Episode 62 - Leading The Warfighter with General Christopher Donahue

Today's guest is General Donahue, Commander, Allied Land Command and United States Army, Europe and Africa. And he's one of the central architects behind NATO's evolving deterrence posture, the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative. General Donahue has commanded at every level of the US army and has led some of the military's most ambitious modernisation efforts, including the Soldier Lethality Cross Functional Team, and as discussed, the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative. At a time when the alliance faces its most serious security challenge in decades, this conversation explores leadership, culture, innovation, readiness and the future of deterrence in Europe, but importantly, the preparing to win in combat mindset. Good morning, General. Thank you so much for joining us this morning, especially giving us the time during your busy schedule in the uk. I just want to start to talk about the special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States. And drawing on your experience operating alongside British forces, where do you see the UK leadership approach adding the most decisive value within NATO today? And what leadership capabilities must the British army invest in now to remain indispensable over the next decade? Well, I think every member of NATO brings a unique superpower and the United Kingdom, your officers, and because of your NCO corps, you bring the ability to think differently and solve problems unlike any other nation. And that's one of the things that I think why the US and the UK has a very special relationship. We're very similar that way, but we solve problems differently than you do. And you just bring a different angle and look at it, that always adds to the benefit. And I think the combination in particular of the US and the uk, that's where you get a really neat combination. Okay. And with that combination, given your current sort of command status, you know, most British soldiers and officers will now, going forward, operate in NATO coalitions. And given the more primary position of the ARK now in NATO, from your experience, what leadership qualities do you think British personnel demonstrate most strongly? And where do you think our training institutions need to adapt to prepare leaders for the realities of coalition warfare? Essentially working in a multinational environment. Yeah. So under my role as Miklich center, but then also is landcom. So one's the US contribution to the regional plans. So we're the element that fights that regional plan. We have the Fourth Black Rats up in Estonia, that forward land force that is critical. And your Asgard program that Roy Walker has and his transformation and modernization of the UK army is remarkable. So we watch that very closely. And I'll talk a little bit later about some of the stuff we're doing together with you. With Asgard. But that brigade's very important. What you do in Estonia is critical to making sure that those regional plans are real. And then obviously the arc, you know, formerly under Ray Fortis, now under Mike Elvis, that is your significant contribution to NATO in the fight. And you have to transform that core into what it needs to become. And as a nation, you have to invest in it. Roly Walker's plan to do that is spot on. And that aligns to the CGS principle of 2040. 40 where the 20% is the survival platforms, the backbone of the tactical force, whether that be the arm vehicles, helicopters or dismounted infantry, and then the reusable uncrewed attritable platforms, which is your 40% and then the final third layer which is your consumable 40% capabilities, such as the one way attack, first person drones, as well as decoys and electronic warfare systems. Right. So to back up one, we have a new war fighting concept for NATO called the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative. Roly and I have talked about this and have been thinking about how we need to fight now and into the future. And the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative is a lot of the things that he and I have talked about over time. We really started that during Ukraine, okay, when I was out here as Task Force Dragon with a great team, a great coalition team. And then we looked at that and we used very similar concepts when I went back and we were responsible for some Taiwan, okay. And then when I came back out here, we used that to how do you from the land contribute to deterrence? Not only contribute, but how do you help not be a joint force consumer, but how are you now a joint force contributor and from the land under this Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative? And what we were just talking about, this is how you're going to be able to do that. It's going to change warfare. And you know, Rollie breaks it out by 2040. 40. We actually break it out by percentage. The exact percentage of what you need by, you know, I'm not going to get too, too much into it, but it is unbelievably specific how much we're into. But, but the really the theory is 20% man, 40% attritable. So things you don't want to get killed, but if they do get killed, it's okay. Think robots, containerized munitions that shoot or either offensive or defensive capability, jammers, et cetera. And then consumable one way attack 155. All those things still matter. And that's kind of the percent as you go forward. You're seeing that play out in the Middle east and in Ukraine right now. So it's a global thing. Right. So when we talk about the eastern flank deterrence initiative, it's not just a Europe thing, it's used to deter in Europe and accomplish what NATO needs all 32 nations to do and is the war fighting concept for it. But it's how you're going to fight anywhere in the world. Just to go back on that. So you've talked about the 32 nations just to bring it back to the operating in a multinational environment, interoperability. We've talked about the project Maven system, having the operating system, all of which is really clear and then open architecture. But in terms of the people concept of Brit forces operating with the US that's been going on for many years. But how do you weave in those cultural differences to be that cohesive force again? I think anytime you're working, doesn't matter if it's a coalition, an interagency, it doesn't matter where you are intra army. Okay. Whenever it comes to cultural differences and stuff like that, when people throw that stuff out, I always kind of switch them off, right? Because what your job as a leader is, this is where we're going. And when we get to, you know, it's always easy to say, hey, we have to accomplish X. And whenever we get to X, here are the conditions that have to exist so that we can then think about what we have to do next. That's where everybody needs to go. So whenever people talk about cultural difference or interagency differences or intra army doesn't matter what it is coalition, Everybody agrees on 90%, so focus on the 90%. Don't let the 2% or the 10% or whatever it is slow down everybody getting to that goal. But then also culturally or organizationally, every organization brings strengths that somebody else doesn't have. So leverage those strengths. So don't focus on the differences. Candidly ignore the differences. And if anybody wants to make those differences part of it, kick them off the team, make them turn it into an opportunity, it goes to this is what we have to accomplish. Right? It is bigger than you. It is bigger than your cultural difference. That really nicely leads me into the fact that, you know, you've led at every level in complex coalition environments where clarity of intent is critical. The why and I think you sort of said that you, I listened to a podcast where you talked about you write a one pager in whichever role you are in to talk about that why, how do you think about communication as a leader? Particularly the balance between communicating up to shape the strategy, such as efdi, and communicating down to drive action? And what are the common mistakes leaders make in getting that wrong in terms of communication? Well, the first thing is you have to have, you know, everyone has to know exactly where you need to get to. So if you're a battalion commander, everybody in that company or everybody in that battalion should know. The standard is, is that every. Let's just assume it's an infantry battalion. Every infantry company has to be able to conduct a night combat assault. And you have to integrate in drones, ew. You know, whatever capabilities you think you need to, and everybody has to be able to do it to that standard. That is what every rifle company needs to do at the battalion level. We need to set the conditions for that company attack to be successful. And that's what you focus on. Because if you can do that, you can probably do anything. Now, that doesn't mean you're not going to train on other things, but if you cannot do that one task, then you need to stop doing what you're doing and go back and be able to do that and keep everybody focused on that. So that's that. And then you've. You have to go out and be present, okay? You have. If you are not present, you don't know ground truth. You have to go out and see it, because that's great that you can put that out. But there's going to be friction, there's going to be challenges, right? You have to go out and do that. Okay? In that situation, you may go out and a company commander may tell you, hey, that's great, Donahue, you want us to do that? But every time I fly a drone and it breaks, I have to go back and do a process that it takes three months to justify why I broke the drone. Okay, now, we fixed that, but that was an issue we had. Okay? But if you're not present and you don't sit there and talk and ask questions and just keep your mouth shut and listen, you need. So there has to be that command and feedback that happens. And then at your level, you have to go back and make sure that you're explaining the challenges of your lower organizations to accomplish what you need to. Right? But everything you do has to be focused back to that. Okay? You know, I went out and did this, visited Dell, this computer company, and the guy in charge said, hey, everywhere you go, I want you to ask people what they do. And it didn't matter. Where you went if the person was cutting the grass, cleaning the bathrooms, moving boxes, or the person actually designing, building computers, everybody said, we make the world's best computers. Everybody, right? So that clarity of exactly what you have to do. And that aligns to the cleaner who helped put a man on the moon. When in 1962, President Kennedy visited the NASA space station for the first time. And during that tour of the facility, he met a cleaner who was carrying a broom down the hallway, and he casually asked, you know, what did he do for NASA? And he said, you know, I'm helping put a man on the moon. Everyone was aligned to that single why a mission, Right? And I think you speak to something that, you know, you very much were trying to do, certainly General Cowley's trying to do in training, is focus on those basics and do the basics extremely well. And then you really touched on another part. It's all very well, communicating your intent, whether that be verbally or in, you know, a written one pager. But it's actually getting out to the parts of your battalion, your unit, whatever that size of structure is. Those parts that ordinarily people wouldn't expect to see, you know, you, as the CEO in this particular case, turning up because you're going to get ground truth. Okay. And that comes back to something generally you've spoken about regarding physical fitness as a leadership responsibility. Preparing for combat, getting to know your people and building trust in them as a leader. Essentially a choiceless choice. Beyond fitness itself, are there any daily habits or disciplines that junior leaders could adopt tomorrow that you believe disproportionately improve performance over time? Yeah. So PT is way more than just going out and, you know, getting in shape. The first thing is, you know, physical training exists to make sure that you're prepared for combat, Right? So your PT program better be designed to prepare you for combat. And I know you guys didn't have an opportunity to get out with us today, but our PT program is designed for that first and foremost. The second part of this is any. Anyone who's, you know. So if you're telling me, Donahue, that I have to be able to do this company, nighttime, live fire, or whatever your job is at Echelon, and we do PT every day at the same time. And you told me this is about combat, but yet you don't have a plan that actually gets me ready for combat. You haven't thought through how to do this. And we do this every day, and I show up and this is crap, then they're going to look at you. And they should look at you and say, well, how are you going to figure out all this other really complex stuff? So that is not only your chance to prepare them for combat. That is your chance to prove to them, I know what I'm doing. Trust me. Get on my back, I'll carry you there. Okay? And then that's where you get to know your people, right? You get to know how they react. Okay? And every week we have. You have to take a test every week and then you submit it into our app and you see where you line up. So you get to know how well your people compete. The last time I checked, combat's about winning. Make no bones about it. It is about winning. And that's where you get to see how people, how they act, how they don't react. And then also you get to know them, how well are they doing. Right. You know, we always talk about people in war fighting. That's where you get to check in and see, see your people. If it's a small unit, they should know at PT right away if something's wrong or off in somebody's life or something's really great, doesn't really matter, Right? But that's where they should get to do it. And then lastly, that's where you build mental and physical toughness. Combat is hard. You're going to have good days, you're gonna have bad days, and that's where you drive that mental toughness, okay? That's also where you build physical toughness, right? Because you do have to do that. And you can do it in a smart way where you don't injure people if your program's the right way. So that's why that all matters. And that also teaches everybody how to do all the right. You know, in the US army, we have these, you know, troop leading procedures. We have these steps of how you develop training and everything that all should be implemented right there as well. And I think it's that ability to build a sort of cohesive team as well. If you've got everyone turning up to pt, yes. You'll pick up on so and so isn't particularly sparking this morning. Is there something wrong in his personal life? So there's all those sort of indicators, I think on pt. And I think that the important part of that is you start to build a team and you get to know that team. There's three things that build teams. Culture, right in that one page. That's who we are, that is our culture. But then there has to be A process. It can't be all culture, because then whenever people leave, it dies, right? So the process has to be able to sustain everything that you're doing. I didn't say a bureaucracy, Right? A process. A process is what identifies what the situation is and solves the problem and moves the organization forward. And then the last thing is environment, right? You have to have an environment where people show up and they want to be there, they want to get better, they want to compete, and they're allowed to go out and do all the things that you need them to do to. To solve the problem and to accomplish what they need to. And there has to be honest feedback back and forth in that environment. Those are the three things that are really critical. It doesn't matter what you're doing. I don't care if it's, you know, guarding Buckingham palace, preparing to fight somewhere, or whatever the case may be, just on the team front. I think everyone in this room values diverse backgrounds, diverse ways of thinking, is generally effective. But what fundamental piece do you think leaders misunderstand about turning diversity into combat power? So I don't like to use words like any of that, okay? What I like is we have a team. You know what I mean? Whenever anybody would ever talk to me about diversity, I'd be like, don't talk to me about diversity. Just go out to a rifle platoon, go out to a tank platoon, go out anywhere else. You know what you're going to see? You're going to see people from everywhere in the world who think differently than everything else. We got diversity covered. It's called America. Don't worry about it. Right? So I don't even get into that, okay? This goes back to culture, process, environment. What I want is, I don't care who you are, where you come from. All I really care about is, you know what? Whoever we are, that's what you're focused on. You. You are all in on us. I always tell people, you joined the United States army, we didn't join you, right? And whenever you think of. And you know, for you guys, I don't mean this, this way, but, you know, the U.S. army is older than our nation. And whenever we cross the Delaware, okay, we weren't a nation. Are you willing to cross the Delaware for something that you are trying, that you don't even know if it's going to work? Right? Nobody cared who was in those boats or anything else. All we cared about is, were you with us? That's culture. Process is how do you sustain it? How do you Build it? How do you make sure that it continues, Continues, Right. How do you solve the right problems? How do you identify? You know anyone who tells me that unmanned systems like ah, we're over focused on it? No, I would argue that is the future of that is going to be a very, very critical factor of how we're going to fight into the future. Ground, air, on the water, underwater, all domains. So you have a process that's going to bring all that in. Then that environment where you can come in and bring up new ideas. You can say, hey, these new ideas are crazy. That's not going to work for the following reasons. And you can have a debate and you sit there and figure out how do you do a company night live fire attack against any adversary in the world? And you figured out how to do it. Then you don't talk about any of those things, right? Because right, wrong or indifferent, that as soon as you bring those words up it becomes, it'll polarize somebody. And in the military we don't do that. Right. We focus on people and war fighting. No, I agree and I think you've mentioned the culture and the process and Simon Sinek talks about the why. And I think it's not just a one off, one pager, it's not a one off communication. You consistently need to work hard to communicate the why of what you're doing to bring your team and to create that culture. And I think the important part for the listeners, the officers and the soldiers listening is that the communication of your intent and what you try to do is not a one off shot. It's something that you continually, continually do. And it's one team, one team. You joined us, we didn't join you. And everybody has to buy in. So there'll be a lot of soldiers passing out of training, whether that be at Sandhurst, Katrick, afc, Harrogate or Pirbright, into an army that's facing threats it hasn't encountered in a generation. General, what is the single most important leadership investment they should make over the next five years? I think it's twofold. The first thing is you have to understand your adversaries. Not one adversary, all your adversaries. You have to be reading all the stuff you guys are working on and you have to go out and you have to create forums. You have to do everything you can to build those environments so that people are talking about it. Right? So what you all are doing is so important. Whenever we built the new mobile brigade combat team in the US Army, I challenged all the Brigade commanders to create a forum, a chat, I don't really care, whatever it is, where they all are going back and forth and exchanging ideas and talking about what they have to do. And they did it. It was really cool, right? A guy named Colonel James Stoltz led that effort and just became very, very powerful as we transformed that. But you should have those forums where people, you know, peers are out there establishing and talking about stuff and challenging subordinates and superiors with whatever they're. They're learning. So again, that. That portion of it, the next one is, is how do you balance? You know, we talked about pt. That's a basic. Right? How do you balance? Ensuring you have all the right basics, but yet you also understand that things are changing. They're changing very rapidly. And you have to understand the electromagnetic specter, right? You have to understand this new technology. You know, Nickali has out this new Forge zero course. People should be racing to go to that thing. The other day, a guy was talking, it was actually at rusi, said, hey, everyone's talking about electromagnetic spectrum and blah, blah, blah, and all this other stuff. I said, well, hey, you know, the first thing you got to do is go up and draw electromagnetic spectrum. And this is all. This is what my. In this case, he was in a logistics unit. This is what my logistics unit looks like on the electromagnetic spectrum. And then draw a red line down below and say, this is all the capability that, you know, this adversary can do to see what I have. So everyone likes to make this stuff so dramatic, but it's like, no, just understand, what do I look like? What do they look like? And then those type of things are what you have to start figuring out. And then also that's going to give you the why, you know, you're going to have to change, right? Because suddenly you'll realize, because then you layer in how many UAS does this adversary have? What is our counter UAS capability? Okay? And then you're going to start to, okay, well, if I'm not going to get this, how do I hide myself from this person? How do I change my tactics? How do I do this? Right? So those understanding your environment, understanding your adversary, and all those things will drive the why behind. You got to change, right? And that's going to drive. And then suddenly everybody, if you knew all those things, everyone's going to be like, Nick Cali's Forge zero. We need everybody to go to it. Not versus, like, well, you know, this is kind of unique. Should we go? Should we not? No. I mean, clearly he's right. You got to go. And that Forge Zero course is aimed at convening cross sector talent across all ranks around army problem sets and applying emerging concepts in tech craft. And here at the center of army leadership, we're also trying to do that with UAS and simulation and use that as a vehicle for leader development. And we're in the foothills at the moment, but the initial results are positive and we can use technology to enhance leader development. So there's a myriad of ways of using innovation. Okay. So you've really made that clear of what young leaders want to do. And you know, we've got example of two young leaders across the room who are looking to innovate with what we have. I know you've had experience leading the soldier lethality cross functional team where you revolutionized close combat capabilities, treating the individual soldier and squad as an integrated combat system. What lessons would you offer British army leaders? Probably the junior ones coming through, linked to my previous question about how to generally create that innovation and that culture, given we are at a time that we all recognize of, you know, resources are limited at the moment. So the first thing is, the very first thing we did to baseline anything we did is we looked at our adversaries and then we looked at how we were going to fight. Okay. And once you understand those things, then you know very quickly what you need to change. So the very first thing we actually changed was our infantry, you know, how we produce an infantryman, right? And we looked at it and said, okay, this is the shortest mos producing, you know, course we have in the US army. And we're not producing the right capabilities that they're going to need on the battlefield. So we actually lengthened it, made it more difficult, added additional tasks to make sure that we produced the right infantrymen. So we started at the basics, right? And then we figured out, okay, well, how is the infantry squad, platoon, company, how are they going to fight against these adversaries? And that then drove the prioritization of what we needed to fix right away. You know, one of the very first things we figured out was, hey, our nods, you know, if we're going to fight predominantly at night, I've talked about it several times, we have to get dual tubes. So you have depth perception, right? And we want both the traditional, you know, how you take ambient light and do the traditional nods, and we fuse thermal in together. So now they had thermal and you know, the traditional nod into one. And then we put in the reticle, the ability of their sight and A compass, and that was it. So now everybody could look out, they knew where they were. They could do either thermal or the traditional ir, you know, bringing in the ambient light, and then they could know exactly where they're going. And we put that reticle up in the eye. And marksmanship standards went through the roof. Right. And everyone was always worried about, hey, how do you fight subterranean? And everything else. Well, now you can use. Where there is no ambient light, you can now use thermal subterranean. So we, we solved a bunch of problems, problems together. So that was one example, but. And the army turned it very quickly envgb the. This is an example of the acquisition world doing tremendous work very quickly, and that increased that capability of that squad very quickly. And this is going to be very important as you look at the current environment. Whenever we'd brief, I'd put up a picture of a carrier, I'd put up a picture of an F35, and then I'd put up a picture of an infantry squad. And I would say, isn't it interesting how everything's designed to support the carrier? Everything's designed to support the F35 in these programs. What is designed to support the squad? We were just talking about, you know, the various capabilities. Who's carrying a sensor that can tell you when a drone is in your area? So somebody on the squad has to carry it. Who's carrying the ability to shoot down a drone or jam a drone? How many batteries do you have to carry for that? So that squad is just like an aircraft carrier. So how do you figure out that? And then how does it have to be interoperable, all those other stuff? So we're able to put all those things into effect there to change the rifle squad. And I think, you know, we. I was lucky to be part of a tech terrain. Walk through Google and they talk. You know, they're a very decentralized structure, not as hierarchical as the military, but they are able to dive in to the people who are looking at the ideas, innovating, and then pull those ideas out. I sometimes question we've got some great ideas at all ranks and whether we as leaders are able to access those ideas, given the layers of rank. And I wonder if you've experienced that yourself. And has there have been any ways that you've been able to reach in to the soldiers, to the officers that are at the face of those ideas and bring them forward so we can innovate at speed? Yes, I think what we're doing presently is we give an organization the problem to solve. And then we've created this capability called gted, this global Technical Acquisition Team that has everything associated with what you have to do to, to actually bring capability and put it in a formation. And one of the things that we're able to do is take. So how do you do counter uas? Right, so we gave that task to one of our units, went out, worked with a US Company that was providing capability to Ukraine. We were able to scale that out. And that capability we put across the eastern flank to some of the problems that we had with Ukraine. Ukrainian or Russian drones being pushed into NATO airspace. They were able to use that to defend NATO airspace. And then whenever you know that our current operations here against Iran, we were able to flex that capability into the CENTCOM AOR to help out and defend those locations. Okay, but that was one unit that solved that. And that feedback has been remarkable. We took an infantry battalion and turned it into a drone battalion. We were fortunate to be able to let them go into Ukraine. Watch, observe, learn, come back out, and now scale that capability to figure out, okay, how are we now going to integrate? Because I told you we rebuilt the mobile brigade combat team. So we know within that brigade where we put these unmanned systems, well, how do you take capability that now enables. So in other words, we've enabled battalions and companies, how do you now enable protect the brigade in that environment? And that's what that battalion's now trying to figure out here. But they're going to be the ones that figure it out. They should be the ones. Agree? Yeah. I mean, if it's rank orientated, it's going to take too long. You want them to be innovating at the source, at the ground level? Whoever owns the problem should solve the problem. No? Great. And we've had instructors who have been on OP Interflex teaching the Ukrainians, learning lots about trench warfare. I know that W2 page has rewritten the trench warfare doctrine, but one of the sort of problems we've come up against is the delay in what is thought to what is taught. Right. You've already mentioned the eastern flank deterrence initiative. And arguably it's probably the most ambitious restructuring of NATO's land deterrence posture in a generation. I'm also being reliably informed by the pod and the green notebook that you've used the phrase be relentless and be unreasonable, but never ever violate being a great teammate. Where have you been unreasonable, whether with the alliance, with industry, or even with your chain of command? I asked them, when am I unreasonable to maintain the pace. When. When do you think I'm unreasonable? From when you wake up to when you go to bed, sir. Yeah, you are who you are. So I. I mean, you know, you know, you know my background. I mean, my generation spent a lot of time at the junior level in combat. Right. Man. It's not unique to me. Right. It's a generation. And I think what you learn out of that is. So the first thing is, if you're going to drive organizations and you're going to do all the things that doesn't matter if it's the lowest level to the highest level, you got to be a great teammate. Because if you're going to make change and tell people this is what we have to do and everything else, they have to understand and they have to believe in it and they have to be part of it. And you can't do it in a way that ruins organizations or ruins relationships between organizations, agencies, whatever level you're at. So you always have to be a great teammate. People want to believe in what you're doing, help you and join, and they should want to be part of your team. And you can never violate that. If you violate that, you can be the most relentless and unreasonable people in the world, but it doesn't matter, okay? So you always have to be a great teammate, and people want to be on your team and believe in what you're doing, and you can get a sense of that. You can feel that. Now, the next thing is you have to be relentless, okay? And by being relentless is, I can't tell you when you're going to go to combat, but you're going to go. And do you want to be the person who, whenever you go to combat, said, you know something? I knew this was going to be a problem in combat, but I didn't address it because there'll be enough other stuff that's going to pop up that you didn't know about. But you have to have that belief of, I am preparing for combat and I'm preparing my subordinates for combat in the near term, okay? And in whatever echelon or level or unit you're in, you define that near term, right? If you're an element that's on alert 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that's a different level of what you have to solve in your time horizon, right? But you have to be able to know that you have to get that capability to the people at the right time. That is being relentless. And then unreasonable is. It's a pretty easy standard if your son, daughter, brother, sister, whatever you picked the variation was going to be in your organization. Are you doing everything so that you can look yourself in the mirror and say, yeah, I did everything the right way to make sure that they had what it was. Okay. But then again, you can never violate being a great teammate, because being relentless and unreasonable and you're not a great teammate, it won't work. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And that comes back to you as the leader to create that culture where you want people to be part of your team. Going back to what you talked about at the beginning, you know, whenever you, you know, people talk about relationships all the time. Nobody owns a relationship, okay. Now, there's people in an organization who, you know, my relationship with ACO as Lancome. I'm responsible for that relationship to aco. I'm responsible to General Grinkovich that I, you know, nobody else owns that relationship more than. So I'm the only person that can. That can say, hey, yeah, you can do this or do that. But that reputation that Landcom has with aco, I'm the only one that can do anything that puts that reputation in jeopardy. Right. Nobody else can. Okay. But that's about being a teammate. Relentless, unreasonable, just as you kind of figure out, okay, well, how does that work out? And everybody should have relationships, Right. And people act like, hey, that's my relationship. No, it's not. You may be the primary person responsible for it, but I don't care if a bunch of my subordinates, if General Grinkovich goes out and talks to him and learns from him and everything else how I want it. Right. I'm proud of my subordinates. I want them to be with him. I want them to talk to him. I want them to learn from each other. Just makes us better. But at the end of the day, that's. I'm the one who's responsible back to him for stuff. But you had to be very comfortable sharing relationships, too. And you've got. A relationship can't be built overnight. It takes time. It takes work. It's not something I think we think relationships are. You know, we have a relationship through the connection of this podcast, but we, you know, a proper, true relationship is built over time, effort, as you go through. Absolutely. And there's going to be conflict, there's going to be disagreement. Disagreeing is not being disloyal. In fact, disagreeing is being loyal. Now, once the decision's made, you move out, Right. And I suppose you're always going to get a disagreement around the table, but eventually what you're striving to get is alignment correct. Everybody needs to know where we're going to end up, right? Is it 2 up, 1 back, 1 back, 100 journal? It doesn't matter, right? We got to get there. So just going back to the efti, imagine an officer soldier five years from now, inheriting the architecture you're building today. What is the single most important thing that officer or soldier will need to understand about leading in NATO's eastern architecture? Flank. And in terms of their character, particularly, I think the, the very first thing is. Forget. Forget that for a second, is that, let's just assume it was the fourth Black Rats, okay? That whenever they left out of the United Kingdom and they went out to Estonia and they showed up, they would be able to plug everything that they have into that network environment when they're out there, and they're able to share all the information almost seamlessly whenever they show up, okay? So that's the first thing. So whenever they show up, they come in, they're getting all the right data feeds, they understand the environment, they know when UAS and any of the various threats, you know, I'll keep it G rated, but any of the various threats, threats that are out there, they know that and they are completely harmonized in with the first Estonian division, okay? So that's when we'll know that we got probably the most difficult thing of the efdi, right? And we're on track for that. But then from a leadership perspective, the very first thing is they have to be unbelievably physically fit at all echelons, all levels, because the demands of combat are not going down, they're going up. And if you're physically fit, that allows you to mentally stay in the game. If your body does not get tired, if it does not get fatigued, you can think better. That's why PT matters for combat. Clearly you can do the tasks and everything else associated with that as well, but most importantly, it's about mentally remaining in the game. The next thing is they've studied their adversary and they know that adversary better than anything else. They know how they're going to think, how they're going to act whenever they start, you know, doing whatever plays out, they know exactly what they're going to do, okay? The next thing is they know their organization so well, they know how they're going to react, okay? So you have all that kind of going on there as far as. Then that's really preparation before you ever show up, okay? The next thing is when they're in combat, they're going to make mistakes and things are going to happen and they're going to learn and they're going to tell their subordinates, hey, listen, this is what just happened over the last 24 hours. This went well. This didn't go well. Here's how we're going to fix it. We're not going to make that mistake again. And they're honest and they talk about it and they fix it on the spot. That's what you have to do in combat. Those are the things that you have to do to prepare to be part of the efdi. And that brings me on to, you know, preparing yourself. Essentially. Leaders don't arrive. I think it was a quote from General Miller. And you take personal responsibility, which you've clearly talked about throughout the sort of 40 minutes we've been speaking. What are your reflections on the balance between military training, education and more activities such as sports and other things within a military academy curriculum? Which of those best prepared you for your career as you've gone up? So I. I think probably so many things have impacted you, right? Your family, how you were brought up. You know, the. Probably the two people that have influenced me probably the most actually is my father and my wife. Okay, so, you know, so that wasn't West Point right now. A lot of things influenced me there. I was around great people. I could go on and on, but I won't. So really then what are the qualities that we're looking for the sake of this? Talk about a junior leader. So for a junior leader, the very first thing is you have to be competent. You have to have prepared. I think at every level you have to be professionally curious that you understand again your adversary how you're going to fight. You should be going out and trying to fight. Find everything you can to get the advantage that you can have over any adversary. I don't care if it's a PT event, I don't care if it's, you know, some battalion event. I don't care. Or if it's fighting whoever. Pick your adversary. You're constantly looking and trying to find an advantage that professional curiosity. And you've studied so hard that you know how to fight better than anybody, okay? The next thing is all your subordinates have to know that you truly care about their well being, their well being in combat and when they're back home, okay? And that means sometimes you got to tell somebody, hey, man, you drink too much. Hey, I saw that you were thinking of doing X, Y and Z, knock it off. Okay? The other side of it is, hey, you know, Smith, you're doing a great job. When you're at a range, go up and grab their phone and say, hey, FaceTime your mom, you know, hey, Mrs. Smith, just want you to know your son's doing great in the Army. Thanks for raising, you know, a great soldier. You know, in this case, thanks for, thanks for raising a great American. Thanks for raising a great UK soldier. Okay? You know, they'll, they'll see that the next one is don't worry about being liked by your subordinates, worry about being respected, okay? Because if they respect you, they'll follow you anywhere, okay? And they have to have that trust in you and that whenever you own mistakes, like I forget the word you used about General Miller, but you have to hold yourself accountable and just tell them, hey, you screwed up. This is what, I should have done this, I didn't, I learned, I'm not going to do that again. When you put all that together, they'll follow you anywhere. General, there's some great advice there for leaders at all levels and it also aligns to the leader compse framework of what leaders do, particularly how they develop their individuals, provide support and challenge, but also develop themselves. So that really will resonate with all the listeners. Okay. You've held appointments which we've gone through at every level, from the divisional to the corps to the army level. Now, what has to be learnt, unlearnt or relearnt as leaders progress from tactical to operational and at times strategic command. The first thing is play your position. Right? You know, I was super fortunate. I got to be a rifle platoon leader for 36 months. Okay. By the end of those 36 months, I was a pretty average platoon leader. I wasn't too bad, but I don't ever want to be a platoon leader again. Right. And keep stacking all that up. So when you go up, play your position, learn your job, do what you have to do at your echelon and empower and set the conditions for your subordinates so that they can do their jobs. Don't worry about them. Just make sure that you're empowering them and you're ensuring they have what it takes to do their jobs. And at every level, you see people do that. Whenever people get too involved in decisions down below, you're not going to be there with them in combat. So don't worry about it. The higher you go up, the more you have to study, the more you have to learn, the more you have to think Take the time to do it, okay? The higher you go up, the harder the problems are to solve. If you're solving easy problems, you're not focused on the right stuff at all, okay? And then you get paid to win. You get paid to solve problems. Start solving problems and winning, okay? That means you have to be very, very professionally curious. And you got to take risk, okay? And you should be taking risk all the time. But whenever you take risk, you never take risks that you don't have the ability. It's not catastrophic risk. It's risk that if it just doesn't go well, you're still in a position of advantage. You're always in a position of advantage. I don't care what level you're at. That's great, great advice. I'm going to finish on a centre of army leadership tradition of some sort of quick fire, if possible, one to two to three word answers. So the first one is one daily leadership habit you've adopted. Well, I'll give you two. The first one is, whenever I come into work in the morning, I just read, right? I seclude myself, you know, these guys will tell you. I come in and all I do is read, right? And I'll communicate with people that I need to communicate with. And that's, that's what I do in the morning. And then before I leave work, I write down everything that I know I have to do the next day. Yeah, so that, that's kind of how I bookend those things. What keeps you awake at night, General? Nothing, you know why? No, tell me, General. No. Look at all the talent that is around me. Is everything perfect? Do we have everything solved? No. But if anything happens, if we go anywhere, anything that'll happen, we'll figure it out. You know, Is there a leadership behavior that really annoys you that you would stop overnight of me or others? Others, probably. I don't like it whenever people don't acknowledge the importance of unmanned systems. It's not going away. It's here. And it's only going to get more and more pervasive. I mean, you only have to turn on the news, right? You can see it every day. You can see what Amazon is developing. But people are definitely trying to do that. The other thing, too, I would just say is, you know, just goes back to what we talked about yesterday. People need to write more about their profession or at this point, you know. So if you say, hey, what is the one thing that. There's really two things that I do not do as well as I could the first is because all of our armies. But, you know, I definitely feel with the US army and even in my Lancom role, I do not elicit all the talent that we have because it's unbelievable. We just can't figure out how to get the talent out of everybody. That's on me because I'm in charge. I really wish we could do that better. And the other one is, like I told you yesterday down there, we just haven't written enough about what we're doing and what we need to do. We have to do better as from an alliance perspective. So. And the final one is, what book are you reading right now? So the book I'm reading right now is mobilized by a guy named Sham Sanker, who he's a guy that got commissioned as a direct lieutenant colonel tech guy that's in from one of the companies that are out there, but really interested in his book just because I. I know how he thinks and I can't wait to learn from it. Brilliant. Thank you very much, General. Thank you again for everything. This has been a great podcast. Thanks, sir. Today's conversation covered leadership, innovation, culture, and the eastern flank deterrence initiative. But perhaps all it reinforced the enduring importance of character and leadership in an era of accelerated technological change. Importantly for leaders at all levels, General Donahue emphasized the need for all of us to understand our adversary, learn our jobs, so we can all fight better. He emphasized the need to inculcate a winning mindset in everything that we do. He talked about relationships and building your team, being accountable to your team, but also importantly, being respected by yourself team. And he also emphasized that continued need for professional development, that need to read, study and write more to have that professional curiosity. And to finish on a General Donahue quote, be relentless and be unreasonable, but never ever violate being a great teammate. Sa.