The Art of Manliness - Become a Master of Uncertainty

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:12.160 Uncertainty is a constant of human existence. How will market conditions affect your new

00:00:16.280 business venture? What will be the results of that medical test you just took? Will a

00:00:20.460 new relationship work out? For most of us, situations of uncertainty trigger anxiety,

00:00:25.080 even fear. But the stress of uncertainty doesn't have to overwhelm you. You can learn

00:00:29.800 to navigate it with secure, adaptable confidence so you can keep thriving and progress towards your

00:00:34.280 ultimate goals. Today on the show, Rich DeVinney, a retired Navy SEAL commander, returns to share

00:00:39.320 insights from his new book, Masters of Uncertainty. He first explains why thinking that life will be

00:00:44.160 predictable keeps people from realizing the potential. He then walks us through practical

00:00:48.600 techniques for dealing with uncertainty like moving horizons, creating meaningful goals that

00:00:52.920 work with our brain chemistry, and de-stressing your body so you can be more resilient and make

00:00:57.220 better decisions under pressure. We also discuss how teams can tackle uncertainty by implementing

00:01:01.620 dynamic subordination to adapt in rapidly changing environments. After the show is over, check out our

00:01:06.740 show notes at awim.is slash uncertainty. Rich DeVinney, welcome back to the show.

00:01:24.380 Well, thanks for having me, Brett. It's good to be back.

00:01:26.040 So we had you on a few years ago to talk about your book, The Attributes. I know it was a big hit with

00:01:30.660 our listeners. You've got a new book out called Masters of Uncertainty. Is this book a continuation

00:01:36.040 of your thinking in The Attributes? It's not a continuation. It's actually the overarching idea.

00:01:42.780 This is the book actually I've wanted to write for years and years and years. And as you know,

00:01:46.860 because you've read it and I know we'll get into, The Attributes is simply one aspect of understanding

00:01:51.040 oneself in uncertainty, challenge, and stress. And so in a move that was kind of unconsciously

00:01:56.340 genius, I guess, I decided to write The Attributes book first, which was fantastic because The Attributes

00:02:02.380 is such a big topic and it laid a nice foundation for people to understand them, for us to build our

00:02:07.800 assessment tool, and so on and so forth. But understanding how we operate and perform in

00:02:13.760 uncertainty is really where I've always had my passion and what it takes to do that, both

00:02:18.180 neurologically, physiologically, and of course, what we need to know about ourselves. And so

00:02:22.560 The Masters of Uncertainty is really kind of the overarching idea that I've been exploring for

00:02:28.120 a long time. Attributes was a piece and I just happened to write that Attributes book first.

00:02:32.960 Yeah. Maybe Masters of Uncertainty is the prequel.

00:02:35.960 Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Yeah. Prequel. Yeah.

00:02:38.200 So why have you been so passionate about uncertainty and thinking and writing about it? What's your

00:02:43.000 background with it?

00:02:44.520 Well, you know, uncertainty on its own really is defined as that which cannot be relied upon or known.

00:02:51.140 You're just in an unknown, unreliable situation or environment. Now, what we have to understand is

00:02:56.840 that there are different forms of uncertainty. You know, you can have uncertainty with curiosity.

00:03:02.540 That's, you know, every kid on Christmas Eve, okay? There's uncertainty there, but there's no

00:03:06.900 fear. It's excitement that comes from that. What we're talking about and what I specifically focus

00:03:11.380 on is this idea of uncertainty plus anxiety, which equals fear. So it's the uncertainty that

00:03:17.540 elicits fear because that's really where most people focus on when it comes to defining their

00:03:25.040 performance or interrogating the performance or when they fail in performing. And so, and so

00:03:29.540 obviously in the SEAL teams and any spec operations unit, especially in combat, you are very well

00:03:36.200 versed in managing and moving through things that are pretty dangerous and scary and have that

00:03:42.600 uncertainty element in it. So, so in doing that throughout a career in the SEAL teams, I really

00:03:46.500 began to wonder, okay, what is it we do? How do we do it? I began to kind of explore the neuroscience

00:03:52.180 when I linked up with a, who's now a good friend of mine, Andrew Huberman. This was seven years ago,

00:03:57.540 seven or eight years ago. So it was before his enormously successful and awesome podcast.

00:04:01.660 But we began to, he was, he was, he has a sphere lab at Stanford and we began to kind of explore this

00:04:06.380 together. And I began to realize, or I guess we began to realize together that you could talk about the

00:04:11.340 neuroscience and you could talk about the techniques that guys like us use. And you could fuse those

00:04:16.880 together in a meaningful way that allowed other people, anybody to really understand that this is

00:04:20.920 actually quite human and we all have the capacity to do this. So yeah, you mentioned you are a SEAL.

00:04:26.220 That's your background, Navy SEAL. How did uncertainty show up during your career as a SEAL? So I imagine

00:04:32.460 that every time you went on a mission, even if you had done a lot of planning, there was still an element

00:04:37.220 of uncertainty to it. 100%. And I would even say uncertainty shows up in SEAL training. I mean,

00:04:42.160 the day, day one, I mean, SEAL training, you know, BUDS, basic underwater demolition slash SEAL

00:04:46.800 training is designed to throw you into uncertainty and challenge and stress, all of it, because it's

00:04:52.000 designed to take you down to zero physiologically and physically and even mentally, and then ask,

00:04:58.560 okay, what else do you got? What else can you do? And can you, in fact, problem solve when things are

00:05:03.000 very, very serious and the stakes are very, very high. And so you start in SEAL training, the guys

00:05:08.000 who show up to SEAL training and make it through, we're all folks who somehow got good at this prior

00:05:15.660 to getting to the beaches of BUDS. You have to have some level of competency even to make it through,

00:05:20.940 you know, the first day, first week, first two weeks of BUDS. But what happens is you hyperdevelop

00:05:24.940 these techniques, these tools, these skills, if you will, and then you find yourself utilizing them

00:05:30.540 in almost every aspect of SEAL life, whether it's training, jumping out of airplanes at 20,000 feet,

00:05:36.180 whether it's in combat and gunfights, whether it's scuba diving in dark harbors, you know, every one of

00:05:42.320 those environments comes with it, a sense of you don't know exactly what's going to happen. And so

00:05:47.600 this is why you become masters of the craft. What do you think is a common misconception civilians

00:05:53.280 have about how Navy SEALs deal with uncertainty? Well, I think one common misconception is they think

00:06:00.540 SEALs are fearless and Navy SEALs are absolutely not fearless. In fact, fearlessness in of itself is a

00:06:05.480 very, very dangerous thing. I was told by a really wonderful officer when I was a younger

00:06:12.040 junior officer. He said, Rich, beware the fearless leader because that guy is going to get you killed. 0.95

00:06:17.260 And so fear is a natural human thing. It's a human being's risk assessment tool. And it tells us,

00:06:23.020 hey, pay attention. This is risky. This might kill you. This might hurt you. This might harm you.

00:06:26.940 So Navy SEALs, we experience fear just like anybody else. However, we have the capacity,

00:06:33.900 the tools and the practice in moving through that very deftly. So it doesn't sideline us. We use the

00:06:39.400 fear in a very meaningful way by risk assessing properly and planning properly. But then after

00:06:44.860 that, we understand that, hey, things are just going to happen and we know how to move through it.

00:06:49.360 Yeah. You use the example of the Osama bin Laden raid. This was something that was planned for 1.00

00:06:55.580 months. They even built a replica of the compound he was in to practice. Yeah. But whenever the actual

00:07:03.600 mission was underway, things just went completely cattywampus. Helicopter went down. And so they had

00:07:10.480 to adapt and they still were able to get the mission done. They were. Yeah. And just a quick correction

00:07:14.660 there. The mission actually hadn't been rehearsed or planned for too long. I mean, the decision was made

00:07:19.680 by the president when they got the intel. And so the team had about, I think, three weeks, three or

00:07:25.980 four weeks. Yeah. But in that three or four weeks, they just, they rehearsed ad nauseum and memorized

00:07:31.400 and got prepared for every single detail they could possibly anticipate. And yeah, like you said,

00:07:36.320 once they hit the, I mean, as soon as they hit the target, the plans changed, you know, uncertainty

00:07:41.420 struck and the plans changed. So it's a classic example of the idea that, and again, I don't, I don't,

00:07:46.520 we can talk about planning. I do not besmirch planning at all. I think proper planning is

00:07:50.620 good. What we don't want to do is get caught up in the paralysis by analysis or paralysis through

00:07:55.840 analysis where we're trying to plan every single thing. Because A, it's not going to let us move

00:07:59.500 and B, it's a real energy drag. So we have to get ourselves into a position where we plan a couple

00:08:04.360 things. Hey, this might happen. This might happen. And then after that, if anything else happens,

00:08:08.860 we'll figure it out along the way. At the start of the book, you write this. I thought it was,

00:08:12.520 it really caught my attention. Most people fall short of realizing the potential primarily because

00:08:18.100 our culture promotes a misleading belief that life is predictable. How does believing life is

00:08:23.620 predictable set someone up for failure, falling short of their potential?

00:08:28.220 Well, you know, we are lucky enough to live in a society and live in a time, and most of us,

00:08:32.620 I guess, where the environment is structured around us so that, or such that we can rely on

00:08:38.760 predictability. I mean, we don't, you know, people don't have to worry about getting killed by the

00:08:44.180 saber-toothed tiger anymore, or finding their food, or else they're going to starve, or finding proper

00:08:49.600 shelter, and so on and so forth. However, what we do have to understand is that even though that is

00:08:54.780 the case, even though life is designed nowadays around predictability, uncertainty is always going

00:09:00.340 to happen. It's always going to be present. The combination of not knowing and the combination

00:09:03.940 of anxiety is going to bubble up that fear response in us, and to assume that things are going to go

00:09:10.200 as planned is a bad assumption, because you're not going to prepare yourself when things inevitably do

00:09:15.460 not go as planned. And so I think that's one factor. The other factor is that we are, as a species,

00:09:21.040 designed to step outside of our comfort zone. I mean, this is, in fact, why we have gone from cave

00:09:26.860 dweller to space explorer, because the human being, the human species, were designed to keep exploring,

00:09:32.740 keep discovering, step outside of those boundaries. And so understanding how we can do that more

00:09:38.100 effectively not only prepares us for that uncertainty, challenge, and stress that hits us

00:09:42.680 without warning, but it also allows us to take deliberate steps, choose deliberate times to step

00:09:49.180 outside of our comfort zone and explore and grow. That's where growth and evolution happens, and I think

00:09:53.420 that's a really powerful aspect of unlocking potential of every human being. All right, let's talk about

00:09:58.640 some of the tactics people can use to get a better handle on uncertainty in their work or their life.

00:10:04.120 I'm sure a lot of our listeners, most of them probably aren't Navy SEALs, but they're dealing

00:10:07.920 with uncertainty. We're living in a work environment where artificial intelligence is upending a lot of

00:10:13.460 industries. If you're a parent, your kids can come home with problems you got to deal with that

00:10:18.880 you've never dealt with before, so a lot of uncertainty. One tactic you talk about is moving horizons,

00:10:24.780 and this is where you progress through uncertainty toward your ultimate goal by repeatedly setting

00:10:30.540 and then reaching for one immediate horizon at a time. And you do this by clearly defining a duration,

00:10:38.560 pathway, and outcome, or DPO, for each step along the way. Tell us more about moving horizons and DPO.

00:10:46.740 Yeah, moving horizons is a tool that taps into our own every human being's neurology,

00:10:52.620 and the neuroscience behind that is that when we are in any environment, our brain is trying to

00:10:58.780 figure out that environment. And it's doing so along basically three major factors. There's

00:11:05.200 obviously other things in there, but the three primary factors it's trying to figure out are

00:11:08.680 duration, how long this thing's going to last, pathway, what's my route in, out, or through,

00:11:14.500 and then outcome, what's the end state of this. And what we have to understand is that when we are in

00:11:18.260 absence of one or more of those aspects of those three things, we find ourselves in uncertainty and

00:11:24.820 anxiety, and we start to feel an oftentimes the fear response. An example would be illness, okay?

00:11:29.280 So say you and I got strep throat, okay? Strep throat is a known disease that we know people

00:11:34.080 don't really die from, and there's a known antibiotic to treat strep throat. So in the case

00:11:38.620 of strep throat, we are knowledgeable about pathway, the antibiotic, and we're knowledgeable about

00:11:43.560 outcome, which is we'll get better. What we don't know, what is unknown,

00:11:46.780 known as duration? Because some people respond to antibiotics differently than others. You might

00:11:50.140 get better tomorrow, it might take me three days. So our anxiety, stress, uncertainty level is mild.

00:11:55.620 Now say we get the flu. The flu is also a known disease that most people, at least in today's

00:12:00.440 society, don't die from. However, there's no known antibiotic or medicine you can take for the flu,

00:12:06.600 and the recovery for the flu is variable. We don't know how long it's going to take for someone

00:12:10.340 to recover from the flu. So in the case of the flu, we know the outcome, we will get better,

00:12:14.880 but we are absent duration and pathway. So our anxiety, stress level is moderate. Now imagine

00:12:21.200 a virus shows up, and we've never seen it before. There's no known cure or vaccine. There are some

00:12:27.660 people dying, there are some people not dying, and it's spreading around the globe, and we don't

00:12:31.640 know how long we're going to be in this thing. Obviously, this sounds familiar to most of your

00:12:35.340 listeners, because this is 2020 in a nutshell, right? And in that case, we were absent all three. We're

00:12:40.240 absent duration, pathway, and outcome, and our fear, our anxiety, our uncertainty level was high.

00:12:45.560 So all Moving Horizons does is it gives someone the ability to, inside of any environment,

00:12:50.920 basically buy down uncertainty by creating a duration and pathway and outcome. You create what

00:12:57.260 was previously unknown, and you do that by, in whatever environment you're in, asking yourself,

00:13:01.120 what do I know and what can I control in this moment? And you pick something to focus on,

00:13:05.840 a horizon. And once doing so, you've created a duration pathway outcome. So I'll give you a

00:13:10.040 quick example of SEAL training. So in SEAL training, you run around with big, heavy boats

00:13:14.400 on your head all the time for hours and hours. And I remember doing this, it was three in the

00:13:18.140 morning or something. We were on the beach, and we were running next to a sand berm. And of course,

00:13:21.240 I was miserable. Everybody else was miserable. And I remember saying to myself, you know what,

00:13:24.960 I'm just going to focus on getting to the end of this sand berm. And what I realized, well, I didn't

00:13:29.760 realize at the moment, but what I did at that moment is I picked a horizon. And by picking a

00:13:33.900 horizon, I created a duration pathway outcome. Duration from now until end of sand berm,

00:13:39.960 pathway from here to end of sand berm, and then outcome end of sand berm. By doing so,

00:13:44.240 I also neurologically created myself a small goal and then a reward at the accomplishment of that

00:13:50.200 goal, which is a dopamine reward. And that allowed me then to, once I hit that accomplishment,

00:13:56.340 to come back out, ask the question again, okay, what do I know? What can I control? Pick another horizon

00:14:00.480 and then do it again. And you can do this cycle over and over and over again through any uncertainty,

00:14:06.160 challenge, and stress until basically one of three things happens. Either you move through the

00:14:11.160 challenge, you're done, you accomplish the goal, or you gain enough certainty in your environment so

00:14:17.120 that you no longer have any uncertainty in your environment. So the moving horizon strategy,

00:14:20.860 by the way, is the reason why it's such a powerful strategy, powerful tool is because every single

00:14:24.980 human being has done this at some point in their lives, right? So I'm not telling anybody anything

00:14:29.040 new. They've done this. They've chunked their environment in a way that allowed them to step

00:14:33.120 through whatever they were trying to step through. All we know now is by articulating it and understanding

00:14:38.360 it, you can in fact do it more often. You can practice it and become very, very good at it so

00:14:43.240 that you do it without thinking, which is where masters of uncertainty lie.

00:14:46.600 As you're speaking, an example that came to mind where you could use this is unemployment. Let's say you

00:14:50.940 lose your job, you get laid off. You can use moving horizons to work through that. I think the

00:14:56.360 uncertainty with job loss is typically duration, like how long am I going to be unemployed? The

00:15:02.840 pathway, it's like, okay, I got to start networking, submitting resumes, things like that. The outcome

00:15:08.660 is obviously I have a job. So the duration thing could be the tricky part. But yeah, you can just keep

00:15:14.600 setting smaller goals for pathways until you accomplish your goal of getting a job.

00:15:20.140 It's a wonderful example. I would say, you know, the initial loss of employment immediately creates

00:15:25.780 an absence of all three. How long I'm going to be unemployed? What's my route? What's my pathway

00:15:29.800 to get a new job? And then how long, you know, am I going to be able to get a new job? So you're

00:15:33.240 immediately absent of all three of those. You're correct. So in those cases, in that case, someone

00:15:37.500 needs to say, okay, what do I know? What can I control and create a horizon and therefore create

00:15:42.200 a DPO. So it could be, you know what? Okay, I have a buddy. My buddy can link me up with a recruiter.

00:15:47.460 That's my first horizon. I'm going to call my buddy and see if he can link me up with a recruiter.

00:15:51.480 You've created your first horizon. You've created your first DPO. You do that. Then whatever that

00:15:56.000 result is, you create your next one, then you create your next one. But it is very much about

00:16:00.480 working the problem in the moment and focusing only on that which you can control in the moment.

00:16:05.620 One thing you will never, ever see Navy SEALs do is worry about stuff they can't control in the moment.

00:16:11.300 If they don't have any control of it in the moment, we're not going to worry about it because

00:16:13.900 it's useless. It's a waste of energy. And this goes for everything from SEAL training to

00:16:18.360 legitimate gunfights in Iraq or Afghanistan. When you're in a gunfight in Iraq or Afghanistan,

00:16:23.580 there's so much going on. But you're in the moment, you're saying, okay, what do I know?

00:16:28.540 What can I control? What is my thing that I can actually take focus on and control in this moment?

00:16:33.260 And you start moving through that. And slowly, certainty builds, hopefully, and you move through

00:16:37.440 that. But I think unemployment is a wonderful example. And you see exactly why these strategies

00:16:41.840 are not only reserved for Navy SEALs or super performers. They're very human.

00:16:47.480 Yeah. Another example I thought of was waiting for medical test results. So you might know you're

00:16:52.200 getting results back in three days. So what you do is you set a horizon and you just say,

00:16:56.100 okay, I'm going to research the different possibilities of what I might have and what

00:17:01.040 that might mean. That's my horizon. And then when I reach that horizon, I'm going to ask myself again,

00:17:06.500 all right, what do I know? And what can I control? And maybe set another horizon where I then research

00:17:12.480 specialists who might be able to help me and then just concentrate on that horizon. And that can give

00:17:18.320 you a sense of control. It gives you something to do. And I don't think not everyone might want to do

00:17:23.400 that because some people just don't want to worry about things before they're concrete. And maybe

00:17:27.020 they're just going to say, I'm just going to focus on keeping up my health by making sure I do one of my

00:17:33.120 workouts every day for the next three days. That's the only thing I control. And that's the only thing

00:17:37.540 I know has a benefit. Related to moving horizons and creating manageable horizons is creating

00:17:44.560 meaningful horizons. What do you mean by that? So the meaningful horizons describes what the size

00:17:51.720 horizon needs to be. That's always the next question. Okay. How do I know, like, what should I focus on

00:17:56.480 or what's the best size horizon? And so what we have to understand to understand the answer to that

00:18:01.120 question is dopamine as a neurotransmitter, which is a very powerful chemical. You know,

00:18:06.740 it was for years and years regarded only as a reward chemical, but it's much, much more than

00:18:10.660 just a reward chemical. It's actually a motivation chemical. It kind of gets us up and moving. It

00:18:15.140 tells us keep going. This is good. Keep doing this. Dopamine is what gets us up out of the bed in the

00:18:19.680 morning. They've done experiments in the lab with rats where one group of rats is given, well, I guess a

00:18:26.240 whole group of rats is given a device where they tap a lever and a tasty pellet comes out of that

00:18:32.400 thing. And so of course, every rat will just sit by that thing and just hit the lever, hit the lever

00:18:36.660 and get a pellet. Then they took half of that group and removed the dopamine from that group. And all

00:18:43.020 they needed to do is put those rats who had no dopamine, basically a rat's length away from that 0.75

00:18:48.420 lever. And those rats wouldn't even move to get that pellet. So what this means is that, and dopamine

00:18:54.060 works in our system, is that when we create a horizon, we are giving ourselves a motivation

00:18:59.120 through dopamine and we have an amount of dopamine that's allowing us to keep going.

00:19:04.640 If we create a horizon that's too far away, that's too big, we will run out of dopamine along the way

00:19:09.760 and we will quit. All quitting is, is just you run out of dopamine. That's what it is. So if I'm in a

00:19:15.580 situation and maybe I'm on that beach in hell, we can I say, you know what? I'm running with this boat.

00:19:19.300 I'm just going to make it, you know, to the end of the week. That's way too big in that moment.

00:19:24.540 The other side of that is if you pick a horizon that's too close and too easy, you won't get

00:19:29.900 enough of a dopamine reward to feel it and be motivated to pick another horizon. And so,

00:19:34.940 so that would be, you know, maybe I'm just going to count three steps. You know, that's,

00:19:38.420 that might be too small, whatever that is. But as you can tell, these are very subjective to the

00:19:42.200 person and they're subjective to the intensity of the environment. The more intense the environment,

00:19:46.100 the shorter the horizon is likely going to have to be. But we can and must modulate this size,

00:19:52.120 these meaningful horizons as we move through. And it has to be subjective to our own experience.

00:19:57.160 Well, let's walk through an example of doing this. Let's say someone wants to start a business.

00:20:01.860 They have a nine to five job. They've got a dream of, you know, becoming an entrepreneur,

00:20:06.740 starting their own business. What would setting meaningful horizons look like for that?

00:20:11.440 So let's just work through at least a basic level of subjectivity here, right? So imagine the person

00:20:17.060 has already started some businesses before and is looking to start a new business, you know,

00:20:21.760 get out of what they're doing, looking to start a new one. Their first horizon might be, you know what,

00:20:25.760 I'm going to call my buddy who's a VC, pitch him an idea and get some, see if I can get some funding

00:20:31.240 going. Okay. Because that's, that's the, that's the first thing. Or their horizon might be, you know what,

00:20:34.880 I'm going to, I'm just going to, I'm going to start something up. I'm going to talk to my friends,

00:20:38.320 start something up and we're going to see if we can put together something in the next three or

00:20:41.180 four months. That might be the horizon for someone who's done it before. Someone who's never done it

00:20:45.440 before and is literally has to, is deciding to quit their job and do it. Their first horizon might be,

00:20:50.380 I'm going to go to the library and start learning about how to build a business, how to create a

00:20:54.120 business. You know, I'm going to call somebody to ask some questions to, to do that. You know,

00:20:58.500 a really good way to describe this. So in the book, I talk about a guy I met who was an ultra runner.

00:21:03.360 And when I met him, I said, how'd you get into ultra running? And he said, you know,

00:21:06.800 you won't believe this, but I used to be 400 pounds or so. And I was like, well, no, I was

00:21:11.200 like, my gosh, I mean, tell me that story. He's like, well, you know, I was so heavy and I was so

00:21:15.180 overweight and unhealthy. And I decided one day I've had enough and I'm going to, I'm going to start

00:21:19.340 running. I'm going to, I'm going to set a goal to run a marathon. And I said, so what'd you do?

00:21:23.660 He's like, well, the first thing I did is I decided I was going to go home and I was going to order

00:21:26.940 running shoes. So that's what he did. And then when the running shoes showed up, he said, okay,

00:21:31.020 tomorrow morning when I get up, I'm going to get up and put on the running shoes. He did that.

00:21:35.260 Next morning he put on the running shoes. He walked to his front door. Next morning he put

00:21:39.060 on the running shoes. He walked to his mailbox and then so on and so forth until he was running

00:21:42.420 a marathon, you know, six, eight months, 10 months later. I can't remember. So the example for him

00:21:47.200 was, you know, putting on his shoes and walking to the front door was a meaningful horizon. Now

00:21:51.620 I try to run a couple of times a week when I'm home and not traveling. I like doing it. If I have to

00:21:57.380 take two or three months off and I haven't run in two or three months and I decide I'm going to start

00:22:01.300 running again, putting on my shoes and walking to the mailbox is not going to be enough

00:22:05.200 of a horizon for me. It's not going to be meaningful enough for me because it's too short.

00:22:08.720 And so we have to understand that this subjectivity matters and we have to begin to modulate our own

00:22:13.680 horizons. You could do this in the moment too. I mean, you can actually in the moment pick

00:22:17.600 something and as you're moving towards it to decide, oh wait, that's way too far and pick

00:22:22.080 something shorter or you accomplish it. It's like, actually that wasn't far enough. I need to pick a

00:22:25.440 longer one. So it's not, you don't have to get it perfect every time, but it must be subjective

00:22:29.420 in whatever endeavor you're doing.

00:22:30.700 Yeah. It sounds like a skill that you develop and how to measure that. Reminds me of in weight

00:22:35.760 training or even in running, you have this of RPE, rate of perceived effort. Yeah. And it's

00:22:41.020 auto-regulation and it takes a while for you to figure out like what's a 10 for you, like what's

00:22:45.920 really, really hard and what's a four. When you first start off, I think you typically underestimate

00:22:52.000 because you're not fully aware of what your body can do. But then yeah, like once you get the hang of

00:22:56.620 it, you're able to be like, you know what? My goal is to go for an eight. And today this effort

00:23:03.020 feels like an eight. But on another day, an eight could be less or more just depending on

00:23:08.940 what's going on.

00:23:09.800 A hundred percent. And I'm so glad. I went for a run this morning and I was traveling all day

00:23:13.960 yesterday. So I didn't eat a lot all day yesterday. And so when I went for the run this morning,

00:23:17.480 I started and I just felt completely depleted. And I was like, oh my God, I was slower than I usually

00:23:21.940 am. And so perfect example that you just gave because my eight today was markedly slower than

00:23:27.460 my eights when I'm properly nourished. So yeah, you're 100% right.

00:23:31.180 Okay. So creating meaningful horizons is about making sure the horizon you set is challenging

00:23:36.080 enough or just has enough to it to keep you interested, but not so challenging that you

00:23:42.160 give up and quit. So here's an example. Let's say you're thinking of moving somewhere different

00:23:47.320 from where you're at right now and you're not sure about the move. Like you don't know if

00:23:50.800 you're going to like it or not. It, I think it takes about two years to really feel settled

00:23:55.740 into a place and be able to feel like you click with it, but telling yourself you're definitely

00:24:00.800 going to have to stay for two years, that can feel pretty psychologically daunting. And I

00:24:05.640 think you can tell if you've got a, if you got potential with the place in a year. So you

00:24:10.860 set a horizon for one year, you say, I'm going to do all I can to dig into this place for

00:24:15.160 one year. And at the end of the year, I'll evaluate if it's working and whether I want

00:24:21.240 to stay. So that could be a motivating, meaningful horizon. Another idea you have on sort of modulating

00:24:29.240 your and taking control of your dopamine system to stay motivated is this piece of advice that

00:24:35.240 I thought was interesting. It was, it was counterintuitive. It was keep your eyes off the prize.

00:24:40.500 Yeah. How does that actually help with long-term motivation? Well, this feeds into the meaningful

00:24:45.160 horizon concept. So in other words, we have to have an objective, right? We have to have a, you

00:24:49.160 know, something we're moving towards, whether it's run a marathon, whether it's make it through

00:24:52.540 sealed training, whether it's start a business. Okay. That's the objective that has to be present.

00:24:57.120 However, we know just like we, just because we just talked about it is that that's too big.

00:25:01.480 That's too far away. That's too much of, that's the whole elephant and you need to break the

00:25:05.380 elephant into one bite at a time. So when you are in this process of moving horizons,

00:25:09.380 as you move through these challenges, especially during uncertainty to keep focusing on the big

00:25:15.980 goal, the big picture is too much. It's too far away. It's too much to handle. So,

00:25:20.260 so keep your eyes off the prize. It's simply a reminder that, Hey, it's there. It's driving you.

00:25:24.900 It's, it's important, but take it down to the chunk and focus on that chunk. Don't worry about

00:25:29.020 the big goal right now. Focus on the chunk. This is what keeping our eyes off the prize means.

00:25:32.400 And it's important because if you focus on that big thing too much, then you'll lose focus on your

00:25:38.640 horizon shifting and you will eventually, it'll be too long and you might give up along the way or

00:25:42.660 quit. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:25:48.380 And now back to the show. Okay. So we've talked about some psychological tactics you can do to

00:25:53.760 reframe things in your head whenever you face uncertainty, how to manage it, how to navigate

00:25:58.400 it. You have another section in the book where you talk about actual tactics, like physiological

00:26:03.880 tactics you can do to calm down the arousal system that kicks in whenever you're, whenever we're

00:26:10.360 afraid, whenever we're dealing with uncertainty. And this is important because you need to be calm

00:26:15.780 in order to be in the right mental space to choose an appropriate next horizon. And that can be

00:26:22.440 challenging when uncertainty is just thrown right, right in front of you, right in the moment, like

00:26:27.080 something's wrong in the moment and you don't know what's going on. How's it going to affect you?

00:26:31.280 What do you need to do? I mean, you're just stressed out. So what are some tools people can use

00:26:35.860 to reduce the arousal they feel whenever they're stressed out in uncertainty?

00:26:41.680 Yeah. I mean, there's many, although the most powerful, fastest ones that have kind of been

00:26:46.680 discovered have to do with our visual system and our respiratory system. And that's because our

00:26:50.380 visual system and respiratory system are directly connected to our central nervous system, which is

00:26:55.000 what we talk about sympathetic parasympathetic systems when we're in stress, challenge,

00:26:59.800 uncertainty. And so what's happening, like you just described, and we have uncertainty, challenge,

00:27:03.340 stress, fear, all that stuff, our anxiety goes up, our autonomic arousal, our sympathetic system

00:27:08.440 starts to climb. So let's talk about the positives and negatives of this, right? As our autonomic

00:27:12.260 arousal climbs, we're in sympathetic response, our frontal lobe, the decision-making part of our brain

00:27:18.320 begins to recede. And our limbic brain, our emotional kind of unconscious brain, our lizard brain

00:27:24.800 begins to come to the fore. Now, in the extreme cases, we encounter what's called autonomic overload

00:27:31.420 or amygdala hijack, which is when the frontal lobe, the decision-making part of our brain has

00:27:36.000 receded completely, and our lizard brain has taken over, and we are acting without thinking, okay?

00:27:41.600 Now, this comes in very handy for things like jumping out of the way of a moving train or

00:27:45.320 running from a bear, okay? But it doesn't come in handy for 99% of the other things that happen to

00:27:51.240 us in life when we can actually really use some conscious and intelligent decision-making going

00:27:56.940 on. And so what we have to understand is physiologically, we can bring that frontal

00:28:00.300 lobe back online by decreasing our autonomic arousal. We can do this visually or through

00:28:05.380 breath. Now, like a visual tool that I talk about in the book is open gaze. You know, when we're

00:28:09.900 stressed and focused, what happens is our gaze begins to focus in very tightly on whatever the

00:28:14.740 threat is. That's why we sometimes get tunnel vision during these phases. So what they found is if

00:28:18.940 you go into open gaze, and open gaze is simply the technique of just if you're staring out or even

00:28:23.380 if you're staring at something, you just soften your gaze. You're no longer staring at it anymore.

00:28:27.420 You're just kind of noticing all of your peripheries. You're just taking it all in. This is very easy to

00:28:32.640 do with horizons and things like that. But they've proven that this type of open gaze begins to shift

00:28:37.940 your physiology from sympathetic to parasympathetic and brings down your autonomic arousal. There are

00:28:43.180 respiratory tools as well. I'm not going to go into all of them, but when we talk about breath, when we get

00:28:47.660 stressed and anxious, what happens is our breathing changes. It becomes quicker, shorter, we're not

00:28:52.840 taking in as much oxygen, we're taking in a lot of carbon dioxide. And so another technique that I lay

00:28:58.440 out is this technique called the physiological sigh, where basically you take a full deep breath in, you

00:29:04.240 top it off, and then you slowly breathe out. And what's happening there is you're blowing out the carbon

00:29:09.180 dioxide from your system, which is de-stressing you, which is taking your autonomic arousal down. And so this is

00:29:14.140 taking our autonomic arousal down, it's shifting our physiology, and most importantly, allowing our

00:29:19.580 brains, our frontal lobes to get back online in such a manner that we can start to ask questions

00:29:23.980 about our environment. And of course, the first question we want to ask is, what do I know,

00:29:27.800 what can I control? What's a horizon I can focus on? And so there are physiological ways. What's

00:29:32.640 happening there is when we think about uncertainty plus anxiety equals fear, the way we buy down anxiety

00:29:38.560 is through those techniques, those physiological techniques. You can buy that down. The way we buy down

00:29:43.060 uncertainty is through the process of moving horizons. But as you buy down both of them,

00:29:47.880 the fear starts to dissipate. Gotcha. Okay. So an example of this, let's say you run a business

00:29:52.880 and you have a website that takes orders. The website crashes. I mean, that's happened to me with

00:30:00.600 some of the stuff that I've run. It can just stress you the crap out, especially when you're having a lot

00:30:05.140 of high traffic and like, this is really important that the site be running. And I've, you know,

00:30:10.100 whenever that happened, I just like freak out. Oh my gosh. I would have been better first to just

00:30:14.920 do some of those practices, maybe open up my gaze, do the sign. And then that calms things down. And

00:30:23.140 then I start doing the moving horizon thing. Yeah. Although I will say, I mean, the cool thing

00:30:27.420 about this, even, even choosing in the moment to do like, say five physiological size, that's a horizon

00:30:33.000 right there. You've just picked a horizon. You've picked something to focus on. You do that and you

00:30:37.020 come back out and you say, what can you do again? So, so you can use even these tools,

00:30:41.580 even these breathing tools as mini horizons. Sometimes the environment's so intense that

00:30:45.420 your only horizon is I'm going to take 10 breaths. That's what I'm going to do. And after that,

00:30:48.720 I'm going to see what's going on, you know? So, so yeah, it's a great example. And all of this

00:30:53.200 meshes in a very, very meaningful way. Okay. In the next section of your book. So the first section

00:30:57.460 is all about calming yourself down when that fear starts hijacking your limbic system and then

00:31:02.120 figuring out ways to reduce the uncertainty in that specific situation. The second part of your

00:31:08.440 book, you talk about identity and you return to your framework of attributes, which you talked

00:31:15.160 about in your first book in this part. How can knowing what your attributes are help you navigate

00:31:20.780 uncertainty in life? I mean, maybe we start out like, what are attributes for those who haven't

00:31:24.220 read that first book? Well, yeah. So, so this part of the book just describes, so, so I say the first

00:31:30.280 part of the book describes those things that are not unique to us as human beings. In other words,

00:31:35.220 all of us have this, all of us have the capacity to move horizons. And this is how our brain works

00:31:39.200 ubiquitously throughout the human species. The second part of the book focuses on those unique

00:31:43.300 things that we bring into an uncertain situation. This is when we get into those things about us that

00:31:49.080 are different from everybody else. So the first one is attributes. And this idea of these qualities

00:31:52.420 that we have, patience, situation awareness, compartmentalization, perseverance, okay? And where we fall

00:31:58.620 on those qualities, like we talked about in the last conversation, attributes, we all have all

00:32:02.980 of the attributes. We have all of these qualities. The difference in each one of us are the levels to

00:32:07.080 which we have each. So, so adaptability, for example, if I'm about a level six on adaptability,

00:32:11.760 which means when the environment changes around me outside of my control, it's fairly easy for me to go

00:32:16.340 with the flow and roll with it. Someone else might be a level three, which means the same thing happens

00:32:20.300 to them. It's difficult for them to go with flow and there's friction there. So they're still adaptable

00:32:24.640 because all human beings are. But if we were to line up these attributes on a wall, like dimmer

00:32:28.580 switches, all of us would have different dimmer switch settings. And it starts to speak to our

00:32:32.680 own unique performance, not only in everyday life, but especially during stress, challenge,

00:32:37.720 and uncertainty. Because in stress, challenge, uncertainty, we are literally running on our

00:32:41.000 attributes. Because all that other stuff, you know, personality, all that stuff goes out the

00:32:44.860 window when the you know what hits the fan. So understanding our unique attribute fingerprint or

00:32:50.300 footprint is very valuable in understanding how we're going to show up at uncertainty. And that's

00:32:55.640 why it's so important in this process. Gotcha. And where can people go to learn like what their

00:32:59.140 attributes are? Is there like a website that you have? Yeah, yeah. Our website, theattributes.com,

00:33:03.300 we have it all there. And we have an assessment tool there that you can take and you can figure out

00:33:07.020 where you stand on all 41 attributes. And it gives you a readout and gives you some information on how

00:33:11.320 and why you behave the way you do. And so, so yeah, check it out at theattributes.com.

00:33:15.560 Let's say you take the thing and you realize, oh man, I suck at adaptability. How should you

00:33:21.080 prepare yourself for times of uncertainty? So first of all, knowledge in this case is power,

00:33:26.720 right? Because if I know I'm low on adaptability, then automatically when the environment starts to

00:33:31.320 change, uncertainty starts to come into the fray. And because the environment is changing,

00:33:36.560 I immediately can say to myself, oh, wait, this feels bad because I know I'm low on adaptability.

00:33:42.200 And just that conscious thought, by the way, is bringing your frontal lobe back online,

00:33:47.100 or at least keeping your frontal lobe engaged in the process because you're having a conscious

00:33:50.660 thought. But I would say in those environments, if you know you're low on adaptability, you can say,

00:33:54.940 okay, well, when the environment shifts, so say you're traveling, okay, and you have a couple

00:33:58.760 connections and you're at the airport and you're told the flight's delayed and it's going to affect

00:34:04.300 your connections down the line. It's also going to affect the engagement that you were supposed to be

00:34:08.500 at. So you're not going to get there in time anymore, so on and so forth. Now you are in an

00:34:12.700 environment of uncertainty and it's because the environment's changing rapidly. And so the same

00:34:17.820 process applies. You just begin to pick horizons that are meaningful for you. In the case of low

00:34:23.460 adaptability, just know that it's going to feel uncomfortable and more stressful and more uncertain

00:34:29.260 because you're low on it. When I'm traveling, because I do so all the time, and the plans start to

00:34:34.800 shift around me, the environment starts to shift around me, I'm pretty high on adaptability. So the

00:34:38.600 difference between me and someone who's low on it is not that we don't DPO the situation or shift

00:34:44.780 horizons through that situation. The difference is I just feel less stressed about it. I feel less

00:34:49.320 uncertain about it. So just understand that the attributes we're a little bit lower on, we're going

00:34:52.780 to feel more uncertainty, challenge, and stress when those things are exercised due to the environment

00:34:58.340 versus other ones. But you know, the opposite is true. If you're high on stuff, the attributes you're high

00:35:03.400 on, when the environment goes uncertainty, and the environment requires whatever that attribute is,

00:35:07.220 and you happen to be high on it, you're going to feel less uncertainty and challenge and stress.

00:35:10.300 So that's a one way to look at is that these uncertain environments that are asking for the

00:35:14.600 attributes we're lower on, those are likely the ones that are going to cause us more work.

00:35:19.140 Yeah. And I imagine too, if you're high in adaptability, if you don't have enough uncertainty,

00:35:25.580 then you get bored. And that can be a problem too.

00:35:28.700 Well, yeah, any of these attributes to their extremes, too high, too low can be bad, right?

00:35:33.300 But we also understand that any of these attributes, whether you're high or low, is not a bad thing

00:35:37.840 or a good thing. These are completely non-judgmental. In fact, there are advantages to being high

00:35:42.840 adaptability, there are disadvantages to being high adaptability, and there's advantages of being low

00:35:46.680 adaptability and disadvantages. So in the normal spectrum of these things, there's always pros and

00:35:51.800 cons. But at the extremes, in any of these attributes, it certainly gets to be a bad thing.

00:35:55.940 Yeah, I think knowing your attributes can help you design better horizons. So if I'm low on, say,

00:36:04.300 perseverance, that's one of your attributes. If I'm low on that, I can't just set long, vague goals.

00:36:10.100 I got to make my horizons shorter, more defined, more frequent, so I don't run out of gas halfway

00:36:16.240 through. The same thing goes with compartmentalization. That's another one of those attributes you talk

00:36:20.600 about. So if you struggle with that, you probably struggle to block out noise, stay focused when

00:36:26.080 things get chaotic. So if that's your problem, then your DPO might need to be even more simple.

00:36:33.300 And so basically, your weaker attributes don't mean you're doomed under uncertainty, but they do mean

00:36:39.760 you need to tailor your horizon strategy to how you're wired. That just makes the whole system

00:36:45.620 work better. And you also talk about the role that identity plays in motivation and staying the

00:36:52.460 course during times of stress and uncertainty. Talk to us about that. Yeah, identity has always

00:36:57.120 been fascinating to me because it's always been something on my mind. And it's because I've witnessed

00:37:01.800 and certainly researched and seen examples of people acting in ways that are confusing to them when

00:37:10.940 they look back at it. So so take the sports fan who beats the crap out of another sports fan and then is

00:37:17.080 suddenly in front of the judge and like, I don't know what I was doing. I was out of my mind. I just they're 0.74

00:37:21.320 confused as to why they're they even acted that way. And one of the reasons is because our performance, our

00:37:26.720 behavior sits and relies upon the identities that we collect along the way. So we are as human beings, a

00:37:33.740 collection, a collage of different I am's. They can be everything from benign to very, very important, very

00:37:39.660 powerful. I went to this high school. I am this type of sports player. I am a Navy SEAL. I am a husband

00:37:45.160 father. I'm a Metallica fan, whatever that is. Okay, we have a collection of these things. And each one of

00:37:50.300 these I am's each one of these identities comes with it, some conditions, some rules, some behaviors

00:37:55.020 that describe how you act in that identity. And we align to those. That's why we chose those identities

00:38:00.640 in the first place. What we have to understand is uncertainty, challenge and stress, we are always going to

00:38:04.520 behave towards the identity that we align to that we prioritize in that moment. And this can be an

00:38:10.720 advantage. It also can be a disadvantage. So so the example would be, as you know, as a Navy SEAL,

00:38:16.240 that's a very powerful identity. And in Iraq and Afghanistan, obviously, that was the priority

00:38:20.300 identity that I was aligning towards as were my teammates. However, sometimes the target would

00:38:24.780 change. And we'd suddenly have to put on our husband father hats, because maybe we have to deal with

00:38:29.080 some civilians or kids. This is an example where a fluidity in your identities can actually be very

00:38:33.740 beneficial. Now take the sports fan. I mean, say you're a fan of whatever ex sports team,

00:38:38.600 and you find yourself in an argument with a fan of another ex sports team. And you know,

00:38:43.860 if you continue down that track, depending on the sports teams, you and I could probably comment on

00:38:48.020 some that are worse than others. But if you continue to have that track, you may find yourself

00:38:52.480 in a physical altercation, because that identity is driving you. Or you could calm yourself and ask

00:38:58.300 yourself, okay, what? I'm also a husband and father, I'm a professional business person. And so getting

00:39:02.460 into a fight in the street right now is probably not good for that identity. And you can shift. And so

00:39:06.300 so all this to say is understanding that identities really are very powerful in the way they drive

00:39:10.960 behavior, especially during uncertainty, challenge, stress, to start to get a handle on those identities

00:39:16.460 we carry. And we all carry a lot of them really do. Again, some are really important and powerful,

00:39:21.240 some are fairly benign, but but there are a lot of them get a handle on what they are and begin to

00:39:25.580 use them in a more effective, proactive way. Because you can begin to shift into identities that

00:39:31.120 actually more appropriately fit whatever situation, you'll often find if you, if you do the diligence,

00:39:35.960 you might find some identities that don't, they don't matter to you anymore. They're like, Oh, I

00:39:39.080 don't actually, I'm not that anymore, I can discard that one. And then we also find ourselves in in

00:39:43.560 situations where we're building new identities, you know, this is entrepreneurs do this, I did this

00:39:47.620 coming out of the Navy, the Navy SEAL identity, very powerful. But once I'm not a SEAL, I'm not a SEAL.

00:39:51.540 And so I put that on the shelf, obviously, in a position of honor and respect. However, now I'm going to

00:39:56.720 build a new identity. And that is author entrepreneur. And that's another way to actually

00:40:01.820 actualize this stuff is to have an understanding and move and flow in a positive way towards

00:40:06.740 whatever you're looking at. All right, so we've been talking about how to deal with uncertainty

00:40:10.300 as an individual. So the DPO, moving horizons, using those tactics to calm yourself down,

00:40:17.760 knowing how you typically navigate uncertainty by knowing your attributes, having that identity to

00:40:23.660 help you stay grounded and motivated when things get hard. Let's talk about teams, how to navigate

00:40:28.940 uncertainty as a team. And you introduced this key principle that you got from the SEALs called

00:40:35.300 dynamic subordination. What is that? Yeah, dynamic subordination is simply if you were to think about

00:40:42.120 how this looks on a chart, it's not the pyramid task org structure, which we all know, the leader sits

00:40:48.760 on top and barks orders. It's not the flat line where everybody's in this together. We don't know

00:40:55.340 actually who's in charge. And it's not even the upside down pyramid where the leader's at the bottom

00:40:59.840 in service to everybody, because the burden is not supposed to sit only on one person. And so what it

00:41:05.520 really is, is a blob. It's an amoeba. And the position of leadership in that amoeba can be anywhere at

00:41:12.300 any time. It's wherever it needs to be in the moment. And so dynamic subordination is an idea that

00:41:17.100 the team understands that challenges and issues and problems can come from any angle at any moment.

00:41:22.040 And when one does, the person who's closest to the problem, the most capable immediately steps up

00:41:26.800 and takes lead and everybody follows and supports. And then the environment shifts and someone else

00:41:30.360 steps up and takes lead. And so this is how all the highest performing teams operate. Listen,

00:41:34.400 I was an officer in the SEAL teams. I went on hundreds of combat missions and I was in charge of

00:41:38.400 every single one. It did not mean I was always being supported. In fact, most of the time was the

00:41:42.880 opposite. I was supporting other people, whether it was my snipers or breachers or whatever,

00:41:46.200 or salters. Sometimes the environment shifted and they were in support of me, but it was all based

00:41:50.800 on the environment and what was needed in the moment. So it's a very important concept that

00:41:55.500 tells us that our role on a team has nothing to do with our hierarchy or rank. It has everything to

00:42:01.520 do with what we are there to contribute to the team. And this is how the highest performing teams

00:42:06.160 operate. And this is the key to operating uncertainty, challenge, and stress, because uncertainty by its

00:42:10.980 very nature is we don't know what's coming. We don't know what angle things are coming at. So we need to

00:42:15.040 adjust and focus on whatever we can in the moment. And that might be at any angle.

00:42:19.580 And just to be clear, I want to kind of touched on this. There's still a leader

00:42:23.200 whenever you have dynamic subordination, correct? Like someone who's responsible.

00:42:27.640 Well, yeah, I understand the question, but what we have to do is I can't answer it if I use the

00:42:32.280 colloquial definition that we all think of as leader. A leader is a behavior. Being in charge is a

00:42:37.780 position. There's two very different and distinct things. And we don't get to self-designate,

00:42:42.280 by the way. We don't get to call ourselves leaders. That's like calling yourself good

00:42:44.820 looking or funny. All right. People decide whether or not you are someone they want to

00:42:48.520 follow based on the way you behave. And I remember being in situations in the military,

00:42:52.160 at least a couple of times, where I'd look at a person in a hierarchical position above me,

00:42:56.680 and I would say, I would not follow that person anywhere. Meanwhile, there'd be someone over to

00:43:00.500 my right or left who had no hierarchical position whatsoever. I'd be like, I would follow that

00:43:04.200 person to hell and back. Okay. It's because of the way we behave. And so leadership is defined as 1.00

00:43:09.200 someone who others choose to follow based on behavior, which means everybody on a team can

00:43:15.080 be a leader in the moment. Now, if you're talking about the person who's in a position of being in

00:43:19.660 charge, who is responsible for the team holistically, now you're talking about someone whose leadership

00:43:25.480 role should be to create a dynamically subordinating environment. That's the whole role of the leader in

00:43:31.600 terms of the person who's in charge. You need to create that environment because if you don't,

00:43:35.160 you're not going to create a team that can in fact deal with uncertainty, challenge, and stress.

00:43:38.900 So yeah, every team is going to have a hierarchical nature to it. That's the nature of a team. But

00:43:43.220 the role of the person in the highest position of hierarchy is to create a dynamically subordinating

00:43:48.720 team. It's not to have the big office, big desk, get the big paycheck and be deferred to on everything.

00:43:54.240 It's to create a dynamically subordinating team that actually moves fast, moves efficiently. And I

00:43:58.120 always kind of told my junior officers when I was talking to them, you have to get used to what I call

00:44:03.040 the irony of leadership. And that is, if you do your job correctly, you eventually work yourself

00:44:07.380 out of a job. You create a team that can run without you and in many cases run faster than

00:44:11.900 you, outrun you. That should be the goal of every true leader because every true leader should aspire

00:44:16.200 to that. You want to make your team so good, so much better that eventually, oh man, they're so good,

00:44:20.860 I got to withdraw. They're moving way too fast than I could ever move. And it's because of the things

00:44:25.700 I've allowed and helped them do.

00:44:27.380 So let's say you're in a position of authority. How do you develop that environment where dynamic

00:44:32.500 subordination exists? I'm sure there's a lot to it, but like one or two things that people can do.

00:44:36.840 Well, I mean, first of all, you empower an environment of trust. Trust is the foundational

00:44:40.280 element. And trust is all about behaviors as well. You can't make anybody trust you. All you can do is

00:44:44.700 behave in a way that allows them to make a decision to choose to trust you. So as a leader of a team or

00:44:50.180 hierarchical position, the highest hierarchical position in a team, you must be behaving in ways that

00:44:56.160 promote that environment of trust. You know, making people care for you, listen to them,

00:45:00.060 you practice empathy, you're consistent, you're competent, you tell the truth, you're accountable.

00:45:04.580 These are all behaviors that will allow for others to look at you and say, ooh, this is someone I

00:45:09.040 trust. By the way, the behaviors that define great leaders are almost synonymous with the behaviors

00:45:14.080 that define trust. So they're very, very similar. So we have to build that environment by doing,

00:45:20.080 by modeling the behavior we want to see more of, and then rewarding the behavior we want to see more of

00:45:25.020 in terms of trust. Now, part of that trust, part of that trust building is that as the person in

00:45:30.260 charge, you need to give opportunities for the people on the team to extend themselves,

00:45:35.620 go outside their comfort zone to, to actually step up and be in charge to take those positions,

00:45:40.380 even if they might fail, because we learn a lot from failure. But when they fail, that's really

00:45:44.240 important because if you have their back, when they fail, they will learn rapidly. They feel that trust

00:45:48.540 and that safety, and they'll be ready to do it again. And so, and do it the right time this time.

00:45:52.620 So we have to, as people in charge, really take responsibility and accountability for

00:45:57.900 creating that environment, both through the way we act, through the way we reward, and through the

00:46:02.280 way we allow our teammates and those in our span of care to really extend themselves and, of course,

00:46:07.920 have their back when they do it. Besides developing that trust, another thing you talk about that's

00:46:12.080 important to have this dynamic subordination take root in a group is really being intentional about

00:46:17.460 the culture in a team. How can a person who's in a position of authority, not a leader,

00:46:22.800 person in a position of authority, help develop that kind of culture?

00:46:26.400 Yeah, I mean, the culture is kind of, I mean, very, very close to the identity of a team. You know,

00:46:32.400 whatever that culture is, is close to the identity of the team. And those things can be,

00:46:36.900 can be intertwined. In other words, what are the behaviors that this team expresses

00:46:43.340 because we're part of that team? That's what the culture really is. And so why we have to be

00:46:47.500 very cognizant of this is because culture in any group of people is going to emerge regardless of

00:46:53.200 whether or not the leader has anything to say about it or not. Whether you're deliberate about

00:46:56.640 it or whether you're not deliberate about it, some sort of culture, some sort of identity

00:47:00.040 will emerge. And if we are not deliberate about it, then we might not like what we see

00:47:04.460 that emerges. And so the challenge is to be deliberate about the culture, be deliberate about

00:47:09.820 whatever identity you're creating for that team. Include the team in that process, of course,

00:47:14.760 because it's not just you as the person in charge. But what are those things that define

00:47:19.240 us as a team from an identity standpoint and a culture standpoint? You know, the Boy Scouts and

00:47:24.720 the Girl Scouts do this well. The Marines do this well. They have, the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts have

00:47:29.120 a creed. And their creed is really just a list of rules that define their behavior. That's what it is.

00:47:35.340 You know, that's the culture. And you talk to any Girl Scout around the world,

00:47:38.520 they are all aligned on that very same rule list of things, that culture. So we can do the same

00:47:44.740 thing in organizations. We just have to be deliberate about it. But rest assured, if you're

00:47:47.680 not deliberate about it, it's going to emerge whether you like it or not. And you may not like

00:47:51.760 it. And you also talk about once you establish that culture, you have to start being picky about

00:47:58.600 who you let in to the group to make sure that they match up with the culture.

00:48:03.760 Well, yeah. And this is a lot of the work we do with organizations and teams around attributes.

00:48:07.320 You know, every culture, every identity is going to have a set of attributes that are

00:48:12.220 prioritized. And I say set. It's probably, you know, one or two or three top things that

00:48:16.660 are prioritized. And so what we have to do as people who are bringing new folks onto a

00:48:21.720 team is make sure that the people we're bringing on are aligned with that from an attribute sense

00:48:26.620 and from a value sense, from an identity sense, all those things. So that they come in and

00:48:31.200 they're like, OK, this person actually fits their culture fit. And but you can't do that

00:48:35.280 if you don't know what the culture is. So you got to start there.

00:48:38.280 Yeah. I think in times of uncertainty, it really does help to know what you're about.

00:48:43.100 Well, Rich, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book

00:48:46.060 and your work?

00:48:46.680 Well, yeah, the best place is theattributes.com, like I said. So it's theattributes.com. So

00:48:51.620 there's a the in front of the attributes. And there you can find both books. You can find the

00:48:54.980 assessment tool. You can find everything we do for businesses and organizations and teams.

00:48:58.580 Kind of a one-stop shop. And of course, the books are also, you can find them on Amazon as well.

00:49:01.820 And I'm also on Instagram and LinkedIn under Rich DeVinney. But theattributes.com is the best

00:49:07.420 place.

00:49:07.940 Fantastic. Well, Rich DeVinney, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:49:10.180 Thank you, brother. Great to be back.

00:49:12.480 My guest there was Rich DeVinney. He's the author of the book, Masters of Uncertainty. It's

00:49:15.720 available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at

00:49:19.260 his website, theattributes.com. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash uncertainty,

00:49:24.060 where you can find links to resources when we delve deeper into this topic.

00:49:31.820 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website

00:49:38.480 at artofmanless.com where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that

00:49:42.300 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And make sure to sign

00:49:45.520 up for our new newsletter. It's called Dying Breed. You can sign up at dyingbreed.net. It's a

00:49:49.640 great way to support the show directly. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until

00:49:53.740 next time, it's Brett McKay, reminding you to listen to AOM podcast, but put what you've heard

00:49:57.780 into action.

00:50:01.820 Thank you for listening to AOM podcast.

The Art of Manliness - May 20, 2025

Become a Master of Uncertainty

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