From The Coal House to The White House with Dr Fiona Hill

Speaker A: Today's guest of the Centre of um army leadership podcast is Dr. Fiona Hill, one of the world's most renowned security, foreign policy and Russian experts. The daughter of a coal miner and midwife from County Durham, Fiona Co authored the UK Strategic Defence Review in June 2025, having previously served as US President's top advisor on Europe and Russia. Today, Dr. Fiona is Chancellor of Durham University, a Fellow of the Brookings Institution, and a member of the Board of Overseers at Harvard University. Dr. Fiona, welcome.

Speaker B: Oh, thank you so, um, much. I'm really delighted to be with you.

Speaker C: It's great to have you on the podcast. We're doing this remotely to America. I want to start firstly about your growing up in County Durham during a period really. You describe an industrial development decline, a place where opportunity often felt distant and predetermined futures were common. But yet your story is really one of extraordinary determination, community investment and social mobility. Uh, looking back now, what leadership lessons emerged from growing up in that environment?

Speaker B: Well, I think that the environment itself really helped to inculcate a sense of grit and determination. Um, that might sound a bit trite and cliched, but, um, coming yourself from Northern England, you know, you know, that there is a sort of sense, uh, in the region that if you don't help yourself, no one's going to help you. And I mean, that has actually been a theme throughout the northeast of England, I would say, um, in perpetuity in centuries, it's been the militarized frontier of England against Scotland, the scene of many battles, uh, an area that was invaded over and over again, um, by Romans, Vikings and, uh, Angles and Saxons. And everybody who's kind of come to Britain at different points and left their mark have gone through the northeast. And it's been one of those frontier zones. So I would just sort of say that anyone who has their origins there, ah, just knows that there's just this sort of history passed down about, look, you better look out for yourself. This is, uh, a tough world. Bad things always happen. In fact, I mean, uh, it's uh, the converse of that. Trying to always look somewhat optimistically on things rather than just expecting the worst. That sometimes is the more difficult thing to grapple with. But there's also a very strong sense of solidarity in the region and of mutual assistance. Not just, you know, pull yourself up, you know, by your own bootstraps, but other people helping you out. And, um, I think that in the period in which I was growing up, you know, I was born in 65. My whole formative Years are really through, as you point out, that period of pretty dramatic industrial decline. Yeah, I mean there was you know, sort of one day that you know, kind of everybody woke up in my home area and found that every major industry had closed down all in the matter of, of hours, you know, for example, suddenly plunging everybody up into unemployment. But you know, people did create these uh, uh, associations to help uh, themselves and to help everybody else around them. So you didn't really kind of feel like you were always on your own. And I grew up in a uh, family that was four generations of County Durham coal miners. And they'd all been heavily involved in the creation of Durham Miners Association. And the Durham Miners association created what was essentially the United Kingdom's first welfare uh, state. Uh, and that isn't the way that people think about it now. It wasn't about handouts, it was about a hand up. It was more about well, being and uh, looking after the community in hard times, but encouraging people to get back on their feet, get back into work and get the kind of assistance that they needed. And I saw everybody in that community leading in some way. There was that kind of sense of working together in a team but always, you know, trying to put yourself out. I mean of course that's not uh, across the board, but generally, I mean I looked around and I saw all kinds of evidence of leadership in daily life, of stepping up and just being there for other people in my street, in my town, you know, and broader in the region.

Speaker C: And do you think that people, particularly leaders that uh, haven't grown up in that environment and not necessarily had to put themselves out there and go through those experiences, do they miss something important about that responsibility and service that then serves them well later life and leadership?

Speaker B: I think it actually paradoxically gives you a head start on these kinds of things. I felt at the time I was growing up in a deprived, disadvantaged, um, region. When you compared it with other parts of Britain. I mean I remember on school trips going to other parts of England and thinking, whoa, what's this? My goodness, luxury. The way that I was making relative comparisons. Uh, but now with the benefit of hindsight, actually fairly quickly into my teens, teens and into my 20s when I got to university, I realized what an incredible gift I'd been given in terms of formative years of really kind of learning, you know, from the school of hard knocks early on. Because other people come to that later in life and I don't think that they necessarily will miss out it over time, but they come to it later. You know, they'll come to it in the course of their careers by, you know, some, you know, really, uh, adverse situation. I mean, particularly in the military that, you know, you have to deal with in training, with, you know, the kind of the high tempo of this or in combat, you know, for example. But, you know, I found a feel that I'd already been well prepared for this. I'd learned a lot of lessons that I internalized. And it was only later that I, you know, realized how I could uh, delve into those to really adapt them for the experiences that I was, um. Uh, I was having. So I felt like even though I didn't perhaps have the best education in a formal sense, I'd had a great life education and that that had really put me at a different level for getting a head start on things that had made me realise what was important, how to prioritize and frankly, how to get things done, not wait around for somebody else to do something.

Speaker C: That's really important. Because you talk a lot about, in the various things I've listened and you've written about is the infrastructure of opportunity. Talk about your teachers, your mentors, local organizations and then the chance that you offered. Chances as well. What responsibility do you think leaders have to identify and develop talents that systems or other parts of society might overlook?

Speaker B: Well, it's a primary responsibility of leadership because you can't succeed unless you've got talent and you've got other people around you. I, uh, mean, it may be that so many people these days in a world of influences and seeing things on the Internet and the kind of leadership, uh, that is manifested at the top in places like the United States and elsewhere, with a sort of strong man, one man rule, one man fixing everything. You might get the sense that you don't have any agency. And that's just completely wrong. And, um, is actually, I think, a real sort of sign of weakness to not recognize that the success is a result of the aggregation, the accumulation and uh. Basically, um. Uh, the bringing together of everybody in their different talents and very diverse viewpoints. I mean, I know that anything that I have achieved in life, any success that I've had and any success in a leadership role, you know, in a role of which I've risen up to in either academia or in government, has been completely dependent on, uh, the success and the performance of people around me and their ability and willingness, uh, to work with me and the capacities that they have to bring, you know, as I said, different viewpoints, different talents, uh, to the picture as well. And I think, you know, for any leader now, be in the military or in the civilian sector, the private sector, in business, they have to really kind of recognize that the best work, the best ideas are going to come out of the players that they least expect. And they have to actually actively go and look for that. You know, we think about all of the breakthroughs and innovation on the military and technical, uh, side and they've often come from unexpected places. You know, we look at the war in Ukraine right now and we see that innovation on the battlefield, but that's being done by ordinary guys and often women and people in the immediate, um, areas behind the front, uh, figuring out that there's a problem and how do they fix it. You know, uh, from everybody doing, you know, literally bake sales and money collection to get, you know, essential equipment to thinking through the logistics and ways of getting supplies and, you know, expanding out through all kinds of networks. I was in, um, County Durham, uh, not so long ago in my role as Durham Chancellor. And I was in a pit village called Horden that you would probably know, people wouldn't have necessarily heard about. It's one of the poorest villages in the UK writ large. It had lost all of its employment with the closure of the pits. It was one of the last places mines to close down in County Durham. And there's almost no employment in that, uh, town whatsoever, um, apart from investment in a, uh, local theater, which is actually a remarkable story in itself. But what is what struck me was down in the streets in Harden, I could see some Ukrainian flags flying. And I thought, that's interesting, along with a British flag. And I discovered that there was a man who was a mechanic from, you know, one of uh, what would have been a, you know, a garage, um, and a, you know, kind of a, a car, ah, repair place in, um, Harden. He'd lost his job, but what he was doing now was refurbishing surplus, um, army trucks, uh, from British, uh, surplus that had been either abandoned or, you know, as, you know, some of them get sold or, you know, kind of basically given away. And he was refurbishing them and driving them to Ukraine. And I thought, what an incredible story. And he was using, you know, his own skills and his own talents and these networks that he'd somehow got involved in to do something so far away from the front line. But it was also, um, part of the Ukrainian leadership has been to look for places that no one would ever think of. I mean, how would you think that there would be a relationship between this old coal mining village of Hawarden in County Durham. And, um, the front line somewhere, perhaps in the Donbass. And it's just that whole unexpected, um, opportunity to find talent and to find assistance in critical times that leadership, um, is all about. Because of those, Ukrainian military leaders have had to be more resourceful than anybody would be under normal circumstances.

Speaker C: And I think it's that ability, clearly something that the military is really good at, uh, but needs to continue to work at, is to build teams. But to build teams that have diversity of thought, different experiences and different backgrounds, to get the latest ideas and to innovate and to harness this sort of the power. Otherwise, you know, you will then end up in groupthink. So I think that's. I think that that is really important. I just want to talk about. Touched on something you mentioned in your, um, in your book. Your Uncle Charlie was a veteran of the Atlantic convoys, and he always encouraged you to study Russian because he couldn't understand how wartime allies became Cold War adversaries. And I think that curiosity has shaped your career. What do you think, sort of being in the military teaches people about asking questions of the world and then a follow on how important do you think curiosity is as a leadership trait?

Speaker B: Well, I mean, obviously those two questions are, uh, both the sides of, uh, the same coin. Because you have to have curiosity, you have to be able to ask questions. I mean, I know in the military and in many other settings where things seem very hierarchical, you know, it's not always encouraged to ask a question, but you always have to ask questions of yourself about what am I doing, why am I doing it? And will this succeed? And if I want this to succeed and there are certain obstacles, how can I overcome them? It relates back exactly as you said to what we'd just been talking about before in terms of leadership and looking outside the box, uh, at all times. My Uncle Charlie was really quite a remarkable character. Sometimes he asked too many questions, and even into his old age, he was one of those people that was always writing to the local newspaper, which would cause some considerable embarrassment to me and my sister. We pick up, you know, the local Northern Echo. That was Uncle Charlie yet again. You know, we didn't share his last name, but, um, there he was yet again in the letter section. Or he wrote, you know, terrible poetry, was quite funny poetry actually, but it was all a sending in something. He just kept active all the time, all the way through his life. And as a young man, he'd actually joined, um, one of the brigades that had gone to fight in the Spanish Civil War. He'd only been about 15 or 16. And, you know, people can read about this now because it was one of the anniversaries of those International Brigades that they weren't all Ernest Hemingway's and, you know, sort of famous writers and aristocrats and all, you know, kind of adventurers. They were often, you know, working class, uh, people who, um, didn't like the whole idea of the rise of fascism, you know, in that period in the 1930s, and wanted to show solidarity, just like Ukraine is, you know, today in many respects, a kind of mirror of the kind of reaction and the response that, uh, people had to the Spanish Civil War. And there was one of the brigades that was, uh, basically put together, one of the International Brigades up in Glasgow in Scotland. And they actually marched and walked all the way down through the Northeast, almost like the Pied Piper of Amlin or something, picking people up on their way. And Uncle Charlie joined in, went off to the Spanish Civil War. We used to think of his making all these stories up. You know, it's his kind of, uh, just a desire to do something. Maybe didn't last very long. In two weeks, he was captured and handed over because he was so young to the, you know, the British in Gibraltar. And then he was always getting himself into trouble by asking questions about why we're doing this. What, you know, what are people fighting for? You know, what. What is it that we're trying to, um, achieve here? And, of course, during the war with the convoys and the, you know, the logistics, uh, problem, we had an issue. You know, we had to, uh, somehow solve all these logistic issues in the Atlantic, in the Atlantic convoys. He'd previously been in the Mediterranean. His ship had been sunk there, and he'd been blown up by depth charges from the sinking ship. So he was one of these people who just never stopped. He never got, um, put off by anything. And when I would hear these stories, first of all, he was great at storytelling. And that's also important. Being able to tell a story, part of leadership and satisfying people's curiosity. But it was also just this sheer sense of determination and that just. He wanted to play a role, um, in some fashion in the big issues of the day. Not just kind of staying at home because he knew that that would affect the home front. He, um, had been born, um, in that kind of period between two wars and in the first war, so many members of his family had died. They joined the Durham M Light infantry or some of the other Regionally, uh, focused regiments and they'd all just died en masse. And he'd been very affected by that and thought that, you know, you had to basically stand up and try to actually do something to stave off the worst of times and participate. It wasn't jingoistic, it wasn't about kind of misplaced patriotism. It was just about that sort of sense of responsibility to you and to others and always asking a question about why is something happening and wanting to understand it. And that really did have a big impact on me. I mean, everyone in my family was always asking questions about, you know, what was happening, why was this happening, and trying to find a larger explanation and something that would make sense to them so that it would also motivate them to participate in somewhere in the things that were happening around them and to try to be more effective.

Speaker C: It's that inquisitive mind and trying to find out more and learn, constantly learn, which we try and encourage our junior soldiers and junior officers to do. Uh, and leadership is part of that. It's a never ending learning journey. I just want to sort of transition now from your childhood. You spent your career close to power, um, but also willing to speak hard truth to it. And I think that's where leadership becomes genuinely difficult. And you've worked across numerous administrations, um, that are dramatically different and have different leadership styles. Without focusing too much on the politics, what common characteristics did you observe in effective leaders at the highest levels? Noting that you've served with a few, to name a few, Obama, ah, President Trump, etc. So.

Speaker B: Well, look, the most effective leaders are those that bring everybody else along with them by having a compelling story. And there's a weird thing about Trump which, as, uh, most people who've ever heard me speak, now, I'm not a big fan, but he is very good at telling a story. Now perhaps it's not in a kind of a way that the linear narrative is all over the place. They call it the weave. And I do a bit of that myself, of course, weaving together all kinds of different strands. I think we all do. But this is certainly not one where you could actually sometimes follow where he's going. He doesn't always go back to where he started either, but he's very good at kind of creating an atmosphere, um, uh, kind of pulling people along. And when even critics of him will say, well, at least he takes some action or appears to take some action, and he's always out there and always speaking. And it's a flawed form of Leadership, because he always expects then everyone to always follow his lead, to not challenge him, to not rupture his narrative. And he's at the center. He's the hero of everything. So I mean, I would say that overall it's not the effective kind of leadership they'd want to see. And he's not setting a particularly good example, but he is a very effective storyteller. Um, uh, other people might call him a propagandist, a sloganeer, because he's just very good at, ah, finding the message that kind of gets across to people. He's channeling people's grievances very effectively. Uh, he's not always offering something positive apart from himself as the solution to every problem. But you have to accept that he is somebody who manages to capture people's attention and to give them a kind of a sense of purpose, at least in following him. The other more effective leaders, in my view, that I have kind of worked with have been those who've really listened and have also given you a chance to state your case. They might not agree with it at the end, but they've at least given you a chance to state your case. They've uh, shown that they've um, factored that in, but they've also modeled um, the kind of behavior that they would like to see you, um, also adopt. I mean, sort of in that leadership, they've gone an extra mile themselves. They've been willing to show that they've done their work, done their homework, or that they're also prepared to take tough choices and stand by them and take responsibility. And I mean, it may seem kind of strange because, you know, again, I mean, one can be very critical of some of the decisions that George W. Bush made. But I think that he in some respects was a bit more effective than Obama, who was very cerebral. And you know, I would actually, you know, say made some, you know, pretty good choices. Although he would agonize over them a lot, show a lot of his homework and do a lot of um, homework. But Bush was genuinely warm with people. He was genuinely listening. He would take a lot of time to kind of go through an issue. And um, you could tell he cared about people. He'd remember people's names, he knew things about them. There were all kinds of stories about him. No matter what person's background, was being supportive of people that he'd met at different times of his career. It turned out he was funding the medical care of a friend from um, school's child. Cause they couldn't afford it. And nobody, uh, even knew about this. And that person wasn't political. It wasn't somebody who, you know, was going to do any benefit for him. Uh, you know, there was all just these things that I found out by accident through someone else who, you know, was from a totally different political persuasion that, you know, George W. Uh, Bush would, you know, many times transcend partisan politics to do something that he thought was, you know, the right thing. I mean, you know, you may remember that he was the person who set up pepfar, which was the, you know, the massive global program for combating hiv. And it was something that he really stuck with, and it didn't really get him any, you know, claim or certainly any kudos back in, you know, the United States. And a lot of that was not particularly popular. He did it because he thought it was the right thing to do. Now, a lot of his other judgments, I would, you know, stand back and say, my God, I wouldn't have done that. And, you, uh, know, sometimes his faith in people was somewhat misplaced. But I just think that he actually, the people around him really admired him, and some of them, you know, felt a great, massive affection for him. You know, with Obama, it was very much a moral high ground that he, um, you know, had occupied and rightly so. Fantastic orator. Now there's somebody who was an extraordinary good speaker and communicator and people could listen to all day at a kind of a narrative level that was so much high. He inspired people, you know, if you remember, on all the stories about hope and change and you know, the way that he, um. A mellifulus. I can never say that word properly, but that's. That's really the, the whole way that he, that, that he spoke, he was captivating and spellbinding in a very, you know, obviously different way for, uh, from Trump, and in a way that George W. Bush wasn't. George W. Bush was so much better behind the scenes than he was, you know, when he was, you know, out there in public making all kinds of really strange linguistic, um, errors and things. My, actually my favorite, um, George Bush, uh, word is misunderstimate. He was a never misunderstimate Russia. And I was like, yes, that's actually right. I've never missed it. It's just brilliant. And he always talked about strategy rather than strategy. And it was just, you know, it was very endearing. I mean, obviously kind of somewhat problematic sometimes, but, yeah, it was just. There were obviously three very different, you know, people that I got a chance to, um, You Know, see, uh, up front, and a lot of lessons from that. And also, you know, people at different levels. I mean, there were people like H.R. mcMaster, um, who was, uh, National Security Advisor, um, when I first joined, you know, the Trump administration, um, great American, great soldier, great leader, cared a lot for everyone, laid out, very good communicator about what, you know, he wanted, uh, to do, and constantly touching base with everybody, you know, everybody felt like a great affection, you know, for him and, uh, working, you know, with him and for him, for example. But, I mean, I could, you know, I could go on about people like that who really modeled, you know, kind of great leadership and made it kind of clear to you that they would go the extra mile for you.

Speaker C: There's so much in there. The storytelling piece, whether it be Trump or he talked about, um, President Obama as the orator. We may want to come back to this in terms of the sdr, when we talk about the army the nation needs, the army the NATO wants, and the army, our soldiers deserve. Hope we got that narrative right, but we'll come back to that. And then you did touch on m. Conveniently the army definition of leadership, um, which is the character, knowledge and action to inspire. And you talked about President Barber inspiring. So perfect from that front, you sort of have touched on it. But I just want to dig a bit deeper into how do you and the people you've worked with distinguish between leaders who genuinely care and then leaders who simply perform? Connection. Well, the subtle difference. The genuine caring versus the connection, the simple connection, uh, performing connection.

Speaker B: Well, well, you're obviously right that some people are great performers. And, you know, we all know, you know, from. From life, um, you know, somebody who, um, you know, can go through all of the motions in, you know, a perfect and, um, you know, certainly admirable way. But it's all about that feeling connection, that feeling of genuine warmth. And that's what I said, that, you know, kind of. If I compared Obama with, um, George W. Bush, I sometimes did feel that Obama was actually performing more than he was feeling, whereas George W. Bush wasn't so great at the performance. But you got that feeling of genuine warmth from him. And, um, you don't get any of those things from Trump. He's always performing, but in a very superficial, you know, kind of way. And again, it's all about him. The feeling, a fellow feeling is for himself. He says, I'm fellow. The fellow who matters more than anyone else. Whereas Bush exuded that kind of sense of just genuine fellow feeling from others. And I think, you know, you get that in just the little things, the things in the way that people remember something about someone. Like, I'd be surprised that Bush would remember some little nugget of something about me or something that I'd said. And I think he remembered that, you know, so it wasn't just the, uh, you know, somebody's got, you know, kind of a note that it happens to be a birthday or, you know, you've got a dog and two kids or something on, you know, you lived there and that, and that they can repeat that to you or they kind of find some other fun fact that you can find out, a commonality. It's just nothing that they've actually genuinely shown an interest in you, and that may be in a particular difficult circumstance. And I mean, that is always extraordinarily important from the perspective of the army or any, um, high stakes, uh, environment where you've got to, at times, pull out all the stops from the form. You've got to trust that the person next to you will do that, because you know something about them and you know, something deeply about their personality that you know that they will always be, you know, there with you. And it's got to be. I mean, I mean, I know you do this all the time in the army and people train for that. And then, you know, in some circumstances, just that training and preparation and being part of a team is sufficient. But there will be some instances where you just need to know that you're connected to someone in a way that, um, you will act as one or, you know, kind of basically in synchrony.

Speaker C: It's essentially being authentic. Authenticity inspires trust and builds that team, and without it, it becomes very superficial. I think you hit the nail on the head when you talked about the little touches of whether it be remembering small facts, personal facts, but if you feel that warmth, that authenticity, then you're more likely to follow that particular leader and he or she is likely to inspire you.

Speaker B: Exactly, yeah. I mean, when we were working in really tough circumstances in the first Trump administration, it was a bit of a shit show, I should say not on a daily basis, but regular enough that it was, you know, pretty stressful. And I knew that, you know, a lot of people were traveling in long ways to come really early in the morning, and on the way to, uh, you know, the, uh, Old Executive Office Building, there was this really nice bakery. And everywhere on my way in, I would get some baked goods to bring in to make sure that people at least had something to eat. It's very British, isn't it? It's very north of England here, Come in and have some tea and cake. And, you know, I think everybody put on loads of pounds in that, you know, kind of time as well. And I always made sure that we had some, some tea. And I had, you know, the good old Keep Calm and Carry on poster up, rather than all the ubiquitous posters of Trump all over the place. I thought we had enough of that. And I wouldn't let people have the television on all the time. Just said, you know, come on, let's just focus on what we're trying to do. And we had regular meetings and, you know, touch, uh, times where I kind of encouraged people to tell me what they were worried about as well, and made them promise that nothing would go outside of those doors. We were extraordinary good. We didn't have any leaks, you know, from our, from our group because we said, look, we're all in here together. And we also had the benefit of having quite a few people who were detailed over from the Pentagon. And we had one guy from Delta Force, um, you know, who was, um, assigned to one of the groups we're working for. And, you know, they actually, you know, obviously modeled, you know, um, extremely, you know, great examples of leadership. And just remember, Roland, you know, this foxhole together here, and, you know, this is, you know, something where we're being tested and we have to hang together. And if we start, you know, slightly dj, we did have a few, you know, kind of cases of rivalries and some problems, and, you know, occasionally that did actually break, uh, out. It always caused a problem. And we were able to say to people, look, you know, as we said, you know, by not, you know, pulling tight together here as a team, we're all in this together. This is not, you know, kind of. I did get some criticism sometimes of not being hierarchical enough, you know, kind of with people, but I was wanting people to bring their best self, you know, to this. And if they were the right person to be dealing with an issue, they should be the person who's dealing with an issue, not, you know, trying to brief somebody else, you know, to deal with it in a sort of superficial, you know, hierarchical manner. I always kind of push to have the members of my directorate who were the experts on an issue to be the people briefing the national security adviser. I mean, we did try to keep everybody away from President Trump time because it always go badly. Although we had a couple of people that we would actually, you know, specifically select to go and talk to. Him because he responded better to them. One was the guy from Delta Force. The other guy was another, um, uh, uh, detail from the Pentagon as civilian, but who just, you know, looked exactly like he was out of central casting. And, um, both of them were incredibly competent, very good. And we just teed them up often to go in and, and do the briefing. Because it was also a kind of question about not letting your own ego get in the way of things, just to try to be as effective as possible and think like a team. And if, you know, you're not the right person to deliver a message, who is going to be the most effective messenger? And if it's the way they look, fine. If that's what it actually takes. Right. When you're in the military, if you're a scout, I was kind of. I suppose I approach life by being a scout, you know, kind of somebody who's out there, you know, kind of collecting information and, and, um, I suppose I've been that my entire life and I was weirdly in the Girl Guides, but it was just always kind of thinking out, I'm trying to find information, I'm trying to find out the best way to convey this and how I'm trying to head off problems. And that's, um, just to get the mission accomplished and to get the job done.

Speaker C: Yeah. Best person for the job. And it also sounds like Washington, uh, could do with a Greggs.

Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.

Speaker C: On a serious note, in your early days as an intelligent analyst and as an advisor, as he's spoken to President Trump, part of your role was often telling decision makers things they didn't want to hear. When we talked about choosing the right person to do that, you have experienced the three presidents we talked about. President Bush, President Obama. Ah. And President Trump. Been plenty of other leaders you've worked with. How do leaders create cultures where people have that psychological safety to speak honestly and openly if become receptive to uncomfortable truths?

Speaker B: I think you've actually first of all got to go across that this is part of preventing disaster, because, I mean, I can talk about so many instances where people have denied the truth. And we all know that, I mean, as historians, and I know that you do a lot of military history, Sanders, and many other places too, people are taught about why things go terribly wrong. Napoleon going to, um, you know, Russia in the middle of winter.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, now. And the weather forecasting that, you know, could have, um, you know, completely upended, uh, D Day, you know, for example, all this information that you, you know, that you need, you need to know the terrain. That's what I was talking about. Being a scout before, you need to know if there's going to be a problem. And if you create a culture where nobody dare tell you about that, then you're going to fail.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And, I mean, that's what we see in Ukraine. That's what we're seeing in Iran right now. Everybody knew that Iran would, um, close the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, it's been known since hardly time immemorial, but certainly for the last 40 years that any kind of, uh, action, uh, that, uh, went in the direction of travel that we're in now would lead to, you know, the choke point being closed. And people kept telling people over and over again. And I think, you know, in this kind of particular case, Trump didn't want to hear it. And the environment in which, you know, he was being able to be told it had been narrow it down to people who, you know, didn't want to. They, if they were giving him, you know, uh, information that he didn't want to hear. And, you know, we've heard that the Chairman of the Joint Chief stuff did lay it out, but they're doing it so that, you know, it kind of looks like a whole load of options in other ways. They're not kind of being forceful enough about it because he has constrained, uh, the ability for people to tell him things because he either doesn't want to hear it, doesn't believe that they've got anything to tell him. So, I mean, Trump is not a leader, let's just put it that way. He's somebody who, um, mirrors the kind of ideas of leaders, and he's kind of strutting around believing he's a leader, but it's more because he's got a caricature in his head of what leadership is. Now, Putin, um, has done exactly the same thing in the case of Ukraine. It was also because he constrained, uh, the amount of information that could come to him. He made a decision with just, uh, two or three people around him and didn't allow the information to come up that would have contradicted what he expected in Ukraine. And so I think as you make this case, you have to, to leaders make a case and just keep piling on. The cases of where incredible blunders have happened, uh, that in many respects were unnecessary or bad decisions have been made because you didn't allow that information to come forward. And I mean, the great tragedy of the United States right now is looking at the dni. So, you Know, I joined the dni, you know, relatively early on after it had been set up. It had been set up in the wake of 9, 11 because of all of the data points that were missed because of lack of coordination among all the intelligence agencies. Not saying that we all um, know that it would be very hard perhaps to head off uh, bin Laden's terrorist attack, but it might have been possible um, early on. Same with October 7th, um, and Hamas and Israel. People had actually listened to some of the people that actually had that intelligence, that information. And you know, uh, the formats there for um, them to bring that information forward were not necessarily there. And so, you know, in the aftermath, you think about this coordination body and you know, I have to say that the DNI has um, gone way beyond where it should have done in the last 25 years. It's become m. Moribund and it's uh, become duplicative and everything else. But now it's become so meaningless that you know, somebody from like a housing agency, uh, but has no intelligence background whatsoever, has been put in charge of it. And um, over the last um, several years it hasn't been producing any kind of um, information and intelligence. The CIA is in a slightly different category here. But that whole coordination body, that whole um, format which was supposed to bring up all of the bad news and aggregate it all and put it forward into the briefings has been broken down. And I think the United States is at ah, risk of catastrophic mistakes at this particular point because the leadership has not understood that they don't have all of the information and that they need these formats and they need to create a kind of atmosphere where people can bring things forward about potential problems. And I just hope to God that nobody replicates the same thing in the United Kingdom or anywhere else for that matter. Because the minute that you start to think you know everything or that none of this information is necessary and you get rid of all of the data and you kind of constrain people's ability to bring things forward. You punish them for it. You literally shoot the messenger, then you're done.

Speaker C: Yeah, and it comes back to that collective power and using experts rather than a single source of truth, whoever that may be. I just want to bring us to your. You described it as a really personal, difficult time, understandably when you were testifying before Congress during the impeachment inquiry and you were effectively speaking difficult truths publicly under immense scrutiny. Can you just describe, you know, firstly that moral clarity to provide the evidence what you believed was right, but also some of the leadership Lessons, some of the self reflection from after, uh, giving that evidence to the impeachment inquiry on where that came from and how that developed.

Speaker B: Well, it comes out of everything we've just been talking about, you know, because first of all, you know, I grew up in this environment where, as we all talked about everything was pretty difficult, but also why I saw people standing up all the time and doing quite difficult things. I also had this family history. It wasn't just my family history. It's history from the whole region, you know, of people, you know, going off, um, and, you know, and paying the ultimate sacrifice, uh, during wartime, in World War I and in World War II. And, you know, listening, I listened always to all of the stories about this. And I kept thinking about Uncle Charlie. I mean, for God's sake, the guy got back up and, you know, over and over again, the Spanish Civil War, the ship being sunk in the Mediterranean, literally being blown to the surface and depth charges and having to be rescued and then going off to the Arctic confines and the same thing, you know, happened there. And it was just. He kept on going. And I kept thinking to myself, well, nothing like, uh, happened to Uncle Charlie is going to happen to me here. I've just been asked to stand up and to speak here. I hadn't actually, I have to say, fully processed that millions of people will be watching worldwide. I didn't get to that leap, which is probably just as well. I just focused on the matter at hand. And the other thing is that this was also, I mean, deeply affecting the people that were my team. So, um, when Masha Yovanovitch, Maria Yovanovitch, the ambassador, um, to Ukraine had been sacked, and I knew all of the circumstances that I was so outraged because, you know, this was somebody who was a great American who, um, had served her country, made incredible sacrifices. You know, here's President Trump lambasting her and saying she's going to go through a lot. And she absolutely did. Her own president didn't even stand up for her and believed falsehoods about her because she was basically sacked on the basis of some, um, people badmouthing her basically to curry favor with Trump and the way that he was always just attacking people who had actually served him, were serving the country, I said, I can't just let all of, um, them basically be going through this without me being there to support and to tell what I know. So telling the truth isn't, uh, that difficult. I mean, a lot of people seem to think it's difficult, but obviously it's the only thing that can be done. And, um, you know, there's only one answer when you tell the truth, there's no prevaricating about it. And I didn't have the full picture when I first went into, um, the um, impeachment. And I have to say that I'm still in two minds as to whether he should have actually been impeached at that moment. There's no question about January 6th. But, you know, kind of he certainly should have been held to account for, you know, what was absolutely a misdemeanor in the way that he was trying to blackmail and extort President Zelensky. Even before the war had broken out, this was a country that was already in great peril. But, you know, the, the whole um, uh, set of conditions and circumstances around the phone call. I had left before it happened. I'd advised against a phone call, not because I thought this was going to happen, he was going to get started, but because I knew that Trump didn't really care, he didn't care about Ukraine and this couldn't be a productive call. And then, you know, what was happening around all of this with the, the whistleblower and you know, everything else, I was, you know, not aware until it all, you know, kind of break out into a public. And during, you know, the um, uh, before actually the actual impeachment that was televised, uh, over closed door hearings. And during that process I learned a lot more about what had been happening. And so, you know, kind of by the time being an analyst, I was trying to put everything together and now I suddenly had all this data points I didn't have at all. So by the time I got to the public event, I, for myself had realized how this had all played out. So that there'd been this parallel process which is all we see now in US Politics. It's all the parallel process, the people doing it for, you know, Trump's purposes or for their, um, own personal gain and being paid for it. And the corruption is just off the charts. But, you know, we'd actually had the state process and then the parallel process. And I hadn't understood exactly, you know, how this had played out until that moment. And that's, you know, kind of basically what you know, I commented on as well. And it was also in that moment where people were grandstanding. I think that this is the time in that, um, impeachment trial where the members of the Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, lost the plot, where they forgot who they were and that they were the representatives of the American People and that they were a co. Equal branch of government and that they were supposed to be holding the executive branch to account. They just forgot what they were doing. It was all a big political game. And people who saw that might remember that, you know, at one point, I got this grandstanding by one of the members. They just walked off, and I said, excuse me, can I say something? Because I was like, what? You know, and I'd already decided to myself, if I never work in this town again, that's fine. I'm. I'm already, you know, in my 50s. I've done more things than I could absolutely, positively, you know, ever have imagined. I mean, I've gone beyond what anybody would have said to me. You know, back at school when they said, you're a bright girl, you're a clever last, Fiona. You know, you can do a few things. Nobody could have envisaged that. So I'm good with this. You know, I can live with myself. And, you know, if I have to get other jobs. I've had so many jobs before, I can do anything. I literally thought that. I just thought, to hell with it. You know, this is. This is. This is just not right. So, uh, I did get, you know, the fire in my belly and got my back up, and I thought, okay, uh, I'm sorry. Not acceptable. Yeah, you know, this is just, you know, you're playing a game here. And, um, I didn't come here to play a game. And, okay, you know, do whatever you want, but I'm gonna hold these people to account. Good luck, Fiona. Get your job again. I thought they might not want me after this.

Speaker C: Well, I think you talk about a key sort of value of moral courage that we speak about in the army, and then you've touched on it again. But it's really important that a lot of the moral courage, or the moral courage to speak up in that moment and express the feelings you had stem from that, uh, bedrock of values and standards that then link back to your childhoods, which I think is really important. And we'. But I think it is something that the listeners, officers and soldiers alike, can really relate to. A practical example of values and standards and how in later life, it ended up allowing you to have the moral courage and the principle to speak up in that impeachment.

Speaker B: To look at our life in a very long. It's not just an arc, but it's just a very long, um, timeline, timeframe, and everything that you're doing is preparation. And, I mean, when you're in the army and you're in the military, you have incredible training and preparation. You have this opportunity to learn so much more about yourself and about the world and those contexts. But it's really, you know, how you live your life all the way through that becomes really important. And I realized that in that moment because I realized, you know, and I also told a story at the beginning with my, you know, opening remarks that people still refer back to. And that was conscious. It's because people were trying to pigeonhole me as some deep, um, state, you know, kind of bureaucrat, you know, you know, nothing about the world, standing up to this authentic, you know, kind of president who's a man of the people. And I thought, you know, expletives in my head, that, you know, because he's absolutely not a man of the people. I might not be a man, but I'm a person of the people. You know, I grew up in a very male dominated, you know, environment where, you know, people I deeply respect. And they were my role models. My dad, my granddad, my uncles, my godfather. These are my role models of good people, you know, who did things. They weren't, um, you know, they didn't think girls could do everything. My dad didn't think, you know, girls could play soccer, which is the football, which was always really annoying because he was really good at football. And he said, well, men have to have something is what he said eventually. Why can't I play? He said, because men have to have something. I was like, okay, okay, you know, fine, fine, you know, but it was just. But they never said you can't do anything. In fact, they all said, you can do this. And so here somebody saying, you can't do this. I'm going to tell a story about you that's not true, that we're going to depict you and everybody else as these somehow disloyal, subversive, deep state bureaucrats who know nothing. And I thought, none of this is true about none of the people I'd worked with. Uh, the men and women who had been in the US Military had been in Afghanistan and Iraq and Delta Force. And these were some of the bravest, smartest people I've ever met and had the privilege of working with, with all the people who are in the civil servants. I mean, many of them had come from Main Street America. They'd come from the equivalent of Northeast England and County Durham, and they just worked their way up. And I mean, there was, there was nobody with you know, the, uh. Yeah, I mean, yes. I mean, Trump was honing in on, you know, one of my colleagues, George Kendawara, Bow Tie and George Kent, you know, who had been, you know, the, um, Foreign service. He came from a long line of Americans of public service, from the military all the way around. So it was like seven generations of people, you know, serving America, you know, that's not for nothing either, but this whole idea that we were some kind of privileged caste that had been, you know, given all of these privileges, I mean, this was just absolute rubbish. And that made me want to kind of come out right at the very beginning and say, look, this is who I am, um, and this is who everybody else is. And to say that we're un American, we're not American, you know, okay, I've got this British accent, but I come from the same area as George Washington. And in fact, most founding fathers were, in fact, from Northern England and Scotland. And, you know, you kind of think about all of their heritage, and they came with that idea of, you know, the British and Scottish Enlightenment and humanism and all of the values that they had. Um, you know, basically learned, you know, they were British until the revolution in any case. Like, come on, you know, so it's like, um, you know, where are we going with all of this? So it's just that kind of feeling that, I mean, obviously I. I gave all of this in a very sober, you know, way. And, um, you know, kind of maintained, you know, all my composure, even though there was lots of thoughts going on around me. And that's also preparation and training, you know, for being calm under fire. And I have to, you know, give a lot of credit to, you know, colleagues who went through, you know, with me beforehand, giving me, you know, some tips that I've talked about before to make sure that my teeth didn't chatter by being cold, by wearing thick tights, you know, because I wouldn't be, you know, kind of freezing, uh, making sure my. My underwear on, you know, so I'd be warm. You know, it's kind of like all of this, you know, sort of silly things that seems absurd, but, you know, um, pressing the balls of your feet into the floor so you don't jiggle your legs up and down, you know, keeping, you know, your gaze looking at a point, you know, not looking distracted, all that. It's literally everything that you get taught as well. The right kit, you know, the. The. The. The right approach to things, because it all matters in that moment. And the absurdity of having my clothes picked so I look the part because, um, one of the people working with the law firm said, um, you'll end up in the style section of the Washington Post. I said that's ridiculous. I mean I'm supposed to be here to testify. And indeed we did. And we were described as refreshingly dull.

Speaker C: Is that a compliment or not a compliment?

Speaker B: I think it was because we weren't supposed to get in the way. I mean it's like you've got to look the part, right? I mean in the military you've got, I mean if you're on parade and everything else, not supposed to stand out, you're not supposed to be there, you know, kind of wearing your own version of the uniform and you know, doing your own version of the march or something like this. I mean you're supposed to kind. Because you're trying to convey, you know, the information. And they said you don't want to get in the way of the information, uh, when it gets back to that being the right kind of messenger in that moment for the right kind of message and being effective in getting that across.

Speaker C: I'm conscious of time, but I cannot resist this question. Given you were the co author of the Strategic Defense Review, you've spoken repeatedly about the dangers of complacency in defense and national security. And with. Regarding this Strategic Defense Review, use the phrase corrosive complacency.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's uh. George Robertson did. Yes, yes he did, yes.

Speaker C: Sorry, George Robertson

Speaker B: kind of turn there.

Speaker A: My error.

Speaker C: But why is complacency a uh, dangerous leadership failure? And then I'll link another one conscious of time. What leadership does defence need to direction does defence now need to take to implement the Strategic Defence Review? So two parts. The complacency. Why is that such a dangerous leadership failure? And what leadership does the fence now need to show to implement the Strategic Defence Review?

Speaker B: No, those are really um, great uh, questions. And I mean just, it's like, you know, why corrosive complacency as well? Because when what um, George Robertson was trying to get across, Lord Robertson was, you know, that you're kind of eroding, corroding trust and faith and um, um, people have expectations here that some action is going to be taken on the basis of, you know, a review that um, it wasn't very costly in terms of uh, you know, the monetary value, um, that was um, you know, applied to it. We did this on a shoestring. But it was incredibly costly in terms of people's time, their dedication, their seriousness of purpose and their expectations. Because people had a lot riding on this review. I mean people Saying, why are we doing this? We do, you know, a review back in 2021. Well, because the world had changed. And the whole point of this review was it was trying to meet a moment, a moment that was becoming incredibly dangerous and was getting, you know, more and more dangerous as we went through it. You'd have the war in, uh, Ukraine, uh, uh, in 2022. That was becoming a system changing, you know, world changing war. And uh, you had already signs that the United States was going to go in a different direction during the presidential campaign. Even if Kamala Harris had been elected as president, the United States would not have been taking the lead. I mean, if you go back to President Obama, you'll remember that he talked about leading from behind when it came to European security and other issues that the United States was already saying for a long time, come on here, here you are, this is yours. And there was, uh, the Wales summit for NATO in 2014, which had made it very clear that there was an expectation by the United states that the UK and everybody else would step it up. It was 2% of GDP. We were already hearing 3%, 3.5%, 5%. I was making the joke about NATO was going to be Article 5 is going to be Article 5% and that you wouldn't. And I turned out to be correct because I knew what Trump, um, was thinking, that he did not want to pay for NATO, he wanted Europe to pay for it. He thought that the United States should be getting compensated and paid back for everything that, um, he had personally given. I mean, he always thinks of himself as the manifestation of the United States and he was very hostile to the whole idea of NATO. So we knew things were changing. And so that whole idea of complacency, we're always saying, time is not on our side. We should have been doing this yesterday. And we knew, um, unfortunately that there would be more demands, more burdens placed on, um, the UK defence budget. And what we were trying to do, um, was also get across that you could do more with the less that you have. And it also wasn't a question of just the military, just the army, just the navy, just the air force or the, you know, the, the, the, the nuclear, um, um, program and you know, um, uh, all of the, um, you know, the people who uh, serve for the continuous, uh, sea, uh, deterrence. It was also about how the country's mindset needed to change. One of the biggest things that we emphasized, uh, was having a national conversation about the seriousness of predicament that the UK and Everywhere else was in, and we just haven't had that. And that's another thing of the complacency. We were not out there laying out the threats and how the threat landscape was changing and the ways that we might have to expect having to adjust to this. So it was a kind of a question about the defense reform itself and everyone pulling together with the single defense, uh, headquarters as a single unified, uh, force. It was getting the right kind of technology. And we see in the battlefields in Ukraine all the time. When we were working on the report, things were changing dramatically in the review. We had also all these submissions, uh, from people from the outside. 8,000 people took the time, uh, to write in with ideas. Allies, partners weighed in as well. We had citizens assemblies of people who visited bases and came back into focus groups. We had polling. There was a lot of work, hundreds of people involved in the actual review workshops. Uh, there was three lead reviewers and there were six others. This was a big effort, and people came up. We looked at defense medicine. We looked at education and training. We looked at, um, everything that we might need on the intelligence and technical and every different front do. We tried to distill all of this. And then it kind of went ka. Chunk. Um, Chunk, chunk. You know, it was kind of like, great. It's like having, you know, some kind of. I mean, I'm sure you have the sort of the battlefield where the engine just breaks down immediately, you know, with a little piece of equipment, which I'm sure people are going, yes. You know, we have this all the time. It just broke down across Whitehall. And it was basically because everybody was, instead of having a singular sense of purpose, was thinking that they had the time to tinker with this. That's kind of where the controversy was coming from. And it wasn't clear where the bold action should be. And I think that that's been a problem that I have to say overall with, um, the current British government, which I feel very sad about, because I have to say, as a shout out to John Healy and the Ministry of Defense. I thought that these were just consummate professionals and all of, uh, the chiefs who were very serious about this and saw the problems were willing to address them. Sure, there were all kinds of different service rivalries and what we want this and we want that and kind of different views about what we should emphasize. But ultimately everybody was on board with the fact that the picture for British defense, the defense of the realm, defense of society, had changed dramatically and that a lot of threats were to the homeland it wasn't just we were going to be in expeditionary forces in Afghanistan, Iraq or wherever that we had a great deal of risk from the technological changes. And we see all of that. We see it in Ukraine, we see it in the Gulf. We know what the threats are. We see Russian ships in, uh, the Arctic and the North Atlantic and, uh, the surveillance of undersea cables and gas pipelines. We see what damage drones can do. We know about acts of sabotage. The UK has already had all kinds of, uh, activities from the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko to the Skripal, uh, father and daughter being poisoned with polonium in Salisbury. And the huge impact that that had. There's a lot been happening. And so the idea that we can just review this to death, um, is not an appropriate one. We've been waiting for legislation. You've got readiness and preparedness. We talked about cadets and reserves and we talked about how we needed a whole, whole of society approach. And that's kind of where we've been failing because I think defense and the, uh, servicemen and women have been doing their part. And you continue with training and preparation, but it's like the rest of the country's not doing its bit. And, uh, as we pointed out in the Strategic Defensive view in this current day and age, and you look at Ukraine and you think about the man in Holden making adjustments to surplus. This, um, military equipment is sent to Ukraine. Your supply lines are going to be along your lines of support are going to be long and you need all hands on deck. And the kinds of things that we're likely to see as in terms of attacks on the British homeland are going to affect society. And while the military is actually doing what they need to do, we need to get everybody else prepared to thinking about emergency preparedness and readiness. Um, we've got all of those skills in the uk. We've got loads of people out there doing this kind of thing, but we don't have the organizational frameworks for it. And that has to be mandated. It has to be set at the top. And this is kind of basically what George is doing. And you can have every, um, hearing in the House of Lords or Parliamentary committees. And we've been doing all of this. You can make every speech. I gave a speech in April, the Imperial War Museum, laying this out. We've got to do something. You know, one of the people that, you know, we interviewed for the, um, um, the report said it somewhat crudely. You know, don't tell us how shite we are, just tell us what we can do you know, it's just, come on, what can we be doing here? And I think there's just that great frustration about lack of action. And getting back to my leadership point about Trump. He always looks like he's doing something because he is. He's always doing something we'd actually wish he wouldn't. You know, there's lots of things we wish he would stop doing and, um, some things he would start doing. But he gives that sense of action in a way that other leaders have not. And I think that that is actually something to learn as well. I mean, you don't have to make bold, stupid action, but to, uh, actually be seen to be taking action, not just talking about and having another review. I mean, there were just so many reviews. And you can't just admire the problem to death because eventually you're going to have to do something. And that was why George really intervened in April.

Speaker C: And it's quite hard to do without a defence investment plan or shortly coming.

Speaker B: Yes, exactly. I know that it's, uh, coming. And as I said, I feel very frustrated on the part of the. Of, uh, John Healy and, you know, for other people that we work with, because I feel that they're being really shortchanged.

Speaker C: Yeah. And then the final part that we haven't got time to go into, um, is that connection, that narrative piece of the whole society approach, whether that really is something that worries people, uh, on the high streets of Britain today.

Speaker B: Well, it does, because. And then actually, it's worth saying it just very quickly, because we go back to what I said at the very beginning about narratives and telling stories. Stories. We have a vacuum and it's been filled by, you know, jingoistic, false, patriotic, performative, um, action and words by people who, thinking about themselves, Trump, like, are not at all thinking about Britain, because if they were, they wouldn't be doing the things that they're doing. They wouldn't be creating division, they wouldn't be kind of pitting one person against another. They would actually be trying to bring everyone together with a story that everyone can take part in for the good

Speaker C: of the country as well.

Speaker B: It's what we had In World War I, we had it in World War II. Ah. A war is a disciplining, um, event. And we should be disciplined right now because there is a world at war out there that we're getting embroiled in. And we need to pull everyone together and have a narrative that is inclusive for as many people as you possibly can to give them a kind of sense of why we're all in this together.

Speaker C: We're going to make you late. It's a tradition of the show to finish on some quick fire questions. One or two words. What's the most underrated leadership quality?

Speaker B: Kindness.

Speaker C: Who most influenced your leadership thinking? Who most influenced your leadership thinking?

Speaker B: My dad.

Speaker C: Great. And then finally, what book should every military leader read?

Speaker B: Oh, that's a tough one. Oh, that really is a tough one.

Speaker C: We'll let you off because we're going

Speaker B: to make you let Alice in Wonderland. Because, I mean, it's, um. I mean, for me, it was what kept me going through, um, the craziness of, um, um, Trump. Alison. Wonderland is my favorite book. Uh, and I mean it's sort of berserk. It's all a dream, but it's just the absurdity of life and realizing that you've got to keep your head about you and your wits about you when everybody else is going insane. And it is surreal. And I mean, I literally felt that I was in an episode of one of the parts of Alice in Wonderland while I was in the Trump White House. And it was just that absurdity. Being able to stand back. Back from it. That was kind of really important for me. And, you know, realizing that sometimes life is much, um, stranger than fiction.

Speaker C: Thank you so much for your time. We could have continued the conversation. I've only got through half the questions. Sorry to make you late for your next meeting and enjoy the Northeast, uh, next time you travel back.

Speaker B: Yeah, and it's a real pleasure and I hope that actually I can, you know, come in person sometime to Santos. I mean, I did come, uh, there a few points in the 1990s when Crystal Donnelly and, you know, the team were doing all of the research on, um, uh, you know, this. What was then the Soviet Union and uh, you know, kind of, uh, the aftermath and into Russia. And I always had a great experience.

Speaker C: Well, we would love to invite you to our conference, the annual Cal conference, but I'll speak to your team. It's 19th of November and it's all about resilience and as a whole society approach. So if you could speak on the panel, that'd be amazing. But we'll pick it up with the team.

Speaker B: Well, thanks.

Speaker C: So thank you so much.

Speaker A: Today's conversation with Dr. Fiona Hill has covered a range of leadership lessons hard earned from the Coal House to the White House. Dr. Hill doesn't downplay, um, the value of softer skills. Nurture developing talent around you, be receptive to challenge and listen to your team's quieter voices. But Dr. Hill also discussed the practical implications of these leadership lessons, particularly vital for service personnel, given her role authoring the Strategic Defence Review. Think big, be aware, and don't be afraid of bold action. But in spite of all the preparedness these leadership lessons can give you, life is often much stranger than fiction, Fiona Hill says. Take the time to acknowledge the absurdity, step back and have a thinking. It looks like Condor moments aren't only useful during section attacks.