wrote, you know, he popularized emotional intelligence You know, what can I do as an older person to make sure I still have the skills to retrieve those things because I'm starting to forget about things that I know Facing this particular problem that experience would help I think I've been here before but I don't recall specifically what we did to solve this problem But knowing that your midbrain your box Is where you store these patterns of experience is really important Now occasionally as a leader, you know, you're you're looking at a problem And again, we're still talking about the person to mention. It's not just your brain as a leader It's all the brains around you. They all work the same way They all have different patterns of experience, but they're generally wired in similar ways Your face with a problem All right, you have a problem when you're faced with a problem. What's the first problem? Anybody know Your face with a problem like like the aircraft damage and you heard that an aircraft was damaged on the ground What's the first problem? You are you are going to be biased and not only you but everyone around you has their own perception, right? But the first problem when you're faced with a problem is what is the problem? And so we have a tool that we we call the cone in the cube and what it is is think about this It's about managing and harvesting Perceptions you take a cube. I'm sorry. You take a cone put it in a wooden box Nail it all closed you drill a hole in the top a peephole you look in what do you see a? Circle you drill a hole on the side. What do you see? By the way, did the chief right tell you this already? He totally has it wrong Did he he didn't tell you that did he did he say the same thing? I'm saying All right, so he's improved it But but the thing with the cone in the cube that I like and a lot of leaders don't do this is It's about managing perceptions and I had done this so many times at CDC I can't believe how different people perceive a problem. I thought we all figured out Right, so a person will say like the aircraft damage one. I mean I'll sit down on my team You know there's like six seven of us. All right. Tell me what we know, right? Tell me what you know Tell me what you think about this problem and you get little sometimes it's subtle you get variations to that problem Well, we understand that a small shack was damaged on the flight line. We think someone was injured You know one of our aerospace ground equipment things was was hit. You know you get all wait a minute What I understand we're meeting because I thought there was damage to an aircraft Oh, and oh, yeah, that happened to right if you don't take the time to hear everyone's perceptions Then when you move too quickly into the solution environment, you might have people leave a meeting And they're focusing on it a variant to the solution and I can guarantee you one thing happens when that occurs in a meeting You're at best than to have that same meeting again Because chaos will ensue people will be talking in about the problem in different ways and also the leader is gonna be okay Hang on a thing. Let's all get back together again because something went off the rails, right? That's the cone in the cube dilemma and it's it's important for the leader to bring everybody together to understand You know and manage all these perceptions of the problem so that when you do put a solution in place You can start to manage the outcomes and what you're always trying to do the decision that's being made or the solution is Have as many positive outcomes related to the decision versus negative right pretty simple proposition So thinking about the brain the midbrain is where all this take place. This is where you make all your decisions This is where you manage your decisions looking at positive and negative outcomes now occasionally your face with a really new Different unusual problem. I can say at CDC in October of 2001 When I was sitting there with all the center directors Jeff Cope on the director of CDC all the senior staff and I'm doing the briefing About what we know What we have never seen at CDC and we've seen everything we've seen Ebola in bats in the Democratic Republic of the Congo We've seen all kinds of crazy things and of course emerging infectious diseases were a big thing back then But we had never seen weaponized grade spores anthrax spores Released in the United States and knowing that at the time we knew that was being released through the mail system That was different unusual Not there was no patterns of experience in the center part of the brain that really helped us understand this new Situation is new condition. So what happens when you even if you've gotten you've harvested all these patterns of experience In the midbrains of everyone around you. What do you do? You have to know this is the time to be innovative. This is when you think outside the box Right, you move into the in the upper part of the brain and if you've ever done this Is anybody here working in the innovation lab or have you ever worked in the innovation lab? Well, usually young people respond to that Innovation labs are when people get to try out things and they get to have all kinds of failure, right? So it creates an action learning type of environment It's also exhausting to be Functioning in the high part of the brain takes a lot of energy to stay up there and be innovative and creative You know people like Elon Musk, they spend an awful lot of time there But then in the midbrain, there's some pretty weird things going on, right? If you've ever seen him do an interview or listen to him for any length of time or read anything He's written, you know, the guy clearly has maybe genius qualities But it's because just like others like Einstein they spend a lot of time They they dedicate energy to living in this upper part of the brain where they can do high-end analytical thinking And they don't spend as much time in the midbrain as the rest of us mortals But it is important to know when it's time to take your team to that higher level and think outside the box You know when I hear people say right out of the gate, I asked young people We did a focus group. I said, hey, when do you think out of the box outside the box always? The problem with that is is you're defying the way your brain functions If you have an experience here in the midbrain that resonates with a particular problem Why wouldn't you put that back into work? You know, put it back to work and have it address it Why keep reinventing the wheel? It doesn't make sense Younger folks, especially millennials, they think that thinking outside the box makes them different, unusual, smarter And it really doesn't because they're taking all those patterns of experience and they're dismissing them And they're putting themselves and the people around them in a situation where they're reinventing the wheel So think inside the box first only go outside the box when you really know that anything That you're putting on the table that would be a pattern of experience It just doesn't work for this new novel kind of a problem at CDC I was sitting in a room with all these people we're talking about anthrax And they immediately went to their go-to game which had worked for decades. They're called epiades Take an epidemiologist, a laboratory scientist, a public health advisor, send them out into the field and great things happen The problem was the field where we were seeing anthraxia. We saw it in bookward town of florida We were sitting in New Jersey. We saw it in washington and the rayburn building. We saw it in in new york city, right in rockfellow center It was explosive the epidemiology of how this is being distributed So we couldn't use the old patterns of experience. We had to do something new and jeff colpin to his credit He he recognized it and he allowed me to create more of a military model To create force multipliers to allow all the agency to embrace what we were faced with And it was a massive response The only thing that that even came close was the ebola response to west africa a few years ago But it was a pretty big response and it was very different. I'm glad we did we did because the result was fantastic I believe truly that we had we saved hundreds of lives because of the way we responded to anthrax We we had secured so much anthrax spores In mail on mail, especially in these distribution facilities like in new jersey where they process millions of pieces of mail a day You want to talk about the perfect storm? This was the perfect storm Well, we got ahead of it. We were able to contain things keep it from getting into people's homes or businesses And I do believe we saved lives So getting back to the person to mention So the basement when you think about going to the basement and after you you get out of the basement You're going to be in your mid-brain. You're going to get into the high brain when you need to be innovative That that's that's sort of a simplistic way of thinking about how your brain works And how you want other brains to work with yours as you're trying to you know solve problems and sustain solutions Now there's a couple traps. The basement is one of them going to the basement It's not good But if you know you're there get out if you see stuff around you work with them to get out follow What you know set of predictable steps Just get them out of the basement so they can be constructive and helpful in your problem solution environment The the other trap has to do with low emotional intelligence Now can somebody give me an example? Just give me an example. What would a leader look like who's exhibiting low emotional intelligence? Speak loud I'm sorry Self yeah sort of self disruptive behavior tantrum. I love that Have you ever seen it in your career? It's funny because there's there's people I work for it. They thought that was actually a skill that You know leaders had to have you know banging the table demanding action tantrum is definitely a Evidence of low emotional intelligence any other This is I always like to start this conversation with a glass half empty any other Signs of what you'll see in a leader who's exhibiting low emotional intelligence Yeah, they could shut down. Yeah, not not functional right and actually drive themselves to the basement Yeah, yeah, they're afraid to perform afraid to act afraid to think Frustration for absolutely. Yeah, there's no question low emotional intelligence You know where you're not self aware of self managing and that's socially engaged And yet you're you're being held responsible and you don't understand why people aren't succeeding Right, you're out of touch Any other thoughts? Inability to recognize other people's opinions outside of their own absolutely absolutely And what and if that goes on too long, what happens? They put their energy away. It's like I'm not going to keep giving you my energy if if you've got this all figured out It looks like a fate of complete. Why am I even here participating in this, right? anybody else Why low emotional intelligence? It's kind of like the energy. I'm getting off you guys Anybody else low emotional intelligence Apathy. Yep. So so what about high emotional intelligence? Like a person who's clearly self aware. They're managing themselves. Well, they're socially engaged socially aware What do you see? control Self-control you absolutely it becomes visible, right? Confident or competent both Engaged yes, you said clear vision This is a is a key one that a lot of people discount is you know a leader that gets it Like they got a clear vision. They're consistent. They're seeing things. They're what happens then is they start to Your energy starts to gravitate towards them So now a leader with high emotional intelligence is going to have followers, right? They just have to maintain it But they'll have followers because followers want to lead or want to follow High emotional intelligence. They do not want to follow low emotional intelligence and and keep in mind too that You know our third dimension our second dimension I'll talk about the second which is the situation in which you're leading The condition sometimes will push a leader who might tend to have normally high emotional intelligence Under those conditions, they might have low emotional intelligence. I've seen it I've seen people who have been spot-on high emotional intelligence and something about a particular condition Just drops them right down. They almost they can't function. They don't look like they're thinking They're a bit out of touch And I saw one person we had an admiral who's in the u.s. Public Health Service commission corps and the director cdc Dress them down in front of everyone else And this person for three or four days I couldn't believe not only were they in the basement, but they really had low emotional intelligence They were angry. They were taking it out on people. I mean, it's almost like the person became 14 years old And you had this sort of cranky teenager, right? And here's somebody 60 years old with a 35 year career You would think they would be durable enough to be able to withstand that but it was a pretty bad tongue lashing And it wasn't justified. So the conditions can drive you to a different space You just have to know And and then act accordingly so you can try to avoid that to the extent that you can Yeah, speak a little bit left Trans so Yes Yeah, so I'm gonna let me I'm gonna tell people what you asked, but I'm gonna put my spin on it Because I think I know what you're getting at Um And it is that's the sort of parenting approach Focus on the transaction, right? So right am I kind of tracking? Well, no, I mean if I got your question on it, I want to get it right Yeah, yeah, yeah, so all right, so you're gonna take me to a place. I was gonna not go to shit But I want to go there because I I know what you're getting at so another another challenge And I didn't talk about this yet here, but I'll mention this so Daniel Goldman who I talked about with emotional intelligence and kind of you know, he's the one that popularized That thinking and I've had the pleasure to work with him. He's one of our adjunct faculty for the npli. He's a really good guy funny But he he's been doing this research that I find so fascinating over the past probably five or six years And it has to do with marriage counselors, you know, whether they're talking to marriage counselors They want to understand they're trying to get to this issue of that emotional Reflection point and they're using a husband and wife husband husband whatever two people love each other, right? And they're trying to understand what causes The degree of anger In those conflicts that tend to smart start with the small things how many folks here are married That's pretty popular so So You have an argument with your husband or wife anybody volunteer this what what starts it? What's that? They're wrong. No, no, no, don't don't go there too quick. I mean I love this idea, but just hang on to it for a second um No, what starts it? It's little things right. Hey, you know, I'm glad you did the dishes, but there's something on this one still or Why is this 34k in the drawer or why is there still clothes in the dryer? Right the buzzer's been going on for 20 minutes Why am I the one getting the clothes out of the dryer, right? He says For people who really love each other by the way the person you love the most is the one you're going to be the Most horrible to the most horrible. There's only one exception your mother As we said, there's only one your mother is she has some kind of a blanket immunity for life She'll never be she'll never face this kraken that that's in you. It's in all of us, right? But he said what happens is a little thing triggers it But something bigger has been brewing underneath for a long time, right? So so what might be the bigger thing? Think about it don't divulge too much information, but something Bigger Yeah, so maybe you didn't do the dishes or maybe you put a dirty fork in the drawer He didn't get the but what what happens in the argument you have All right, first of all once somebody gets emotional, right? Because I want to make sure I get to your point Somebody gets emotional when a spouse gets emotional. What does that do to the other spouse? Absolutely, it's like it's like an infectious disease unbelievably communicable You can only Raise them by being more emotional Right, and it happens a lot with married couples and those arguments can be terrible They can be terrible. I mean to think about it the things you can say to your wife or husband horrible And and highly you become very regretful that you said these things you still set up, right? He says that What what you have to do first of all when these things happen the emotion has been something that's been inside you for a long time It could be he's he you know, he gave me examples like Through marriage counseling they finally get to what's the root cause of all this anger because these little teeny fights They can go on for months years They can keep going on and up because they're not dealing with the root cause of the problem The root cause of the problem is something like You know, we were not able to send junior to college because you spent all that money on toys men Or we were not able to send junior to college because you have 300 pairs of shoes ladies Or guys, I don't know anymore, but And so they'll find that as they unpack that Those things have all the meaning those big things and they just didn't talk about it And they needed to talk about it and be communicative in those issues Otherwise unsolved you get this sort of the onion the layers of onion that wraps around something becomes so emotional That it literally drives marriages apart in a lot of cases And so he he's been looking at this research and he's trying to find ways to put it into Thinking in the workplace. So somebody mentioned before having an emotional airman come in to your office It could be anybody it could be You could have an emotional commander, right? I mean some things bring people down to the point where they they hit this breaking point And immediately you think it's so important because you become emotional too Now I've had a lot of people come into my office crying And when I hear their their story and a lot of times I can't quite hear because they're using that high pitch That I don't quite hear And this is usually the guys But I assigned you know that that emotion and I become emotional and he said that's the problem Just like in a marriage you have got to learn how to diffuse the emotional situation And and go from emotional thinking to rational thinking So he's got a few and I and this does work. I've used it in the workplace He he says All right, here's what you're doing. Tell me how this will work in your marriage. Um First thing you have to do is remove yourself from the situation, right? So you're having this heated argument all of a sudden somebody stops and they walk out of the room What does the wife or husband do when that happens? Yeah, I'll be damned if you're leaving here I'm not done with you right and then you then you got to have a runner You know you're running because you're don't But but what happens it is in capitulation Somebody is trying to become rational while they're so emotional so the depth they have to come out It's pretty deep But you have to become rational so that you can get the other person to discharge the emotion Because emotion creates emotion rational thinking will create rational thinking And he says there's a couple things you can do if you can carry it out and survive One is three deep breaths and this goes with meditation three deep breaths And don't blow in your husband or wife's face because that's probably not going to be the outcome you want But what when you take deep breaths you put you're starting to tell your brain that it's time for rest Because when your brain is caught up in an emotional turmoil, it isn't resting It's fully engaged and active after after a big argument. Do you ever notice how tired you are? It can be exhaustive It can really be exhausting having an emotional argument Three deep breaths the other thing that I thought was really fascinating you found from this research When you argue do you sit down or stand up? You're standing up. Do you ever wonder why? He says he they thought initially it was because It's a way to be intimidating like if i'm going to win the argument I got to position myself like squaring the shoulder It isn't that way because most men will lose that one with a wife I can tell you right now you're going to lose it if you square shoulders with your wife because they're tricky But the reason you do it is because you're starting to sink in your brain So your brain is thinking I have three things I can either fight Right I can be afraid or I can run You're a better position to do it when you're standing Right So he says sit down if you sit down on a comfortable chair Your body automatically starts to rest you you have no control over this your body will start to rest And it starts to discharge the emotion and it may be at the dissatisfaction of one of the one of the opponents here But he says it works and marriage counselors are using us now when you have these arguments that become so heated He recommends the breathing he recommends to sit down the same is true when you confront this in a workplace So when you have an airman comes in your office, they're emotional they're standing right? They tend to stand When you get them to sit down Then you start to kind of unravel the emotion and you can't move towards a And I know people will still cry and be upset because something really affected them But it puts you in a better position and maybe get to the rational Understanding of what's the problem that's causing this emotional signal because you have to figure that out I'm telling you all this because This is what we encounter in our brains and you know as leaders and thinking about the person to mention You have got to find ways to discharge emotion and keep people rational in their thinking Because you want them to be an effective part of your problem solution challenge If people are emotional low emotional intelligence Creates emotion in the workplace when you have a lot of emotion in the workplace Does it generate negative or positive energy? Yeah Almost always generates negative energy and remember rule of thumb for every one negative person they can take down 10 positive people 10 10 positive people So you really have to work hard. I'm making sure you're discharging emotion in your work port and keeping people as rational It's about knowing we're humans. We're going to be emotional. Just manage it when you're confronted with it So that's the person I talked about going to the basement the cone in the cube The way the brain functions the the next dimension is this The situation in which you lead And it's one of the things in our model. That's not really talked about on a lot of other models I mean there's there's talk about you know when people think about decision modeling and situational awareness I kind of like the way we think about the conditions in which you're being asked to lead because they change all the time You know if you go back to work And everything is and we talked about this earlier everything's kind of patterned and rhythmic You know the brain is going to automatically find a place to operate efficiently And you can have a whole career in that space, right? If you're a disruptor and you want to create collision and you want to change your organization because the current organization is not performing well Then that's going to take a whole lot of energy and it's going to bring a lot of change And the conditions in which you work and all the people around you have changed exponentially Now I've seen a lot. We talked about resistance before If you introduce change and you've changed the situation or the the environment in which people are functioning And you keep it in a constant change mode. What happens? People start to check out You can't do that to them. They just can't be in an organization. That seems like it's a perpetual change They they have to get to some normalcy because the brain demands it the brain demands a pattern Where they can move into a space where it's going to find times to rest Collision doesn't allow for that now. I've done some leaders that I work for They never had their jobs long, but they were massive colliders It's like collision without a plan collision without a purpose You start to see really good programs start to falter, you know things that we're working are now broken Right, you can't you can't be a collider without a plan You need to make sure people understand why you're doing what you're doing why you're leading the way you're leading And it's really helpful to create this understanding of the situation in which people work What I used to tell my my teams all the time. I may have already said it here The conditions in which you work are constantly changing, right? It's non-negotiable. Yeah, of course You have to remain adaptable if you're you and your team are going to remain relevant You have to be adaptable to those changing conditions That's one thing I walk out of here with that somebody asked me this morning When I was meeting with some senior nco's at the senior nco academy You know, what do I say? To the scientists in this lab where I'm going to work who are they've been around forever. They're in their late 50s 60s and they just don't seem willing to change at all And I've faced that I'm sure you guys have faced that in your organizations when you're faced with that challenge You have to use that little adage. I just mentioned The change the conditions in which you work are constantly changing. We must remain adaptable if we're going to be relevant Nobody's going to argue that now. I'm not going to be adaptable. I'm not going to you know They're not changing the conditions are the same. That's not true So you have to find a way to get them in a position where the you know, it's non-negotiable to have to understand that I've used that at cdc a science-based organization, you know 60 percent of our folks have a master's degree or higher Very highly educated They didn't want to move on any of the change initiatives we put in place Until you know, I started to think about this notion of the changing conditions which we work We have to remain adaptable if we're going to stay relevant And the minute I mentioned the fact that if cdc starts to lose its relevance Organizations like the national institute of health the fda They'll happily come in and take over our mission space happily And they'd love to get our 11 billion dollar budget, right? So when you put that out there now people are more motivated to want to work with you to make sure that the agency is changing to face those Changing conditions and that they are in fact adaptable and relevant So the third third dimension of mental leadership Is Is really an important one and it's one that in a couple weeks We're going to launch our first emerging leaders program at harvard And we actually have a day dedicated to this where we're going to talk about the power of Creating and sustaining mutually beneficial human relationships I mean we've come to this now with our young folks We have to teach them how to establish relationships because what they think is that this doesn't Right, I mean how many folks here have kids teenagers? older kids, yeah The way they relate to each other is not the way we related to people when we were that same age And so we have to think about the power and importance of of creating and sustaining human relationships You know a lot of us have have had have friends and colleagues that we've known for a long long time We may not see them all the time We may not connect as frequently as we like But you know there's those certain friends we have that even if 10 years go by And I have a lot of air force friends from back in the 80s We get back together again. It's almost like we didn't skip a beat Right, but then occasionally I'll run into a colleague that I actually work with pretty closely And I forgot all about them Because I didn't take the time To create a relationship with them because I might have committed the cardinal sin as a leader Of treating somebody like they're disposable like they're an object Like I've had people at CDC come up to me and say oh, mr. Henderson remember that time we worked together we did it. Well, I don't even have a clue It's because I didn't dedicate enough energy To even create a relationship It doesn't have to be of course a loving relationship But we have got to take the time to dedicate energy to creating and sustaining these relationships If you do this well, and there's some of us that are just genetically coded to do this really well And in my organization, I always tried to bring those people to the forefront I didn't care if they were 22 years old or 62 years old If they were genetically coded to create relationships and create sort of an esprit de corps with folks I got them in the mix because it's contagious. They're so good at it And and they were a good example for other people as to this is how you create these mutually beneficial relationships So at our emerging leader program in a couple weeks You know, we have a couple of exercises where people literally have to walk through scripts and talk about You know themselves and we've done this before in different leadership sessions But this is all based upon getting to know people and trying to be intentional about your interest in them Not to objectify them, but really be interested them as human beings It's it's like teaching people empathy You know, we're going to have to teach you to be empathetic to that other person and the conditions in which they live With the hopes that from that relationship, there'll be a better member of your team And maybe they'll follow you as a leader The leaders that I've followed in my career The ones that I have found to be just really genuinely good leaders and good human beings Is because they dedicated a lot of time to this. They really cared about you They care about you they care about the work they do They care about your teams and they want to make sure that you succeed and they hardly ever use the word I It was always about you and your team. How can I help you succeed? And that's an important part of our third dimension, which we call connectivity How do you connect with people in your organization? How do you connect with peers partners other people where organizations may have similar goals to yours To combine your efforts to exceed the type of outcomes that the organizations are capable of and then a tricky one that Has to be mastered is how do you lead up to the boss? You know, you have to have a relationship with your boss I'll tell you a story about two I see polar opposite types of bosses. I had one was Julie Gerberning in the 80s Julie was very emotional. She'd like to see you. She had to look you in the eye She had to know you were telling the truth She had to know you're being honest and she had to know that you genuinely had the capacity to do what she needed you to do And I was working with her at a time We're building this across the country this public health infrastructure around preparedness and response You know billions of dollars was being funneled through state and local health agencies We were very busy and I was her go-to guy on that so she had to see me. She had to You know emotionally connect with me But she also was very rational and very scientific to make sure that what we were doing was going to be Institutionalized across the country. I mean, I'm so proud of one of the achievements I had at cdc Because sometimes these things are fleeting when congress reacts to an event like the anthrax events are 9 11 You see unbelievable appropriation action. You got to sit in the air for something happens. Also, there's all this appropriation Unbelievable focus of attention and then the next appropriations cycle. They kind of forget about you Well, we weren't going to let that happen. And so even even today we celebrated the 15th year of the public health preparedness and response grant Which started out being a billion dollar grant to state and local health agencies now It's about 700 million dollars But it's a substantial grant and it supports public health infrastructure that when we have a real issue in our communities Those communities are prepared to deal with it and I'm proud of that and it's because of My relationship with her leading up to the boss and the fact that I was there I tried to be present as much as I possibly could be To make sure that that relationship was going to create a public good and I think we've done a good job Now so here she is emotional. She wanted to see things. She loved diagrams pictures puppets, whatever it took, right Then I had another director tom freeden under president obama tom is highly analytical And you know, i'm pretty sure he's on the spectrum somewhere, but He really didn't care to see you Right even in an elevator if you were in the elevator alone with him He would do everything he could to blend into the woodwork of the elevator He just like like the remember soap burt you do this and he was invisible only he thought he was invisible Tom literally had a problem with people and You know in a public health agency where we're known for our hugs It was kind of odd to have him as a director. He didn't want to see me So i'm i'm responsible for the entire reorganization of cdc And he'd rather deal with me over the phone on the computer. It was just an odd thing, right? And and that's how he developed his trust and that's how he functioned But you know what I knew that and once I knew that I formed a relationship And it's not long lasting I could tell i'm not leaving here and having calls with tom freeden And he's certainly not calling me to see how i'm doing with my family But in the moment I had to have that relationship. You've got to find a way to relate to your boss and make it work Because if you don't spend the time to do that you're going to let your team down So you have to lead up. It's another part of connectivity so those are the those are the three dimensions and You know it's how they come together collectively that offers you this tool to navigate complexity You know being mindful of yourself mindful of the people around you understanding how the brain works knowing when you're in the basement the power of strong emotional intelligence And there's a lot of tools out there. Daniel Goldman wrote a book. It's not his most recent book I think the recent one is called emotional intelligence 2.0, but he has a book called focus It's a great read. I really like it because what he's trying to do is he's trying to help you train your brain To focus. You know, we're not good at this anymore You know people say i'm a multitasker they make it sound like multitasking is an awesome skill It's really not because if you multitask too much you run the risk in an organization of doing many things poorly as opposed to a few things Well in his book focus helps you train the brain to focus on the complexity so that you can Focus helps you train the brain to focus on the complexity so that you can drive at an outcome that Clearly will offer, you know a public good or be a positive outcome So that's the only book i'll offer other than the your it book The other thing i'll mention about your it So when we when we came up with this title It was years ago. We were writing this book forever But I use this this notion of tag So remember when you're a kid you play tag So there's two roles, right? So when you're the person that's going to be tagged I don't know what they're called. I guess we'll call them players Right, but the person who has to tag you Right, they're it like they'll say you're it like when they tag you you're it. What does that mean you're it? Right, so When you're it it's an n of one When you're the potential to be tagged it's always more than one right, but you have a What we call a pivot or a shift in the way you think Right because when you're now having to tag people your strategy you're thinking It's much more predatory you become the predator Because the one thing you don't want is to be it forever Right, that's failure, right? I'm going home now. I'll be it forever. I'll see you guys next week So you want to tag and who do you tend to tag? the weakest Right the weakest So, you know if that's why people always said when I was a kid growing up It was always that friend that had a limp he was destined to be it most of the time But he was cunning because he'd get you eventually But but that's what the book's about is about that mind shift when you go to from you know Being the person who could be tagged to being the person now you're it and when you're it There's certain responsibility There's certain things you have to do and you have to be really good at it And one of the things is you have to navigate complexity when we in the book we profile a lot of folks We look at case studies thad Allen from the coast guard This guy is pretty phenomenal. I mean I have to say that the military has an awful lot of good examples to it When people were it they were really good at it really good at it Because you're trained your condition to develop the competencies and under those conditions you thrive You know sailing the crystal people will say what they want about him, but there's times when he was it He was really it and he was it very well He did a pretty remarkable job in the field and he's not on our book, but his book boy It's it's quite a good book. I recommend reading that one So I know we have a few more minutes. Um, let me uh Let me just ask a couple things and I'll just kind of open it up for questions So I want to be clear about one thing In your organizations when there's an absence of leadership An absence of it. What do you see? fear feral feral I got you. Okay Absence of leadership. What else do you see here feel? Sort of insurrection possible, um You're really thinking about this. What's what's your job? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's sort of game of thrones thinking on this whole thing. Um That absence of leadership tell me give me some other sort of simple things you're going to see in an organization What's that hurt Lost of productivity. Okay. Yes lack of direction. Okay lack of accountability. What's that Yep, yes duplication of effort redundancy Absolutely frustration. Yep Um, now what happens if it goes on a long period of time say months years Yeah, eventually that You know, it was uh, I think it was bill parcel when they said something about You know, this is the third season in the row the giants or whatever team used to go third season in the row You know, the team's not doing well. What should we do? And he's immediately just talking about replacing quarterbacks and one of our reporters said now I think it's time for the coach to go That's what they do is they they take out the leader and you know Organizations where we don't intentionally develop our leaders It's sad that we put people in these roles where they're asked to lead they're improvising. They don't do well Of course, they're the first to go But that's only the beginning of the problem because then with low morale low energy you haven't been developed. There's chaos You you put some new person in there if they haven't been intentionally developed to lead You know chance there you're going to run the risk of the same outcome That's when you get an organization that it becomes this rejection organization because they're just not relevant anymore Creating a negative culture. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean whatever energy is left It tends to gravitate towards the negative, you know people are skeptical And I saw people at CDC some people a 30 year career These are people I remember years ago. They were they showed promise This is our future leadership and then they had 30 years of being exposed to an absence of leadership And they are part of the problem now. I mean they're jaded They're just not going to give you the energy and now they're just waiting for retirement You know, it's just sad that we didn't really do what we could to help that person reach their full potential And that's our job as a leader now. We'll flip it around And try to think of this but without using The opposite words of what I asked about in the absence of leadership In the presence of leadership leaders that you follow Why do you follow them? What do you see feel here, etc? Presence of leadership Speak say loud acceptance You said acceptance acceptance of Oh, I see you're accepting you're part of the team. Okay. I got you. Okay. So you said Purpose yes Trust yeah Optimism that's great Yeah, there's a feeling as though you're being supported. You're being yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yes High performing unit. Yes Let me just offer one one thinking here It's one of the things that we think about And we call it the orders of preservation and it has to do with When there's a presence of leadership presence of leadership and this is you folks I mean you have to be that present leadership and whatever roles you have as chiefs, you know, unlike in the civilian side Um, we don't wear all this stuff here, you know, I mean as an scs. I'd walk into a room I think some people thought I was actually a wage grade four clerk It might have been my my poor English skills Or my dress. I don't know but you know, I didn't have that benefit And so people look to you guys and gals and they're going to look for the example They're going to look for the season veteran And there's no way to hide the fact you spend a ton of time in the air force to reach this level that you're at And the notion that you're a present leader. It's almost non-negotiable. They're going to demand that you're that present leader But I want to talk about these orders of preservation because it might help you think through and I just talked to a guy After the last session. I think it helped him So here's how the orders of preservation work just to kind of to touch on the ego issue for a moment So the first order of preservation is self Right for you to become a chief you had to do a lot Yeah, right Because there's a lot of people who aren't chiefs and there's a lot of people who won't be chiefs So you had to have this notion of preserving you In that equation, you know if you wanted to be a chief because you wanted more Responsibility you wanted the authority to have a greater impact to have people follow you so you could help them reach their full potential and make a difference You had to become a chief Right and you did You can't continue with that order of preservation being the primary because now that you are As far as I know, there's not an e10, right? Right and I don't think there's anything in the works for any 10 We could start that rumor I'm having dinner with calete tonight. So I'll start that with him Maybe maybe he's the e10 So orders of preservation being self is number one think about a person being elected to office They might have a great platform. They might have, you know, great ideas bold different revolutionary unless they get elected It's totally meaningless So when you see people running through the election process their order of preservation is themself They must get elected or it doesn't mean anything Now once they are once you become a chief Then your order of preservation must shift It has to shift to an order of preservation of your organization Right You get into an organization. You understand the culture. You understand whether it's high performing not high performing There's things you're going to have to do There's a ton of transactions And there's a ton of strategy and things that you're going to want to do knowing that you don't have a lot of time to do it What what's the general tenure of a chief? How many how many years Yeah No, no for to be a chief to be an e9. How long will you be an e9? 8 to 12 years I mean, that's a long time Right Is it is it generally that long for So you might be in a unit three years, okay So you you you're a chief you get into that unit and you're going to be there for you You know that time is limited for you to do something, right? So that means some people and it's the same way in the in a medical field with physicians Like you look at physicians rotating through hospitals or tend to be there three years because they're constantly moving up and getting promotions So you you might think order of preservation if it's still self what's going to happen is you're going to be a disruptor I don't have a lot of time. I don't have time for this foolishness. Go kill destroy, right? Now if your order of preservation is the organization and you take the time to understand the culture of the organization The people that work at your strengths and weaknesses programs that are working programs that need to strengthening You figure this stuff out and the and you leave the organization better than when you found it, right? That that's great But there's a third order of preservation. That's important and you should think about and the roles you guys and gals have now Which even if it's 10 years, you'll be surprised right how fast that 10 years is going to go And how much time it takes to change things and this is the order of preservation related to cause See every coop was a great example of a surgeon general a leader who you know, he had to do something to get himself You know eligible to become the surgeon general He had to understand the organization which he operated, you know at Simon's health education and welfare But then he shifted to cause what's he known for? Right, he brought our attention to the the hazards of smoking He did a lot of other things especially around physical fitness, but smoking was his big thing You know, he brought so much science and research to look into the dangers of smoking It's pretty phenomenal. So he was able to shift his thinking from orders of preservation from self organization to cause And it's something I would challenge you to think about That order of preservation and the work that you do, you know, what's the bigger cause for which you could affect some kind of change If you think about it, if you can grasp that You know, you might put yourself in a position where you're going to fundamentally change the way the air force thinks about his problems I mean, there are some chief master sergeant Over time like if you think about barns and others I'm pretty sure that their order of preservation at the end of their career was about some big cause some big kind of change They wanted to create and the illicit ranks to the air force You know, you have to know that because you are where you are now and you worked hard to get there You have the opportunity to really affect change when it relates to the bigger cause And so I challenge you to think about it that way so Orders of preservation self organization cause something to think about Let me just ask are there any I'm happy to take any questions about leadership Any thoughts concerns you might have I know we're kind of running short on time But I want to make sure I offer that opportunity anybody It's tough end of the day Long day. I appreciate your attention Thank you so much and congratulations on your promotion and good luck moving forward and thanks for your service to the country