What does it really take to lead when you don’t know the right answer, and the consequences of getting it wrong are real?

Dave Berke is a retired US Marine Corps fighter pilot, former TOPGUN instructor and ground combat leader who served in Ramadi alongside Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Today, he is Chief Development Officer at Echelon Front and the author of The Need to Lead.

In this conversation, Dave takes us inside what TOPGUN actually teaches about decision-making, humility and remaining calm under pressure. He explains why leadership is learned rather than inherited, how to remain decisive without becoming convinced you are right, and how he earned the trust of Marines who had far more ground combat experience than him.

Dave also reflects on assigning his own team to Ramadi, losing Corporal Chris Leon, carrying responsibility without being consumed by guilt and returning to his family just six days later. He shares why the emotional control that served him in combat could not simply be switched off at home, and what his wife and children have subsequently taught him about leadership.

This is a conversation about ambition, trust, loss, emotional control and what leadership demands from us in the cockpit, in combat and around the people we love.

Find Dave:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidrberke/

Echelon Front: https://echelonfront.com/

Dave’s Echelon Front profile: https://echelonfront.com/instructors/dave-berke/

David, you've said that even as a Top Gun instructor, you didn't feel like a real Marine.

What felt missing to you?

Yeah, I mean, I think about that as I wrote it.

I always wanted to fly.

I loved airplanes.

I always wanted to be a fighter pilot.

But there was something.

There was something unique about the Marine Corps.

There's something intriguing about it that really compelled me to want to be in the Marines.

And I think there's just a uniqueness of the Marine Corps ethos, how they present themselves, and, of course, just their reputation.

And I was.

I love being a Marine fighter pilot, but there was a part of me that I was.

I was thinking about the shape of my career and the things that I had done.

All of my training, all of my flying, all of my work had been really, really closely connected to the Navy, which was great.

All of Marine Corps flight training is combined with Navy Naval aviation is the Navy, and the Marine Corps essentially run by the Navy.

I happened to be assigned to one of the very few fighter squadrons in the Marine Corps that's on a Navy carrier air wing.

So flying off carriers are all Navy squadrons except ours.

And then when I was a Top Gun instructor, that's the Navy's weapon school.

And there was just something I wanted to leave the Marine Corps, saying I did something that was very, very uniquely Marine Corps.

And so that just kind of was nagging in the back of my head.

There's no slight against anything I'd done or anything I'd done with the Navy, but there's something unique about the Marine Corps that I really felt that I wanted to experience before I left so I could look back and say the thing that drew me into the Marine Corps, I got to experience a little.

Little taste of that.

What was that thing that you envisioned as being a real Marine?

Yeah, I think that thing is.

Is.

I mean, the way it played itself out was I was a forward air controller, but it was really being around ground Marines in some variety, whether it was a battalion or in some other way, something where I got to experience the ground side of the Marine Corps.

I think the uniqueness of the Marine Corps is that we have all the components.

We call it the magtaf, the Marine Air Ground Task Force.

We have all the air, all the ground, all the logistics.

And I did.

Didn't want to leave the Marine Corps having only seen what it was like to be around Marines on the aviation side.

So I wanted to be around battle, around grunts.

Was there any part of you that thought that that ground combat would prove something.

Was there anything that was missing in you in that time?

No, because when I volunteered initially to be a Ford air controller, I, I had no expectations I was going to see combat.

I was just going to.

In fact, the, the, the job that I volunteered for initially was to stand up a new unit at a base in Japan.

And, and it was really going to be kind of a one year overseas.

It was a deployment technically or per se, but it wasn't like deploying anywhere.

It was just going to be stationed in Japan and I thought it was going to be awesome and a lot of fun and Okinawa is a cool place, get to be around Marines.

There's good scuba diving.

It's a neat experience.

It was an overseas one year deployment.

So when I was initially thinking about doing this and then chose and volunteered to do it and work my way into that job, combat was not part of the plan.

I had no, no, no thoughts about that.

Did not expect to be doing that.

How quickly did that change for you so that, that you were thinking you were going to Japan and then it suddenly turns out you're going somewhere quite, very quickly?

Yeah, very, very quickly.

In fact, you know, I can certainly remember the dates to it, but you know, I volunteered for this.

I think it ended about there in Japan in September.

I had to come right back for a bunch of training to become a qualified Ford air controller.

Long story short, between getting there, getting back, getting qualified, and then really showing up full time in Japan, it was probably late October when I was back in Japan as a qualified Ford air controller ready to continue the, you know, the next 11 months or whatever it was, the next 10 or 11 months, I'm probably there a couple of weeks and they're like, hey, we are looking for volunteers to backfill the same unit that was in Camp Lejeune in North Carolina that was shorthanded on a quick turn deployment to Iraq.

We need folks to help with that.

And as soon as they were asking for volunteers, like I said, it's by weeks into my, my time in Japan, I'd volunteered to go back home to the states to deploy to Iraq.

And so I knew that was happening weeks after I showed up.

Very, very quickly.

Very quick turnaround.

Yeah, quick.

Was there any, you say as soon as they asked for volunteers, you're putting your hand up and sort of putting, putting yourself forward for that.

Was there any consideration, any hesitation in your mind or you just knew as soon as they were asking that was it?

Yeah, I mean, they were asking for volunteers.

I mean that's the first thing is they needed guys, they were shorthanded and you know, quite frankly.

And I certainly didn't know what I was going to be getting myself into per se.

But you know, I was a really well trained, very qualified, very experienced pilot.

I had seen combat from the other side.

I was a fully trained Ford air controller.

You know, I understood aviation really, really well.

And basically they're asking for people with my skill set, would you volunteer?

And it was just a absolute no brainer.

Like of course I would absolutely volunteer.

And I felt like I had a lot of investment on the Marine Corps behalf into me into to be qualified to do that.

And when they're asking for help, it was just didn't even think twice about it.

It was a no brainer.

I just want to jump back to the very start of it all.

So you're 14 years old, you're watching Top Gun, as many of us have, and you see that and you go, I want, I want to do that.

Yeah.

And it's the ultimate story of young boy wanting to do something and gets all the way there.

What was it at that time that being a fighter pilot, you thought that would give you.

You know, I'd always been, since I was a little kid, I'd always been intrigued with the military.

I grew up really close to a marine base.

So it was kind of always around me a little bit.

And you know, I'd been going to air shows since I was a little kid.

I'm Pretty sure by 6 years old I was, you know, getting taken to the air show which is literally right around the corner from my house.

Like it wasn't some big adventure.

It was a short trip into another world and it was very easy to get to.

It was really neat.

You know, I remember growing up in school always be able to look up and see airplanes flying around.

So that was, it had always, always been a part of my, my upbringing.

I think the thing about the movie, which I know is a little bit cheesy to say and I think everybody had that same experience.

But the thing about the movie, it was like, it was such a huge spectacle on screen and you're sitting there and it was like so big and so loud and so visually compelling.

You know, even the sounds and, and what it looked like and the planes taking off and landing.

And when I say the movie, it's probably like the first two minutes of all the takeoffs and landings.

There was something just captivating about that.

And I think also for the first time it kind of, it Looked real.

It was like, that's real.

You could tell this is a real thing.

This wasn't a video game.

It wasn't a movie.

I mean, I understand it was a movie, but it wasn't like a science fiction thing.

It was real footage.

Yeah.

And so as you're looking at that, I'm like, man, I'd never seen it so genuine up close and personal and so authentic and so tangible.

And I think that really just got me like, hey, this is a thing.

This is a real thing.

It's not Star Wars.

It's real.

And so there's something about that first couple of minutes that's so compelling.

I can watch that now.

It's like, man, that's it.

That's just.

It's just a camera on the flight deck with.

With real footage.

Yeah.

Uh, and it really.

It got into my bloodstream, man.

Like, there's no way to.

No two ways about it.

Yeah.

And what.

What was the journey like from then?

What did you.

Was there specific things that you did over the next years to make sure you got there?

So picture, you know, 14, you know, early teens, getting ready.

You know, I'm starting high school, and all of a sudden, like, so you see that thing, which initially is like fantasy, then like, oh, wait, hang on.

That's.

That.

That looked real.

That's real.

I am sure I had some interactions here and there, maybe with a pod in an air show.

There's.

There's things that just drive you down the path of like, hey, hang on, dude.

This is.

This is.

This is a real thing.

There's people doing this right now a mile away from your house.

And then it.

I hate to say it, Sam, but it kind of just becomes somewhat straightforward.

Like back in the day, you know, when you're in high school, you had a.

You had a guidance counselor, and.

And you would talk about your interests, and you'd fill out these little forms and you would share the things that you might be interested in.

They're think, thinking about ways to get you into college or maybe ways to get you into a trade school or ways to get you into a profession.

And I think probably in my freshman year, I was like, hey, I'm think.

I think I might want to join the military.

And it probably started as generic as that.

Certainly over time, there was nuance to what branch of service, you know, the things I wanted to do.

But, you know, back then, you would go there, and, you know, they go, oh, well, you got to take this test.

And here's some.

Some things you can look at, here's some brochures, here's some information.

And, and I know this sounds, it really wasn't that complicated when you told, you know, the adult, this is what I'm thinking about.

She goes, oh, several people have the same interest as you.

Here's the path, here's the place to go, here's the phone number, here's the brochure, here's the way to do it.

You know, it was kind of like the real life version of, of Google.

You know, we just did it in person and they had information, they shared it with you.

The things that were intriguing you pursued, the things that weren't you ignored.

And I just, I knew I wanted to do and I just kind of figured out the steps and there was always someone there to help me along the way.

It was a pretty straightforward process to learn how to do it.

Obviously doing it is a very different thing, but to get it done, like it wasn't that complicated and I just followed the steps.

Yeah, pretty straightforward.

Yeah.

It's, I suppose it's quite unique for someone that age to be so driven to do a certain thing.

I think a lot of, yeah, kids and even adults, a lot of people still don't really know what they want to do and they might go and do a degree in something and maybe decide they're not really that keen on it and it's fine to change parts.

But for someone from age 14 to just be like that is it and to just go for it, is that something that you've noticed in yourself?

That when you get your eye on something you just have that drive to go.

I'm a parent now, I got three teenage kids.

Like it is not a necessary and not even necessarily a good attribute.

Like you do not need to know what you want to do when you're 14.

And I don't look back on that as like the secret to my success or a recipe for it is not required.

Anybody listening to this or watching this, the last lesson you should take away from it is like you should know what you want to do.

In fact, for the most part the opposite was true.

I think what it really was more than anything was just kind of a recognition, like, this is just what I want.

I suppose it could have been possible that as time went on I could have lost interest and maybe aged out or found something else.

I just never did.

I certainly know what it looks like to see someone, a young person, show a passion or show an interest and I know what it's like for them to lose that interest.

And it's totally fine.

I just, there was just no way I wasn't going to do that.

I don't think I'm like that or with everything.

I certainly am very, you know, I try to think of myself as a somewhat open minded person for both interest for me and other people, but man, at that age, it just got in my DNA, it got in my bloodstream, it got in my head and I was, I was just going to do it and I never lost the interest or the passion.

And the other thing, I think it was interesting and unique for me is like my closest friends, my best friend, who is still my best friend to this day, was, was the same singular focus.

So I kind of found myself in a little group of friends that all had the same interests.

And what's kind of interesting is most of my friends that I consider my close group of friends all went on to do the same thing.

And so part of that was kind of feeding on each other too.

Again, it's not a requirement, it's not necessary, certainly not at that age.

But I, at that age I'm like, I am going to do this.

And I never lost the desire and the passion to do it and I just, I stayed on the path.

Yeah, yeah.

I think it's a really important, important point to make as well, that it's, it's okay to not know.

And I've spoken on this podcast multiple times about my own journey through not going to university because I didn't get the grades and then deciding to go to learn to become a PT in the gym and then join the fire brigade and starting a podcast just because these things interested me and just following things, trying things, and you can keep doing that and just trying stuff because then if it doesn't work out, you know, one other thing that you, you don't want to do and you're just whittling them away.

Totally agree.

When you got into the Marine Corps, I believe there was only two flight slots available, is that correct?

Yeah, that was correct, yes.

How many people were up for that?

And what did earning one of those two spots teach you about yourself?

Yeah, so it was an interesting scenario and there's too many details in the background to go through it.

But ultimately when I signed up and, and, and applied and was selected to be a Marine officer candidate, which meant they accepted me into the training program, that I had to get through the training program.

But there's only really two ways to do it.

You can either do it as an air officer, meaning you're going to go to flight school or a ground officer, which means you're, you, you don't know what you're going to do yet.

And I think the aviation is unique because it's such a unique portion of the military and of the Marine Corps specifically.

They want to identify, you know, for all sorts of reasons, folks that have been pre selected to just go to flight school.

Obviously there's no guarantee you're going to get through any of the training and certainly not through flight school, but it's a career path that you know you're going to be on.

When I contracted and the way the timing worked out for me and the way I approached applying to join the Marine Corps Officer Candidate Program, I was contracted as a ground officer.

And so when I got to something called the basic school, which is every Marine officer, pilot, lawyer, ground officer, no matter what, every Marine goes through this six month training.

And that's where unless you're a pilot, they assign you your main specialty, your, your, your main job.

When I arrived there in a class of 250, they announced on the first day how many pilot slots there were going to be.

And I, I, I went there, I wanted to be a pilot.

I wish I'd understood better how to contract as an air, air candidate, but I didn't.

So bottom line is I was there as a ground guy trying to be an air guy.

They're like, there are two of you are going to get selected for this.

I was like, man, my heart sank.

You know, I wrote about this, you know, the, the two out of 250.

Well, it turns out a couple things.

One is not all 250 people want to be pilots.

So you're not necessarily competing with all 250.

And there are still dozens and dozens of air pilots you're not competing with.

And then, you know, quite frankly too, there's, there's a pretty rigorous screening process.

To be eligible to become a pilot.

You have to take a, a pretty tough test.

There's physical requirements, vision requirements.

And so, and then again, like I said, a lot of people don't necessarily want to be pilots.

I don't ever, I'll never know what the actual number was.

It wasn't 250, but it also wasn't seven.

It was, it was a big number of people that wanted to be considered for it.

So while I can't say it was genuinely out of 250, what I do recall is being in a class of 250 people, hearing the, the leader go through the list and Saying, how many of each job are going to be?

When he said two for pilot, I was like, oh, my God, two.

This is going to be a problem.

Whether it's 250 or 150, it didn't really matter.

It was a very low probability, no matter who was really eligible and competing.

So it was a.

It was a.

It was a tough scenario for me, man.

I was fighting the odds statistically to make that happen, so I was very lucky that it worked out.

What was your mindset like in that moment, hearing that number two?

Was it.

Did that sort of put you back into reality a bit, or was it something that just.

You're still like, that's one of those two is me.

Both.

Yeah.

A little bit of panic, and I'm like, oh, man.

I had heard rumor mill, you know, typically like 10 to 15.

You know, it ebbs and flows.

I'd gotten stories from other people, but what I got in my head was like, hey, this is going to be hard.

I knew it was going to be hard showing up there.

And when they said two, I was.

I was like, whoa, hang on a second.

I was thinking 15 or so.

It really shook me for a minute.

Um, and that day, I. I do remember the sensation of.

Of having some panic, like, oh, man, this is.

This is way harder than I realized.

But to your point, too, Sam, like, I'm.

Like, I'm.

I'm.

I am going to be one of those two.

And so I got over the panic and kind of got to work and did everything I needed to do, also knowing in the back of my mind that, man, this is.

And there's just gonna be a lot of.

A lot involved that I, you know, I can control what I can control.

I could do my best.

But two is just.

It's such a tiny number that I had to be realistic that, you know, it certainly wasn't probable.

In my head, I'm like, I'm gonna make this happen.

But reality was, it was going to be long odds.

Yeah, that's such a unique mindset to be able to have to hold two opposing views like that.

And I remember, I read.

I can't remember the book, but it was about Royal Marines in the UK and the training.

The training process to become a commando.

And they were talking about the people.

They were looking at the mindsets.

They were looking at the people who do get through.

And it was the people who can basically say, I'm confident I can pass, but I also know that there are things out my control where I might not pass.

But it's okay because I will pass.

And it's like flitting between those two things with the confidence just underlying it.

And I think it's such a unique mindset to carry.

I think so many people just see one or the other and sort of fall into it.

Yeah, I carried that for five months of training.

That balance back and forth of reality versus, you know, what I wanted to make reality.

And obviously it worked out.

But yeah, it's a, it's a balance.

There it was, There were some tough days.

I'm like, man, yeah, you know, it's, it just.

The numbers were just not in my favor.

Yeah, I bet.

What was that, what was it moment like for you when you got told that you'd made one of those spots?

It's like the best thing ever, ever.

I have a, you know, I'm dating myself.

I took a selfie, if you want to call it that.

I have a picture in my photo album, no joke of I'm on my cordless phone telling my mom, like I just walked out of the office, was told by my platoon commander I was going to flight school.

And I had a mirror in my room and I took a picture of my reflection in my mirror.

I.

It was, I had a smile on my face that was like comedically oversized.

It was a culminating.

You know, there's a few life events because there was so much buildup.

You know, that's seven plus years and certainly four or so, like really deliberate, you know, college OCs, like really deliberate.

I want this to happen.

And then two out of 250, the whole narrative, and then there's a day, and by the way, I got the second spot and you know, they may have ended up giving out like a third or a fourth.

Like there might have been one or two guys behind me that ended up getting it.

And they probably have very similar stories of just how lucky they felt.

But when I got the second billet, I took a picture of it because it really represented like an entire life's dream of, of the opportunity.

Again, there's no guarantee I was going to get through flight school.

There certainly wasn't a guarantee of anything on the outside of that.

But I knew I was going to Pensacola and I was going to get a chance to go to naval aviation flight training.

And in the last two or three weeks that were left of the six month program, I found out probably five months and a week into training that I was going.

And so the last three weeks were kind of just euphoric.

Like I was on cloud nine.

It was just the, the, it was an absolute life defining culminating moment.

Like, hey, you're going to get your chance.

Which was just.

I'm reliving it right now like it makes me very happy to think about it.

Yeah, amazing.

You went on to then go to Top Gun and as we've already spoken about the film is what originally drew you in that, those opening moments.

And you then went to that place where you're living it.

What's.

I mean, I imagine there's loads of differences obviously between the movie and real life, but.

Sure.

What are some of the things that people maybe don't understand about what Top Gun is and what you learn there?

Yeah, well, I mean the real Top Gun in the movie are not alike.

It, it's, it's not a, the movie.

And if you ever watch like a documentary about the movie, they weren't trying to capture Top Gun, the real Navy fighter weapon school.

And so a lot of what's being depicted isn't designed to show the rigors and the, and the lifestyle of a Top Gun student or an instructor.

But the movie does an amazing job A, visually and just the effects of watching the flying.

But also I think some components, they, they magnify elements of personality traits that I think make Top Gun what it is, is you've got this incredible amount of discipline, you've got this high risk tolerance, you've got this really dangerous environment.

You've got personalities like Maverick who, who like to, you know, explore his, his own way of, of, of operating which, you know, we don't want people just making things up, but you know, having a little bit of a rebellious nature of, of trying to push the envelope.

Those things are all actual real things.

And so when you get to Top Gun, certainly life as a student, life as an instructor are a little bit different.

But ultimately the school, Top Gun is a school.

It is a, is it, It's a training and education environment geared towards absolutely creating two things.

One, the best pilots and more importantly, the best instructors that you can create in naval aviation to proliferate the best training and tactics for pilots to win in combat.

And so it really represents the absolute pinnacle, the apex of naval aviation, certainly in the fighter world.

And it's really just a place that, that is an aspiration to get there because you know you're going to be part of the biggest contribution you can make, which is to the, the culture, the ethos and the capability of this thing we call naval aviation, which is this massive thing.

Top Gun represents the pinnacle of that, but it's.

It's undeniably a.

A job.

It's a profession.

It's a schoolhouse.

It's a.

It's a place where, like, people that.

It's dead serious.

But at the same time, it is like, in the back of your mind, like, I can't believe I work here.

This is like, the coolest thing, is the best job.

These are the best people.

This is the most fun.

It's the most exciting.

So you're.

You're really balancing this incredible burden of reality that the obligation you have is so significant on behalf of the nation and on behalf of naval aviation with.

I'm kind of living the script of this movie.

This is the coolest thing ever.

So it is the most fun.

It is the hardest work, but the most rewarding work you could possibly imagine at that stage in your career.

And it truly does represent in.

In every position in any profession into the world, there is something that represents the pinnacle of that profession, and that's what Top Gun is.

And so for me, it was just the.

Another culminating event in life to get to be there as an instructor.

Just the coolest thing ever.

Yes.

You were there, obviously, as a student, and then you went on to be an instructor and a senior instructor there as well.

This is crazy.

Yeah, yeah, it's amazing, amazing work.

I want to sort of understand a bit about what you think makes good training.

And obviously it's quite specific, but there must be some underlying principles.

I've spoken before, again, not to compare the two, but firefighting.

I've been asked about how you.

How you respond to incidents.

And I always say training is like the most important thing.

You just train repetition in that.

In from your experience through what is such an elite area.

What do you think makes good training?

Yeah, I mean, there's this very cliched, simple answer, which is it has to be hard, has to be realistic.

And everybody kind of knows that.

But I.

And I would never want to presume that I understand the dynamic of, like, running into a building and fighting a fire.

That just seems crazy.

And I'm honored to let you do it.

So good for you.

And I'm grateful for that.

But I imagine there's some similarities in the environments, in the sense of what allows you to be prepared is you want training to be really difficult and really realistic.

But the thing about the training, too, is the training shouldn't be designed to give you, like, a rote response to everything.

There are certain things that should be done a certain way every time.

And I Imagine you've got these really well defined sops or processes or things that for the most part kind of need to be done a certain way every single time.

And aviation has that as well.

But good training also should catch you off guard.

It should challenge your expectations, it should undermine your plan a little bit.

It should put you in a position to go, ooh, this isn't going the way that I thought.

Or this problem is presenting itself in a way that I've never seen before.

And I imagine each true fire and each true emergency, there's always gonna be some uniqueness and some nuance to it, even if you've done it day after day, year after year.

And so training, in the sense of it being realistic, the training has to have one side where it is effective enough to test all the challenges of understanding the processes and the procedures and SOPs and, and at the same time be dynamic and difficult enough to force some free thinking, some independent thinking, some.

Some uniqueness to it.

And that's really hard to do.

And so I think one of the things Top Gun has learned how to do well is we create training environments that are really difficult and, and very clearly test the objectives we are trying to demonstrate your proficiency in.

But at the exact same time, it's not that you just, oh, if you do A, then automatically B.

And it doesn't.

No, it doesn't work like that.

Combat doesn't work like that.

The real life doesn't work like that.

And so you want those training events, especially in the later portions of training, to really test the understanding of how to make decisions in real time, when things are moving really fast, when there isn't a cut and dry answer, just a rote, process driven answer that's hard to do.

Man.

There's a balance inside there.

I think aviation, certainly training for combat and training for the environment you're operating in, there's probably a lot of similarities.

There is.

If all you know is the SOP and all you know is the procedure and all you know is the checklist, you're going to struggle when things don't go as planned, when things deteriorate and things in the environment don't react the way that you expect.

So you got to train for that too.

And that's.

That's tough.

That can be tough.

Yeah.

And on that thing you just mentioned about making decisions, making decisions under pressure, that's obviously what you want to put people in that position during the training because it's something that's going to happen in real life when it comes to making decisions under pressure.

How do you remain decisive?

I suppose there's two possibilities.

You've got a position where there's no obvious answer.

Yeah.

Also a position where maybe you think you know the answer and you're so set on that that you're not willing to listen to anyone else.

Yeah.

How do you remain decisive in those moments?

I mean, I think there's a fine line there and I think that's one of the things that I discovered.

You know, I, I, I, I wrote this down.

Is something that I learned, definitely a Top Gun.

But I, I learned it later than I would have hoped to have learned.

It is the lesson I learned is that flying is leadership.

And what you're asking about there is the ability to be decisive, yet open minded.

That is much less about flying a fighter or, or fighting against an enemy or fighting a fighter and than it is about being a good leader.

Because that attribute is something that you have to cultivate in your leadership brain, not your tactical.

Which group do I attack first, which type of bomb do I drop, which altitude do I use?

Those are tactical things.

Those are not leadership things per se.

And I think what you have to do is what you just described is you have to understand decisiveness comes from understanding that if I'm indecisive, especially at the speeds that happen in fighter aviation, I'm sure it's same in your world is decide indecision is going to get you killed.

It's going to get you killed.

If you wait even a second or two sometimes you can put yourself and your team in a really bad spot.

So the attribute of being decisive comes from learning the skills to be decisive amid uncertainty, amidst uncertainty and understand how moving quickly but incrementally is really necessary.

At the same time, one of the things that weighs against the concept of decisiveness is open mindedness and listening to other people.

And so I think it really presents what I would call, you know, our company calls it a dichotomy.

You know, the guys that I work for, Leif and Jocko, wrote a book called the dichotomy of Leadership, which is really presenting exactly what you just did, Sam, is you've got these two opposing forces, you've got this concept of decisiveness and this concept of listening to others and being open minded.

The challenge with that is that they're both correct.

So which one do you pick?

And the answer is yes is the answer.

You gotta be decisive, you gotta be open minded.

I think the hardest part in all of that is the self awareness that you have to do both.

I think once you become self aware and go, hey, I want to be decisive, but I want to be open minded.

Especially when you got a good relationship, you got a good rapport, it becomes a little bit easier.

I think the challenge inside those dichotomies is when you bias too much in one extreme or the other.

I'm decisive, I get things done, I make things happen, I make the plan and we execute.

That all sounds great, but it's really not a great leadership attribute.

Especially if I'm not allowing myself to admit, hey, it wasn't a great plan.

I might have missed something, or Sam sees something I don't see, all of a sudden that decisiveness is a liability.

The other side is, hey, I really want to hear what Sam has to think and I'd love his perspective on that.

And I'm super open minded and that takes a bunch of time and I want to review the notes and I want to, you know, reconnect.

All of a sudden you're behind and you're in trouble.

So you can see where I'm going with this is, is you really have to be willing to balance those two.

That's hard, man.

That's a hard thing.

That's why fighter aviation, the leadership is so challenging and so difficult.

No different from firefighting, ground combat.

It's what the seals go through, you know, the guys that I work with.

So that balance of those two opposing forces that are both correct makes it for a really tough line leadership environment, which is why it's so difficult to really reach that apex in that profession.

Because these are tough, tough, tough problems to solve.

Because the answer to it is correct and yes, and both.

And it's, that's not easy.

Yeah, yeah.

And I suppose again, it just comes from repetition and there's repetition of putting someone in that position where they've got to decide quick, but also stay open.

Minded to options and you learn from mistakes.

And it's like, how bad of a mistake do you really want to learn fighting fires?

Because you, you gotta make mistakes, right?

Well, yeah, yes, but, but no, we.

Can't make the most.

Yeah, exactly.

So same thing with flying airplanes, right?

So I think that's where you know, you've got culture, you've got experience, you've got legacy, you've got history, you've got mentoring, you've got all these forces at play here.

So I think what you're describing, I think is the beauty of this is why I love what we do now is like, these are leadership problems.

Leadership Is hard, but leadership needs to be taught and trained to.

And if you good at it, it applies everywhere in life.

So tough, tough scenario, you, you, you hit the nail on the head with that.

I'm just really reiterating that.

I think you're exactly right.

It's, it's a tough business, but it's, it's, it's necessary to be successful.

Yeah.

And I think like leadership, we always, we talk a lot about leadership in an external way.

I was speaking to Mary Howe, who was an AC130 gunner in the US and she was talking about internal leadership as well, and how it's so important to lead ourselves in order to lead others so good.

And it's just, just that reminder as all we would get locked up in, sometimes talking just the external side.

But, but on that, obviously the work you guys do with Echelon Front, you go to businesses and do these deliveries on leadership.

What are the things that make a good leader and may make a bad leader, in your opinion?

Yeah, well, the good news is that what makes you a good or bad leader applies everywhere.

So what made you a good leader in the military will make you a good leader in the private sector.

It'll make you a good leader at home.

It'll make you a good leader in your communities.

And to the point you made a minute ago, which I loved, was it'll make a good leader just within yourself.

Just sometimes leading yourself is the hardest thing.

Just doing the, the best thing you're supposed to do when no one else is around, no one else is watching.

When it's just you, the opposite is also true.

Whatever attributes of behaviors drive failure for the military are the same as a drive failure everywhere.

So the good news is that leadership is leadership.

There's no, like, there's no unique formula to military leadership.

It's not any different from any other kind.

And so when you can get over the initial hurdle, like, hey, good leadership is good leadership.

You don't need to be in some setting or some environment to understand what good leadership is.

And if you've never served in the military, never served in something like a fire brigade, you could still learn the exact same things required to be successful in those settings, even though you never experienced them.

Leadership is leadership.

I think the, the biggest element of what good leadership is, and we teach that at Echelon Front.

We talk about the laws of combat, we talk about mindsets, we talk about taking ownership.

I think underneath all that is the idea that leadership is simply a skill to learn.

You know, you could Ask me, like, what makes a good guitar player?

I don't play the guitar, and I can't actually define and describe and explain it from a guitar player.

But I bet if you took someone who's a really good guitar player and said, hey, what makes a good guitar player?

He would offer some.

Some elements and components that are universal to playing the guitar.

And I bet you the same thing is true, that if you wanted to learn how to, you know, do a particular skill, like play a sport or learn how to build something, somehow the idea of leadership somehow in people's minds, like, it's separate from other skills like instruments of music and sports, and it's not.

Leadership is a skill no different from any other skill.

If you want to learn to play the guitar, Sam, you could get someone who knows how to play guitar.

They could teach you.

You become a good guitar player.

I'm not saying you're going to become the world's greatest guitar player, but if you want to learn how to play the guitar, someone could teach you.

If you want to learn how to build a house, someone can teach you.

You wanna learn how to play soccer, someone can teach you.

The same is true for leadership.

And I think once people recognize leadership is a skill built on fundamental behaviors, fundamental actions, fundamental ways of thinking, fundamental ways of belief.

And that's how my book is broken down.

What you do and what you think, anybody can learn it and anybody can get better at it.

There's all sorts of nuance.

There's also a uniqueness.

Every person is different, every environment is different, but leadership fundamentally is a skill no different from any other skill.

And if you embrace learning the skills of leadership, you will get good at it, and it will work in every single aspect of your life.

And I think that's probably the biggest myth that people have to get over in understanding what makes a good leader is someone who studies leadership, someone who practices it, someone who learns the behaviors and applies them in their life and improves over time.

And that paradigm is identical for anything you want to learn.

What makes a good anything?

Someone who learns it, who practices it, who gets better at it.

Yeah, I think a lot of people maybe have the misunderstanding that it's a nature thing versus a nurture.

Classic.

And that people are born natural leaders.

Classic.

And I just.

Yeah, it's just definitely something you can learn.

And it's.

It's like you say, it's just like learning an instrument.

It's learning how to use yourself.

You are the instrument.

That's a beautiful way of putting it there Is no human being alive that has ever been alive, that was born knowing all the things to be a good leader.

None, not a human.

Like, we are not born like that.

And the thing of it is like this nature, nurture, debate is I think what's unique about leadership, and it's very similar, I'm sure to music, is some leaders make it look easy.

So if you've got a boss or a parent or a teacher, a coach, a mentor who's just this, what appears to be this naturally good leader, part of it's like, man, boy, must be nice.

This person knows all this stuff and is so good at it.

It's easy to attribute it to like, oh, that's how they've always been.

They were born like that.

Think about like, I keep coming back to the guitar.

It's more just an example.

Like musicians can make playing instruments easy, make it look easy.

Like, oh, must be nice to be, you know, yeah.

Jack White, the best guitar player.

Like, hey, that guy, you know what?

He was probably born.

He probably has some natural talents.

Some natural.

And there are folks, there are athletes that have some good athleticism there.

There are musicians that have some good musical inclination.

There are definitely some leaders that have a little bit of tendency, but it is a skill.

And if someone is really good at playing an instrument, you know what they've done, have practiced that an obscene amount of time and hours and years to get good at their craft.

Unfortunately, once you get to the end state of being a really good musician, a really good athlete, it appears like it just happens on its own.

The same is true for leadership, good leaders.

Somehow you like, oh, Dave was born like that or Sam was born like that.

No, no.

Nope.

It's a skill.

You want to learn it, read about it, practice it, study it, get better, you will improve.

That's is not complicated.

It's hard to do, but it is very simple.

Yeah, agree.

I just want to jump back into your.

Your story.

So we spoke a bit earlier about.

You were in Top Gun, you're a senior instructor and you volunteered to go for a ground wall you were setting, saying earlier you went originally to Japan.

And very quickly it all changed.

You've described that moment as an act of self sabotage.

What did you mean by that when you did that?

Yeah, I remember writing that too.

And the way I captured that was like.

I think for most human beings the idea of like knowing what the right thing to do is always in the back of your mind.

Most people for the most part know what they should do.

And a Lot of times we, like, rationalize, justify, and excuse our way out of it and avoid doing the right thing because it's hard or it won't be fun or you just don't want to do it or, or whatever it might be.

I'm as human as anybody else.

When I see something and feel something, I know I'm supposed to do.

If it's hard, there's a part of me going, hey, Mayor, be a lot easier if you didn't have to do that.

And so when I described it as an act of self sabotage, what I'm sabotaging is the instinct to not do it.

And so what I did there, and I've done this throughout my, my career, in my life, is like, if I in the background, I'm like, I know this is the right thing to do, is I almost like force my hand to make sure I do it.

And one of the best things that I did was like, I volunteered to do that.

And once it's out there, you can't.

You can't walk that back.

So I could go that night, be like, man, I don't want to be away from my family.

I don't want to put myself at risk.

I don't want to go through that, that challenge, that.

That difficult environment.

Well, if you've done nothing, you will.

A lot of times you can talk yourself out of doing the right thing and don't.

And the way I describe it is like, it's self sabotage, but it's kind of like the opposite of.

It's like sabotaging yourself into forcing the right outcome, not the easy outcome, not the comfortable outcome.

And if I get a thought like, hey, this is the right thing to.

Do,.

It's hard, it's going to be difficult.

I'm going to try to weasel my out of this.

And I basically put myself in a spot where I can't volunteering for those jobs.

And I volunteered for the fact tour.

Then I volunteered to go to Camp Lejeune.

I volunteered to go to Ramadi.

In the back of my mind, I did it because I knew it was the right thing.

And I also knew that the more time I had to think about it, the more I try to convince myself not to do it.

I wasn't going to let myself do that.

And so I was like, nope, this is the right thing.

Just do it.

Just put it out there.

Just.

Just do it.

Get it done.

Don't avoid it.

Don't.

Don't figure out a way to get out of it.

Just do it.

And I think it's a good philosophy of life because like I said, all human beings.

Same with me.

I'm a big fan of the easy path.

I get it, I get it.

I like things that are easy and comfortable.

I get it.

I want that.

But there are times you're like, hey man, you just got to just step it up and do the right thing and force up to it.

And if you got to sabotage yourself, do it, you know, put your, put your name on paper.

Can't walk that back.

You're committed, man.

Get it done.

You sort of know straight away you get.

I mean, we say it's our gut feeling, don't we?

We, we know what's right or what's, maybe what we should be doing.

And then the longer something goes on, the easier it is for us to start finding excuses for it.

It's why like going to the gym first thing is an easy thing.

Oh, sorry.

Not an easy thing.

It's difficult, but it's useful because you can just be like, I'm getting up, I'm getting my kiln and I'm going to.

As the longer you sit at home and you go, well, I'll just do the emails first and then I'll go to the gym after that and then it's like, well, I'll do something else.

And before, you know, it's the afternoon and you haven't been to the gym and you start talking yourself, well, maybe I'll skip it today because I, I hired yesterday.

And it's just that like that, you know, when there's something that's right early on and just sticking.

It's a good metaphor for life, man.

It's a good way to live.

It's tough.

Absolutely.

It's a good way to live.

Yeah.

And you mentioned obviously volunteering to go to Iraq and Ramadi as well.

You were asked to assign the team specifically to go to Ramadi, right?

Yeah.

Why did, why did you write your own team into Ramadi in that moment?

Yeah.

I'd love to tell you some story of like some altruistic, you know, Dave story.

I was the senior Ford air controller.

We essentially had and I'm close but like 20 something teams similar to mine that were going to be all around the country of Iraq and all sorts of 25 different places and 25 different sets of, of teams that had a support.

I knew I was telling about my best friend earlier who, who, who grew up wanted to be a Marine fighter pilot.

He was already a fact in Ramadi.

He was in the middle of it.

Everybody knew that that's where the fighting was.

It was the most dangerous city, was the epicenter of the, of the insurgency.

And everybody understood that was the place that was the most dangerous and, and, and the most deadly.

When I was asked, I, I mean he, my boss came in, he's like, hey, just fill this out.

He didn't give me some story.

Just, it's basically just picture like a sheet of paper that had 26 locations, get all the teams to, to, to be on there.

I just couldn't comprehend a scenario where I was expecting or asking or volunteering someone else to do the hardest job.

And, and again, it's not like it wasn't some like moment of altruism.

It was just that same thing we talked about a minute ago.

Seems like it's just the right thing to do.

Like, hey, there's a really hard job.

I need someone to do it.

I need you to fill out who's going to do it.

Like, what am I going to volunteer?

Like, someone else should do this, but I shouldn't.

I was the most experienced pilot.

I was the most experienced fact, I was the senior guy on paper.

I was extremely well qualified for this.

And other guys, I'm not saying other guys couldn't have done it, but, hmm.

When I volunteered for, and I've volunteered my teams as well, I, I, I was, I wasn't just volunteering me.

I understood that I was creating risk for other people.

There just really wasn't any other way to do it.

There's no way I could have done that and had somewhere else do it.

Now if he had asked another person to fill it out, this story might be totally different.

I have no idea.

But I took it.

Ramadi Lightning 61 Major Burke this is happening and then we figure out the rest and, and you know how it played out.

But there is no scenario where I could have expected or asked someone else to go to a place that I, and everyone knew was the most dynamic, dangerous and violent place.

It just, it was just, it would have been the wrong thing to do.

So I just said, I'm doing it.

And that was as simple as that.

It's part of being a leader, isn't it, that you wouldn't ask people to do what you're not willing to do.

I suppose that comes into it as well.

And you're just, it was just the.

Right thing to do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.

I've heard you, heard you talk about sort of arriving in Ramadi and you've, you've you've got your camouflage on.

You haven't worn that for many years, and it's all clean and all of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

How did you go into that situation?

Obviously you're around people who've been there for a lot longer.

They know that environment really well.

How did you go about building trust?

Yeah, it's interesting.

I mean, I, you know, on paper, I was a pretty senior guy.

Yeah, a lot of experience.

You know, I was a Top Gun instructor.

I was a training officer.

I had all these attributes that looked like at least a marginally qualified, capable guy that, you know, wasn't brand new to anything.

I mean, in reality, I didn't, I had, I didn't know.

I had no idea what I was doing.

Totally in over my head.

Certainly from a standpoint of like what I had envisioned as a kid, what I dreamed about, what I trained and practiced for, and what I had done.

You cannot get two more different scenarios than being the senior instructor Top Gun.

I think I wrote him.

I made the joke.

Like, I'm dual qualified.

The F18 and F16.

I've got a condo in Lake Tahoe on a ski resort, and I am driving a Corvette.

You know, it's like the most cliched, cheesy, like out of the movies, and you snap your fingers and I'm now leading a team of Marines on the ground with a bunch of Navy SEALs in the most dangerous city in the.

In.

In probably the world, certainly in Iraq.

And I think the way that you earn trust, build credibility and help people understand that you, you are there to contribute to the outcome and keep them alive and keep them successful is you follow the exact same leadership principles A, you've already brought up, and B, what led to my success in the past.

You listen, you're open minded, you build good relationships, you become a good communicator, you stay in control of your emotions, and you empower your people to be effective leaders because they understand the outcome we're trying to achieve.

And you model those behaviors, you live those behaviors as best you can.

And most of the time, le leadership is reciprocal.

What you give is what you get.

What you put out is what comes back in return.

And if I was in a situation where I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't act like I did, and if I was in a situation that I felt like I knew what I was doing, I'd share that and share that in a way that says, hey, you know, this is what I feel like we're doing.

But not in a threatening way that stifled my subordinate leaders.

And the most important thing I could do was have the trust of the team.

My team.

And the way you earn their trust is that you.

You show them that you trust them.

And I trusted my guys.

And the truth is, like, I had two guys with combat experience, maybe three out of my.

And the rest were clueless and new, just like I was to ground combat.

So I didn't have this massive wealth of knowledge underneath me, which is kind of interesting.

I have, for the most part, a very inexperienced group, and I still had to let them lead.

I still had to show them, and I trusted them, and that's how you make that work.

And by the way, that wasn't just Ramadi.

It was.

It's everywhere.

That's.

That's how it operates, you know, in.

In the world.

And so I just followed the basic fundamental leadership principles that lead to success everywhere.

And lo and behold, for the most part, it worked.

I wasn't perfect.

I wasn't like.

I certainly wasn't, you know, the most comfortable, confident leader in ground combat.

I was.

I was struggling, man.

I was barely keeping up.

I mean, I'm running around with Navy SEALs in.

In these insane combat environments, getting shot at, shooting at people, calling in airstrikes, running.

It was crazy.

I was hanging on for a lot of times.

Yeah.

But ultimately, good leadership is good leadership.

I did my best to be a good leader.

Nobody's gonna ever look back and be like, Dave Burke was the most brilliant ground combat leader that ever seen.

Nobody's gonna say that.

But we.

We took care of each other by.

By trusting each other and.

And building a really strong relationship.

And that carries a long.

A lot of weight in a long way in any environment, certainly in ground combat.

Yeah.

Yeah, it sounds.

Sounds like a great plan like that.

Mutual trust.

I think a lot of people want to be trusted maybe without trusting people, especially in leadership positions.

And that's just such an obvious way that you've laid out where that works.

Obviously, you went through so much whilst you're on the ground there, and I assume learned loads of things.

What did you learn that for all those years in flight training, Top Gun instructing?

You didn't learn there, but something that maybe you learned as soon as you got on the ground.

Yeah, the thing, you know, there's no question about.

And I obviously learned this, and I think anybody that's been on both sides of.

Of combat, you know, in the air and on the ground, and there's spectrums of both of them.

Ground Combat is pretty intimate.

It is, I, I, it's sort, it's incomparable to other versions of combat.

Now I, again, I got to be careful.

Like, there are things and certainly historical.

My experience in combat in a fighter was with this massive advantages, absolute air dominance.

I mean, our, what America and our allies can do in the air compared to most of our enemies, certainly at the time.

Like, we live in a pretty secluded, pretty unique space.

I would never want to like, articulate that air combat isn't as scary as ground combat to someone who fought in Vietnam or World War II or Korea.

I mean, that stuff is like up close and personal.

But when I was flying combat, I've been shot at, I dropped bombs.

I mean, it's, it's, it's busy, it can be scary.

But ground combat is intimate.

It is, it is up close and personal and it's magnified.

And part of what I had to understand as well, in a lot of ways it's the same.

The magnification of it is really hard to prepare yourself for the first time you get shot at.

And I, I wrote about it a little bit.

I mean, I, I was in firefights where, I mean, I was in some cases like a foot or two away of, of getting hit by, you know, volumes of fire that it's really hard to imagine.

I saw things happen to people.

You know, I've wrote about that too.

Like, ground combat is intimate and what it will do, it was, it will challenge.

I think one of the hardest parts about being a good leader is remaining detached and staying in control of your emotions.

The thing about my experience in the airplane is I had flown so many times, I'd flown so many thousands of hours.

I felt very comfortable even when things were deteriorating, I still felt in control.

When things deteriorated on the ground, man, it is, it is hard to retain control of your emotions.

And I was really forced to learn how to do that.

And it's, it's not different per se, but it's, the magnification is, is, it is dramatic.

And I was not prepared for it in the, in the sense that I understood what I was getting myself into.

And when I got there.

There's just some things you have to experience for yourself.

The first time you see a casualty, the first time you see a dead body, the first time you see or feel and hear bullets go past your head, the first time you see people panicking.

All that was, was I had to work really hard to manage, internalize that.

And I felt very fortunate to be able to do that.

But, man, it pushed me to my limits.

It has nothing to do with diminishing the significance of any other thing that I had done.

But what I experienced on the ground in Ramadi was unique.

And like I said, it was.

It was a challenge for me to retain my composure and retain my control, which was absolutely necessary to being successful.

It pushed me to my limit to be able to do that.

I'd like to think that I was able to do that for the most part, but, man, I was kind of at.

At.

I was on the ragged edge a few times.

Some pretty crazy things happened, and I. I had to work really hard to.

To be effective in some of those difficult environments.

Yeah.

Is there.

Where's the line of that sort of emotional detachment from the moment enough to be able to make decisions calmly, but obviously go too far and you're completely cut off emotionally.

And yeah, we.

We've heard many stories of people that do that, and then it sort of comes back to buy them a lot later on.

Is there.

Where's the balance for you?

There is a balance, undeniably.

I think the language you're using is exactly right.

I think where I struggled more was in and out of the environment.

Like, when I left the environment, getting back to more normalcy was harder for me, I think, in the environment.

I don't mean to be callous about this, but if you can't maintain control of your emotions in ground combat, you're going to get the people around you hurt or killed.

And so I always understood, like, hey, I am.

I am setting the tone.

I'm setting the behavior.

I'm setting the culture.

I'm setting the actions of the people around me.

If I do this well, they will do this well, and if I do this poorly, they'll do this poorly.

So I. I feel like I had a good understanding.

I think most leaders do, and certainly work towards the idea.

And you've probably seen this in, like, the most chaotic fire you're dealing with is if you can't do the right thing, it's gonna hurt other people, not just yourself.

It's gonna hurt other people.

And I think that demand signal, for the most part, brought the best out of me and brings the best out of other people, you know, that are well trained and have good relationships and all those things.

You know, you certainly don't want to be devoid of emotion in combat, but you absolutely need to project that you can maintain control of your emotions.

And when you do, just like I talked about before, it's reciprocal what you put out is what you get.

If I maintained calm in crazy environments, my Marines reflected calm and if I got freaked out, they were going to freak out too.

And I'm like, hey, this is going to help.

This is going to hurt them.

The balance for me was much harder in regaining a different balance of normalcy outside of combat.

And so my return home was a much harder problem for me than it was while I was there.

A good leader and I understood like, hey, this is the best way to keep my, my Marine safe and alive and effective is you got to maintain control of your emotions in the scariest, most dangerous, life threatening situations.

Do it.

And I was able to do that.

That didn't, that wasn't a light switch for me.

I didn't just leave the next day and like back to my old self.

It was tough.

Yeah.

And is that, it's exactly what you're saying about that.

Projecting is what you project.

It's how you make people feel around you as a leader.

You, you could be feeling nervous inside, but if you start projecting that, everyone starts feeling it.

If you project calmness and like make decisions, people just see that and they're like, well, if he's calm, I can be calm.

I learned that flying, that translated really, really well.

I was able to do that well because one thing about flying is you were on a routine basis going to be presented with life threatening scenarios.

It's just a nature of the business of fighter aviation.

And I learned how to manage that pretty well.

That translated very well to ground combat is that skill of detaching from emotion, projecting calm, focusing on the mission and the people and getting it done and not freaking out.

I handled myself pretty well there because I had years and years and years of experience doing that.

Yeah.

I want to go on to the next point, but before we talk about sort of what happened, I just want to ask who was Corporal Chris Leon to you?

Yeah, Chris was my radio operator, is one of the men on my team.

I had a relatively small team.

It was a 13 man team.

We called it Assault.

A supporting arms liaison team.

That was the team that I wrote down who's going to what city.

It was Salt 6, my supporting arms liaison team.

It was the 12 other Marines as part of that team.

And without getting too crazy about it, bottom line is I took the 13 people and broke them into three, four man teams.

So four, four and four.

I had an extra person, had a fit person, my Navy corpsman, my doc stayed with me.

The dude was awesome.

I wasn't going to go anywhere without him.

But ultimately we had three teams that I had to split it up into three rotating teams to be able to deal with the demand signal of all the ground missions we were doing.

And each team had a someone qualified Ford air controller or JTAC or fac.

Each team had appointment, each team had a radio operator and each team had a team lead.

And Chris was one of my radio operators on one of my teams.

Only handful of us, small group of people.

Chris was one of my Marines.

Talk me through what happened that day for you.

Yeah, I mean the story of Chris is obviously a tough story to tell.

It's only, it's like the 20th anniversary that was last month or two months ago, like just very recent.

Chris was killed on the rooftop of a building right downtown, you know, South Central Ramadi.

Shot and killed by an insurgent on, on, I hate to say it, on a mission that we had conducted routinely, regularly.

And it was the first time I had, I lost a Marine on my team.

And that was, it was Chris on June 20th on the rooftop of Cop Iron, a place I'd been many, many times.

With everything we just spoke about and that emotional detachment to a level and try not to project what you're feeling maybe.

How did that test that element of your leadership in that moment?

Yeah, well, it tested it a lot.

And I have to really give the credit to his boss, Chris's officer in charge of his four man team.

We used to call him simple, not because he was dumb.

He was actually a smart guy, super intelligent guy, and a really good, experienced combat leader.

The way he handled that scenario was an ultimate case study in great leadership and detachment and trying to focus on dealing with the problem at hand and giving what at the time we thought was the best chance to, to keep Chris alive.

I was certainly tested that.

But the Marines that were right there with him on the roof were the ones that were really put in the most difficult environment and they behaved in an unbelievably admirable way, which is a reflection of the mindset I always wanted to create for the team was how do you handle these difficult scenarios?

They handled it extremely well.

For me, it was really, really tough.

I think the hardest part for me when I went through that was accepting the outcome.

I, I, it was really, really tough for me, you know, when I'm certainly looking at him firsthand and an understanding what happened and, and objectively being there and, and seeing what happened, it was hard for me to internalize and accept that Chris was Killed.

I. I really had a hard time.

I didn't want to do that.

That was.

That was the hardest part for me, was accepting the reality of that.

I was tough.

I was not.

I was not fully prepared for the idea that I was going to lose a Marine on that deployment.

Yeah, I suppose it's something you never really want to sort of think about ahead of that happening.

You hope it never will, obviously.

Echelon Front, you talk about extreme ownership.

It's the book that Leif and Jocko have written as well, and it asks you to say that responsibility, take responsibility for everything.

How do you stop it in that moment, becoming.

Feeling guilty if you're taking responsibility for everything that happened?

Well, I did feel guilty.

I think the most difficult part of that is that there's a part of you, certainly a part of me, and I don't want to speak for other folks, but I think I'm.

As a pretty common, pretty normal human being, There was a part of me that wanted this to be over.

When he was killed, I'm like, I don't want to keep.

I don't want to do this anymore.

I don't want to go through this again.

I don't want to experience it again.

I don't want to lose another Marine.

I didn't want it to happen to me or anybody around me.

And so there's this sense of, like, man, I don't.

I don't want to go through this again.

And what I had to acknowledge is if I'm feeling that in the back of my mind, kind of in the recesses, there's no way my Marines aren't thinking that, too.

And I think what you have to convey is a balance of acknowledging what happened, being human about that, accepting it, embracing it, but also accepting the reality that there is still a war going on and we're going to get back to work.

And that's what we did.

I had to be more aware and more sensitive to.

To the risks associated with that after he was killed than before, because a little myth, a little, I guess you say, like, little.

Our reality was shattered.

Yeah, the reality that it was.

And.

And.

And we were around a lot of casualties I had seen and been a part of and observed and been to memorials of a lot of friendly casualties.

And.

And we had.

We had killed a lot of people.

It was part of the business that we were in, but it always been a tiny bit removed from us.

Just a tiny bit.

And when it happened to us, it has.

There's a magnitude of it and a Shattering of the reality.

That's just.

It's unavoidable.

And so I had to understand that the team was going to struggle and wrestle with this more than we ever had, because this is the first time it truly, truly, truly happened to us.

And at the same time, like it was June, it was the absolute apex, the height of the violence going on.

It wasn't going to end the next day.

It also wasn't going to end because we wanted it to.

And if I wanted to make sure we came back and didn't lose anybody else, we were going to have to be at our absolute best.

And that was going to be hard because we just saw and felt and experienced something that nobody wanted to go through.

That was a leadership challenge I had to carry for the next several months.

We were barely halfway through the deployment when that happened.

And that was the hardest part, I think about that was.

I'm sorry, it hurt.

It was devastating.

And the next day after the memorial, we probably took maybe 36 hours, whatever, we had to go back to work, and we did.

That's what we did.

We went back to work.

And by the way, that was the best way to honor Chris and his legacy and his losses.

If I were to be able to ask Chris, what should we do?

He'd say, go back to work.

That's what he was said, of course.

And you think.

And we did.

Yep, that's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You stay out in Ramadi for the remainder of that tour, and six days after leaving Ramadi, you're back in San Diego.

I've.

I've been crazy.

Yeah.

So that.

That's such a quick changeover again, that a lot of people, after that long away, maybe don't really recognize.

And I've seen about you.

You've spoken about the drive home from the airport where you had your, I think, your wife and mother in the car, and.

Yeah, you just sort of burst out and shouted at them over something totally normal.

Do you think that was you carrying everything back with you?

And what was it you think you couldn't switch off in that.

In that coming back?

For sure.

I mean, the odd thing about that is, like, I don't even remember the moment where I lost my sense of reality and then freaked out that we weren't scanning for IEDs in downtown San Diego, you know, on the.

On the street, that my house was on, like, the safest little community neighborhood that you could imagine.

So if you were to tell me that, like, I would have struggled coming home from that deployment, I'd be Like, yeah, I could see that people are going to struggle with that.

You have to work through some things.

And I wasn't opposed to the idea that I had endured some, like, you know, some, some tough environments and that I was going to have to work through that.

If you were to tell me that it was like the first 15 minutes you were back in, in the United States with your wife and your mom, I would have laughed at you and like, come on, dude, that's not how it's going to work.

You know, I land at San Diego airport, my wife is at the, at the, at the terminal, my mom is at the, at the curb.

I get in the car, it's a 15, 15 minute drive from the airport to my house in Pacific Beach.

And by the 12th minute I'm screaming at them to stop talking because they're just having a conversation.

And I'm, I'm shocked at my, the people inside my vehicle aren't quiet and focusing on threats, which I had every single day for the last 200 and something days or whatever it was.

I was there.

There's nobody talked inside the Humvee.

Like, what are you talking about?

If you're talking, you were talking about risks and threats and, and what you're seeing, you're not, you're not socializing, you're certainly not, you're not just, you know, BSing in the car.

If you were to tell me that would, I would have.

There's like no way that's gonna happen.

Me screaming at them kind of was like, almost like screaming at myself.

It woke me up.

I was like, oh my God, what, What happened?

Super embarrassing.

I go through in a lot of detail in the book.

I don't want to board your listeners with it, but it's, it was a, it was a startling, shocking, super embarrassing also like wildly unexpected behavior that happened like instantly from like instantly 15 minutes I'm home, I'm screaming at them to stop talking and start, and to pay attention to what they're doing.

It was like almost like an out of body experience.

That was an ominous sign of, of things to come that really kind of.

Things deteriorated pretty rapidly after that.

You know, starting that night, you know, I started having nightmares.

I mean, it was not good, but I did not expect it to happen like instantly.

Yeah, 12 minutes into my return.

So it was a rough go.

Yeah.

I've spoken to many military personnel on the podcast and people who.

It's such a common story that, isn't it?

Coming back from somewhere and really struggling to relate and get back into civilian lifestyle.

And I don't know if there's an easy answer for it, but what do you think?

I mean, reflecting back on it now, what did help you going forward?

What helped you sort of get back to your normal self?

And is there something that we can do better for veterans coming back?

Yeah.

And listen, I don't ever want to diminish the experiences and the reactions of veterans.

I can assure you there are men and women that endured much worse than I did.

And I am by no means someone that, that can speak to, you know, the degree of horrors of what people have gone through.

My experience was mine.

It was obviously a tragic experience.

It was very difficult for me.

But ultimately I am not a, an expert.

And also what I went through compared to what other people gone through, like, I'm not going to lecture anybody on what they went through and how to deal with it.

I will say, you know, I think support, I think the idea of PTSD and dealing, I think all those things, I think is great, that, that, that those resources should be made available and help people work through the obvious challenges that come from those environments.

For me, my process to recover from that and move on from that was very much something I, I needed to, could and, and understood was internal to me.

The problem for me wasn't that I didn't have the help and didn't have the external support and didn't have the resources.

That's my particular scenario.

The chapter title that I wrote about when I discussed this in the book that I wrote was the chapter was called Listen.

And I think one of the risks of how I wrote it was that there was like, implied, like a very simple approach to solving that problem.

And it was simple.

It was, it was really, really hard, but it wasn't very complicated.

What I was able to discover is my reaction to the sea.

The, the, the fear, the anxiety, the anxiousness, the nervousness, the overreaction, which is like very, very common symptoms of what you could call PTSD or just common symptoms of, of transitioning from combat back to, to regular life.

I, I, it manifested in me the way it does in most people.

What I was doing was sort of resisting that or rejecting that or, or try to ignoring that or pretending like that wasn't happening to me.

I didn't really want to acknowledge it.

And so if I was, you know, short with my wife or overreacted to a loud noise or, or raised my voice unnecessarily, what I wasn't allowing myself to do is understand, like, why are you why do you feel this way?

Like, what is.

What is causing that problem?

And the way I attribute that is like, I wasn't listening to myself.

There was always something triggering these things.

And.

And for me, the way it played out is I kind of created a scenario where I wanted to dictate if I could control the environment, I wouldn't have these reactions.

And the way I did that was like, oh, my wife should talk less, or, oh, we shouldn't go to this place.

Or if I'm feeling a certain way, other people should acclimate and accommodate me.

That way I can control this.

That way, my reaction is more appropriate.

And, like, you probably hear me say that, like, this is ridiculous.

Like, that's not how the world works.

You can't do that.

And what was awful for me was, like, my wife was trying to.

To.

To accommodate me.

She was trying to.

She was, like, trying to give me what she thought I needed, which was that.

And what I was able to notice, like, very quickly, like, she wasn't herself.

And I recognized, and I'm like, I didn't want her to be a different person.

I wanted her to be her.

What I liked about her and part of what I liked about her is, like, she spoke her mind, she had thoughts and ideas, and she was happy to share them with me.

And now she's, like, muting herself.

Like, oh, if she says something that will trigger Dave, Dave will get upset.

I don't want him to get upset all of a sudden.

Like, none of us are who we are.

And so the two things, like, hey, she needs to.

This is not a way to start a marriage and certainly not gonna have a family.

Like, there's no way this is gonna work.

It's doomed from the start if that's my expectation.

But the real problem was, like, was I listening to myself?

Like, if I was frustrated with her, it's probably because I was just frustrated in general.

And if I was frustrated in general, like, I had to, like, think for a second, like, what's.

You know, there's probably, like, something at work or something on my squadron or something.

Like, there was something.

And instead of listening to what that was, I was, like, pretending it didn't.

It didn't exist.

I described it as just listening, and it was extremely therapeutic for me, which was like, hey, listen to your own brain.

Listen to your own thoughts.

Listen to your own emotions.

Listen to yourself.

Don't resist it.

Don't reject it.

Don't deny it.

Don't pretend it's not there.

Listen to it.

And if I went through the process of listening to that, everything kind of diminished a little bit.

Like all my everything just kind of started to calm down.

Didn't happen overnight.

Wasn't over.

Just like a one moment of recognition.

It was a process, but it set me on the path of just regaining normalcy.

Anytime I rejected or resisted those emotions, things got worse.

Anytime I listened to those emotions, things got better.

And so I learned just listen.

I listened to the people around me.

I listened to my wife.

Most importantly, I listened to myself.

And it worked.

It helped.

I was able to regain most of my formal self.

Listen, man, I. I still got.

I'm not perfect.

I still have little moments.

It's been 20 years.

Clearly they've diminished.

But listening is an overlooked, underutilized, wildly important leadership behavior.

And I wasn't doing it.

And I think most people can do a.

Can listen more and talk less.

That worked for me.

It's a probably good thing for just about everybody.

Just don't talk so much.

Yeah, listen more.

That's a good way to live.

That's great advice.

I think so many people fill silence with something because they're scared of silence.

It's like, just listen and, like, take in what you've heard.

And to give my own experience of this, I spent a year doing volunteer work on the phone lines for Samaritans.

So they're a charity here who are there for people in crisis.

So mental health, suicidal line, but also just for people who are lonely and want to talk things through with an anonymous voice on the end of the line.

And they've got this listening wheel that they sort of to talk you through through the training.

And there's all these things around the outside, like confirmation back to them and repeating things.

But in the middle, the main thing is listen.

Sorry, it's not listen, it's silence.

But in.

In that silence is where you listen.

And yeah, if you can hold silence for someone, whether that's yourself or someone else, that's where more things start to come.

So when you listen to the first bit, just sit there for a minute, and in that silence, people will fill it.

People will fill it with something else.

And they feel awkward in that silence as well.

And that's where the slightly deeper stuff comes.

So, yeah, really, really good advice.

It's good advice.

Talk less and listen more.

100%.

With everything we've spoken about and leadership, both externally and also, as I mentioned earlier, the internal leadership.

What part of yourself are you still learning to lead?

Every aspect.

Like every aspect.

There are Certainly some things I'm much better at now than I used to be.

But I can't find a single leadership attribute or behavior that we teach to include all the ones that I wrote about that I don't have room to improve.

I'm better at some than others.

Some things I've gotten pretty comfortable with.

Some things actually, like we talked about before, some things came more naturally than others, you know, so I'm not.

You know, nobody is born with everything you need, but a lot of people have some.

They're good at this, maybe not good at that.

Like, with everything, you know, you can see that, like I said in sports and music and everything, I've got some.

A couple things I'm pretty.

Pretty comfortable with that for the most part, I'm good at nothing.

I'm perfect at.

Leadership is an unending pursuit of growth.

Like, you never get to, like, the end.

You never get to perfection.

And that's obvious.

But the list of things I need to improve on is so long that, like, it'd just be an unending pursuit that I don't focus on the things I'm good at and, And.

And.

And rely on those being enough.

It's the areas where I struggle the most that I try to focus on improving.

And I've got.

I've got a lot of room to improve in a lot of different ways.

I mean, where I'm probably tested the most right now is, like, in my parenting.

You know, I got two teenage daughters.

I got a teenage son.

They're great.

You know, every parent loves their kids, but they're.

They're a.

They're a handful, man.

I.

They're.

They are a leadership challenge.

I'll leave with that.

And I'm sure every.

Every parent, like, it's.

They're a leadership challenge.

I'm no different.

Certainly I would.

My kids act like every other normal kid in the world.

I try to think that maybe I have some good tools on my toolkit to help through that.

But if you think I'm over here, like, you know, masterclass parenting, perfect outcomes, and my kids don't display any of the traditional teenage kid behaviors.

I live in the real world, man, and I am tested routinely, and I am always in a place where I can go, I could have done that better.

A. I could have.

Like, my wife and I are constantly like, either I screwed it up, she screwed up.

We're like, hey, we need to do, like, yeah, there's a lot of willingness to accept that we.

We can be better at that.

That's probably the biggest challenge I got right now.

Yeah.

And I am not perfect at it.

I'll leave it at that.

What.

What has your family taught you that all the years in the military couldn't have?

Well, two things.

One is a reminder.

Leadership is leadership, man.

It is.

It is.

Leadership is leadership.

It's all the same.

We talk about probably be the most, most overlooked and hard to apply behavior or something we call detachment, which is, you know, detach from your emotions, detach from your perspective, detach from your ego.

We make bad decisions when egos are out of control, when we're emotional or when we're locked into what we see and ignore other people's perspectives.

Easy to say.

Detach, we say.

It's so important, we call it.

A. Detachment is a superpower, and you can teach the skills to detach.

You learn your red flags, you learn your little behaviors, you learn the skill of detachment so you don't overreact to difficult situations.

It is really hard to detach.

Yeah.

Probably harder than anywhere else.

With the creatures that you have helped create from birth.

You are.

I don't care who you are, you are emotionally attached to your family, your kids, more than anything else in the world.

So the application of the principle is significantly harder with your family than it is anywhere else.

I can talk about in the.

In a jet, in ground combat, in some of the most terrifying environments where I was able to maintain control of my emotions.

And I'll tell you, like, my teenage daughter, one of them could say something, and I'll be like, man, I will feel those emotions percolate up, like, as quickly and.

And like, whoa.

So it's harder.

It's the same.

But, man, it is harder.

I think success as a parent and leading at home, the formula is easy to understand.

We could talk about it.

We write about it, we explain it, we share it.

Doing it, man, family will test you in ways that it's hard to understand.

And I think it's because you're so invested in them.

I don't care about anybody else's success more than I care about my.

My kids success.

And so when you have this emotional investment in them, you can't help but struggle with detaching from those emotions.

So that's the life we all live in.

We care about these creatures, these.

These beings.

You know, they're the only people in the world that we care about more than we care about ourselves.

Right.

Like, that's just how it is.

So it could be tough.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's a challenge.

I just want to circle back to that first question I asked about leaving Top Gun for Ahmadi, and that at the time, you said that you didn't feel like a real Marine, and that's why you did it.

Did Ramadi finally make you feel like a real Marine, or did it instead sort of change what you pictured a real Marine was?

That was by far the most demanding professional leadership experience I ever had.

Ground combat is ground combat.

There's nothing like it.

Obviously, I don't want to glorify it.

I'm very, very grateful for what I experienced.

It.

It.

It defined who I am today.

It set me on a path of.

Of life experience in and out of the military, that to this day, I'm at Echelon Front, working for life in Jocko because I was with them in Iraq.

I could have never forecasted those things, but it is undeniably from a leadership.

From a professional leadership experience, nothing comes close to that.

Not.

Not even close.

And had I not experienced that, I don't think I would have found the opportunity and success I found.

And then in the remaining 10 years of my career after that, had I not gone through that, I'm very, very fortunate, despite all the challenges and things that I went through there, which were tough, and obviously some things I wish I could take back.

But that experience certainly defines in so many ways who I am and how I am now as a result of that.

So that was the apex of my professional leadership experience, Without a doubt.

Yeah.

That gut decision to do it was right.

I always knew it was the right thing to do.

I'm glad I went through with it and didn't talk myself out of it.

Yeah.

David, it's been amazing speaking to you today, and I really appreciate your time.

The way I like to finish my episode is to ask my guests to leave a question for the listener.

So I love listening to podcasts and going away and starting conversations around what I've listened to.

If you could leave the listener now with a question to go away, start a conversation with anyone, stranger, family, whoever it is, what question would that be?

This is a question I'll ask them.

Or they're supposed to ask the other person.

One for them to ask someone else.

It could be for them to ask themselves.

Whatever you want.

Yeah, I think I. I kind of like the.

I just want to make sure I understood it right.

I mean, I think the question I. I am constantly asking myself, and I wouldn't want to give advice to other people, but if they do this, it's going to help their lives.

If they think about this is try to look for something in your life that isn't going the way that you want, something that's creating the frustration, something that's not happening the way that you want to happen.

I think the question you should ask yourself is, what can I do to take ownership of that?

I think it is when I, I, when I look at the nature of relationships, when I look at the nature of leadership at home, at work, in our professional or personal lives, even by the way, even just our own selves.

I love that comment that you Talked to that AC130 gunner, like just leading yourself.

It is just human nature to conclude that this isn't because of us, it's because of them or something else or some, something beyond our control.

And I think one of the most important things to think about is like, what can I do to make this better?

That's a way of saying, how can I take ownership of this?

And so you've got a relationship, you've got a scenario, and just look for some way, how can you make this better?

It seems so, so simple.

And I think part of the reason of the success of the book, Extreme Ownership, that Leifanjal wrote is in its simplicity of how in every aspect of our lives, we are very likely falling short in exerting control over influence in the outcome for the better.

So as you look around with the other people, think to yourself, what can I do to make this better?

Yeah.

And in every case, if you are detached from your emotions, you are detached from your ego, and you're detached from your point of view, you will find an answer.

And the answer is you could take ownership of that a little bit better.

That is the key to improving all aspects of life, to include the relationships to people.

So that's a question I asked myself.

Listen again, I am not perfect.

I am not even hinting that like this is this.

Oh, you just, it's easy, it is hard business.

But deep down, most of us, if we can get our egos out of the way, we know the right thing and know the right answer.

And if you follow through with that, your life will get better, those people's lives will get better.

And that's the game we're trying to play here, is help people's lives get better.

That's what we're trying to do.

Yeah.

Great question, Dave.

Thank you so much again for your time.

And if people want to find you, keep up to date with what you're doing, find the book.

Where can they do that?

Probably the easiest place is to go to Echelon front.

Our.

Our website is like echelonfront.com I'm certainly like my book, you know, you could find on Amazon.

You can certainly just Google my name, whatever.

There's a UK version for the UK listeners.

There's a US version for the US listeners.