Performance under pressure – lessons from a military veteran

Host: 

Hi, and welcome to another episode of NousCast, the podcast of Nous Group, an international management consultancy. Today, we're pleased to bring you a conversation on leadership and how it can help organisations to achieve high performance under real pressure. In today's episode, we've got a very special guest, Dan McDaniel. Dan is a highly experienced former military leader who was an officer in the Australian army for 34 years, half of which he spent serving in special forces, the SAS. In his last military role as a major general, Dan was seconded to the United States Army as the deputy commander of their Pacific army. An organisation of more than a hundred thousand people spread across seven time zones and overseeing a budget of 2.25 billion Australian dollars.

During his military service, Dan was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal and the Distinguished Service Cross, was made a member of The Order of Australia and was awarded the United States Legion of Merit. Dan is now a principal at Nous. In conversation with Dan will be Tim Orton, the founder, CEO, and Managing Principal of Nous Group. Tim leads major transformation programs and is a trusted thought partner to executives in government, universities, and the private sector. In their conversation, Dan explains how his experience in the military offers lessons for leaders in a variety of sectors seeking to achieve high performance under pressure. As you listen to their conversation, we encourage you to think about what it means for the industry you are in. Let's get into it.

Tim Orton:

Hi, Dan. Thank you for being part of this discussion. I'm really looking forward to it. Just for the listeners' benefit, you have a deep experience in defence, but tell us a bit about the roles you've held, please.

Dan McDaniel:

Thanks Tim, and it is great. I'm really, really glad to be able to have this discussion. There's a saying that in the military, you might have one career, but you have many jobs and I've had some fairly diverse roles through the course of my time in the military. I've led from small to medium-sized tactical teams on military operations in theatres of war overseas, in pretty extreme environments, and a lot of them without precedent, things that were new to Australia and Australian service people at the time. I think at that tactical level, that's where I learned a lot of the very valuable leadership lessons and had some of the really formative experiences.

A lot of that time, in fact, all of that time was spent with the special operations command. In my case, specifically, the Special Air Service Regiment. In later years in the business of defence, I was involved in developing strategy for the Army, specifically, 10 to 20 years out. I had a role critically analysing defences or some of defences proposed capability acquisitions where I was leading largely teams of public servants, which was fantastic, very challenging, different. A role where rank was far less relevant to young graduates in the public service, which I really, really enjoyed. My last role in the military was as deputy Commander of the United States Army in the Pacific, and that was absolutely fantastic professionally, personally, and from a family perspective.

The US army just embraces families, like very few organisations do. Organisation of about 100,000 people and responsible for the Indo-Pacific. We used to like to talk about its spreading from polar bears to penguins and from Hollywood to Bollywood. Really interesting being embedded inside a foreign military supporting US foreign policy, and in my case, executing the military strategy underneath US foreign policy. As I said, really embraced in all aspects from family right through to professional life, the same values, but probably very different cultures. That's been probably a wave top summary of my experience in the military.

Tim Orton:

Which for many listeners, it's interesting, both high-performance operations in your earlier career to very large-scale strategy later in your career. Some will say, "Boy, I've got a lot to learn from Dan." Others will say, "That is a weird, strange, different life. How relevant would this be to me?" In that sense of very relevant or very different, what's your perspective having now been out of the Australian Defence Force for some time and working more broadly?

Dan McDaniel:

I think the commonalities are around people, specifically. We all need to lead people. Again, different contexts maybe, but it is all about people. As leaders, we need to lead culture. We need to set that culture and then be the example for the organisational cultures that we feel are right, again, in maybe in across different contexts. I think leaders need to set vision and mission and then champion execution. Managing risk, again, quite different in terms of the nature of risk in the military as opposed to business and other sectors, but it's all consequential and it all matters to someone and it's all important to people regardless of the business that they're in.

I think driving change, you can't afford to stand still whether you're in the military or whether you're in business. In my case, particularly in special operations, we were required to be ready for things that we didn't see coming. We would often be first out the door, and I experienced that a number of times. If you weren't changing, if you were standing still, if you weren't trying to improve the organisation, then you were pretty much headed down the path of irrelevance and that whether you're in the military or business, that's not a good thing.

Tim Orton:

Certainly, every organisation that Nous Group works with nowadays is striving for that combination of great performance in a positive culture, but people say those things are not always very clear as to what they mean. What for you are the hallmarks of great performance in a positive culture?

Dan McDaniel:

I think really important is a unity of purpose supported by a very clear guiding vision, mission, purpose, and action, how it all comes together to achieve the vision that's been set. That's critically important, otherwise people don't know where they're headed and why they're doing what they're doing and can start to drift. When they can gather collectively around that vision and that purpose, things start to make sense. We see it a lot in the military where while there is competition between people, unity of purpose means they're headed in the same direction. Again, in the special operations community, that sense of being more selfless than selfish and testing yourself around that. If your people in your organisation is more selfless than selfish and celebrates collective success, then I think that's definitely a hallmark. Other things, mutual respect amongst professionals, holding each other to account for performance in a positive way. I think organisations that invest in people and provide people the opportunity to really be the best version of themselves. You know it when you see it, and that's definitely a hallmark.

Tim Orton:

I can imagine, particularly in special operations that selflessness is absolutely critical to people trusting one another. How do you actually build that? Because I see in many other organisations an underlying selfishness. How did you do that in special operations?

Dan McDaniel:

The beauty in special operations command is that everyone has come from somewhere. No one starts in that organisation, and it's a luxury really that, that organisation is able to be very, very selective and able to rigorously assess the really deep character and qualities of people through its selection process. I think if organisations are not being rigorous in their selection processes and understanding what's really important to them as they're selecting people, then they don't really have an eye on what's most important to them in terms of the context of their business success. I think it's about what's rewarded and the nature and structure of rewards. In the military, remuneration is less of an issue because it's fairly common across the board. Any competition around that aspect is less prevalent. Again, in SOCOM's case and particularly my experience with the Special Air Service Regiment, a very clear vision and mission and a clear code of conduct means that you can really push that selflessness all working for the good of the mission and for the good of each other.

Tim Orton:

There's two things I think that are distinctive about your leadership experience. One is that it has been in defence, which is different from many in the workforce. Second is more particularly that you operate under extraordinary pressure, both physical pressure and mental pressure. Interested, how do you sustain great performance, positive culture when you're operating under pressure?

Dan McDaniel:

I think generally, people underestimate what they're capable of and what we are capable of, each other, both physically and mentally. Sometimes you only find that out when you're taken to a place of discomfort. I think it's really important that people are taken out of their comfort zone and that's how they develop, and only then do they actually really realize, "Well, actually no, I can do this. I am capable of that." Upon reflection, here is how I am better than I maybe was 12 months ago. I'm able to deal with more difficult situations and indeed not doing well and maybe failing in some respects has taught me a whole lot of things. I actually think that the culture of an organisation should be built with the difficult times in mind, and I think investing in people early is important. Delegating, adding responsibility and accountability to again, pull people out of their comfort zone and really extend them in order to develop them.

I think it's unhealthy for people to be extremely uncomfortable all of the time. They have to be lifted out I think, and then given time to go back to where they are comfortable and during that time be able to reflect on how they have improved now, what they're capable of, and that's how you learn actually the level of capabilities that you have. I know overseas on operations, some of the deployments that I went on were for 12 months, and before you go, you wonder how you're going to be able to sustain yourself for 12 months in an intense environment like what naturally exists when you're in theaters of war and on combat operations. Again, it's only in hindsight that you realize that you're able to lift yourself up mentally and operate pretty consistently at a different plane, and it's only when you come down out of that, that you realize it.

Tim Orton:

I guess the flip side, Dan, is that when things are under pressure, when things are hard, it can be easy for people to take shortcuts to yield to temptations. How did you lead or how do you lead people to show the strength of character, to stay the course when it's difficult and it would be very tempting to take a shortcut?

Dan McDaniel:

I think it's important to know really well the people that you're working with and the people that you're leading. Being invested in people at a deeper level I think is quite important. It's probably one of the hallmarks of the military. People, everybody is different, everyone has different thresholds for mental load and mental stress. Different locus of control and different levels of confidence and indeed aspiration, what they may want to achieve and where they're quite happy to maybe stay. I think part of the answer is really finding out what drives each individual and what might be holding them back. I think it's important to understand what motivates and demotivates people and how they're best rewarded and what it takes for them to sort of feel respected as a key contributor to an organisation.

I do go back to a unifying purpose and vision mission being very, very clear about where they're headed and how they fit within the direction of an organisation. I think that clarity is a pretty important motivator and I've seen where it can drift away. If people become unclear about why they're doing what they're doing, they can start to question a whole range of things and start to ask themselves, is this worth it? That's when I think shortcuts can become more attractive if they're really questioning the whole purpose of why they're doing what they're doing.

Tim Orton:

You made the observation earlier on that some organisations are under relentless pressure, where in some ways in the military there are periods of intense pressure and then perhaps less so, even that may not even be true for the military anymore. I'm just thinking in the private sector, you've got competitors, you've got regulators, you've got changing economic circumstances. In the public sector, you've got a government and ministers who have a high set of expectations. How do you build up your organisation's resilience so it can sustain performance and culture over time?

Dan McDaniel:

I probably prefer the term strength over resilience and maybe a bit of a philosophical discussion for another time. Resilience, strictly speaking, is defined as returning to a previous state, being able to deal with pressure and springing back, I guess, into shape, the same shape that you were before. I don't think that, that's strictly speaking what any organisation is after. I think organisations want to be better and stronger for having had to deal with the challenges that they're presented and the difficult times. I flip that across to people. I think investing in people early demonstrates commitment, particularly investing in leadership.

I think I see the military does it really well, but I see in some organisations and sectors that people only receive the investment when they're actually in the positions and require it, and it's too late. They're dealing with problems, and at the same time, trying to learn how to be leaders when that learning should have happened years prior and give them time to reflect and to prepare themselves to really perform well, both for themselves and for the organisation. Again, I think communication is key. Clear, consistent, constant communication about the vision, the mission, the purpose. People crave clarity, and I think if leaders can provide that consistently under pressure, then that just gives people confidence that, okay, we got this, we're headed in the right direction.

Preparing organisations, I think is important and it's too late to prepare when you're facing a crisis and that preparation has to be done well ahead of time. The way I think the military does it well is delegating and making people more responsible and more accountable earlier. Starting to push down so that people are able to step up. I'm fond of us saying that you should only do what only you can do. Not the case all the time, but I think that as a principle to ask yourself whether you're delegating enough so that when you are facing a crisis and you are under relentless pressure, do you have the depth in the organisation to be able to say as the lead yourself to get the rest you need and know that the organisation will continue to drive on with people really understanding what your role is and being able to step up and support that.

Tim Orton:

Of course, to be able to only do what only you can do and the delegation that comes from that presupposes you understand both the capability and the mood among your team, and at least my experience is the more senior you become, the more difficult it can be to sense what people are really thinking. How did you go about that understanding where your teams, where your people are up to particularly both tactical teams, but then when you're running the special air regiment with a thousand, 2,000 people and then when you're the deputy commander of the US command with a hundred thousand people, how'd you get a sense of what was going on?

Dan McDaniel:

Yeah, it's difficult, and I know you know it's difficult. It gets more and more difficult, as you say, the bigger you get organisationally and the more senior positions you're in where you have a whole lot of other stresses and other things that want to pull you in different directions, I think really important to be in the environment of the people that you lead enough and at the right times. My experience, in my case, soldiers, specifically, they don't want you to do what they do. They don't want you to be them. They want leadership and they expect that and deserve that. It's really critically important to get down into the weeds and to be able to just speak at the level of the people that are experiencing what they're experiencing. I've had some great examples of that in Afghanistan one night on night watch as we used to do when we were out in the field. I found myself at around 2:00 in the morning standing next to probably the most junior soldier that we had in the organisation that I was leading, which is around 120 odd people.

I was the most senior, he was the most junior, 2:00 AM, about minus 20 degrees, a bit of shared adversity. Keeping watch to keep those asleep safe. In that time, that 45 minutes we spent together, I found out that he didn't understand why we were still doing what we were doing in Afghanistan. He'd lost sight of the purpose, and it shocked me because I assumed that it was very, very clear. It was only probably three to four months, maybe a little longer after the attacks of September 11. We were the first contingent into Afghanistan from Australia working within a coalition, and we were there to make sure that Afghanistan could no longer be a safe haven for terrorism. That was very clear to me, but obvious that I'd failed to be consistent and clear and repetitive, I guess, and constant in terms of the messaging around our mission and our purpose.

Other times I've sat on top of hills on SAS selection courses with the staff that are running the courses, spending time overnight, sitting around listening to their views of the organisation and what they think is going right and what they think is going wrong. When I was deputy at US Army Pacific, I went to Alaska, put on the snowshoes and wandered around in an exercise that we were conducting with the Indian Army. Speaking to private soldiers from the US Army about their view of our strategy and what it was that we were doing, which is just really rich and rewarding, but just so important. I think being curious, being present and involved as I've alluded to there, but keeping an eye out for changes in the norms of behavior. A great example there is there's a process of debriefing a patrol, an SAS patrol after it comes in from a mission.

Sitting in on some of those debriefs, you can get a really, really good sense of whether things are going as they should or whether maybe there might be a few issues here and there. I've certainly picked up on a few of those in years gone by. I think people won't share if they don't trust, and there's a great US special operations truism that they like to quote, which is that you can't surge trust. You don't get trust at the time you need it. It needs to be built over a long period of time. If you know people and connect with them at a deeper level and show that you're willing to walk in their world, I think that goes a long way to building trust, and I think that goes a long way to then getting a clearer picture of what may be going on inside your organisation.

Tim Orton:

I've been questioning you at length about your leadership experience, your leadership lessons. Which leaders do you admire most and why?

Dan McDaniel:

Certainly, I've had a few over the years that I've taken many things away from, and starting right from when I was a cadet at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, an instructor there who was a sergeant, I'll call him Dave, and he was an ex-SAS soldier. What I learned from him at a time when you're a cadet and there's a fair bit of, there's a lot of orders getting barked at you and getting directed all around the place, and Dave was a very, very quiet individual. He taught me that leadership isn't just about barking orders, it's really about understanding people and motivating people to deliver extraordinary effort beyond their discretionary effort. That normal level of effort that we would all apply in whatever workplace we are in. Dave was able to squeeze out of many cadets, including me, just a much deeper level of effort through influence, not through pressure.

When I graduated and I went to my first unit up in Townsville, I had a fantastic pairing of commanding officer and regimental sergeant major, commanding officer is the senior officer of a unit, and the RSM, regimental sergeant major is the senior soldier of unit together. They are the key leadership group and team. I had John and Bob, and John was the CEO, and he was ex-SAS guy. There's a theme here that's emerging, but look, he was very uncomplicated. He really lived his leadership. He was tough, uncompromising, but he absolutely loved the soldiers and he looked after those soldiers like no one else did, and they knew it and they loved him as a result. Again, he would elicit that deeper level of effort. Bob, his regimental sergeant major was equally tough, and he was a senior soldier, but he understood that junior officers like me and their first go around with the training wheels off needed guiding, not ridicule.

He spent a lot of time with us helping us understand soldiers at a deeper level, having been one for his whole life. I learned some amazing lessons early on from a pairing like that. Later on, I worked for Stan McChrystal, a US four-star general, in Afghanistan. His humility, his empathy, his willingness to listen was incredible and impressive. He had a lot of pressure on him. He listened beyond hearing. He didn't just tick the box. You could see it, and he would act upon the things that you'd said. Maybe not immediately, but in time. He used to say that it's not my job to be right all the time, it's my job to listen, learn, ultimately, judge, and ultimately, act.

I might not act in the way that you've recommended, but you could certainly see that he would, and he was a real role model in a supremely challenging environment. Then also, I think those people have generally been people that have positions of power to me and above me, if you like, and rank an authority. I've taken an enormous amount from those soldiers that have worked with me and that I've been around particularly in some of those tougher environments in Afghanistan, and one particularly who just demonstrated an incredible amount of self-awareness that I've never forgotten when he was quite severely injured and wounded in a mine strike.

A very serious event that we had where we lost one of our soldiers in that event. This individual was so badly injured that on medical advice had decided that I needed to return him to Australia. I gave him that message when we were in Afghanistan. He said to me, "Well, look, there's my physical health and there's my mental health. If you send me away from this organisation right now, my mental health will never recover. I need to go back out. I need to maintain focus. I think mentally, that's the only way I'll get through this." It was quite incredible. I immediately changed my decision, made sure that we supported him medically as best we could, and we did exactly as he'd asked and he continued to serve. I think I've often taken inspiration from that level of self-awareness and tried to be as self-aware as that individual to know exactly how you are in the moment and know how you need to be, to be the best version of yourself.

Tim Orton:

That was actually quite fascinating and very moving. I'm interested as a follow-up question, and this is something peculiar perhaps to the military. You talk about officers and soldiers. There's almost two groups of people, and I know that in sense, the officers is responsible for the soldiers, but the soldiers can, in some respects, a lot more experienced than your officers. How do you manage that from a leadership perspective?

Dan McDaniel:

The way your training is conducted at the Royal Military College, you probably don't realize upon leaving and joining your unit for the first time, exactly what you have and what you're armed with. It comes with time, I guess. You start to realize that the theory has served you well and you understand what you have in your kit bag when you're pulling it out to apply to situations with which you're faced. Once you've done that a couple of times, I think your confidence grows and you do start to grow into the leadership position that you have. You're certainly challenged, and I was challenged by soldiers who said precisely what your question is about. I had a soldier once say to me, "Why would I ever listen to you when you're six years younger and almost a whole lifetime less experienced?" That's a test of your confidence and a test of, I guess your leadership ability and how you handle a situation like that.

As I said, you do quickly start to realize that the qualities that you have as a person and the training that you've received holds you in very good stead. As you apply your judgment to different situations, you really do start to grow into those roles. I think all through your military time, you're often, many, many times joining organisations with people that are far more experienced, and I've seen this now time and again. When things get really, really difficult, those really, really experienced people will still turn to you and say, "Well, what now, boss? What do we do now?"

Tim Orton:

Probably a perfect place to finish. Dan McDaniel, thank you very much for that fascinating discussion through what it is to be a leader within a military organisation, and the parallels that those of us who work outside the military can draw. Thank you very much.

Dan McDaniel:

A pleasure and thank you. Thanks very much, Tim.

Host:

That was Nous principal, Dan McDaniel, and Nous CEO, Tim Orton. You can read more about our thinking on leadership and many other topics on our website. That's www.nousgroup.com. That's all for this edition of NousCast. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you next time.