Show Notes

• Growing up wanting to fly jets
• BUD/S training
• 90% attrition rate
• Cold, sandy and wet – and the mental acuity required to make it through
• Hell Week
• “You earn your (SEAL) Trident every day.”
• The widening of aperture that comes from being a CO
• The nature of war
• Why teams are critically important
• The 3 most important words a leader can say
• Discovering “The Attributes”
• Skills versus attributes
• Peak performance versus optimal performance
• How “being in charge” is different than “being a leader”
• The single most important thing we can do to unlock our potential

Connect With Rich Diviney

Website: www.theattributes.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theattributes/?hl=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RichDiviney
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/theattributes/

Additional Resources

The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance: https://amzn.to/3z94r3R

Summary

Rich Diviney is a retired Navy SEAL commander, an expert in leadership and human performance, and the author of “The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance.” He discusses what it’s really like to be a Navy SEAL, as well as the hidden drivers of optimal performance.

Full Transcript

Brian  

Welcome to another episode of Life Excellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success. Rich Diviney is a retired Navy SEAL commander, a best selling author and an expert in leadership and human performance. In a military career spanning 20 years, Rich completed more than 13 overseas deployments; 11 of which were to Iraq and Afghanistan. Since retiring from the Navy, Rich has shared his knowledge and expertise as a speaker, facilitator, and consultant. He is the founder and CEO of The Attributes Inc, and speaks and consults on leadership, high performing teams, assessment and selection, and optimal performance. In January 2021, Rich published his first book, “The Attributes:  25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance”. Welcome, Rich, and thanks for joining us on Life Excellence.

Rich  

Well, thank you for having me, Brian. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Brian  

It’s a pleasure to have you. Rich, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a couple guys who have served in elite units of the military, as well as a few guys from law enforcement, FBI and DEA agents and I’m always curious about what caused their lives to go in that direction. I think part of it is [that] it’s so different from how most of us live our lives. Tell us about your background growing up, and at what point did you decide you wanted to be a Navy SEAL?

Rich  

It is very different. Admittedly, I had no clue what Navy SEALs were; I grew up wanting to be a Navy pilot and specifically fly jets. My twin brother and I both wanted to fly jets, then we realized that if you went into the Navy, you got to fly jets off of ships, which I mean, that’s pretty cool. And this was before “Top Gun”. “Top Gun” just solidified our desires. But it wasn’t until the first Gulf War in 1990 – it was shortly after – that I happened upon a Newsweek article that was outlining the Special Operations Forces of the different services; so Marines and Green Berets and SEALS and Air Force CCTS and such. And I couldn’t help but notice; I was like, these Navy SEAL guys, man, they they seem to be everywhere, they do everything – sea, air, land. And specifically, I loved the idea that they were born from and of the water, and being a water rat I said, this seems pretty cool. So I started reading books and ended up at Purdue in the NROTC unit there and again, hadn’t really decided which direction to go. But ultimately, I said to myself, well, I know I can be a pilot, but I don’t want to be a pilot and wonder if I could be a SEAL. So I decided to go for it and fortunately, it worked out pretty well.

Brian  

I think most of our listeners and viewers have some perception in their mind about the SEALs, probably related either to BUD/S training, or Hell Week specifically, or maybe combat. And of course, most of that for most of us comes from television or from the movies when we see a platoon carrying the biggest log we’ve ever seen, or a life raft or something like that. I know there’s a lot more to it, though, how does one actually become a Navy SEAL? And what does that process look like?

Rich  

Well, you’re right, the process is not a lot like the TV and movies. What’s interesting about that is when joined up back in the mid 90s, there wasn’t a lot of SEAL stuff out there. Very few people knew what SEALs were and it was very interesting to watch the explosion in popularity as we went through the early 2000s to see this unit become so recognizable around the world. But ultimately the process is, and has been for the last 50 plus years of course, called BUD/S:  Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training. And I say 50 years; it’s been longer than that. The UDT’s first predecessor to the SEALs first formed in World War II. The SEALs came about and were formed in the early 60s. And they were drawn from the UDT teams. But BUD/S is a six month long course. It’s held out in Coronado, California, San Diego area, and it’s known as some of the toughest training in the world. Roughly 90% attrition, so only about 10% make it through and known – in the fifth week of training – for the infamous Hell Week. Hell Week is where you get most quitters. But you start out on a Sunday afternoon, and they run you until the following Friday and you basically only get about two hours asleep for the entire week. You’re doing all the exercises imaginable; running with heavy boats on your head, you’re wet, it’s cold and sandy for the whole time. That’s when you get your most attrition. But there are three phases in the SEAL training; the first phase, which is – to put it bluntly – kick your butt phase, [chuckle] you get the most quitters during that first phase; second phase you start focusing on diving and all the diving skills; and then third phase, you focus on land warfare, so you learn all the shooting and some basic demolition and things like that and then you graduate. Nowadays, you go through another whole six month course of specialized training before you go to your SEAL team and then you begin to serve.

Brian  

And so, as you said, the “kick your butt phase”, and I’m guessing that’s not how it’s described on Coronado island, in and around San Diego, but of course, Hell Week is part of that phase. From the Navy standpoint, what’s the purpose of BUD/S? Specifically that week long grueling Hell Week?

Rich  

The purpose is interesting because…and something I had to really figure out; part of what I tried to do in researching the work I was doing while I was still in the SEAL teams, on attributes, and of course thinking about it in writing the book, but I thought, back when I was doing this research, I spent, in BUD/S, hundreds of hours running around with big, heavy boats on my head, you spend hundreds of hours exercising with 300 pound telephone poles and running around with those things on your shoulder, you spend hours and hours freezing in the surf and at the time, I had been on hundreds of combat missions overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places, I had been in thousands of training evolutions, and never on one of those did I carry a heavy boat on my head or a 300 pound telephone pole. So what you recognize is what they’re doing to you in the SEAL training – it’s not really training at all, they’re not training you to do those skills of SEALS – they are putting you into these environments and situations to see if you have what it takes to be a SEAL. And “what it takes” means those kind of innate inherent qualities that allow you to operate in deep deficiency of sleep, deficiency of energy, maybe even deficiency of of positivity. Can you go down to zero or sub zero and still operate, still perform? That’s what BUD/S is trying to tease out of candidates. And so it’s different. It’s really very much an attribute selection course versus a skills training course. Of course, obviously, in the second and third phase you do learn some skills; you learn some diving and some shooting, but most of the in-depth skills training doesn’t happen until you’re actually out of BUD/S into the SEAL qualification course, or even at a SEAL team. That’s when you really learn the stuff and hone it down. Most of that initial stuff is all about teasing out those qualities and see if you have, quote, “what it takes”. And in this case, what it takes is the unique set of attributes to be a Navy SEAL.

Brian  

You mentioned the 90% attrition rate and that’s 90% of an already arguably elite team, right? There’s an application process. I mean, you don’t just sign up for the SEALs and get started, there’s some selection process prior to that?

Rich  

Oh, yeah, the numbers only shift and of course, they shifted too, a great deal, when the SEALs became quite popular. In other words, a lot more young men apply. But, inevitably, at least certainly when I was going through, you can imagine probably about 1,000 to 1,500 or so folks applying per year and out of that – well, maybe even more maybe 2,000-3,000 applying – out of that, just being rough with the numbers, if you have about five classes per year with about 150 candidates, you’re talking about 700 or so people starting and then of that only 10% make it through. Then the officer selection’s even more competitive. I think when I went through, from all of the ROTC units in the country, they only took 12 to start BUD/S and then from that, who makes it through. So people talk about…and I think there’s a lot of people who are fascinated with [it] and a lot of young men or even guys my age who wonder if they could do it. I hear a lot of, yeah, I thought about doing that, or I wish I could have done that, and that’s all fine. But I always say that the selection process starts with that decision – not even to try out. It starts there, before you even get to the beaches of BUD/S. But ultimately you’re talking about a whittling down process that’s really quite intense.

Brian  

What was the hardest part about BUD/S for you? And what is it that separates those who get through it from those who go up and ring that bell?

Rich  

Well, if we had an answer to that second question, then the BUD/S compound, the center there, would have saved millions of dollars trying to figure out what those specific things are. It’s tough to narrow down. I think, ultimately, when I had done the attributes work…first of all, I will say that the toughest part of BUD/S – I guess it varies for everybody – but the cold is one of the worst parts, because you can’t escape it; the misery of being sandy and wet and just having to keep going; you can’t escape. And so you just have a whole element of things going on with you throughout that course. I think the key quality for anybody to make it through that training is heightened mental acuity attributes that I talk about in the book. The ability to compartmentalize in a way that allows you to block out everything that doesn’t matter in the moment and focus only on one thing, and that one thing might be just get through the next ten seconds, or that one thing might be just get to the next meal. So without the ability to do that you cannot make it through. So you wonder, okay, what is it that allows guys to get through? I mean, what in their background or their upbringing allowed them to get good at that type of compartmentalization? That answer varies from guy to guy, depending on how they [were] brought up, maybe what sports they did, what their upbringing was. But anybody who makes it through, those guys who do make it through, all have a really innate ability to compartmentalize extraordinarily effectively.

Brian  

As a commanding officer, were you surprised by guys who made it, who you didn’t think would make it through BUD/S, and guys who didn’t make it that you thought for sure they would? I guess, probably as time goes on, you stopped wondering about that, because there are so many variables.

Rich  

You’re right. I mean, you stop being surprised almost as soon as you go through it. [Laughter]. You start the class and even in my class, there were some real studs. And it was quite often that physical studs – division one athletes or whatever – these guys oftentimes were the first to quit and you’re left there wondering, well, how the heck did I get through? You begin to, very quickly, not judge on the visible, which makes and made the work that I began to do with the attributes so much more interesting to me because the attributes are all about what’s not visible. But I stopped being surprised. The worst part for me – I say, worst part for me, but the hardest part for me – was when I’d have guys who were interested in going to SEAL training and I [would] often help them with their process. The best you can do is help them the best you can to get there and [then] you say okay, once you’re there, it’s all on you. And to be honest with you, the success rate is mixed results – some guys made it through, a lot of guys didn’t. I think every one of us SEALs who’s mentored someone to go to SEAL training, you basically do the best you can, but ultimately, you’re not sure. [Laughter].

Brian  

Because there’s no way to predict that, is there? I mean, you can’t look at somebody’s resume or what sports they played or whether they were a star athlete or had academic excellence or any of that, because you can throw all that out the window when you’re putting somebody through a week of sleep deprivation and cold and everything else that goes into Hell Week.

Rich  

Hell Week is really just the fifth week of a six month course. There’s something that’s called – and this is a very real phenomenon; I heard about it before I went through Hell Week – but it’s called “post-Hell Week depression”. I didn’t know this until I got through Hell Week and I got hit with post-Hell Week depression. Post-Hell Week depression basically is you’ve just been through Hell Week; you’ve made it through one of the hardest weeks in military training in the world, and you realize you still have five months of this stuff to go and you’re like, oh my God, because it doesn’t let up. I mean, you certainly are not, after Hell Week you’re not, carrying any more boats on your head, you’re not doing a lot of the kind of kick your butt type stuff that they make you do that has no meaning, but they’re still hard. It’s still a very hard course and so the post-Hell Week depression is real because Hell week is only the fifth week of a six month course.

Brian  

So the rest of the six months, is that less physical or is it still heavy physical training, and then moving into a lot of the tactical training?

Rich  

It’s heavy physical training, but it’s done in a in a way that begins to build you up. I would say everything up to and through Hell Week really kind of breaks you down. You’re not getting much stronger during that first five weeks, and post-Hell Week is when you begin to. It’s very heavily physically focused but it’s done much more responsibly in the sense that now you’re getting stronger and faster and better, as well as training. So it’s designed to push you, but you’re benefiting from it at the end of the day.

Brian  

 That makes sense. So it must feel like such an accomplishment when SEAL training ends and you go through formal BUD/S class graduation. You’re joining an elite group and you realize that as a US Navy SEAL, but when you get that SEAL Trident pinnned on your uniform, it’s not the culmination of the experience, right? It’s not like somebody’s putting a gold medal around your neck at the Olympics. It’s really, in some respects, just the beginning.

Rich  

It certainly is. The saying in the teams is that you earn your Trident every day. And that is the absolute truth; you’re there to continually earn your Trident and certainly it’s not, I always say, it’s not as simple as BUD/S when you get to the team, and go, it’s pretty easy – I mean, I say easy, it’s pretty simple – it’s either quit or don’t quit. That’s about it, your only responsibility at BUD/S is not to quit. That’s about it. When you get into the more advanced training, when you get into the platoons and you start doing the work, now you have to perform and that’s a big deal, and it matters. So “earn your Trident everyday” is a mantra that every Navy SEAL carries. It’s one of the reasons why, when you leave the SEAL team – we’re not like the Marine Corps in the sense that we say once a SEAL, always a SEAL –  when you leave the SEAL teams, you’re not a SEAL anymore. And that’s fine. We say that with respect, because we want to honor the guys who are still doing the job, but I am not a SEAL anymore. I’m a former SEAL and I hold that time I served as a SEAL in very high regard. It’s on the shelf and I honor it, but I don’t do the job anymore. I’m not earning my Trident anymore every day. To be a Navy SEAL, you have to earn your Trident every single day. And that’s the point that really keeps the edge quite sharp. 

Brian  

That’s the biggest part of the notion that you’re not a SEAL anymore is that you’re not earning that.

Rich  

That’s exactly right. I would say you’re a former SEAL, you’re not an active SEAL.

Brian  

It’s interesting, the timing of when you joined the Navy, because that was back in the 90s, I think 1996, so pre-911. What effect did 911 have on the US military in general and specifically on the SEAL teams? Because you were there five years, you had a good amount of experience under your belt. And then, I won’t say everything changed, but a lot changed.

Rich  

A lot changed. I think the military in quote “peacetime” is really centered around preparedness and exercises and thinking about different scenarios and that’s what life in the teams was before 911. It was all about deploy for presence; we’d still deploy. I deployed all over the Middle East prior to 911. We were there for six months, ready to go if something happened, or training constantly; you’re always at the ready. I think what 911 did, and what the war did, was it just simply focused everything, because now you’re going and you knew exactly what you were getting into. So the training became much more focused and precise, and in certain skill sets, we all became very, very honed. But in other skill sets, there was atrophy that went on. I mean, not a lot of water in Afghanistan or Iraq [laughter] and the SEALs are from the water, right? So a lot of the maritime elements you just didn’t do as much anymore. So in many ways, the community atrophied in some of those skills and competencies. The community has adjusted since the war has finished. The community has now re-focused itself on some of those core elemental maritime proficiencies that the SEALs were born and bred [on]. I would guarantee you that the SEALs today, right now, who are operating, are probably much better scuba divers or combat swimmers than I was because they’re focusing on that stuff. But the war, really it focused you and everybody became really centered and, to be quite honest, there were some folks that decided to get out. Because once the reality hits of what you’re about to do, and the risk you’re about to take, some some guys were like, yeah, I’m not gonna do this. I’m not ready for it. So that happened as well; just interesting evolution holistically.

Brian  

And along those lines, it seems like the threat to democracy, if we can call it that, certainly hasn’t waned since 911. If anything, it seems like the tension today is higher than ever, with current conflict in the Ukraine and tension increasing between the US and countries like Russia, China, North Korea, Iran. Rich, [which] factors remain constant through your military career, and how are things different – if they were – toward the end of your career? You had 20 years of experience in the military, which is a long time and, again, it was during a time of great conflict.

Rich  

It was very interesting. I’m incredibly, really grateful, to have been able to experience it and learn what I did. I mean, grateful is a weird term to use, because it was hard, and we lost a lot – so many – but you still try to pull out from those experiences, the positives. I was an officer so the evolution of an officer in the military to include the SEAL teams is one of constant…I would call it, I would hope…certainly for me, was kind of the aperture opening more and more, and so you’re able to see things at a bigger distance and from a higher point of view. So for me, personally, I began to…as we went through the GWAT (Global War Against Terrorism), and I started the GWAT as kind of a young lieutenant right there with the guys in it and then slowly kind of rose up the ranks to be in charge of task forces and things like that. You begin to understand and look at the conflict in different ways. I think one of the biggest questions that someone in a position of leadership asks, or should be asking is, what are those things that we’re doing that need to be done and what are the things that we’re doing that don’t need to be done? In other words, you become much – and risk adverse is not the right word – become much more risk aware. You begin to understand how to calculate risk in different ways. Some officers see this and some don’t. I had a few, just fantastic, mentors who I latched on to – and this was both Navy officers and Army officers – who were of the mind that said, I want to make sure that what we’re doing has purpose; I don’t necessarily care about volume; in other words, number of operations or whatever, I care about the purpose of each operation. So if I do ten operations on a deployment and they’re all meaningful, I’d rather do that than 100 operations that don’t mean much. Whereas there are other senior leaders who really felt like volume was the way to go, I was on the first corner where I felt like I really wanted to make sure that what we were doing has had purpose. When I was sending guys out into the field of combat, it was for something that had value. So I think that’s really what I learned. I learned to really look at that very carefully and understand the nature of war. I think most steady, even-minded military folks who’ve experienced war – and I’m talking about really experienced war, like been in it – are mostly pacifists at that point, and not pacifists [like] the lovey-dovey-hippie-dippie, just a pacifist in the sense that we all understand the horrors and the bad stuff that comes from war on both sides. It happens to the people who are experiencing it in whatever country it is; happens to the the good guys, the bad guys – war is a bad thing. I think those folks who go through it, who have stable psyches, understand that and understand that war has to be very, very carefully considered before entering into it, because when you do, it’s going to be hard. So that’s, I think, what I learned.

Brian  

So you have a greater appreciation for peace, after having been through conflict.

Rich  

Yes, that’s a great way to put it.

Brian  

I’d like to switch gears and ask you about teams. I know teams are critically important in military. They’re a big part of the structure with the Navy, with SEALs. I live in southeastern Michigan and, I don’t know if you’re a football fan or not, but there was a coach here at the University of Michigan back in the the early 80s named Bo Schembechler and he gave a speech about the importance of the team. And he says, no player is more important than the team; no coach is more important than the team; the team, the team, the team. We all recognize team sports and the importance of teams on the playing field but that really pales in comparison to the importance of teams on the battlefield, especially when we’re talking about elite operators. Share your perspective on that. Why is the team critically important? And how does team building occur in the SEALs?

Rich  

The team is critically important because there can be no team, unless it’s made up of humans. When I hear the importance of the team, team, team, I also hear the importance of each individual, and each individual’s ability to contribute to the team. The team is important because you have, if done correctly, a collection of individuals that bring unique capabilities that mesh together like a zipper. And so you create a unit that can now deal with an enormous amount of diversity and complexity and ambiguity, because you have the ability to fall back on each other, support each other, step up when you need to step up. So the team becomes necessary in that way. Because, especially in the military, by design, you’re going into what the military defines as VUCA environments, V – U – C – A:  Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. The VUCA environment is what the military is designed to do, and to effectively perform in a VUCA environment you need to have as much advantage as possible. That advantage comes with team members who provide a myriad of different strengths to the equation and understand when it’s their turn to step up and lead and when it’s their turn to follow. This idea of what I call in the book, “dynamic subordination,” where the team understands that issues and problems and challenges can come from any angle at any moment and when one [issue/problem/challenge] does, the person who is the closest to the problem, and the most competent, immediately steps up and takes charge, or takes lead and then everybody follows. It’s a dynamic swap between leader and follower. I also call it “Alpha swapping”, where that Alpha position changes; it hops around, so that even though I was the officer in charge of almost every operation I was on, it didn’t mean I was always being supported. In fact, it usually meant the opposite; I was supporting the snipers here or the breachers there or the assaulters here. Then it just kind of went in that circle so it looks a lot more like a flock of birds or a school of fish. So a foundational element of team building is trust and trust building. You can’t have any team without that foundational element trust. That trust is forged through diversity and challenge on the beaches of BUD/S and forged again as a platoon when you’re going through training. It’s forged by the humility that the environment demands. People often say, well, you know, how do you maintain humility when you’re a Navy SEAL? Well, it’s very easy because the ocean will kill you, if you don’t pay attention. I don’t care how good of a swimmer you are, whatever you think, if you turn your back on the ocean it will kill you, as will the air at 20,000 feet, jumping out of an airplane or climbing a mountain or whatever. On the battlefield a nine year old kid with an AK-47 in Somalia, [if he] pulls the trigger [and the] bullet goes [in the] right direction, it’ll kill a 35 year old well-trained Navy SEAL in an instant. So that type of humility is in your face all the time. So with that, you’re constantly leaning on each other, trusting each other; and part of that is also a vulnerability that the team members express to each other. It’s without the stigma of vulnerability, meaning just show your weaknesses. Vulnerability means I’m showing you my strengths and my weaknesses. I’m wearing it all on my sleeve, because I need you to understand when I’m going to be leaning on you and when you can lean on me. And so that type of transparency is fully expressed in everything you do in these environments. And that builds this unit, if done correctly, of just incredible trust and efficiency and high performance.

Brian  

That’s obviously one woven throughout the fabric of everything that you do in SEAL training. I remember reading about a couple things that I thought were interesting. Maybe you can share some additional really simple things that are done to build that trust that you’re talking about, to build teams. One is that you don’t seem to have the same officer deference that other branches of the military have. You’re calling each other by your first name. Something as simple as the Trident pins, I think it used to be [that] officers had a different color than non-officers and that was changed. What are some other things that are just really simple things? I’m asking that because not all of us are going to be SEALs, obviously, or part of an elite operator team like that, but we’re all on teams; whether we’re talking about sports teams or teams in the office. Maybe to ask the question a little differently, what are some things, some team building strategies, that you learned in the SEALs that can be applied anywhere in life?

Rich  

I think the biggest one is – and it speaks to the comment you made of the familiarity and the first name and the lack of deference, in many cases, amongst the officer and enlisted as you wouldn’t typically find in a normal military unit – the fact that in this type of a very, very high performing team, hierarchy means nothing more than an area of responsibility. That’s all it means. Because I’m the commander, that just means I’m in charge, I’m responsible for this set of things and then the sniper’s responsible for this set of things and then the breacher is responsible for this set of things. So you come to a team, wearing your rank, not as a position of power, but almost as an explanation of roles and responsibilities. My snipers would never in a million years ask me to step up and take the shot, and it’s not because they know I’d miss, it’s because they know it’s their job to do it. My lead jumper would always step up and take the lead when we’re jumping into an area because that’s his job to do. Just like I would never ask my enlisted guy to manage the entire target while the assault was going down, because that’s my job to do. So I think every team, if they want to be high performing – really high performing – and really effective at dealing with ambiguity and complexity, would benefit from taking the hierarchy and instead of using that as positions of power and deference, use that as positions or explanations of roles and responsibilities. That really begins to clarify people’s ability to say, hey, now it’s my turn to step up and now it’s my turn to receive. I think leaders, especially, can do this; the culture will follow whatever example the leader promotes. But I always say one of the three most important words a leader can take to the members of a team are “I need you”. Because what that does is that tells that team member, hey, what you do here matters, it has purpose, and I can’t do what you do; you are a valuable member of this team and we need you to be that way. That immediately puts ownership on that person and, most people, they want that ownership and they’ll step up to that ownership. So when when a leader can say, I need you, it’s a very visceral, visible signal that, hey, you matter, every single person matters. One of my favorite CEOs used to say this to the command…obviously, everybody sees the Navy SEALs, and they see the guys with the guns going to do the missions and the cool stuff. But the Navy SEALs are supported by all these other entities; the intelligence, logistics, supply, the comptroller people, everybody who supports the effort to get the SEALs to where they need to go. And this particular SEAL used to get in front of a command and say, listen, you’re importance to the mission has nothing to do with your proximity to the X. The X means the target, the actual…maybe the building, you’re gonna go rescue the person or get the bad guy; that’s the X. So essentially, it’s like just because you’re back at basecamp, or even back in CONUS (Continental United States) working the money, it doesn’t mean you’re less important to this mission. You’re absolutely necessary. I think that was a really great way to encompass the importance of every single person to this larger effort.

Brian  

I think everything you’ve said makes sense. I wonder though, how does ego not get in the way of all that? I think of sports teams, or again in the office or on the battlefield, and maybe especially on the battlefield when you’re talking about Navy SEALs, you’re talking about really elite performers who are at the top of their game; they’re well trained. I would think they’d be even more prone to ego getting in the way and yet I certainly understand the danger of that happening. How do you navigate through that? Or, how does that not happen?

Rich  

I’m going to caveat this answer by saying that there are a few Navy SEALs who are very arrogant; it happens. But what I’ve never seen are SEALs that are arrogant out on the battlefield. I think the reason is – in fact, I know the reason is – because the environment doesn’t allow you to be. You cannot, like I said, you can’t have ego with the ocean. You can’t have ego with bullets flying downrange. The environment humbles you, the environment makes you. And the stakes are higher; just be honest, I mean, the athletes’ stakes are not high. We say, the Super Bowl matters or the pennant. It matters, yes, but no one’s going to die if they lose, and worse off, you’re not going to get your buddy killed if you do the wrong thing. That’s the, I’ll say the Navy SEAL’s – it’s really the military member’s – worst nightmare is that you will do something that gets your buddy killed. You’d rather die yourself than do something that gets your buddy killed. And that, in of itself, is humbling. That stems and stamps out all ego. So I would say the most ego I’ve seen in in the SEALs or in any military unit…now, again, those that have actually been to combat because a lot of people don’t understand that most, the majority of the people in the military, never see combat. That, again, doesn’t devalue their importance to the mission, but the people who are actually in the front lines, you typically don’t see that ego there because the environment doesn’t allow it. I would imagine if it’s ever showed up, it probably hasn’t worked out.

Brian  

Makes sense. Rich, I’m always fascinated and amazed by elite performance, however that’s manifested, so let’s segue now into “The Attributes”. I really appreciate all that you’ve shared of your background, and I definitely want to dig into the book because there’s a lot of great material. One aspect of the book I really appreciate is how you bridge elite performance of special operators in the military, with optimal performance of civilians in all areas of life. Tell us about the work you’re doing as a CO, commanding officer, that led to your discovery of the hidden drivers of optimal performance, The Attributes.

Rich  

Absolutely. I was put in charge of the selection assessment and training for one of our very, very specialized SEAL commands. At this particular command, we would take a lot of the best candidates who applied from all the rest of the SEAL teams and we put them through our own selection. We get about a 50% attrition, which is okay, because any assessment program implies attrition, but what was not okay, was that we, as a command, were unable to effectively articulate why guys were not making it. So guys wouldn’t make it and the rote answer would be, well, he couldn’t shoot very well, he couldn’t do this, couldn’t do that, because it was all very skills based. When I took over, my CEO said, hey, Richard, we need you to articulate this, because it’s not going well in terms of our ability to explain it. So I really sat back and I looked back at what we did at BUD/S and I said, wait a second, you know, if I’ve never carried a boat on my head in all these missions, then they’re not looking for skills when it comes to BUD/S; nor are we in this selection. That’s really when I began to separate skills and attributes and really found that they get conflated and confused all the time, but they’re inherently not the same thing. Just to kind of break it down for the audience, skills are not inherent to our nature; we’re not born with the ability to ride a bike or shoot a gun or drive a car. We’re trained and taught to do those things, and skills also direct our behavior and in a specific environment tell us how and when to do something; here’s how and when to ride a bike or throw a ball or shoot a gun. Then, because they’re very visible, they’re very easy to assess, measure and test. This is why we get seduced by skills when we’re looking at teams, or even hiring people, because you could put them on resumes, you can put scores and stats around them. But what skills don’t tell us is how we’re going to show up when the environment becomes uncertain and stressful and challenging and unknown. Because in an unknown environment, it’s very difficult to apply a known skill. This is when we lean on our attributes, and unlike skills, attributes are inherent to our nature. In other words, we’re all born with levels of patience, situation awareness, adaptability. You can you can develop these things over time and experience, but you can see levels of this stuff in small children. Attributes don’t direct our behavior, they inform our behavior; they tell us how we’re going to show up to a situation. So in other words, my son’s levels of perseverance and resilience informed how he showed up when he was learning the skill of riding a bike, when he was falling off a dozen times doing so. Then, because they’re hidden in the background, they’re very hard to see and therefore hard to measure and assess. They become the most visible during times of challenge, uncertainty and stress. So what I was able to kind of figure out, or I guess, articulate – it was already out there – was the fact that these hidden drivers, these attributes, are driving our performance all the time in many ways, that are beyond skill. So if we start looking at attributes, we start looking at these innate qualities, we start piecing together what actually drives performance and what dictates individuals and teams that will be able to continue to perform even when things go south and sideways. So that’s the work I did. Then as I got out of the Navy and began to talk to businesses about teams, I would get very often people saying, hey, Rich, we’re putting together, or we put together, this dream team; we got the best marketer, best legal person, best graphics designer – best, best, best. We put together the team and the team was great for the first week or two. But then when things went sideways, the team turned toxic; they all began infighting and just everything went downhill. And I said, well, it’s because you were looking at the wrong things. When you put together a team, if you assemble dream teams based on skill, you’re not going to get the right qualities, the attributes, that you need for teams that actually last and can perform through environments when those skills no longer matter. So what I did is I tried to take the work that I did in the SEAL teams, I tried to ubiquitize it and talk about, okay, what does this mean for everybody, all of us as humans, when it comes to optimally performing through life. What are of those common, most important attributes for that type of performance and that’s what I came up with; the 25 attributes that I write about in the book.

Brian  

You made the distinction between skills and attributes, which I think is an important distinction. Another distinction you make early in the book is between peak performance and optimal performance, which I thought was really interesting. When we’re trying to figure out ways to perform at our absolute best, whatever that looks like, why do we want to strive for optimal performance rather than peak performance, and what’s the difference between the two?

Rich  

The biggest difference is that one is only a small part of the other. Peak performance is an apex and there’s only one place to go from an apex and that’s down. So when we talk about optimal performance, instead of focusing on just peak, the peak – because peak is just like the fad, and everybody wants to peak everything – peak there, this peak, that peak, peak everywhere they are – and it’s unrealistic. Optimal performance means I’m going to do the very best I can in the moment, whatever the best looks like in that moment. So the best in the moment could be peak, right? It could look like flow states, and everything’s clicking, but my best in the moment also could be, hey, I’m freezing in the surf zone and all I got is the ability to just count to ten and not quit, and I’m just slugging it out, it’s dirty and it’s ugly, and it’s gritty, and it’s grimy, and it’s painful. That is also performance. It’s optimal performance; I’m doing the best I can in the moment and what my best looks like right now is pretty ugly. But optimal performance allows us to do a couple of things; it allows us to reward ourselves and pat ourselves on the back, even when things are tough and ugly and hard. It doesn’t look like peak. And it also allows us to understand appropriate energy management. I don’t need to be peak when I’m driving to the grocery store. I can manage my energy in ways that are much more efficient. One of the big mythologies that you see in TVs and movies of SEALs is that right before the mission the guys are like, rah-rah, who-yaa, high-fiving – everything’s like high energy – and the fact is, we’d be on helicopters on the way into combat and guys would be sleeping. Because the guys knew they didn’t know how long what was coming was gonna last. They didn’t know what was going to [happen], when was this going to end; there was no answer to how long or what was going to be required upfront. So I am not going to waste an ounce of my energy right now when I could be saving it. So optimal performance allows us to understand proper energy management, it allows us to peak on demand, and then allows us to relax and recover on demand as well, so that we’re always maintaining cognizance of that battery load that we’re going through in any given scenario. It seems like there’s an opportunity if we’re telling people that we want them to perform optimally under the situation, and recognizing that that might not be a peak state, that we give people a little bit of wiggle room for maybe less than optimal. How does that get measured? Well, less than optimal, I guess, would be you’re not doing the best you can. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. There are some people who might try to cut corners, but ultimately, I think most of us want to do the best we can in any environment but sometimes it’s just hard and sometimes it’s not going to look good. I think, as leaders, if we’re both preaching and exemplifying this type of performance, then people will look at that in the model. I always say leaders just need to model the behavior they want to see more of. First model it and then reward it. So model the behavior you want to see more of, and then start rewarding the behavior you want to see more of. You add those two equations and the people, the folks who are supposed to be there, will rise to the top and people who aren’t supposed to be there, they will usually self-select to leave. And that’s the best case scenario.

Brian  

That makes sense. So you have 25 Attributes, and you’ve also grouped those into five groups. Could you talk a little bit about that? We don’t have time to cover all the attributes but if you could just talk about how you came up with the 25 and why 25 versus 30 or 15. Then maybe a little bit too, about the way that you’ve grouped those, which I thought was very interesting.

Rich  

Absolutely. Well, the 25, I basically took the 25 from an original list I created when I was doing it for the SEAL teams for this specific seal command. Of course, the list I had for the SEAL command was 36. But as I kind of vetted it out, and took out some very specific ones and figured out what might be synonymous with others, it clumps to about 25, which admittedly, is a nice, even number to write on the title of a book, but it just turned out that way. Then, and honestly, the categories came to fruition while I was writing the book; I had not intended for them to clump into those categories. But as I was writing, they began to clump in these ways, which is really convenient and began to help me tell the story a little bit better. There are five categories. The first category is Grit, and grit really speaks to – but a lot of people think of grit as its own attribute but grit is not its own thing, grit is a combination of things, combined and stewed, and catalyzed to come up with the result – grit can be described as our ability to kind of push through and persevere through these smaller shorter term goals and challenges; the short term, short duration stuff. Those attributes that make up grit are courage, perseverance, adaptability, resilience. Then Mental Acuity attributes, those are the attributes that describe how our brain processes the world. I talked a little bit about compartmentalization, that’s one of them. The first one is situation awareness, how much information are we taking in about our environment. There are some people who are very highly situation aware or highly vigilant. Navy SEALs typically are highly vigilant. We notice things about our environment where there are other people who walk around kind of in lala land; they don’t notice a lot – and there’s no judgment there – it’s just the way it is. So those are levels of situational awareness. Compartmentalization, like I described, the ability to assess information, prioritize, and immediately focusing in what you need to focus in on; task switching, the ability to hop between categories and context. How efficiently can I switch focus points, because again, multi-tasking is a myth. Our conscious minds can only focus on one thing at a time. So how effectively and efficiently are we able to shift between focus points and then learnability? How fast are we able to learn and metabolize the rest of the lessons around us? Then we have the Drive Attributes which, grit speaks to the short term challenges, [while] drive speaks to those long term endeavors that take a longer term time to pursue. What are those attributes that make up the driven person? Those are self-efficacy, open mindedness, discipline, cunning, and then yes, narcissism, which I know is a pejorative term, but certainly a driver; we can get into that if we want to. The Leadership Attributes, so what are the attributes that make great leaders? Think about leadership that people understand as leadership; being a leader and being in charge are not the same thing. One is a noun and one is a verb. Anybody can be in charge, anybody can self-designate, I’m in charge. You can’t self-designate as a leader; you can’t call yourself a leader. That’s like calling yourself good-looking or funny. Other people decide whether or not you are someone they want to follow. If you call yourself a leader and you look back and there’s no one following you, I got bad news for you, right? So people decide whether or not you’re someone they want to follow and they do so based on behaviors and those behaviors stem from these attributes. Those attributes are empathy, selflessness, authenticity, decisiveness and accountability. And then finally, Team Ability, what are those attributes that make up a great teammate? You don’t get to call yourself a great teammate either. Other people, your teammates, call you a great teammate, and they do so based on the way you behave. Those attributes are integrity, conscientiousness, humility and humor. And then I have a couple of others that I talk about which make up [the rest], the ones I described are only 22. I have three other ones that I describe as The Others in the book, which we can get into if you want, they don’t kind of bin in the same categories, but those are roughly the five categories of 25 Attributes. I appreciate you sharing that. Are certain attributes more important than others? I would say, for the longest time I said, no, but then I was really pushed up against the wall in a couple of podcasts and I had to really think about it. I would say, if I were to define the most important attributes for humans as a species, is probably the Grit Attributes. And the reason why I say that is because if we, as human beings, don’t have some assemblance of those great attributes – the courage, perseverance, adaptability, and resilience – we’re going to have a rough go. So I would say probably those are the most important. I think the Mental Acuity are, as well, but it’s tough. I try not to judge them.

Brian  

So when you talk about the need for grit, and the risk of not having that, are you talking about individually or collectively as a society?

Rich  

I think a little bit of both. But I typically would start with the individual. Again, courage, probably the most important one, because courage is our ability to step into discomfort and challenge and fear. Courage is literally what has caused, we as a species, to go from cave dwellers to space explorers. If we cannot step into discomfort effectively, if we have no ability to be courageous then, I mean, we’re dead in the water. Perseverance is the ability to be courageous; kind of do it over and over again and persevere through those things. Adaptability implies that as the world and the environment changes around you, inevitably, as you’re discovering, as you’re stepping into all this new stuff, you’re able to adapt and shift and evolve, really, and change the way you need to. And then resilience is the ability to recover after all of it, bounce back, so you don’t fall into a spiral. So I think that’s probably why those are so important for an individual.

Brian  

I’ve always maintained that adaptability is a key success trait of the 21st century. So obviously, I’ve put that ahead of other things, but your book really helped me to appreciate that there are so many other things that maybe don’t need to be – if we’re using a scale of one to 10 – don’t need to be at a level ten, but certainly, it makes sense to have those. In terms of development of the attributes, I understand that we can identify with certain attributes, and that we resonate with some more than others. You even have a great free assessment at TheAttributes.com, which I encourage our listeners and viewers to go to, to identify and and provide insight into those attributes. How do we take all of that great information…we’ve measure each of the Attributes, each of the 25, and apply it to create optimal performance in our lives and also to help our teams perform optimally. So what do we do with all this great information?

Rich  

Well, the first is to understand that you don’t want to, and cannot probably, be high on all of them; you don’t need to be high on all of them. In fact, being high on any of them is probably a bad thing; being too high on any of them. I think there’s only a couple that being too high would be okay and that’s like resilience. I’d have to think if there was one more I thought of, but other than that, if you think about being being too adaptable, is a bad thing. Being too courageous means you’re fearless and that’s you’re not assessing risk properly. So that’s the first thing; understand where you fall on these things. Then understand how that fits into the niche you’re currently in. I always think of ourselves as automobiles; we’re all automobiles, we’re all different types. Some of us are Jeeps, most are Ferraris, and some of us are SUVs, and there’s no judgment there because the Jeep can do things a Ferrari can’t do. And Ferrari can do things the Jeep can’t do. But it’s good to lift your head and figure out what kind of car you are. Because you might be a Jeep that’s been trying to run on a Ferrari track and if you are, you’re going start to understand why there has been friction. You can either say to yourself, okay, well actually, I don’t want to be on a Ferrari track, I want to be on a Jeep track, I’m gonna get over there, or you say, well, I’m a Jeep, but I’m gonna try my best to be on a Ferrari track. So you start to think about those attributes you may want to develop. To develop an attribute you can’t do it the same way as a skill. Three things have to present; first, self-awareness, then self-motivation, and then a willingness and an ability to step deliberately into discomfort and stress to develop and tease that attribute. So if someone wants to develop patience, for example, they have to go find environments that test and tease their patience, whatever that looks like for them. It could be deliberately drive in traffic, it could be stand in the longest line of the grocery store. I always say have kids, that will develop your patience, whatever that is for you. You have to go find that and it has to be self-aware, self-motivated. I can’t make you, for example, develop an attribute. I can teach you any skill, and in some cases I can teach you without you even wanting to know. If you’re on a computer enough, you’ll eventually learn how to type. I mean, that’s just the way it goes. So even skills can be taught at an unconscious level, but attributes have to be deliberately developed.

Brian  

In your opinion, Rich, what’s the single most important thing we can do to unlock our potential and help others do the same?

Rich  

I would say introspection; introspection and self-awareness. It’s a desire to understand what drives us, what’s our makeup; be honest about our strengths and our weaknesses and start to understand and capitalize on those. Develop the one or two things we might want to develop, but ultimately be very honest about our strengths and weaknesses and go forth and prosper that way.

Brian  

That’s great. Rich, thank you first of all, for your 20 years of service in the military. I think in the US…I’m certainly guilty sometimes of taking for granted the freedom that we have in our country but I do realize, I think people today, maybe more than than ever, in this lifetime, realize that freedom comes at a cost. We also realize [that there are] the men and women who are paying the price, paying that tab, so I appreciate your willingness to do that. I know you’re a former SEAL but certainly want to credit you for that service because not all of us do it but we all get to benefit from the service of those people who do, and so thanks for that. And thanks for being on the show today. I really appreciate you sharing your background and helping us to make optimal performance the standard in our lives. I hope we have the opportunity to talk again soon. I think we could talk for hours about either the SEALs or The Attributes and lots more, so thanks again. I appreciate it.

Rich  

Well, thank you for having me. It’s been a wonderful discussion. And we’ll definitely keep in touch. I’ve greatly enjoyed our chat, so thank you.

Brian  

Thank you. And thanks for tuning into Life Excellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with former Navy SEAL Commander Rich Diviney on social media, and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.