Order of Man - February 28, 2025


Why Every Man Should Build 'Command Presence' ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES


Episode Stats

Length

23 minutes

Words per Minute

175.58205

Word Count

4,080

Sentence Count

290

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

In this episode, I talk about the importance of having a command presence with your children, your colleagues, your co-workers, and even your clients. If you don't have this command presence, then you will not be able to influence them in a positive way, and ultimately, you will be unable to lead them to a place they could not have imagined going on their own.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 When my youngest son was born, it was very scary when he was born.
00:00:04.240 And clearly there's some complications and they're monitoring mom and they're monitoring baby and it's not going well.
00:00:11.240 And it started to get a little chaotic in the room.
00:00:13.800 And the nurses were freaking out and they were, one of them in particular was yelling at other people.
00:00:18.420 OBGYN walks in.
00:00:19.900 First thing he said was this, everybody calm down.
00:00:23.060 The level of clarity and competence and calmness.
00:00:29.260 And when he walked in, the temperature of the entire room dropped.
00:00:36.020 You're a man of action.
00:00:37.800 You live life to the fullest.
00:00:39.240 Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path.
00:00:42.180 When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time.
00:00:45.560 Every time.
00:00:46.640 You are not easily deterred or defeated.
00:00:48.940 Rugged.
00:00:49.680 Resilient.
00:00:50.600 Strong.
00:00:51.660 This is your life.
00:00:52.520 This is who you are.
00:00:54.020 This is who you will become.
00:00:56.000 At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
00:01:03.240 Men, today I want to talk with you about a concept called command presence.
00:01:07.200 If you're not familiar with what command presence is, it's the way that a leader presents himself and is perceived by those he's attempting to lead.
00:01:16.080 If you as a man do not have command presence with a woman in your life,
00:01:19.140 command presence with your children, your colleagues, coworkers, bosses, and even your clients,
00:01:24.920 then ultimately you lack the ability to influence them in positive ways and lead them to a place they could not have imagined going on their own.
00:01:32.480 And that is the point of being a leader, to motivate, to inspire, to influence in a positive way.
00:01:39.880 I know sometimes that has a negative connotation to it, but influence just means that your example is setting the tone for behavior out of the people that you're closest to.
00:01:52.060 It's not moral. It's amoral. It has neither good nor bad necessarily, but you can influence people negatively, and you can influence people positively.
00:02:01.760 And when I talk about influence under the realm of leadership, obviously I'm talking about being a positive influence on people,
00:02:09.360 and your ability to hold that command presence with them is really going to, I believe, spell the difference between people deciding they want to follow you
00:02:18.140 or, at a minimum, that they'll comply with what you have to say, and then on the opposite end of the spectrum,
00:02:26.340 that they'll completely rebuke and rebel against what it is you want.
00:02:33.020 Obviously, we don't want our kids to do that. We don't want the women in our lives to do that.
00:02:36.100 We don't want our clients or colleagues or co-workers or bosses to do that, so it's crucial that we develop this command presence.
00:02:43.320 So what I did is I came up with four different things that you can incorporate, four different factors that I believe are crucial
00:02:50.860 when it comes to being able to articulate and have this command presence.
00:02:57.260 Let's just break it down, and we'll get into it right now.
00:02:59.300 So number one is clarity, and normally what I would say right now is these are in no particular order, but these ones are actually in order.
00:03:10.360 It's very important that you have clarity.
00:03:12.660 When it comes to leading your children, it is crucial that you know what your role is and what you expect of your children,
00:03:19.980 what you hope to accomplish, what you expect of them to accomplish down the road,
00:03:24.840 because without that clarity of purpose, without that compass or that North Star,
00:03:30.480 it really doesn't matter what you do because there's no final destination.
00:03:34.380 If you can't be clear about what your role is as a father,
00:03:37.340 then none of the other things I want to talk with you about are relevant.
00:03:39.640 If you aren't clear about your role as a husband or as an employee or as a business owner or as a consultant or a counselor or a mentor or a coach
00:03:51.260 or any number of roles that we fill in, then nothing else matters.
00:03:55.900 And I want to ask you, how much time are you spending on a daily basis thinking about the type of man that you want to be
00:04:04.700 in each of the roles that you play in this life?
00:04:06.980 Do you have a journal?
00:04:10.580 Do you have a battle planner?
00:04:12.900 Do you have notes that you take?
00:04:15.340 Do you have a system on your computer that you use where you're reviewing it constantly?
00:04:21.600 As I said, every single day and telling yourself, this is the kind of partner I want to be.
00:04:27.740 This is the kind of father I want to be.
00:04:30.040 This is the kind of counselor or coach that I want to be.
00:04:33.320 If you know that, then you can start to backfill the actions that you need to take on a daily basis in order to help the people that you love and care about
00:04:41.540 and those you want to serve get to that place they would not have been on their own without you.
00:04:48.000 And that is the point of leadership, to motivate, to inspire, to influence in that positive way.
00:04:54.740 So, again, the first thing is clarity of purpose.
00:04:58.860 And by the way, if you want a resource on that, maybe you don't feel like you're real clear on what you want.
00:05:04.260 We have this incredible vision exercise that we walk a lot of our guys through.
00:05:09.020 It's part of our 30 Days to Battle Ready program.
00:05:11.020 So, if you go to orderofman.com slash battle ready, the first couple of emails that I'm going to send to you
00:05:18.140 are all around creating a vision for yourself about the type of person that you want to be.
00:05:23.060 And that's a free program.
00:05:24.380 It's just something to help you get your head wrapped around the idea of command presence
00:05:29.340 and also will help you create an effective battle plan that you'll be able to incorporate in your life.
00:05:35.020 Again, it's free if you go to orderofman.com slash battle ready.
00:05:38.140 But number one is clarity.
00:05:39.140 All right, let's get into number two.
00:05:41.480 And I didn't order these in my notes, but as I was preparing to talk with you,
00:05:45.480 I thought, you know, there is a sequential order for this.
00:05:48.940 So, if number one is clarity, then what I would say number two is character.
00:05:56.400 When you're trying to establish command presence, people are going to start to see right through you.
00:06:03.960 They're going to know if you're a man of character.
00:06:05.640 They're going to look at you and say, well, that guy is 50 pounds, 60, 70, 80 pounds overweight.
00:06:11.980 And he's trying to talk to me about being a disciplined person.
00:06:15.440 I don't think so.
00:06:16.460 Or if it's in the realm of your profession and you're training sales people and they know that you can't sell anything to anyone and you're trying to tell them that they have to do $100,000 in sales this year,
00:06:30.520 that's not command press, like nobody, nobody believes you, okay?
00:06:35.660 You need to have this X factor.
00:06:39.140 And that's what most people attribute it to, some sort of mystical, unseen, hidden force, like a Jedi force that just some people are able to tap into.
00:06:52.060 And they call it this X factor because they don't understand.
00:06:55.240 I'm going to explain in the four things that I'm going to share with you today a very tangible formula for creating the quote-unquote X factor in your life.
00:07:04.800 So, again, number one is clarity, knowing exactly what you want in each of the realms that you fulfill.
00:07:09.280 Go to orderofman.com slash battle ready to do that.
00:07:11.720 And, number two, now having character.
00:07:15.120 You know, we hear this thing of being a man of example, leading by example.
00:07:18.900 That's what I'm talking about.
00:07:20.700 Are you a man of your word?
00:07:22.060 It's easy to say you should do this, you should do that, everybody should this, everybody should that, you shouldn't do this, you should avoid these things, you should do these things.
00:07:29.980 But unless you're doing those things yourself, that's going to fall on deaf ears because everybody sees right through it.
00:07:36.580 I think all too often we believe that we're fooling people, but people are intelligent.
00:07:41.720 And if they're not mentally intelligent enough, they pick up on it, all right?
00:07:47.740 There's cues, there's subtleties to the way that you're behaving, the way that you're showing up, the way that you look, the clothes that you're wearing, the way that you present yourself.
00:07:57.340 They can see that.
00:07:59.600 It's so readily apparent, and yet we oftentimes are the ones that we think we're pulling the wool over people's eyes,
00:08:08.460 but really what we're doing is pulling the wool over our own eyes.
00:08:12.860 So let's get away from asking people to do things that we would never do for ourselves.
00:08:18.180 If you want people to be fit, then you better be fit.
00:08:21.300 If you want your employees, your sales team to go out there and make six, seven figures this year,
00:08:25.760 then you better be able to back that up with experience.
00:08:29.420 I realize you might be in a different position now within your career, but with experience saying,
00:08:34.020 hey, I did this, and here's what I produced, that's just being a man of character.
00:08:39.540 And the interesting thing about character is that you don't need to go out there and shout it from the rooftops.
00:08:45.060 You don't need to tell people how great you were or how well you performed or how well your business is doing.
00:08:52.000 I see this all the time on social media.
00:08:53.780 People beat their chest about their own things.
00:08:55.540 I even see people saying, today's my birthday, and here's what I learned.
00:08:58.620 Like, no, nobody cares.
00:09:03.020 We need to stop looking at it through that lens and just start being those individuals
00:09:07.120 because those cues, those subtle cues that are hard to articulate are the things that people actually pick up on.
00:09:13.600 So are you a man of character or are you not?
00:09:17.400 And the best two ways to become a man of character are to write down what you want to do
00:09:24.000 and then do it and or don't write down slash don't say that you'll do things if you have no intention of doing them.
00:09:34.500 There really isn't a whole lot more to it than that.
00:09:36.820 It is that simple.
00:09:38.280 Not always easy because we're busy and we're tired and we have conflicts of interest
00:09:42.520 and we have our emotions that get in the way and we have demands for our time and attention and energy.
00:09:47.160 But at the end of the day, did you say you would do it?
00:09:49.480 Then do it.
00:09:50.040 Oftentimes, we hear a lot about the importance of accountability and there's tiers.
00:09:55.100 There's levels to accountability.
00:09:56.580 Number one is being accountable to somebody else.
00:09:59.400 So if my boss says, hey, I need you in at 8 o'clock in the morning and you can leave at 5,
00:10:02.880 you can take a 45-minute lunch break, and here's the assignments I need you to do on a daily basis,
00:10:07.420 I am accountable to my boss.
00:10:09.660 And there's nothing wrong with that.
00:10:11.040 If I agree to it and my boss agrees to it or I tell my client I'm going to do something
00:10:17.740 and they agree to pay me in exchange for doing that thing, there's nothing wrong with that.
00:10:23.580 But you dang well better do it.
00:10:25.000 But I think that's an inferior form of accountability than being accountable to yourself.
00:10:31.180 And self-accountability is simply, I said I was going to do it, so therefore I am.
00:10:36.040 And I have systems and processes and organizations and ways to ensure that I'm getting done what I say I'm going to do.
00:10:44.800 But that added level of accountability is superior to being accountable to other people.
00:10:52.000 And the reason is, is because other people are fickle.
00:10:54.380 Other people are fleeting.
00:10:57.580 Even your clients.
00:10:58.760 You know, if you agreed to do a certain thing and your client says,
00:11:03.700 hey, let's meet next Monday at 3 p.m. in the afternoon and you're great.
00:11:07.720 So you plan everything, you do everything, you go through everything, you've got your presentation ready,
00:11:11.380 you're ready to present to your client, and then the client calls you at 2.30 and says,
00:11:14.500 I can't make it, my kid's sick.
00:11:17.480 Fine, I get that that happens.
00:11:18.920 But if you are only accountable to your client, then that's an inferior form because
00:11:23.860 your clients change, circumstances change, something is out of our control completely.
00:11:29.620 But what's not out of your control is the way you feel about yourself and the work that you do.
00:11:34.480 So number two is character.
00:11:37.220 So one is clarity, two is character.
00:11:40.180 Number three, I would say is, again, I'm ordering these as we go.
00:11:46.580 Number three is competence.
00:11:49.640 If you want to have command presence with people, meaning they are looking to you when things go wrong,
00:11:55.460 when there's questions, when shit hits the fan, that they're actually looking to you,
00:11:59.940 then you better have a level of competence.
00:12:03.800 If you don't have competence, nobody's going to look at you.
00:12:07.120 And so that means that you need to spend your time thinking about what you need to study,
00:12:11.840 what you need to learn.
00:12:12.860 If you're in a professional setting, I know your boss, hopefully your boss has some sort of leeway
00:12:18.700 and investing in you with professional courses and designations and programs.
00:12:24.020 Some of the bosses that I worked for have, and those are the bosses I like.
00:12:27.100 And some of the bosses I've worked for haven't.
00:12:28.840 And those are the bosses, not coincidentally, that I don't like because they didn't care about me.
00:12:33.820 I was just a number.
00:12:34.780 But guys, we have to develop the competency in order to project what it is that we want to project.
00:12:42.540 Confidence is part of that.
00:12:45.200 Clarity is part of that.
00:12:46.760 Having character.
00:12:47.680 Like all of the things are intertwined.
00:12:49.400 But at the end of the day, if you're not competent about a thing,
00:12:52.120 then there's no way that you can articulate a message to other people that will land and resonate
00:12:57.000 and stir them to action.
00:12:58.720 And that's what a leader does.
00:13:01.280 He stirs people to action.
00:13:05.100 If you're leading your kids, you're stirring them to working harder on their schoolwork
00:13:09.780 or to stand up to the bully or to have that difficult conversation with a friend
00:13:14.700 or have that difficult conversation with a schoolteacher.
00:13:17.580 That's what a leader would do.
00:13:19.980 But in order to do that effectively,
00:13:22.800 you need to be competent in the thing that you're actually talking about.
00:13:25.600 So I would have you take an inventory of your own life and ask yourself,
00:13:31.000 where am I asking other people to do things that I'm not fully aware of how to do?
00:13:35.820 Where am I bullshitting those individuals?
00:13:38.460 And if you are, trust me, they already know it.
00:13:42.240 They know it.
00:13:43.720 And if they're not talking about other people who aren't doing this,
00:13:47.680 guess who they're talking about?
00:13:49.000 They're talking about you.
00:13:50.020 Because we are just surrounded by and inundated with individuals who lack this command presence.
00:13:59.060 If nobody's talking about it, they're talking about you.
00:14:03.380 So be very aware of what your level of competency says about why people should follow you.
00:14:10.500 And the last one I want to talk with you about today,
00:14:13.420 and this ties in line with number three, which is, again, competence, is composure.
00:14:20.100 When everything else is crumbling around you, when the world is falling apart,
00:14:24.560 when there's a natural disaster, an active shooter situation,
00:14:29.080 a little bit of a fire at work, a breakdown in communication,
00:14:34.180 people are just hot-headed at times because we had bad days,
00:14:37.540 we have conflicts of interest.
00:14:38.720 When things are breaking apart, what does your level of composure say about you?
00:14:44.640 And I know for me, when things are falling apart,
00:14:47.400 I'm going to look for the calmest person in the room.
00:14:51.320 That's composure.
00:14:52.740 Not the guy who's frantic, not the guy who's freaking out,
00:14:55.020 not the guy who's barking order at everybody,
00:14:56.680 and not the guy who's making everybody more on edge.
00:15:00.560 Not the guy who's, certainly not the guy who's cowering in the corner,
00:15:03.320 afraid, like not involved in the situation.
00:15:05.820 You can kind of tell he's hesitant about it.
00:15:10.060 He wants to tuck tail and run.
00:15:11.280 He wants to get out of there as fast as possible.
00:15:14.320 The one we're looking for is the one with composure.
00:15:16.660 I'm going to give you a real world example.
00:15:18.500 When my youngest son was born, he's now eight years old.
00:15:23.760 And he's an incredible kid.
00:15:25.100 I love the kid to death.
00:15:25.920 We have such a good time together.
00:15:27.860 It was very scary when he was born.
00:15:31.020 And I can't exactly remember all of the details,
00:15:35.660 but he refused to come out of the womb, essentially.
00:15:40.560 He like got stuck in there.
00:15:43.680 And the OBGYN was unavailable.
00:15:47.040 I think when my ex-wife and I went to the delivery room,
00:15:51.580 I don't know if he was on vacation,
00:15:53.640 or maybe it seems like maybe he was at a concert in Las Vegas or something.
00:15:56.920 Like something happened, which is fine.
00:15:58.660 No problem.
00:16:00.360 So we get in there, and clearly there's some complications,
00:16:03.300 and they're monitoring mom, and they're monitoring baby,
00:16:06.700 and it's not going well.
00:16:09.320 And it started to get a little chaotic in the room.
00:16:11.700 And I looked at my ex, and I could tell, I could see it in her eyes.
00:16:16.080 She was very afraid.
00:16:17.440 And I think at that time, I was starting to get a little afraid.
00:16:21.480 And the nurses were freaking out, and they were,
00:16:23.620 one of them in particular was yelling at other people,
00:16:26.260 do this, do that.
00:16:26.960 But she was super frantic and obnoxious about it.
00:16:30.400 And what it did is it caused my ex-wife and my blood pressure to rise.
00:16:35.040 We got more scared.
00:16:37.540 And about the time where I'm like, I don't, like, is this going to be okay?
00:16:40.840 We're super nervous about it.
00:16:42.660 Our OBGYN walks in.
00:16:45.640 And he had got back, and he knew we were in there,
00:16:47.400 and he walks into the room, and he said,
00:16:48.700 the first thing he said was this, everybody, calm down.
00:16:53.680 That's the very first thing he said.
00:16:55.200 And he said it so, not rude,
00:16:58.060 but so assertively that everybody immediately was quiet.
00:17:05.280 And he, I remember he put his hand on my ex-wife's shoulder,
00:17:09.900 and he said, it's going to be okay.
00:17:12.940 We're going to figure this out.
00:17:14.620 Let's go ahead and have a look.
00:17:16.560 But I remember the level of clarity and competence and calmness
00:17:23.520 and just composure that this OBGYN had.
00:17:28.680 And when he walked in, the temperature of the entire room dropped.
00:17:36.340 Figuratively and probably literally as well.
00:17:39.860 Because of his level of composure, which stemmed from his level of competence.
00:17:45.320 He delivered probably thousands of babies at that point.
00:17:48.580 And he did what he needed to do, checked how things were going.
00:17:53.980 He said, okay.
00:17:54.640 And he was on, by the way, he was also honest.
00:17:56.920 He said, hey, this is not normal.
00:17:58.400 This is not working the way it should.
00:18:00.920 So here's what we're going to do.
00:18:02.640 If that doesn't work, here's what we're going to do.
00:18:04.220 He never lied to us.
00:18:05.960 He was very honest about the risks.
00:18:08.440 And the fact that the way that this delivery was working was not normal.
00:18:11.980 And then ultimately, he ended up delivering the baby in that room.
00:18:15.740 And it was fine.
00:18:16.820 And we have this healthy eight-year-old now.
00:18:19.320 But I'll never forget the command presence.
00:18:23.680 The minute he walked in the room.
00:18:25.380 And everybody else would chalk it up to this X factor.
00:18:27.740 Some unforeseen thing or virtue or characteristic that this person has.
00:18:33.680 It wasn't that at all.
00:18:36.880 It was the fact that he had clarity.
00:18:38.920 He knew what he was there to do.
00:18:40.780 He had character.
00:18:41.960 Because obviously, he had done the research.
00:18:44.040 He had been through this before.
00:18:45.220 He knew what he was dealing with.
00:18:47.740 He had competence, clearly.
00:18:49.460 Thousands of babies.
00:18:50.920 He'd been in this situation.
00:18:52.300 And probably significantly worse than ours in the past.
00:18:55.160 And he was okay with it.
00:18:56.800 And then he had the composure.
00:18:58.240 Again, when he first walked in the room, he said,
00:19:00.080 Everybody calm down.
00:19:03.120 And immediately, everybody towed the line.
00:19:05.320 That is command presence.
00:19:09.080 I don't want this to be confused with being a jerk.
00:19:12.620 Being arrogant.
00:19:16.100 Being commanding.
00:19:18.060 Or worse, demanding.
00:19:20.580 He wasn't any of those things.
00:19:22.920 And the people that you look up to are not those things either.
00:19:26.320 But they do have clarity of purpose.
00:19:28.640 They are calm and cool under pressure.
00:19:31.540 They do know what it is they want.
00:19:33.600 They are very good at what they do.
00:19:36.340 And if we're to extrapolate all of the factors that go into exhibiting command presence
00:19:40.660 when it comes to leading other people, and by the way, leading is one of the three pillars
00:19:44.920 of manliness, preside.
00:19:47.020 It's here on my hat and it's here on the crest behind me.
00:19:52.020 Preside leadership.
00:19:53.880 Then it's our job.
00:19:55.580 If I believe that it's protect, provide, preside, then it's our job to exhibit command presence.
00:20:01.280 And I think the more that each and every one of us work on that, not only will we feel better
00:20:06.780 about ourselves, and that's good, but that's secondary to the way that we'll be able to
00:20:09.920 lead others to a place they could not have imagined going on their own.
00:20:13.340 Our kids will be more enriched.
00:20:15.420 They'll be happier.
00:20:16.860 They'll be more fulfilled.
00:20:18.420 The relationships that we have with other people will be more robust, more vibrant,
00:20:23.740 more fulfilling, more enjoyable.
00:20:25.700 Our businesses will be more profitable.
00:20:29.300 The employees that we hire will make more money.
00:20:32.380 They'll feel more satisfied at work.
00:20:35.260 Our bosses will be happier with our performance.
00:20:38.180 The kids that we happen to coach on the little league baseball team will more often look to
00:20:43.340 us as examples of what it means to be a man well beyond being five and six years old.
00:20:49.280 I have coaches that I still communicate with from the time that I was 13, 14, 15, 16,
00:20:54.820 all the way to 18 years old.
00:20:56.080 I still respect those men.
00:20:59.000 Matt Labrum is one of those individuals, command presence.
00:21:02.220 And I come to realize he's not all that much older than me.
00:21:05.620 He was a young punk, much younger than I am now when he was coaching me as a 16-year-old
00:21:10.940 kid, but he had that command presence.
00:21:13.560 Not all the time.
00:21:14.900 I will say that.
00:21:16.220 But as I watch him coach now, because he's still coaching, he's developed a new level of
00:21:20.340 command presence in his wisdom and maturity over the years.
00:21:23.700 That is the goal.
00:21:24.820 We get better at being men.
00:21:27.980 So guys, that's my message to you today.
00:21:30.000 Remember that.
00:21:30.580 Take that to heart.
00:21:31.520 Part of this, I do want to say, part of this was influenced by a leadership lesson that
00:21:35.260 we had inside of our Iron Council with our team leaders earlier today.
00:21:39.920 We had a great conversation about the importance of command presence.
00:21:44.760 And I got some of the inspiration for this discussion from that.
00:21:48.800 I wanted to make you aware because I want to give credit where credit is due.
00:21:51.960 So again, guys, command presence is about clarity.
00:21:54.640 It's about character.
00:21:55.440 It's about competence.
00:21:56.180 And it's about composure.
00:21:58.140 Think about that this weekend.
00:21:59.780 Think about how you might incorporate that into your life.
00:22:03.020 Take a look at our battle ready program.
00:22:06.020 Orderofman.com slash battle ready.
00:22:07.440 And if you're interested in joining our exclusive brotherhood, the Iron Council, that opens up
00:22:13.300 in about two weeks, a little over two weeks.
00:22:16.160 And you can check that out at orderofman.com slash Iron Council.
00:22:20.460 All right, guys.
00:22:21.900 Those are your marching orders.
00:22:23.300 We'll be back next week.
00:22:24.220 Until then, go out there.
00:22:25.000 Take action.
00:22:26.180 Exhibit command presence as a man.
00:22:28.120 Become a man you are meant to be.
00:22:34.080 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast.
00:22:37.060 You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be.
00:22:41.100 We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.
00:22:44.240 You're ready to join the order of man.