Overcoming Setbacks to Achieve Dreams with Military Commander Justin Reuter | Episode 6

In this episode of the Bouncebackability Podcast with Simon and Rusty, we welcome an incredible guest – a senior defense consultant and Tornado F3 fighter pilot, Justin Reuter. Drawing on his own personal journey as a military weapons instructor (think the UK’s equivalent of ‘Top Gun’) and Commander of the UK Air Forces in the Middle East, Justin shares his insights on how civilians can adopt military techniques to aid bounce back from setbacks and develop resilience within their organisations and teams.

He talks to us about the importance of mentors and how brutal honesty from all ranks in his team have benefited his own growth; how he has applied the concept of funnels and delegation to optimise leadership roles of corporates across the UK, and the effect environment can have on the outlook of your team. 

We also dive into the military's approach to planning, debriefing, and reassessment, and how businesses can incorporate these strategies to become more productive and resilient. Justin's wealth of knowledge and practical examples provide invaluable lessons for leaders in any field. Get ready to gain valuable insights on building resilience and creating a culture of challenge within your teams. Let's dive in!

In this episode:

[00:03:18] Resilience - Overcoming setbacks to achieve dreams.

[00:08:14] Military training methods – building strong teams and the importance of trust between team members.

[00:18:25] Maintaining composure in face of challenges – the complexities of managing the Afghanistan base. 

[00:38:09] Justin's lessons on delegation, broadening horizons and the impact of good leaders.

You can connect with Justin here:

LinkedIn:

Justin Reuter | LinkedIn

Please like, subscribe or follow, so you're notified of any new episodes coming up, and if you're keen to reach Rusty or Simon with any suggestions, feedback or comments, you can contact them via the show's LinkedIn page here: 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-bouncebackability-podcast/

Transcript

Simon Ursell [00:00:00]:

Okay, welcome to Bounce back ability. Coming up, we've got Justin Reuter very excited about this one. What an absolutely unbelievable career this guy's had.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:00:22]:

Yeah, like last commander of Top Gun, which I think me and you are both going to yeah, pretty excited about, awkwardly excited about in front of him.

Simon Ursell [00:00:31]:

I've got the music in my head.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:00:33]:

I'm hoping you don't ask what his call sign was. That would be really embarrassing.

Simon Ursell [00:00:36]:

I bet you ask him what his call sign was.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:00:39]:

So no, really looking forward to it. I guess I'm just curious. Lots of people in the military spent a bit of time around them and loads we can learn. And I guess it's the ultimate, isn't it? Like people who actually go into war and it is the ultimate sacrifice.

Justin Reuter [00:00:55]:

Yeah.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:00:56]:

Just curious as to how they prepare for that stuff so that hopefully they don't have to bounce back as much as they would.

Simon Ursell [00:01:03]:

Well, yeah, I mean, they've got to be good at bouncing back, haven't you? Kind of. You're going to have setbacks. So just fascinated to see somebody as well experienced in some seriously difficult times as Justin, how he copes, that how he bouncing back. So let's get on with the pod.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:01:24]:

Great. Welcome everyone. Excited to be here with Simon cheese and pickle sandwich and Justin Reuter beef ragu.

Simon Ursell [00:01:33]:

Justin Reuter, we were to his friends.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:01:36]:

As usual, we were testing the microphones. This time we've got to say our favorite foods into it.

Simon Ursell [00:01:41]:

I can't even remember yours, Rusty.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:01:43]:

Carbonara.

Simon Ursell [00:01:45]:

Okay.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:01:46]:

That's why awesome to have on justin Reuter. Really excited about this chat. Retired air vice marshal, last commander of Bastion airfields, ran Top gun for the UK. So I think we're going to really have a great opportunity to delve into what bouncing back ability might mean for Reitz in his world. And yeah, let's get it on.

Simon Ursell [00:02:10]:

So thanks for coming on Reitz. Justin, what would you say is the military equivalent of bounce back Ability then?

Justin Reuter [00:02:18]:

Hi, Simon. Hi, Rusty. So a couple of thoughts. I mean, at the big level, you've got how resilient can an organization, or in fact a nation be? So you've got an idea that you can build in a degree of resilience to cope with shock, to be able to recover from it and be able to respond. And that's really important in a military sense because when you look to smaller parts of the organization, it's how do you recover from what the enemy is trying to do and then impose your will upon the enemy and then you take it down to a personal level. And I think it's the ability to prepare yourself and I think preparation is really important to prepare yourself for unexpected or even expected shock, being able to recover from that and respond in a way which is stronger, so you can achieve what you want to do.

Simon Ursell [00:03:03]:

Wow. Yeah, that's pretty cool. So have you got any stories around that as stuff that you've experienced, where you feel like either you have bounced back or you haven't bounced back and maybe would have done things differently?

Justin Reuter [00:03:18]:

So Rust has introduced some of the cooler things that I did later on in my career as a qualified weapons instructor. So UK equipment at Top Gun, at Bastion in the Middle East, where I was the UK Commander of the Air Forces for a year. But I'm going to start with a really, really basic one, because resilience or bounce back ability is different at every stage of your life. It's different when you're a young kid, it's different when you've got greater experiences, it's different when you're in different conditions, when you're under different sorts of stresses, when your home life's different, when your work life's different. But I'll give you a really simple one. I was going through initial officer training, I was 18 years old. All I'd ever wanted to do since I was nine was join the Air Force and fly jets for the military. And that was a dream, and I got to do that dream. But if it wasn't for my dad when I was going through training, then I wouldn't have got to do that because a really simple thing happened. It turned out I was a bit rubbish because I was 18 and didn't really know what I was doing, and I had to go and repeat twelve weeks of the training again. And as I started the repeat of that twelve weeks of training, I got a freakish injury. I basically slipped and I hurt my back, I jarred my back and it meant that I couldn't do the next week of the training, so they put me back another twelve weeks and I said, that's it, I can't cope with that, because when you're 18 years old, another twelve weeks is a disaster. It was unfair, it wasn't my fault. I could have been back training within a few days. So I rang up my dad and I said, I'm quitting, I'm going home. And he gave me the very best bit of advice at that time. He turned round and he said, this is going to seem like the worst and the hardest thing that you've ever done, but trust me, it won't be. There'll be much bigger things to come. And you'll look back on this and you'll barely remember it, or you'll probably laugh about it. And after that brief conversation with my dad, I realized that I still had to achieve my dream, that this was a tiny little setback. And I went back, got on with my training, and actually, the only thing he was wrong about is that I do think about it. I think about it a lot and go, do you know what? It seems like it's a massive thing at the time, but it's never as bad as you think it's going to be. It's never as bad as it actually feels right at that moment in time. You just got to find a way of getting around it and through it. So simple and basic story is you've got to be able to get up again even if the knocks seem really hard because you'll look back and go, do you know what? That wasn't all that difficult.

Simon Ursell [00:05:33]:

Your dad sounds like a really cool guy. The sort of resilience, the bounce back ability, effect of mentors and people around you, I guess in the military, your dad, those kinds of things. I mean, I've certainly experienced setbacks where somebody's helped me and I think the environment, I mean, Rusty, we've talked to some cool people on this pod, environment seems to be a real big deal. Would you say you look back at your dad, you look back at your military career, the people around you, how profound has their effect been on you and your resilience?

Justin Reuter [00:06:11]:

So the people's pretty much everything in this. So at 18 when you're going through training and you've got nothing to fall back on, you fall back on your family. You then build a team of people who you trust. And you're able to do that because especially in the military, the military is about teams. You never achieve anything as an individual. Even the pinnacle of so called individualism, being a fighter pilot and I was a navigator, so a two seat aircraft in the backseat I was sat. But fighter pilots, pinnacle of individuality. Well, there are very few moments when a fighter pilot is acting individually. He's part of a team, he's put there by a team, he's interacting with a massive team. So actually a team of talented people is hugely important. And then when you get more senior later on, you fall back upon people who you've worked with, served under, been impressed with, and sometimes your subordinates, somebody who you really trust, somebody you form a relationship with, people around you in the environment. Massively important.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:07:13]:

And I'm really fighting the urge to talk about Top Gun because obviously I've.

Simon Ursell [00:07:18]:

Got the music going out of my head.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:07:20]:

Just a couple of things I probably wanted to build on. And then a question I'd love to ask one is a guy was speaking to me the other day and he just said like, you'll just have great humblings in life and you'll learn from them and they're different at different kind of seasons of your life, aren't they? So that might have been a great humbling. It sounds like you learned a lot from it. The next one and his analogy was your personal board of directors, kirk spoke about your square squad. So who are the people around you that help you respond in those kind of challenging times and I guess because know, it's contextual, it's seasonal in your life. It's also like it's about the response and the thing that I was most interested in because you would be significant. I mean, you've packed a shirt in your bag. You're really organized, but the preparation part so you kind of said the word preparation. But tell me more. Talk to me about what that might look like.

Justin Reuter [00:08:14]:

So I'll start with training because what the military gives you is training. So first of all, it tries to put you into a mold, and it does it deliberately because you got to be able to fit in, because you got to be able to pull in the same direction. But then what that does is when you expand and when you learn more, you realize that you work well in a team and you can work as part of a team. Then when you become quite senior. So when you're a senior commander and I was fortunate enough to command in some quite senior positions, you realize that you need a team of people. And that team in the movies, you get to go out and choose them. You go and hand pick your people. Reality is no, you get who you're given. You get who's available at the time. So what you've got to be able to do is to form and forge that team, but also realize that if you're at the top of it, if you happen to be the leader there, you've got to pick people out of that you can trust. So the stupid example I would give would be when Roman generals were awarded a triumph and they got to parade through Rome because they were incredibly successful. They would pay an employee, a slave sometimes, to whisper in their ear that they were humble, that they were not a god, that they were a mere person. So what you've got to be able to do what I had to do because it's very personal, is to find somebody I could trust and relax and unwind with. So when I was out in the Middle East for a year in command, loneliness of command, I had a staff officer who worked for me who was absolutely awesome. She was absolutely, totally brilliant. Great sense of humor. First time I met her, she came in and she had a handful of fruit, and she said, oh, sorry, sir. I would shake your hand, but I've got my hands full of plums, and we both fell about laughing. And I realized she's somebody I could actually really trust and have a laugh with. And on one occasion, I'd just come off a video call with my headquarters, and as usual, your headquarters is definitely full of assholes. They don't understand how difficult it is. And I was so furious with the response I was given, I kicked a chair across the room in my office. I was on my own in my office, and the door opened, staff officer came in and she said, oh, hello, sir, everything all right? Oh, have you kicked your chair over? And I said yes, I have. And she just sniggered in my face and walked out. Now, she was incredibly junior, but the act of doing that made me realize, because we could trust each other, that I was humble and stupid in the moment and I needed to get it out of my system. And actually having a laugh about it enabled me to get over that within seconds and then move on. So we talk about people around you. You got to have people who can be honest to you and that really helps you.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:10:42]:

Yeah, just to pick up on one word, there like, just loneliness. So there'll be people listening who are leaders in their organization or their team. And that's my sense that as people get promoted upwards, it often feels a bit more lonely. And actually, you have got to go and find people who will be honest with you, who will give you feedback, who will help support you when you're bouncing back.

Justin Reuter [00:11:02]:

Yeah. And I think some people don't like that, but then I think that they draw within themselves and I think they become less effective. They lose touch with what made them really good and got them to that position. I think if you're able to keep a degree of vulnerability and openness with people who you can trust, people who are around you, people who understand what you're doing and trying to do, but can be really honest and direct and go, don't do that, that's a really stupid thing. Do you know what? And also to come up to you and go, you're right, because that helps too.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:11:33]:

Who does that for you, Simon? I'm just going to throw that question at you.

Simon Ursell [00:11:37]:

Well, you're supposed to do that sometimes, Rusty, and which you do do occasionally. I've got a few people around me, so I've actually used Justin as a mentor for a bit. He was really great at that. Really appreciate that. Justin, there's still some stuff that you've said to me that I've taken away and I use for myself and with others. You talked to me once about funnels. I don't know if you remember this, but it's something I've really taken on and has been massively helpful for me, where I was really struggling in a leadership role, running my business. I didn't understand why some people weren't taking stuff on. I was trying to get involved in everything, every decision. And he talked to me about delegation and how if I was the cause of us not being able to grow and not developing as a business, because I was trying to take everything on and trying to do everything myself. And actually, you described me as a funnel and everything had to come through me, which meant it was all building up behind me because I couldn't do it all and overflowing. And that analogy has been really powerful for me. I've taken that away. I've talked to lots of other leaders about that. So I think mentors around you is super, super important. I think if you don't have honest people around you, you're definitely not going to be that resilient because you can't take it all on yourself. But also I learned a lot about delegation from you and I think that's something I guess you're probably pretty good at modestly. You probably wouldn't say that, but I'm sure you are really good at that. Is that something that the military chains you in? Or are there people in the military who are bad at that, good at that?

Justin Reuter [00:13:20]:

I guess so, like all organizations, there are people who are good at it, really good at it, and there are people who are not very good at it. So our doctrine in the military is based on a thing called Mission Command, which I've spoken to you about before.

Simon Ursell [00:13:32]:

Capture the hill.

Justin Reuter [00:13:33]:

Yeah. Don't tell people how to do it. Tell people what you want to achieve and the experts will decide how they're best going to do it. And you see that sort of leadership in sport. You see it definitely in the military. But that doesn't mean the military is really good at it. It means the military has to keep working on it. And so I think delegation is something you really have to keep working at. So one of the things we talked about when we talked about funnels or choke points is only do what only you can do. So if you're the leader of the organization and there are things that only can be decided by you. And by the way, that's a short list if you're a leader of an.

Simon Ursell [00:14:05]:

Organization and you should work really hard to get rid of anything that you notice that is like that, shouldn't you?

Justin Reuter [00:14:11]:

Absolutely. Anything you can delegate. You should delegate until it hurts, delegate until it's really uncomfortable, then delegate again. But that delegation has to come with empowerment. So if you say, well, I don't have to do this myself, but people are too scared to do it because they don't feel it's been delegated, that's because probably not, they haven't been empowered. So delegation comes through empowerment, empowerment comes through trust, communication. But it's difficult to do. And I don't think the military is always good at it. In fact, when the military is not on operations and is running from its home bases as part of a department, Ministry of Defense, then I think the military is just like any hierarchical, bureaucratic organization. It almost funnels itself into I can't make that decision, have to elevate that one upwards, which is terrible. When we're on operations, mainly it's different.

Simon Ursell [00:14:59]:

Why is that?

Justin Reuter [00:15:01]:

Because it becomes about the imperative of life and death, whether you are protecting your lives or the lives of the people you've been sent to protect or taking other people's lives. It gets very real when it's about life and death. And so suddenly you act in the way that you should do, but if you haven't practiced it and trained it and you're having to tell yourself to do that, that's quite difficult to do, I guess.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:15:26]:

You are in the ultimate theater, really, aren't you? So we're talking about business and sport, where actually there might be a chance to bounce back, but you're living in a world of life and death, quite frankly. So when you were talking about preparation, I started going like, what would that look like? Is that like worst case scenario? What if this happens? We play out scenarios. When we get fresh information, we iterate so that hopefully we don't need to bounce back. Is that like how much time, effort, mental energy goes into that stuff to.

Justin Reuter [00:15:56]:

Mean that we're less likely to have those mean? You said you were dying to talk about top guns. We'll talk about a little bit the.

Simon Ursell [00:16:04]:

What was your call?

Justin Reuter [00:16:06]:

Horseman.

Simon Ursell [00:16:07]:

Horseman?

Justin Reuter [00:16:07]:

As in the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Simon Ursell [00:16:09]:

Oh, wow. Okay.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:16:11]:

Simon, what would your call sign be think?

Simon Ursell [00:16:14]:

I don't know.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:16:15]:

Pickle, sandwich?

Simon Ursell [00:16:15]:

Clown.

Justin Reuter [00:16:19]:

So we used to talk about preparation done at naught knots and one G-I-E. When you're sitting on the ground going nowhere and you're not pulling G, it's a lot easier to think about something than when you're doing 600 knots and pulling six or seven G because your brain disappears. I mean, there's the physical aspect of it where quite simply, there's less oxygen going to your brain and you're having to fight to keep it there, to keep conscious. But there's also it's so damn complicated when you're trying to do that. So the more thinking you can do, the better. So when we're talking about bounce back ability, one of the great things about the military is you've got a huge training thing to fall back on. You're prepared for it, and all of your training is about, what if this goes wrong? What if that goes wrong? You spend more time thinking about what might go wrong. So there's a great opportunity to misquote loads of people in this. So I'm going to start with one. So General Eisenhower, he said that he didn't find the plan very important or useful at all, but the planning was everything was in the planning. So the planning is really important. The military over plan, arguably, but they plan massively. Why? Well, because you think through all of the different options. So you train hard and you fight easy. So when it comes and inevitably the enemy do something you're not expecting or something goes wrong, because it always goes wrong. Because the weather's shit, the aeroplane doesn't work, somebody doesn't turn up, somebody shoots down the thing that you don't want shot down, the fuel is contaminated, whatever it might be, all these things, whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. So if you're prepared for it, then you've got options to act. And suddenly it's not the disaster that shuts everything down, it's the okay. All right.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:18:06]:

Have you got, like, a great example of some of that planning that actually then the reality was this is like I would talk about thinking slow to think fast, but like those where you've actually spent time at zero knots and one G and actually it's played out and you've gone, oh, thank God we did that bit.

Justin Reuter [00:18:25]:

Yeah. Pretty much every mission I flew on, the weapons instructors course, the Top Gun course was like that because we did loads of thinking, talking and planning. And then each brief you discuss the so what's the what ifs we call what ifs? You go through the what ifs all the time? What if this, what if that? What if this? So I think every mission was like that, but I think that there was another really useful thing that I got left behind by a previous commander. So when I took over Bastion in 2014, sebastian was the biggest UK base in Afghanistan. When I arrived, it was UK, US and an Afghan base, about 30,000 people, so the size of a small town. And I ran the airfield, which is about the size of Heathrow, and at the time was the fifth busiest UK run airfield in the world. So you had Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Stanstead, Bastion. But the complexity of Bastion was that it wasn't just airliners taking on and off. There were fastjet fixed wing, there were airliners contractors, afghan helicopters, special Forces helicopters, British helicopters, American helicopters, seven or eight different times of uncrewed air vehicle, three to 400 movements a day on three parallel runways, 10,000ft long on a perimeter which was about 25 miles wide, or, sorry, 25 miles in Circumference that got rocketed and mortared. I mean, we didn't have to worry about car parking, but security was an issue. And I ran that airfield with a team of 120 people, which is significantly less than Stansted was managing with, but as I say, we didn't have car parking. But the guy I took over from Nick, I bet you were way more sarcasm. I've just been through Stanstead, so I can't criticize that much. In fact, yeah, we were well organized in comparison. But the guy who I took over from, I was going to say office, but let's not picture an office. It's a plywood cabin behind a blast wall to to prevent damage from getting rocketed. And there was something pinned to the wall. And it was a picture of I don't know what sort of dog it was, but it looked like it had a wicked grin on its face, standing at the bottom or sitting at the bottom of a set of stairs. And it just said, good morning. There's a shit in the hallway. And that kind of summed up what was about to happen for the next five months was that you walk into work and somebody would go, you'll never believe what's just happened. It's like, Jesus. And so what you would do is you take a bit of a step back each time. And I think I learned from that. Know, my second terrible misquote or butchering of somebody else's, know a bit of Roger Kiplin was triumph and disaster and treat them both the same. So nothing is ever quite as bad as you think it is, and nothing's ever quite as good as you think it is. So if you're able just to pause for a second and go, oh, that happened, did it? Okay. And then not show the emotion for a second, even if you then go into a small dark space afterwards and scream to yourself and go, how? What? Why?

Simon Ursell [00:21:21]:

Sounds healthy.

Justin Reuter [00:21:23]:

But I think I think being able to take that moment and then form a team of people around you I e. The people you've got available and go, right, how are we going to fix this? Who's got a really good idea for how to make this less terrible than it sounds?

Rusty Earnshaw [00:21:38]:

You said something before we started. I wrote down, actually, and you said, let's think about how that will play out. Like, just such a simple thing for people to use to go, okay, we could physically play this out. We could talk through this to actually go, how do you think it's going to happen? What if this happens? What will we do then? You then kind of triggered me a little bit onto a podcast I've been listening to that just spoke about our outcome unbiased. So even like when we review, so even if you think about a sports team, if we were to do a week's training and then review before the game and go, what do we think we've done? How do we think the game is going to play out? What do we think will happen? Okay, who do we think will play well? What do you think we missed this week? But then review it after the game. Take away the contrast between those two events can be quite helpful information for us on actually how we react to stuff. Because the other thing he said that really resonated with me was, like, as a leader, I imagine when we do get into those moments where we need to bounce back, you probably need to give yourself a Trip Advisor rating on how you respond to it. So if you walk in the office and they go, you'll never guess what's happened, and Roy starts freaking out, then some other people might freak out as well. This could actually spread quite quickly.

Justin Reuter [00:22:56]:

Yeah. So I think firstly, because I came from a flying background, flying has a debrief culture. So there is planning and preparation, then there is the execution of the mission, and then there is a debrief, and the sorting is not over. Until you've debriefed. And the debriefs are brutal, and they're meant to be brutal. There is no rank in a debrief. So the squadron boss can be debriefed by the most junior person in the room, and the rank comes off in the debrief because it's got to be like that, because otherwise you won't succeed. And so I think one of the good things that I hope I've been able to do, not always, is to try and take the Debrief culture back into what you do later on and go, Right, how did that go? So if you're able to pre mortem, fantastic. How do we think this is going to play out? What do we think is going to happen? What are the things that are going to derail it? Where are we still a bit weak? Do we have to mitigate that? Or are we playing to our strengths and then afterwards go, okay, how did it go? Let's talk about this honestly. And I think all of that being conscious, if you're a leader as well, being conscious of how you then affect other people. So we talked about freaking out, and I joked about kicking a chair about across a room. But another time during that year away, bearing in mind that nobody else out there was doing a year, most of my team was doing six months at a time. So I saw three deputies. The first one was there, had been there three months before I arrived. He did three months with me. The second one suffered full six months with me. And the last one got to see me go after three months.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:24:29]:

He had a chair kicked at him for a full six months.

Justin Reuter [00:24:32]:

And he enjoyed that. He was asking for no. He was. And actually, they were all three brilliant people, it has to be said. And I don't know, I wouldn't have got through that in the same way that I did without those people. And they were all very different. But there was one occasion, it was unconnected with something that happened at the headquarters. I can't even remember what triggered it, but I was really frustrated and I just went anyway. I was really angry. And the headquarters was built around a square, internal square bit corridor, so you could walk every side of the square without going outside, which is a good thing because it was about 40 degrees outside all the time, and I was just looking for one particular person. So I went out of the office and I ended up walking all four sides of the square looking for this person. Wasn't it? And it was fine, okay, I'll speak to him in a bit because he was probably in one of the other buildings doing some stuff. And I went back into my office, and what I hadn't realized is I'd carried my terrible mood and my awful countenance, and I didn't think I was a scary person at all. I'm some short, weedy looking bloke, so I don't think I'm ever looking scary at all. But if you're the boss sometimes and you look angry and pissed off, people assume it's because you're pissed off with them and angry with them. And I wasn't angry with anyone in the headquarters. I was just annoyed at what had happened. I needed to speak to one person. They weren't there. I went back to my office bit later on I got a debrief from one of my team who went, did you mean to intimidate everybody in the entire headquarters? And I went, I don't know what you're talking about. And they went, because you have because you just carried your thundercloud around the entire office or office building. And you don't realize that sometimes. So you've got to be able to realize it because you also don't know how many crap things other people are trying to deal with exactly the same time. What they don't want is to have that rubbish laid upon them because they didn't need it. So if there's ever a time you've got to be able to say, I'm just going to take a sip of water or tea before I leave the office. I'm just going to remember that I'm annoyed with this, but I'm going to internalize it because it's nothing to do with anyone outside, and then focus on the problem afterwards. Wow.

Simon Ursell [00:26:33]:

Because we're back again to environment, aren't we? Because you're setting an environment there, aren't you, where if the environment is one that is calm, cooled and collected, people are much more resilient to stuff going on? If you're piling more stuff onto them through your mood and your behavior and your body language, then you're going to be making that environment much more challenging for people to bounce back from.

Justin Reuter [00:26:57]:

And I'll tell you what, there are some people in the military who would go, I don't understand that, Simon. They need to toughen up. An actual fact. I'm training them to be tougher by imparting all sorts of hell and thunder upon them. I look at that and go, you must be kidding. Because what people become then is afraid of you. And you don't want people to be afraid of you because you want people to come up to you and go, hey, sir, can you not do that? Because it's really stupid and it's the wrong thing to do. But if they're scared of you, they won't. And then you'll do the stupid thing and they'll follow orders and then the outcome will be bad. So I think there are people in some organizations, not just the military, but in some organizations will go, no, we need a stronger business or a stronger headquarters. The environment would be better. Everyone's got to be able to toughen up. And of course, I think that drives terrible behaviors. I don't like that at all.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:27:50]:

I got a friend who had an interview recently and they asked him how good are you at administering the stick? And that's in an environment for young people, which blows my mind. And I will take a mental photograph of your face there, Roy.

Justin Reuter [00:28:05]:

Yeah, it just horrifies me, but were they serious?

Rusty Earnshaw [00:28:10]:

And I guess the phrase that stuck out there is like rank comes off in the debrief. Like you would want people to be able to go, hang on a second, have we thought about this? So if we are going to bounce back effectively or avoid having to bounce back, you would probably want someone to put their hand up and go, hang on a second, Roger. You're wrong at this point. And I guess that's quite a challenging thing for leaders to do given and it's interesting hearing it about it in your context, because my perception of military is that it's super hierarchical. What I definitely hear from some people, and special forces would especially say we're trying to make it as flat as possible. Obviously we're aware someone needs to make decisions, but you need to harness, I guess, the collective intelligence in the room.

Justin Reuter [00:28:55]:

Yeah. I think ultimately there is an accountability and a responsibility that sits with a leader at times. There is an incredible hierarchy and there has to be, because somebody's got to say, go and shoot that down and you might not come back or Go and drop that weapon. And the chances of success are this many percent and the chances of not coming home are this many percent, but they've got to go and do it. So you've got to be able to have that authority, that command authority, and within that there's an accountability and responsibility for it. But in all cases, you've got to generate, I feel, an environment where people are going to say, I think there's another way of doing it. I think we can achieve it. Y and Z and that they will challenge you all the way to get to the best part of it, and then at that last moment when you go, okay, I've been presented the options. We're going to do A, B and C and not X, Y and Z. So A, B and C, we're on go do. Now, sometimes you don't have time to do that, so it's got to be, yeah, I hear you, but we're going to do this, and then you'll hold that responsibility. But in most cases, even in the military, until you're in like a shooting match, that's really quite a rare thing. In most cases, you got the opportunity to sit back and go, what do we think? How do we best achieve the aim? How best achieve the outcome? So coming back, though, to bounce back ability. I think an organization which has had more time to input into something, to own problems themselves, is more likely to respond better to the I didn't see that coming catastrophic disaster because it is then able to turn around, shake its head as an organization and go, all right, okay, we're now sat on our backside. How do we sort this out? How do we fix it? Who's got a good idea? Anyone see this coming? Okay, so I think actually the organizations which are built for success and it going well, are also the organizations which quite often are able to be able to take quite a shock. And that could be I mean, let's talk it societally, it could be a pandemic, it could be a fuel shortage, it could be war, but actually it could be something that people predicted and saw coming. It could be competition in business in a military sense. It could be, well, the enemy were always going to try and do that. So it's not as if we didn't expect them to fight hard, we just ended up losing. But if you always think you're going to win, then you'll be a little bit disappointed.

Simon Ursell [00:31:30]:

It's absolutely fascinating. It really is. I think sort of to close talking mean growing up and working in the business world, business leadership, that kind of thing, the sort of things that I hear from people from the military, like yourself, Justin, and Rusty, like you from Sport, really quite similar stuff. The pre mortem, post morteming. I don't hear a lot of that in the business world. And I was just curious, you, Justin, actually Rusty as well. Is that just me or is that something you do see? That sort of environment building desire to get better? It seems to me that the business world has got quite a lot to learn from those kind of things. I mean, I've certainly tried to build that into tighter grange, not always successfully, but do you see that as well? Because you're both now moving into quite come from Sport, come from the military and are both moving around in more sort of business circles. Is that a fair comment?

Justin Reuter [00:32:36]:

So the first thing to say is the military is not universally good at doing this.

Simon Ursell [00:32:40]:

Sure.

Justin Reuter [00:32:41]:

So there are people who I've looked up to and learned things from and I've tried to be like in the military, the best leaders I've seen, and hopefully I've got close to some of them. There are some where I've looked at them and gone, whatever happens, I will not be like that terrifying tyrant or not be like that particular person. I will not micromanage this. I will not do the following. And I've tried hopefully to be reasonably good at it. What I then find is that the military is very self critical and assumes that everyone's better than it, that our business wouldn't do it like this. Or I now move in the business world and I'm sort of less than a year into sort of being a consultant, freelance consultant in business. And what I find is that it's really, really patchy in business. In fact, it's mainly absent in business. I don't see really detailed planning. I don't see setting of strategic goals or end states and then somebody backtracking to how you can get there and then I don't see challenge cultures regularly. I do in some organizations regularly where people go, hey, that's not going to work, we're not going to do the following. I see quite structured and complex organizations which aren't actually organized to do the aim, to do the task in the end. So I haven't come across some really, really good examples. I say the military keeps whacking itself on the back with a birch rod saying this is terrible, we're awful at doing this, we should be more like business. And I come into business and go, well, the things that the military are very, very good at and there are things that we're not so good at, but there are things that business doesn't do very well at all. And I think that culture of pre mortem, post mortem or plan and debrief reassess, let's go again. I don't think that's done well in most of the businesses that I've been involved in.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:34:35]:

I've written some notes as usual. Yeah, again, like the 1% Club I think 99% of people are often just sleepwalking through life, I'll take you or not and maybe I'm going to rename the 1% Club top Gun. What have I heard that I think the 1% clubs, the people that I get to see, they understand the impact the leader has upon organizational resilience. So they understand probably like the environment stuff, but also the individual. They do scenarios all the time. They pre mortem stuff, they reflect and review, like in a helpful way. They co create. So you spoke about accountability. I think without co creation there is no accountability. You're just telling me what to do and quite frankly, I probably want to rebel. They build trust. Like you must have mentioned the word trust ten times in this. It's so important. They know when flat is helpful. So when the rank needs to be removed and we got an open discussion and there's no judgment, there's no like can't believe he said that to me in that meeting type of stuff. Ownership is important. They recruit really well. So they probably found out loads about you from that first story. You were delayed by a week, you came back, you did the extra twelve weeks. Some other people might have not come back, so you probably get the right people like Simon Will. Hiring is super important. And then the last two things, people in leadership positions have trusted people around them that help them. It's lonely at the top is my experience of leadership. And then when there are great humblings, then we go, what do we learn from this? They don't go, oh well, we're rubbish at this, we can't do anything about this.

Justin Reuter [00:36:15]:

Do you know what? There's a really good, sort of tiny end to that story as well. So two years ago, I was fortunate enough to get an award, get a state award. And although, because it was at the end of COVID times, I couldn't take guests only, my partner Jen came along with me to the palace to get my award. I was able to take my dad for lunch afterwards. So I met him in my uniform with my gong and we sat down and had a fantastic lunch afterwards. And his wife and my partner Jen had nipped off to the loo. And when I was sat down with my dad, I said, you probably won't remember this, dad, but do you remember me calling home from initial officer training at Cranwell 30 something years ago? And I told him that story and he laughed and he said, I didn't think you'd even remember that. And I said, no, dad, it was one of the most important things that ever happened. And I was able to share that back with him and say, it's one of the best pieces of advice I've ever given. He said, I just did what anyone would have done, what your dad would have normally done. But actually, it was a totally brilliant piece of advice. So, thinking about that, I've always held that in my memory. I was able to thank my dad for it at a time of great sort of pride or something at the end of my career. But it was an amazing thing to be able to thank my dad for something he had done all that time ago, to give me that bounce back that I desperately needed, at a time where he was quite right. It was only a little hiccup, but to me, it was the biggest thing in the world.

Simon Ursell [00:37:45]:

Wow. Well, on that amazing note, we'll close. Thanks very much for coming on, Roitz. Really appreciate it.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:37:51]:

Top man. Thank you, Royce.

Justin Reuter [00:37:52]:

Thanks a lot. Enjoyed it.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:37:55]:

Well, I hope everyone enjoyed that. Maybe apart from the bit where Simon, you did do it, you asked him what it's called.

Justin Reuter [00:38:02]:

Simon.

Simon Ursell [00:38:02]:

Well, I can't help it. And everybody wanted to know. So, come on.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:38:07]:

What was your take home?

Simon Ursell [00:38:09]:

Well, there's a couple of things. I mean, the funnel, the stuff I've learned from Justin and it's just really brought it all home. Delegation is huge. I think the military do mean, obviously Justin didn't think it was great across the whole of all the armed forces, but I know how great he is and I bet you some of the people that have worked with him loved it, so really enjoyed that. The delegation part. The other massive thing for me is I can't get over in the business world how sort of insular we can be sometimes. And it's just so interesting and fascinating to hear somebody like that just encourage people to get out of their bubbles, get out of their business and go into different environments, go and talk to people in the military, go and see what that's like, go and talk to sports, see what that's like. Go and talk to charities, see what that's like. Going to other organizations of all different types. But, yeah, I think you can learn so much from guys like him. It's fascinating. So modest and humble about it, too.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:39:12]:

Yeah. And I guess it ties in with Kirk stuff around related world, so getting to go into different environments and who you reflect with is super loved. You know, when he started speaking about the loneliness of leadership and the people that he had around him, two things for me that I thought, I just love the phrase the rank comes off in the debrief. How often does the highest paid person in the room speak first and then other people don't say something, which ultimately might prevent us from having to bounce back from something? And the second thing is, I just loved when he's talked about carrying his thundercloud around the room. So are we, as leaders, aware of the impacts we're having on other people in order to make sure that we are able to deal with stuff effectively?

Simon Ursell [00:39:58]:

Yeah. I mean awesome, Podcast. I just thought it was fascinating. So, yeah, big thanks to Justin. See you on the next one.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:40:06]:

Over and out. Thanks so much for joining us on the Band Spectrum podcast with Simon Russell. We've really enjoyed your company. If you want to reach out to us, Simon, where can they reach you?

Simon Ursell [00:40:17]:

LinkedIn's. Best place? Simon Ursul. U-R-S for sugar. E-L-L. Send me a message. Rusty, where can we find you?

Rusty Earnshaw [00:40:24]:

TikTok no, not really. LinkedIn, russell and Shaw and then the same on Twitter, but please ignore all my political thoughts.

Simon Ursell [00:40:32]:

Yeah, second that.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:40:33]:

Over and out.