df - dozen leadership secrets

7/31/2019 DF - Dozen Leadership Secrets

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The DF Dozen

Leadership Secrets for Everyone

You gotta ask yourself, who the heck is this DF guy giving the rest of us leadership tips? Greatquestion and the answers are really quite simple. It took me 20+ years of studying others,practicing the techniques, and testing the principles on hundreds of teammates and fellowsoldiers over the years. Did I make em all up myself? Of course not. Did I try to apply themduring my career? You betcha! The reality is, I learned them all from my mates, in one specialoperations unit or another, and simply tried to capture them along the way - most in the pre-9/11era when man-hunting was a success if your piece never left the Thunderwear holster in yourdrawers, and then post tower-drop when a kill at the end of the hunt became the norm. In bothenvironments, the secrets held.

After retiring, I applied these secrets with another group of elite men with similar results. Can Ilead? Youd have to ask the boys. However, guys like that provide the opportunity - you have to

choose to embrace it. But these secrets arent really secret. They are for everyone to use to getstuff done to a high standard. They worked for me and many peers and superiors for years withhigh maintenance thoroughbreds that didnt impress easily and didnt need a lot of direction.Sometimes just getting the General to approve the hit is leadership enough. But when thosemini-windows open that require your leadership, youll be prepared with proven, results oriented,and relevant techniques. All you have to do is make an effort.

So, is it DF or DF? Wellboth.

DF Leadership Secret #1 - Play well with others...but remain the Alpha

male.

Most leadership books and theorists tell you that to get ahead you have to play well with others.Dont go against the grain. Be a team player. This is sound advice - unless you happen to bethe guy or organization that everyone aspires to be. Arrogance, in measured amounts and usedprudently, actually benefits an organization. Of course, you have to be able to back this up withresults vice rhetoric. More specifically you have to possess a long list of recognizablesuccesses. Remember, the rules are made for the masses, but the masses don't finish.

DF Leadership Secret #2 - Get Over It!

The year was 1994 and the US Army was staged to invade the country of Haiti. Our Ranger

battalion had just loaded the tail end of the last of seven C141 aircraft prepped to execute acombat jump on Dallas DZ. The 82nd Airborne had already taken off from Fort Bragg, NC. Nosooner had we struggled into our seats did we see our battalion commander, then LTC FrankKearney, come walking up the ramp still wearing his parachute. The colonel grabbed the nearbyradio mike and made an announcement over the aircrafts intercom.

The bastards cut a dirty deal. We are on a twenty-four hour hold, He barked before turning toleave and pass the word to the other aircraft.


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That invasion was called off, at least the aggressive entry option, and we waited around acouple of days in the off-chance our services were still needed. Just prior to boarding the sameplanes to head back home to our families, Kearney executed one of the most memorableleadership acts of my career. He gathered the battalion around him as he stood atop a woodenPT stand and gave us a pep talk. We needed it. I turned on my tape recorder to capture hiscomments.

Kearney simply told us that if you stay in the special ops business long enough, and especiallythe Rangers, that you would definitely see combat in your time. Just not this time and just notHaiti. Basically, he motivated us so much that by the time we loaded the planes we were lookingforward to the upcoming Boxing Smoker more than we were feeling sorry for ourselves for notexecuting the combat jump.

Not long after this event, Kearney gathered the officers and senior NCOs and told us that weweren't going to the Ft Benning cemetery once a month anymore to lay a wreath at thegravesite of fallen Rangers from action in Somalia a year or so earlier. He said it was time tomove on mentally. We had done what we could for those heroes and it was time to honor themby physically and mentally preparing for the next action. It was respectful, spot-on, and the right

thing to do.

Years later, while serving in a different special ops unit, we gathered to farewell our squadroncommander. We all were feeling a little underused by our nations decision makers. We openlybitched about American citizens being held hostage in Ecuador and the Philippines, practicallydaring our nation to do something about it. Sure, we spent a lot of hours planning rescueoperations that were shelved. And even more hours hoping someone with enough authoritywould decide that Americans held hostage were important enough to repatriate.

Like Kearney years earlier, our commander told us, Get over it! He then said, Someday thenation is going to need the services of this unit. It didnt take long.

DF Leadership Secret #3 - Apply Your Sixth Sense and Seize theMoment

You are a commando, the guy that everyone in the room is looking at to go against the grain, tochallenge the conventional wisdom, to say something with passion, something based onempirical evidence and that follows logical thought that even the stuffiest senior leader in theroom can't argue with. In fact, the senior conventional minded leaderwantsto hear what youhave to say. Even if they dont admit it openly, they know you carry an enormous amount ofclout with their subordinates the moment you walk through the door.

Only hours into Operation Anaconda in March 2002, the well thought-out plan for attacking theShah-i- Kot to rid the valley of al Qaeda fighters began to fall apart. Senior conventional leaders,

well-removed from the fighting, developed cold feet. Emergency meetings were held wheresome recommended immediate retreat to prevent further loss of life and equipment.

Near the fighting and hearing this latest news from Delta officer Jim Reese, Pete Blabergrabbed his Satellite radio hand mic, called the Joint Operations Center, and convinced theambivalent leadership not to retreat, but rather reinforce and seize the moment. Anaconda isnow considered a major victory for US forces in Afghanistan. It was gravely close to becoming amajor embarrassment.


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On a different battlefield, in mid July 2003, Saddams notorious sons were still evading USspecial ops forces. An informant had failed a polygraph three times and some intelligenceagency elected to disregard anything else the fella had to say. One seasoned special operator,with a keen sense of intuition, opined the informant was simply too nervous to ever pass a poly.The operator told his commander that he believed the guy. He was telling the truth.

Within hours, the murderous sons of the former President of Iraq were being hauled down twoflights of stairs wrapped in bed sheets and thrown into the back of a waiting civilian van. Ace ofHearts, Uday Hussein, and his brother, Ace of Clubs, Qusay, were hiding in the house in Mosulafter all.

DF Leadership Secret #4 - Admit Mistakes with Confidence

We all do it. We fumble something important and instinct tells us that maybe we werent at fault.Or maybe the blame can be shared with a couple others. Mistakes are the stepping stones tosuccess, but a good special operator learns from other peoples mistakes and never makes thesame mistake twice. But as a leader of high-performance teams most eyes are on you. A fouledshotgun breach can easily be fixed with a spinning mule kickand nobody is the wiser. But the

leader that sends one of his assault teams to the wrong target building is a true liability. Ithappens, your men expect it. But they also demand two things. One, that you own up to it assoon as the post-mission hot wash begins, and two, that you learn from it and dont screw it upagain. Selection is an ongoing process, particularly for the leaders.

In a short note to President Clinton in the fall of 1993, former Delta Commander andcommander of Task Force Ranger MG Bill Garrison took full responsibility for the disaster inMogadishu, Somalia. Never mind that the Clinton administration denied multiple requests for

AC-130 gunships and armored vehicles from Garrison himself.

A month or so later, on a hot autumn day on a remote parade field at Ft. Benning, GA, Garrisontold the 700 members of the 3rd Ranger Battalion that we were as close to Americas Foreign

Legion as you could get. He went on to say that our job was to fight the dirty little wars thatnobody else wanted, was capable of, or could stomach. He finished by telling us that if wecouldn't handle the potential consequences of the business, or if our families couldn't, then weneeded to find alternative employment. Nobody expected Garrison to shoulder the blame, buthe did it anyway, and still to this day he is considered to be one of the finest leaders ever tocommand Delta Force.

DF Leadership Secret #5 - Find Your Maverick...or Grant.

When the future of the Union was in doubt and the Confederacy was giving it to the Yanks,President Abraham Lincoln turned to the unrefined, abrasive, results-oriented General UlyssesS. Grant. Grants leadership turned the tide and ensured the North won the Civil War.

Four modern day superstar special ops leaders - GEN (R) Stan McChrystal, BG Scott Miller,COL (R) Pete Blaber, and MG Bennet Sacolik, - at some point in their black ops career, turnedto one man as their Grant. Year after year, commander to commander, maverick warrior LTC(R) Jim Serpico Reese, a stand-out Ranger and Delta officer, quite possibly would have madeGrant appear wanting when it came to working through chaos, calming nerves, and demandingthe best out of subordinates.


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Before Reese there was founder of Delta, Colonel Charlie Beckwith. From the beginning in themid-seventies Beckwith was very clear that the men of Delta would not be subject to anypolitical innuendo, bureaucratic standard, or be pressured by some higher authority to dosomething that might be the product of some harebrained couch potatoes.

In 1980, while at a remote desert air strip, just conceivably twenty-four hours from rescuing

American hostages held in Tehran, Iran, Beckwith made the call of a lifetime. It was a call that isstill questioned by current senior military leaders today. He knew the technology of the day specifically that the allowable load capacity of the helicopters prevented him from taking hisentire assault force - the minimum force to be successful in his eyes - on to the next rendezvouspoint. It wouldnt cut it.

Beckwith sent a radio message to then President Carter that he was aborting the operation. It islikely that had Beckwith simply gambled and proceeded with a smaller force the outcome wouldhave led to significant loss of life, both American and Iranian. Many critics of Beckwiths decisionargue that it resulted in the most internationally embarrassing failure of our time. But one couldalso argue that the same decision quite possibly saved Delta Force from disbanding before herthird birthday.

DF Leadership Secret #6 - Pull the Trigger

How much information or intelligence does a special operations unit need before they launch ahigh-risk kill or capture mission? I argue that very rarely will the intelligence picture be betterthan a seventy percent solution, and at that point action should be taken. Waiting for another tenpercent, or even five percent, only closes the window of opportunity faster as we wring ourhands and stare at the live Reaper feed on kill TV.

I firmly believe that the American tax-payer doesnt want our most highly-trained and high-priced special mission units to waste precious time with mental masturbation and analyticalparalysis just as strongly as they dont want them sitting around playing X -Box all night. Sure,

some missions are just stupid, or so extremely high risk that it makes much more sense to levelthe place with a 500 pounder. Special operators arent required for every problem set. But,special operators are expected to manage risk, get on target, figure it out, and run it down evenwhen the picture is sketchy.

It is well documented in open sources that al Qaeda in Iraq, led by the murderous JordanianAbu Musab al-Zarqawi, was destroyed by a unique operational shift in mindset championed byseveral special operations officers. The recent revelations in the controversial book Task ForceBlack, that chronicles the actions of British commandos in Operation Iraqi Freedom, serve astestament to the pull the trigger philosophy. High risk raids night after night, from one target tothe next, running the intel and pulling the thread from point of discovery to point of capture,defined a never before attempted tactical tempo. It was the tipping point in the battle against AQ

in Iraq for American Tier One forces, Army Rangers, and even the conventional forces whostrapped it on with little notice or knowledge of exactly where the next target was or who thepersonality hunted was. The hand wringing, hesitation, and over-thinking it that defined andhamstrung the first few years of war after 9/11 was finally over.

DF Leadership Secret #7 - Manage the Boss

Elite special operations units spend as much time on what to do on target when things go badas they do with the primary plan. For well-trained units, most plans do in fact survive first


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contact. A gunfight rarely should drive a switch to Plan B as it is expected on high risk missions.This holds true when the luxury of extended mission planning is in play think UBL hit in earlyMay 2011.

But the majority of special ops missions are intel driven with launch triggers that appear rapidlyand with little notice. Commonly referred to as In-extremis Assaults, where a few minutes are

spent viewing a signature on a UAV feed, superimposing a numbering system on a freshsatellite photo, and moving to the vehicles or spinning helos. These are only possible when theoperators are well-tuned on standard operating procedures, understand the contingencies, andare well aware of what their teammates will do in certain situations.

Extended planning or in-extremis, managing the boss on target is equally important. Dont letthe boss get cold feet just because you hit a SNAFU. Develop and work through yourcontingencies well ahead of time. When they are needed, before someone hastily calls to abortor retreat, remind your boss that you have already anticipated the problem and are prepared forit. If he wants to remain on the helo during the assault, or in the employee lounge, thats fine.But on target, or on task, youre driving until you need something from the boss.

DF Leadership Secret #8 - Drive Risk

We are all familiar with the difference between a gamble and risk. Conventional wisdom saysgambling is a no-no because you cant recover from it. But you can recover from risk-takinggone bad if you planned for contingencies and applied mitigation measures along the way.Personally, Im on auto-delete when I hear anything is conventional, but semantics aside, whatreally matters is that someone needs to be focused on the next step, the next phase,maintaining the vision, and as much as possible, foreseeing the future. Assaulters worry aboutwhat is behind the door, the troop commander worries about what is down the alley or what todo if we have a sniper compromised or a helicopter go down.

As a leader of high-performing teams, you have to be willing to execute on incomplete

information, listen to your own instincts, and see the forest through the trees. Nine times out often, your boss is nowhere near the target, and even if he was, youre just in the way if you allowhim to lead for you.

You arent mule-kicking doors. Sure, you know how to, but your focus needs to be on how youcan best support the team and forecast the next step quickly, before one of your team leadersappears from the darkness and says, Dry hole, what next? At that point, you are either leadingthese high-performers or you are simply a strap-hanger on the manifest.

What you do next, most assuredly will be high risk. Someone is going to have to go over thewall of the next compound over, and chances are, they know youre coming. Speed andsurprise were spent on the initial target going in, and violence of action sounds great at the

mission brief, until you know there are a dozen screaming women and children in the unseencourtyard. In a situation like this, you alone will drive the risk, and what happens in the next fewminutes is the burden you carry after willingly accepting the role of the leader.

DF Leadership Secret #9 - You Are Not an Action Hero.

Counterintuitive to what you may be thinking, to lead action heroes you have to first realize thatyou are not one. Thats right. When I somehow made it through Delta Selection and

Assessment and an extended Operator Training Course, after more than a hundred other far


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more talented men fell by the way side for one reason or another, I knew I wasnt hired to be anassaulter or a sniper. Nobody told me this, as an officer, it was just a no-brainer.

Did I have to learn the same skills? Absolutely! I had to be able to get over and through theobstacle courses, hit the x-ring, carry Mr. Heavy, fight Mr. Goodbar, stay in the circle, leap at25,000 feet, execute a J-turn, and put a 5.56 kill tap in the cranial vault of a paper terrorist while

under goggles and stepping over a rickety coffee table. Just to get in, everyone has to meet thestandards.

But for an officer, once the standard has been met, and you drag your bags across the hall toyour first troop a group of extraordinary people the last thing they need from you is to kick inthe door or snipe the guy in the cockpit. No, you have the easy job some will tell you ofleading these men.

And at that moment when you apply this secret, realizing you are not one of the action heroesmore Clark Kent than Superman you have met the first standard for actually leading high-performance teams. Not just in Delta Force, not just in SEAL Team Six, but in any industry,corporate big-boy, or ambitious start-up.

DF Leadership Secret #10 -You Cant Determine Your Own Success.

The men and women you lead determine this for you. If they are successful, then you aresuccessful. Your stake holders will recognize it; your commanding officer will recognize it.

Just prior to taking command of an infantry rifle company a former battalion commander of minesent me a personal noteNow is the time to pay back all the people that got you where youare now, by ensuring their success. I kept the note under the glass on my desk at work andread it literally every day.

Years later I was in a musky safe house with a couple other special operators in a bombed-out

Balkan slum when I received a message to call my boss. I reached him on the satellite phonewithin the hour and he passed on that I had been selected for promotion below-the-zone,essentially ahead of 95% of my peers, to the next rank. I was shocked, totally humbled, andquite embarrassed actually. I hung up the phone and tried to play it off with the guys around me,but they didnt fool easily.

So, there I was, a fairly new Delta officer, the boss of a classified real-world mission, with theunenvious task of having to tell my men who I barely knew at the time that I was some hot-shot officer that some Department of the Army board decided needed to be promoted earlierthan most of the other guys.

At that moment, with an early 90s era life-size poster of teeny-bopper Brittany Spears hanging

on the wall, the only thing I could do was laugh at the absurdity of the situation, admit that theboard members must have made a big mistake, and try to refocus the conversation back to themission. But inside, I intuitively knew that my former battalion commander had been spot on. Imentally checked off the countless soldiers and sergeants, peer officers, and the talented andcaring superiors I was so fortunate enough to have served with, to have learned from, and tohave ultimately benefited from. Incidentally, I dont recall any of those earlier influences andgreat Americans being former Tier One operators...which says a ton about the modern day

American soldier.


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DF Leadership Secret #11 - Empower SMEs.

Top shelf leaders seek out subject matter experts and designated performers. Everybody isgood at something. Learn from them. Take as much of their time as they will give you lettingthem teach you what they know. In fact, as the leader, you have to dedicate time to learning thelittle things that you may never have to use if Plan A goes. But if not, you better know how to fixthe radio when your communicator is hit and it drops fill, or how to insert a J-tube in one of yourmen while the assaulters handle things, clear a fast mover for danger close, or jump on theMK19 when the gunner is down. Maybe someone will get to these things before you, but youmight find yourself first in line.

Some guys are hard wired for sniping. They are comfortable in solitude, have no problemremaining motionless in complete silence for hours on end, and enjoy solid control over theiremotions. These are things that would drive an assaulter crazy. But, jamming on the X-Box withteammates till 0300 hours, hearing kit up, were rolling, and quickly downing a two -pack of RedBull tallboys is a little more aggressive than the sniper would like to be.

Other guys are hardwired for IT.

In the early 90s, as a ranger lieutenant, I had the distinct pleasure of supervising a youngranger whiz kid named Jim Thyne. Ranger Thyne was an Infantryman by training and was justas valuable or capable as any other ranger to assault the objective, parachute into combat, orcreate havoc in one of the local establishments downtown. Ranger Thyne could meet thenormal standards required by everyone to serve in the rangers those days, but in another muchmore valuable way, he was the most important single ranger in the battalion.

Ranger Thyne spent his off-duty time self-sequestered in the barracks, reading those big thickcomputer catalogs and tinkering with anyones broken microwave sized desk top computer. Itdidnt take long to recognize this unique personal drive and interest, pulling Ranger Thyne froma fighting position, and Knighting him with the dubious and not much sought after billet as

Company Clerk.

In that day and age, when battalion HQs was still using monographic Harvard Graphics, MSDOS, and Word Perfect 5.1, Jim Thyne proved to be a true innovator and pioneer of the shapeof things to come. Rumor of Jims savvy for hard drives and floppy discs spread around theother companies like word of the plague. We were in an era of technological change andeveryone was automating their personnel records, training records, and supply records. But onlyRanger Thyne knew what to do when things like the blue screen of death reared its ugly head,or a hard drive crashed a few buildings over. When that happened, our office phone quicklyrang followed by pleas for help. Can Ranger Thyne come over to our company today? We havea computer problem? they always said.

Overnight, Jim Thyne became a true Power Ranger. Information is power! he liked to tell meover and over. Often we horse traded Ranger Thynes services; A 2 ton truck here, a coupleof extra crates of frag grenades there, exclusive access to the closest flat range, you get theidea.

The day for Ranger Thyne to PCS came and he brought me his orders for the 82nd AirborneDivision. I thought what a waste of raw talent. He didnt need to be jumping out of airplanes; heneeded to be developing innovative tactics, techniques, and procedures to secure our relevancyin the fledgling computer age and into the 21st century.


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A few phone calls later and Ranger Thynes orders to Ft. Bragg were rescinded. His new job arelatively souped up clerk job officially termed computer specialist. Instead of just worryingabout a single ranger battalions IT needs he now was responsible for FT. Benning proper andthe Infantry Center specifically. During this final assignment in uniform, Ranger Thyne continuedhis self-study and made a lot more friends, particularly those senior officers and NCOs whowanted their computers fixed yesterday.

I visited Ranger Thyne years later just before he was to leave the service. He was working inthe basement of an old WWII era brick and mortar building. The damp and stuffy old storageroom was crammed to the ceiling along three walls with desk top monitors and partially openedCPUs. Wrapped bundles of cables of all sizes and colors snaked up through the ceiling leadingto every senior Infantry leaders office. During our catching up, he remarked to me, Sir, do youknow how fast I could pull the plug on this entire IT infrastructure? Who would they call? Im theonly one on post that knows what all this stuff does.

What corporation or military organization can function in the 21st century without a platoon ofJim Thynes? Empower them and learn.

DF Leadership Secret #12 - Ride the Logic Train

Elite units are fundamentally problem solvers. They were created to solve complicated,sensitive, and delicate problems that, for one reason or another, a tank, a bomb, money, or apolitician can't fix. And whether or not you are in the boardroom or on the battlefield, complexproblems require the team to possess a working common operating picture and collectiveenergy moving forward to reach a logical conclusion. If your team is comprised of type Apersonalities, which probably make up 90% of any special operations unit, your job as theleader becomes not only ten times more difficult, but a thousand times more important. As theleader, nobody expects you to have all the answers, the most switched on comments orsuggestions, or even the most intelligent questions. Your mates, the experts, got that.

Your job, a challenging part, is understanding the big picture and maintaining a keen sense ofhow each enabler supports the solution, how the intent of the boss and his boss focuses thetask, keeping the gorillas focused, and generating steam toward an acceptable end. Mostimportantly though, the leader needs to consistently reset the left and right limits of the problem,splice important pieces of each warrior's thoughts and opinions with the others, and applyconsistent, repetitive context and shared purpose. If you need to get from A to B, and the LogicTrain pulls in to station and everyone gets on, if you don't keep them on throughout the ride yourforce eventually becomes scattered, unorganized, vulnerable, and defeated.

Dalton Furyis the author of the New York TimesbestsellerKill Bin Laden: A Delta Force

Commander's Account of the Hunt for the World's Most Wanted Manand a Delta Force Thrillerseries that chronicles the disgraced but resilient Kolt "Racer" Raynor. The series was launchedin 2011 with Black Site. The second book in the series, Tier One Wild, is available 10.16.12.

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