Debrief to Win: How Failure Builds Unstoppable Leaders

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Speaker 2 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. We have a tremendous episode for you today, a conversation with Robert Cujo Teschner.

Speaker 2 He is a combat veteran, former F-15 Eagle instructor at the prestigious U.S. Air Force Weapons School, as well as Air Force top gun program instructor.

Speaker 2 He's a former F-22 Raptor fighter squadron commander, having commanded one of America's most prestigious operational F-22 fighter squadrons.

Speaker 2 Cujo is now a leadership coach, a peak performance personal development coach, entrepreneur, speaker. And his book, Debrief to Win, is a must read.
for leaders. It is a must read.

Speaker 2 It's called Debrief to Win. I'll have a link in the show notes.
If you haven't read Debrief to Win, stop what you're reading right now. Pick up this book.

Speaker 2 If you are in a leadership position or aspire to be

Speaker 2 in one someday, this is a book you do not want to miss. This episode is going to blow your mind.
It is absolutely incredible.

Speaker 2 If you're in a leadership position or ever want to be a leader, lock in, friends, because we got one for you today.

Speaker 2 With all that said, and no further ado, let's get on to my good friend Cujo.

Speaker 2 I gotta tell you, I have been so incredibly excited to chat with you because a mutual friend of ours, Chris Paradiso, uh met you, spent time with you, and since that moment hasn't stopped talking about you.

Speaker 2 Um, and mostly positive. No, I'm kidding.
And uh,

Speaker 2 I just obviously I read your book, Debrief to Win. And, you know, I just want to dig in.
So I appreciate your time that you're spending with us here today.

Speaker 3 Yeah, listen, thank you very much. I mean, so Mr.
Perideas has been singing your praises and I've been looking forward to this. We do all kinds of different things, but

Speaker 3 this is the kind of thing that I like to do almost the most.

Speaker 3 And I'm really excited to be able to present like an idea, a thought coming from what it is that you've read and debriefed to win to your listeners to help them and what it is that they're doing.

Speaker 3 I think it's the exact right audience for what it is we're talking about. So this fires me up.

Speaker 2 Awesome. So where I want to start is

Speaker 2 in most of these I turn into basically personal consulting, just so you know, like I basically do the podcast so I get free personal consulting.

Speaker 2 So many people reach out to me today, my life as well. It's freaking hectic, right? Like there's so much coming at us.
And we talked a little about it before.

Speaker 2 You said you got so much going on, you know, in your brain. So do I.

Speaker 2 Much of your philosophy,

Speaker 2 my understanding, is taking time post-action to reflect,

Speaker 2 as title your book, Debrief to Win, taking time to think about what happened.

Speaker 2 And I know for a fact that the vast majority of leaders, of executives, of sales individuals, we just don't, we don't, we don't do that.

Speaker 2 We take action and regardless of outcome, we just move on to the next action. So my first question is actually kind of hyper-tactical.
How do we build that time in?

Speaker 2 How do we actually stop ourselves or slow ourselves down enough to reflect, to kind of debrief on action?

Speaker 3 Yeah, great question. How many hours do we have to discuss this? 17?

Speaker 2 As long as you want.

Speaker 3 Okay, good.

Speaker 3 I'll tell you what, the brute force method seems to be probably the entrepreneurial spirit.

Speaker 3 Like, let's just go out there and attack and dominate and do whatever it takes 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Speaker 3 Like, I'm on fire with this concept, and we're just going to go, and we're going to make mistakes along the way, but we're just going to keep on applying for it.

Speaker 3 And eventually, we're going to win at this thing just because we've just been so power-focused and energetic all the way through. And that's definitely an option.

Speaker 3 And I think both you and I have been have been squarely focused on that kind of an option in the work that we do. And so it kind of makes sense to us.
And there you go. And it can be successful.

Speaker 3 Question is, is it the best option?

Speaker 3 And that's a really worthwhile question for all of us to think about. Like, is brute force the best way to move forward?

Speaker 3 Or is there something else that's missing that could make this whole experience of building and leading a little bit better?

Speaker 3 So I would contrast what it is that we do in the world of business and specifically the entrepreneurial world with the way that we attack it in military high-performance teams, high-reliability, high-consequence organizations, I might add.

Speaker 3 And that is, though we have a lot of brute force that we can bring to the mix for sure.

Speaker 3 And we're talking a lot of type A players and folks that are, you know, in it to win. We've gone with the intentional route that says we owe it, we owe it to those who we serve.

Speaker 3 To do this thing as effectively as possible, which means learning constantly and baking in, making a cultural focus to bake in the time for reflection always.

Speaker 3 Not occasionally, not only when there's been a disaster, not only if it best serves us or if we feel like, okay, this is the one that warrants it. No, we're going to do it always.

Speaker 3 And we're going to bake it in to where generation after generation after generation will always do it that way.

Speaker 3 And you might ask, okay,

Speaker 3 so what? Like, how does that apply to me?

Speaker 3 The answer is, in that world where so much is writing on the outcomes, we know that we can't afford not to take the time to do it that much better the next time.

Speaker 3 And I think there's a lot of cross-applicability there into all that we do.

Speaker 2 I completely agree.

Speaker 2 You know, I, I,

Speaker 2 so my entrepreneurial career in its most recent iteration was I started my own independent insurance agency.

Speaker 2 And similar to Chris, we know each other from the insurance industry, from the insurance industry.

Speaker 2 And it was was funny, you know, I had never run a sales team before. I'd always been more

Speaker 2 either more of like an executive CEO role or a marketing role. But here I start my own business.

Speaker 2 Now I'm, at least at the beginning, head of all the departments, and you're running these sales meetings. And what I found was,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 it was very difficult to get my team to do post-mortems on sales, right?

Speaker 2 It was almost like they didn't want to think about it. Like if they didn't get it, if they won,

Speaker 2 they'd love to tell you that little trick or that little thing they did to win. But on the losses,

Speaker 2 it was like they just wanted to throw it from their mind or they became

Speaker 2 kind of maybe shameful or

Speaker 2 they were worried it was going to bring in self-doubt. And how do we work through being comfortable, not just discussing the wins and debriefing on the wins?

Speaker 2 I guess that's the fun part, but how do we become culturally comfortable discussing our losses? Good.

Speaker 3 So now we get into the real deep psychology of all this.

Speaker 3 And it starts with: I was recently interviewed, somebody was interviewing me about whether or not they should hire me to deliver a keynote at their conference. And so the one big question that

Speaker 3 the principal asked was:

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 3 what is the thing that has equipped equipped you the best to learn?

Speaker 3 And I instantly responded with my failures. And he said, I thought that's what you were going to say.

Speaker 3 And then he proceeded to say that most of the people that he asks that question of talks about how great they are and it, you know, positions them to learn because of how open they are to, you know, just knowledge and wisdom and power and might and whatever it is that's on top of their mind.

Speaker 3 He's like, it's actually failure. Failure is the thing that equips us to learn.
And it's through navigating those failures that we figure out a better better way, hopefully.

Speaker 3 And that's the philosophy that's at play here.

Speaker 3 So, if we won, yeah, it might be fun to celebrate that, I suppose, but really, we had to ask ourselves on the winning side: did we win due to us or due to the fact that we got lucky?

Speaker 3 Was the person that we were having the sales call with going to buy no matter what, and we just happened to stumble upon that, or did we actually do something to truly earn that win?

Speaker 3 That's that's you know, those are some of the questions we need to be asking on that side. But on the loss side, like if we can figure out why we lost this deal, didn't sell it,

Speaker 3 then hopefully it equips us with the ability to go in with higher confidence to that next call

Speaker 3 that we're going to win this thing. And so it's those failures that if we can extract the lessons that are potentially available to us there, they equip us with a brighter future.

Speaker 3 And that's the thing that all of us need. So it's the failure side that has always revealed the most to me in my previous career, for sure, in this career.

Speaker 3 And the people that I really am impressed with the most are the folks that lean into that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's funny.

Speaker 2 I completely agree with you. And most of my career has been failures with some nice victories sprinkled in intermittently.
You know what I mean? And it's funny when you talk to people who've,

Speaker 2 I'm going to call, you know,

Speaker 2 successful entrepreneurs that have kind of maybe hits escape velocity, right? There's all different levels of success, but I don't want it to just be like someone who's got some big, huge exit.

Speaker 2 It's all different levels of success. We'll cap success at escape velocity.

Speaker 2 You're not wondering if you're going to be able to pay your bills this month. You've kind of hit a point where you, okay.

Speaker 2 So anybody who's hit that level, right, when you really dig down, and whether that's, you know,

Speaker 2 whatever it is you're unwinding, maybe it's a nice glass of scotch or a cigar, whatever you're unwinding, golf course, whatever your thing is,

Speaker 2 They never, people never took those type, people who've won, they don't tell you about their wins, right?

Speaker 2 When you're on the golf course and you're breaking down and you're yucking it up, you're not like, oh, you know, we made this big sale the other day. You're like, you know what?

Speaker 2 I had this thing on a T,

Speaker 2 I was going to knock it out of the park and then I barfed all, you know, and then it didn't, you know, this didn't happen. Or man, this was the easiest decision I could have ever made.

Speaker 2 And I just, you know, just didn't do it.

Speaker 2 It's always the losses losses that those type of people talk about.

Speaker 2 Yet when you get into, say, the social media world or the people who haven't hit escape velocity, all they want to talk about is the wins. Do you think that that's just part of the growth process?

Speaker 2 Or do you think the fact that those individuals haven't hit escape velocity is because they focus just on the wins and they don't want to address the losses?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think it may be part of that. It may just be that we feel as human beings that in order to get to escape velocity, we may have to make it seem like we're winning bigger than we actually are.

Speaker 3 And that if we were to evidence any insight that it wasn't that way, that people would think less of us and not buy what we're selling. And so we posture.
And I mean, you mentioned social media.

Speaker 3 I mean, that's the place where everybody, it's a learned skill because this is relatively recent that this thing is a phenomenon.

Speaker 3 We've learned to posture, highlighting how grateful we are for how successful everything tends to be around us. And there it is.
The reality is vastly different.

Speaker 3 And if we believe what it is that we're reading there, then we're

Speaker 3 probably placing our belief in the wrong thing. I go academic for just a second.
I'm a big fan of the work of Dr. Amy Edmondson.
And she's written numerous books.

Speaker 3 Probably my favorite of her books is The Fearless Organization, where she's discussing the role that psychological safety plays in organizations that want to win.

Speaker 3 All right, so if you're talking about team learning, you got to have a psychologically safe environment, a place where you can be okay being vulnerable in the effort to learn.

Speaker 3 And her work has influenced mine a lot. One of the things that's interesting about Dr.

Speaker 3 Edmondson at Harvard is that when she started her work on her PhD, and I'm just going to summarize in my words what it is that I think I learned from her, when she started working, her theory was, was that the best teams made the least amount of mistakes.

Speaker 3 And it stunned her as she began her research to find that that was actually incorrect. The best teams made more mistakes than the worst teams.

Speaker 3 It was so upsetting to her actually that she almost capsized her PhD work and went a different route. But then she was so frustrated with this that she decided to dig deeper.

Speaker 3 And once she dug deeper, what she found, it wasn't that the best teams were making more mistakes. It's that they were talking about all of them and the worst teams were covering them up

Speaker 3 or just ignoring them and

Speaker 3 in the process of that. repeating their mistakes.
So the best teams were talking about them. They were exposing them to the light.

Speaker 3 They were learning from them and working to not repeat them, which that describes my background in the high-performance team world of fighter aviation. Like we made mistakes.

Speaker 3 It's impossible to be perfect in that world. So many things coming at you.

Speaker 3 But our idea was if we can go back in and scrutinize why things went the way that they did this time, then hopefully we're equipping ourselves to have a better next time.

Speaker 3 And that, again, serves the interests of the people that we are here to serve. And where would that not work?

Speaker 3 And the only thing that we have to contend with as entrepreneurs and leaders in the business world is

Speaker 3 that the culture that I'm talking about, this one of ritualized learning post-mission, as we call it, it's not the culture in business.

Speaker 3 And so then it requires us to be intentional about building a culture where learning post-mission is the way. And then that sets conditions for success.
We just have to create that culture.

Speaker 2 One anecdote to your social media story.

Speaker 2 In 2020, when I was growing my agency,

Speaker 2 we're coming out of COVID. I launched my agency seven days before COVID hit.
So

Speaker 2 that was an interesting entrepreneurial experience.

Speaker 3 Timing's everything, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 gyms open up August of 2020. I'm, you know, miserable because nothing's happening.
The world's shut down. I've invested all this money, blah, blah, blah.
So I'm like, screw it.

Speaker 2 I'll start going to the gym because no one's picking up the phone and answering my calls anyway. So, um,

Speaker 2 so I said a, I had never deadlifted before. I'd always been an athlete, but I had never deadlifted.
I said, I'm going to try this new exercise and I'm going to set a goal for myself. Okay, great.

Speaker 2 So I do that and I said, okay, to hold myself accountable, every day that I deadlift, I'm going to just record my last set and post it on social media.

Speaker 2 And at first, I look like anybody who's never done an exercise before. I mean, I'm athletic enough, but certainly not, you know, whatever.
And I got these people

Speaker 2 calling, you know, say, I mean, people say crazy shit to you when you post stuff on social media. And it's all, it's all good.
I don't care. And then, like, about a year and a half in to my journey,

Speaker 2 I had, I worked with a branding expert to help upgrade our brand and what, whatever. And she's like, you know, why are you posting this stuff? She's like, look, you know, you look like this.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, because I want people to know that, like, you don't start at 450 pounds at 41 years old deadlifting. You know,

Speaker 2 my first day, the max I could do was 185 pounds. I don't know.
You know what I mean? I haven't been a college athlete for 20 years. So

Speaker 2 like it's like, you know, it wasn't about, I'm not trying to be a fitness professional. It was about showing like, hey, as an entrepreneur, I believe physical fitness and wellness is very, very...

Speaker 2 important.

Speaker 2 I bring a lot of health and people on the show for that reason. And all I'm trying to show them is, hey, it's COVID and it sucks and I got a mask on, but we can work through it.
That's it.

Speaker 2 And I'm telling you, she blistered me. And she wasn't doing it to be a jerk.
You know, she was being accurate. She's like, people are going to see this as you failing.

Speaker 2 Like, they're not going to take this as, like, you said, like, putting your, you know, presenting this thing that like, you're all this stuff and you're this powerful guy.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, well, I'm not that. I can only do 225 today.
You know what I mean? What am I supposed to do? And it was wild.

Speaker 2 She was like, she was, so I didn't take it down and whatever, but she was like really adamant that that was having a negative impact on the brand on my brand and the brand of the business was like these videos of me lifting weights.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 but here's the opposite to it, and this is where I want to get back to your to your psychological safety piece for a second, was the other side was I must have gotten hundreds of messages, mostly from guys, but but from a few women too, that were like, dude, like

Speaker 2 I've been struggling to get get to the gym, and you're pissing me off that you're going, and now I'm going too. You know what I mean? Like, and you know, and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 So, I'm like, you know, I think we have to, the other side of this is, yeah, you're, you're going to get some feedback that you might not like, but you're also, if you're being authentic and really trying to help and, you know, get better, there's so many people that are also going to see you for what you're actually trying to do.

Speaker 2 And that's why I hate this like fake life stuff. It really is bad.

Speaker 2 Okay. Sorry.
Sorry for that side note, but it is my podcast, so I can

Speaker 2 do it whatever I want to, Joe. It's my podcast.

Speaker 2 First of all, you're exactly right.

Speaker 3 It's your podcast. Secondly, this is really important.
It's a very important point you make.

Speaker 3 If I could just put a little bow around this from my perspective, you think back to different leadership styles, and probably at the early part of the 20th century,

Speaker 3 you know, the invoke thing was the heroic model of leadership. Like the leader knew everything, had all of the answers.
Like, all hail the leader.

Speaker 3 You better not question the leader's decision the leader is perfect uh again like you know we will never question which is so not true like there's zero people that are walking around perfectly solving all problems and giving the answers to every question that that but anyway there was a model at one point where that was how things were and it was it was a dangerous one i mean if you apply that to the world of commercial aviation If we don't question the captain, then there's a good chance that at some point we're going to die because the captain is not infallible.

Speaker 3 And if the captain misreads something, misanalyzes, doesn't process the whatever, and nobody else speaks up, then this thing is probably headed for disaster.

Speaker 3 And there's plenty of evidence of that, many accidents that were preventable because nobody spoke up in that same kind of a context.

Speaker 3 And so this whole idea of leaders being potentially fallible and highlighting what it is that they're struggling with, it actually part of the thing that connects us as human beings.

Speaker 3 And knowing that you're struggling the same way that I am, but knowing also that in your struggles, you're willing to highlight where it is that you're not exactly perfect and the journey that you're taking to getting to a better state.

Speaker 3 It does inspire, like, because that's the reality of life. Like, nobody came out of the womb, like everything's solved.

Speaker 3 You know, we have to constantly force and struggle and learn and fail and pick ourselves up. And so, what you did was excellent.
And good job not listening to that advice from the PR expert.

Speaker 2 Well, hey, going back to our buddy Chris, that dude gets up and runs every day at 3 a.m.

Speaker 2 And every day I get a text message from him, your ass better be out of bed.

Speaker 2 Now, I don't get up at 3 because I think that's crazy, but he's, but, you know, I'm up at 5.30, 6 o'clock, and I don't work out that. I work out later anyways.
But, like, that's motivation, right?

Speaker 2 Like, here's a guy that I respect, that's successful, that has his head on his shoulders, and he's up doing the work every day. I can't do that.
Like, you know what I mean? Like, I can do that.

Speaker 2 Like, if he can do it, I can, you know, and that's how we push each other. But to your point, and this is where I want to circle all the way back around to psychological safety.
Like,

Speaker 2 I do think that

Speaker 2 I have to feel like I can ask him questions about why he does it, how he does it, and know that he's not going to turn around and be like, you know, just do the work, motherfucker.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean? Like, he's, you know, he'll say to me, like, dude, I...

Speaker 2 on the days that I'm fasting, I might just walk a couple miles on, you know, so, so understanding that not only do I respect him and do I want to emulate parts of of who he is because I value his journey, but that I can ask him questions and know that I'm going to get real feedback even when I'm missing, right?

Speaker 2 Like, so if I am off track for a week, you know, he's not going to judge me for that.

Speaker 2 He might give me a little shit because he should, but at the same time, he's going to give me real feedback on how I might be able to realign myself.

Speaker 2 So I would love to know, because to me, where psychological safety goes wrong, and correct me on this, so much of it starts with ego. And a big part of my work on this show is highlighting where ego

Speaker 2 just, I believe, just destroys our life.

Speaker 2 Big, big, you know, I'm Christian, but also a huge fan of stoicism and, you know, enlightenment and all of these really progressive mindsets, progressive in the positive sense, not in the leftist sense,

Speaker 2 are rooted in removing the ego from our lives.

Speaker 2 How do we do that organizationally, especially in your situation where you are surrounded by the alpha of alphas, right?

Speaker 2 I mean, the egos in that room were probably enormous, but you guys were able to work together and create massive outcome.

Speaker 2 How the hell do you do that?

Speaker 3 Yeah, great question. And I think it started with

Speaker 3 the culture was pre-existing to me. And so it was very easy because if you didn't adapt to the culture, then you were off the team.

Speaker 3 So if you couldn't be vulnerable in front of your teammates, then you were going to be off the team. Like we would not tolerate that from somebody.
Why?

Speaker 3 Because again, nobody's perfect. And our ambition post-mission, and that's exactly how we look at these things, we're executing missions.
We don't do projects. We don't plan events.

Speaker 3 We don't do things. We're not overwhelmed with tasks.
We're execute missions. And after every single mission, we're there to learn.
And learning involves confronting the truth of what happened.

Speaker 3 And so if you can't contribute to the truth, like if you can't, you know, admit, like, yeah, right over here is where I shot you, Hanley.

Speaker 3 Like, this is the point where I take the missile shot that, you know, if it had been for real, would have killed you, Hanley, is right here at time

Speaker 3 1.56 p.m. That's where I hit launch.
If you can't do that, then we can't learn effectively. You're a danger to this team.
You're off the team. So we've made a culture that way.

Speaker 3 I think when we're trying to kickstart something like this in an organization, you go back to, you know, you're starting your insurance agency and

Speaker 3 you're creating the culture intentionally.

Speaker 3 You have to lead with vulnerability in order to inspire anybody else to follow your lead, to get over their egos, to get over whatever it is that's preventing them from contributing to group learning.

Speaker 3 And if you're perfect, like if you never make a mistake, like if you're always the one that's pointing the finger elsewhere, it's never going to take root. Psychological safety will never happen.

Speaker 3 The other piece of this is, in addition to you being open to the fact that you might have contributed to the team's loss here,

Speaker 3 is not losing your mind while you're talking about it. So like it's one thing to commit to learning ritually after everything that we do.
How we come into that is also really important.

Speaker 3 And learning by way of, you know, yelling and kind of losing your losing your mind is actually not learning. Like, we're creating conditions of fear.

Speaker 3 That fear is a natural thing that causes us to self-censor and shut up, retract into our shells, and it doesn't help us. So, like, emotional intelligence got to be high.

Speaker 3 Got to work on maintaining consistently high ability to self-regulate in order to maintain the good of the team. And that's hard to do, especially when this is your baby handling.

Speaker 3 Like, you've created the company, you invested the money. This is your treasure that you're putting into this thing.
You want it to work. When somebody else on the team screws it up, it's hard.

Speaker 3 It's actually very hard to be able to be like, all right, guys, let's learn together. But that's actually

Speaker 3 a huge piece of what it takes.

Speaker 3 And so finding a way to center in, enter into this conversation with childlike curiosity, not make any assumptions, not rush to judgment, maintain a positive disposition, neutral to positive tone, presence, body power, all this stuff goes into it.

Speaker 3 That's where it it gets a little bit complex. It requires us to be very intentional about

Speaker 3 leading effectively.

Speaker 2 Is there a time, though, when you can just get up in someone's ass, though? Like, I just like, you know what I mean? Like, I found...

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. So

Speaker 2 I'll give you an example. Yeah, please, please.

Speaker 3 I'll give you an example. Because this is what you're seeking right now.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 back when I was the squadron weapons officer, so this patch indicates that I graduated graduated from the U.S.

Speaker 3 Air Force Weapons Instructor course at Nellis Air Force Base, the original fighter weapons school.

Speaker 3 And when I came back as the chief instructor pilot of my fighter squadron, I had a mission one day where I violated a major rule of engagement.

Speaker 3 So, think original Top Gun movie, you know, boss, I was only the hard deck for a couple of seconds. You know, there was no danger, so I took the shot.

Speaker 3 I did one of those kinds of things, only probably more aggravated than that example. And I'm supposed to be giving the example of what right looks like always, 24 hours a day.
So that was not good.

Speaker 3 And I was getting ready to come back in and debrief this sucker. And the word had already gotten to the squadron commander, who is one of my favorite people on the planet, by the way.

Speaker 3 And so he comes in and he comes into the debrief room.

Speaker 2 He's like, Cujo, come here.

Speaker 3 And he takes me out of the room that I'm in. I actually had to stifle a grin because I knew it was coming and it was perfect.

Speaker 3 He takes me into an empty debrief room, slams the door so the entire squadron can hear, and screams at me, don't you ever effing do that again.

Speaker 3 And that was it. That's all he said.
And then he slammed the door behind him, leaving me in the, you know, almost empty debrief room right now. Again, entire building shakes.

Speaker 3 Everybody hears this exchange. He's gone.

Speaker 3 And I thought that was classic. In fact, it's like an example of perfect from my vantage point.

Speaker 3 He wasn't screaming at me for my sake.

Speaker 3 He knew I already knew how bad the screw-up was.

Speaker 3 What he needed everybody else in the squadron to know is that I was held to the same standard as everybody else, that I wasn't going to get a pass, that whatever special status I had did not apply to, like I'm just like anybody else here.

Speaker 3 The rules apply to me just like to anybody else here. If I violate them, I'm going to get my butt reamed for it.
And who knows what else is going to come from this? And the message was received.

Speaker 3 Everybody was in like

Speaker 3 mode after that. And I'm like, that was perfect.
So yes, there are times when we do have to lay the smack down.

Speaker 3 And a good leader understands where it is that that's not going to not only not break psychological safety or the team's effectiveness, but is actually the exact right thing for the team then.

Speaker 3 It just can't be that way every time.

Speaker 2 Yeah, what I hear you saying is it has to be a tool in your tool belt used appropriately like any tool, not

Speaker 2 your cultural norm.

Speaker 3 That's right. Yep.

Speaker 3 And I mean, just like anything, like if every day were Christmas, and we'll just look at it from the purely, you know, secular lens of like people are getting gifts here and it's all like fun and happy.

Speaker 3 It would actually diminish the uh the joy of oh it's christmas again you know

Speaker 3 i wish one of these days we wouldn't get all these presents like it's it's just it's not the same thing and if that's your deal where you're always coming down hard on everybody like oh there he is there's the boss again losing his mind over another you know whatever you know and you got to ask at what point do people totally tune out i've actually had people tell me as a consequence of always being criticized for everything that they do, they've actually not only stopped caring, but they've been actively seeking another place of employment because they just tune out.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 This is funny, but so I coach, my kids play sports, I coach them. And the kids are

Speaker 2 funny. Some of these kids have been with for a while.

Speaker 2 So one of the kids, great kid, parents are good people, but the dad's a bit of a yeller and he's not a coach, so he's constantly yelling from the stands.

Speaker 2 And I coach third base for baseball, and he gets to third. And he'd kind of made a bonehead play.
And he was safe at third, but it was very ugly how he got there. Let's just put it that way.

Speaker 2 And the dad's.

Speaker 2 And I just kind of leaned over and I'm like,

Speaker 2 how do you deal with that? You know, and the 10-year-old looks at me and goes, oh, I don't even hear him anymore.

Speaker 2 He thinks he's laying the SmackDown on his kid. He didn't even realize he was yelling at him.

Speaker 3 Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 3 Isn't that so true?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't even hear him.

Speaker 3 It's just noise. At some point, it becomes noise, and

Speaker 3 it's not effective. By the way, because you brought it up, kids, youth, sports, and the role that that plays.

Speaker 3 And kind of going back to this concept of we learn more through failure than anything else, where we learn that is really important. It has to start as kids.

Speaker 3 If we don't learn the importance of navigating failure early, when it hits us later in life, we're really thrown for a loop and that's a hard thing to have to overcome so uh my my uh oldest who also started off playing baseball and um

Speaker 3 second oldest uh the coach was going to move into a into a higher bracket you know more aggressive league uh wasn't going to take the entire team with and so was making the rounds of calling the parents to say your kid didn't make it our kid did

Speaker 3 And he's like, hey, listen, if you want to continue with us, you know, just want you to know

Speaker 3 your son's so talented. We'd love to have him.
I'm like, okay, this is great. I'm fired up.
He's going to be happy to know that.

Speaker 3 But here's what I need you to know now that we're playing at a higher level. The moment that he doesn't pass muster, bench him.

Speaker 3 The moment that he has an attitude that suggests that it's getting to his head, bench him then. And by the way, if you want to kick him off the team at any point, you're cleared in hot.

Speaker 3 And he said, you know, I got to say, Mr. Teshner, in all of my years of coaching, I've never had a parent who's talking along those lines.

Speaker 3 Usually it's the parent that upset that their kid isn't playing more, that they did get benched, that they didn't make it to the thing. So can I just ask, like, why are you going this route?

Speaker 3 I'm like, yeah, it's simple. This is the time to learn.
Learn how to navigate.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 you didn't make it. I need my son to learn that now, not.
20 years from now when he gets cut from the company and is like, what? I've only ever won all my life. I need him to learn this now.

Speaker 3 We need to learn this while he's still under my guidance so that I can coach him up through that thing and we can harness that to have a better day tomorrow. That's so important.

Speaker 3 And it begins with where you are right now.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So I was a high school and college basketball referee for 12 years.

Speaker 2 I loved it. Unfortunately,

Speaker 2 once

Speaker 2 kids came along, driving three hours to make $150 just wasn't, the math didn't work out as well.

Speaker 2 Give basketball referees all the crap you want. Understand they are underpaid for what they do.
Just so everyone listening, yell at them. If you purchase a ticket, do what you got to do.

Speaker 2 But just understand they ain't making a lot of money, these guys. They're doing it because they love it.
That being said, in that 12-year period from I started in 2002

Speaker 2 and went to 2014,

Speaker 2 I watched and was part of,

Speaker 2 you know, kind of firsthand a major shift. in how parents interacted with their children on the sport.

Speaker 2 When I started, was kind of, you know, I finished my college baseball career. I guess it was a little later.
I finished my college baseball career in in 2003. So that's when I started.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 from that point, when I first got in, it was very much the way that I was brought up. I mean, I got coaches smoking cigars on third base, you know, yelling at you if you strike out,

Speaker 2 handle this, you know, I mean, I've had coaches throw me into fences.

Speaker 2 And, you know, what's funny is, and actually we talked about this in the last show with the, with the, uh, Steve D'Agostino, but it was like,

Speaker 2 I had these moments that today I'd have coaches in jail for. You know, they'd be in jail.
But those moments would happen, and I'd be like, you know what? I kind of deserve that. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 I was talking back, or, you know, like, I pimped a home run one time. Shouldn't have done it.
Shouldn't have, I'm not, this is not, I'm not advocating for this activity, but it was our rival, and

Speaker 2 a lot of stuff was going on in the game. And I just absolutely jacked this home run off their closer.
And

Speaker 2 I acted like an asshole. I pimped a home run.

Speaker 2 So I come around, The moment my foot hits home base, my coach has both his hands. I don't even know where he came from.
He was like a ninja. He had both his hands on my jersey.

Speaker 2 He literally drags me like on a cartoon. Like my feet were dragging.
He's dragging me off the, throws me into the dugout, right?

Speaker 2 Turns around and he goes, he just looks at me. He got a cigar hanging out of his mouth.

Speaker 2 You will never fucking do that again.

Speaker 2 End of story, right?

Speaker 2 Today he's in jail. Me, I'm like, you know what I'm not going to do again?

Speaker 2 I'm not going to pimp another home run.

Speaker 2 Not going to do that. Like, message received, right? Got it.
Don't ever have to say, message received. I got you, coach, you know, and lesson learned, right?

Speaker 2 But in this time period, to get back to my point here,

Speaker 2 in that time period, that 12-year time period,

Speaker 2 when I first started, it was very much the same. And

Speaker 2 for those listening, I'm not advocating for physical violence against kids. Please, please take this for what it is.

Speaker 2 It was a different time period, but very much that like you're held accountable to your actions. And by the time I retired 12 years later, it was the polar opposite.

Speaker 2 What do you think has happened culturally? And it's still, I will say it's getting slightly better, but it is still very prevalent in sports today. I found just in coaching, it's a little better.

Speaker 2 There seems to be a little more rationale, but or reasonableness, but it's still very prevalent.

Speaker 2 What has happened culturally from your viewpoint that we're dealing with this now? Because a lot of these kids that were in youth sports back in 2003, they're in the market now.

Speaker 2 Leaders are hiring them for jobs, asking them to do things. They underperform.
They get in trouble.

Speaker 2 And now I read some stat the other day that something like 30% of all job interviews, people are bringing their parents on now.

Speaker 2 Like their parents, they're bringing their parents on job interview phone calls. It's crazy.
I heard it on the all-in podcast. I got to find the snap.

Speaker 3 Yeah, look,

Speaker 3 what a great question and what a big problem. And I think it ties in, and I'm not going to have any statistics for you on this.
It's just my observations.

Speaker 3 I think we're living increasingly in a world of, you know, what's in it for me?

Speaker 3 How do I meet my own personal thing? I meet immediate gratification and satisfaction in all ways.

Speaker 3 Like if the Amazon thing doesn't get delivered within the next 30 minutes, I'm going to be really angry, you know um and tied to that uh what are the expectations i mean you look at a in the sports world you look at like a like a patrick mahomes okay

Speaker 3 um playing a game very violent game very fast-paced game at its level but at the end of the day it's a game he's making 500 million dollars over a decade to play said game uh you know what is the ambition i want to be like that i want to be like that and so you

Speaker 3 i mean i I think parents might be kind of trying to position their kids to be like that in that thing. They're hyper-protective all around to make sure that the kid is

Speaker 3 doing whatever is best for the kid and not for the team. And the lesson and

Speaker 3 the ambition here is different.

Speaker 3 I think it used to be like we're supposed to be learning how to be a team and what it takes to be a person of character on a team and to support the team's good and not to do it for ourselves.

Speaker 3 Like, hey, coach says I need to lay down a bun. That's not actually what I want to do right now.
I'd like to jack the home run. You know, so what am I going to do?

Speaker 3 Today, I might just go my own way and try to crank the home run.

Speaker 3 Back then, like, if you didn't follow the coach's instruction for the good of the team, you'd be punished for it.

Speaker 3 And I think the ambition behind what we're doing may be shifting because of what's at stake. I mean, back when we were kids, folks weren't signing those kinds of contracts.

Speaker 3 And though the ambition to be like

Speaker 3 whatever the hero was of the day was still there,

Speaker 3 it didn't have as big of an impact, I don't think, as it does these days. We model or we follow the behavioral patterns of those

Speaker 3 who we hold in high esteem. And so if they're doing things, it must be okay for us.
And you talk about, you know, getting fired up about your home run.

Speaker 3 I mean, name for me an athlete who's not doing that on the big stage right now. I think back to the World Series and some of the things and the bat flips and whatnot.

Speaker 3 I mean, like, okay, you know, and I see it in my kids. They emulate the folks that they're watching on TV.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 3 I think it's up to us as parents to help kind of co-design with our kiddos what it is that we're trying to get out of this.

Speaker 3 And my ambition in telling the coach, Bencham, was that I'm not trying to limit my son's ability to do what it is that he's capable of.

Speaker 3 I just want him to be a man of character while he goes about and does that. And he needs to learn to fail now.
And it's through those, through navigating that, that he'll become his very best.

Speaker 3 But his best is also going to be,

Speaker 3 you know, having the self-confidence to know that he's been through tough situations and he's going to be okay on the back end

Speaker 3 that's important

Speaker 2 remember when the david winfield shuffle was considered like risque the fact that he would just slide to the slide to the right twice

Speaker 2 it's crazy so i have a theory that i want to hit you on with this and you let me know if you think there's any validity to it so i've thought about this topic a lot because i think leadership is incredibly important at all ages uh in every aspect of our life leadership of our family community organizations our church, if that's what we do, sports teams, community groups, our companies, whatever.

Speaker 2 And to me, you know, in the research I've done and just,

Speaker 2 I've come up with kind of this idea that I think a lot of this started to happen when we no longer could trust, when we no longer felt the loyalty from the companies that we worked for that we felt for them, right?

Speaker 2 When my dad was, when my dad was coming up through the railroad, my dad's worked for the railroad for 30 years, right? You put in your time.

Speaker 2 You put in your time, you pay your union dues, and at the end of the day, the railroad takes care of you. You're good, right? They rally behind you.

Speaker 2 You got health insurance, you got a retirement, it's all good. And then somewhere in between

Speaker 2 2000 and 2010, the railroad changed its rules. And then all of a sudden, it became a tiered retirement structure.

Speaker 2 And then it became, well, if you didn't put in this many years, you didn't get anything. And then it became, well, now we're not offering health insurance anymore.
And then it became, you know,

Speaker 2 DEI kind of got involved. And guys, you know, that got things squirrely.

Speaker 2 And, you know, and it, it's like all of a sudden, this thing that for so long, you know, say, say, from the 50s to the maybe late 90s, you know, you pick a company and you commit to them, they commit to you, and you're going to be okay on the back end.

Speaker 2 All of a sudden, that doesn't exist today, right?

Speaker 2 And to me,

Speaker 2 my theory on this, and I haven't done any PhD work on it, so I don't have any hard facts but is that when that break started to happen it infiltrated all these other aspects of our life and we no longer felt that we could trust if we if we gave our loyalty to the larger organization that we could trust the larger organization to be loyal to us and when that started to break down then in all aspects of our lives we started

Speaker 2 We started thinking, well, geez, if the company doesn't have my best interest interest in mind, well, then I got to look out for me.

Speaker 2 I'll jump seven companies in seven years if I can make an extra $20,000 and have a better job title and a little more health insurance, right? And

Speaker 2 I don't know,

Speaker 2 I struggle to think that people are wrong in that, right? I struggle to think that the individual who can't trust the parent company,

Speaker 3 I don't see it as a bad thing that they look out for themselves because they I don't know that they can trust a a lot of these large organizations I don't know where do you stand on all that well yeah well well for sure I mean you know part of the leadership deal is uh is is being trustworthy and fulfilling your obligations and honoring your commitments all of that I mean that's that's that's leadership 101

Speaker 3 and I mean nobody's gonna look out for you better than yourself. I mean, I say this as a post-colorectal cancer kind of a guy.
Like, I've talked to a lot of doctors.

Speaker 3 For many of them, I'm just another number, you know, like almost dehumanized. You know, I'm patient number 406.
Come in, get my thing, and you know, whatever.

Speaker 3 And I realize that I know a lot more about my condition than many of the people that examine me and do whatever, because they may have had like a one-hour class on this particular thing, but I'm living it every single day.

Speaker 3 And I guarantee you, I'm very, very in tune with what it is that I'm experiencing. So

Speaker 3 I have to be about me more so than anybody else in order to advocate properly for myself. That said,

Speaker 3 what is the ambition of a team?

Speaker 3 I mean, is the ambition of a team for the team to serve its individual members? Is the ambition of the team to help the individual teammates to achieve their own individual unique aspirations?

Speaker 3 I mean, the teams that I've been on, it's certainly not been the case. In fact, it's been the opposite.
Like, everybody subordinates self-interest to the good of the team.

Speaker 3 And if one of us fails, all of us do. And it's a totally different dynamic.

Speaker 3 And so I think if leaders have broken trust by not fulfilling obligations and they've caused folks to then kind of be in the defensive crouch of, I must protect me, then we're doing it totally wrong.

Speaker 3 Because what's the point of a team? What's the good of a team if we're really not one, but in name only?

Speaker 3 Like everybody's just contributing their piece to, you know, to keep the boss off the back just so they can figure out where they're going to jump next. Like that's not a fulfilling place to be.

Speaker 3 And though it may be where people are and maybe it's okay for them to be there because of the broken trust and the experience that you're describing there with your father, I mean, that's sad.

Speaker 3 It truly is sad.

Speaker 3 I actually had the same experience when I joined the Air Force. I was at the Air Force Academy as a freshman.

Speaker 3 The chief of staff of the Air Force came and said, listen, I know I told everybody, or you know, the rule was when you signed up here.

Speaker 3 that if you made it to graduation and you were pilot qualified, you were going to fly airplanes for the Air Force. But I just want you to know that

Speaker 3 as a result of shifting strategy, it's not the case anymore. Only like a quarter of you are going to get a chance to fly.
Good luck. We're like,

Speaker 2 what?

Speaker 3 And actually, someone even called out the chief of staff on this, like, hey, we have an honor code here. We're supposed to not, you know, ever lie.

Speaker 3 Can you reconcile what you've just done with our honor code? I mean, you know, I mean, tensions were high,

Speaker 3 and that does not endear us to the leadership.

Speaker 3 But fundamentally, there's no point in teaming if it's all about me. Like, if if you and I are a team, but I'm only going to do the parts that benefit me,

Speaker 3 let's just call this what it is. It's the Everybody in It for Themselves show, and

Speaker 3 good luck.

Speaker 3 May the best one of us win. And

Speaker 3 I do think that it comes back down to we need leaders who honor their obligations, who speak the word and are truthful always, who can then create an environment where it is about the good of the team and about the team achieving mission success together.

Speaker 3 Meaning that if I sense that you're having a problem over here, Hanley, I'm going to commit myself to helping you out, giving you whatever gift of time and talent that I've got that can help you to help advance our collective mission because that's what teammates do.

Speaker 3 And those are the kinds of organizations that we want to be on.

Speaker 3 And if we're not finding that fulfillment here, we're going to go our own way, create our own companies, and hopefully create that dynamic there. And I suppose of all the ills that we describe,

Speaker 3 if we can then, inspired by not replicating what it is that your father's experienced, create a kind of environment that brings the best out of our teammates, then that's a win.

Speaker 2 And we always do our best when we're surrounded by people that are pointing in the same direction with us. Yes.

Speaker 3 Yes. And triple yes.
Oh, yeah. And it's, I mean, it makes it fun.
Like these days, like one of the squadrons that I used to be a part of,

Speaker 3 we love hanging out with each other. We're all done.

Speaker 3 Like, none of us is, I don't think, well, maybe there's a few of us that are still in the Air Force, but most of us are washed up, old, retired retired guys now and gals.

Speaker 3 And we can't wait till the next reunion. And we, I mean, our first reunion was just conducted at a very inopportune time.
Like, the schedule was not really convenient for anybody.

Speaker 3 And we all showed up. Some people were only there for a few hours, but they showed up.

Speaker 3 They flew all the way to Las Vegas to show up, to be there for this thing, because we miss being around one another because there's something special about work.

Speaker 3 Even in high-pressure, you know, dangerous situations, working with a bunch of people that actually care about one another and care about achieving success together, that's that's a really big deal especially now

Speaker 2 and those it's funny you know

Speaker 2 i have people from previous companies careers that you stay connected to and when you look at the people who you do stay connected to it's you know

Speaker 2 i hate to use a military analogy in a situation that doesn't make sense but that were in the foxhole with you right that like you know maybe that you're part of a company that's a thousand people but your little business unit of five you took on this challenge or this client and you got it done and it was late nights and tough conversations.

Speaker 2 And, and then, you know, you, everyone, you know, project gets done, you go your separate ways, but you can come back together on that moment. And there's like a bond there that you can't break.

Speaker 2 But you've also, you know, you've, all of us, I'm sure most of us listening have been in situations where you're given that same task, except everyone's got their own agenda.

Speaker 2 There's no connection, no bond. Oftentimes the outcome is less than you want it to be and you can't wait to get away from those people.
And

Speaker 2 skill level, while I think can add to the value, is meaningless to the connection and ultimately to your ability to execute the outcome.

Speaker 3 That's right. I mean, you know, you look at teams that have only ever won together.
I would argue they're not a team.

Speaker 3 What really allows us to know that we are one is when we can navigate the challenges together well.

Speaker 3 Like when the pressure is high, the stakes are super high, everything's riding on this, and we can come through that aware of all of this.

Speaker 3 It's not that we had our heads buried in the sand, we're blissfully unaware. We're aware of all of this and still manage to get it done correctly.
That's a very, very special thing.

Speaker 3 And those are the things that

Speaker 3 build bonds that are so special and unique that you'll never forget that. And you'll actually

Speaker 3 look back on those hard days as the best of times. That's what's cool.
And that foxhole mentality is a

Speaker 3 valid thought that applies literally everywhere. So it goes back to how we started our conversation today, and that is we learn the most from our failures.
How we fail really matters.

Speaker 3 The best teams fail exceptionally well together.

Speaker 3 Maybe a question for your listeners is: at every level, wherever it might be that we team, whether it's at home, whether it's at church, whether it's on the softball team,

Speaker 3 whether it's at work, how well do we fail together? And maybe that's a good benchmark against which to measure whether we're that kind of team that we want to be.

Speaker 3 And I'd say the best teams fail exceptionally well together. They do so in a way that builds the bonds of trust.

Speaker 3 And everybody comes out of that failure analysis super amped up about wanting to go out there and prove that we've learned from this, how to never fail this way again.

Speaker 3 And may that be our aspirations. Think about it.

Speaker 3 I mean, in a relationship, somebody that you love, you get through that honeymoon phase where everything's perfect and everybody's always like super awesome and you're faced with the stark reality that maybe we are all human beings here and there are challenges.

Speaker 3 How well we navigate that is going to determine what the rest of the life is going to is going to be like. And if we can't fail well,

Speaker 3 we're going to break up. Like this thing is going to end at some point.

Speaker 3 My wife and I, we try to fail well together. And that's a really, really important, strong ambition for us.
We're coming up on 20 years here in January.

Speaker 3 Hopefully we'll continue to fail well together.

Speaker 3 Because that's, I think, how we're measuring how well we're doing as a couple. And I think it applies everywhere.

Speaker 2 Kudra, I think that's a perfect place to put a pin in our conversation. I appreciate you.
I appreciate your time. This has been phenomenal.

Speaker 2 Better than Paradiso even told me it would be. And no, thank you so much.
Where can people, besides, I'll have links to the book in the show notes. I'll have links to anything else that you mentioned.

Speaker 2 Where can people get deeper into your world?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'd say come join us at TopGunTeamwork.com and learn how to apply the principles that we use in high-performance teams to your significant benefit. That's a great starting point.

Speaker 3 And I'd add to it, thanks for what you're doing in the world, Hanley. Thank you for putting this show together.
It's a lot of work.

Speaker 3 All the background that goes into preparing, all of the things that you know coming into this, navigating everything, putting it all together, like that's a big deal on top of everything else that you've got going on.

Speaker 3 So you're doing an exceptional job from my vantage point. Keep up the outstanding work.
Thank you for the opportunity and privilege of being part of yours.

Speaker 3 And know that I appreciate Peradiso for introducing us to one another. What a great day it's been.

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