695: Andy Stumpf - Leadership Lessons From SEAL Team Six, Discipline vs. Motivation, Team Guy vs. Navy SEAL, High Standards, and How To Be Drownproof

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My guest: Andy Stumpf is a retired Navy SEAL who spent 17 years on active duty, including assignments with one of the most elite special operations units in the U.S. military. He's a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book is Drownproof: Eight Life Lessons to Keep Your Head Above Water.

Key Learnings

"What you allow in your presence is your standard." It doesn't matter what your corporate ethos is. It doesn't matter what's tattooed on the wall behind you. If your actions don't align with your speech, it means nothing. Speech is debatable. Actions have impact.

You can control almost nothing in your life, but you can control the boundaries you set and your willingness to maintain them.

There's a difference between a SEAL and a team guy. A SEAL is there for the title and the individual journey. A team guy is there for the mission and the team. They wear the same uniform. From the outside, you can't tell them apart. Internally, everyone knows.

Andy would rather have a group of team guys than a group of SEALs. Your ability to accomplish unbelievable things is 100% aligned with what group of people you bring into your organization.

You'll get fooled in the interview process. People wear masks. That's just how it works. The reps come after. Set up consistent feedback. Bi-annual after-action reviews on performance and how they're showing up as a person.

80/20 the interview. Talk 20%. Make them talk 80%. The more they speak, the harder it is to keep the mask on.

Let people go faster, not slower. It's way easier to solve this problem six months in than six years in, when they've already catastrophically impacted the culture.

Drown-proofing is not an exercise in being drown-proof. It's an exercise in self-control. You bob up and down in a pool for an hour with your hands tied behind your back and your feet bound. If you panic, you sink. If you stay calm and control your breathing, you can do it indefinitely. The test occurs in the water, but it has almost nothing to do with the water itself.

The world is chaotic. That doesn't mean you have to be. When everything around you is going sideways, walk yourself back. What can I actually control? My breathing. My self-talk. My priorities. My next move.

The circle of influence vs. the circle of concern. Draw a line down the middle of a legal pad. On the left, write everything you're worried about, working on, occupied by. That column will be huge. On the right, write what you actually have direct control over. You'll only be able to write one thing: yourself.

The most effective leadership tool is mentorship. Andy's mentor Dave Hall gave him "just the perfect amount of rope to hang myself, and then maybe he'd help me get it around my neck