Leading with Curiosity and Character | Scott Clancy | Episode 324

Scott McCarthy [00:03:13]:
Scott, sir, welcome to the show. So good to have you here today.

Scott Clancy [00:03:16]:
It’s great to be here.

Scott McCarthy [00:03:18]:
So we have a former or sorry, an author, a speaker, retired man major general, former deputy commander of NORAD. Wow. It’s

Scott Clancy [00:03:28]:
Not not deputy commander of NORAD. I was the director of opera director of

Scott McCarthy [00:03:32]:
The director of ops. Sorry. My bad. My bad. But regardless, nonetheless, it is it’s still it’s still awesome to have you on the show. So I wanna dive straight in, and let’s just go back to square 1. And I love asking former military, you know, senior leaders this question is, like, what drove you to join and more applicably to show to become an officer. I think I probably know the answer for you, with your background, but become an officer and, you know, a leader and then drive you to become a senior leader within the forces.

Scott McCarthy [00:04:04]:
Why don’t we start there?

Scott Clancy [00:04:06]:
So thanks very much for having me, Scott. It’s the it’s the Scott talk. You know, we’re just gonna sit here and chat for a while about stuff. So I I really appreciate, the opportunity to do this. Why I joined? So I would say there’s 2 things that drove me at the very front end to join. First thing is I had a love of flying and I wanted to fly that drove me down a certain path towards being an officer and that kind of stuff. Because of the nature of the rank that pilots hold. And the second thing was is I really wanted to serve my country.

Scott Clancy [00:04:37]:
And I had this ingrained feeling that that was something that I needed to do. You know, I was in the air cadets before that joining and then went to military college. And I can remember being the second day that we’re at military college and they asked 225 of us or whatever that, you know, front class was, how many people joined to get a degree and a whole bunch of people put their hands up and how many people joined for work experience or to get a job or to get out of your small town or like all this stuff. And then they asked how many people joined to serve their country. And I was the only one with my hand up. And I’m not saying that, you know, as a, but that’s just for me, that was very important. And funny enough, especially for those who are pilots, you, you know, that as you start to climb ranks and do things, the flying becomes a very small portion of what you have to do. You keep an anchor on that.

Scott Clancy [00:05:26]:
And then the other stuff, the leadership, the management pieces that they become that bread and butter. So what drove me to join the military was that I wanted to serve and I wanted to fly and that love of flying and the people that are surrounding that flying, the brotherhood and sisterhood that is out there on that. And then the need to continue to serve and just a feeling that I could actually do good things. Those are kind of the reasons why I continued to serve and continued to sacrifice throughout my career.

Scott McCarthy [00:05:55]:
Oh, it’s awesome. It’s funny because I’m a middle call grad as my as well.

Scott Clancy [00:06:00]:
What’s your college? Whenever. 54. I’m 56. 16656.

Scott McCarthy [00:06:10]:
Wow. So for the audience listening, you’re like, what the heck is are they talking about? There’s a tradition with the numbers of the last two line up. 1 person owes the other person some form of drink. There’s a whole math equation behind it, so I almost owed, mister Scott here a few drinks. We were pretty close. That’s too funny, which I always found odd about that tradition before I go into my story is that it’s the, you know, the younger person owes the older person the drinks whereas, you know, you think I would always think of it, the older one to, you know, bring the younger ones up. But alas, traditionally

Scott Clancy [00:06:45]:
I’ve always seen that tradition play out in real life is, what’s your college number? I have a college number that, like, you owe me. And the end, it ends up being, like, you know, 100 of beers or 10 or whatever it is. Yeah. Whatever. And then they those 2 people and all the people around them end up spending the rest of the evening talking Right. And engaging, and it’s just a medium to break the ice from a fun tradition. Absolutely. You know? And

Scott McCarthy [00:07:09]:
that’s It’s funny because I have a little cousin who’s 1st year at the college. And one of the first questions I asked her was, hey, college. And she was like, right? Alright. So, anyway, so my story when when I talk about, you know, joining the college per se, and people like, well, why why did I go down that rabbit hole? And it was like, well, I wanted to be different because I’m from Newfoundland originally. And from Newfoundland, everyone goes to the mine. And I was like, I want RMC to be different. And then, well, lo and behold, as you know, we’re not different at RMC. Everyone’s identical.

Scott McCarthy [00:07:41]:
We’re all dressed the same. We all do the same things. We all have relatively the same schedule. Everything is exactly the same. So it’s a bit ironic there. But nonetheless, let let’s dive in. So, you know, you want to serve your country. You want it to fly.

Scott McCarthy [00:07:55]:
Now we were talking before, you know, we’re sharing some stories before, and you talked about, like, you had this captain who taught you you’re, like, even more senior. So in the pilot world, that’s common. Right? Like, pilots, a lot of them just wanna fly, so they stay at that captain rank for essentially their entire career. But you obviously have gone on. You went on to become a 2 star general. So what drove you to say, okay, you know what? Maybe it’s less about the hours in the cockpit, but more about taking care of the people under my command.

Scott Clancy [00:08:24]:
It’s it’s interesting. And it’s I think it’s a great question, Scott. And I think that everybody has to find their own path. Right? And I also think that one of the errors that we make in our military, and I have a lot of experience with the army as well as the air force. And I think it’s so it’s it’s a little bit of we’ve got this preconceived path that leads to being the CDS and everybody has to be on that little train wreck. I mean, professional development system. No. And I’m saying this facetiously because yes, there are certain prerequisites that you need to you’re in command now.

Scott Clancy [00:09:00]:
Command is important. It’s important to be put in positions of authority where you’re given those responsibilities, where you have to feel and see people as they’re gonna perform or or not in those key things. And a breadth of experience is always important. But what I have a real problem with is that there’s a preconceived path that gets you, you know, from wherever you are to the top. I don’t think I necessarily followed any of that stuff. And throughout my career, I’ve done certain things because I wanted to be given opportunities, but I also, most of the time, just tried to do the job I was doing right now to the best extent I possibly could. And then I just got called to go do something else that really is is so I have a a good friend. His name’s Rick Finley.

Scott Clancy [00:09:47]:
He was the deputy commander of NORAD, and he was the NORAD j 3 on the morning of 9:11, another tac hell guy. And Rick, when he’s a 3 star general, used to say, you know, I don’t know how I got here to being a 3 star general, but I’ll tell you. All I did was concentrated on doing my job, and I never wanted to advance in rank. But I just had people telling me, you need to go and do this. And I listened to them because they were good people, they had good mentors, that this kind of stuff. A lot of that is the same way with me. I’d be asked, listen, you need to go and do this. And I’d say, oh, okay.

Scott Clancy [00:10:16]:
You know, when I finished staff college and got promoted to lieutenant colonel, I took a job teaching at Fort Frontenac, which is the army staff college. And I taught AOC and I was the chief of curriculum development at Fort Frontenac. So for 4 years and I loved teaching tactics. I I loved teaching with the army. I thought it was just a fantastic system and, you know, every 6 months you had 12 new students and all being able to just open their eyes to all of that stuff. You know, I loved it. But right in the middle of that, you know, I got a phone call from, you know, a general and said, we need you to plan Chinooks to Afghanistan and sustain that for so I could pluck that of that and go go do this and finish that. You you need to go down to Colorado Springs.

Scott Clancy [00:10:55]:
And I always one thing after another, here’s where you’re going. Here here’s what the next plan for it is. So a little bit of this is you you just do the things that set you up for success so that you could give back. And that was the other part is that you you’ll get into a specific position and and you you’ll say, woah, woah, where’s my career go from here? And there’s planning and there’s understanding. For me, it was all about just do the job well, set yourself up so that those opportunities, if they get presented to you and your family, you can take advantage of them. And that was it. Now, I never had to worry about French. Right? So although I grew up in Ottawa, I went to the College Metair Royal in Saint Jean.

Scott Clancy [00:11:34]:
So I came away with a bilingual profile. It was the oddest bilingual profile you’ve ever seen. It was e. So every 5 years, I had to do a written test, which I would just not study for it because I didn’t really care because I got maximum marks, and I’m completely fluent speaking. So it didn’t really matter. But that was one of the impediments that ends up hiccuping a lot of people as they advanced. I didn’t have to worry about that. So does that answer your question or get after what you’re kinda getting to?

Scott McCarthy [00:11:57]:
Kinda for sure. I I just wanna take a moment and, you know, note some parallels. So I actually came to this job out of Fort Frontenac myself, and I got the phone. So I got notified that I’ve been selected for command here in Montreal in, you know, late January, and I was like, okay. Cool. And I was like, alright. Got till, you know, July. Like, July.

Scott McCarthy [00:12:16]:
Right? Normally, that’s the time frame. And then sometime in February, I got an email from my director saying, hey, Scott. Give me a call. I’m like, this is odd. So I get a hold to him. He’s like, so when can you show up in Montreal? I’m just like, what do you mean by when can I show up in Montreal? So long story short, the guy I replaced had put in for his release to retire from the forces that day, and so they’re, like, scrambling trying to figure out. So very similar very similar stories, very, you know, linkage. Now I I, you know, definitely a lot of appreciation.

Scott McCarthy [00:12:44]:
You know, I I really like what you said, but just doing the best job you can in the job you’re in at that time and and, you know, kinda let your work and and your, you know, that speak for itself. I think there’s that can a lot of people can kinda relate to that slash should take that away because myself included, often when I find this, often when it’s like, okay. What’s next? What’s next? What’s next? And I’ve often myself had to, you know, frame myself and go, okay. It’s not about what’s next. It’s about what’s right in front of me. And how might I do that the best?

Scott Clancy [00:13:18]:
So so I Right. So to amplify that, I I think there’s 2 pitfalls that people tend to fall into, especially as they move up the the rank structure. First of all, you’re being put into more and more and more challenging positions with larger and larger portfolios each time that, you know, you move around. Those are very daunting things. To take those seriously, you have to remain professionally curious. Professionally curious means that, you know, as a tackle guy, taught at Fort Front and Axe army tactics, might, you know, finished it being a wing commander. I knew nothing about RCF personnel or when I went to NORAD, you know, I’d never been in an F 18 and intercepted Russian bombers or, or any, I didn’t have to do any of that stuff, but I had to learn really, really, really fast. So you have to be professionally curious.

Scott Clancy [00:14:06]:
There can be a tendency as you get to those to just go back to, okay, well, now I’m a generalist. I don’t have to know those details. I don’t have to. There’s a balance there. You don’t have to know how to fly the f 15 or the f or the f 18 to, you know, to task it to go intercept a bomber on the North Slope of Alaska or up in the Canadian archipelago. But I do have to know enough about the trials, the tribulations, the limitations, the people that all of the rest of that stuff. So you got to remain professionally curious. There’s a tendency maybe to retreat back into those generic things and allow them to that’s the first pitfall.

Scott Clancy [00:14:39]:
2nd pitfall. And you and I have seen this and we can talk about it frankly. People will take on the trappings of those ranks and the other things that go around it. You get asked to do a lot of things as you move up and you get asked to travel and you have the opportunity to go and visit troops and, and, and, and, but a lot of that is not necessarily your job when you’re in command. Yes. You have to be out there. You have to be in the fit. You have to be listening to the truth and everything else.

Scott Clancy [00:15:03]:
But I was in command a very small percentage of the time that I was actually in service. You know, funny enough, I never commanded at the unit level and I never had a Lieutenant Colonel command. And that might strike you as being odd. You know, your listeners, if they’re not in the military might go, it’s odd. It’s actually the pivotal command in the evolution of most people. Now, while I was a Lieutenant Colonel, I was given an AWSE rank acting while so employed ranking. I commanded our air forces in Haiti, as part of the earthquake. So for 3 months, yeah, I was given responsibilities even beyond that rank.

Scott Clancy [00:15:37]:
So you can make that case, but it doesn’t matter. Again, we go back to not every path is the same. But the trappings of those ranks, the trappings of those kings can be, yeah, I have to travel here and I have to go to this conference and then I’ve been asked to speak at this or and none of that. None of those things has to do with your portfolio, your job, those things that you have to get get done. And remembering that job as leaders is to make the life better for everybody who’s down chain from us. So the more that I got into these higher positions of responsibility, especially when they were staff jobs, My job was to sit at those desks, answer the phone, and do the best possible job I could for, you know, for a period of time, it was the entire Royal Canadian Air Force as I was in charge of personnel and logistics and operations for the whole Air Force. If I wasn’t doing my job, if I was out visiting, going to mess dinners, doing all the rest of that stuff, I would not be taking care of those portfolios and getting those solving those wicked problems that the men and women, people of the RCAF and the Canadian Air Forces expect. So that responsibility that there’s a there’s a pitfall that people can fall into, and they can be daunting.

Scott Clancy [00:16:49]:
And what we don’t do is we tend not to mentor well as people leave that lieutenant colonel major to lieutenant colonel rank and move up. And the worst is once you get to general officer. There is nobody talking to you about these types of things. The expectation is you’ve now got it all sorted out, and very far from the truth.

Scott McCarthy [00:17:10]:
Those are some great insights, actually. I love those 2 pitfalls. Actually, I wanted to dive, but I don’t want to dive deeper into both. So the first one, I think it’s it’s gonna be very applicable, to the listener out there, and I’m gonna preface this question, my statement here, like, often leaders find themselves, like, well, that’s fine. Be professionally curious, but how do I do that so that I don’t look like I’m I’m a fool that I don’t know what I’m talking about, that I’m weak as a leader, that all this imposter syndrome starts creeping in. Like, I’m supposed to be the expert. I’m supposed to know this stuff because I’m the one that’s in charge. So how do you remain professionally curious, find the answers to these things, but at the same time, retain that presence as a leader within your own team.

Scott Clancy [00:17:59]:
So do you think that Phil Jackson, who’s won 9 NBA championships, could beat Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, or Seth Curry on 1 on 1?

Scott McCarthy [00:18:13]:
No idea because I don’t follow basketball.

Scott Clancy [00:18:15]:
Well, so I just named, like, maybe the 3 best, you know, barring LeBron James. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But he’s coached all of them. And I would make the case, you know, my book, developing coaching leaders. There’s a nexus here between coaching and and leading. But my point is, is that they’re not technical expert.

Scott Clancy [00:18:31]:
And and what I would even correct, you know, and and I love this conversation and I love that we’re deep diving in this, even the lexicon that you’re using, you’re expected to be the expert on that full stop, full stop. So you’re saying that as a pilot, I’m the expert avionics technician. I’m the expert WIFI tech. I’m the expert. Like I could keep on going with all of the various things that there’s a team out there that are experts. They’ve trained thousands of hours, years of training apprenticeships to bring them to the point. They’ve got knowledge. They’ve changed things.

Scott Clancy [00:19:06]:
They’ve done things. Oh my gosh. And now just because I’m leading them, the lexicon that we use needs to change. When we went to Afghanistan, I had a chief foreign officer, you know, come to me and we were dealing with the wicked problems of how to no Chinook was ever going to be on Canadian soil. We were going to deploy forces to Afghanistan. And the first time they were going to fly together, either as a crew or as combined, you know, Chinook and Griffon escorts was going to be in combat in Afghanistan. We’re gonna send them into combat with less training. Some of them, especially the Chinook crews, then we sent crews off to fight the 2nd World War of the battle of Britain.

Scott Clancy [00:19:43]:
So based upon that, you’re gonna have wicked problems. So we’re trying to work out some of these wicked problems. And this chief foreign officer and I were sitting down with a with a team, and I said, I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re gonna do with this. Yeah. I really don’t know. Okay. We’re gonna have to explore this.

Scott Clancy [00:19:54]:
And he goes, afterwards, pulls me aside, says, sir, you’re leading those teams. You can never say you don’t know. And I said, chief, with all due respect, you’re full of it. That team knows that I don’t know. Sooner or later, we’re gonna have to make a decision, but we’re not there yet. So don’t have to make a decision, but they’re experts and they know that. And they got really good guidance from me. And now they’re out there and they’re gonna be feeding us, and we’re all gonna be curious and we’re gonna work together on this.

Scott Clancy [00:20:19]:
We’re gonna find that. If we were forced into a corner, I’m as decisive as the day is long, I can make a decision. I don’t have to. And that vulnerability that I show those teams. So using Brene Brown’s, you know, construct on vulnerability, I’m showing the team that I’m vulnerable. That doesn’t make me weak. It makes me strong. It makes us as a team strong because I know and understand that because pushed into a corner if we had yeah.

Scott Clancy [00:20:41]:
Here’s what we’re gonna do. 2 up, 1 back, armored reserve, hot box lunch. Nowhere. I I can make those decisions off the cuff if I have to based upon my knowledge and experience. I don’t have to. I can demonstrate that. And underpinning all of this, Scott, and you and I have talked about this a little bit in the past, it has to do with trust. If you’re gonna engender trust, one of the elements of trust, and I always talk about 4 elements or components of trust because I like Charles Feldman.

Scott Clancy [00:21:07]:
He wrote a book called The Thin Book of Trust, which is very small and and I’m a pilot so my lips still move when I read so it’s good for me in that. And the 4 components he talks about is care, sincerity, reliability and competence. So there is an element of competence and trust and I think within the military we overstate that you have to be the best pilot to be leading a squadron. No, you know, you have to be the best accountant to lead accountants. So is Elon mess, Musk, the, the best pick any one of the things that are in his organization? No, they’re not. So we have to lose that out of our lexicon. Now, the way that we combat this, and I think this gets to your point, you know, young leaders coming up or middle managers coming up, if you are always on yourself thinking that you’re having to be that expert, if that’s the lexicon that you find your mentors using, if that’s the lexicon that you think is being expected you of your subordinates, I would challenge that notion first. And I would challenge it very, very overtly with either your mentors and bosses and with your team.

Scott Clancy [00:22:11]:
I think what you’re going to find is a lot of compassion. A lot of people say, no, no, we don’t expect you to be the expert, sir. I’ve heard this a lot. What we expect you is when we put you in that position, we’ve given you the fact that you’re in a position to make a decision and you can make it and you can give us guidance and, and, or you can ask really good questions because sometimes we don’t see how all of this fits in. Right. I can give you the mission. I’ll give you the intent. We’ll walk forward with this.

Scott Clancy [00:22:38]:
That vulnerability is important because it allows you to enable that two way street of trust, you to them and them to you. Does that make sense with with what we were talking about?

Scott McCarthy [00:22:48]:
Absolutely. And what I’d like to double down on is that the last bit you talked about there and what I was hearing out of you was more emphasis on character. So one of the things which I focus in on here is character based leadership. That’s actually one of the the ways we execute leadership. So, otherwise, leadership in 3 domains, leading yourself, leading your team, leading your organization. Yourself is you, obviously you, the individual. Your team is the individuals that make up your your team, and then the organization is more of the institutional benefit. So, and with that, leading yourself aspect back to decision making, I use the character based leadership framework, which has judgment in the center of it.

Scott McCarthy [00:23:27]:
Right? And that’s kind of what I’m hearing. You don’t have to be the expert, but you have to be the guy to make the or a guy to make the decision. And if you use, you know, your character, you show some humility, show some of that that ingenuity, you know, looking and and being intrigued and having and asking the right questions because, again, you’re not expected to be asked for. You shouldn’t be the if you are the expert, you’re in the wrong place. That’s my point of view because you shouldn’t be the one that knows all the avionics stuff. Right? Like like Right. And you’re hoping.

Scott Clancy [00:23:58]:
Yeah. Hoping. What I used to say is and so this become there’s blurry lines here. Right? And, obviously, this depends on what what layer you’re at in the stuff like this. And and to be able to ask tough questions, you know, and and get to the answers and and and show that kind of stuff and remain curious, Sometimes you have to hold people accountable. Now accountability is fundamental to this element of, of trust as well. So competence is not everybody’s ingrained with it kind of thing. Right? Everybody comes to the table with their own various levels of either technical competence within their, their mission jobs, as well as in leading themselves.

Scott Clancy [00:24:35]:
Right? Like you evolve from a point of you’re leading a team you’re at that coalface level to you’re leading leaders that are leading teams, you know, like, and then it it’s, you know, you’re leading institutions that are leading teams and it gets big. But but sometimes you have to call people out. Right? Sometimes you have to say, is that right? You know, why are we doing okay. That doesn’t make sense to me. And here’s why it doesn’t make sense to me. And and and okay, well, or a week ago, you told me a, now you’re preaching at me. B, nothing’s changed in the interim. I don’t understand.

Scott Clancy [00:25:06]:
So you have to know enough. And this is why I say being professionally curious and and always trying to get more. Now exposure is important. Listening to your team is important. And getting perspectives and opinions that are not necessarily just in your lane are all essential, which which is why you have to have the personal vulnerability to ask peers. Hey, is my team messed up here? Am I messed up here? Am I not giving you what you you know, you’re the you’re the supply depot, you know, am I not servicing the end users that are out there in the group? How is it if you’re not reaching that out, if you’re not engaging with those other teams and then holding your team accountable for that? So the element of competence, it’s squishy. Right? You’re right. In a perfect regimen.

Scott Clancy [00:25:49]:
You don’t want to be the person that that’s calling them out. Like I tell you, I’ve been put in a lot of positions where you would expect, Hey, you’re a brigadier general. You shouldn’t have to say, I understand. And you’re drilling right down into that little detail. And as it makes sense to me, because that’s not what I was taught. Well, sir, things have changed since you were a officer, cadet, Lieutenant, and we do things like this. That’s fascinating. I learned something today.

Scott Clancy [00:26:16]:
The other side of the coin is, well, I don’t know. Okay. There’s a thing that I wrote about in the book. It’s called zoom perspective. And I like the concept because as leaders, I think it’s a real tool that we can use the ability to zoom in. Be right there with an individual might be 2 or 3 down like earth, the coalface or some, or a leader that’s, you know, a subordinate leader down the food chain and being with them, asking them questions about that piece of stuff like this. But then being able to zoom out and explain to them where they sit in the big picture because the ability to zoom in is gonna get you down to their level asking those right questions And you you have to have that ability to zoom in and zoom out. You have to know enough about the organization and the people in it to understand it.

Scott Clancy [00:26:58]:
And the more that you’re familiar with the organization, the more that you but you never stop studying. Right? Like, real leaders are studying the people, the organisation, the context, all the rest. It it never stops. You’re always professionalizing that piece. And that gets back to, you know, you’re doing your job. Like, it’s and this is why I find, you know, we’re still on that first question. Right? That some people, they they get caught up in that, whether it’s imposter syndrome or all the rest of those things where they revert back into those things that are not their authentic selves. Their authentic selves is they wanna do the best job they possibly can, but they divert from that track because it’s very daunting to to get into that, especially if you feel like I’m really outside of my comfort zone here.

Scott Clancy [00:27:36]:
And the more that you’re in the military, you’re gonna get thrown into those positions where you’re going to have to get comfortable that it’s going to be uncomfortable. I was thrown into so many jobs where I learned, you’re just learning on the fly, and you’re trying to read as much as possible and apply. And this is why it goes back to character. You you wanna make sure that you’re promoting people that have that determination, that intellect, that ability to get done, but are willing to be care, you know, demonstrate that care and that empathy to the people so that they can understand the context upon which it’s not just a clinical thing about I did the book knowledge and I understand how missiles approach North America. It’s do you understand there’s a crew that’s in there 24 hours a day that’s gonna be looking at those? And and if they’re sitting there longer than 8 hours, they might miss something. That might be more important than, you know, the technical piece of how that missile is gonna get radar tracked and all the rest of the stuff. You kinda have to know both, but you better be having the right character to deal with that the right way. Does that make sense, Scotty?

Scott McCarthy [00:28:35]:
Absolutely. And, I like to add on to I often say that the moment you stop learning is the moment you become useless to your organization because, you know, everything’s constantly changing, and you need to constantly evolve. You need to learn. Heck, it’s about this podcast all about. I’m constantly learning stuff every interview. Right? This is my professional development here. Each each interview is, like, something new. Drives my team nuts because I’ll come back, and I’ll start applying stuff back at work.

Scott McCarthy [00:28:59]:
And, like, where’s the boss getting this stuff from? And, like, oh, guess what? I’d like to bow boomerang back to accountability because I find accountability such an important topic. Misunderstood from my perspective. I would love to get more, from you about, you know, how we can hold teams pot in a positive way accountable, whether for actions, inactions, to make sure things are getting done. I’d love to hear more about that from you.

Scott Clancy [00:29:29]:
Well, so yeah, I’ve very, very long time in the military thought that this is something that we really don’t necessarily do well. And we don’t do it well because we’re not we don’t spend a lot of time deep thinking what it is that we want people to be accountable for. So I’ll give you an example. When I was a wing commander, I commanded, 7 squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their tactical helicopter squadrons. Their primary jobs were to work with and support the army on the army battle space. Now they’re air force units. But when they go into combat, they’re going in supporting Special Operations Forces, or Army forces predominantly. Because that’s the hard job.

Scott Clancy [00:30:15]:
If you’re sitting in the rear echelon supporting the Air Force in, you know, it’s, it’s actually a pretty simple mission as compared to if you’re right on the front lines supporting the army. So one begets the others. So what I would tell my commanding officers, cause I’m only leading, you know, you say, oh, your wing is 2,000 people. You’re leading the whole wing And the end, I’m leading 7 or 8 folks, 7 or 8 left handed colonels, maybe 1 chief because I’m giving them the direction. They’re leading the rest of those organizations. Now it’s not that simple. And we all know that. Right? You’re leading and you have to portray that example to everybody and, and, and, and, but you have to set that expectation and hold the accountability for the people who are right there with you.

Scott Clancy [00:30:54]:
So what I used to tell them, and I thought very deeply about them, is I only had 4 things that I needed them to do. I need them to lead their squadrons well, and then I define about 3 ways in which I thought that was leading well. How I thought about morale, how I thought about the effectiveness of those units, how I thought about their product up outputs. I told them that they needed to be prepared to replace me on a moment’s notice, and therefore, they had to be demonstrating to me the skills that are beyond that which they are demonstrating just in commanding those squadrons. So they had to see their squadrons as part of the larger whole within the greater wing. They had to be able to provide advice on the use of aviation on the army battlefield to an army formation, so brigade or divisional commander. And they had to demonstrate to me that they had those technical competencies, and they could demonstrate that leadership, and that they could inspire that trust with an army 1 or 2 star general. Canadian or allied or special forces are the equivalents.

Scott Clancy [00:31:56]:
Right? And then I I can’t remember what the 4th one was. But by setting that, you know, halfway through the year, I’m bringing them in saying, hey. So here’s what I’m seeing at a unit. Here’s what I’m seeing. Like, everything around what they’re doing is the character and all of the reporting back on what I see so that they’re getting a great report card or not. They’re getting a great report card. It’s just whether it’s good or not. Right? And I’m always gonna be saying here’s the top ten ways that you can improve.

Scott Clancy [00:32:22]:
And what surprised me the most was that people saying, my God, this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this. And it’s not about, hey, I’m getting feedback on my evaluation. No. It’s people telling me what I’m doing wrong and how to fix it and how I need to do better. You’re going, what are you talking about? Well, most people that rise through the ranks, they’re just told they’re perfect. And it’s only when you screw something up that you’re told that you did something bad. So what are you talking about? How did you ever learn? Now, you mentioned something about learning. We’re always learning.

Scott Clancy [00:32:56]:
I just did an interview with, Mehdi Kordi. He was he’s a British national, but he was the coach of the Dutch track cycling team, over the course of the last Olympics. Dutch team won 9 Olympic medals at the last Olympic Games. So they’re basically they were dominating the scene. And and what he would tell you as it pertains to now you’re gonna have to edit because I lost my train of thought. It’s that’s the gray hair that just coming out of me. We were talking about we’re talking about accountability. In the Dutch? Yeah.

Scott Clancy [00:33:29]:
But it was the lead up to what he told me that I can’t now I can’t remember. Anyways, Now now now you got me completely off track. But the the the big thing with accountability and these commanding officers was was all about, if you’re not that’s what he told me. Is he said, you know, if you if you’re always having success, not only are you not learning or it’s harder to learn, you might be reinforcing bad practices. So, yeah, you might have won that race in spite of the 10 errors that you made. We’re not learning anything. You’re actually reinforcing bad things. And what I find too much with our senior leaders is they’re not allowed to make mistakes.

Scott Clancy [00:34:08]:
This is going back to this impostor syndrome. You have to be perfect. You have to have the portrayal of everything. Because if not, then you’re not learning. I am a flawed individual. I was brash tactless loud mouth as a captain, as a major, and probably a lot as a Lieutenant Colonel. And I tried to temper all of those things. I knew it and I was working on it, But I was given mentorship and given the opportunity to make mistakes and unlearn from them.

Scott Clancy [00:34:35]:
And hopefully that’s what you need to set up with your systems. But if if you’re not, if you’re not holding people accountable for those things and showing them and and holding a mirror up to their face of the things that they can do to improve, why would they? Why would they why would they have a habit of working on themselves? They might talk a good game, but they’re not actually doing the hard work because they never get put in a position where that’s challenged. For me, these people were going to lead teams into combat. We’re gonna place the most treasured resource of Canada, the men and women of Canada, under their command and perhaps their lives were gonna be at stake. For me, they were gonna meet challenges that they had no idea that they they might have to face. They’re gonna be faced with things because that’s what combat does to you. That’s what that’s what operations does to you. It gives you situations that there’s no way that you could have imagined that that’s gonna happen.

Scott Clancy [00:35:25]:
Good. Then it’s the people and the training. Not because you’ve trained for that specific and, you know, thing. It’s because you’ve trained, you’ve failed, you’ve seen how they fail, you’ve seen how they learn through failure. And if you’re not testing your teams up to failure, then you’re not moving them into a position where they’re gonna learn. Which means that you’re not gonna trust them right when the muscle meets the road. People have to have an that’s why I talk about aspirational goals. Because accountability and aspirational goals, they sit on this same plane.

Scott Clancy [00:35:54]:
If you set challenge goals, I always used to say to people, how do you tell someone, how do you train someone to do tension ups? You tell them that the standard is 20. I can only do 2, but you gotta get to 20. A few months later, they’ll be doing 10 and you go, k. Good enough. Right? Like, you have to be challenging. You have to give them a doesn’t mean that you’re gonna, you know, yell and scream and demand more than there possibly can, but you’re gonna have to set challenge goals for them because they can’t have the idea that they can fail. The team has to be able to succeed. The magic, especially with military organizations, is the team.

Scott Clancy [00:36:25]:
It’s not the leader. The leader is just trying to harness that stuff. The the real juice here is the team.

Scott McCarthy [00:36:31]:
It’s awesome. Had a thought now I lost it. But regardless

Scott Clancy [00:36:36]:
It’s a Scott thing. It’s a Scott thing.

Scott McCarthy [00:36:38]:
It’s a Scott thing. But I want to go back because you mentioned this very keyword, which I find is associated with everything you talk about, and that was mentorship. And, obviously, you’ve written the book, which is tied to this very important thing, and you’ve hinted at it that we in the in the forces don’t necessarily do well, and guess what? I will 100% agree with you. Like, people’s like, who’s your mentor? I’m like, I I don’t know. I’m like, no. Like,

Scott Clancy [00:37:07]:
you know,

Scott McCarthy [00:37:07]:
how am I supposed to know? Like, did someone say, hey. I’m your mentor, or is it just something that I’d like, hey. Call up somebody and go, hey. Can you be my mentor? Or is it just, you know, ad hoc? I don’t know. Like, I just kinda do kinda what you said right near the beginning of the show. Doing the best I can with what I got. Alright? But I would love to dive deeper into that topic because I loved when you said the part about when you were talking about your CEO is just like, hey. You gotta be able to replace me.

Scott McCarthy [00:37:33]:
And out there in in the business world, I find and speaking to others is like, oh, that’s touchy feely. I’m like, well, why? Well, if they can replace me, then I can get fired. No. No. No. No. No. No.

Scott McCarthy [00:37:44]:
That’s that’s not what that’s what it is. Well, maybe maybe you deserve. Like, if you’re not doing a good enough job, like, hello. But the reality is, like, hey. If you gotta take a knee, if you gotta take a day off, you gotta take a week off, like, someone’s gonna back you up, take take care of you while you’re at, or maybe you can progress. So I’d love I’d love for you to dive deeper into mentorship. What are some pitfalls of mentorship? What are some ways forward that we can actually properly mentor our people? I’d love to hear more from you on that topic.

Scott Clancy [00:38:13]:
Yeah. So Scott, I think you’re you’re really onto something here. And the translation between and and I wanna step out of the military and I wanna stick with this business analogy because I think I think it’s gonna be really illuminating. You know, talk about this and then look back on the military example for a sec. Business people that I’ve talked with done workshops with, you know, I do some executive coaching and talk to people in a variety of nations about this kind of stuff. And what you’ve told me is very much what I hear from them. You know, I’m not training people to replace me. That that’s a real dangerous space for me to be in because that might cost me my job.

Scott Clancy [00:38:50]:
And to which my answer is, what? I don’t know if you want to be part of that organization then. And they’re like, what what are you talking about? I said, well, I’m not if this is all cut through, if this is all about who’s the best and who’s making the money and all the rest of stuff. Yeah. That’s not a culture that I’d want to be involved with. Now, easy for me to say military guy, my job’s not to make money and all the rest of stuff, but the cultures of organizations that I see that are the most successful, they are not focused on that. And they’re not focused on that one individual who’s bringing in the most sales and and and and that’s the because that dog eat dog, that’s only gonna last a certain amount of time. And what I see from the vast majority of people and one of the reasons why I wrote the book is what I was hearing from a lot of people who were whether in business or in government, and in the military is that leaders are completely disconnected from the people that are working for them. They don’t understand.

Scott Clancy [00:39:45]:
They don’t get us. They don’t and the leaders of these organizations, whether it’s executive or middle management or frontline, are saying there’s absolutely no loyalty in these people. They’re all transaction based. Pay me my money, and then I’m moving on to the next job. And How do you square those 2 things that are moving 2 violently different directions? And I kept on coming back to the same thing. So how are you preparing and developing these people to replace you in your position? I’m not going to do that. Right. Your response.

Scott Clancy [00:40:15]:
I’m not going to do that because then they’re challenging me. I said, are they? You want cultures in organizations where people go, I love coming here. I love coming to work. I learn something all the time. The opportunity that is being given to me, I would take an I have to admit as director general of Air Radianist for the Royal Canadian Air Force, I heard this all the time. You know, the reasons why people want to leave the service compete with the fact that they love serving and they love doing the job and they love serving the Canadian people and doing however, spousal employment, the constant moves. Like, I’ll go through all the rest of things that that wane over time that impede, you know, that kind of service, that kind of loyalty. People want cultures and organizations where they are challenged, where they can advance, where their development is seen by the organization as the thing.

Scott Clancy [00:41:05]:
If you’re not in, you know, a live or die situation, which, you know, often, especially in the military, you’re not. It’s only very small periods of time that you’re in that. Then your job as a leader is to develop the people below you to advance and to take on that experience, giving them all the benefit of the experience that perhaps you never had. You know? When I was that in that position, I would have wanted to have this and I got it afterwards. I’m gonna give the people that now. Okay. I’m gonna go out here and do this. And people are saying, yeah, but then they might be better than me.

Scott Clancy [00:41:36]:
Okay. You’re going to have to get over yourself a little bit. If you’re going to create a good culture. First off I have, 3 or 4 commanding officers of mine that are going to be clearly promoted beyond the rank that I ever got to. They were better leaders than me when they’re left. If I compare them as a Lieutenant Colonel to Misla, my job was not to be better than them and to advance up ahead of them. My job was to enable them the best way that they can. So, so I say that leadership and coaching are emotional trust relationships.

Scott Clancy [00:42:11]:
Steve Nash, gave me that quote. No. Not the basketball player. And I know you don’t play basketball. Steve Nash was an MVP Canadian guy, played basketball. There’s also a lieutenant colonel in the Royal Canadian Regiment. But I

Scott McCarthy [00:42:22]:
I know Steve.

Scott Clancy [00:42:22]:
You know Steve? Okay. Steve’s doing his PhD on on leadership and things like this. Very smart guy. Steve and I were at the Fort Frontenac together. Great dude. He coined that phrase. I love it. Let’s talk about relationships.

Scott Clancy [00:42:36]:
If you have a relationship with someone, you think about that. It’s not, it’s not just a coworker. It’s not just, I’m going to have a relationship with this person. Picture your your parents or a sibling or your kids. Well, they might do something wrong. They might do something to piss you off. If they’re kids, they’re constantly doing something that’s upsetting. You know, I could keep on going because you’re setting boundaries.

Scott Clancy [00:42:57]:
You could do all the rest of those things. But does that mean when they do that, that you’re gonna start compromising the relationship? Now it depends on the travesty of the event, you know, all the rest of the stuff. But cast that aside, the relationship is actually up here, and whatever transactional thing you’re doing with them is down here. I didn’t like that you didn’t say thank you when I paid for dinner yesterday. This isn’t, I hate you and I’m never gonna speak to you again. So if you place that relationship above whatever the transactional thing that’s going on, number 1, that means that individual is important to you. Okay. So that’s why I like it.

Scott Clancy [00:43:28]:
It’s an emotional trust relationship. Secondly, it’s emotional when you’re leading people, when you’re coaching them, you’re going to have to connect with them on an emotional level. So if you’re going to mentor them, you could give them tips, you could give them ideas, you can help them through their career, you can do all that stuff. But if you’re not able to connect with them on an emotional level, getting to know them, understanding what their needs and desires are, then then they’re never going to respond to that mentorship. You know, I could I could ask you a bunch of questions and I bet you I’d go, well, what about haven’t you had a conversation with this person? He said, well, yeah, I did. And maybe he kinda but he never connected with you, really. And I’d say, I think he was trying to mentor you a little bit, but I don’t think he broke through the ice Scott’s, you know, icy veneer or what whatever it is. Right? The idea here is, 1, we don’t teach mentoring and coaching techniques.

Scott Clancy [00:44:15]:
We we don’t in the Canadian Air Force. I’ll give you a little tidbit. The British Army started teaching mentor and coaching skills to their professional development instructors at each one of the levels of their professional development system for their officers and NCOs as that was output of their center for army leadership. And those skills started propagating those mentoring skills started propagating because at each level you’re being exposed to them. And then you could ask yourself, well, when do you know that it’s actually implemented? You know, when you’re doing it and it’s being done to you. So when you recognize both sides of that coin, you go, Okay. Too often, we expect, receive, Hey, I’m gonna be on the receiving team. So I want mentorship.

Scott Clancy [00:45:01]:
And what I would say is you want mentorship, start giving it. Because then that expectation of how you deliver that is going to be what you expect from above. Then, then you might even have the courage to say to a boss, a senior leader, someone who you feel connected with. Hey, here’s my expectation of what I think you should be helping me with. Cause I’m challenged with this and I’ve watched this happen live where people voice that frustration to very senior leaders in the air force. And they get very pointed, not just answers mentorship. Here’s where we go. Here’s the thing.

Scott Clancy [00:45:36]:
And some of that mentorship, and I will, I will tell you people don’t wanna hear that. And that’s another part mentorship isn’t, hey, you’re doing great. That’s cheerleader stuff. You want, you know, I forget who coined that phrase, but they’re friendters. They’re not mentors. They’re friendters. You’re doing great. And I love you.

Scott Clancy [00:45:53]:
You’re blah blah blah. Okay. Great. You want those? You want everybody in your that’s fine. Mentor’s gonna be you don’t have French. You don’t have a master’s degree. You’re competing with people that are fluent and have master’s degrees. You’re not gonna rank high enough on the merit list to meet the next round of promotions.

Scott Clancy [00:46:11]:
So what are we gonna do about that? How do you wanna approach that? If your reaction is defensive and all the reasons why you couldn’t and found and all the rest of those things, This individual is giving you exactly what you need, holding a mirror up to your face and saying, hey. Listen. This is where we and let’s work together on that stuff. If you’re not willing to take this so this is why I’m saying you got to best way to train yourself to do it is to give it the techniques associated with this. Connecting with people on a personal level. And there’s lots of skills in there, communication skills, especially listening, but it’s also having a network and exposing them to networks and experiences and ideas, all with the idea of their development. Your mission is tied to their development. This is the part where in business, I don’t think they get this.

Scott Clancy [00:46:57]:
You need to be able to tie individuals’ mission, what they’re accomplishing on a day to day level, and into the future to their personal development. Listen, I know you’re doing accounting and this job and all stuff like this, but here’s what I need you to do. See this project that’s coming up. I need you to take on this because it’s not just doing the accounting piece. It’s now organizing this interfacing. There was this technical, and then I’m gonna need you to brief these. Isn’t that your job? It is. But I need you to expose to this because, you know, this is the next piece in your development so that when you do get the opportunity to come into my job, you’ve had that exposure.

Scott Clancy [00:47:31]:
We can get the and we can learn from that. I need you to take this on. I don’t wanna take this on. Well, then you don’t wanna expose yourself to to be able to advance. Organizations that do this, they become the best cultured organizations because people see their own personal evolution. And we should not think about, well, then people are just gonna leave the organization. Who’s your best recruit? Military, civilian, government. Who’s your best recruiter? It’s a person who’s left your organization who goes, you have to go work here.

Scott Clancy [00:48:01]:
I learned so much. I was prepared to replace my boss, but quite honestly, he wasn’t going anywhere. But the then the opportunities opened up because I had all of this exposure, and I was able to develop my and and then I just went on to the next thing. But, man, the mentorship, the coaching, the framework, the culture, go and work here. It will set you up for success for the next 20 years. That’s what you seek out. That’s what you try to mentor into your people. Now does that getting after what you were talking about, Scott?

Scott McCarthy [00:48:27]:
100% and beyond. You you hinted at something which is a bit of my experiences, like, hey, you need to do this because I did that. I no. No. I don’t. Actually, I have no interest in doing any of that, but yet people felt that was mentorship back in the day. Right? Like, they were like, oh, yeah. That’s mentorship.

Scott McCarthy [00:48:46]:
No. You’re gonna do this course and become this type of person because that’s what I was, and I see you and me, and, like, you’re just replaying you, but younger you. Oh, it’s like, hey. How about we have a conversation about what I want?

Scott Clancy [00:49:00]:
So you are bang on. And remember at the beginning, I was saying we have this pedantic track that the military says, here’s here’s the formula for you to get from, you know, captain to general, general officer. Everybody’s path is different. Everybody’s wants and desires are different. Everybody’s capabilities are different. And if we can get jiggy with that, then we’re gonna manage people and character more along those lines. Look, if everybody’s not an operator, everybody’s not tuned to operations. Like, when I became a 2 star general, the idea was defend the continent, see the defense against our major adversaries globally, prepare our forces to be able to counter those threats, be in a position to advise government and both governments on the advance of those threats, and then be able to direct the reactions to mitigate the if you’re in crisis or in conflict, you know, those effects.

Scott Clancy [00:49:59]:
That’s big stuff. Right? You know what? I’ve written papers on the coming war with Russia because it’s coming folks. Right? And I can keep on going. Canada shouldn’t be in NATO. We could keep on going. We have to bulk up North American defense because that’s my but there’s a lot of people that that’s not their gig. You know, I I took military and strategic studies when I was a young officer cadet in college, and I employ it, you know, when I’m a 2 star general, understanding the global sphere and global stability, nuclear operations, command and control, all the rest of it. Maybe that’s maybe acquisition is your thing.

Scott Clancy [00:50:31]:
Maybe military personnel and the military personnel system and how that, I don’t know, but everybody’s got their own little niches. Let’s let them go. The problem is, is if we whitewash, everybody has to have the same skills, the same things they have to do in the same way, then we’re not allowing for the individuality that is every person’s transparent self coming through in the things that they do. There’s gonna be some things that we’re gonna demand of people, some bars and standards of of experience that that we’re not but the more that we can broaden those things, the more that we can get away from, it has to be this pedantic way to the top. The more that we’ll be starting to mentor people and listening to them. Here’s one of the things that I will tell you, and and we’re back to military example. But when I was director general of air readiness for the RCAF, you know, I was responsible for the appointment and the merit system of the air force as it feeds into the chief of military personnel, the bigger central system. And we had a lot of officers coming out of command appointments that we would say, okay, here’s where you’re going next.

Scott Clancy [00:51:37]:
Here’s how the change and their answer was, nope, I’m finished. What are you talking about? You walked into commands, did you get so they were they were lying to everybody. They weren’t being transparent with us, and we were feeding them the, you know, the same well, we don’t know what you’re gonna do next. And, no, we’re keeping them in the mushroom factory. Right? The lights are off, and we’re feeding them poop. And we wonder why we’re not having an open, frank conversation. And then when I pick up the phone and I call these these folks, I’d say, hey. Listen.

Scott Clancy [00:52:03]:
This is the thing. This is the deal. They’re going, why am for the first time, are we having a, you know, an honest conversation about this? Now I always ran, you know, the people that I was mentoring with, you know, very frank way of doing it. That that’s that’s not the standard within large organizations because it’s easier to blame. Sorry. You didn’t get I thought you were doing great, but I guess meanwhile, the person’s missing 3 or 4 things that are essential for their advancement that you knew darn well that there was no way that they were, they were gonna advance. Well, why aren’t you being honest with them? Again, we’re that accountability has to be a two way street. So, you know, to me, I think there’s there’s a lot of things that we could do better with this with systems.

Scott Clancy [00:52:45]:
And for leaders, it starts with connecting emotionally with the people. Now you said it yourself. Why aren’t people listening to me what I want? You know, I used to sit down. I used to ask people and it’s in my book. I used to ask them like 5 things every time that I’d I’d meet with them on our career. You know, thing. We talk about geography. We talk about the next step.

Scott Clancy [00:53:04]:
We talk about areas in their portfolio and their their experience that they might be missing. We talk about things that they really wanna do that that they haven’t had the opportunity to do. And then I used to ask them, how do you want it to end? Now it’s very interesting to talk to a young pre staff college major who you say, how do you want it to end? They go, well, sir, I’ve only got like 15 years in or something. I don’t understand. Well, how do you see your career ending? And have you thought about that? Have you talked to your family about that? Have you talked like we can just keep on, but the answer, whatever answer comes out of that is going to have to be thoughtful. And then on an emotional level, person’s going to go, wow. They are actually, they’re wondering how I see my, how I see my film, how I see, you know, I, I really don’t care about what the answer is, but the answer is something that you have to answer for yourself. And that might change over time.

Scott Clancy [00:53:59]:
Now I’m connecting with the individual. I’m using a framework to allow myself to connect on an emotional level. Remember we talked about trust. Care is what I consider to be the number one component of trust. I have to demonstrate, people will not know what you said to them. They’ll remember very little of what acts you did around them, but they’re definitely gonna remember whether or not you care.

Scott McCarthy [00:54:21]:
That’s awesome. Absolutely. I love it. Gonna slowly wind down here, but I do got one more question or you know, I’m sure I got more questions. But I recently heard a quote. I’m not big I’m not a big quote guy, but this one really resonated with me. I think you’ll like it too, and that is experiences lessons you learn. Wisdom is learning lessons or sorry.

Scott McCarthy [00:54:41]:
Experience is learning from your failures. Wisdom is learning from other people’s failures. So what I’d like for you to do is share some wisdom with me here. So maybe that’s something that a mistake you made in the past. Maybe that was a, you know, really difficult situation that you’ve you you saw yourself in that you you had to lead your team through. I’d love for you to share something along those lines with us.

Scott Clancy [00:55:03]:
Yeah. So I think that’s a really that’s a really neat quote, Scott.

Scott McCarthy [00:55:06]:
Isn’t it? I I

Scott Clancy [00:55:08]:
I like it. I I’m not sure that I’m a wise person in in any way, shape, or form. I think I’m I got wiser with the gray hair. Obviously, since I’ve left the military, I’m a lot more reflective on a lot of the things. A lot of the stuff in the book is about explaining where I think the errors that I made and how I learned from those things. But I never considered myself to be a very wise person. Lessons learned It’s kind of we’re dancing around, you know, how you learn things. And do I have to experience something to learn from those? Some things you have to, it’s very visceral, right? In the military, we talk about the bond of the person that’s beside you as you’re walking into.

Scott Clancy [00:55:47]:
Let’s just use combat as as the great crucible that we walk through. But for all teams within military organizations, it’s, I would die for you. I would die for you. And I know you would do the same for me. That, that bond that ties you together, it gets tested. Right? But you have to learn to be able to, to see whether those bonds are gonna withstand the test of, of the largest things. So lessons learned, we put military organizations into them. We we’ve what I the first thing I would say is you have to test your organizations, not necessarily to the breaking point, but at least to the maximum of their capacity so that they can see this.

Scott Clancy [00:56:28]:
Now there’s a discipline here. And I say this to all organizations that the dichotomy between people and mission. Right? You’ve heard the phrase, right? People first, mission always, mission first, people always, which one is it? I really don’t care because if you have a really honest conversation about how the importance is between those two things, you realize that they’re they’re essential. The thing that you have though when we’re talking about, you know, learning lessons is that if I care about the the people and the mission, testing that organization doesn’t mean that I’m gonna push people to the max, and then that’s the expectation until further notice. So cut 10% out of your budget, give me a 150% for this year, And that’s a surge, you do that surge, and then they come back the next year and goes, good, you’re able to do that. That’s now the norm, and you’re going, and you ignore the Herculean effort that it took to get people and then, you know, everybody in the organisation goes, really? Really? Like, a no recognition, like, oh, good job. And then but next year, same shit. What? And then they’re gone.

Scott Clancy [00:57:28]:
Like, they’ve you’ve you’ve you’ve lost them. You’ve lost the trust with them. They they don’t because they don’t believe anything you’re saying anymore because that is and business organizations, same thing. Cut 10% or else, you know, and then you cut 10%. Okay. That’s the new norm because you can do that with that budget and you go, but I bucksheet 3 things in a crude fine, like all the things around. Okay. So if you’re gonna learn lessons in those, first thing is you have to be transparent with people.

Scott Clancy [00:57:52]:
Okay. This this is the way it is. But when people actually draw attention to themselves, and a friend of mine used to use the analogy, you know, you’re walking along the forest and you fall down, and someone sees you, and they say, hey. You fell down. And you say, yes. I fell down. Okay. Hey.

Scott Clancy [00:58:08]:
What can we learn from that? Okay. Oh, here’s this thing. We tripped over that. Okay. And you can use that analogy in business and military, anything. It’s a pitfall. Someone saw it. Someone saw you mess it up.

Scott Clancy [00:58:18]:
Okay. You’ve learned from it. They’ve learned from it. Okay. We carry on the real good organizations, real good cultures are ones where you fall down. Nobody sees you. And you raise your hand and shout at the top of your lungs. Hey, I just fell down.

Scott Clancy [00:58:35]:
I don’t understand what’s going on here. And and and and and. Okay. Now your analogy is that’s still learning. Wisdom gets from looking at it from someone else. I don’t I’m not sure that I agree because, for example, we’ve learned lessons and then we relearned them in Afghanistan because we made other errors. And history is a a brutal teacher and it tends to repeat itself, you know, and there’s significant cost there. But I don’t think necessarily that’s wisdom.

Scott Clancy [00:59:03]:
What I think about wisdom is being able to look at organization structures, people and say, I think there’s a better way of doing all of this and making this homogenous together. Being able to fit these things in a much more holistic fashion and explaining it in a simple way. To me, that’s wisdom, right? To me, wisdom is my friend, Rick Finley, who says, just do your job. Someone else is gonna take care of your next job. Trust that they’ve got your best interest because if you’re doing everything right to try and be the best person that you can, best officer that you can, the best business person that you can, then someone’s gonna take care of you. In the end, that’s kind of wisdom sent because you can you can build a life and a career around that kind of stuff. So to me, those are the kind of differences. In in my career, I think the biggest learning moment for me came up when I was given the responsibility to prepare the forces to go to Afghanistan and our helicopter forces, as I’ve mentioned before, you know, we didn’t have any Chinooks in Canada.

Scott Clancy [01:00:18]:
We are leasing them from the United States. We’re gonna pick them up at Bagram Air Force Base and fly them. Like, it it was all of the things of saying, so the crews are never gonna fly together. They’re not gonna know it. Nobody’s gonna work together. Everything’s gonna be virtual right up to the point where you actually send these units over and then sustain it for multiple years. Every fabric that we did up to that was, you know, I understood the building blocks of getting ourselves to that point. This was here’s a wicked problem that we have no idea how this is gonna come about.

Scott Clancy [01:00:48]:
The the what I learned in that moment and for the next 3 years, 4 years when we had to sustain and deploy those forces was I wasn’t gonna solve any of these problems. But man, the team that I was gonna surround myself with was. And what I was gonna demand out of that team was going to be excellence. But I was gonna recognize, you know, where people needed breaks. We were gonna take care of ourselves as a team. But that the problems themselves were not gonna be solved on by me. I had to give the team a vision. My boss, the the the commander of the wing at the time, and then the air force gave us the vision.

Scott Clancy [01:01:23]:
And then we were gonna take that on. Chunk that up, work hard because it’s hard work, figure those things out, but allow the team to actually work. You have to release enough, you know, the horses need to be able to run. And if you release that intellect and value every person on that team, you’ll be so, so enamored with with what you get back. So to me, that was the sheer wisdom. That was the point where I went, okay. Now I really see this. I’ve led teams.

Scott Clancy [01:01:54]:
I’ve I’ve worked hard of intellect, logic, tactics, got all that stuff. This was the first time where I have no idea how to solve these problems, but I know they have to be solved. People are dying on those roads in Afghanistan. We have to get helicopters in there. How are we gonna do this? The answer is not or not. The answer is you’re gonna overcome that, but she didn’t know how. Okay. Glenn, let’s give the the team that problem, and the team solve the problem.

Scott McCarthy [01:02:16]:
It’s awesome. Love it. And and as a green army guy, thank you for those Chinooks in Kandahar. The guy who took them many times. I appreciate those birds

Scott Clancy [01:02:27]:
very much. Me. All all I did was write and sign orders and and, you know, do opophals and things like this. It was it was it was the troops that that get that stuff done, and they solved every single a lot of the problems that we solved in that mission was not solved at headquarters at various levels. We gave the framework and then we dumped these problems down on the units and said, hey, how do you see this? And they said, well, because once you get that input from the bottom end, you go, okay, good. Yeah. Give us to that. Go away and keep doing your training.

Scott Clancy [01:02:56]:
Because they knew what right needed to look like. And they only needed to give us a sense of what that needed to look like. Okay. We’ll work out the rest of the framework in here. Understanding concepts like risk, and being able to characterize that stuff, being demanding over top of standards and things like this. And you learn, right? And setting organizations, like we always said, when we’re going into OPPA valves for those helicopter units, I care that they know the tactics. I care that they they’ve following the procedures and all the rest of stuff. We have people that are verifying that stuff, but I really care that they’re learning organization.

Scott Clancy [01:03:25]:
So give them 3 or 4 things that they would never have seen during their training because I wanna see how they’re gonna react to that. I wanna see how the leadership is gonna react to that. I wanna see, you know, I wanna see whether the CEO’s blood’s gonna boil when I tell him that one of his pilots just did something really, really, really, really wrong. I’m not saying that the pilot did anything wrong. I’m just gonna put that in because I wanna see what that guy’s real if you’re not pushing these people to the edge of those envelopes, you’re not gonna see what that true character is, character based leadership. As you said, this is the stuff that you wanna test.

Scott McCarthy [01:03:54]:
That’s awesome. This has been fantastic, Scott. I really appreciate it. The final thing for the show before we wrap up here is, how can people find you, follow you, grab a copy of your book? You hinted at it or mentioned it a number of times. It’s shameless plug. Have at it. All about you right now.

Scott Clancy [01:04:11]:
So thanks for that, Scott. I I really appreciate it. You people can go to www.scottclancy.ca. That’s my website. If you do forward slash book from there, you’ll get to the universal book link. It’s on Amazon. It’s on audiobook. If you wanna listen to, you know, a bunch of hours of me talking because I actually recorded it myself.

Scott Clancy [01:04:28]:
Funny enough, my son listened to my record. I would have thought that was the one person that did not wanna hear my voice in his ear for hours. And he liked it. It’s about coaching and leading. It’s, you know, it’s my experience. I coach just, all the way up to university level basketball. So I see the nexus between us having to coach our teams as well as lead. And it, has a lot of stories about how I messed up and tips and techniques.

Scott Clancy [01:04:50]:
I cover fundamentals in the first half and tactics, techniques, and procedures in the other half. I also have a a leadership blog slash forum. It’s called Synapsis, like connecting the Synapsis in your mind. I’ve interviewed, you know, CDSs like Tom Lawson and chief of the general staff, the UK military, but also civilian coaches, fellow Newfoundlander who’s a college buddy of mine who’s now the CEO of a major company down in, Las Vegas, things like this. And we cover people and concepts and actual techniques and tools that people can use in the forms of leadership and, coaching. So, and you can get that off of the website as well and a lot of tools, and it’s all free. So away you go.

Scott McCarthy [01:05:32]:
Awesome. And for listeners, always, it’s easy. Just go to the show notes to this page. All links are in the show notes. You can grab them, one click link, and boom, you’re there. So, again, thanks for listening. Scott, thank you for taking time. You could say you’re a, you’re just a retired guy, but I I see you doing lots in your retired life.

Scott McCarthy [01:05:48]:
So thank you for taking time at your schedule.

Scott Clancy [01:05:50]:
I appreciate it so much. Thanks for doing what you do, Scott. I really appreciate it.