The one trait every leader needs today, with General Stanley McChrystal

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/353ddfddf93abd80

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Character first is the essence of who we are.
It is the most important measure of us and of our lives.
Regardless of what you proclaim to be your character, if you don't
had the discipline to live it.
You don't really have it.
And in reality if
We go back to the saying all it takes
For society to fall is for a few good men to do nothing.
I think
All of our business leaders need to consider that if the decision that I am
feel like I'm being pressured to make doesn't align with being able to look my granddaughters in the eye and explain to them what I did and why.
That's not gonna work for me.
And I think
At the end of the day.
That is far more important.
than any short term business.
advantage might have.
That's General Stanley McChrystal, retired US military leader and head of the respected business consulting firm, the McChrystal Group.
Stan is the author of best-selling books about leadership, risk, and teams, but his newest book focuses on character. Stan argues that integrity and accountability are core to freedom and to lasting business success.
He exhorts all of us, as a recent New York Times essay of his is titled To Be Not Afraid.
In our talk, Stan gets into characters role in AI, warfare, and hot button issues like signal gate, transgender people in the military, and more.
Stan's focus on honesty, unity, and courage. Make this a conversation that's sorely needed right now. So
Let's get to it.
I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

I'm Bob Safe and I'm here with General Stanley McChrystal. Stan, thanks for uh joining us.
Bob, thanks for having me. It's good to see you again.
You first appeared on the show.
In the early days of the pandemic in twenty twenty, and we talked about
Leading in a crisis, the need for adaptability and for collaboration in fast changing environments. Today the landscape is very different.
No health trauma gripping the world, but the sense of crisis is back. Certainly
The fast changing conditions.
In today's uncertainty, you're focusing on character.
We have a a new book out titled On Character Choices That Define a Life.
Why character?
Why now?
Yeah, I think we have got a crisis in the country.
about character or I would should say an erosion of character.
And what I'm trying to do with this book
is to begin a national conversation on character.
I mean, think we need to stop arguing about policies or politics or personalities.
And I think we need to talk about character.
And then last, I think we need to demand it.
We need it.

But we need to demand it of each other.
And I think that would change some of
the dynamics of how we interact.
And I think if we don't do that we'll pay up
A stiff price.
One of the hallmarks of the pandemic was was fear, fear of a deadly illness that could strike anyone anytime. You've been talking about fear today, but it's it's a different kind of fear.
That's exactly right. I mean we normally associate fear with a
Clapples.
Thunder and lightning and it startles us.
But this insidious fear is
Where you don't trust in the system.
Or you don't trust that the things that you could count on before, the rule of law.
The integrity of the people who lead us.
And when you start to fear
You fear
Maybe you don't have protections.
But you also start to fear them.
People that you start to

from a different group in society.
This fear it
Yeah.
causes us to close up. We get more nuclear. We get more
Uh disconnected.
Everybody's
A threat.
And so
Fear is often leveraged.
by certain people in society because
It can get them political power, it can get them economic power, but ultimately
It undermines the things we
Need most.
It's those relationships, it's alliance the world. It's all the things that I think
Allow life to be a better experience.
You've said that the that the remedy for today's environment of fear and instability is rules. Now that that could sound kind of authoritarian, that we need to restrict activities and ideas. That's that's not necessarily how you mean it.
No, not at all.
If you think about what rules do, they say what we can and can't do. Go back to school.
Things we were allowed to do or not do.
The other thing rules did is it protected you from the bullies.
What the rules do is they let us sleep at night.
They let us feel confident that
Our families will be protected.
All of the things that
They give some structure. They're not designed as limiting factors. They actually
increase our freedom because there are things we don't have to worry about.
There's a difference between laws and
and socially accepted rules of behavior, right? Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. You talk about the
This is like a loss of internal discipline. Can you explain that? These these are our personal.
Choices.
They are personal choices, but then they become accepted in society as we start to normalize.
behavior we wouldn't like.
Yeah.
Somebody suddenly wants to attack you on social media.
That's not technically illegal. If somebody comes out and lies
About you.
If they do all the kinds of things that undercut your business.
What gives us the freedom
to believe that we can function without having to worry about that every day.
You said that um character is like an equation. You have character equals conviction times discipline.
Character first is the essence of who we are.
It is the most important measure of us and of our lives.
And it's what we should be thinking about that in regard.
So what makes it up?
I've come up with this equation and it's funny'cause I'm terrible at math, but
This seemed right to me.
It's the things we believe in and those I
call convictions. It's deeply held beliefs, not just something somebody told us. It's something that we have
Decided that we believe we pressure tested it.
We thought about it for enough time where we go, This is something that I'm willing to live for.
Or die for.
'Cause it's that important.
But that's only part of the equation because Bob, you and I could have these very strongly held convictions.
But if we don't have the personal discipline to live to them.
They're kind of academic.
Because if we say I believe in integrity more than anything else
But as soon as it becomes convenient for me to lie or cheat, I do that.
Then I don't have the discipline to adhere to those things which
I have professed to believe in.
So I think it's the two, and of course is with multiplication. If either is zero.
You have zero.
That's where your character is. So regardless of what you proclaim to be your character.
If you don't
Had the discipline to live it.
You don't really have it.
You also acknowledge that like we are human. So sometimes we, you know, maybe things go to z zero when we didn't we didn't need to. You wrote something that I saw. We periodically maybe despicable
But we should feel guilty when we do?
Well they see that's the point. That's exactly right.
All of us are gonna fail every day. You and I are gonna go through any given day and during parts of that day, we're gonna be rude to somebody, or we are gonna do something that doesn't really reflect the
level of character that we want to have for ourselves.
Now if we accept that as the new normal.
That's the new level, and I just live to that level.
Then
It's pretty sad. What we have to do instead is say, Okay, I got that wrong.
I was less than I demand of myself, but it doesn't mean I'm going to allow that to be.
The new norm.
I am gonna force myself
to try to go back to the level that I aspire to be. It's a constant struggle. I'm seventy years old now.
And the reality is I still struggle with my character.
I still work to define it.
If every time we don't live to the standard
We look ourselves in the mirror and we say, you know, okay, that wasn't what I wanna be.
Then we have a chance of
Continuing to force ourselves.
I was thinking about your
your commentary and focus on on this issue of character in this moment and
You know, someone could interpret this through
a a a political lens is sort of a critique on the willingness of those in power to say
Whatever they can to get their way, whether that's denying election results or recasting January versus freedom fighters.
Are are you critiquing
Trumpism?
I'm critiquing character in general. Now
Donald Trump my feelings on Donald Trump are public knowledge.
But he is not alone.
In fact, if we look at
I was very disappointed in President Biden's
willingness to sort of keep from the American people.
his physical condizione.
So
I am unhappy.
that in our political world now we have normalized people looking at the camera and lying.
That we have normalized some of the
Demagogary.
That occurs and again it occurs on both sides. So
Nobody should look at the other and feel self satisfied. They should say
None of us are living up to what we want to.
And I think it's even wider than politics. It's part of our society where
We have people who are doing influencing and other things in a
In a way that's not at all
Based on
Truth or reality.
Our audience for this show is is largely
Business people.
W what what do you see the role of business leadership in a time like this? I I know you work with a lot of businesses and business leaders.
When you see how sort of some law firms some universities and some
corporations, for profit organizations are reacting to challenges from the government.
You you wish there was a little bit more
Bravery, more courage in some of that response?
Yeah, let me start by saying I know how hard it is.
having courage in the theoretical sense when you know they say you never get blitzed in the press box.
Um it's easy from the stands to say those people on the field
Like original.
But I am disappointed.
And I do believe that
There are many organizations that
We'll regret.
Not having shown
An adherence to the values
That I think they believe they have.
And
We find ourselves rationalizing to a
An accommodation that is not worthy of us.
Your intuition will tell most of us.
What's right and what's wrong.
You know, some people need a little help, but most of us have a pretty good sense of it.
And then the question is just finding do we have the
the courage and the discipline to live to it.
But if you're tempted to come out with a
response that in your heart you know doesn't align with your values.
Then I think that's the time you have to rethink your role.
And maybe you gotta step away from it. Maybe you gotta say
The person in this job
has to do things that I am unwilling to do.
And that's
That doesn't happen often enough in our society today.
For people to say
It's not for me.
I I'm not the one to lead this organization in this time.
Yeah.
This kind of environment of conflict.
Or even more specific, if they are being pushed into a certain decision and they say, I am unwilling to make that decision. It is too
Incongruent.
with my beliefs and and what I think is right or wrong.
And that means you go down, that means you lose the job. That means you
And that can hurt.
Uh one of the things that
You know, I used to tell military leaders, every time you're placed in command, which is a sacred responsibility, you have to think of it as your last command.
Don't command.
Like you want to think about your
promotion to the next level.
Because if you do, you'll find yourself
overly conservative
Very cautious about things.
And you often won't do things that
You really think you ought to do.
And so you have to think about I am gonna do the best with the responsibility I've just been given.
I wanna double click on what Stan is saying here, that leadership really is about taking on heat for the things that you believe are most important, even if that costs you your leadership role.
This is something that Stan himself did in his military career, by the way, and it's one of the reasons he's so respected today. As business leaders at all levels contemplate their actions in the face of hostility from government, from shareholder activists, from employees.
What is the right way to exercise car? When is it correct to speak out? And when is it correct to rethink your beliefs? We'll talk about that and more after the break.
Stay with us.
Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely.
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Humans will never be more intelligent than AI.
Those were great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't how do we build a future.
That is human centered.
I'm Rana El Calyubi.
And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone.
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Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in.
Before the break, General Stanley McChrystal talked about the importance of character in addressing today's biggest challenges. Now Stan talks about how character is unfolding in the US military, what most upset him about the signal gate fiasco, how AI is changing modern warfare, and more.
Let's dive back in.
Wanted to ask you about the changes that are afoot in the military in the Department of Defense. Some folks champion the idea of change.
You know, some folks make dire predictions for for you who have
You know, work with military and military leader for a long time.
What's your perspective about what's being it
Tempted?
I I would say first if I go to thirty thousand feet and look at it from a
A big distance.
Change is needed.
Change is appropriate.
And I think it's going to mean significant change.
adoption of new technologies.
Changing of force structures, all of those kinds of things.
All of that is correct.
Even firing
Generals.
If it's necessary is a good thing if you are firing generals because they don't have the skills or they don't have the right
Personalities.
So all of those things
I completely sign up for and I wouldn't
recognize a lot of sacred cows that would be exempt from
Hard scrutiny.
Now, having said that.
I am not aligned with where the current secretary of defense how he defines
Some of the current issues and the direction.
He talks about the warrior ethos.
But the reality is
What we are trying to do is get the best military we can, and that's not necessarily
The strict warrior ethos.
Because soldiers
Soldiers are disciplined. They follow
Rule of law. When you think about warrior, it's got a little bit of a
a looser definition or interpretation usually.
So
That
I think is
Probably a mistake if you start to say
You can't have transgender soldiers. My response would be one, there aren't many, but two
If a trans gender soldier is really good
We need'em.
We don't have that many
Extra people that are really good that

So
I have a much
different definition of what a really effective service member
Might be. I think I do.
And then
I also think that if you are
Uh
judging military leaders on a political ideology.
You're playing with fire.
And here's why.
We've had this extraordinary couple of centuries of the US military
being pretty apolitical. Not always perfectly, but
generally very political.
And although there's friction between civilian leadership and uniforms
It's one of the healthiest relationships that you've seen on the globe.
For two hundred years.
Once you start
to hire and fire senior leaders based upon their political
alignment with any particular
Uh ideology.
You are going to affect younger military leaders. They are going to shape their behavior. They they're smart people. They'll look up and they'll say, This is what it takes to succeed.
In this business.
And they will start
to represent that behavior.
And a decade from now or two decades from now, we'll have a very different kind of military.
And we won't like it.
It will not be the a political
Very professional.
Force that I
New.
And that I think is largely the case today.
So I I think it's understanding the danger of that dynamic that is really
Critical.
The issues around security, this signal gate scandal using publicly available tools to communicate.
Is that really a big deal or is that like sensationalized? I mean, I know sometimes in theater you had to act fast and maybe couldn't always
Use every tool that you wanted. What do you see about what was going on in this particular situation?
One, I do think it's a big deal. I think using signal, even though it's encrypted, it's not secure.
And so you are transmitting future plans on an unsecure
Device.
Which is extraordinarily dangerous for the men and women who are gonna go execute that operation. So
I do think that was a big deal. It was almost a reflection of amateurism.
Now the other side of it bothers me far more.
We had
The mistake.
It comes out, everybody knows it's a mistake. They know that the information is extraordinarily sensitive.
And they get up in front of cameras.
And they say the information
Was not classified.
Now they know that that's not true. They know that's a lie.
It is.
Classified.
And
Yet they look at the camera.
And they say something that maybe most Americans
Can't parse the difference.
But anybody who's involved knows that
People whose salaries you and I are paying.
In positions of great responsibility
Consciously and intentionally don't tell the truth.
To you and I.
That's a big problem.
And that's the far greater issue here.
We can minimize the event that it occurred as a
You know, a mistake.
But we can't minimalize
The lack of integrity.
There are things where like half the c country believe that
One
Group of people are just lying.
And half the country believes another group of people are lying about sometimes about the same things and it's
It does get hard for people to parse.
You know, who is acting with character when you're in that kind of
Noisy environment.
It's a
Extraordinarily dangerous too because we think about it, go to a war, a major war.
And you typically have two combatants.
And your side's right and their side's wrong.
And if you switch positions, you're gonna feel the same thing. Your side's right and their side's wrong, but you're now on a different side.
And so the reality is both sides start to
Just make the assessment that as you say that
We are for truth and
Goodness.
They are evil.
And vice versa. The truth is usually in the middle.
And
Yet when we
Make that
straight distinction like you do.
We communicate to our own populations what we want them to believe.
We do information operations on ourselves.
And over time you convince yourself more and more
That yeah, I'm right because I'm on this particular team.
If you and I had grown up in
South Carolina.
In the eighteen fifties, we'd have joined the Confederate Army.
Statistically, we would have.
Well we can say no, we think slavery was bad, but we think it
Hundred and seventy years later.
The reality is
we probably would reflect the life's journey that we've had.
Mm.
The key thing here is to respect
the reality that your life's journey may not be complete and it may not be right.
I'm curious.
How you look at
AI's potential impact on the military.
And
How do we know if we're ahead or behind, especially in that
Competition with China.
Yeah.
We've never had anything quite like this. Uh the closest analogy in my mind would be nuclear power, atomic weapons.
And we got'em first during World War Two. We we won the race to produce nuclear weapons and then used'em first.
And
When other
Countries.
Follow us.
And
And develop their own nuclear weapons.
We got this.
Sort of balance.
The problem with
Artificial intelligence and I've had the opportunity
opportunity to do some work and a big war game on it.
uh is that if somebody achieves artificial general intelligence before their competitors
Theoretically they could then sprint ahead in a way that
their competitors almost couldn't catch up.
And you could have a dominant superiority.
And we're not even a hundred percent sure what AI will do on the battlefield.
We know it will make a lot of things simpler, faster, easier, logistics, planning, all those things, which will make an army more efficient.
But as AI starts to do target discernment, autonomous
engagement with weapons systems and robotics.
We're we have an incomplete picture.
You know.
Ukraine's like a glimpse of the future.
We have an incomplete picture of how dominant that will be.
So I don't think there's any time except the

With this idea of losing the race.
would mean losing the war.
And when you think of AI
You have to blur the the lines we had for many years of military power and separate from diplomatic or commercial power.
Um those things are now so interwoven.
Because the ability to leverage AI in production and things like that.
could give a country a decisive advantage that
That immediately shows itself in the military sphere.
So I think first
I think two things have to happen.
We need to be pursu those kinds of regulations and understanding around the world.
That give us some opportunity.
to put rules and norms in place.
Or AI.
But
We're not
Close to it.
But parallel to that, we need to be at breakneck pace.
Trying to develop AI.
Those seem in tension, they seem in contradiction.
Mm-hmm. Here we are trying to develop
New nuclear weapons and at the same time we're trying to
Set up rules to limit their use.
But if we lose if we don't
Yet at least nuke or at least parity.
With AI.
then we're gonna be in a position that's extraordinarily dangerous. And that's again, it's not gonna be the military. It's gonna be
This
broader national effort.
And the the topic of
character that you're that you're s so focused and compelled about today. That applies to AI too and how we talk about it
Whether it's commercial uses or or
Or military.
Well, I would argue the character becomes more important because the power of the individual is dramatically
more than it was even two hundred years ago. We think of the old saying about Samuel Colt who created the six gun. We say God made man, Sam Colt made him equal.
And he lowered he leveled the playing field for people who weren't as big and strong

An effective weapon.
AI is going to do that and give
Extraordinary power not just to nation states.
But to individuals.
And so
Those people who have that extraordinary power and almost all of us will have some form of it.
have the ability to do great good or just great evil.
And so character, I think.
is gonna become more
Essential than ever.
There's a lot at stake.
In this in this moment right now.
Where we are. I mean, we're kind of on a prep precipice.
Think we are. I think we're on a practical precipice in terms of the future of the nation, the fate.

If we're talking about making America great again.
Let's talk about making character central again.
Let's talk about
Focusing and demanding character.
Well, Stan, this was great and I always uh appreciate you talking with me.
Thanks for doing it.
You're so kind to have me and Bob. Thanks for all you do.
I was grateful to welcome Stan back on the show during this tricky chapter in our world today. He's got a way of boiling things down to their essence, a discipline that helps distill what's most important. The choices of business leaders, of military leaders, of all of us.
They do more than impact actions today. They set the tone for the future. And it underscores the question: what kind of a future do we want?
AI, the US military, the worlds of business and of politics, it's all interconnected, like never before.
For good or bad, that puts more pressure on all of us in every realm to be better leaders, leaders with integrity, with courage.
And his stand would say with character.
I'm Bob Safian.
Thanks for listening.
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