This Navy SEAL Commander Says Leaders Aren't Born or Made — They're Chosen Based on One Thing We asked a retired special operations leader about what makes effective leadership. His answer challenges everything you think you know about who gets to lead.
By Jon B. Becker Edited by Mark Klekas
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What makes someone a leader? It's a question that has sparked countless debates in boardrooms, offices and business schools around the world. But according to one retired Navy SEAL commander, we've been asking the wrong question entirely.
Rich Diviney is the founder of Attributes Incorporated. Rich spent more than 20 years leading Navy SEALs and has now transitioned that experience into helping corporations, sports teams and individual leaders become better at their jobs. His latest book, Masters of Uncertainty, looks at how leaders deal with uncertain environments.
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In this interview, we asked him to apply his views on leadership. His answers reveal a counterintuitive truth about leadership that challenges the traditional nature vs. nurture debate, and why he believes the most important leadership tool is something most people avoid.
Q1: What is the role of a leader from your perspective?
Diviney: The role of the leader is to create an environment that generates success, thriving and prosperity. We have to create that environment. We do that through modeling. We do that through culture building. We do that through behavior, and we do that through rewarding those people who are actually modeling or behaving in the way that we want to see. So our number one role is to set and create the environment.
Q2: What's the one thing that every leader needs to know?
Diviney: Leadership is a behavior, not a position. You are a leader because someone chooses you to be based on the way you behave. Are leaders made or are they born? The answer is neither. They're chosen based on the way you behave.
Q3: What's your most important habit?
Diviney: My most important habit is honest and frequent self-introspection. And I think that's a habit I'd like to inculcate in as many people as possible. I try to teach it to my kids. But how often am I honestly looking at my own performance, my own behavior and asking, "Okay, is this positive or this negative? Where is this taking me? Where can I improve? What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses?" And being humble and clear about that, so I can continuously grow and improve.
Q4: What's the most important thing for building an effective team?
Diviney: Most important thing for building an effective team is trust. You have to have trust. If I were to relate it to sailing, trust is the boat while inspiration is the wind. Inspiration, we've all heard about effective teaming, inspiration being very powerful, cool. But we can be sailing on the seven seas and going at a clip and then the wind dies down. We're in the doldrums. If we don't have that boat, we're sinking. And so we have to work on building that boat of trust. Inspiration might come and go, but trust has to be present, ever present.
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Q5: What's the biggest mistake you see other leaders make?
Diviney: I think one of the biggest mistakes is not understanding that behavior can be seen, while intent cannot be seen. And so someone can be behaving in a way that's completely misconstrued by others, but their intentions are all good. And so as leaders, we need to be very explicit all the time and transparent about our intent so that our behavior matches that and is transparent and explainable to others.
Q6: What's the best way to deliver bad news?
Diviney: With empathy. If we're going to deliver bad news, let's get into the shoes of the person we're talking to first, figure out what their perspective might be, and then give them the bad news with empathy and care in the context of making them better and making the team better.
Q7: What's something you've changed your mind about recently?
Diviney: I've changed my mind about the ideas surrounding limiting beliefs. In other words, I've done some recent reading about the power of limiting beliefs and the fact that we, as every individual, often say things to ourselves that we don't know are detrimental, but they're detrimental to our purpose, to our identity, and to all those things. And so I've changed my mind about how I talk to myself in some of these limiting beliefs, and I try to do an exercise almost every day where I ask myself, okay, what limiting beliefs may I be carrying with me and let me change those and make a new decision.
The full interview with Rich Diviney can be found here:
