The WAY OF THE SEAL UPDATED AND EXPANDED EDITION: Think Like an Elite Warrior to Lead and Succeed

INTRODUCTION

LEAD FROM THE FIELD

You cannot travel within, and stand still without.

—JAMES ALLEN, BRITISH PHILOSOPHER AND AUTHOR (1864–1912)

It was September 1990. I stood with my classmates in front of 300 visitors, staff, and students at the Naval Special Warfare Training Center for our graduation ceremony, on the verge of becoming something most guys only dream of: a bona fide rootin’-tootin’, parachutin’, deep-diving, demo-jiving, running, gunning Navy SEAL frogman. Only months earlier I’d been in New York City, the perfect overachieving conservative boy living the prototypical American dream. I had surrendered my childhood fantasy of battling evildoers and rescuing damsels in distress, blithely accepting the cultural push into the corporate channel where I racked up credentials and set my sights on a moneyed future. Society’s drummer boy beat his drum, and I, like many of you, marched along oblivious to the much subtler drumbeat inside of me.

My path led me to accounting and consulting. Perhaps yours led you to medicine, law, banking, information technology, or any number of traditional fields. Some years later, you found yourself deeply entrenched in a career. Maybe you still love your work but wonder why success in your field has not also led to peace and happiness in other areas of your life. Or maybe one day you found yourself wondering how you got here, or worse, what you’re doing here. Perhaps like me, you found yourself wondering why you aren’t completely fulfilled, and whether you’ve stepped into a big rut.

The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back came while I wrestled with the idea of leaving New York. I was unhappy with the daily grind, feeling more at peace during intense workout sessions at the dojo or running the early morning streets. During one of these runs, I noticed a poster for the SEALs outside a Navy recruitment office. Be Someone Special, its alluring message read. Yes! I thought. I want to be someone special. Right now, I feel like a cog in the wheel of a giant, cold machine. As I had in my childhood fantasies, I felt drawn to the idea of serving others, and excited when I imagined operating daily at the highest levels of performance and challenging myself on a team full of those who shared similar values. My decision was anything but clear, however, until I worked with my last client, Kane.

Kane & Co., a family-run paper company, had been caught up in the influence-peddling scandal of the Long Island defense industry in 1988. The company produced packaging used by defense contractors to ship large aerospace components. When the big contractors were exposed as having bribed government officials, smaller subcontractors like Kane got swept up in the investigation. The IRS focused on these easy targets and insisted they hire auditors to dig up and analyze their reams of data. My Big Eight consultancy assigned me, along with a supervisor and one other junior auditor, to perform the audit for Kane.

These guys are never going to leave, I heard Joe Kane say through the office walls one afternoon. They’re gonna kill this business and Dad in the process. The founder’s son was talking on the phone to his siblings, who were all desperately trying to keep the company afloat as Kane Sr. fought a sudden cancer brought on, the family believed, by the extreme stress of the audit. Sure enough, a month later Mr. Kane passed away.

The news hit me hard—I felt like I’d personally killed the guy. And Kane Jr. was right: We could’ve completed our work in three months, but our bosses kept sending us and billing the hours because they had the IRS behind them. The way we were bleeding this company horrified me. Kane was no longer the client; the primary motive became racking up billable hours.

The whole shebang looked like a pig with lipstick to me. How could I continue participating in this charade? I decided right then to commit to my fledgling purpose of becoming a warrior leader by serving in the Navy as a SEAL officer. I went back to the office and resigned immediately. I took a job as a personal trainer and doubled down on my karate and Zen meditation training, all in preparation for my SEAL bid. A month later, out of money and praying I had made the right decision, I received a surprise call from a partner at my former consultancy: Mark, I’m starting a new firm, and I want you. I felt the familiar tug of my ego as I imagined the money rolling in. Then my inner voice said, Stop! and I remembered why I’d left my job in the first place. I knew with certainty I now traveled a better path, the right path for me. I politely turned the offer down.

One year later and here I was graduating from SEAL training, stepping into the next phase of my hero’s journey, ready to accept whatever challenges lay in store. The presenter stopped speaking, and everyone turned to me as he extended the Honor Man plaque in my direction. One hundred and eighty candidates had started training six months earlier, and out of the mere nineteen who graduated, I finished at the top. I beamed as Captain Huth, Commanding Officer of BUDS (Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL training), pinned the coveted Trident—the gold insignia worn by a Navy SEAL—on my uniform.

The Trident marks you as someone special, a rare modern-day Spartan who trains harder, works smarter, and is courageous in the face of all challenges. To me, it also represents the Way of the SEAL, a mind-set and attitude that allows the wearer to be victorious on both the inner and outer fields of life’s battles.

This book is about how you can earn your own Trident now.

What Is the Way of the SEAL?

As fast as the wind, as quiet as the forest, as daring as fire, and immovable as the mountain.

—BATTLE STANDARD OF TAKEDA SHINGEN, JAPANESE WARRIOR (1521–1573)

I’ve been fortunate to study leadership as well as to observe it up close and personal from multiple perspectives. I’ve attended seminars and taught them myself at a major university. I have led and been led in large corporate and military settings, as well as in small businesses and on teams (a team being any group of people intentionally coming together to accomplish a mission or set of goals—this could mean a sports team, a volunteer committee, a department of employees, a married couple, or even a whole company or family). What I’ve noticed is this: Because there is no cultural emphasis on or education around embodying core values such as honor, courage, and commitment, aspiring leaders lack a foundation in their own character development, seeking career advancement without the means to become better people. As they adopt a particular model from a training event or book, they earnestly hope it will give them the ability to manage their leadership situations. They think, All I have to do is apply the skills and act as the experts say, and things will be better. When their results fall short of the model’s promise, these leaders lose faith and go looking for the next theory to deploy.

Servant leadership, situational leadership, visionary leadership, change leadership . . . these are popular models, and they all treat leadership as a skill. But what if leadership is not a skill? What if it’s about character? We wonder why things don’t work or continue to feel wrong when we spend so much time seeking the holy grail of leadership models instead of looking within, instead of building our character.

Bottom line: If you lack an underlying commitment to self- mastery and growth, even the best theory won’t help you lead yourself or a team to success.

Embracing a New Approach to Leadership

I believe that one must ground authentic leadership training in what I call an integrated development model, something I have been teaching SEALs, entrepreneurs, and corporate warriors since 2007. The five developmental aspects in my program, which I call the Five Mountains, vertically evolve the physical, mental, emotional, intuitional, and spiritual intelligences of the leader; the integration of these skills results in a more balanced, whole-person growth. In The Way of the SEAL, we focus on primarily the mental, emotional, and intuitional arenas. You will see, though, how this material can support your explorations in the other two arenas, and I encourage you to pursue them in a manner that suits your lifestyle and beliefs. The exploration of the physical mountain can vary so widely that it commands its own book (you can read about the physical training I recommend in my book 8 Weeks to SEALFIT). The exploration of the spiritual mountain is inextricable from the other four mountains, so much so that you will naturally develop it to a large extent as you progress in the Way of the SEAL (a more focused spiritual development is a deeply personal journey, and again, extends beyond the scope of this book).

Strengthening in any one arena is relatively meaningless without the support of the others, like a table with uneven legs. You really need to develop all five simultaneously to tap into your full potential with the Way of the SEAL. When you do, the result is a modern-day warrior who achieves his or her mission with honor and humility and who naturally earns the respect of those whom he or she serves and leads.

I believe genuine leadership stems from the heart of an individual, regardless of (and sometimes in spite of) the organizational role or power systems in which he or she is enshrined. Therefore, you’ll find that the Way of the SEAL is predicated upon your commitment to fully develop personal discipline and an ethical stand; you’ll focus on becoming a good teammate before stepping into the leadership arena. You will never seek leadership roles as an end in and of themselves. Ultimately, we will develop kokoro, the Japanese word for a merging of heart and mind in action. It implies that we are balanced and centered, operating in synchronicity with our inner selves, with others, and with nature. When we commit to this depth of development and lead with kokoro, we will be authentic, present, and powerful. And we will win every mission.

The world needs leaders to lead from the front and push from the rear; to stand up and step out, risking more to enforce integrity at all levels—self, team, and organization. This approach will greatly improve your chances of winning ethically and sustainably in today’s accelerated business climate. And a multidimensional perspective will never fail to give you an edge against those with a more narrow or nearsighted approach. Organizations can embrace this concept as well and support the vertical development of individuals and teams by allowing risk and failure to foster deep learning—the kind that develops the character authentic leadership requires.

This change in thought and behavior starts with your commitment to personal excellence. But as you follow the Way of the SEAL, you not only create a better you, you also help create a better world.

Ancient Values for Modern Times

To think and act like a Navy SEAL is to pursue whole-person growth within a warrior context. I consider the term warrior to have a broad meaning as one who is committed to mastering himself or herself at all levels, who develops the courage to step up and do the right thing in spite of negative consequences, all while serving his or her family, team, community, and, ultimately, humanity at large. To achieve your personal Trident, you must:

• establish your set point, turning a deep sense of values and purpose into a touchstone that will keep your feet in the sand and your eyes on the goal

• develop front-sight focus so nothing can derail you on your way to victory

• bulletproof your mission to inoculate your efforts against failure

• do today what others won’t so you can achieve tomorrow what others can’t

• get mentally and emotionally tough, and eliminate the quit option from your subconscious

• break things and remake them, improving them through innovation and adaptation

• build your intuition to utilize the full range of your innate wisdom and intelligence

• think offense, all the time, to surprise your competition and dominate the field

• train for life to develop mastery of your physical, mental, emotional, intuitional, and spiritual selves

Though many of the techniques and practices in this book are unique, the essence of these principles isn’t new or trendy. In fact, a close study of ancient warrior cultures such as the Spartans, Apache scouts, and samurai—bands of elite operators who are predecessors to the modern Spec Ops teams—reveals similar behaviors and philosophies. These cultures embodied a different set of values from what has become the norm in modern society. Today’s Western culture is largely narcissistic, and would greatly benefit from developing honor, courage, commitment, and more world-centric views. The story we tell ourselves about our life and how we should interact as part of the whole is based upon an individual carving out his or her slice of a limited-resource pie in a competitive attempt to secure a living. The financial meltdown of 2008 and the recession that followed forced many into unfamiliar jobs; onto the dole; or out of the workforce forever. In all sectors, the norms of behavior have become vague, with personal values around most things growing slippery.

Yet our daily crush of commitments keeps the hamster wheel spinning, masking a growing unease as our social media and 24/7 news cycle distract attention from what matters most. It also obscures the reality that we are solely responsible for our thoughts and actions, and the universe ultimately holds us accountable for that. We pay at a personal and societal level for the failure to hold ourselves to higher standards.

The Way of the SEAL is not a quick fix. It’s a journey, a way of being. I’ll give you strategies and tactics you can employ right away. In the end, however, the key factor is your own development into someone who can live these principles, not just give lip service to them. The journey starts with this book and continues as you practice in the field, risking failure and judgment, but ultimately achieving the most profound and sustainable growth.

LEADERSHIP IN AN ACCELERATING WORLD

Stick to what’s in front of you . . . idea, action, utterance.

—MARCUS AURELIUS, ROMAN EMPEROR AND THOUGHT LEADER (121 AD–180 AD)

If leadership is about character, what unique pressures will shape this character in today’s accelerating world?

Since 9/11, SEAL operators have dealt with a rapidly changing landscape on the battlefield. Dynamic tactics and advanced technology have come together to create a just-in-time environment where the enemy creates new techniques and improvises tools almost instantaneously, and where information and money flow often determine the outcome of a conflict. The emergent business landscape mirrors these changes in many ways, and this book is a treatise on leading in this accelerating world.

The eight principles of the Way of the SEAL and the tools that support you in learning and embodying each, emerged out of a laboratory of elite operators committed to being the most forward-thinking, prepared-for-anything, adaptable-to-changing-winds, mentally and physically tough badasses around. And when leaders are that prepared, that flexible, that willing to embrace change and go with the flow without losing sight of their goals, they are equipped to deal with anything the world throws at them, no matter how fast the change comes. You will need to be that kind of leader, and the WOS is your developmental roadmap.

Let’s dive into the major themes causing this accelerating environment. The first is the pace of technology advancement occurring through Moore’s Law of computing power. This law, identified by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, predicts the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits will double every year or so—and this has been true ever since their invention. Thought leaders such as Ray Kurzweil believe we will see some form of artificial intelligence with the power of the human brain by the end of the twenty-first century, and possibly one with the collective brain power of the entire human race quickly thereafter when it becomes self-improving. If this is true, it will be enabled by another big shift in how the world works—the intersection of the new technologies of the cloud, robotics, sensors, 3D printing, virtual and augmented reality, nanotech, and the Internet of Things (IOT)—all of which makes it appear that we are racing toward a future most of us could never have imagined or didn’t dream would happen in our lifetimes. And, finally, with social media and smart phones, we are seeing the ability to connect globally through near-ubiquitous Wi-Fi with six billion plus people, even in the remotest spots on the globe, providing a platform for a collective human super-intelligence. This is all having a profound impact on industrial age institutions and cultural norms, both struggling against this tide to maintain a sense of meaning. If you sometimes feel like things are spinning out of control, you’re not alone.

An added complexity for established leaders is that we have a generation coming into the workforce with a radically different relationship to technology and change than the over 30 crowd (that includes me by a long shot). This generation is made up of 20- to 30-year-old millennials who are defining new work relationships, as well as the generation after like my 19-year-old son. This i generation (as in iPhone, iRobot, etc.) is the first of tech-savvy thinkers who grew up with ubiquitous Internet and mobile phones, and they are impatiently awaiting leadership roles, or creating their own. These generations take this crush of technology far more for granted than their elder peers, and their brains have evolved in ways that we don’t yet fully understand. But we can see the effect these generational forces are having in business and on the political landscape: They’re changing the rules of the game, both for better and worse.

In the business world, we’re rewriting the rules of what a performance culture looks like. The new workforce doesn’t value the same economic incentives as previous generations, or any of the tried and true organizational paradigms for that matter. One example is the U.S. military’s struggle to confront terrorism and ISIS. The young enemy fighters are innovators in using new technologies such as blogging, social media, and video sharing for recruiting and information exchange. We are fighting a new war with traditionally successful tools and strategies, but they have limited impact on the enemy. The enemy is acting and reacting much more quickly than us because of their comfort operating in rapidly changing, murky environments. This has given them an edge and forced the military to turn to its Special Operation forces, such as the Navy SEALs, to learn to be more adaptable and flexible. This book is not about warfare, of course, but the lessons of leading on a battlefield (a VUCA environment) are necessary for business leaders to learn and implement.

What Is a VUCA Environment?

VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—the hallmarks of this accelerating business environment we now find ourselves in. Special Operations teams have mastered leading in VUCA environments in Iraq and Afghanistan; they had to in order to both survive and achieve their mission. But what does it feel like for the business leader to operate in a similar, albeit less dangerous, environment? It’s not unreasonable to say it can be downright confusing and scary . . . but when you learn to deal effectively with rapid change, you will see many incredible opportunities to get excited about.

The millennial and i generations put high value on the freedom of information and openness. They believe content is meant to flow, not to be siloed or fenced off with intellectual property protection and security firewalls. They will borrow, steal, and share things that were created by others and think nothing of it. This is neither right nor wrong; it is simply a cultural shift brought on by the technology explosion. The business leader or entrepreneur must outsmart, outrun, and outperform the competition rather than just rely on their trade secrets and smarts. Outraged employees and customers will swarm like a drone army with viral videos and social media posts to effect change when they think a company’s leadership has done something unfair, even if it is legal and makes good business sense. Often this leads to a major mea culpa and a leader’s career ends. In late 2017, for example, Uber’s CEO stepped down after the company was criticized for its unfair treatment of drivers and negative culture; on the other hand, Wells Fargo’s CEO was forced out after publicly downplaying the fact that some of his employees had opened more than three million fraudulent accounts just to meet sales quotas. And once information is out there, it’s out there. Privacy is nearly dead; almost everything we once considered private—our financial dealings, our relationships and ideas—are fodder for the Internet’s social engine. Political and business leaders are failing to deal with these stark changes in information flow, control, and philosophy. Both the changes and our leaders’ failure to deal with them have led to polarization, uncertainty, and decision paralysis, as seen in the American political process.

Bottom line: The confluence of rapidly advancing technology with two generations of productive individuals adept with this technology (yet using it to break old rules and norms) is causing changes to occur faster and faster. Power that used to be fixed in the form of capital or legal protection, whether individually or with corporate and government institutions, is losing ground quickly to the power of a more fluid information flow and social response. Said another way, humanity is using technology, once again, to affect massive cultural change—intentionally and unwittingly, and for better and worse. The norms of behavior have clearly changed, so leaders must change both strategy and tactics and also how they learn and grow. It isn’t useful to say to the over-30 executive, You need to think like a millennial. To lead in a VUCA environment, leaders will need to adopt an open, excited attitude toward mastering the principles of the Way of the SEAL, and to win in their minds first, before the battles are fought.

Mastering the VUCA Environment

The one thing you can count on these days is that things will continue to change and speed up. With the tools in this book, you can train to deal with this environment. There’ve been other books and schools of thought around the concept of change leadership, but none of them works very well in this new landscape because they are focused on trying to control the process for a known outcome. SEALs, on the other hand, understand that we can never control the process, and that the outcome is almost always unknown.

You can only focus on one mission at a time, align with the vision, and define what targets and criteria will lead to acceptable results. The rest you need to be flexible about. No plan will ever survive contact with the enemy or with the reality of whatever circumstance is out there. This is the first premise to accept if you want to master operating in a VUCA environment.

Ultimate mastery requires that we embrace vertical leadership development, which is about developing your consciousness and evolving your mind-set, rather than simply focusing on acquiring horizontal skills like communication or planning. Vertical development creates lasting change in neurological structures, altering brain functions and worldviews, and leading to more complex and nuanced, intuitive thinking, feeling, and social relating. In the August 2017 issue of The Atlantic, journalist Jerry Useem describes how CEOs in power for long periods show signs of mental degradation similar to patients with traumatic brain injury. He posits that this happens because leaders in powerful positions, such as corporate CEOs, stop stretching their learning muscles. They are focusing on cognitive horizontal leadership skills (i.e., those impacting the bottom line in the short term) versus vertical development (i.e., deep skills of emotional, intuitive, and spiritual intelligence). In short, vertical development will more effectively evolve a leader in areas that are critical for navigating a VUCA world. The training I provide in this book and through my Unbeatable Mind courses is the first integrated, vertical development program for leaders that I am aware of. It will allow leaders to surf volatility with a powerful vision, to neutralize uncertainty and find mutual understanding, to simplify complexity to gain clarity, and to clarify ambiguity by becoming agile and eliminating doubt with powerful action.

Surfing Volatility

I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.

—JIMMY DEAN, COUNTRY MUSIC STAR AND BUSINESSMAN (1928–2010)

Learn to thrive in chaos. Surf volatility like it’s just another wave under your board. Easy day. Comfort with chaos requires complete control of the only thing you can control: your mental and emotional response to the external threat. All the tools introduced in this book will train that, but let’s start by seeing how radical focus will lead to greater situational awareness, internal control, and decision-making power.

Get Radically Focused

Imagine you’re leading a SEAL team on an op to capture a key ISIS leader in war-torn Syria. The op is going down at 0-three hundred and the weather has turned nasty. The location is fixed and the helo drops toward the target. Suddenly, a rocket blazes within inches of the bird, and the door gunner begins raining down lead into the darkness. The chopper makes a dangerously steep descent and lands with a jarring thud a click away from the original drop zone. You lead your team out the door, set security, and then proceed to the target like nothing happened. At the target you breach the door and enter the structure to find it riddled with bad guys shooting in all directions. You and your team quietly dispatch them and secure the target, collecting any intel you can find. On the way to the extraction site, you engage in a running gun battle with fighters attracted to the sound of gunfire. This doesn’t distract you from completing the mission, and as the helo lifts off with your team intact, you silently praise the training that allowed this op to be another easy day.

That level of focus needs to be yours in leading the chaotic missions of your business. The primary skill that will allow you to surf this type of volatility is something I call radical focus: focusing with SEAL-like precision on the right thing at the right time for the right reasons. And to develop radical focus, you will need superior situational awareness to discern the subtleties of what’s going on and to maintain control of your thoughts and emotions as the metaphorical rounds are zinging around you.

When I was with SEAL Team THREE, I had the privilege of leading the same group of men through several deployment cycles, each twelve to eighteen months long. With so much time working together so closely, I developed an uncanny sense of what my teammates were thinking and feeling during long missions that included extended durations of silence. Often the thoughts of my teammates would flash into my mind and I would just know what they were going to do just before they did it. Because of the heightened risk in the field, I was employing more of my mind’s