The Crucial Role of Trust in Military and Business Leadership (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: The military is actually much better at measuring trust because, for them, trust is life and death. And I've had so many experiences getting to work with Marines or SEALs or whoever, where the way they talk about trust, I'll give you another example. So I had the opportunity to visit Quantico, which is where the Marine Corps selects its officers. And I had a briefing by the colonel in charge of OCS, Officer Candidate School, and he showed up late for the briefing. Now, Marines don't show up late. If you're on time, you're late. That's their belief. And he showed up late. He said, I'm terribly sorry. We've had an incident on base that we're considering throwing out one of our students, ending their career, throwing them out of the Marine Corps. And, of course, curious George here is like, what happened? And he said to me, he fell asleep on watch. And I said, that's it? Like, he fell asleep on watch in the woods of Virginia, and you're going to throw him out of the Marine Corps? And I'm like, you guys are pretty tough. He said, no, you don't understand. He said, when we asked him about it, he denied it. When we asked him about it again, he denied it again. And when we gave him irrefutable proof, then he said, I want to take responsibility. I want to take responsibility for my actions. And the problem we have is, you take responsibility for your actions at the time you perform your actions, not at the time you get caught. He said, we had another Marine who fell asleep on watch. He owned up to it immediately. We punished him, and we have no problem with him. And then the colonel went on to explain to me, he says, you have to understand, if I take this person and I put them in a leadership position, and if his Marines doubt for one second that their leader is being honest with them, or if his Marines think that he's doing something just to advance his own career and protect himself at the sacrifices of his Marines, trust will break, and people will die. And so when in a combat situation, when there is chaos, and by the way, command and control is not a leadership mentality or philosophy that you can engage on a regular basis, and it's not so in the military, but it is essential in chaos. COVID is a great example. Like, when we went into COVID, that was chaos. Every plan was chaos. Everything went haywire. Everything went haywire. And you do need leadership that does actually go into command and control. But the thing is that command and control only works when you have spent time building the trust up until that moment, because when I tell you to follow my orders blindly, don't question me, just do it, there has to be the undying belief that you're making this decision for the right reason, and you're not going to needlessly sacrifice me, and I know that you will make mistakes. So the Marines know that mistakes will get made, and people will die because of those mistakes, but we're not doing them on purpose, and we're not needlessly sacrificing people, and they will follow those orders blindly. Now, that's an extreme example, because it's the Marine Corps, and it's life and death. But the same is true in business, which is you can command and control all the time. That's micromanagement, and that wears people out. But good leaders who are empathetic and spend the time building trust and care about their people in chaos, in crisis, they have the opportunity to convert into short-term, command and control, and it's highly, highly effective, and the team comes together in remarkable, remarkable ways. But the trust has to be built first.