Leadership isn't just about the stars on your shoulders; it's about having the courage to step into the unknown, where you might just learn how to fly. In this inspiring episode, we have Retired Lieutenant General Michelle Johnson to share her journey of breaking barriers in leadership. As the first woman to ever become a Cadet Wing Commander in the U.S. Air Force Academy, she paved the way for future generations of leaders. Today, she dives into the core principles of leadership such as the importance of courage, vision, and managing up. She shares her experiences in managing complex international relationships, navigating the political landscape, and persuading those who hold power. Lt. Gen. Johnson's leadership journey shows how having faith in yourself and your ability to adapt can lead you to new heights. Tune in now!
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Lt.Gen. (Ret.) Michelle Johnson - Leaders on Leadership
I am so excited. My guest is Retired Lieutenant General Michelle Johnson. General, welcome.
Thanks so much for having me, Tracey. It's been so good to know someone from my decade at the Air Force Academy.
Let me tell you a little bit about Retired Lieutenant General Michelle Johnson. She was in the class of ‘81 at the United States Air Force Academy. It’s my alma mater, so you know how tremendous she is. ‘81 was the second class of women that graduated. She was also the first female cadet to be named Cadet Wing Commander, which is quite the deal, and she later went on to become the first female officer to serve as the Air Force Academy Superintendent.
She was our 19th sup. Currently, she is the one and only female who has been appointed to be the superintendent of one of the service academies. Talk about a trailblazer, Michelle. Not only that, she was also inducted into the inaugural class of the United States Air Force Academy Athletic Hall of Fame and a Rhodes scholar.
While in uniform, she served as the Air Force Aide to the President, an Air Force Squadron, and Group and Wing Commander. Let me tell you. She was in C-141s, KC-10s, KC-135s, C-5s, and C-17s, and she also worked at the NATO/SHAPE, where she was a Deputy Chief of Staff Intel and operations. She also served with the NBA as the senior vice president and head of referee operations. She is married to the tremendous John Hargreaves. She’s a retired pilot and the happy parent of two sons. Michelle, I wish you would have focused and done something with your life. I salute you. I’m starstruck.
This is how I connected with Michelle. This is the tremendous people you meet in the book you read. In September 2023, I was in Philly. Many of you know, I talk about the American College of Financial Services often and I have the blessing of serving on their Center for Military and Veterans Affairs. Every year, they do a Soldier Citizen Clambake Award and we gave the award to Admiral Mullen from the Navy this past September. While I was there, I had the amazing honor of connecting and sitting at the table with Michelle. That's where we met. Michelle, do you want to tell them about your connection with the American College of Financial Services?
It's been a wonderful association. I was a friend and colleague in the Air Force with the Provost when I was on faculty at the Air Force Academy. Gwen Hall was as well, and she introduced me to the new CEO of the American College, George Nichols, who was a transformational leader. You could talk with him sometime.
I was born in Iowa without a lot of means. He was born in Kentucky without a lot of means, but he made his way through New York Life Insurance and he's come back to give back and to take this college. That had been a designated correspondent school for people in the financial industry to take it to the next level.
To not only help make it a robust educational opportunity for people and financial services but to help apply practical financial knowledge to people who need it in underrepresented communities like veterans. I’m trying to be a great supporter of the Veterans Center that you're an advisor for, but he's also in the Centers for African-Americans, members of the financial community, and families with people who suffer disabilities. They have special financial planning challenges.
To try to attend to the realities that human beings are still within life but maybe haven't been touched by knowledge of financial practices and how things work. The whole atmosphere of service reminds me a little bit about the service you and I tried to provide to our country but in a different way to serve others to build community. That's what drew me. I’m so honored to be one of the trustees on the board of trustees for the college.
Thank you for sharing that and I love that you said come back to give back. As we transition through a lot of our readers, they're on their second, third, and fourth careers and they keep coming back to continue to give back. Michelle, my father, wrote a speech called The Price of Leadership many years ago. It's one of the ones that has been most downloaded because it's very raw, authentic, and practical.
In it, he talks about the things that you are going to have to be paying as a price to be a leader and not just a leader in name only. I can't wait to hear your take on this, especially the first one, loneliness. There were few women in my class ’88. There was ‘97 in the first class of females at the Air Force Academy, so you're already a small group but tend to be the first, the one, the only. Can you unpack what loneliness looks like for you at a time in your career as leadership and what you would share with our audience if they're going through a season of it?
There are different angles of it, as you point out, to go and suddenly become a minority. I’m from Northwest Iowa, so I was not in a minority there. As a woman, we're half part of the humanity but also as a wide-angle Saxon Protestant. I went to the Air Force Academy and suddenly, from being a woman and a lot of other factors, I was a minority.
It was a new idea to people. They didn't study the history. We could talk about this more later, but what was happening when I graduated from high school in 1977, all volunteer forces needed everybody. All hands on deck. We can't draft people now and it can't be one certain group of people. We need everybody in an all-volunteer military force. I didn't know that at that time.
I thought it was an opportunity for education. I was a basketball player but also to serve for a while. It was lonely and shocking. It was aggressive. It’s like, “In your face, you don't belong here,” kind of lonely. You have to cleave to what you believe, what you're striving for, and what's the shared purpose. Some officers, cadets, men, and women did as well.
You don't belong here, but for every one of those, there were 5 or 10 great educators and mentors who'd say, “You're capable of this. Why don't you try it? Why don't you try for a scholarship? Make sure you're in the flying program.” I didn't know it. It says the Air Force Academy. I know that, but my family was farmers. They didn’t even think about that. That's part of it, but the structural loneliness thing is part of some things.
I found as I got more senior, I was in uniform for 40 years, basically if you include the four years from the Academy. At the end of my career, I was more senior and I’d be put in different organizations to help solve problems. I was a stranger because I hadn't been in their community or their tribe for a long time. It was professional loneliness. You haven't done what we've done. It was a very interesting skillset, but I think there were similarities.
Part of being a leader, if you wish to do that, is to be out of your comfort zone and move other people out of their comfort zone. You may have read Marty Linsky's work, Adaptive Leadership. This isn't a military thing. This is modern leadership. Leadership isn't always conforming, following the rules, and checking the box.
Part of being a leader is to be out of your comfort zone and move other people out of their comfort zone.
That's management. What do you need to do? Management is super important. You got to do that. If you don't, keep the books or you're in trouble. If you want to adapt to new things, new demands, or new missions, you need to move an organization and yourself out of your comfort zone. That's lonely and it's in your new territory. You're not where you want to be yet, but you're pretty far from shore. You need to find a way to move forward and to understand it.
Understanding the history of how you got there to prepare and say, “How do we get here? Where we're trying to go?” and then communicate that to help you see the loneliness. It's a real thing. I deployed one time when I was in KC-10s in the ‘90s. We spent a lot of time deployed in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. I could give tours of Abu Dhabi.
During the First Gulf War, we called that Show Air Force Base or Show Abu Dhabi.
It's very elaborate now, evidently, but we were still intense and then the rocks out there. We would deploy from our Squadron. Our Squadron was in California, Travis Air Force Base, between Sacramento and San Francisco. Usually, when you are deployed, you take on the next level of responsibilities. My captains and majors had to take roles as schedulers and flight commanders at a greater level than they would have had at home. I ran into one of our majors. We're standing outside at 135 degrees, which was something I should admit was a bad idea. He stopped me. I was a lieutenant colonel and he said, “I get it now. It's lonely being in charge of people or being responsible.” He was feeling it.
He said, “When you walk in the room, people stop talking because now you're them. It's us and them and now you're them.” If you can prove that you care about them at the shared mission more than yourself, everybody benefits. However, if you try to act remotely and act like you're the warlord and you're the strong person leader, “Do what I say. I’m the boss,” the divide is worse and it's terrible for everybody.
If you can prove that you care about them at the shared mission more than yourself, everybody benefits.
Unfortunately, when I ran into people in the private sector, sometimes they think that's what leadership is. You're the boss and you tell people what to do. What I learned, on the contrary, is how did we get here and where are we going? Communicate that. Be consistent and fair and people will come along with you and help accomplish tremendous things despite there being tremendous in this thing.
We've had a lot of people in the military. I know they get to the colonel level and then they go into these staff positions. They're in more civilian sectors outside of their tribe and you have to show you care and share. Otherwise, I’ve seen some bad culture clashes and it chewed up some great people and spent them out.
When you come out of wearing the uniform after 40 years, we have people in our tremendous tribe who are leaving entrepreneurship or life insurance to go and do the next chapter. When you came out of uniform, I know, like me, it is different because it's such a collective. It's such camaraderie. It's so much fun. It's so crazy and scary. I think of that loneliness. It’s like, “I was a chiropractor for 30 years and now I’m not.” Where are you at right now in that transition because I know it hasn't been all that long.
I retired in 2017 from the Air Force and I left the NBA in 2019. I’m going to touch on some of the other points you're going to bring up because I think what your dad hit on applies. A part of it is an executive leadership. I became a generalist, by the way. Executive leadership is being a generalist because the main thing you are an expert at, perhaps for a long time, is one of many things you're in charge of.
Your confidence as a professional may have been based on that competence in a particular flying that plane, so all the plans had different cultures too. Each crew, the way you pronounce the checklist, there’s a different culture. There’s the way you did the bag drag. I flew cargo around the world in C-141 on the ground.
It’s the next thing up from a C-130. You’re in the dirt working. You’re considered knucklebusters. You dragged your own bag, helped each other, and helped with maintenance. KC-10s were like Gucci. These are fancy planes. We wear headsets and park at different places. It’s a different way to communicate and maneuver.
I had a pretty collective career in the Air Force, even operationally, but when I would talk with the senior officials, even civilians in the DoD, let alone, as you said, in the private sector, you can be a specialist for about so long and then when you go into management or leadership, you're responsible for a varied spectrum of skillsets.
I found people whose confidence was based on the specific. In their competence, they lost their confidence because now I’m managing people who know more about many things than I do. I was going to talk about the letting go part or my angle on abandonment. Part of it is letting go of, “I know what I know, but I’m going to let go of my ego and let go of my fear that I don't know everything. My fear of I can't control everything.”
Let go and empower the ones next to you. That was the last sixteen years of my career in the Air Force. I went from a flying wing to being in charge of personnel, air mobility command, and public affairs for the Air Force. What do I know about that? I know about bringing people together in their expertise and doing their homework.
We visited USAA and the senior vice president for corporate communication. How do you communicate in a big enterprise to try to get better? I had my public affairs experts learn. They knew more about setting up a press conference than I did and that's okay. I had to let go. I had a lot of people who are in the military or support people like the Navy Supply Corps.
The logo on their collar looks like a pork chop, so other people operators call them pork chops, which is terrible. That’s a terrible thing. Not because it’s not respectful but because the people who work for me who are in Navy Supply went to Harvard Business School. They are smart about supply chains, big logistics, and the national power source, so I tried to assemble teams who could solve problems.
That’s what I became. I was a change agent because we would have to do things differently. It would take a few months to earn people’s trust that I do care more about the mission and myself. I’m going to be okay. I was blessed that John was home taking care of me and the boys. He said that was his mission. The home was not relaxing because we had twin babies. When they were toddlers, they pinned on my Brigadier General Stars. The home was incredibly not restful but empowering and full of love. It was safe and recharging, so I didn’t have anything to lose. I want to do my best.
When people realize that whether they were at Fort Meade with cyber, when we did cyber command, or when I wound up at NATO/SHAPE in the Southern part of Belgium with generals from other countries who had never been around a woman General officer because other countries haven’t done that yet, they had to deal with me.
Sometimes, I had to be tough to get their attention because I’m 5’8” on a good day or used to be. My voice isn't baritone. Sometimes, if I say things nicely and quietly the first 2 or 3 times, they don't hear it. I learned something. I don't know if Armand Hammer said this. Somebody else besides me said this, but I liked it and I used to repeat it.
When you come up with a new idea or a new thing with a new group of people who don't know you, the first 50 times you say the thing we need to do together, they don't even hear you. It doesn't even register. The second 50 times, they don't understand you. I heard you, but what? The third 50 times, they don't believe you. At 151, they'll go, “Is that what you meant?” Sometimes our spouses do that, so this isn't just at work. However many times it is, it's a lot on that 151st time. I have a memento from an old job that they put on a fake magazine cover 151 times. On 151st time, they go, “That's what you meant.”
When people start owning it for them, I say no. What do I know about cyber? I know about policy, people working together, strategic opportunities, operational requirements, and how to think operationally. That's why I endured in service so long. There wasn't a path for women and women weren't allowed in fighters or bombers when I went to pilot training.
We did heavies, but when I got out of that tribe, other tribes realized I had something to offer to their tribe. It was communication and consistency. I did my homework. They'd say, “Johnson, it's a good thing you were right.” Sometimes, you are the voice in the wilderness and you have to double-check and have someone.
The last thing I’ll say is it's great to have an ally, companion, a mentor, maybe someone not exactly in your chain of command, but it's a sanity check to say, “I know in the voice in the wilderness. I genuinely don't want to be crazy. It sounds crazy to people when it's new.” I do have another anecdote about that from the NBA. What do you think? Give me a sanity check.
My late sister worked as a manager in a big insurance company. She was my voice of reason on management types of things. My husband loves me too much to be a great critic of speeches but in terms of practical operational matters, he's a crudogue as we used to say. He's a very pragmatic electrical engineer dude who graduated from VMI, so he could give me the straight scoop, but sometimes I needed somebody else from the world that I was in to say sanity check.
You're not alone. Leadership is a team sport. Even though you feel alone, you're not alone because the whole point of leadership is being with other people. The last thing I’ll mention from the NBA is brilliant. A chief of NBA referee operations is still there, Monty McCutchen. He used to be my partner. I tried to codify what he knew in process, resources, and training, but he's wise. One time he said to me, “Michelle did this brilliant thing.” I said, “What brilliant thing?”
Cadet Wing Commander: Leadership is a team sport. Even though you feel alone, you're not alone because the whole point of leadership is being with other people.
He said, “To bring when the referees rotate through New York, Brooklyn, and New Jersey during the season, have a small group in-season training sessions and go over video and talk about the position as they do.” I said, “Monty, what's brilliant about that? That's practical training. That's continuing training from the intense stuff you do in the summer to do it throughout the season.” He said, “It's brilliant to me because I never would have thought of that.”
That's from a different world. That brought it from being a pilot in the Air Force. No matter what field you're in, the Air Force or any service or trade, you have resources and you’re committed to training. You have criteria and standards for performance and you evaluate people on that. That's easy. It's not easy for other people who don't know. It was a new idea to him. I wasn't alone, but for a while, I was lonely because I had to say that 151 times.
There's this duality of it and they're going to be times and sometimes you need to get alone because you're getting prepped or purified or we did something or we need to own it. It's not a bad thing. I’ve heard people say, “You’re only lonely because you did something wrong.” There are reasons for everything. You can be accused of something.
There are all bad things that happen to good people to put you in a lonely place, but I love that you talked about having somebody outside of your chain of command to be an ally or a voice of reason to sit there. That's so important because otherwise, we're too much in the same arena. We can often get what we need to hear and people tell us what they think or see it through the same ones we do. I love that you brought that aspect up.
Even at the Academy, it's an institution of higher education. It's a commissioning source. It's in a beautiful place. It's a good gig to be in Colorado Springs at 7,000 feet altitude, on the side of the mountains on the front range, and be with all these wonderful young people from across the world and our country. Obviously, we have cadets from 70 countries across the world that come through. Even that place could become inward-looking and I would say, “See ourselves as others see us.”
You may do something and it's motivated by every pure thought, but externally, it's perceived differently because they don't have the context. They haven't lived in that group. That's sometimes the fresh eyes. The fresh eyes can be lonely eyes, but you need them, as you said, to go off and reflect. Think about how we get here, what we are trying to do, and how we get there together.
Cadet Wing Commander: The fresh eyes can be lonely eyes, but you need them to go off and reflect. Think about how we get here, what we are trying to do, and how we get there together.
We calibrate and reorient how we're going to make the end goals. You talked about having to support your family. It’s the next topic and again, he talked about weariness. I love that you talked about you had the great thing. People always say that when you have two alphas married, how do you guys do it? Do you kill each other? I’m like, “No. Two alphas means double the resources, double the tenacity, we're not quitting, and we're not giving up.” It's almost this complementary thing.
I love to combat the work-life balance because here you are pinning on your store and you have little ones at home. Every woman out there, heck every man out there, has to deal with juggling fortune, family, and growing that. You had that to help you be strong and safe, especially you had to stay rested to fly, rested to command, and make decisions when you're going to hostile or the fog and friction war. How do you combat weariness, Michelle?
Sometimes, it isn't possible to do it on your own. One of these things is when I was a squadron commander and my husband was in Okinawa for three years. It was our longest separation. We only had cats then, so we’re waiting for kids. We were older parents. We didn't live together very often initially. I remember it was coming up on Christmas.
Our flight sergeant for our Squadron and first sergeant was hovering around my office. I worked long hours and it was KC-10 Squadron. I fly all the time and it was only about 250 people. People take time. If you listen to them, care about them, do the documentation, and everything, it takes a lot of time. I know this one evening as Christmas was approaching, these two guys, the flight surgeon, and the first sergeant, were in my office talking with me and it hit me.
I looked at them and I said, “You're taking care of me, aren't you right now? Your first sergeanting me. You're checking on me.” They said, “Yes, ma'am.” In terms of letting go, let people help you. It's so hard to ask for help to even know you need help. At a student level for cadets, they get themselves in a hole and grades. All they needed to do was raise their hand and ask for help.
Everybody wants you to succeed there. If you're in an organization, unless you're a hateful, loathsome human being, which hopefully none of us are, people want you and the organization to succeed. If you've been giving to everybody else, they want to help you and you need to let them. That's super hard, but that was a real blessing to have people like that around me.
Did I always take their advice? No. I was probably horrible about that, but you do need to take care of yourself. I don't have musical talents, but some people do. That feels like their tank of joy. Don't forget to find your joy. If the boys were running around, John would leave. I was a brigadier general at the Pentagon and we lived near the Pentagon, so I could walk over and at least be home to maybe see him at bath time and go to bedtime and stuff.
He'd say, “Look at the wall.” It’s the big crayon drawing all over the wall that we would have to repaint, but he said, “I left it for you because I knew you'd get a kick out of it,” or the big pile of chairs and pillows and stuff in the living room because that was there for filled my tank and that was terrific. Even that said, it has driven type A as I am and you take different roles at home. I was playing a type B at home. He both can at the same time, but he was a leader at home and obviously at work in different settings and back and forth.
I read Viktor Frankl’s book and when I’m having a bad day, I’ll think, “He survived the Holocaust and he lost his whole family. He was a psychologist and he chose to stay with his family when he could have gotten out.” His writings were helpful about the meaning of life. You’re doing something you love with people you love. When you’re faced with adversity or have the attitude to face adversity in a way, that’s an achievement. Getting yourself out of a predicament is an achievement and it doesn’t come across as a Rhodes scholarship, a medal, a lot of money, fame, or anything.
When you're faced with adversity or have the attitude to face adversity in a way, that's an achievement.
If you have the grit to overcome the challenge, that’s empowering. Even my friend Monty, the head of referees at the NBA, is a philosopher and ref. He’s not published it, but he’s got a manuscript. He was written about sports. People do sports because they want to be challenged against the standard. It’s like, “Let me see how good am I at this. I want to know. I’m going to do my best and then if I’m not the best, dog on it. I’m not, but I’m going to give it my shot.” Sometimes, some aspects of public service are like that. Flying a plane is hard. You don’t pop out of high school and know how to fly a jet, manage a mission and every fuel, do the kinds of things we did, or be a Thunderbird like Nicole Malachowski.
I think a lot of people want to be challenged and say, “How good would I be? Fair and square, but I gave it my best shot. That’s how well I could do it.” Attitude is helpful and it doesn’t matter if you’re short or tall or they’re small. I’ll bring back the loneliness a little bit. People see me show up and flying Squadron, saying, “I don’t know anybody like you. My mother is not like you. My sister is not like you. How can you possibly be doing this thing?”
If your attitude is we want to do this thing and everybody helps, then you can get over that pretty fast. I’ll leave the last thing. Kansas is the home state of the McConnell Air Force Base, where I was a wing commander when I had the boys. I was up all night anyway. There's no sleeping for me as a wing commander. It is between the calls from the command post and the boys.
That's how it was, but on a cold winter night in Kansas when it was zero temperatures and high winds, we're trying to launch a bunch of planes, like twenty planes. Everyone on the flight line wore Gore-Tex gloves. We had no idea who anybody was because we were blobs of waterproof material, pushing pallets and trying to refuel things. When everything was said and done and the planes were all launched, I went around, as the commander does, to talk with people, thank them, and check on them, having no idea what they looked like.
As they pulled off their balaclavas, hoods, and everything, you could start to see their ranks, faces, ethnicity, men and women, tall and short, everything, and I was so moved. I was moved daily, but I was moved in moments like that to say, “Isn't it wonderful that we were who we were? We went out and did what we had to do and we value each other.” To me, that's exciting. That fills my tank. I tell people now I’m a mom. You should get your sleep. Make sure you eat right. Take care of your joints and stuff like that. There's this other feeling that's inspiring and hopefully, you can foster that in others.
You said, “Fill the tank,” and you're right. There was nothing like the military as far as we were all in it together and none of it mattered. As you said, it’s not the rank or anything all bundled up or you're in Kenmore Fair. You can't even tell, but we were the collective. It’s a diverse group but the ultimate unified mission. Michelle, you brought up probably one of my top five books, Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl. If you want to learn about resiliency and adaptive capacity, I tell people who are complaining, read that book and then you come back and talk to me. They never come back and complain. It’s so profound.
That's a heavy, dark topic. If you read it, it's full of joy. It’s not to trivialize anything.
He didn't trivialize it, but that's profound. You covered abandonment and I love that. Primarily, as you're climbing up, you got to let go of the ego. You got to be okay with abandoning some of these things that may have worked for you as an individual contributor or a commander at a flight level where you had a smaller group. Remember, it’s less and less of the outcome.
The only outcome of you as a commander is what the individual troops do. You have to start managing the troops versus managing the processes, the sorties, the non-mission capable rates, or all that other stuff. Is there anything else on abandonment you want to talk about? I thought that was so rich to share with our audience.
It was a one-on-one level when I was a co-pilot in C-141. I was a little older than other co-pilots. I was a little more senior. I was the first lieutenant. Now I’m a second lieutenant because I’ve gone to graduate school at Oxford and then was fine. We had Lieutenant Colonels who've flown in Vietnam. He’s a gruff guy. Some who had flown the plane so long, even though we were supposed to be dutiful students of the tech orders, they'd quit reading the tech orders because they knew how to fly it and the co-pilots would do the knob work for them.
There's this one gruff lieutenant colonel. He's a wonderful person. We respect the heck out of him, but he scared all the co-pilots. My husband had flown with him too. He said to me once, “Johnson, I make the co-pilots cry and that's the guys, but I don't mess with you.” I didn't know what that meant exactly. One time, he and I were on a check ride. The flight examiner was sitting right behind the console, watching everything we did.
For our audience, a check ride is an evaluation ride. She's getting graded on proficiency.
Also, how we ran the checklist and how we ran the mission. He and I were on it. It’s an evaluation like you're driving in high school, but times 1,000. I noticed that in the left seats where the aircraft commander sits, his navigation select panel wasn't right with the checklist. Safety first, but also contending with culture. You don't touch each other switches as a cultural thing about reaching across somebody, especially somebody imposing like him. I reached my hand over in front of the switch that needed to be corrected and said, “I’ll set your knob select panel up for the takeoff check,” then I waited.
I didn't touch it, but I waited. I wanted to show respect. I didn't know what he'd do and he said, “Thanks, Co.” I hit the button, we did the flight, and everything went on. I’ve actually said that at a commencement speech at Niagara University a couple of years ago, “I know it seems weird to say something like that. Thanks, Co. So what?” What he did was courageous in a way. He let me help him. It not only helped us do the mission safely and get to see the check right and everything, but it also modeled for me to let go.
Later, when I was on missions and was tired in the middle of the night in Bahrain or someplace, I did the before-takeoff checklist. I say to the crew, “We've all been awake for 36 hours now, so we need to help each other. If you see something, you speak up because we're all tired and we've got to get this right. If you help me succeed, I’ll help you succeed.” I said that attitude. Part of what helped me do that. It’s letting go of my ego or letting go of the fear of although things she's weak.
Michelle, you were telling the story about when you got with your check pilot and you had the courage to let him know, “I’m going to touch the switches,” and then you were referring to some things that happen when people don't feel in other cultures that they are free to express what's going on.
Sometimes, it's grouped dynamics, leadership, and culture. We used to talk about crew resource management because, on a big airplane, you have teams of 4 to 20 people. The C-5 fighter crews are big and 141. We had to have at least four people, but when you're working in a work environment, being able to collaborate means listening to each other and letting go of your own protectiveness or personal power. It's important in a plane. Someone is going to get hurt if the chief pilot, the aircraft Commander, or the pilot in charge doesn't listen or take input. As I’ve said, there have been accidents and some came from national cultures of hierarchy.
Being able to collaborate means listening to each other and letting go of your own protectiveness or personal power.
The leading person is like, “I’m the boss. I don't have to listen to you.” It's literally dangerous, but even if it's not in an airplane, in general, you're not hearing the totality of what’s going on. You're not being informed if you're not listening and taking input from people around you. Ultimately, a leader has to decide and may not follow exactly what those inputs are. That's part of the aloneness. Someone’s got to decide, but listening empowers a team to know that they'll be heard. You may not agree, but they'll be heard and it's an important lesson.
You hit on the importance of being courageous enough to manage up. A lot of times, here you are managing down or managing lateral but to help your boss or your leader to become the best that they can. As you said, unless it's illegal, immoral, unethical, or unsafe, you are being heard. For the leaders out there, you have to be courageous enough to make the call and say, “I know, but we need to look at this.” The last thing my dad talked about was vision.
We hear about these visionaries. Michelle, we have our heroes in the military who were sheer, brilliant tacticians, motivators, and all the greats. My dad would always tell me, “Vision is seeing what needs to be done and then doing it.” It’s this blue-sky thing but also this very tactical strategic thing. How do you hone your vision, especially now that you're in the next stage of your life? I know the military would often feed you your vision, but how do you inspire that in other people?
It's an important notion. You don't have to be a genius philosopher to have a vision. It's what needs to be done, as you said. Maybe even asking the question of, “We're doing this thing. So what?” What's going to happen on the other side of this? Some of it is strategic planning. What are the opportunities and what are the risks? That is not a military function. It's a business function, I would think. Even the American College of Financial Services Board talked to us about financial risk, what are the risks with personnel, and what's going to happen next. To my point, we caught it with the head of referees for the NBA when I suggested in-season training, not just in the summer. That seemed brilliant and visionary to him.
It seemed obvious to me. If I thought of that, what do we miss that someone else might think of it? To your point of managing up, as a senior officer or a general officer, I wasn't always the most senior. I was a 2 or 3-star, but there are always four stars and civilian leaders. To be brave enough to challenge the status quo or tell them the truth or the bad news sometimes is eye-opening. Do it privately and give them some grace, a way out, or a graceful exit. We can fix it if you make this phone call or this is what needs to be done, but to see ahead and assess, that's part of a vision as well. It has to do with listening and learning. In this day and age, people don't always want hard-copy books. My husband and I are still of a generation that values the tactile feel of a book.
I’m aggressive with books. I deface them out of love. I write in them and I tear their pages, but I’m willing to learn. To my earlier point about how we get here as an organization or as a group and what we need to do next, the best part of a vision is a narrative. What's our story? Maybe that's a more palatable way for us to think about what's our narrative. For me, a lot of veterans and other people are at a point in life where you have more discretion about your time. What brings meaning? Not as profound as Viktor Frankl with that sense of that meaning, but in the sense of what do I know that might help another group, whether it's with corporate memory or another perspective as a board member now.
Board members are not supposed to partake in the everyday operations of an enterprise, but I always think, “Have I asked a challenging question? Have I thought of another angle that they might not have thought of?” You're on the advisory board for the Veteran Center, so you may think of that as well. It’s like, “If I asked a good question that they might not have thought of or another angle and to be supportive in a way that's constructive.” It isn't always positive cheerleading. It's sometimes saying, “There may be some pitfalls on that one. You might want to consider what could happen from practical experience and also from studying.”
You brought that up earlier. We always have something to offer, no matter if it’s taking off the uniform but the way we think. What I like about people in the military is we always are a worst-case scenario. We're always contingency planners and we're also after-actions people. That's the other thing where you talked about we train it in-season and out of season and that's not intuitively obvious. It's interesting that you said that because I can remember sitting on some boards, when something would go wrong, not military things, they're like, “What's next?”
I’m like, “What happened here? After the access report, no behaviors change until a lesson has been learned,” and we tweak something. I love that you said that in a constructive way. That's the point of leadership. Not an echo chamber but to ask the tough questions or the great critical thinking skills because we have seen a lot and blended a lot about what could possibly go right. You can't go into war thing and everything is going to go right. You think everything is going to go wrong and reverse engineer from that.
Tell that story. It is what it is and don't be afraid. Too many people use the word fear and I’m afraid. I was always thankful. I didn't have to worry in the main about our boys going to the shopping center and being bombed. We live in a violent world and things can happen randomly but we live in a pretty safe environment.
We don't have the day-to-day risk like a lot of people have or the food insecurity that a lot of people have and those things so I count my blessings. What are we afraid of? What do we have to be afraid of to say it is what it is and try to persuade people? That's the other thing. With vision, you want to do that thing that you see something that is different. I go back to what I said before.
They may not even hear you when you say, “I disagree with that.” They may not hear you literally the first couple of times. I really think this is a thing and try to be persuasive that way. After working at the White House for two years, I carried the nuclear codes for President Bush and President Clinton. If you do a lot of advance work, you have to plan ahead.
Here's what will happen in the worst case that maintains connectivity with the Commander in Chief in the command authority. You had to think of every possible contingency: medical, communication, physical, other 25th amendment, and nuclear things. Mostly, bad things didn't happen, but in order to get senior civilians to do what I needed to do, I had to persuade them.
I had no power over them. I was a major, but you have to persuade people to get things done. People have written about political powers. It’s a power of persuasion. You're moving people. I did that to the extent that when I went back to Travis Air Force Base after that assignment, one of the sergeants said, “You could tell us what to do. You don't have to persuade.” I said, “Okay. Point well taken.” I'll tell you on those few transactional things, but it’s inspiring things and trying to do new things for an enterprise to have a vision of what happens next. You need to say why and what will be in it for you. What will your role be in it?
The vision isn't, “We're going to get to that mountain,” it's, “How are you going to help us get to the mountain? How am I going to help you get to the mountain? How are we going to do that together?” We are obviously great communicators, but that's not a value thing in military service. If you look at Myers-Briggs personalities, I’m an ENTJ, so I think I can do the math. I was an Operations Research undergrad. It's like an Engineering minor at the Service Academy. Both of us were, but I tend to be an extrovert who thinks intuitively, which isn't softer. It's in macro and I’m a thinker and dredger. We can go do that, but not everybody can see it if they're a linear thinker or more sensory or an engineer. They want to know what happens and what step is next.
Understanding myself and how I’m thinking, I’m open that way and engineer like my husband. He is a linear engineer. There are times we bump. There are many reasons why spouses bump. One of the reasons we do is that we're wired differently. It's very complementary and it's great overall. When you're working with people who are literal, this idea of a vision might seem a little too open-ended and you need to help them understand what happens next, what's in it for them, and what our role is together. They may not automatically see their role in the group and laying it out in a narrative again is helpful.
I love that you described the vision as persuasion and moving people because otherwise, it's your thing. Vision is shared with them. You hit on all the books I’ve read. Say the number one question anybody has on their mind is What’s In It For Me? Why too? We have to set the why, but in the how, as far as practical, the management, or the 30,000, what's in it for me? I get the why, but that’s the reason why expectation is a success. I have to see value in it, which means, what's in it for me? I love that you talked about it. Some people are like, “You don't have to woo-woo me.” I put my task hat on as you do and go, “Here are the orders.” “Okay, fine.”
I literally did that in the Squadron because they thought I was too nice sometimes. I had a black hat. I would put a black build cap on. I don't smoke, but I had a cigar and I get out and say, “This is me being directive,” and we'd laugh about it. That was also part of building the collegiality of what we're doing. I haven’t read Daniel Pink's works, but he has a book called Drive, which is the most realistic about not what's in it for me but calling it as it is about understanding the politics of a dynamic. Politics are human beings together.
It's not like political parties. It's Aristotle. We're political animals because we live with other people. Understanding who the informal leaders are, who the formal leaders are, and how to navigate that is part of persuasion, leading, and pursuing a vision because those can be helpers, so they can be obstacles. The informal leaders may have more power than the formal leaders, weirdly. You can harness into that but you can't pretend it doesn't exist. It's only your own idea. Again, this is a team sport.
Cadet Wing Commander: Understanding who the informal leaders are, who the formal leaders are, and how to navigate that is part of persuasion, leading, and pursuing a vision.
You hit the nail on the head when you talk about politicking well. For those of you who are tuning in and want to get your CLF, we have a whole class on one of our modules about networking and managing in politicking well. As you said, anybody that has survived in one of the biggest bureaucracies of all time, I eat the military as long as you have, you're a great politicker. We have this politics and it's sucking up. It's kissing butt. It's hard as it is. It's networking. It's coming together because there's a certain amount of resources and it's a win-win, so we have this negative notation. I love that you could not have done what you did without getting fed up.
There are a million other pasts you could have taken, Michelle, but you stayed on the one because you knew how to be politicking well and not in a derogatory, sell-your-soul, or cronyism-type sense. I’m glad you brought that up because we may have some audience out there that are like, “I don't know. Should I stay or should I go?” I always tell them, “Do you want to fall into your sword or do you need to open up your mind and spirit about politicking well?”
We're all in this together and we have to find a way forward together. Is this a nuisance or an idiosyncrasy or is this a point of order that is against your conviction? Most of the time, it's something that annoys us. I’m like, “Do you want to throw it all away for that or do you want to learn to politic well?”
To your point, you're going to have, in a career, a good boss, bad bosses, good teams, or bad teams. The moments when it's clicking when you're on that championship team and it feels right, those don't last forever because somebody leaves or something changes, but those are great moments. One of the reasons I endured this eclectic journey was that I could see the patterns. It was eclectic enough that you start seeing the patterns across organizations. That's why people write all those management leadership books because human beings and organizations act about the same.
Cadet Wing Commander: That's why people write all those management leadership books because human beings and organizations act about the same.
It's different language, uniforms, and hierarchies in a way, but politicking to me was saying if we need to bring some people together or say the Pentagon with different entities with different equities to defend, try to understand the equities of the others at the table. Plan ahead. Not only have allies at the table but try to think 2 or 3 steps out.
This literally happened to me. There was a senior civilian who had been military and there's some baggage with that. It was a real obstacle working when I was on the joint staff at the Pentagon on cyber policy and I set up to him and said, “This is the equity I need to represent right now respectfully because this is the truth. I have to hold that.” I immediately went back. I was a one-star general and I talked to my three-star general.
I said, “You may get a phone call from somebody because I had to stand up to them and they are far senior to me.” He goes, “He already called me. You were doing the right thing. You were doing what you had to do.” That's one thing, but to have a successful policy, a lot of times, I would try to anticipate that when this person wants to work against me, they're going to go to the next level.
If I’ve already greased the works to the next level by informing them, not paying them off or nothing underhanded but saying, “This is part of the story for you to know. When the other person came with their side, I’d wind up getting support, usually because I did my homework. I was prepared and pretty factually correct and be able to move forward.”
It became winning and it worked in NATO across 28 allies then. Now we're up to 31 in NATO, but at that time, it was 28 plus 22 partner Nations for Afghanistan. There are 50 nations around. It’s understanding the organization around you and not your own narrow slice of it. Where do I fit in? People do social mapping for other reasons to think who would be on board, who would be antis in this initiative, and understand that. Who are you going to have to persuade to come forward? Who are you going to have to come on board? Not in an underhanded way, but with persuasion, facts and research, and persistence. I will say persistence helps.
That’s why you pay the price of leadership because everybody would be doing it if it was easy. Coming across against these naysayers, your example is managing up well and politicking well. It’s excellent. Thank you for sharing that. I was hoping you get into that and you said why you endured. I love it because everybody has their own reasons for it. That’s fascinating, Michelle. We did loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. While I got you on the line, is there anything else, from a leadership perspective, that you would like to share with our audience about how to triumphantly and tenaciously pay the price of leadership?
I’ll share a vignette. I’m not sure exactly who it’s attributed to. I’m told Iyanla Vanzant has said it and other people, but it’s something that I’ve used in remarks. Also, it’s a reminder for me. Its rich alludes to fear. The saying is, “When we come to the end of all the light that we know and are about to step off into the darkness, faith is knowing that 1 of 2 things is going to happen. They’ll either be something solid in the darkness for us to stand on or we’ll learn how to fly.”
To me, this is like not being afraid to explore something different. It’s 1977 and 18-year-old me left Spencer, Iowa, to want to see what the big world was like. I have no clue, no videos on a website, no internet, no family experience in the military or with higher ed, except for my brother, who went to medical school, but he's far older than me.
It was a different time when all the money we had, which wasn't much, went for him, and my sister and I were on our own to try it, go out, step into the darkness, and go, “Solid. It’s not as scary as I thought it was going to be.” I need to learn something new to survive in this way and try something new. It may be more fulfilling.
In my case, it was in the big world. There were lows. They don't write that in your bio. Nobody writes in your bio the rough days and the things when you met with someone who was a curmudgeon or worse, who tried to undermine you or things didn't go well. They don't write that down in your bio. It's part of the journey and makes you appreciate when things click, when you do move a policy through, or when you can communicate with somebody.
I almost said it in SACEUR, the Supreme Allied Commander Forces Europe, when I was at NATO. He promised the Russians, who had a bigger contingent in Brussels, that NATO did because they were very suspicious of NATO because NATO was formed to defend against them. He wanted to keep them informed during the conflict in Afghanistan because of their fear of opium, the drug trade, and terrorism coming over the border. Meanwhile, they gave us over-flight and train track access or railroad access from the Baltics all the way to Kazakhstan over Russian airspace and ground space.
We wanted to communicate with them and he sent me to Moscow one summer with a team with the German Lieutenant Colonel, a British Colonel, and a US colonel. A Norwegian Admiral was in Moscow to brief the device director, the vice chairman of their general staff, and their four-star. They were going to have me talk to a two-star, but when I showed up, the four-star showed up, so I had to adapt. Over a long briefing table, standing over a map and a long lunch, we went and did our work and went back. To me, that was a capstone professional experience to represent the equities of my nation in the halls of the Kremlin.
They’ve been our foe in so many ways and so many episodes and to know my business enough to be able to come through and to keep my team together. It was a very emotional experience for the German officer. Can you imagine in paintings in the Kremlin of General Zuckoff, who's the Russian General Montgomery from Britain and Eisenhower from the US? Obviously, Germany was the enemy then and my German colleague felt it. It was a lonely, moving time for him. That was a real capstone experience. In the life journey, you pick up along the way.
I didn't know this when I was a lieutenant. I don't know if I could have done it when I was a lieutenant, but you learn along the way. To be willing to step into the darkness with faith or confidence or whatever your belief system is that supports you. To be able to go out alone in the dark with people who may never want to be leaders. Not everybody wants to and that's okay too, but we need to be good teammates because we're going and we need you to come with us.
Not everybody wants to be a four-star general. Some people want to launch and recover and be a crew dog or whatever, but I love that. Michelle, you have certainly paid the price of leadership and continue to do so. Thank you for sharing all this wisdom. I can't wait to listen. If I have no scribbled everywhere, I have to get it organized. Michelle, if people want to connect with you or learn more about you, what's the best way that they can reach out to you?
I have a very small footprint on LinkedIn. I’m there, but I’m at the point in life where if you Google Lieutenant General Michelle Johnson, you could see my official Air Force bio in there. People have found speeches have done. I talked at the National Press Club when I was superintendent. I’ve had some hard interviews. I’ve had some fun ones where you can tell all the good news. I’ve had a tough one too. I exist out there. There are a lot of Michelle Johnson, but not as many Lieutenant Michelle Johnson.
Michelle Johnson sends her farewell. Please be sure and check out Lieutenant General Retired Michelle Johnson, a Trailblazer. I hope you enjoyed everything she shared with you about what it takes to paying the price of leadership. Remember, you will be the same person in the future that you are now, except for two things. The people you meet and the books you read. I hope you heard us talk about a lot of tremendous books.
You met a tremendous person and I want to thank you for paying the price of leadership. If you like what you read, please hit the subscribe button, leave us the honor of a five-star review, and share with your friends who are trying to live a triumphantly tremendous life as well. Thanks so much to all of you for paying the price of leadership. Have a tremendous rest of your day.
Important Links
Retired Lieutenant General Michelle Johnson – LinkedIn
About Michelle Johnson
Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Michelle Johnson class of ‘81 USAFA was the first female cadet to be named Cadet Wing commander and later became the first female officer to serve as Air Force Academy superintendent (#19).
She was also inducted into the inaugural class of the Air Force Academy Athletic Hall of Fame and a Rhodes Scholar. While in uniform she served as the AF Aide to the President, an Air Force Squadron, Group & Wing Commander; NATO/SHAPE Deputy Chief of Staff Intel & Operations; NBA Senior VP head of Referee Operations. Her husband is John Hargreaves, a retired USAF pilot; happy parents of 20-year-old twin sons.