Episode 138 - JB Spisso - Leaders On Leadership
What makes a good leader? What qualities of leadership do you need to have? We answer these questions as Dr. Tracey Jones interviews retired combat veteran, leader, trainer and educator JB Spisso. JB discusses the elements of leadership with Dr. Jones and we hear why good leaders know how to listen and be accountable. Listen in and learn more leadership skills from Dr. Jones and her guest.
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JB Spisso - Leaders On Leadership
I am extremely excited to share with you a wonderful leader. His name is JB Spisso. JB has many years of experience and transforming individuals into leaders. You're going to like this because you know about my background. He's a veteran of the United States Army with 26 years of service, including ten years in Special Operations with the elite 75th Ranger Regiment leading the country's most talented soldiers in combat. He retired at the prominent rank of Sergeant Major, the highest and most respected non-commissioned officer post in the military. With JB, what you see is what you get. He's a motivator with an energetic passion for helping others. He published his first book, Warrior Leadership: Steps to Success for Leaders on the Ground. We're going to learn so much more and all about that. JB, it's an honor to have you with us.
Doctor, thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here. I know that your audience is going to be supremely motivated when they're done with it.
Good Leader: We're not a yo-yo. You control yourself; you start your car in the morning, you back out of the driveway. Now you're going forward and if something's not right, that's when you slow down, maybe even pull off the side of the road.
Our audience knows my background in the military. They know my father's love of the military. I love having other military leaders on here because even though we're not in the military anymore, that significantly honed our leadership tenets and constructs. I'm anxious to dive into what you hear about what it takes to pay the price of leadership because military people do pay the price of leadership.
You have some seasoned veterans that follow this show. They know that leadership is a learned trait. I want everybody to continue to understand that. When I work with young executives and coaches, and they're like, "I want to be there." I'm like, "That's all part of learning. We want to continue to learn that leadership throughout our careers. You can look at your career or my career, you continue to learn that leadership throughout the stages." That's very important. The second part of that is it's important to be authentic in your leadership. Find out what works for you. I'm a talent accelerator and a motivator. That works for me. People see that when they talk to me and see me in person. Whatever that leadership style is for you, whether it's stoic or whatever finds you, it needs to be authentic.
Many of the beauties of the military are you are in a growth mindset. Every certain number of years, you're expected to get to the next rank and you have years in service. There is no flat-lining or plateauing. I love that you talk about you're always in the growing stage and also authentic leadership. Everybody may not be a patent. I love that you said some are going to be charismatic and some are going to be more stoic, but it's what works for you. If we look at the great military leaders throughout history, it’s all different kinds. If you try and copy somebody else's, it's going to fall flat. Thank you for starting out our leaders on that.
Let's talk about paying the price of leadership. My father wrote a speech. He was a leadership lover, a very highly experiential, highly pragmatic and read on the growth trajectory. He talked about the four elements that if you are a leader in reality and not a leader in name only, you're going to have to pay the price of leadership. The first one he talked about is loneliness. We've all heard that adage, "It's lonely at the top." Can you unpack for me what does loneliness looks for as a leader and maybe share a time where you went through maybe a season of loneliness as a leader?
As you continue to climb as a leader, I'll be the first to tell you that leaders should be servant leaders. We should take that leadership pyramid and turn it upside down because that's where success comes. However, there will be times that you will be lonely because you have to find that inner strength for yourself. In 2008 in Afghanistan, I was a Sergeant Major and the leader of our team. We had a coalition team of 6 Americans, 5 Romanians and 5 Polish. There was a time there midway through the deployment that I was like, “I don't know if I'm going to make this.”
Every single day when I walked out to the gunshot before we did a combat patrol or whatever we were doing with the Afghan National Army, I had to put the smile on. Everybody looks to the Sergeant Major. You can't be down when there's a twenty-year-old PFC who's in the gun turret in charge of 50 caliber machine gun that’s hopefully going to save your life and engage the enemy. You have to be that way. It's very difficult to do that.
I did two things. One, I journaled every single day when I was in Afghanistan and then I burned it at the end, believe it or not. I walked up to the burn barrel and burned it. The second thing I did was I reached out to a mentor of mine who was a professional hockey coach, Tom Renney. He's the President and CEO of Hockey Canada but he was the New York Rangers head coach at the time. He had been my mentor and we'd been friends. I would reach out to him via email. I found a connection with somebody outside the military that took care of me and that's how I fought through that. Those are the two things I would recommend to people to do. You have to journal and you have to find somebody that you can lean on.
I'm in a period where I'm not sure what’s next. It's like what Churchill did when he was kicked out of office. He regressed before he wrote that famous Sinews of Peace speech where the iron curtain came from and went within himself. He wrote, research, and kept the fire going. I love that you talked about you're going to feel it but you can't show it. That doesn't mean that you lie to people. It means that as a leader, there are a lot of things you're going to feel. I love also that you went outside the organization. Sometimes you have to get that outside label that looks at you from the outside because otherwise, everybody inside has the same view. It's an unbelievable point for our readers. Thank you so much for that.
If I go to another Sergeant Major or somebody else, they are going to say, “Cowboy up, tough it up.” Tom Renney is a very bright individual with high IQ, high EQ. He was very thoughtful in his responses to me. The other part is if you're mentoring somebody, be very thoughtful in your response. It’s not just something quick but thoughtful on how you're going to respond. Find the right words of courage and action that can help people. That's so important to do. That's how I fought loneliness. I'm a Christian so I pray a lot. I start my day with it, middle of the day, end of the day. I try to keep that power of my faith first and foremost.
I'm glad because you brought up one of my favorite verses, Ecclesiastes 4, “A cord of three strands is not easily broken.” If you feel like you're hanging on by the end, reach out. There's the spiritual element but I love that you said that for your lifelines and people. Even Napoleon Hill, that mastermind group, you've got to find those people and they'll be there for you to pour into you because we're meant to go through this as a collective. That’s a great insight as well. Why did you burn it? Why did you throw it in there? Out of curiosity.
Good Leader: You have to communicate your vision of what's going to happen and what you want the organization to do. When you do these things, then all of a sudden everybody's like, okay, I get it. I understand it. Then you become like-minded thinkers.
It's funny because I look back and say, “There are probably some good nuggets of information in there.” It was a long deployment. I didn't get any leave because I was a Sergeant Major. I was tired. I kept that motivation on everything else. I had to do it. In the end, I was like, "I need to start a chapter here."
I wrote a lot. I was out there during the First Gulf War. It’s totally different because I was in Abu Dhabi. I was not in Afghanistan on the ground. I kept a lot of stuff but I don't know if I've ever gone back to that. I had to ask that because I could see where you got the calling from, and that was the end of that. I respect that.
The next thing which ties into that is weariness. My dad would say, “As a leader, you're trying to surround yourself with believers. You hope they're believers.” Even in the military, JB, you know as well as I do, not everybody was all in with the mission at all times. When you are in combat, most of the time, you would separate the wheat from the chaff. How did you combat weariness so you could stay at the top of your game, especially on these long deployments?
It's a lot of things. Even in life, you combat weariness. I've been a professional leadership and culture development expert for years. You battle that sometimes daily. It goes back to you have to take care of several things. We always talk about fitness. We have to take care of fitness. I have to work hard to take care of that. You have to watch your diet and get rest. You have to train this muscle right here in your head. It's such a big muscle and we forget what to do there. We have to control our thoughts and understand who we are. I like to drive myself like a standard transmission. We're not a yo-yo.
You control yourself. You start your car in the morning. You back out of the driveway. Now you're going forward. If something's not right, that's when the slowdown, maybe even pull off the side of the road, but then when you're ready for that big event, mash the gas and go through the gears. That's how I try to control myself. Twice a day, I try to take a few minutes for myself. In the military, you did it, stop, look, listen, smell. I get a cup of coffee. I'll walk outside. I'll smell the coffee. I'll look and listen.
Whatever the case, maybe you take that in for a few minutes to reset yourself. If you look at all the best leaders, they've always done that. They've always taken time out in their morning and afternoon to reset themselves. I believe it was General Wayne Downing who was the very first Special Operations Commander, a four-star general.
He is a former Ranger Commander and all that legend. He's passed away. I was speaking to his aid one time years ago. He said that the general had twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes in the afternoon. That was his time. They called it on the calendar GPT, General Personal Time. That's the time he took for himself where he would read, reflect and that sort of that thing.
He had standing orders. The orders went something like, “There are only two people that can interrupt me. One is my wife, the second is the President and we better be going to war." Think about that as a leader. You need to take your time, especially a lot of senior leaders on this show. You need to protect that time because it makes you better. You're like an ATM. If the ATM is empty, you can't help anybody. If your ATM's full, how many people you can help. How do I battle weariness? The long answer here to your question is I try to keep my mental, physical and emotional health all moving. It's all part of it.
Emotion is huge. Even for healing, from physical illnesses or injuries and stuff like that. I love the transmission and don't be a yo-yo. Don't yank around. The power of thought. Everybody's like, “Thoughts first, then feelings, then behaviors.” Don't tell me about your feelings. Sometimes they're like, "The military is blind." You don't do what people in the military have to do without controlling what goes on up inside of them.
The next term my dad talked about was abandonment. It gets a negative term like fear of abandonment. I work with animal rescues so that's a bad term to use. His point was, "Tracey, you're going to spend more time contributing to your failure than your success by focusing on what you want and like to think about. Not what you ought and need to think about." His thing was you got to prune away the non-value-added time sucks to stay on point, on target and on mission. In the military, we have our orders but we get into the real world and there is so much stuff swirling around. How do you stay task-focused and stay away from mission drift?
Mission drift can hamper what you're doing. I try to stay hyper-focused on what I'm doing. I know what I do well and don't do well. It's funny because you're in the military and I consult with a lot of business leaders. I do one-on-ones, personal coaching and all that. All of a sudden, they'll be like, “Teach me shooting.” I'm like, “I don't do that. Here, call this guy.” When I retired from the military in 2010, I hung up my guns and never gone back to them. “You're fit. Teach me fitness.” “I don't do that.”
This is what I do. I'm a leadership and culture development expert. This is what I focus on. What I try to do is compartmentalize what I do well. I continue to learn and grow but I stay into my niche of what I do well. What’s important to do as leaders is to understand that because what happens is we climb and we're like, “We can do this or that too.” You ended up making mistakes or you have to go through the process. You battle through it and you're like, “If I'd have known that beforehand.” That's what I try to do.
All of these that you talked about, loneliness, weariness and abandonment, are important. There are many things that would knock you down. I don't watch a lot of news. I watch about fifteen minutes of news a day and that's it. I try to keep the black mirror away from what I'm doing. I keep my social media to 30 minutes a day. I pick up a book and read. I try to keep my mind healthy in that way. That's how I do it.
Warrior Leadership: Steps to Success for Leaders on the Ground
I was on a podcast and they said, "If you try to be all things to all people, you end up being nothing to nobody." You have such wide experiences. You get a lot of things. That is one constant we hear from all the leaders. You know your zone of genius and your MOS in the military. Whatever we had, this is what you do. You're trained to do this. Don't go trying to do somebody else's gig. The last term my father referred to was vision. A lot of leaders either go with the flow. There's no shortage of finding bad leaders. My father would always say that vision is not something mystical. It's seeing what needs to be done and then doing it. How do you keep your vision moving forward honed? How do you cast out? You're very focused and intentional. How do you hone in on what that thing is?
Vision is an absolute make or breaks for leaders, 100%. That's even more important than the mission because you could give the mission statement. We use this with pro sports teams. I work with professional athletes and professional teams. They want to win, “I want to win a Stanley Cup.” Everybody wants to win the Stanley Cup or the Super Bowl but your vision has to put you on that path.
There are two things that leaders should do with vision. It surrounds purpose and motivation. That purpose and motivation need to be described. Also, you got to get that vision out of your head. You got to communicate it to people. Don't communicate the mission to them. Don’t tell them what to do. They already know what to do. Over-communicate that vision to them and understand that everybody you're talking to sees it differently.
You could convince yourself but you've got to be able to tell other people why we're doing this, why we're making this adjustment, and why we're going that way. I say in my book all the time, “People don't fear change. They fear loss.” Anytime to try to change something in an organization, everybody automatically goes, “How does that affect me financially or physically?” You have to understand. When you get people on the vision, you say, “This is why we're trying to go this way. This is what we want to do.” If you properly explain that, then you're fine.
You got to give it to leaders like JFK, Ronald Reagan, even Barack Obama. They were good at explaining things. If we don’t do that well, then these things would go wrong. This Afghanistan pull-out disaster was not communicated and explained well. No one understood the vision. You can see that everybody was on a different sheet of paper for it. You have to communicate your vision of what's going to happen and what you want the organization to do. When you do these things, then all of a sudden, everybody's like, “I get it. I understand it.” You become like-minded thinkers.
You get that collaboration of believers because if people aren't all in, you can order somebody to do it but you can't in the civilian world, then you don't get that. Thank you for touching on Afghanistan because I was going to ask you about that. It’s near and dear to all our reader's hearts as we watch that.
I could've got a Lieutenant that graduated in West Point that come up with a better plan but that’s okay. We won't go there.
I think that what you're saying is going to echo that. Thank you for touching on that professionally. That's not the way things are supposed to happen. All my friends and everybody, especially people in Afghanistan.
I just have one caveat. I fully support the fact that we shouldn't have people there. Enough's enough. However, you invested so much. I'll tell you from a personal aspect. I was a Sergeant Major. Part of my job is I've mentored five brigade Sergeant Majors. I gave these guys my word, “We're not leaving you. I'm here. Here's my cell number if you need me. We're not going to abandon you.” I gave people my word.
I was earlier than you in the military but I would go over to all these places, peacekeeping missions after wars thinking, "What on earth are we doing here?" That being said as you said, you've made a commitment. There is a way to do it smartly and still get to the end goal. Not just throw the baby out with the bathwater up and everything. We covered loneliness, weariness, abandonment and vision. Anything else leadership-wise? Maybe talk about your book and what you would pour into our leaders in the show.
There are no war stories in my book. I purposely didn't want to make it that way. It is for a business professional to read. It's great because it started at 350 pages. When my editor got to it, she was like, “We're making this for our readers so people can read it on the airplane. That's it.” I listened to her. It was great. What I try to do is impart some leadership philosophies on leaders. There are takeaways at the end. It's great for a senior leader because he or she can look at it and tab it. They can hand it to a younger professional and say, “You should look at some of these.”
From that aspect, I get both groups there. Part of it is understanding the importance of one, leadership is learned and two, the importance of EQ, Emotional Quotient. Understanding who human beings are. We're all different human beings. I was a drill instructor. The first week of basic training, everybody marches this way and that way. Don't look the other way.
What happens is to raise people's talent, you have to find out who those people are. You have to peel back the onion. What makes Dr. Tracey tick? What makes JB tick? What makes this person tick? You have to understand that as a leader. I have three children, all college grads, all educated, super people and all Millennials. They're all three different human beings. As a parent, I still need to understand what's important to them.
You have to do that as a leader. That takes time. Some leaders are like, “I don't have time for that.” You better make time unless you want your organization to be good. If you got a product like the iPhone, you're going to make money. If you want your organization to be great, then you should find ways to help others.
There’s a good friend of mine, another mentor, Dr. Derick Anderson. He's a sports psychologist. He talks about the difference between greatness and goodness. You can be in an organization or on a team that wins and they’re great but ugly on the inside. You feel like you have to take a shower but they’re the champions. Whether the team, the front of the house or the back of the house, it's not good. When you're building an organization, sports team, business, family or community, it should be with goodness. If you build with goodness, you're more likely to become great.
It's like in the Bible, whitewashed tombs. That only lasts. There's a certain shelf life for that. Even with nations that appear. If there's internal disunity or dysfunction, it all comes out.
Like the US?
Yes. How long have we had our system of government? It's the only country in the history of civilization to be this long.
A business professional asked me because his business has implementations. He has got to get people vaccinated. He's like, “What would you have done?” I said, “The first thing I would have done is I would have done a public service announcement if I was Joe Biden with Donald Trump, and then I would have gotten Sean Hannity, Anderson Cooper, Oprah Winfrey and Jay-Z. I got a group of different humans who are all vaccinated, sat them all around and said, “This is why you should get vaccinated.” Had a medical professional on there and talked about it. Instead, it’s like, “You're going to get vaccinated or else.” Of course, there are people who’d be like, “Really?”
It never works. It's like something in the military. There are people being discharged from the military. They're like, “I'm not going to get vaccinated.” That's what you can't do. I voted Democrat. I voted Republican. I voted independent. I voted for whoever I think can do the best job. My father taught me this. He was in politics. Whoever gets elected, you support them. I always do. I want people to do a good job. What you’ve got to do is take your ego out.
There were several moments here for a JFK moment. I always talk about the Bay of Pigs. That was Eisenhower's plan. JFK was a young President. He didn't want to do it. They're like, “We got to do this, Mr. President. We got to go into Cuba and do this.” He didn't want to do it. He didn't feel good about it. They did the Bay of Pigs and it was a disaster. JFK said, “I'm going to tell the American people it's my fault.” They said, “Don't do it. They'll evoke the 25th Amendment. You will be impeached.” He came out and said, “It's my fault. We got a good kick in the pants.” What happened? His approval rating went up 20 points. What did he do? He came in and fired four people in the staff, the Secretary of Defense, CIA Director. He's like, “You guys lied to me.” My point is he stood up and was accountable. If you're a leader and things don't go right, be accountable for it.
The other thing that's frustrating people is there are no repercussions for it. JB, you know as well as I do. When there were things where you would take classified material home, there were always repercussions and punishment. People get so upset because even if you own it, nothing happens to anybody. It's scary that there’s no responsibility back to the taxpayers who are paying these people's salaries. We all make mistakes. If we make mistakes, even in the military, there are consequences. Either you get fired. That's sad too. I worked on fighter jets. If I didn't get to the root cause analysis of why the jet came down broke and I kept slapping things on it or ignoring it, it's eventually going to come down. That's very frustrating for people too.
Good Leader: If you're going to be a great leader, you have to be a good listener.
We don't have an accountability system. What we do is we deflect the point in this and that. Be a human being, stand up and hold yourself accountable. We're all going to make mistakes. We do make mistakes, rise above them. People admire leaders that say, "I screwed up. It's my fault but I'm going to fix it."
I'm going to do something. I'm not just going to say I screwed up but I'm going to take corrective action.
This is how I'm going to do it. I'm not going to get into it.
In the military, we're especially coded. If there's a problem, there's a corrective action. If we talk about it more than once, what did we not do? If there's a repeat or it's recurring, we're going to ground the fleet until we figure out what the problem is. It's so funny because I sit on a lot of boards and get asked to do a lot of things. Meeting after meeting, people were saying the same thing. Einstein's definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again. I don't even think they hope for different results.
I'm not sure what they do but it's the old proverbs. It's one of my favorites, “As a dog returns to his vomit so a fool returns to his folly.” You can't regurgitate. We got a reason. The military made it very difficult for me to sit in the general society. I'm sure you get it too and not say, “Are we here to fix stuff or are we here to run this up the flag pole again, stare at it, and point fingers at one another?” That is difficult to handle. Our church has a small group Bible study that is all first responders. We all have a certain way of how we look at problems, conflict, getting in, and dealing with problems.
It doesn't mean you can't be a thoughtful leader. It just means that decisions have to come right there. Sometimes you need to sit back, think about that and look at stuff. Another great friend of mine, another mentor Tom Power owns his own business. He’s done very well from building himself. He's a very thoughtful leader. The other part of being a thoughtful leader is he's an extremely great listener. If you're going to be a great leader, you have to be a good listener. I say it all the time.
Listen and silent is an anagram for a reason. I did it. A friend of mine is a West Point graduate. I met him up inside the gym. He was telling me a story. I took over the conversation. Later that day, I’m like, “I needed to be a better listener there.” I texted him. He wrote me back and said, “You're good.” It bothered me because we need to hear what people are saying. We don't always need to have an answer. Another thing for leadership is to be a great listener.
JB, where is your book at? Where can people get your book and where can they get in touch with you?
My book is Warrior Leadership: Steps to Success for Leaders on the Ground. You can get it on Amazon, on my website at JBSLeaders.com, and about anywhere books are sold.
Thank you so much for taking the time to pour into our readers. I wrote down a ton of stuff. You gave me a couple of visuals. Listen and silent is yet another thing.
Thanks for having me. You're amazing. Let's keep it going.
To our readers out there, if you like this episode, be sure to hit the subscribe button. Do us the honor of a five-star review. Be sure and sign up at Tremendous Leadership so you don't miss another tremendous episode. Reach out to JB. Get on his radar. Follow him. Reach out to him so you could use some leadership coaching for you or your organization. To my Tremendous tribe out there, keep on doing what you're doing. Keep on paying the price of leadership. We are so thankful for you. Thanks again, JB.
Thank you.
Important Links:
Amazon - Warrior Leadership: Steps to Success for Leaders on the Ground
About JB Spisso
JB has over 30 years of experience in transforming individuals into leaders. He is a veteran of the United States Army with 26 years of service, including ten years in Special Operations with the elite 75th Ranger Regiment, leading the Country's most talented Soldiers in combat. JB retired at the prominent rank of Sergeant Major, the highest and most respected Non-Commissioned Officer position in the military.
JB is extensively well-versed as a leader, trainer, and educator. He has executed effective team building and leadership training for several professional sports teams, including NFL and NHL clubs, and was the first in the National Hockey League to hold the position of Executive Director of Leadership and Cultural Development, spawning similar roles with other professional teams throughout the league. He routinely advises C-Suite executives on leadership and culture and is a sought-after speaker for industry gatherings and leadership podcasts. JB has recently published his first book, Warrior Leadership: Steps to Success for Leaders on the Ground.