Episode 36 – Selection For Tactical Units – The Attributes with Rich Diviney

Jon Becker: My guest today is Rich Deviney. Rich is a retired Navy SEAL officer whose career spanned more than 20 years and included more than 13 overseas deployments, eleven of which were to Iraq and Afghanistan. As the officer in charge of training for an elite Navy SEAL command, Rich spearheaded the creation of a directorate that fused physical, mental and emotional disciplines.

Since his retirement, Rich has worked as a speaker, facilitator and consultant with the Chapman and company Leadership Institute and Simon Sinek, Inc. Speaking to and training more than 5000 business, athletic and military leaders. Rich's book, the 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance is a must read book for anyone involved in leadership or in the selection and hiring of personnel.

I'm excited to have Rich on the show today because I think this book gives us an analytical framework that can help us to understand not only our own innate strengths and weaknesses, but also help to utilize the strengths and weaknesses of those we lead to build a better team. I hope you enjoy my chat with Rich Deviney.

My name is Jon Becker.

For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Rich, thanks so much for being here, man! I appreciate it!

Rich Diviney:

Yeah, John, great to be here! And like I said, long time coming. It's been a while, but worth it.

Jon Becker: Yeah, totally, totally. So why don't we just to give context to kind of the book and the thought of the attributes. Why don't we start kind of the quick Rich Deviney bio?

Rich Diviney: Yeah, sure. You know, I grew up in Connecticut. I joined the navy. Well, I should say I went to Purdue University for my college was navy ROTC. And so I graduated and got commissioned in 1996, got picked up for Navy SEALs. So I went straight to SEAL training in 96 and then subsequently spent the next 21 years in the SEAL teams. Had a tour out in Hawaii, then most of my career I spent here on the east coast in Virginia beach.

And of course it got very kinetic after 2001, so I did a lot of deployments. The numbers start to elude me, but I think it was seven to Iraq and like four or five to Afghanistan and then a few others here and there smattered around, around the world. But as an officer, I was in charge of obviously, SEAL platoons, SEAL troops. I was commanding officer of a SEAL squadron, and I was also put in charge of selection and assessment for one of our very specialized SEAL commands.

And so all those experiences allowed me to really start digging into high performing teams. What they are, what makes them up. How do you pick for them and select and assess? I became fascinated with that when I got out of the Navy in 17. I kind of jumped into the leadership space with a couple friends of mine, one being Simon Sinek, who's a good friend. And we kind of started doing leadership stuff, but I was always kind of keyed in on this performance stuff.

And so as I kind of went down that road, I began to think about writing in terms of performance. And one of the first thoughts, ideas I had was, let me get everybody what I think the baseline is, and that's the attributes. And so released the book in 2021. Since then, I've built a business when my wife and I around helping businesses and organizations and individuals figure out their attributes and build very high performing teams.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting you and I talked about it offline, but it, you know, for years, I've taught culture centric leadership, and one of the things that I talk about is that people have innate skills, and I always describe them as skills. You know, they have. They have certain abilities, and those abilities, often, you know, a high level of one ability may offset them having a different ability.

And I always use the example of the sales guy and the accountant. The accountant is very precise and very deliberate, and if we put her in charge of sales, she would never leave her house. And if I asked the sales guy to do the accounting, we would go to prison. But I had never had an analytical framework that I'm like, okay, this is it.

And so when I read the book, it just instantly clicked, like, oh, my God, that totally explains it. And also gives enough detail that it kind of allows you to understand how you can apply it in your own life and how you can apply it in dealing with those you lead.

Rich Diviney: Yeah, well, I appreciate that. And one of the things I endeavored to do was figure out performance. And I think it all comes back to the early days, I mean, the early days of what I call healthy imposter syndrome. And it kind of started. I mean, there are probably instances of it prior to the Navy, but certainly when I finished SEAL training right in our class, I think our buds. Class buds, basic underwater demolition slash SEAL training. That's a six month course that Navy sailors and officers go to to become Navy SEALs. There's a 90% attrition rate at buds. Right?

But once you graduate, you are, you go to a SEAL team and you're on your way. Our class, I think, if I remember correctly, was somewhere on, started with 170 students. We graduated 38 students. And I remember even in that moment, looking around me and saying, how the am I still here? Because I looked around me and looked at the guys who were around me and said, these guys are seemingly so much better than I am. Why is that? And that, by the way, continued throughout my career.

And I call it a healthy imposter syndrome because it was not a feeling that debilitated me. It was a feeling that, okay, I'm here for a reason. Obviously, I made the muster. I did what I needed to do. I'm just going to step up my game right now because I feel like I need to. But ultimately, what are those things, what are those elements about me and about these individuals that allowed us to be here standing today on the beaches, graduating today?

And so I began to kind of think about this elemental human performance and what drives us at very elemental levels. And really, who are we at our most raw? Because that's like the saying goes, the real us. The real us shows up at our most raw. And I kind of like, okay, who's our most raw? I had the unique opportunity, obviously, I volunteered for it, to figure that out very shortly after I started buds training day one. They put you at your most raw, right?

And then you continue that way, and then you realize that about yourself, you realize about your teammates, and then you go to war, you go to combat, and you see it again. And so I think it's a real strength and advantage. And one of my goals was to take theSEALs off the pedestal and just talk about them and talk about this in a very human way.

And I think the attributes humanize everything because we all have them right now. Some of us can't be SEALs, but some SEA;s can't be accountants or entrepreneurs or whatever. We all have distinctive niches inside of which we excel.

But, yeah, so I always appreciate when I hear and when you say that the book was relatable, understandable, and immediately you could take that thing and apply it, because I didn't want to write another SEAL book. There are plenty of Navy SEAL books out there, and most of them are pretty good. Right? But I didn't want to write another Navy SEAL book, so I appreciate you saying that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting! You actually intentionally avoid a lot of the kind of cliches of Navy SEAL books, talking about specific units, talking about kind of your career, which was one of the things that struck me is it's like, this is more self exploratory and trying to figure out how did this happen than it was. Look at me.

Rich Diviney: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a couple reasons. One is just from a. Just from a. A personal responsibility standpoint, I didn't want to ride the brand in any way and in some cases, maybe prostitute the brand. That's one reason I want to be respectful of that. And given some of the levels and ranks which I held, I have a responsibility, an official responsibility to do that. So that was one reason.

The other reason is because, again, I wanted to take the concepts and take it off the pedestal. As soon as you start wrapping too much specificity in some of these units and some of these situations, it immediately, it may puts you at a distance from the reader, and I want to make sure that we understand and the reader understands that this is human stuff. It's not just SEAL stuff, it's human stuff.

And then finally, just from an official capacity, if you do it responsibly, you get these books reviewed by the government before you release them based on the rank and position you held. And when I went through the government review, they were like, hey, there's absolutely zero wrong with this. So it was a win. They didn't have to black out anything so well.

Jon Becker: And I think, I mean, certainly our listenership can read between the lines as to what you did. Like, it's, you know, they will figure that out. Why don't we start with what an attribute is?

Rich Diviney: Yeah, that's a great place to start. So this idea is, what are those qualities that indicate that a human being has what it takes to do the thing, right, not knows how to do the thing, has what it takes to do the thing. So the example I'll give is, I was told this story about SEAL training years ago, and I think it happened before I ever went.

But the story goes that this kid shows up to SEAL training, and he goes in the instructor's office and says, I want to be a Navy SEAL. And the instructors say, sure, okay, but you have to do swim test first. And he's like, okay, fine. So they take him out of the pool. The swim test is an easy one, you know, 50 meters. So 25 meters to one end, 25 meters back to the other end.

And so the story goes that this kid gets ready to go, and he jumps in the pool, and as soon as he jumps to the pool, he sinks right to the bottom of the pool. And he starts walking across the bottom of the pool to one side, and he touches that side and he walks across the bottom of the pool back to the other side. He comes up and he's gasping for air, right, nearly drowning. And the instructor looks and says, what the h*** are you doing? And the kid, who's still trying to catch his breath, looks at the instructor and says, I'm sorry, instructor, I don't know how to swim.

And at that point, the instructor pauses and looks at the kid and says, that's okay. We can teach you how to swim. The question is, why does the instructor say that? The instructor says that because if this kid has the attributes, these qualities to show up to Navy SEAL training and he doesn't know how to swim, he has everything inside of him that we need to be a Navy SEAL. Teaching him the skill of swimming is going to be easy.

So in separating this, the distinctions are these skills are not inherent to our nature. In other words, none of us are born with the ability to throw a ball or ride a bike. We're taught to do those things. We train to do those things. Skills direct our behavior in known and specific environments. Here's how and when to throw a ball. Here's how and when to ride a bike.

And then finally, because skills are very easy to see, they're very easy to measure and assess and test. You can see how well anybody does any one of those things. You can put scores around them, you can put statistics around them. This is why we get seduced by skills when we're picking teams or hiring or even performance evaluating.

The problem with skills is they don't tell us how we're going to show up in stress, challenge and uncertainty. Because in an unknown environment, it's very difficult, if not impossible, to apply a known skill. This is when we lean on our attributes. Attributes are inherent to our nature.

In other words, all of us are born with levels of patience, adaptability, situational awareness. We can certainly develop these things over time, experience. But you can see levels of this stuff in very small children, right? Any of us who have kids or have experienced kids will agree with me when I say there are one and a half year olds who are patient and there are one and a half year olds who are impatient.

Okay, so there's a nature nurture element to attributes. Attributes don't direct behavior, they inform behavior. They tell us how we're going to show up to an environment. So my son's levels of perseverance and resilience informed the way he showed up when he was learning the skill of riding a bike, and he was falling off a dozen times doing so.

And then finally, because they're difficult to see, they're very difficult to assess, measure and test. How do you measure someone's levels of patience or adaptability? Right. But they show up the most viscerally. They show up the most visibly and viscerally during times of stress, challenge, and uncertainty.

And so when we're talking about teams and individuals that can operate in uncertainty, chaos, complexity, which, by the way, defines high performing teams and high performing individuals, that's the one distinguishing factor any team can do well when things are going well. The teams that can still perform when things don't go well or go sideways, those are high performing teams.

So if we're talking about that environment and we're missing out on attributes, we're not talking about attributes. We are missing a huge, probably the most important part of the performance picture.

Jon Becker: Well, it's interesting because you look at buds and certainly people wonder why, you know, why is getting cold and sandy a good thing for, you know, revealing how good a Navy SEAL is going to be and listening in your book, listening to kind of the origin story of the teams and buds and kind of the roots in UDT, it almost strikes me that they, you know, they were looking for, quote, unquote, tough guys, and in the process revealed attributes that made that a much more effective way to assess who could do the job than skills would 100% well.

Rich Diviney: And I would. I would say that toughness is simply the result of attributes.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Rich Diviney: And some attributes combined. And so. So, yes, Kaufman, in his early days, were looking for tough guys, but he was also looking for problem solvers. Not just about being tough. You can be tough and dumb. Right? But you need to be tough and still problem solve and adapt and move and flow and flex. And that's when you start to talk about a combination of attributes. Can you actually be tough? Can you tough it out?

The idea is most people in buds quit because of the cold. A lot of people think it's all physical. Right? And that's why they go. That guy's a physical study. He could probably do SEAL training. Well, that's not the case. There are division one athletes who go to Buds and quit the first day. It is all about taking you down to zero and then seeing what you have from there.

So toughness is one thing, but can you, while your cold, wet, and Sandy still perform? That's the case. Or do you wilt into something that's quite useless. That's what we're looking for. So it's not only about enduring the cold, wet and sand, it's about performing through cold, wet and sand.

And now you start to get into a combination of attributes that's pretty unique in terms of that profession. But every profession, every niche has its own unique set of attributes that's required. And that's why it's so important, because if we understand that individual unique list, now we're thinking about, and now we understand. Okay, now I know what I'm looking for in human beings.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Let's touch on one more definition then. I kind of want to dig into the attributes. Let's talk about the difference between peak performance and optimal performance.

Rich Diviney: Oh, yeah. So this is something that hit me as I was doing this work or began to do this work, and it hit me because I was, and this was probably around 2010 when I really began to dig into this. I had taken over assessment and selection and I began to dig in this. And one of the things that was predominant in the performance space was this idea of peak performance. And it was kind of a – And it still remains this kind of almost a fad type. I say fad. It's probably by definition not a fad because it's still around, right?

But certainly an obsession of people just wanting to be peak all the time. Peak here, peak there, peak everywhere. Chasing peak. That's the ultimate thing to peak perform. And people used to tell me, you, SEALs are the ultimate peak performers. And I said, actually, I disagree. We're not. And the reason is because peak, by definition, is an apex. And there's only one place you can go from an apex, and that's down. Right? Peak also has to always or often be planned for, scheduled and prepared for.

So in other words, the pro football player plans and schedules his entire week so that he can peak for 3 hours on Sunday. We don't get to do that. Navy SEALs don't get to do that. Regular human beings don't get to do that. So I said what we really are optimal. Optimal performance means that I'm going to do the very best I can in the moment. Whatever the best looks like in that moment. That means sometimes our best looks like peak and it's flow states and everything's clicking, everything's going great.

But sometimes our best is, I am literally head down, going step by step nugging it out, because that's all I have right now. It's dirty and it's gritty and it's ugly and it's hard. And that is still performing optimally. Optimal performance allows us to do a couple things.

First, it allows us to celebrate those times when we are not at peak, when we're actually gutting it out and it's dirty and it's gritty and it's ugly, hard. It feels like we're not making progress at all, but we are. That is still performing optimally. I can't tell you how many missions we went on overseas that we come back and we're like, man, that was ugly, right? But we still got the job done, okay?

And then it allows us to also do what I call responsible energy management. In other words, I don't have to be peak when I'm driving to the grocery store. I can be at some other energy level. You know, another thing that people think about SEALs is they'll see it on TV or movies, wherever. Before a mission, a group of SEALs will, like, huddle up and start who ya ing and high fiving like some athletic team getting ready to take the field. That never happens, okay? We never do that. We never did that.

In fact, a lot of times we'd be in our helicopters flying into combat and the guys would be sleeping, they'd be taking, they'd be napping. And there's reasons, because we don't know what's coming. We don't know how long we're gonna be out there. We don't know what is gonna be required energetically. We're not gonna waste an ounce of our energy doing things we shouldn't have or don't need to do.

And so optimal performance is kind of this umbrella underneath which peak lives, gutting it out lives, and even recovery lives. Right? And so all high performing teams understand this modulation, understand these differences. And so when I talk about performance and optimal performance, we're talking about performance in any environment, especially in environments of stress, challenge, uncertainty.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's interesting because as I read that I'm an Ironman distance triathlete, and you are an iron man. One day, that's it. Yeah, because you peak to Iron man, and prior to that, you don't have the fitness. And the day after, you certainly don't have the fitness.

Rich Diviney: Right.

Jon Becker: And so it's been like, oh, you're an Iron man. You could just do, you know, you can do. No, you're going to peak that level and that's it. And then you're going to have to recover from it. And there is a difference between what you can maintain in fitness on a regular basis, even if you are pushing to be as fit as you possibly can on a regular basis.

There's only, you're only going to get so much fitness before you break down, before you, you know, whatever. And it struck me that same way that really optimal performance is driving for what is the best I can be on a regular basis, maintainable, and at the drop of a hat have that level of performance versus, you know, I'm going to the Olympics and this is going to be the only day in my life I ever run this fast.

Rich Diviney: Right. Yeah, 100%. And I think, though. So the reason why optimal performance is a good umbrella underneath which to kind of bend everything is because the athlete performs optimally as well. But the athlete just has the environment or situation where they know exactly when they need to peak. It's defined, it's codified. Whereas we don't. Right? We don't know. We have to peak on demand, we have to recover on demand, and we have to be, we have to be managing ourselves so that when it's time to peak on demand, we can.

And what that means is, okay, I'm going to peak and then as soon as I'm done peaking, as soon as that's not required, let me see if I can get some recovery, because I don't know when I'm going to need to peak again or I'm going to have to go down this long road. Right?

The long mission, that's hours and hours, mountains climbing, mountains through Afghanistan, and it's going to be gut wrenching and we're going to have to gut it out the whole time. So even getting to the target, I'm just going to have to do my best. I'm going to have to manage myself so that when I'm on the target, I can do my best. So that when I'm coming off the target, I can do my best. And it's just a much more realistic way to modulate ourselves.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's fantastic! So why don't we – Let's dig into the attributes a little bit, just for kind of the listeners edification, maybe let's start with the five major categories and then we can dive into each of those.

Rich Diviney: Yeah, absolutely. So in the book I talk about 25. What's interesting, Jon, is that since doing the work, or since doing the book and doing work with organizations, we've beefed up that list of 42 attributes now in nine categories. Right?

Jon Becker: Wow!

Rich Diviney: That's another, that's a, that's a couple hours of deep dive, but let's, let's talk about these five, because I think these five still are great for the introduction to optimal performance. And so the five categories are grit, mental acuity, drive, leadership, and team ability. And those. Those are categories inside of which these 25 attributes kind of bin comfortably. They're not exclusive. Right?

So, in other words, just because an attribute is in the courage category doesn't mean it's not used in drive or used in leadership. Right? But they comfortably been those categories. And so grit is this idea. And again, people think of grit as a singular thing. A lot of times they describe grit as an attribute in of itself, but it's not. Grit is actually a combination of things kind of blended and catalyzed and stewed together that create. It's a result of what's kind of blended. And actually, Angela Duckworth wrote a great book years ago called Grit, and she.

Jon Becker: Fantastic!

Rich Diviney: Yeah. And she said the same thing. It's a combination of things. So the attributes required, and we'll get into these, I know, later, but the attributes that are required for grid are in that category are courage, perseverance, adaptability, and resiliency. Mental acuity are the attributes that describe how our brain processes the world around us. So just as we're walking through environments, what's our brain doing and how is it working?

So, situation awareness, compartmentalization, task switching, and learnability. Drive. If grit speaks to those shorter, terminal, you know, endeavors, drive speaks to the longer term. What are the attributes that. That create the driven person and be able to do something long term? Those are self efficacy, discipline, open mindedness, cunning, and, yes, narcissism. And we can get in that as well if you want. Leadership is the next category. What are the attributes that allow others to look at us and decide that we're leaders. Here's the thing about leadership.

Being a leader and being in charge are two separate things. One is a position, one is a behavior. And I always kind of joke, you don't get to self designate. In other words, you don't get to call yourself a leader. That's like calling yourself good looking or funny. Okay. Other people decide whether or not you are someone they want to follow based on the way you behave. If you call yourself a leader and you look back and there's no one following you, I got bad news for you. You're not a leader.

So those behaviors are what cause people to say, this is someone I want to follow. And many of us, if there's listeners who've been in the military or been in any. Any hierarchical bureaucracy of any sort, they may have had this experience. I know I did, where I've looked at a leader before, someone above me. I say, look at a leader. Looked at someone above me in a position hierarchically, and I say to myself, I wouldn't follow that person anywhere.

Meanwhile, there's someone over here to my right who has no hierarchical position whatsoever. I say, I would follow that person to h*** and back. Okay. And it's because of the way we behave. So these leadership attributes are basic, elemental things. They're empathy, selflessness, authenticity, decisiveness, and accountability. Those are the types of behaviors that we typically, as human beings, say, oh, okay. When I feel and see that, I tend to say, that's someone I would follow. Right?

And then team ability. Team ability is really how we effectively operate in teams. I don't. The word. I stole the word from naval special warfare. I think they made it up because I don't think it's a real word, but it's kind of how you operate as a teammate. Okay?

But just like leadership, you don't get to call yourself a good teammate. Other teammates, other people decide whether or not you're a good teammate based on the way you behave. And so those attributes are integrity, open mindedness. No. Integrity, humor, humility, and conscientiousness. Those are the attributes for team ability. We can dive into any one of those, but that's how those categories kind of been out.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it makes sense. And I think that when you dig into it, it's an overwhelming list. Initially, you look at you like, oh, my God. But when you start to look at them piece by piece and dig into them, you start to realize that, oh, yeah, that kind of makes sense. You have to have all of these different components. And so what I'd like to do is kind of go through, and obviously, audiences is a tactical operator audience.

So we'll kind of hit some of them a little harder, because I think they're probably a little more relevant. But why don't we start with grit again? Angela Duckworth's amazing book, which, if you haven't read everybody should read, kind of lays the foundation. But I kind of like the approach that you took of by splitting it up into attributes. It makes a little more sense, I think. So why don't we walk through the attributes that build grit?

Rich Diviney: Yeah, absolutely. And before I do, though, let me just say that for everybody's kind of essay, we all have all of the attributes, okay? The difference in each one of us are the levels to which we have each. Okay? So, for example, take. And we'll talk about adaptability, but adaptability, if ten is high and one is low, okay, I would consider myself about a level eight on adaptability, which means when the environment changes around me, outside of my control, it's fairly easy for me to go with the flow and roll with it. Someone else might be a level three on adaptability.

When the same thing happens to them, it's difficult for them to go with the flow and roll with it. Right? They're still adaptable because all human beings are. And so if we kind of line up these attributes on a wall, like dimmer switches, all of us would have different dimmer switch settings. And the way I like to describe this is, I like to think of us as humans, as automobiles, right?

We all have the same basic component parts. We all have a steering wheel, we all have a carburetor, we all have tires. The component parts are the same, but some of us are jeeps and some of us are Ferraris. And there's no judgment there because the jeep can do things the Ferrari can't do and the Ferrari can do things the jeep can't do. But it's those intricacies, those details that cause us to be different that allow us to say that I'm better in this genre than I am in that genre. That's how we have to look at these attributes.

So as we discuss them, I just want everybody to think, you're going to be high on some, you're going to be low on others. You're going to be medium on probably the most of them. But that those highs and lows, especially the ones you're high on, low on, really start to distinguish and dissect and articulate your performance in all aspects, but to include uncertainty, challenge, and stress. And so, yeah, so that's why I want to lay that kind of foundation.

Jon Becker: Well, it's funny because it's like your video game. You know, you think about playing video games, whether it's Mario Kart or Madden football or Call of Duty, you know, when you're picking a character, they're good at this. They're not good at this. They're strong, you know, strong like ox, like chicken, you know, there's this kind of variety of different attributes. And it is, you know, we are all. We all have them, but we are. And we all know people that, you know, if you. If you are married, you know that your wife has certain attributes that you don't.

Rich Diviney: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And that you have attributes that she doesn't. And it is. It isn't a judgment thing, but from a leadership standpoint, it is. It is being able to pick people that are really good at the things that you need them to do and then trying to build an organization around. If Rich is really good at these five things, then let's try to have Rich do those five things and not do the four things that Rich isn't that good at, 100%.

Rich Diviney: And honestly, every group and team, every team, organization, group. And we do this work with teams and organization. They have a unique set list of attributes that are required for that team. So in other words, the attribute list that is required for a great Navy SEAL team looks different than the list for a great surgical team or teaching team, right?

So first is about understanding what that unique list looks like. Then when you build the team, there's going to be a couple of those attributes, and we're talking about maybe two or three, maybe four tops that every person on the team has to have. Right? And we know that, I mean, they just have to have these. They can't do the job. We could say that with tactical operators, whatever, SEALs, cops, I mean, there's just one, two, or three of these things that all of us have to have.

But then it's about matching and uniting the team. Like a zipper, we all have the basic three or four that we need, but now Rich is a little bit lower on patience and John is higher on patients. So let's zipper this. And so now we have both represent. We've taken care of the problem because we can fill in those gaps because not everybody's going to have the perfect set of attributes. And so that's how we have to kind of look at that. So I'm actually glad you brought that up because that's the way teams and high performing teams are infected, built well.

Jon Becker: And it's the same way that, you know, elite special operations units, you know, you cannot maintain the level of skills and knowledge. You know, there is so much in a modern environment that you can't maintain an extremely high level of knowledge at everything.

Rich Diviney: Right.

Jon Becker: So you do the same thing. You cadre out the team. So, you know, Rich is a really good sniper and John is a really good breacher. And, you know, we're going to take these skills and put them together to form this kind of milieu that allows us to solve whatever problems were faced with.

Rich Diviney: Yeah, and the same thing goes with attributes, and, in fact, more so with attributes to do the problem solving. Again, we problem solve with attributes. Once we have a solution, we use skills to execute. But most of the process of our experience when we're in an environment, especially the environments, we, the listeners, and certainly I experience is, let's figure. We have to figure it out. We have to figure out what's going on first, and then we apply the appropriate skill to that. Right?

So skills are absolutely necessary, but they're at their very back end. They're the very last thing we apply to any problem, because all that rest of this stuff is based upon, okay, what do you bring to this environment? So you can actually figure out the environment, solve a problem, and then apply a solution.

Jon Becker: But what's interesting about that is skills, because they're quantifiable and measurable, we're very inclined to want to do, to look at skills. And one of my favorite elite units, their selection process, they describe as specifically trying to avoid high functioning a*******.

Rich Diviney: Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Becker: And focusing on skills is how we pick high functioning a*******.

Rich Diviney: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I would. I would. In concert with that, one of the things we always used to say is, is the hardest part about our job. You know, the Navy SEAL job, especially the Navy SeAL job, at the levels I was at, was the hardest part is deciding not to shoot. Right? Because anybody can pull the trigger, and anybody can spray and pray, right?

But the ability to understand an environment that's violent, that's kinetic, that's in your face, and is very, very rapid to understand, then process that environment a very rapid way, and then make a decision to pull the trigger or not to pull a trigger in less than a second is, in fact, attributes based. Pulling the trigger. Sure, that's a skill, right? But that comes after everything. The decision not to pull this trigger, that's all attributes based, which is especially.

Jon Becker: True in a law enforcement environment, right, where it is constantly evolving, chaotic. You know, your traffic stop might be for gang bangers with guns, or it might be an old lady who just got lost. And that actually, why don't we go directly to mental acuity then? Because while we're talking about that like that, that's obviously on point. So let's start with mental acuity.

Rich Diviney: That's a great place to start, because I do think our professions, those are the most important because, you know, grit has courage and all that stuff that matters, but it's really how our brain processes the world around us. And I think, well, let's get into it. So, situational awareness is the first one. That's basically our levels of vigilance about our environment.

So people who are high on situational awareness, like SEALs or cops or first responders, typically, we just notice more than your average person. I walk around New York City and I notice stuff. I notice hands. I notice dark alleys. I notice cars. My wife, who's walking next to me, she doesn't notice as much. And again, there's no judgment there. Her situational awareness is just lower than mine. But we are all, you know, we all have a level of vigilance in our world at least. But that's that situation awareness, the next one, which is extremely important, probably the most important one, certainly for Navy SEALs. I would imagine it's for cops and first responders as well.

But again, you can't make it through seal training if you don't have a preponderance of compartmentalization. Compartmentalization is the ability to, inside of an environment, kind of pick something to focus on, understand what the priority is, pick that thing, focus on that and block out everything else until that thing is complete. Right? That's compartmentalization.

So the example of that, like in seal training, is if you can't. So in SEAL training, the kind of the crucible of seal training which many folks may have heard about, is h*** week. Okay? H*** week is in first phase. It's the fifth week of training. First phase. H*** week starts on a Sunday afternoon, and it doesn't finish until the following Friday. And during that time, you only get about two or two and a half hours of sleep the entire week.

And the whole time you're running around the big heavy boats on your head. You're freezing, you're sandy, you're wet. That's where you get most quitters during h*** week. And the saying goes, if you think about Friday of h*** week on Monday, you will quit. Right? And h*** week is all h*** week is. It's just an act of constant compartmentalization. You're just picking things to focus on constantly. You're picking something, if I'm in the freezing surf zone, I'm just focusing on something, blocking out everything else and then moving on until. Until that's complete.

And so compartmentalization also applies because in a tactical environment, and we'll just, you know, let's just say, let's say if a SEALs are entering a room or a SWAT team is entering a room, that's literally what we're doing. We're coming into the room with a large. With a large view. Situation awareness. We're immediately assessing threat. We're picking something to focus on. We're focusing on. We're addressing it. And as soon as that's addressed, we're coming back out and we're picking something else, and we're addressing that and we're coming back out.

So really this, what the unconscious genius of this system, certainly at buzz was, is it's literally hyper developing this attribute that you're going to need in combat, and it's compartmentalization. So I think that's why compartmentalization is so important. Task switching is the next one, and task switching, again, you also need, because the people who are really high at task switching, they actually look like multitaskers. People actually sometimes make the assumption that they are. But we know multitasking is a myth, right? The conscious mind can't focus on more than one thing at a time.

And in fact, I've been debated on this. My neuroscientist friends have been debated on this. People say, well, rich, I can drive my car and listen to my podcast. And that's true, you can, but it doesn't count if you've relegated that other activity to your unconscious mind. The reason why you can drive your car and listen to your podcast is because you don't have to think about driving your car. But if you're driving your car, listening to your podcast, and someone swerves in front of you and you have to take evasive maneuvers to avoid that person, you will have to rewind the last 15 seconds of that podcast because your brain will have hopped.

And so high task switchers can go from the email to the conversation to this to that, and they can do it very rapidly. Whereas if you're lower on task switching, sometimes it's harder to pull out of one thing and focus on another and pull out of one thing. So in the first responder profession, the seal profession, the tactical officer profession, you need to be able to compartmentalize, but then you need to be able to pull out and task switch fairly, fairly rapidly. So there's a balance there that has to be addressed.

And then finally, learnability. I think learnability is an interesting one because learnability doesn't have much to do with our ability to learn. It has to do with the speed and efficiency with which we learn. So in other words, those people who are high on learnability, they're the people who you can show or tell how to do something once and they got it. Someone else is a little lower, might have to be told a couple times, they might make a couple mistakes, they'll get it, but it just takes a little longer.

So learnability is probably the one that you, it's very, it's very subjective to the environment, but you could probably be a little bit lower on that one than the other ones, even as a SEAL, even as a cop, because you can't be super low because you have to learn it somehow. You have to – But some of the stuff we learn, and I could throw CQC close quarter combat into this category, you don't, it doesn't have to be a super fast upload in your system there. You'll have some chances to kind of upload that. It can't be slow. Right?

So you have to be probably in the middle level or a little higher. But it does have to do with this speed and efficiency with tree learn. So those are the mental acuity attributes in total. And I think those are the ones that really speak quite accurately to things that certainly we did in the SEAL teams and certainly most of your audience, some of these folks do on a daily basis.

Jon Becker: Well, it's interesting because as you were describing this, I'm thinking of my friends who are coming back from overseas and how tuned up they are when they're coming back. And it is really mental acuity that is pushed. Their situational awareness is overloaded, by the way.

Rich Diviney: This, by the way, it's a good opportunity to say any of these attributes at their extremes is bad. Too much of anything, too little of everything is bad. Situational awareness is a great example of this because, yes, coming back from overseas, a lot of us experience what we call hyper vigilance and that actually can be very stressful on the system.

And I remember literally coming back from the war zone and I'd be, for example, walking in New York and I'd have to very deliberately say to myself, okay, I don't have to worry about the guy who's walking 5 ft behind me. I have to, I have to turn that off. I have to come off that a little bit. And so, hyper vigilance can actually be seeds to PTSD if you're not careful, because you just can't. It's hard to turn off. It has to be a very deliberate effort.

So folks coming back from overseas where everything is a threat, you have to be able to understand that and say, okay, I'm going to dial that down a little bit. Very deliberately, to the extent you can. I mean, I still can't, I still can't get over people who walk around the city with headphones. That just is beyond me. But again, everybody has, everybody's their own person.

Jon Becker: Yeah. The world, the world needs victims too. But, yeah, no, it's interesting because it is, you know, you think of any of any of these traits in and of themselves if tuned up too high, you know, if you're, if you are too hyper vigilant, you're never even be able to leave the house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, if you compartmentalize too effectively, you're not going to be able to move from big to small or from complicated to simple or well.

Rich Diviney: And honestly, like, the world will burn down around you. So one of my good friends, he's a neuroscientist out there in California. His name is Andrew Huberman, has a great podcast called the Huberman Lab. And he and I have been friends for years. And so he was actually one of the reasons why I wrote the book because he and I were working on some stuff and he encouraged me to do it. But he's funny because he's a self admitted high compartmentalizer, low task switching.

And what that means in his life is he is so good at dialing into something and he'll just drop in and he can spend hours on one thing, like, and that's why he's so good at his podcast, his research and all this stuff. He'll spend hours, but everything around him will. His world can burn down around him and he won't. It would be hard for him to pull back out.

Now, you think about him as a scientist. That's actually a really, it's advantageous. Right? Because you need to be able to focus in. Right? But, you can start to see where this might have detrimental effects if you're placed in an environment where being able to pull out is necessary.

So that's why I think that, like, the most of the audience you have, and certainly, you know, seals or any type of that environment, you need to have a little bit of balance. You need to compartmentalize, but always maintain a situation awareness. So if I'm in something, if I'm focused on something and suddenly a new priority, it presents itself. I need you to task switch that new priority. And so there's a real balance there, I think, between these for some professions.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, fortunately, Huberman is an extremely deep compartmentalizer because it's what makes his podcast fantastic, because nobody else would spend that much time digging into the stuff he digs into to the level he does.

Rich Diviney: That's right.

Jon Becker: It's interesting, though, because compartmentalization, like, you know, you always talk about front sight focus, people coming, front sight focused. That's basically, compartmentalization at the extreme right, locking down and losing situational awareness.

Rich Diviney: Yeah. And we used to, like, we used to train to go into rooms, like close quarter combat, and we used to train both eyes open. Right? So you have one eye that's looking down your sight, and the other eye is open, and you're just training your one eye to be focused on where it needs to be, but you have your other eye, so you maintain a level of periphery. Right? Because you don't want to get frontside focused.

And that was a deliberate tactic we used to train to so that we didn't get frontside focused. So we'd always maintain that. Plus, it's obviously faster. You don't want to be closing an eye to aim and then shoot, but it speaks to exactly that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, let's move on. Let's move on to grit, because grit is, I think it is the category of attributes that everybody associates with seals and with cops. And I think there is probably an overemphasis on grit as a group of attributes. Everybody thinks, oh, man, if you're gritty, then it's going to be, you know, like, we want the most gritty guy we can possibly get. And like you said, any extreme is too much.

Rich Diviney: Yeah.

Jon Becker: But let's walk through kind of how. What comprises grit?

Rich Diviney: Yeah. The attributes that comprise grit. So courage, perseverance, adaptability, and resiliency. So just kind of walking through that first courage, because it's really interesting. And, again, this is stuff Huberman and I worked on in depth when we first met, which was like, I don't know, six years ago, he was running his fear lab there in Stanford, and so he was studying the neurology behind fear, and I was applying. Okay, this is kind of what we do, how we process it in the field.

And one of the things, you know, one of the things we know about fear is that when we begin to have a fear response, fear begins to enter our system. Amygdala gets tickled, autonomic arousal goes up. Our brain presents us with two choices, and we all know these choices. One is flight or flee. Okay. People have thought about and people have said freeze before as a choice. But neurology, neuroscience is kind of determined that freeze is really kind of an oscillation between the two. You're kind of deciding, should you fight or should you free? Should you flee?

But the idea is whether you fight or whether you flee, that's a specific – Each has a specific switch in the brain that gets clicked. And so if you decide to fight. And this means step into your fear. It doesn't necessarily mean put your dukes up, right? But you're stepping into your fear or discomfort. That switch gets clicked, all right? And that is the courage switch, okay? And when you hit that courage switch, you actually get a dopamine reward for that effort, right? Which makes sense because nature has designed us to, in fact, step into our fear.

It's exactly why we as a species have gone from cave dwellers to space explorers, right? Because nature has designed our systems to step in and be rewarded when we step into our fear and discomfort. But all that to say courage is an attribute is the frequency with which you step into your fear and anxiety, right?

So what does that mean? It means that just because you're a Navy SEAL doesn't mean you're more courageous than the average person on the street, right? Because you could literally have a group of Navy SEALs in a gunfight with al Qaeda physiologically feeling less fear than the eight year old you just asked to step in front of the class and introduce themselves. Okay?

And so the idea is how frequently are you stepping into the fear that you could be a generally anxious person. Person. And if you're stepping into your discomfort and your fear, often you're accessing that card switch. Often your card is higher, your attribute is scored higher, because, again, you cannot have courage.

There's no access to that card switch unless there's fear presence. Or you could have someone who does seemingly very brave things. I don't know if you're familiar with Alex Honnold. He did the free solo. Amazing! I watched that movie and I get shivers. It's insane. That guy, when they did the move, they looked at his brain and his fear response is not like normal people. It takes a lot for his fear response to even kick in.

I would never say Alex is not courageous, but the courage switch is not getting accessed as quickly as some normal person. As me on that rock. My card switch would be accessed. As soon as I'm 10ft up, I'm going to be accessing my card switch on that. Again, cards as an attribute is with what frequency?

So I think that's important in terms of defining certainly our profession.

Jon Becker: I think courage is a very good example of where the extreme of an attribute is detrimental because somebody who is too courageous will get killed.

Rich Diviney: Yes. Yeah. And like in the book, I say, a commanding officer once told me, as a young junior officer, beware the fearless leader because that person is going to get you killed. Fear is a human response that's designed as a risk assessment tool for human beings. And so if we're not understanding our fear and accessing our fear, we're not risk assessing properly. Right? And so that you could get into the bulldog syndrome, you run in the burning building. So, yeah, too high is bad just as much as too low. Yeah.

Jon Becker: What about perseverance?

Rich Diviney: So, yeah, if courage is the ability to step into fear and discomfort, perseverance is the ability to continue doing it over and over again. It's literally this ability to just kind of keep going, head down. I'm going to just gut it out. Right? I will just move through, move through, move through. Obviously extremely effective and advantageous. However, we can see how too much of this, especially if you have very high perseverance and low resiliency, you will burn out. And people actually confuse, I should say they conflate resiliency and perseverance quite a bit. They think about resilience as, hey, if I get hit, I'm getting back up again. Right?

Perseverance is get hit seven times or, you know, fall down seven times, get up eight. That's perseverance. Resilience is when I get, when I, when I take a hit and I get knocked off my baseline, how quickly can I get back to that baseline? That's, that's resilience. And we'll talk about that in a second. But perseverance is quite simple. It's this ability to just kind of keep on moving through. Just churn through, churn through, churn through. Obviously, too high. Could lean to burnout. Too low. You're. You're not going to, you're not going to get anything done.

Jon Becker: So let's then we'll skip adaptability for a second and move on to resilience. Because I think, especially in a PTSD context, I think resilience is really important. So walk me through resilience. Give me examples.

Rich Diviney: Yeah. So just visually, if we could imagine our lives, imagine a line, and we draw a line for our lives, and the left side of that line is the day we were born. The right side is today, just a straight line on a page. And then we start to plot the highs and lows of our lives as our life as we've gone through it. And the highs can go above the line and the lows can go below the line.

And then we decide to draw a line connecting all those dots. All of us are going to have what looks like a sine wave because our lives are quite literally a series of ups and downs. So you can think of that line as based. And the idea of resiliency is when we hit a low, how rapidly and efficiently can we get back to baseline? When we hit a high, how rapidly and efficiently can we get back to baseline? Right? Because if you can't do it, if you can't do it at all, you're in trouble. Right?

But if you move too slowly, you're going to risk, like not getting back to baseline after a challenge. You're going to risk another challenge coming and you're going to get further and further down below that baseline because you get a, you go from zero to minus five. You're only resilient up to maybe minus four, minus three, and then you get hit again. Now you're down to minus seven and you go up to minus five. Now you're down to minus ten. Right?

Same thing with good things. Right? Because we have an experience of success or elation. If we can't get back to baseline, then suddenly we are in a position where maybe we get complacent, maybe we start resting our lore as we get lazier or arrogance. Right? So resilience is quite literally this ability to kind of get back to baseline. And how fast can we get back to baseline? Those who are high on resilience can, in fact, get back a lot faster.

Jon Becker: Well, one of the concepts that you talk about in the book and that I had read the book is anti fragility.

Rich Diviney: Yes.

Jon Becker: Right. It's this notion, I think we think of resilience when you hear the word you think of. Oh, yeah, that guy's really tough. He's very resilient. But when you put it in a context of getting back to baseline. Why don't you contrast that for me between what, you know, the difference between resilience and fragility or anti fragility.

Rich Diviney: Yeah. So anti fragility is. Well, okay, let's just kind of, I'll give you the opposite first. Right. If you are unable to get back to baseline, you kind of think about that sine wave, right? It's slowly going to go down. It's going to descend. Your baseline will slowly descend that you're falling into entropy. Okay. Because you're not recovering enough to get back to your baseline. So you slowly fall into entropy. Antifragility is when I go through something, when I recover, I actually recover to an extent where I'm stronger from it. In other words, my baseline increases.

So antifragility. And again, great book by Nassim Talib called Antifragile right. But it's this idea that when something bad happens, when I get hit with a challenge, I grow from it. Right? And that's really important. And there's very unique strategies. That's another set of stuff that Huber and I worked on together that, you know, that we'll probably release here soon.

But this idea that can we design ourselves and design our systems, that when we hit, when we hit a challenge or get something or have something stressful or challenging or uncertain or traumatic happen to us, can we conduct ourselves in a way that when we come back up, we're actually, our apex is higher than it was before. That's what we want to do, and that's anti fragility.

So that baseline is moving up and we're getting stronger. That's what our goal should be. Resilience is definitely good. If we have nothing else, let's be resilient. Let's get back to baseline. When and if we can, at any time, can we actually grow from it? That's actually, that's the best.

Jon Becker: Well, I think that's kind of the new developing doctrine around post traumatic growth.

Rich Diviney: Yes.

Jon Becker: Right. You experienced trauma and your resilience will take you back to baseline. But, you know, so if you are very resilient, you will, you will recover from the trauma. But the difference between, you know, recovering and post traumatic growth is you will use the trauma to inform development and growth and becoming stronger.

Rich Diviney: 100%. Yeah. And in the book, I talk about this, it's much like this physiological process called hormesis, which is this idea that, you know, that the system can get stronger. If you feed it small levels of toxins, it starts to inoculate. It's the crux or the basic premise of most vaccines. Right? You just a little, you know, throw a little in the system, your body will get used to fighting that.

But our bodies, right, our bodies are systems that actually conduct hormesis on quite often occasions. And we can do this mentally as well. Can we use injections of stress, challenge, uncertainty to, in fact, inoculate ourselves and get our stronger so that next time we get hit, we can actually take a lot more?

Jon Becker: Well, I mean, anybody that works out. Right? Is engaging in hormesis. Anybody that works out is engaging in post traumatic growth. You are, by definition, damaging your body. And it responds by not only going back to baseline. Like, you don't just recover. You know, if you lift a heavy object, you tear a bunch of muscle fibers, you're sore. You don't just get back to baseline. If you do it regularly, you get stronger.

Rich Diviney: Yeah, but what is the key to that process? The key to that process is recovery. Right? If you lift your arm, if you lift your biceps every day, you're not. Your biceps aren't going to get bigger unless maybe you're 18, because we know at 18, our bodies are so fast. But ultimately, recovery is the key. And so even in the process of antifragility, from a physical, mental, emotional standpoint, that recovery is the most important thing. And the recovery is going to look different for everybody, and it's going to depend on the trauma, because depending on the trauma, you may need a much longer time to recover fully.

And what I always say is, if you are in a position where you've gone through something and you're the finding recovery difficult. And so, by the way, the way, you know, you recovered that you're finished with that step is that when you think about or recall that instance, you can do so objectively. There's no more trigger, right? That means you've recovered properly.

But if you can't, if you're having trouble getting there by yourself, I always say get help. You know, get, as, you know, get help fast. Right? Do as much as you can. We can't always do this by ourselves. There are a lot of people, there's a lot of places you can get help to recover properly, especially if it's a more intense trauma.

But we can practice this stuff just with little trauma in our lives. The traffic jam, the bad day, the meeting that went not as planned and things like that. We could practice this resiliency, exercising this resiliency muscle so that we get good at it. And hopefully, when bigger things hit, we could be faster with the process.

Jon Becker: So. Okay, let's use that transition to adaptability.

Rich Diviney: Yeah. Adaptability is actually a lot. Out of the three, it's probably the most simple and straightforward. I mean, this is literally the ability to adapt to an environment. When the environment changes out around us, outside of our control, how can we best adapt? Right. It's a very reactive attribute. Right? But this is in a book I talk about. This is the kind of be like the frog. The frog has, as a species, survived five extinction level events on this planet. Right?

And they've done so because, well, when they. When they need to live in the water, they live in the water. When they need to live on land, they live on land. Right. And they've just. They've. They've adapted to an environment.

So adaptability, again, the reason why it's part of the grit is because if you are unadaptable, part of the whole part, the whole process, or the whole purpose of being gritty is you are able to push through and power through some sort of environment, some sort of situation. So the outside environment is implied, and the outside environment is always going to throw things at you that you can't control, that you have to adapt to. So if you are low on adaptability, you may be gritty, but it's not going to be for that long.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah. It's the old Bruce Lee saying, right? You'd be like water. Fill whatever container you go into and move to whatever shape. And it is, I think, especially thinking to a business context, like part of entrepreneurship, is high levels of adaptability. I think over the last 38 years of my career and the business I run every day is a different business.

The situation changes, the clients change, the technology changes, and the organizations that you think of, organizations that have been successful for long periods of time, Apple is one that comes to mind, and they're extremely adaptable. They're constantly evolving.

Rich Diviney: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So, yeah, it makes sense that it's. It's not. It's not okay to just be. You don't want too much, you know, strength, for lack of a better term, and not enough adaptability, because you will continue to beat your head against the same wall, and eventually. Yeah, you know, you're not going to survive it 100%.

Rich Diviney: And the other. The reverse is true as well. You don't want too little. Well, no, you don't want too little adaptability, which is what you described. You don't want too much adaptability, because then you're a limp noodle, and there's no. You're bending and flowing with the breeze at any soft blow. And that's not advantageous either. So in every environment, every niche, there's gonna be a level of adaptability that's required, and that's optimal, but it's not gonna be extreme in either way.

Jon Becker: Well, that kind of goes into the next category of stuff, which is drive.

Rich Diviney: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So, with drives, you've got self efficacy, discipline, open mindedness, cunning, and narcissism. Walk me through that thought.

Rich Diviney: So, self efficacy is this ability to. It's kind of a combination of three things. The combination is confidence. I know I can do this. The initiative to get started, and then the optimism, the realistic optimism that as I go through, as I continue on, I'll figure it out. There's gonna be roadblocks and stuff but I'll just figure it out. So self efficacy combines those, those three things. If you don't have those three things in combination, you don't necessarily have the self efficacy full picture, because if you're just, for example, confidence.

Well, confidence on its own is not going to do much in terms of getting something done. It's the same thing with initiative. If you just have initiative, it's going to be a blind, frenetic energy. If you're just optimistic, well, we know you can plant a garden and just say, the weeds will not come. The weeds will not come. They will come. Right?

So it has to be something behind that. So that's self efficacy. Discipline is this ability to be steadfast and understand the wickets involved in a goal or an outcome or an objective, and be disciplined in those wickets to accomplish that objective.

Now, I bifurcate discipline in the book to two categories. You have inner discipline or outer discipline. So inner discipline, kind of like self discipline, outer discipline is kind of this overall discipline when it comes to long term goals. So the difference is this, the self discipline person is really good at those goals that the external world has no say in whether or not they accomplish. So that's like eating healthy and getting in shape and working out, right?

So I can make a decision, I'm going to eat healthy from this point on, and I can be in Vegas next week at the buffet. The buffet is not going to throw food at me. The external world has very little say. If no say on whether or not I eat healthy, that's self discipline. External discipline or outer discipline is this idea that you have a goal or objective that the external world has a say in whether or not you accomplish. That's becoming a SEAL. It's starting a podcast, it's writing a book, a top surgeon, right? The external world is going to have a say in whether or not you do that.

In other words, it's going to throw things at you that you must kind of adapt and roll with. And so the reason why I bifurcate that is because these polarities can live in extremes. I've known people who are very, very high on self discipline and they're very low on outer discipline. These are people who typically, the way this looks, is someone who, for example, everything about their life is structured, they eat the right thing, they're in super good shape. They have everything kind of mapped out, and everything's very there, spot on. They can't get an external goal or a long term goal accomplished to save their lives, right?

And there's a reason behind that. Because if those people who are really high self discipline, extreme, they love and need routine and structure. And you, and I know everybody knows when you set a goal that the external world has a say in the. You're going to be thrown out of structure real quick. Right? You need to your whole, you may not be able to work out one day. You may have to eat something that you didn't want to eat. Right? I mean, just kind of an example, right?

So very high self discipline, very low self discipline, it can exist, right? I'm on the opposite, actually. I have pretty high discipline and I have low self discipline. And so I'm really good at setting and achieving long term, kind of audacious goals. When I'm told how to do something or I try to tell myself I'm pretty bad, right? I mean, because I'm used to being outside of structure, I'm used to being on the right routine. I kind of b*** up against it quite often.

So in my life, to work on my self discipline, I've had to be more deliberate about injecting a little bit of routine into my life so I can actually be self disciplined in a better way. But all this to say, most people are fairly balanced in this, but there are cases where you may be higher on one side of that than the other and it's going to show up in your behavior. So that's an interesting aspect.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah, that's very interesting!

Rich Diviney: Yeah. Open mindedness, I mean, that's just a passive openness to experience and ideas and things like that. The open minded person is passively open to new experience, new ideas, new new people, new things. Right? It's different from curiosity. Curiosity. And that's an attribute, that's another attribute I just don't talk about in this book. Curiosity is a proactive thing. I'm going to go seek out new stuff.

But being open minded, that's probably more important because there's just a passiveness that I'm going to be an open minded person. Typically, if you're, none of this is black and white, but typically the people who are very high, highly successful, driven people, they have a good amount of open mindedness, an amount that allows them to take in new ideas, new experiences, so they can actually accomplish their objective.

If you're really low on it, you're very close minded, it's going to be pretty difficult for you to achieve these long term objectives and stick with it. Conning, I love because conning is felt or seen as pejorative a lot of times, but it's not. Cunning is very neutral. The way we use cunning can be judged. We can use cunning for evil. We can use it for good. But cunning on its own is simply thinking outside the box. Can I problem solve in a different way? The cunning mind approaches a problem and immediately asks three questions.

The first question is, are there rules and boundaries? The second question is, are they real or are they perceived? And the third question is, if they're real, what happens if I break them? And then the cunning mind begins to look at ways around a problem. And so obviously, a huge attribute for seals and spec ops in general. Because we're always thinking outside the box. And again, but it can be used. Bernie Madoff is an example of bad cunning, like evil cunning. Whereas Oskar Schindler is an example of good cunning. And so you just have to understand that the way we use it can be judged. But the elemental attribute is neutral.

And then finally, narcissism, which people always have an issue with because for the same reasons that I did when I was putting the book together, I kept on coming back to narcissistic personality disorder, which, in fact, is a disorder. And, in fact, I got a copy of DSM-5, which is the psych bible of all the psych diseases. And it has a few pages on narcissistic personality disorder.

But the thing about that disorder is when you go through those, when you look at those pages, there's, like nine criteria that the physician will read through. And if the physician can answer yes to five or more, then the physician can then diagnose the patient as disordered. That is, they have the disorder.

But only about 6% of the population are disordered. They have the disorder. I looked at those nine things, and as I looked through them, I read them. And I'm happy to say I couldn't say yes to five or more. What? I wasn't innocent of everything I was reading. In other words, I would read some of the stuff I read. I was like, well, sometimes I feel like this. Sometimes I feel like that.

So then I kind of went back and asked myself, well, why did I become a Navy Seal in the first place? I was a 22 year old kid. It was in the nineties. There's no war going on. It was the mid nineties. And I was a patriot. Obviously, I wanted to serve my country. But one of the real reasons, kind of a big reason, was I wanted to see if I could be a badass. I wanted to see if I could do something. Very few people could do.

So I asked my other Navy SEAL buddies, why did they become a Navy SEAL? They said the same thing, right? Yeah, they're patriots. Yeah, all that stuff. But they wanted to see if they could do something very few people could do. So in realizing that, I went to the very elemental definition of narcissism. And the very elemental definition of narcissism is the desire to stand out, be adored, be recognized, be made, feel special. That's the definition.

And honestly, I will tell you with certainty, every single human being on this planet at some point in their lives, wants to stand out, be desired, be adored, be made, feel special because it feels good. It feels good because there's certain neurology that we get. We get neurobiologically rewarded when we're adored and paid attention to. We get dopamine, we get serotonin, we get oxytocin, right, but it feels good. But narcissism, first of all, we all have it.

Second of all, it's the impetus to some of our most audacious goals, right? Why else would you want to be the best surgeon, best author, best Navy SEAL, best cop, right? You know, it's. There's. There's narcissism hidden in there, or maybe even explicit.

But the idea is, we all have it. Where do we stand on it? What are our levels? It is dangerous. There can be a tipping point. And it's, you know, you want to. You want to avoid tipping over the edge, right? The way you do that is you surround yourself with people who tell you the truth, who ground you, who don't just tell you what you want to hear, who don't just bend the knee, right, who, you're not always the center of attention. Right?

Now the police community, most of the time, the SEAL community, a lot of the first responder community, we have built into those communities grounding mechanisms. We keep each other grounded all the time, right? And so we manage that as a group. A lot of times, if you marry the right person, your spouse does it for you. I know mine does, and I do for her. But this is how you metabolize your narcissism in a very healthy way, wherever it might stand.

Jon Becker: But you know, what's interesting is, so one of the things I talk about in the culture, cynical leadership class that I teach is one of the unique characteristics of elite units is this high level of candor. Yeah. Right? It's this, hey, Rich, you know, and initially, it's done in a very gentle way, like, hey, buddy, you pregnant? You know, look like there's maternity pants.

Rich Diviney: Right.

Jon Becker: Which is a nice way of saying, I care about you. I want you to be here, but you're getting out of shape.

Rich Diviney: Yeah, yeah.

Jon Becker: What is interesting, though, is that if that is the counterbalance to narcissism, as we are moving more into a world where we are not allowed to give feedback, where we don't want to trigger people or hurt their feelings. You know, one of the most frustrating things for me as a business owner is we fire people all the time and never have an ability to go, look, dude, the reason I'm firing you is, you know, you're an a****** and you treat people poorly. We have to say, well, you know, today's your last day. And so we're creating this culture where we're eliminating the feedback, the feedback loop that stops narcissism.

Rich Diviney: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And as a result, we're ending up with a lot of narcissistic personality types that are, you know, I always say, you know, like the, you know, DevGuru runs a selection to certain. Select a certain kind of person, you know, politically right now in the country, we are selecting narcissistic a*******, and we are 100% successful.

Rich Diviney: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And we're not, you know, this is where having that internal mechanism and that truth speaking and. And candid feedback enables us to temper your narcissism in a way that it is. It is constructive because it does make you want to be a SEAL, and it makes you want to do difficult missions, and you may, you know, makes you chase those things, but it also prevents you from then, you know, going on every TV show and spilling your guts about the stuff that happened when we temper it.

Rich Diviney: Yeah. And we're fortunate in the cop, first responder SEAL communities, because our humility is. Is induced not only through each other, but also environment. Right? I mean, we. I always kind of say, I mean, you can be the best swimmer in the world. Right? You can be surf. You can surf every day. If you turn your back on the ocean, it will kill you. Right?

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Rich Diviney: So we are environments that candor is absolutely necessary. Debriefs are absolutely necessary. We create a habit of. Of being very canderous and rapid with that feedback because we care, and we have to do it that fast. But I do agree. I mean, again, I think there are organizations still out there that are executing candor. I think. I've worked with businesses who do it quite well. I think from a societal level, this is our job as a family to provide each other with that love and candor that we get used to feedback.

It all hinges on this idea of trust. And if you can build a trusting environment, because you can't, if you don't have trust built between human beings, candor is just going to sound like you're being an a******. It's not going to. It's not going to. It's not going to come at you with the same weight and strength as it comes at you. When you know someone loves and trusts you and you trust that person. Right? Because we know all the people we can think of in our lives that we trust deeply. You know, that same list are the people who tell us what we need to hear when we want.

So I think businesses where businesses can do better is they can understand that. Let's build this environment of trust first. Let's work on trust first. Once we get this environment, trust, I'm going to seed in part of trust building is we're going to seed in the ability to be canderous and we're going to gauge it and talk about it in a way that we know this is because we want the team to get better. It's not to beat someone up or point the finger. It's like this is something that the team has to understand. And you start creating that environment, man.

Well, you know, you get people who, when they screw up, they're the first people to say they screwed up, right? They are. They are, absolutely. You get an environment where something happens, someone's to blame, and that person is the first person who steps forward says, hey, I screw this up. This is what I did. This is what happened. You don't even have to point the fingers anymore. That's the goal at a national level. I agree with you. I think, you know, people are, we're just in this, I think in this world where people want to feel like they are heard and more.

So it's a fear based system. Right now, everything about our media, regardless of what political side you're on, is focused on spreading fear about the other person. And fear is a physiological response. So we're going to angle towards those people who are telling us the opposite of what the, of what the folks who were afraid of are. So I don't know, how do we get there? We just need some more discourse, I guess.

Jon Becker: Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's, you know, it's a topic for a different discussion, but I'll kind of run it past like we are living right now in a time where others are exploiting our evolutionary biology, right? We are being fed foods that have, like, the perfect salty, sweet bliss point that we will eat until we gorge ourselves. We're being fed a diet of media that triggers those fear circuits and makes us watch. And social media is conditioning us to look for dopamine hits. And it's just a variety of industries have figured out how to exploit our evolutionary biology. The drive that makes us like sweet food, because you don't find it very often.

And when you do, you can get fat on it every day, three times a day. You just get fat. You don't survive, you just get fat. And I think that's true in a lot of the work environments. And one of the things that I like about the attributes is it does give you a context to look at some of those things and go, wow, we're really high on these, you know, not so positive levels of attributes. You touched on trust. Why don't we transition to team ability?

Rich Diviney: Yeah. Okay. But I will say team ability. Trust is not an attribute. It's not one of the team ability attributes. I know, it's the team ability attributes are aredemental, integrity, conscientiousness, humility, and humor. Trust is much bigger. Again, trust is this category inside of which something is the result of a lot of things.

So a lot of these attributes that we talk about, leadership and team ability attributes, when we behave these attributes, it elicits trust. The thing about trust is we can't. Trust is not just a feeling. A feeling is just a human emotion. Trust is a belief. It's a human emotion that's been rationalized or justified. What that tells us is something we already know, and that is you cannot make anybody trust you. All you can do is behave in a way that allows someone to choose to trust you. Right?

So the result, the whole trust environment is a result of these attributes. And so we think about it. So, for example, the team ability attributes, integrity, this is do the right thing. That's as simple as that. So we know when we see someone, and now here's the thing about do the right thing, it's subjective to the group, okay?

Jon Becker: For sure.

Rich Diviney: Do the right thing for a cub scout troop looks different than do the right thing for an ISIS troop. Okay? And so we have to understand what do the right thing looks like for our group. But when we do that, that elicits. That begins to build trust. Build team ability. Right? Conscientiousness is really simple. The ability to be reliable, work hard, and be diligent. Diligent, reliable, and hard work. That's conscientiousness. Humility. I think that's a no brainer. I mean, we know arrogance kills teams, and when we see arrogance, we don't trust it. We just don't. We see confidence. We trust confidence, but we don't trust arrogance.

And so humility. Humility and confidence walk a nice kind of parallel line a lot of times. And we know there can be very. The best folks are those who are confident and humble. Right. Arrogance and humility, they're opposites. You can't do it. So I would say that that humility is a no brainer because we just. We just don't think of people who are arrogant as teammates. We just don't. They just don't present themselves because of behavior.

And then finally, humor. Humor is really important because I've never experienced a high performing team that doesn't have it. Humor is powerful because it's neurobiologically rewarding us in ways that are unfathomably powerful. Powerful when we laugh, which is an involuntary response, we immediately get hit with dopamine. It's not a reward. It's a motivation chemical. Keep doing this. We get hit with endorphins, which masks our pain. That's like the human opiate. And then we get oxytocin. We're in this together like the bonding binding chemical for human beings.

And so when we laugh, especially with others, we immediately, our body is saying, this is good. Keep doing this. This doesn't feel that bad. We're in this together. That's why laughter is a hack into any miserable situation. It's why the highest performing teams will joke around in miserable situations. It's one of the things I miss the most about the teams, because we would joke in some of the most miserable situations, and someone crack a joke, we'd laugh, and suddenly you're a hack. It's a hack into feeling better, knowing we can do this.

The other hack it allows us to jump into is courage. When we step into our fear, we get dopamine. When we laugh, we get dopamine. So some of us have probably had this experience where we have been genuinely afraid or anxious. In a situation, someone says something that makes us genuinely laugh, and the fear goes away. It's because we've just given our body the same reward that we would have had we stepped into our fear in the first place. Right?

So, again, I've never experienced a high performing team that doesn't have humor as a huge part of it. Humor as an attribute is our ability to laugh. You don't have to be that person making the jokes, but as long as you have the ability to laugh, you're going to do fine.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's a sense of humor, right. It's not being funny. It's a sense of humorous and finding, you know, the ability to laugh in difficult situations, obviously, you know, brings a high amount of humor with it. And I think, especially in this industry, it is a coping mechanism, it's a bonding mechanism. It is, you know, it is critical to teams, and the teams that lose their sense of humor, lose their, their social construct, they lose their connection to.

Rich Diviney: One another, and they lose their resilience as well. I mean, you can't, I mean, it's, again, it's such a powerful, powerful tool. It almost transcends all of the categories because it helps in almost every one of them. Right?

Jon Becker: Because it, well, if you were going to try and like, hey, let's make, let's make rich, you know, more able to deal with difficult things or pain or whatever, you would give rich endorphins. You would give him dopamine, and if you wanted him to care about the people he was with, you would give him oxytocin. Right? It literally is. It's using your evolutionary biology for good.

Rich Diviney: Yes. Yeah. That's why it's so good. That's why it feels so good. That's why, and that's why one of the things about society, I mean, we have to keep laughing. To not laugh is death.

Jon Becker: Well, yeah, that's where it's really scary that we are like, as a society, that we're losing our sense of humor and we're like, oh, the comedian shouldn't say that. He shouldn't be allowed to make that joke. Like, no, no. And it's funny because growing up with tactical teams, I started over at 17, right. So I've been surrounded by SWAT cops and special operators my whole life. It brings a certain sense of humor, which is, I will call a little dark.

Rich Diviney: Oh, yeah. I always do.

Jon Becker: I can laugh at just about anything. And you hear people say, oh, too soon. And of course, the traditional response to that is never too soon. But in this case, literally never too soon because the ability to laugh about something terrible is how you get through 100%.

Rich Diviney: And we're not the only ones that do it. I talked to surgical teams, nursing nurse, nursing teams. I mean, people who are constantly dealing with trauma, their survival is dependent on their ability to find humor here and there. But we've also seen the medical benefits of people who. People who've had terminal illnesses or cancer who. Who go on a laughing regiment, and they. And they actually. They actually get better. I mean, because it is that. It is quite literally the best medicine.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Why don't we – So let's talk about the last category, which is leadership. And obviously, you know, the. The first three are kind of inwardly focused. Team mobility is kind of mildly outwardly focused. Leadership is very much outwardly focused.

Rich Diviney: Yeah. Yeah, it really is, because it's all about these behaviors that other people are looking at and experiencing. So, empathy. I mean, again, empathy, can I absorb. Can I get into the shoes of another? Right? And we don't, you know, someone who has just an inability to do that we tend not to look at as real strong leaders. Right? I mean, that idea that I can. I can really get into the shoes of people who are in my span of care and do what I need to do what I can do for them from that position is really, really good.

So, as leader, as people in charge, if we want to be leaders, if we find ourselves low on empathy, it's something we need to work on, because it's really that important. Selflessness, again, this is the ability to do something for another, but it adds this risk or loss to oneself. So, for example, if I'm walking down the street and I see a homeless person, I give that person $10. That's actually generous. I'm doing more than is expected, but it's no skin off my back.

But if that homeless person turns around and gives that $10 to another homeless person, now, that's selfless, because that's giving something. Doing something for another that is. Is at some sort of risk or loss to oneself. Right? This is why selflessness, not generosity, is a leadership attribute. We don't look for generous leaders. We look for selfless leaders.

Now, selflessness doesn't mean putting one's life at risk all the time. It could mean giving someone. Time is literally the currency of leadership. We all have the same amount, and when we give it to another person, we can't get it back. So when you give it to another person, that person really feels like you are doing something for them. You're giving something to them.

So, as leaders, we want to be able to give that to others and be selfless. Right? That's how important that is. Authenticity. That has to do with our ability to be consistent in our behavior. Okay. It doesn't have to do with. I'm always open kimono about everything and all that stuff and wear everything on my sleeve emotionally. No, it's, am I consistent in my behavior? Am I authentic in my behavior so that people expect and know what to expect from me? You could be a generally grumpy person, but if you're consistent that way, people begin to, they may not like it, but they can expect it. Right?

So that's authenticity. Decisiveness. Again, we have to think about decisiveness in terms of the speed with which we make decisions. Decisive. Making decisions is a skill. You can teach someone how to do better and make better decisions. Decisiveness adds that speed and efficiency factor that has to be considered. We don't necessarily look at people as leaders if they are people who waffle and can't decide and kind of wish wash. Right? We just don't. Right?

And so we, as people in positions of leadership or people in charge that want to be leaders, have to just understand that decisiveness is necessary. We have to be able to gather data and at a certain point say, okay, I don't have 100%, maybe I have 80, but I'm going to make a decision that has to be buttressed by the last one, which is accountability, which is once you make that decision, you begin to move out. Are you owning that decision? The consequences and the good stuff it. Right? That's ownership. That's, I'm going to. I'm taking accountability for my decisions and the results thereof. Right?

And again, people who are in positions of being in charge, and they're constantly pointing the finger at other people, we just don't tend to look at those people as leaders. Real leaders. I mean, I know there's some examples of people out there who always point fingers. Right? But real, true leaders, like people we'd follow to helen back, okay, because pointing fingers means you are cease. You're ceding control. Right? You're basically giving the steering wheel up to someone else, and you're not taking control, you're not taking responsibility and accountability. That's a serious charge for anybody who wants to be a leader.

Jon Becker: Well, and the attributes, the leadership attributes are things that are really more based on the way the follower reacts to the leader. Right. Like it's, it's. I want, you know, you look at empathy like I. If you're my leader, I want you to care about me and be able to put yourself in my position so that you'll make good decisions periodically. I want you to be selfless. I want you to give up what you want for me. If you're not authentic. I can't trust you. If you won't be accountable and own when you make a mistake, then I can't trust you to not throw me under the bus.

And, you know, as a leader, I come to you for decision. Right? That is what leaders do, is they make decisions between two difficult alternatives. I always say, like, you know, there are two kinds of things that come into my, you know, into my business. Cookies and turds. Nobody needs help eating the cookies, right? They just eat the cookies. Right? So what ends up on my desk are turds. It's, of these two difficult decisions do you want to make?

And the farther up you move in an organization, the more Solomon's choice that becomes, the harder it is to choose between. Wow, these are really terrible alternatives. I'm going to have to make a decision. And as a follower, as somebody who is relying on a leader, if they won't make a decision, then they doom you to whatever happens.

Rich Diviney: Yes, they do. And, oh, by the way, it has to be buttressed by accountability. You can go and make decisions all day long if you as a leader are nothing accountable and don't, and are not openly accountable for that. In other words, someone can come into my office and say, hey, can you help me with this decision? I say, yeah, go that way. They go that way. It screws up or it's the wrong thing, and then we blame that person. Right? That is not leadership. Right?

We have to say, oh, that's on me. I got, you know, so I would say, as leaders, you can always delegate responsibility. You can never delegate accountability. Right? Because we, and in fact, as leaders, we're supposed to delegate responsibility, but we always are accountable. If I told one of my guys when I was a commanding officer, hey, you have this. This is yours, and they went off and they screwed it up. Say, okay, you screwed it up. Let's see what you did wrong. That's on me. Right? It's on. I'm not, I'm not dropping the accountability bucket on you. Right? They will take accountability because you're modeling it. Right?

But ultimately, you know, I'm taking accountability as well. And that's the, that's the, that's the secret. But I've had leaders, I've had people in charge who delegate both. And that's wrong. It's just not leadership.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's, you know, you see leaders who will delegate. You know, they'll delegate the negative. You know, it's, I always say, like, negative things that occur are your responsibility. Positive things that occur are a result of your team's good work.

Rich Diviney: Yeah. And that's a good model. Yeah. Whether it's true or not, I mean, you know, ostensibly, you could say in some cases that things go right. It's like, okay, yeah, that was a good stuff on my part, but that's not said by a leader. That's, you know, that's all under the water, and it doesn't need to be expressed.

Jon Becker: Yeah, we won. I lost. I'd like to touch one more thing to just kind of wrap up our time together. It's just an interesting concept that you talked about in the book, which is dynamic subordination.

Rich Diviney: Yeah, yeah. Well, this is so this is a concept that actually describes how high performing teams, in fact, task organize. And the idea is that high performing teams, if you were to look at a task organization chart, it does not look like a pyramid where the leader sits on top and dictates. It does not look like a flat line where everybody's kind of doing the same thing and no one outranks anybody. And we're all in this, and it's all groovy. And it doesn't even look like the upside down pyramid. The servant leadership model, where the leader is sitting on the bottom of that pyramid. What it really looks like is an amorphous blob. And dynamic subordination implies that a team understands that challenges and issues can come from any angle at any moment.

And when one does, the person who's closest to that problem, the most capable, immediately steps up and takes lead, and everybody follows and supports. Right? And then the environment shifts again and someone else steps up. And I also call it alpha hopping. That alpha position just hops to where it needs to go. And so it takes hierarchy out of the equation. Your position on a team has nothing to do with your hierarchical position, has to do with what you contribute to that team.

And so I always say, I was on hundreds of combat missions. I was in charge of every single one. It didn't mean I was always being supported. In fact, most of the time, it was the opposite. I was supporting other people. Assaulters, breachers, snipers, whatever. Sometimes the environment would shift and they'd be supporting me.

But ultimately, we are a team that moves like an amoeba or a flock of birds, where the person steps up, we all support. This is how we play the long game. This is how we optimally form. Because when someone is up in front doing, you know, leading, other people are supporting. Guess what? The people in the very back could be doing. They might be able to recover. Right?

There's kind of like the flock of geese flying in the v formation. That, that, that lead geese, that lead goose is taking all the wind resistance. Right? But that lead goose doesn't stay up there for too long. That lead goose, after a while, a few minutes switch, swaps out with someone else or another goose, right? And they keep on swapping out. So this is the idea about dynamic subordination. It's the way you play the long game and it's the way all high performing teams operate.

Jon Becker: Yeah. That's fantastic. Yeah. I think like a bicycle peloton, right? You're on the front pedaling like h*** for 30 seconds, 60 seconds, then you're peeling off and recovering so you can make it back up. Yeah. So, Rich, kind of tradition on the debrief five, we like to end with five rapid fire questions. Short answer, you know, kind of gut instincts, actually. Before we get there, though, what's, what's the best way for people to engage with you? Where can they find, you know, Rich's, you know, latest work and content?

Rich Diviney: Yeah, the best, the best, easiest is the. so it's all one word theater. But we have there, we have all of our stuff, all of our consulting information, all of our, you have the book there. We have some assessment tools there that you can take to see where you stand on those attributes and media and things like that. All my social handles are on there as well. You can find them. So is kind of the one.

Jon Becker: Stop shop, and we'll link that in the show notes. All right, let's go on to the rapid fires. What's your most important habit?

Rich Diviney: Asking better questions. The brain, the mind will focus on whatever you ask it. We're question answering machines, so if you feed it the wrong questions, why am I so bad at this? Why am I so p***** off? You will get answers. It's unavoidable. But if you feed it the right ones, why am I grateful? What can I do better? You'll get those answers, too. So I've done that since I was in high school.

Jon Becker: What's your favorite, current favorite online resource? Website or podcast?

Rich Diviney: Okay, well, I'm supposed to say Huberman, because he's a good friend, but I do like, it is great, I think podcasts. I love Sam Harris. I've always loved his podcast for quite a while. Resource. I read, I try to read as much as I can. I'm actually part of a, this might sound funny to some. I'm part of a Navy SEAL book club. It's a bunch of us SEALs, both past and present.

So we got Vietnam guys all the way to active duty and we pick a book and every month or month and a half we read it and we get on a zoom. We just had one last night and we just discuss it and then we pick another book. And so I've gotten reading back into my repertoire, which I really like.

Jon Becker: I'm going to avoid the obvious joke that it's a coloring book and that you guys eat the crown.

Rich Diviney: Yeah, well, that happens.

Jon Becker: What's the most important characteristic of an effective leader?

Rich Diviney: Listening. Yeah, just shut up.

Jon Becker: What's something you've changed your mind about in the last few years?

Rich Diviney: Well, I've been married to my wife for 23 years, and one of the things she's shown me and made and allowed me to believe is in the beauty of people and empathy. Right? And my wife, she finds beauty in everybody. And I think that's such a unique, great quality. And so I think changed my mind about the importance and the power of true empathy.

Jon Becker: Final question. What's the most profound memory of your career?

Rich Diviney: Boy, there are so many. But I would say if I were to kind of pull a bunch together and make one, it's this idea that when you have the right group of people operating towards a common objective and goal and you can laugh and you can gel, that's kind of. That's heaven right there. I mean, that's the best you can be. That's a high performing team. Even when you're in really miserable circumstances, you are in bliss in terms of the people you go through.

So I think the idea that I could, in many cases, be walking in the middle of al Qaeda central in Afghanistan or Iraq in a beehive, and I had no concerns because I knew the people around me. We had it locked, the usual risk assessment tools going on, but nothing that said we couldn't handle it. And I think those times were very profound in terms of, man, this is just a great group of people and I love them and I trust them and I'm just, I'm where I need to be.

Jon Becker: That's fantastic! Rich, first, thanks for your service to the country! Thanks for the work you're doing now. I think it's really fascinating. I think it's a good. You did a fantastic job of transitioning a life of service to the country into lessons learned that I think a lot of people can apply. And thank you so much for being here. Today with me.

Rich Diviney: Well, thanks, Jon! It's been a pleasure! And thanks for asking! And I'm so glad we finally got it done.

Jon Becker: Absolutely. Thanks, buddy!