As I travel around the country speaking and training on relationships, human connections, and all the skills that we use as Green Berets, I see there’s a real disparity between senior leaders and the folks in the trenches that are doing the heavy lifting.
How do we combat that? By meeting them where they are and not where you want them to be. That is a timeless adage from U.S. Army Special Forces, the Green Berets. Special Forces teams go into rough places, outnumbered and outgunned, and stay for a long time to mobilize people from the inside out to stand on their own. In order to do that, we have to meet people where they are not where we want them to be, not with brute force or coercion.How do you put this into play in your own life? In your own business? There are three things that you can do today, right now to see an immediate shift.
First thing is to embrace local realities. In Afghanistan, our team leaders grew beards. We wore indigenous clothing. We sat in the circle of a tribal jirga. We had no agenda, no PowerPoint. We understood the value of long-form communication, physical connection, story, and status. We worked within those realities. We didn’t crash our way into those villages in body armor and velcro looking like RoboCop.The same is true in your world. If you’re a senior leader, are you aware of what your employees’ micro realities are? They’re not going to tell you a damn thing. They’re not going to share anything with you until you appreciate and embrace local realities for what they are. To do that, you’ve got to lean in, seek to understand. You’ve got to actively listen. You have to make authentic human connections.
