Military Strategies for Unwavering Persistence | Scott McCarthy | Episode 323

Scott McCarthy [00:00:01]:
Yes. It is your chief leadership officer, Scott McCarthy, and welcome to this week’s edition of military leadership insights where I dive into my 23 and counting years worth of military experience to bring you leadership goodness. And this week we’re gonna be talking about strategies for persistence. And why is that? Leading ain’t easy. Leadership is difficult. It’s tough. It’s a grind. It’s a slog, and I’m probably not selling it to you right now.

Scott McCarthy [00:00:40]:
But no doubt if you’re leading a team regardless of that’s 2 people, 1 person, or 200 or 1,000 you do it because you believe in what you’re doing. Some days it’s just easier than others. So let’s dive into how us in the military tackle that and how we ensure that you know what not every day feels like a grind and a slog regardless of all the cliche sayings that we may have. Alright? And in particular, there are 4 different kind of strategies that we use within the military to ensure that 1, we as leaders and 2, our soldiers are persistent in achieving what it is we set out to achieve. And the first thing the first strategy is actually being clear on what it is we’re trying to achieve. It is mission clarity. You see, we need to ensure we have a clear mission. It’s not like we get

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to say, Hey, just go do some things.

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Right? That doesn’t help you when you’re trying to lead team when you have limited resources time money personnel what have you It doesn’t help you to go and do things when you don’t know what to do. When it’s not clear what it is that your superiors want you to do.

Scott McCarthy [00:02:09]:
Alright? They just say, hey increase sales. Okay. You know increase profits.

Scott McCarthy [00:02:18]:
Great. Increase the bottom line. Okay. Sure. But what is it that we’re actually trying to achieve here? Right? This is the important thing. Mission clarity is super important. This is why we get into the nitty gritty. Alright.

Scott McCarthy [00:02:37]:
So when we have a clear mission, so for the military, it could be take this specific objective by this time that is a super clear mission and we also give the vision that’s driving that mission Understand the bigger picture. Where does our piece our little piece fit into the larger picture with what’s going on because our mission is just a small slice of the bigger mission, which is a smaller slice of even bigger mission and you get the picture. So understanding these how these slices fit in actually help us understand the bigger picture, understand why our mission is important to everybody else. So in the real world, if you tell the sales folks that they need to increase their sales by 10% by the end of the fiscal year because we’re trying to drive our profit margins and therefore take that revenue and that capital and invest it in another area to open and expand now we’re talking now we have mission clarity now we have a vision that we’re going after and as military leaders communication of that mission

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is super important We make sure that

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everybody understands what that mission is and what the vision is. We communicate that through our orders format. We talk to people and we tell them to their eyes face to face. It’s not an email. Okay.

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It’s not just written down. We will talk to people

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face to face and let them know what that mission is, what the vision is, what our intent is. Worst case scenario, we do it over the phone slash radio. That’s worst case scenario. So you have to ensure that everyone is on board because talking to them face to face enables them

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see your enthusiasm. See how important this is. It enables them to ask questions, clarify, to make

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sure that they understand, and you can confirm that they understand by giving it. Alright? So that’s strategy number 1. Strategy number 2 is setting goals and milestones. And this goes into the same boat within mission clarity. It all links together. Setting goals and milestones enables us as military to continue to push like hey it’s just a little bit further we

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can do this a little bit

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more we can do this pilots use that when they do their flight planning. They call them waypoints. Well, areas where they go check yep. Waypoint. And it’s just a milestone. They get to it. You see you hear goals and milestones a lot in project management,

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but you can do goals and milestones in any type of business, any type of scenario. Okay?

Scott McCarthy [00:05:51]:
It’s how you break it down. Big problems break it down into smaller problems. And by that, you’re setting short term and long term goals. And we use that to build motivation because when people start getting you know tired and start grumbling like oh it’s gonna happen it’s human nature it’s natural but they get tired and they start losing focus

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You know, time of a team.

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Now turn around and look back,

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and we start using all these short term, medium term goals

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as reminders of how far we’ve come on.

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It’s like the analogy you’re hiking

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up a 10000 foot you know a 10000 feet high mountain. Well, every couple thousand feet stop and look back and you’ll see at

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every interval you’re hiring you

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go oh wow yeah I did that okay it’s just you know another 1,000 feet

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go up turn around look back oh wow yep the view is even better up here

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now I can’t wait to keep going Using goals and milestones gives that dopamine

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hit. Right? Yes, we achieve something. Let’s go for the next thing. Keeps you focused, keeps you motivated. That’s strategy number 2.

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Strategy number 3 is training and preparation. Military, we are known for training. We are known for preparation and training. That is, if anything, what we do, that’s what we do,

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But there’s a reason for it because when times get

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tough you don’t rise to the occasion, but you fall back on the training that you’ve endured. So when we when we go through rigorous training it builds up confidence. It crushes impostor syndrome because it enables us to do things which we thought we couldn’t do before in a safe environment. First time we use a gun is not

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on operations. We do it on the range. We start off small. We’re doing it targets, close, back, move a little

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bit further back and we add in different drills such as changing magazines on the fly maybe running to align the next step going on what we call live fire ranges where we have people and equipment moving, and we’re firing, and we’re using our weapons. You see this training is rigorous, but it’s preparing us for operations. It’s building us up to do the real thing in a controlled and safe environment. That enables us to be persistent because we’ve taken away all these uncertainty of how this is going to go because we’ve been there.

Scott McCarthy [00:08:44]:
Been there. You can use this in your leadership journey.

Scott McCarthy [00:08:48]:
Another way that you can also use this in your leadership journey training preparations through visualization. Visualizing what you’re about to do, whether that’s have a tough meeting, maybe give a speech, do a presentation, is almost just as good as doing the real thing. So you get those rep repetitions in. That’s training and preparation. Next one, and sorry I said 4, it was actually 5. My apologies. I guess I should have done better preparation. Anyway, the next thing is is adaptability and flexibility.

Scott McCarthy [00:09:26]:
We have a saying in the military and that is no plan survives contact with the enemy or as well it’s been said enemy gets a vote. Well, the story is is things aren’t gonna go to the way they’re

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supposed to go. They’re going to go to not to plan, and that’s okay. That’s why as

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a leader you’re paid the big bucks.

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That’s why you have the job, the role. Your job is to remain agile and flexible being able to adapt in the faces of challenges. Okay? Because you’re gonna face challenges. It’s certain things are going to happen. If you remain rigid,

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non flexible to the change in the situation, then you are not leading your team properly. K? So many leaders out there think that they cannot actually change a decision. The reality is they’re so wrong. You can change a decision when you’re faced with new information. This is being adaptable and flexible. You have new information come in, take that in. Alright. The situation has changed, and therefore, as a leader, you now have a new decision to make.

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Do you continue on the same path,

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or do you just to go after

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the outcome in a different manner? Again, keeping that mission and that clarity of mission to mind as you move forward is super crucial because that is what you’re going after.

Scott McCarthy [00:11:07]:
Alright? But do not do it and hold on just for the sake of it to quote

Scott McCarthy [00:11:15]:
unquote save face. That’s such the wrong attitude. That’s not being adaptable. That’s not being flexible. That’s definitely not being a leader. And then finally, the 5th wave strategy that we use to remain persistent, team cohesion and support. No one does anything in their lives by themselves. It’s impossible.

Scott McCarthy [00:11:41]:
In the military we build high performing teams. We get people together. When we go through training for example together that brings the team together. Going through challenges and overcoming them will bring the team together. Enabling that psychological safe environment for your team to come together, alright,

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and support each other. That’s what we do. That’s how we build teams.

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Put them through tough training,

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get them to rely on each other, and then what happens is that they build the bonds. And,

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as you say, as you’ve seen in

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the movies and the shows, we’ll do anything for each other because

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we have that team cohesion and that support up to and including some people giving their lives for their friends.

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You’re not in a war environment, so you don’t have

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to go that far, but keep that in mind how might you build that team cohesion

Scott McCarthy [00:12:38]:
okay enable that psychologically safe environment enable that coming together so people can build those relationships often

Scott McCarthy [00:12:50]:
that’s when you’re not talking about work stuff, but rather personal things, family life, bringing people together for meals, getting to break bread together is actually a great way. Maybe you do something new, something different. Do a team building exercise where none of you have the skills naturally. It’s not part of what you do, so it’s something difficult. Okay these are just ideas for team cohesion but you get the normal story those are 5 strategies quick easy dirty for you that us in the military that we use for persistence. Those, again, are mission clarity, setting goals and milestones, training preparation, adaptability and flexibility, and then finally, team cohesion and support. Alright, ladies and gentlemen? And that is it for this week’s edition of military leadership insights. I’m your host, your chief leadership officer, Scott McCarthy.

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I’m here for you

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to help you. If you need any support on your leadership journey, don’t

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be shy. Reach out to me. You can find me at lead don’t boss.com. Until next time.

Scott McCarthy [00:14:04]:
Take care now.