Miguel Clarke | Oct 28, 2024

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Miguel, welcome aboard. I am so excited to talk to you. There's so many things we could talk about today. I'm so excited, I almost spilled my coffee, or that's how excited I am. So don't do that. I was just. I'm going to bring the audience with us because we're, like, in the middle. We're just like, fuck it, let's start. We were just. I was just talking to you and I was saying, hey, like, the best strategies. And I. As I say this, I feel stupid because I know you're a podcaster, too. You're a host to. And as I say this, I'm like, oh, you're telling this to your guests. I said, oh, it's important to be, you know, humble and vulnerable. [00:00:32] Speaker B: Yes. And I said, the humble is not a problem. Right. You know, because, you know, when you're assessing yourself, you're never going to give yourself a good score, right? Like an accurate score, you'll give yourself a good score. Right? But you're either going to underestimate yourself or you're going to overestimate yourself. So for me, humility. I let other people decide. I'm just going to be who I am. Right now, the vulnerable part, right? Like, that's where we stopped and we're like, okay, so vulnerable for the audience. So now I'm going to bring the audience with me. I got an email last week and it said, hey, you know, let's schedule a call for you to talk about what you're going to talk about with Ari. So that's why I showed up to this call, and now we're recording. Okay? So vulnerable. Being in the FBI, we spend a lot of time not, you know, making our. Making sure that we're not vulnerable. Right? We don't want to display any level of vulnerability or anything along those lines. It's okay. You know, I've been afraid of things, and I have no problem admitting that. So I will be. I'll be candid. Like, vulnerable is going to take maybe more work than we have time to do here and maybe a little bit of counseling. I don't know. You're not dressed like any counselor that I've ever seen, so I don't know how much counseling I may get from you. [00:01:39] Speaker A: Ari, I'm ex military, so I probably have the same problem. Look, every time. Look, a lot of our guests are vulnerable, but that's because they just are. Practice. That's part of their spiel. That's what they do. But for the average Joe, being vulnerable is incredibly difficult. And I ask these questions and they're like, a lot of times I'm cutting it. And the guest is like, I don't think I can answer that or I don't feel comfortable. And that's what people don't see. So being vulnerable. But here's what I would argue. Let me see if you agree with this. [00:02:10] Speaker B: Okay. [00:02:10] Speaker A: I would argue that being vulnerable is. And, you know, taking away our, you know, mutual, you know, security, armed force backgrounds, Right? Being vulnerable is a hack or a key to connecting with people. Would you agree with that? [00:02:28] Speaker B: I think openness and authenticity, Right. I think that you can accomplish the same thing by removing fear from the vocabulary or removing the effects of fear from the decision making. Right. So you have to really know yourself. And then you say, okay, I'm not going to allow fear to dictate what I do. Like, fear of the outcome, fear of, you know, it's like, oh, am I good enough? Do I know enough? And so I really do think that authenticity kind of mixed with that bravery and then also the openness. I think that you can get the same thing. Now if you have an individual who, you know, maybe they're not necessarily an honest broker, then I could see where saying, hey, you know what? Being vulnerable is a shortcut to getting that way so that you don't actually have to do the difficult work of being authentic. So that super long answer, but I hope that I was clear in that answer. There are people running for office in our country right now that are less clear, hopefully, than the answer. Answers that I've given just now. [00:03:24] Speaker A: I saw this. I saw. We try not. We try to avoid anything kind of, you know, marketing bullshit and politics, but you opened the door. So I'll go in and just, you know, half a foot. I saw this, this LinkedIn or whatever thing, and it was like, oh, from like 20, 30, 40 years ago. And it was something like, oh, how are both our candidates so bad? It was like, this was like, like 40 years ago. [00:03:46] Speaker B: Or how. Yeah. [00:03:47] Speaker A: And I was like, it's kind of similar today and I don't want to be political, but it's kind of ridiculous that the state of politics is just so bad. Why don't we have. Why don't we. I mean, we deserve better, right? Like, that's. [00:03:58] Speaker B: No, we don't. That's the problem. We don't. Right? I had a. [00:04:02] Speaker A: You got to qualify that. [00:04:03] Speaker B: I had a special. An assistant special agent in charge one time, and he said, you know, that kind of in the workplace, courage is required in the workplace and to a certain extent, that we as followers, we get the leaders that we deserve. And I thought that was a really interesting thing, Right. Like, if I don't have the courage to sit down and tell a leader, hey, look, what you're doing isn't working, and it may be costing you in ways that you don't see. If I don't have the courage to say that, or there's nobody on his or her team that has the courage to say that, then we're getting the. We're getting the leaders that we deserve. Right. I mean, that's one of the things. Like for FBI, there's kind of like, for areas where you kind of say, from a leadership doctrine standpoint, you've got character, courage, competence, and collaboration, and you need all of those. If you don't have one of those, then you really shouldn't be working in the FBI. So I'm going to leave everything that's going along and the audience probably has their different color filters that they put on their glasses or in their ears so they can listen to what I'm saying. Just speaking about the organization as a whole, that's the doctrine. If you're lacking in one of those, there's going to be a problem. So I apply that here to the leadership comment that I just made. If you're lacking in courage and you can't say, hey, boss, there's an issue, there's a problem here. Right. Or if the boss is lacking in courage, then that or character or something along those lines, Right. Then you start to see those incompatibilities. But I think that we do have responsibilities as those being led to provide feedback even when the leader's not asking for it. Good leaders should demand feedback. They should demand for it to be open and honest and accurate. Like specific, accurate and timely feedback. And they should push back so they can get it in a usable form. Form. But so few leaders do that, Right? Like that. That's probably 95% of the leaders that you're going to see or encounter will not. [00:05:57] Speaker A: You know what? I. Beginning when you said, no, you know what? I caught myself listening to that. I'm like, shit like that, actually, because at the beginning, I was like, no, no, no, no. This needs to be qualified. This sounds funky. This is not. [00:06:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:10] Speaker A: And I was like, you know what? That is so interesting. [00:06:13] Speaker B: Yes. [00:06:13] Speaker A: But okay, so in the context of searching for a job. [00:06:18] Speaker B: Yes. [00:06:18] Speaker A: You know, there's all. There's all kind of discounts or salt that I'll sprinkle over this, right? Like, okay, you know, we. A lot of times we take the job that is available at the time. November is historically the worst time to look for a job over 20 years. I ran the R script, right. I took the BLS data, I ran the script out of 20 years, it's like 17 is the worst, right? Yes. So if you're looking right now for a job, you might not have those many options, even if you're a great candidate, Right? [00:06:44] Speaker B: Correct. [00:06:46] Speaker A: On the other side, and I think this is the more interesting side of it, right. Is how do you actually figure out in such a short time, maybe five hours you spend with different team members in the employment, how do you figure out the red flags of, well, maybe I deserve better. [00:07:03] Speaker B: And the employer is playing the role of, I have this job that I need to fill and the employee is playing the role of. All right, how do I shrink my time, talents and everything into this narrow role that you want me to play? And for me, when I'm talking to somebody, I believe that people fall into one of two different categories. You're either a people over process or you're a process over people. Right? That's a miguelism. And so I want to quickly figure that out. During the course of the interview, I also want to start asking other questions about leadership. I want to get an idea as to how valuable leadership is to the organization. Are you going to pay lip service to it or what does it mean? Right. Or what are the characteristics of good leaders in your organization? I want to know what the people who do well in this job and at this company, what are some of the common characteristics that they have? And then people who have difficulty, what are the common characteristics that people have difficulty in this role or at this company? Tell me a little bit more about that. And so those are things that I want to know. But I start from a different default. I'm thinking about fit before I start thinking about, can I do the job? If you listen to most job seekers and you listen to most conventional wisdom, it will tell you, right? Take the panoply of things that you're good at, right? Shave off the things that they don't care about and then fit yourself into that role, right? You go to the faucet, you turn on the water, there's always more water. Well, if you paid the bill, there's always more water coming out of the faucet than it'll fit in your cup, right? So it's just a matter of getting it in the cup, getting in front of Them and then transactional. So then you fast forward maybe two, three years and maybe you're unhappy in the job, but the same job that you prayed for, you're just like, oh, man, like, I don't know what I'm doing now. Like, I don't know. I don't, I don't want to be here. And I think a lot of that has to do with not asking the right questions and not identifying the areas where there's gaps between what you want and what you're, what you want to spend your days doing and then what the job entails. Some parts of the job are going to be really good. Other parts of the job are going to be like, hey, these are things that you have to do on the job. Right. Like, if it were, if we didn't have these things, it would be called fun, not work. So identifying those things and then figuring out which things, you know, what can I live with as part of my day to day? And then I also want to get an idea as to who I'm going to be working for. And that I think is a difficult, a more difficult challenge to overcome is really understanding who that leader is that you're going to be working for. As most organizations don't prepare leaders well to be leaders. Right. In fact, most organizations couldn't tell you what leadership in their organization means. Now, coming from a government agency, military, right. That's pretty well scripted, right. We may have centuries of experience to draw from as to what we think about, you know, real leaders and then leading under pressure and leading in crisis. You train leaders for that in the military and you train leaders to a certain extent, you know, in the FBI, that there's that training. It's similar, probably. Well, it's not. Probably it's not to the same level because we're not going to war. Right. But you know, it's a paramilitary type of organization and at least you have the concept there that your people should matter more than you, the leader, and the mission should matter more than you, the leader. Now, the number of leaders that we faced in our time inside working for a government and not. We've probably found not enough people who live that way. [00:10:55] Speaker A: So it's okay. One of the highest forms of compliment that I can give. And people who are on the, you know, on the video aspect and I'm just listening to this, they saw me wrap out my notebook and start, you know, you know, rocking the camera because I'm writing everything down that, you know, there are so many things that you just said I wanted to capture it all so I could follow up. So a. Just. Thank you. That was delightful. I want to. I want to. I want to say something which is my, you know, to quote you, Ari ism, right? My. My ism. Use that kind of phrase. And I want to see what you think about it. [00:11:31] Speaker B: Okay. [00:11:32] Speaker A: You said that there's a difference between people and process and maybe alluded to one being better than the other. I want to pose a. I want to understand what you mean by that because I think that's incredibly interesting. Two, I want to pose a counter hypothesis, maybe. [00:11:46] Speaker B: Okay? [00:11:48] Speaker A: And I'll give you an example of my counter hypothesis and then I'll ask you to explain how you see this in your worldview. [00:11:53] Speaker B: Okay. [00:11:54] Speaker A: For me, one of the biggest challenges in the corporate environment when people, quote, unquote, fuck up is that we kind of point fingers and we're like, oh, you did this badly, you did this poorly. Right. I've always reverted to a. Nope. It's a process. And what the people part of this is your process, and what's going to make you great, what's going to make you awesome, is that you identify what the mistake was in your process. [00:12:23] Speaker B: Yes. [00:12:24] Speaker A: What are you going to do different next time? And in that way, I actually move away from people into process. But the people aspect is actually just, oh, it's the willingness to listen, to learn to be humble and vulnerable about admitting that there was an issue. So that's how I see actually process over people. But I can imagine a counterargument where it's people over process as well. So when you say that people process, how do you see this? What's your worldview? [00:12:49] Speaker B: Okay, so number one, I don't think that the two things that we were talking about, what you said and what I said, I don't see those two things as being incompatible. Right. People over process is when you have a choice between taking care of the person or kind of like following the process. Right. Like, what's your default? And I'll argue that regardless of which way you handle it, people will know, Right. They will know if you're having a conversation with somebody and let's say it's a business deal, it's a difficult negotiation. You know, whether or not they're looking you in the eyes for or you know, that you're aware of that. And if they aren't looking you in the eyes, you don't feel that they're necessarily making that human connection and they're not being maybe open and honest with you. Right. It may be. Not that they're lying, maybe that's something else that they're embarrassed about that's making it difficult for them to really be in the moment. But you immediately are placing yourself, you're reading their expressions and then you're placing yourself in a hierarchy of how important you think you are to them. When you actually and first prioritize people, I think they know the difference. And we're talking about healthy people, right? We're not talking about like, you know, narcissist, you know, emotionally self centered, which you're going to find everywhere, but healthy individuals, like I value your success here and that's important, right? Not to say the process isn't important. It's definitely important. So if you take, you know, screw ups in the workplace, like the example that you were giving, I think that the first screw up is always on the boss. Because we can do a better job of communicating. Right. Maybe we didn't set those expectations, we didn't lay those things out. Process. Right. To your point, right. We didn't do as much on the process side as we would have needed to do to ensure a high degree of success. So that's the first thing. Yes, it is absolutely a mistake. And that's okay, right? We expect new people to make mistakes. I want to know first, is this a mistake that's kind of of the heart or a mistake that's of the head? Right. I had one leader, actually the worst I've ever had. But that's kind of like the one thing that I got from that particular leader is, you know, she said, hey, I can forgive mistakes of the head, I can't forgive mistakes of the heart. If you don't care about the outcome and you make a mistake that's unforgivable. If you do care about the outcome and you're really trying to do the best that you can and you just didn't know what that best thing is. Hey, that I can forgive, that I can work with that I can't work with people who don't care or who are too self centered. And that's why we kind of sit with that. If somebody's working for me, I'm like, you think about the mission first, right. Then you think about your coworkers and what those needs are. Right. So the team. And then you worry about your boss. Right. I should be, you know, tertiary, maybe quaternary. Just put me further down the list. I'm thinking about my people first. If you agree to put the mission first. Right. What are we trying to accomplish here. And so what does that mean to them? Any criticisms that you hear from me, you'll, you know, that you hear any criticism. Any criticism about you, you'll hear from me privately first. [00:15:58] Speaker A: Right, Right. [00:16:00] Speaker B: Right. And I'm committed to your improvement. If you're committed to your improvement. Right. So that's. That's kind of the first thing that I want to get out from there. And then, you know, maybe it's a capability issue. If it's a capability issue, then I owe them honesty. Right. If you don't have aptitude to do this job, then I owe you the honesty and that part of it, being a leader. So it's not just, you know, your perform. It's like, how likely are you to be success. How likely are you to be successful in future endeavors if you don't have this capacity? And you'll need to ask yourself that as a difficult question. So I've. I need people to be honest with themselves first, and then, you know, try to build enough trust where they'd be willing to be honest with me, and we figure out what should we do next. Now, as a result of this, does that make sense? [00:16:52] Speaker A: You know, historically, I've hired hundreds of people. Historically, when it's an. Unless it's a new role that we're kind of both gauging, like, can you do this? Do I think you can do this? Do you? Unless it's that situation and it's kind of an experiment, I fully, squarely, 100% blame myself as the hiring manager when there's an aptitude issue. So I just take like 100. I feel apologetic and like, I. I don't know if I'm handling this well, but I feel like I should have. I did a better job. Because the way that I say it is like, look, if somebody is performing poorly, right. Then it's like a boss who basically put, you know, you know, a duck on a bicycle. Right. That's the analogy that I give. It's like a duck should be in the water, not on a bicycle. So the boss put the wrong talent in the wrong position. This woman or guy or whatever is great at xyz, but they're giving them, you know, p to do that doesn't make sense. So for me, that. That's always been something that I work really hard to avoid. So I really, really appreciate your comments, the stuff that you're saying, even though it resonates strongly with me. [00:18:08] Speaker B: Yes. [00:18:09] Speaker A: And maybe it's because of our common backgrounds, but probably you don't Hear this in. You don't hear this in corporate America almost at all. [00:18:17] Speaker B: Correct. [00:18:20] Speaker A: Is there. Is there a leadership gap? And I'll just say that we're here to talk about security, and it's such a wonderful discussion that we'll have to wait a little longer to get there. [00:18:30] Speaker B: No worries. [00:18:32] Speaker A: Where do you think the gap is? [00:18:34] Speaker B: Absolutely. There's an absolute leadership gap. It's number one. Well, let me take a step back. When I was in the FBI, I was actually selected as one of the first facilitators for the FBI's Leadership Development Program when we were doing a rollout for that in 2011, thereabouts. And I had very strong thoughts about leadership before being part of the forming of that. I saw natural abilities and charisma and all these things. From a leadership perspective, you need to have all these things. Now, what I learned, those are nice to have, they're not necessary to have. And we started the FBI's LDP program to say, look, we're going to create a baseline for people so that they understand what's expected of them. And that's where I don't think that we do a very good job from a leadership perspective. We're thinking about the role, the work that needs to be done, but we don't really think about how that work is going to get done and the people who have to do the work. And then we very quickly start moving to metrics. These metrics are largely arbitrary. And then we start dealing with those metrics as though there's some type of absolute or that they've been qualified in some way that considers the team that's actually doing the work. Right. It's more of a capacity issue, more so than anything else. So when I think about that, I heard this put one way and never left me, we get hired or our jobs based on the values that are on our resume. Now, when you die, you've got eulogy values that are totally different than resume values, right? And when you start thinking about teams, teams actually value having the right person on the team more so than having a person that has aptitude. That's the bottom line, right? Like, if you've got a person who's open, if you have a person who's willing and they're trustworthy, we'll forgive. This is going to sound terrible, but I'm going to say it. You know, here we are. We'll forgive the trustworthy idiot, right? That's not going to hurt you. But that super savvy, slick person that we don't trust. But here, she's really good. Yeah, we'll find a way to get him or her off of our team. It's just that simple. And so, you know, you go into the job interview. [00:21:00] Speaker A: Toxic genius is what I call them. [00:21:02] Speaker B: See? Perfect. Toxic genius. So your hiring manager is looking. It's like, I got a G. He or she's going to be able to do great things on your team and like, yeah, but nobody likes, nobody likes her. We can't work with that individual. So I do see that there's as a disconnect between all the technical and tactical things that need to be done in a job and the way the job is structured. And then I think companies that are really good are the ones that are able to try to get kind of like peek behind the curtain and try to figure out, you know, what kind of character do we have there and how willing are you, how able are you to work, you know, for on a team and getting hired with the FBI, you can see them taking kind of both of those types of approaches. Right? So you've got this in person panel interview where you're asking questions of these three special agents, notoriously devoid of personality, facial expression and seemingly compassion. Purposefully, right. They're not there to be my friends, they're there to be that, like, hey, am I doing okay? I don't know. And then I start putting pressure on myself and then I start to expose my weaknesses to them because I'm putting pressure on myself. And they're just watching all of this and listening to the answers. And it's like, not just what I said, but how I said it. Okay, great. If you pass that process, they're doing a background check. What kind of person do we are we getting here? And then we send you to Quantico for six months and you have. One of the roles that I got to play for a six month period was a field counselor. So you've got these FBI special agents and analysts that you're going back to Quantico and they're evaluating these individuals kind of like for suitability. Right. And then we have the first year of employment with the government and the first year of employment with the government. You can't be fired for performance. There's suitability issues now. [00:22:52] Speaker A: Okay, what is that overlap there? [00:22:53] Speaker B: Right, there's suitability issues. So if you're, you know, you just don't show up to work, it's not really a performance issue, it's a suitability issue. Right. You just, you know, and they have like seven Standards of suitability, which I can't remember right now. And for the people who are listening or watching, Ari said, yeah, shut down all that other stuff that you have. I don't want any other, you know, windows open. Let's just have a conversation. So I can't go and look up the seven suitability standards that are related to government employment. But so you know that you're. There's going to be space along the way. You know, there's going to be mentorship along the way. Right. You get a training agent. If you're an FBI agent, you get a training agent for your first, like, year and a half when you're in the FBI. So they're doing everything they can to evaluate you. And then all of the pre selection process is trying to make sure that the people that we do select have a high likelihood of getting through that entire process and then also being a productive, productive FBI agent. So that hiring process doesn't end when the person gets hired. In a lot of organizations it does. So no wonder there's going to be problems. Right. It's just they think about all the money people spend on a wedding and how much time and effort and money and thought they put into the marriage compared to the wedding. [00:24:10] Speaker A: Right, right. You know, you said mentoring. It feels like, you know, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, we knew what apprenticeship was, we knew what mentoring was. It feels like to a degree that corporate America has forgot what mentor is or how to do it even. [00:24:30] Speaker B: Yes. So corporate America. [00:24:33] Speaker A: Yes. Corporate America, yes, absolutely. What does it mean? What does mentoring mean for you? And I'm going to. I'm going to guess, right, keep me honest here, that you've brought it into the corporate environment because you deem it important. So that's my guess. Is that true? [00:24:48] Speaker B: For me, I always see my role as a mentorship role, but not in the formal way. And I think that people have this view of formal mentorship. And the difficult part is when you're mentoring lots of people, the humility can be an issue. And I don't want humility to ever be my issue. Right. If there's going to be a problem for Miguel, it should not be humility. Right. People will come in and say, all right, yeah, this guy, he's a regular guy. He's down to earth. He's approachable. But I find that sometimes the label of being mentor mentee creates barriers that keep people from being as open as they would like to be. So I'm like, look, I will be willing to share with you, everything that I. Right. And it's up to you what you take. I'll never tell you. Instruction. Do this. I'll ask you questions. What's important to you? What does this mean to you? What do you think? And I want you to come to that answer. And I've told people before, I want you to own the answer you come to right? When your story is written and there's a success story, I want you to look back and be like, man, you know what? I just remembered this guy, he told me this thing, and it made a significant impact on my life. But the story should be your story. I want to make sure I make the footnote right or the asterisk. But it's your story. I don't need to be in the movie or anything like that. Hey, just a reference. So that's important to me now as we start to talk about not just corporate America, but pretty much everywhere where we've gotten away from selling a physical product, there's absolutely no wonder that we've gotten away from mentorship and training. Apprenticeship. [00:26:26] Speaker A: That's incredibly interesting. What's the connection between physical product and mentorship? [00:26:33] Speaker B: So when you're selling a physical product, you know, you've got a physical product that needs to be made, right? Like, there's hands on. There's there, right? Like, and if you're talking about something physical, it really demands for people to be there, to be present to a certain extent with the physical product, you can pick it up, you can touch it, you can inspect it, you look around, and you can have your questions asked, answered about the product in a way that you wouldn't necessarily have with something that's electronic or intellectual property. Right? Hey, it's there. It's. You know, there's 400 pages of documentation that I'm not necessarily going to go through, but if I just have a device in front of me, I can pick it up and look at, hey, what does this do? How does this work? How does this function? Satisfy a lot of my human curiosities that I have. And then you've got like the designer there, you've got the engineer who's there, and he or she can answer questions about that. And so you have a lot of that that's satisfied. But when you're talking about an intellectual property and you're talking about electronic and remote work, everything gets to move so much faster. And we've gotten accustomed to things moving quickly. Now, regardless of how many advancements in technology we have, there is no shortcut to Determining a person's character. There's no shortcut to that, Right. It requires time and a variety of circumstances and situations. And you just have to evaluate me through that time. But everything else in life has gotten to be shortcut, right? Everything else, right? You look at TikTok and all human nature, right? All short. They're all shortcuts, right? So these shortcuts are no different than highly refined sugar. They're designed to get through your bloodstream quickly and spike. But there's no substitute for real nutrition that releases its energy over time in a predictable way. Right. And avoids your body's response to man. Here's the sugar deficit now, or this caffeine deficit. I'm going through withdrawal and I'm not functioning as well as I would or should. So all this technology, people using technology to replace the human aspects of interpersonal relations and interactions. And just like physically being present, there's so many things that not being present, I think causes for organizations when you're dealing with people. Because we're the reason for the technology, right. The technology is not for its own sake, it's for us. [00:28:54] Speaker A: That's right. That's right. It feels like there's a maybe, I don't know, maybe this is extreme, but I feel like Americans to a certain degree are losing this fundamental value of hard work and that this concept of social media and just side gigs and the hustle has turned into. What's the shortcut? [00:29:21] Speaker B: Correct. [00:29:22] Speaker A: And I'll tell you something, I personal, I said you need to be vulnerable at the beginning, but I'll be vulnerable. I got three kids and I don't know if this is like a shit dad thing to do or not, but my son almost got kicked out of two preschools and he is rambunctious to say the least. Right? And he does get it from his dad, I'll admit to that. And so I had him stay home for a whole week and we did math for eight hours and he was four at the time. So this is a four year old doing math for eight hours and he broke down to tears in the middle. And when that happened, I was like, okay, now let's talk about this. Let's talk about how we got to this. Let's talk about why we're here. Let's talk about why we're doing this. [00:30:15] Speaker B: Yes. [00:30:15] Speaker A: And unfortunately all my kids have gone through this process. But my point is, look, there are two ways to be successful in life. You can be smart or, and I say or, and that's incredibly important. You can be hardworking. [00:30:33] Speaker B: Okay? [00:30:33] Speaker A: Now, if you work incredibly hard, you'll be successful and you can kind of be dumb. Not incredibly smart, not dumb, but you can be average, right? You can be incredibly smart, and then you don't have to work hard. Here's what I want to give to you. My gift to you is you're going to be incredibly smart and you're going to be. Know how to be incredibly hardworking. Now, if you want to do both those things at the same time, that's up to you. If you want to do only one of them in different times, that's up to you. But by God, I will teach you how to do both those things. And I feel like this whole culture that we have today is, and I'm shooting myself here on the leg is about feelings. Because I just said I feel like it's about feelings. And then the other aspect of it is we're kind of just trying to find the hacks, and we're not even being smart about it ourselves. We're trying to find the hack or the smartness to be lazy on the Internet. And I'm like, something is going fundamentally wrong here. [00:31:31] Speaker B: I agree with you. One of those FBI characteristics, characters, one of those. And again, I did mention there's no shortcut. I love what you did. I love that when your son got to the point of breaking down, that you're there to help him start to work through those feelings. Hard work is its own gift, and it creates something that Americans used to be known by, which was grit. I don't know that Americans are necessarily characterized by that before. Right. [00:32:04] Speaker A: I think Americans know what grit means anymore. I don't think they know the word. They would have to look it up. And this is awful thing to say, but I'll tell you. [00:32:14] Speaker B: No, go ahead, man. I want to hear your story. Tell me your story. Let me interview you. [00:32:18] Speaker A: There was a movie. There was this movie, True Grit, right? [00:32:25] Speaker B: Yes. [00:32:25] Speaker A: And I will, I will. I will admit, when I saw the movie, I looked up the word grit. So I am like, I'm throwing this, this, this shaming onto the American people. But no, it was me. I had to look up what the word meant. And then, you know, after you learn something, after you have a salable event in your life, then when you hear the same thing, then you notice it, right? So things that you. That you have an event, then they become salable. And then I started hearing it in other places. Then I was like. I was like, shit, this is. And then from not knowing what the Word meant I was like, this is actually a part of who I am. Like, this is incredibly. I never knew that that was the word, but this is, like, part of my personality. I didn't even know it. So for those of you. No shame if you don't know what the word means, that's okay. It could be that it's incredibly important to you, nonetheless. [00:33:11] Speaker B: Could be. So this. This determination. American determinism is something that history books have written about, right? You think about bombing in Pearl harbor and the incredible resolve. Right? And even I think the Japanese prime minister said it's like, hey, you know, I think we may have woken up this terrible giant with incredible resolve. [00:33:38] Speaker A: Yes. [00:33:39] Speaker B: That's who Americans, I think, used to be known for. Right. And to take your point about looking at historical events through 20, 20 glasses, not to say that everything in the country was perfect back then, that's not the point. The point is, from a character standpoint as to who we were as a nation, who we are as a nation, and how we raise our children and how those children interact with the world, toughness is not the word that I would describe for what I see in many of these generations. Like, if I had to rely. If something happened to me and I got taken away and I had to rely on that generation to come get me, you know, I'd rather my dad's generation, like, come out of retirement because. Right. And maybe they have their canes and their walkers and, you know, like. Yeah, but. But I know that they're gonna get the job done. I know there's not gonna be excuses. They're not gonna talk about how difficult it is. The downside is, yeah, they had feelings, but nobody cared about their feelings. Right? That's the downside. So, you know, they didn't have PTSD back then. It was shell shock. Right. You didn't talk about it. Right, Right. You had it, but you didn't talk about it. And I think we expect that of our warriors still. Right? Like, talk about the problems that you have as a warrior that you, you know, you now have those problems because of what you did for us. The military is down in their recruiting, Right. They are between 20 and 30% short of the recruiting targets. Right? So this, what should have been a common theme, you should be able to go anywhere, to be able to develop this or to be able to not develop it. But to go into any high school, if you're looking in the 1960s, probably, you can go into any high school, and you can go. And you can find that now they're not segregated high schools or they're segregated high schools, but you can go there and you can find it. There's a calisthenics program that's mandatory in those schools back then. Right. 19, mid-60s calisthenics mandatory. So people are starting to do difficult things and challenge themselves physically. And so you have a physical fitness, you have a mental fitness and those two things are working together. Hopefully you have somebody that's there kind of like taking care of the spiritual well being of the individual. And then now you have a whole individual who is not afraid of conflict. [00:35:59] Speaker A: Right. [00:36:00] Speaker B: It's super important. Right. Like what you're doing for your, for your son, for your kids, teaching them how to have conflict and engage in meaningful conflict. [00:36:09] Speaker A: Yes. [00:36:10] Speaker B: Whether or not to get to engage in the conflict is a significant skill. Right. And that's one of the things for a leader, as I define a good leader is a good leader should always be willing and should be in a hurry to engage in meaningful conflict. [00:36:23] Speaker A: I have that conflict, conflict, if it's meaningful. [00:36:29] Speaker B: Right. If it's going to make a difference. Right. If one of the people who works for me has somebody else on another team, that person has been disparaging, openly rude or something along those lines, that person who works for me, when I find out about it, they should know there's going to be a response. Conflict will ensue. [00:36:49] Speaker A: Yes. [00:36:50] Speaker B: Right. [00:36:50] Speaker A: That is so delightful. The serendipity is just last night I wrote an article about the five different types of conflict and conflict resolution. [00:37:00] Speaker B: I love it. [00:37:01] Speaker A: And my whole point about this was that when you engage in conflict, your, let's say, strong suit of how you engage in conflict, the method is based on you. And my whole point is that's wrong. The method of engaging in conflict should show first, as you say, beyond should this conflict even be engaged in. That's one type of conflict engagement you can decide to avoid. Right. But then there's four others. And my whole point is that if you engage in conflict or not, it's actually dependent on who you're engaging with and what the environment situation is and making a mindful decision around how to engage. And if to engage is so much more important than who the fuck you are because you should be stretching your other skills and learning how to do things that are outside of your strength. Because you know, it might possibly be that in this situation a different method would be more productive. So it's so interesting what you're saying. I, I want to ask a question. Right, sure. When we talk about the, you know, military or security environment. And we talk about leadership under crisis. I mean, it seems to us very clear that life and death situations, you know, could be the thing. However, in the corporate environment. [00:38:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:21] Speaker A: It's not life and death. [00:38:22] Speaker B: It isn't. [00:38:23] Speaker A: However, rarely, however, is leadership crisis skills still relevant. [00:38:32] Speaker B: Of course. Yeah, of course. So whenever you have somebody who's going through something difficult, how difficult that thing is is relative to their experience, you know, what they prepare for. So something that may seem really small to me is going to seem even smaller to you if you've had combat experience. Right. And even smaller to somebody else. It's like, you know, pointy edge of the spear that goes into the most dangerous things. But we can have compassion for those individuals as they struggle through those things that are difficult for them. We understand in a physical concept, we understand it perfectly. Right. You walking into a grocery store and there's a, you know, I hate to pick on little old ladies, but let's just say that there's, you know, an older lady, she's not particularly tall. Every time she asked me to reach the tall thing for her. Five of the last six international flights that I've been on, the flight attendant has asked me, would I help with the bag or would I help to close, you know, the, you know, the overhead been. Or something along those lines. Of course, no problem. Right. Like, I get it. You're not me, right. I'm over the age of 50. But, you know, I get, I got my AARP card, you know, like in the mail, like, hey, you're. You're of that age now. You're. You're a retired person. You're old. So I got that. And so they're not seeing that. They just see a person who. The task that they're assigned to would be easier for me, and it's not unreasonable to ask me to do it. So crisis skills and leading under crisis. Absolutely. Because what does crisis do for even trained individuals? It introduces fear of an outcome. [00:40:10] Speaker A: Right. [00:40:11] Speaker B: And then your crisis is, how do I overcome that fear and still get the job done? If you're at the pointy, pointy edge, tip of that spear, it's like, hey, yeah, nobody cares that I'm afraid. Nobody cares. Have a bad day. Right. America needs this person to know, not cause problems for America or Americans anymore. And nobody in the world cares about what challenges I need to overcome in order to make that happen. Right. You're not going to find those operators on link, not LinkedIn, but on Netflix, talking about how they Were having a bad day and they couldn't perform at the highest level like some Olympic champions that may call themselves the go. Right. The standard is just totally different there. [00:40:55] Speaker A: That's right, yeah. [00:40:56] Speaker B: So, yes, I always applies, I have. [00:40:59] Speaker A: To bring this down to kind of unpack it because I don't think that the audience who doesn't have a military background just appreciates how incredibly important what you just said is. Fear of an outcome. Let's unpack that in the corporate environment. [00:41:18] Speaker B: Yes. [00:41:19] Speaker A: Fear of an outcome, I would argue, is one of the top reasons why people avoid tasks that could fail, could reflect poorly on their reputation. [00:41:35] Speaker B: Right. [00:41:36] Speaker A: So they're like, no, I don't want to do it. Here's what I would argue and I want to get your take on this. Being fearless in the corporate environment could actually be your fast track road to success. [00:41:50] Speaker B: Could be. [00:41:53] Speaker A: And the story I tell is that I was, you know, first day on the job, this was a startup that turned into American company, that turned into a German company, Siemens. First day on the job, they came and gave me a task. Everybody else said, no. [00:42:06] Speaker B: Yes. [00:42:07] Speaker A: And I was like, sure, I'll it. Now any other person, and this is proven by the fact that nobody else who was there even for years agreed to that task. But I was like, sure. So that fast tracked me on the organization. Why do you say could be why yes and why no. [00:42:27] Speaker B: So the first thing that I need to determine is just how arbitrary is this task? Right. Did you invest all of the resources necessary or most of the resources necessary in order to, you know, make this task viable, achievable? If it's a difficult thing, I'm willing to do a difficult thing. I'm not willing to do an impossible thing. How do you make that determination? Right. People just say, hey, let's just, you know, go do the thing. The number of times that people have, you know, set this task and you know, here, here's what our target is. And then you come back and like, oh, yeah, we kind of figured out that was unreasonable. Well, how did you find that out? Failure after failure after failure. Right. And it's all because I think we don't ask the right questions upfront. And some of the right questions are, okay, now why? Tell me about the why of what it is that we're doing here. Why is this important? Why does it need to be done this way? Right. Are there any other options? Kind of like what's the most important? I need to know. I need to understand what my boundaries are. Are. [00:43:34] Speaker A: Yes. [00:43:35] Speaker B: And when I understand what my boundaries are, then I'm like, okay, so then anything within. I can do anything within these boundaries. Right? So in the military, you guys have like, oh, I'm trying to. I'm trying to think of the term rules of engagement. Yeah, right. And once you have your roe, your rules of engagement, then you understand what tools you need to bring, what mindset you need to have. Right. You know, and so for the people who don't have the military background or law enforcement background, military could basically say, hey, we're going into a hostile environment. We've given all the good guys an opportunity to leave. And so we're telling people that if you're left over, if you're still there when we get there, you're a bad guy. We'd be treated as such. Now's your time to go. And then when we go to that particular location, then the rules of engagement says, any hostile that fits this particular profile, you can engage that hostile with deadly force. Right? Now, if your rules of engagement are, hey, you're going to go in there, we're going to make. This is for hearts and minds. Right? That's what we're fighting for. We're only fighting for hearts and minds. If you bring different tools, you have a different mindset, you have a different mentality. And so getting back to kind of the process thing that you had talked a little bit about earlier, a lot of times those things aren't very well fleshed out for the business. Now, people who've been and work for the US Government are probably going to dislike some of what I'm getting ready to say here right now. I actually miss a little bit of the bureaucracy. I hated it when I was in the FBI. Right. B comes before the I Federal Bureau bureaucracy. I hated it. But there was a rule for everything. There's regulations for everything. Anything you wanted to know, dating all the way back to probably like the 1920s or the 1930s, it's in there. You want to learn how to do something, it's in there. How does a particular violation work? What are the elements that you have to prove? It's all in one particular document. When I got there, a nice 1998, that's the way that it was. We had the Manual of Administrative Operations, I think, or operate like a. It's a May Op. So administrative Operations. And then you have like the Manual of Investigative Guidelines. Right. So you. How do you investigate? And then what's the admin stuff? Right. So MYOG and Mayop. Those are the words for you retired FBI agents. You'd be embarrassed that I don't know what those names are anymore. But you could always pull a string and go to some documentation somewhere that would tell you most of what you need to know about doing something. You don't find that in many of the companies today, right? These are tech companies. A lot of times they get stood up really quick, right? Hey, we're a tech company. We move. We, you know, we've kind of dispensed with a lot of the rules and regulations and things that hold us down, but there's nothing for free in the world, right? So if you don't have those rules and regulations, you have agility, but you may not necessarily have, like, that depth of knowledge for people to go to to understand what a particular scenario and situation really needs. [00:46:44] Speaker A: You know, obviously the world is shades of gray, but I would argue, like yourself, that in some ways, having a clear bureaucratic path can be faster than, you know, this definition of agility. And I'll tell you why. When we have this definition of agility, then it's really up to people to make decisions. And then it's about this conflict of minds or about seniority or about any kind of political or human aspect. Aspect. When you have process, I'll tell you, I could, in the military go and say I would read processes relentlessly, religiously, and I wouldn't understand them. And then I would come and I was like this wizard of process. And I would come to my. To all the people on the chain. I'd be like, you know, I did A, B, C, D, E, F, G. And they'll be like, what about, you know, Z and W? I'm like, yep, yep. And, you know, sometimes they were like, nope, you're missing that. I would run back quickly, I would get it done, I would show the documents, and I could. I could just sprint through processes and get shit done, done. And yeah, sometimes you need to be like, okay, it needs to be under $10,000 in order to get this approved. And so I maybe need to tweak the plan in some way to fit. Sometimes you fit yourself into the process, right? Yes, you do, many times. But. But you can move so fast if the rules of engagement are clear. [00:47:56] Speaker B: Yes. [00:47:56] Speaker A: And to me, it was such an empowering thing. [00:47:58] Speaker B: It is. [00:47:59] Speaker A: And I know we are all trained to hate bureaucracy, but it can also. It can also speed you up and also be empowering if you understand the bureaucracy. And you know what? Sometimes the bureaucracy doesn't make sense, but you can still use it, which is Kind of unintuitive. [00:48:13] Speaker B: Well, you know, yes, I agree, it's counterintuitive to a certain extent. Yes. But when you understand the bureaucracy and the rules, regulations, you can give the decision makers a choice and it's a more informed choice. These are what the rules say, right? This is if you break the rules, this is where we're going to end up. Now you leader, you get to make that choice. Now I'm not making that choice for you. Right? Because this is the rules say, the rules say that we need to do this. This is how it should be handled. Now if I can bring that scenario to the decision maker, we get up to the appropriate level in the chain of command for somebody who's willing to own the outcome for breaking that rule or bending that regulation or whatever. And it's done in an informed way. Right. And if lives are at stake, maybe we break those rules. Right. And but if it's to make an arbitrary million dollar goal, that would be just fine. If we made $990,000 versus a million, then maybe, maybe not. But I think for me as a person who's a leader, a mid level leadership, bring those things forward to the decision maker so we can get it to that corporate level, C level executive to say, hey, I'm willing to decision and I understand, right. So that's why I see my role as a leader is helping the rules, helping people understand what's really at stake and not just what you think is at stake. So a lesson I learned a long time ago, 2011 Sometimes the problem that you think you have isn't the actual problem. And leadership is about solving that problem whether it's real or imagined. Right? So you've got to, even if it's an imaginary problem, you still have to understand it before you can solve. If you don't understand problems before you solve them, that just makes you a politician. [00:50:11] Speaker A: I love, I absolutely love that. Miguel, what would you go back and tell or advise or encourage or empower 20 year old Miguel? [00:50:25] Speaker B: I would tell 20 year old Miguel, do not be afraid of the difficult things. As an FBI agent, when I was still in the FBI, I used to get people reaching out to me on LinkedIn. How did you get into the FBI? I want to join the FBI and I always prefaced my answer with when I went through this process, there was nobody there to help me. So I'm willing to answer your questions, but understand that me seeking those answers was a part of what made me compatible with the FBI. Like the struggle produced a fruit that Fruit is what I lived on when I was in the FBI, right? The ability to overcome that adversity, that's a very important part. And so I would tell 20 year old Miguel, live in the adversity, don't be afraid of that adversity. Take time, slow down, right? Whatever it is that you're afraid of, when you sit down, identify what that fear is. Because, right, so we have a business world. In this business world, we have misplaced fear. Fear is designed to keep us from getting bitten by venomous snakes, right? It's to make sure that we're always looking a tiger in the face because those sneaky jokers will sneak up behind you if you're not looking at them, right? Like it's designed to protect us. Very few times in the business world do we have something that's going to cause us, you know, like life threatening. It's not. So all of our fear responses are designed to protect our lives. And so I would tell young Miguel, it's like, look, understand what you're afraid of and it's not going to impact your survivability, right? So put your fear in an appropriate place, understand it, work through it and then just realize, hey, you're going to be okay regardless of these outcomes. You don't need to, how should you say this? Don't, it's not that serious, right? It's not that serious. Just go through, go do it, love the experience, enjoy it and stop thinking about the outcome. So that's a lot of stuff I would tell myself. I, I, I'd probably have weekly conversations with myself if I could go back and just like, all right, now I'm really going to be a mentor. These are the things that you're going to want to know. These are the things that you're going to need to learn, right? These are the dichotomies in life, right? You go into a restaurant, really nice restaurant, and you know, so, and there's a kid there, the kid's crying. You know, you're about ready to spend 200, $300 on dinner with yourself and you know, your significant other. And then everybody doesn't want to look at the family that has the cry, right? And then they're looking at you like, why are you looking at me like, because your kid's crying, right? And because I can hear your child crying, it's now my business. I'm not trying to be a jerk, right? And so that would be the thing, it's like, that doesn't make you a jerk. Having those Conversations, looking at those things, saying, hey, look, you know, I want to address that, engage in meaningful conflict, have the courage to do that, be compassionate as you're going through and doing that. But you do need to understand that it is okay for you to say, this is impacting my experience, and I am willing to give something, but. Oh, all right. Can I take a step back with this, please? There are. There are favors of things, things that you would offer and then things that you would ask for. Now, it's okay for me to offer something that means a lot to me. I can offer that. I think it's inappropriate for people to ask for that, if that makes sense. The asking for a thing. Ask me for a simple thing. Don't ask me for a heavy thing. Let me offer the heavy thing to you in the situation in the restaurant, expecting me to look away and pretend like this child isn't crying and ruining my 2 or $300 experience. That's too much for you to ask of me. I'm willing to offer it. If you're like, I am so sorry. Right? Like, I don't know why, it's like, okay, you know what? I can offer this. I can offer my, hey, I'll turn the other way. But expecting that, I think that's a bridge too far. And so I would. That's another thing that I really explained to myself, to my younger self is like, understand the difference between these two things, and don't be afraid to confront the things when you see that are. That are kind of. That don't seem right when you distill them down. [00:54:44] Speaker A: That is so delightful, Gil. I am so appreciative of our. We didn't get to security. We didn't get to grc. But I feel like this conversation was just so good, so valuable. I want to leave something with the audience. So I was talking with product manager, and he said that he installed these, like, mud flaps, those rubber mud flaps. And he was like, oh, the car doesn't come with them. And he installed them. And what he followed up to say is there is absolutely no incentive for him to install them. Doesn't help him in any way. But if everybody installed them, then that would help him. [00:55:18] Speaker B: Yes. [00:55:19] Speaker A: And I. And. And he just. It was just a small comment. And when it was over lunch, and it was just an anecdote that haunted me for months. It just. And. And obviously, I tell the story to really mirror and reflect because it's the same thing, right? There's the things that we do that we ask the things that we get. And sometimes there needs to be a sense of reciprocity or fairness or honesty in the process in order for it to make sense. So I feel like you've kind of touched my heart with your comments, many of them today. And I would just like to say I deeply appreciate you. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. [00:56:02] Speaker B: I didn't want to disappoint. Right. You said you have your guests that. Come on. They always say the same thing. This was fun. I had a blast. It wasn't what I expected, but I enjoyed it. So now we'll just have to do part two and actually talk about what we came here to talk about. [00:56:15] Speaker A: You know what? It's a date. We will do it. [00:56:18] Speaker B: Wonderful. [00:56:19] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:56:19] Speaker B: Thank you for having me on. [00:56:21] Speaker A: Wonderful.