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Excellent Executive Coaching: Growing Your Business and Enhancing Your Craft.
EEC 434: Leadership is the Secret Weapon on Every Battlefield, with Mike Ettore
00:24:32
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- [00:05]
A
How can you learn from the military and the Marines as a leader and a leader in corporate America? How can you take the best from both situation and make you an even better leader? Let's ask Mike Etor, who has excelled in both these situations as a leader. Welcome to the excellent executive coaching podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Katrina Verus, and today we have Mike Ettore. Mike, welcome.
- [00:43]
B
Thank you so much, Dr. Burris, for, for inviting me. As you know, I was. You were on my podcast, we had a great conversation. So I've been looking forward to this. Thank you.
- [00:51]
A
Yes, well, I've been looking forward to this. And you have something exceptional. You've been a high ranked leader in the US Marine Corps and a C level executive in a billion dollar publicly traded company. So what are the major adjustments you've had to have from the military to a corporate environment?
- [01:17]
B
That's a great question. And my answer is probably going to surprise the majority of your people who listen to it who are not from a military background. Katrina, you know, most people get their opinion on the military, just what they see in movies. And a lot of times, especially Marines, it's screaming and yelling and all of that couldn't be further from the truth. Now, early on, when you're a recruit and all that, yeah, there's a whole lot of yelling going on after that. I found the Marine Corps to be much more focused on politeness and manners and courtesy than the business world. So the major, you know, no doubt about it, I mean, I did 24 years in the Marine Corps. I can count on one hand the number of times I raised my voice at a Marine. And, and there are times when you need to do that for effect. Other than that, if, if I made a habit out of being what we call a screamer, I would get talked to. I'd get talked to like, hey, we don't lead like that. You know, because unlike the business world, you know, where they can quit on you, Marines can't quit. If they signed up for six years, they got to do six years. But they can soft quit on you and just say, all right, I'm just going to do the bare minimum and I'm not going to exercise any initiative. So to answer your question, I tell people, anybody that'll listen, that I led businessmen and women exactly like I led US Marines, with minor modifications. Obviously, nobody's shooting at us. It's usually not life or death, even though sometimes in the corporate world, you think you're going to die. Things are so stressful and all that but you know, I'm a student of leadership. I'm 70 years old. I've been in leadership roles or leadership development roles for 50 years now. And what I've realized is the common denominator between the Marine Corps and any other environment is human beings. Human nature has not changed in thousands of years. It's not.
- [03:14]
A
Okay, I'm going to interrupt you here because I further want to dig through the difference between being in the military, where you give your life practically in certain situations, especially today potentially, and the corporate world. What is the difference in the motivation between the two? So you've highlighted that in the military they're a lot more polite. People have to stick there for six years. They might silently quit, meaning they'll be there, but not really.
- [03:47]
B
Yeah.
- [03:48]
A
Okay, so, but what is first, the motivation difference between the two?
- [03:54]
B
The biggest motivation difference is the whole institution is the Marine Corps is 250 years old and it's built a reputation for being character based. And we join, and you join the institution, you are joining and serving something greater than you. Now, the very best companies in corporate America that I have seen, they have managed to pull that off too. Where people are proud to say, I work for Ford or I work for Tesla or whatever, but it's often missing in corporate America where, you know, it's kind of every person for themselves. People have different careers they're going to do here for three years and go move on and all of that. So I would just say it's unity, purpose, selflessness and devotion to an institution that is bigger than you. That's the biggest difference between the Marine Corps and the business world. With the caveat that many really good companies, long term successful companies, have managed to do the very same thing.
- [05:01]
A
I see. So that's a big difference. Okay, so how have these companies that have managed to give the unifying purpose, what do you think they have instilled in the corporations to have that mission and identity?
- [05:19]
B
I think first and foremost it's people are the main priority. In fact, I just put a post up on LinkedIn today. The Marine Corps says many of the other services and corporations, they focus on technology. And so the debate is, do you equip the man or do you man the equipment? And there's a big difference.
- [05:46]
A
Okay, you gotta explain that for our listeners.
- [05:48]
B
So the Marine Corps says, we're obviously we want cutting edge equipment, weapons, communication systems. You get the best systems in the world, but if you don't have the very best people, it's never going to be optimal. And the Same in the business world. A lot of people are now betting on AI and things like that. But AI will never obviate human judgment and initiative and bias for action. It just won't. So it's people over technology or any other intangible like that that is the main difference right there.
- [06:25]
A
Okay. Huh. Okay, so it's a little bit different perspective. Is there anything else before we move on?
- [06:35]
B
Core values, you know, core values. The Marine Corps has core values. Character, integrity, rock solid, non negotiable. If you violate that, you're going to get thrown out, you're going to get punished, and you're going to get thrown out. And again, every company, Katrina, as you know, you walk in the lobby, they've got their core values. It remains to be seen whether those are just words on a wall and they're living everything opposite those core values or no, no, actually here we do live them. So the Marine Corps does live by them. And I'll say this, the Marine Corps has its 10% too. We have bad leaders, we have the bottom feeders, we have those, but they get dealt with. And I find the best companies, they focus on people, they focus on their core values, which always include character, integrity, ethics right off the bat. They evangelize them and they relentlessly enforce them.
- [07:29]
A
Okay, so how do you help? Because you're an executive coach and you're also leadership development. So how do you go into a company, evaluate where they are in that situation and help them develop it if they don't have it?
- [07:48]
B
Very good. So when I do my little intake form on them, I said, do you have core values? Of course, they always do. And then I say, will you let me in one of your executive meetings to start this engagement? And the CEO says, sure, but I'm just curious, why do you want to do. I said, well, I won't say anything, but I guarantee you by the end of that meeting, I'll know a lot about your culture. And that intrigues them. They're like, what are you talking about? You're not going to say, well, you're going to know. I said, yep, here's how I'm going to evaluate you. If you say, the meeting starts at 9, I'm going to be there at 8:50 and I'm going to see, does that meeting start at 9? Is everybody there prepared and ready to go or are they strat? Did the meeting start at 9? 17. Are people still straggling in at 9? 32? And then we're going to watch the interaction. Does the CEO dominate the meeting and do all the talking. Is there free flowing discussion? Is there any obvious bad blood between executives? And most importantly, do they argue well? Is it spirited debate where they say, well, I don't know about this, even to the CEO, I don't know about this decision right here, let's talk about it. And then at the end of the day the CEO can say, I've heard your opinions, I've made a decision, we're going to continue with mine. Or you know what, we're going to go with Katrina. Katrina said something right. We're going to go with her option. The best executive teams argue well, but if I see them trying to argue well in a executive meeting and the body language, Katina, you know, the guy says his piece and they're fighting and that guy just, you know, sits back in his chair, starts checking his iPhone, checks out. All of these things. Tell me, good culture, bad culture, and as go the leaders, so goes the team, always. And if the leadership team is not unified, how can you. You cannot expect anybody below them to be unified. And I have never gone into a company and asked executives, what are your core values? And whether there are five executives or 12, I have never had all of them give identical answers on the. They don't know their core values is what I'm saying.
- [10:03]
A
Yes. Okay.
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B
I think we have six of them and of course there's really eight of them or whatever, you know.
- [10:09]
A
Yeah. So the fact that they don't know him, it's not really applied or encouraged in every meeting and demonstrate it. Yes.
- [10:21]
B
And in a way that you'll understand, obviously, because you're very adept at it, you know, knowledge of the core values and relentlessly evangelizing, in a way, is your branding for your culture. You know, if the executives don't know it, how can they evangelize it in a uniform manner? They're not evangelizing it. And core values, if it's not reinforced in everything you do or say, they are simply, you have joined the words on the wall club. They're really meaningless.
- [10:51]
A
Okay, so you've done a very interesting diagnosis of the company culture. So now you've realized they don't have core values. They can't really remember it. Some people check out, some people come late. So what do you do?
- [11:09]
B
Oh, that's a great question. So what that does is it alters or it greatly shapes and influences my executive coaching of them and or leadership training, depending on what I've been hired. If I know there's dissension in the ranks and there's rivalries and there's stove pipes. Then I will throw some specific leadership and management exercises at them that I wouldn't necessarily use for a company. Like, these folks are good. They are like this. I don't have to help them build their culture. They've done this. I just need to help them get bigger, better at maximizing their leadership potential of their team and leadership development and things like that. So my coaching and training is very much a hybrid based upon initial diagnostics. And by the way, before I start Katrina, I go around to every executive privately and say, you got to trust me, confidential. What does your company need? And if they need culture, if they need better peer relationship collaboration, they will tell me, I'll get it. You know, I'll get it. And that enables me to shape it in a benign fashion, you know, and so a lot of times they'll come up and say, boy, Mike, do you do this for every training course? Because this exercise right here, I mean, we really needed this. We. And it forces them to talk together. It just forces them. And as always, you know, when you get two people that don't like each other, they've been batting. Their departments are like this. When you get them in a room and they're working on an exercise, it's like, you know, he's actually a pretty good guy. I can get along with him, you know, that's good.
- [12:46]
A
So you force them to interact and solve a problem together that they can't do individually. Okay. And sort of that helps the relationship. So. Okay. And then you say you coach them individually. Let's say there's two people that don't get along. So at what point in the coaching, one on one, do you address this issue?
- [13:12]
B
Pretty much immediately, I have a little intake, you know, set of questions, like, what's keeping you up at night? What do you think about your peers? Is it collaborative and all that? Is there anybody in particular that you feel is not an ally and you'd prefer not to work with them? And why eye. And you just surface those things right away and they'll let you know. If there's that much angst, they'll let you know pretty quickly. And then we'll peel it back, you know, and like, wait a minute. Do you think there's some other considerations here? Did you do something to this person?
- [13:42]
A
Why.
- [13:42]
B
Why are they reacting like this? You know, did he feel. Are you in a role that he feels he should have been promoted into? And things like that happens often. Yep. Got to peel back the layers and all of that, at the end of the day, it's less about how effective I am. It's just that at the end of the day, most human beings are good people. And if you force them to talk, they'll realize, they'll see the merit in each of them, and at a minimum, you'll agree. All right, I still don't like the guy, but I agree that I can collaborate with him better. It's better for me, it's better for him. It's better for the entire team if we just get along. I'm not going to drink beer with the guy after work. We're not going on picnics together with our family. But at work, I can be a good, supportive ally, and I can expect that from him.
- [14:29]
A
And is the pressure from top management, let's say, is that important? What is their role in helping people that don't get along together? I know your role now. You've. You've made them talk together. But how? Because as an executive coach, you're a catalyst. You make things happen, but then you leave, and then the system has to take over. So how do you coach the leader of these two division heads that don't get along to make sure that doesn't happen?
- [15:01]
B
Great question. When I was a publicly traded executive, the public auditors, as you know, would come in once a quarter, and I would say twice a year, they would do a special audit and they would ask me, all right, Mike, you're one of the top guys here. What's the tone from the top? What's your CEO's message sending? Would he tolerate cheating, unethical behavior or whatever? And I'm like, nope, absolutely not. And they say, by the way, we're going to go ask your people about your tone from the top as well. So the tone from the top, I tell people, and this is a Marine Corps saying, senior leaders must show others what right looks like. They have to show each other what everybody else, what right looks like in everything they say or do. And that starts with, I have to live by my core values, rock solid character. I'm not a hypocrite. I'm enforcing the rules fairly, and I live these things, and I expect others do. And more importantly, we tolerate no personal attacks. I used to tell people, don't ever come to me talking to about one of your peers. I'm going to put my hand in your face and say, stop. Have you sat down and addressed it with her? Most of the time it's like, well, no, I said stop. Go down and Talk to her. And that usually blunts it. And usually when you force them to talk to each other, those silos melt pretty quickly if they know I'm not going to tolerate it. So that's the senior leader. The senior leaders have to say we don't backstab here. We don't snipe, we don't talk about each other. We don't tolerate it from our subordinates either. We are a non gossip company.
- [16:44]
A
Yes. And that's very important. I totally agree. And unfortunately, when leaders gossip, the people gossip. And then of course it has a, an effect overall in the company.
- [16:58]
B
So I'm gonna say one thing, Katrina. I have a saying and I believe this. It is inevitably the members of a team, no matter how large the team, inevitably the members of that team will reflect the attitudes and the behaviors of its leaders. Inevitably, yes.
- [17:19]
A
I totally agree. And they, because they, they're perceived as powerful and they're models of what people think is necessary to get ahead. So totally agree. I'm going to ask you a different type of question. So what have you noticed the introduction or the people with working with AI? Because a lot of people are now going to AI to get a lot of answers instead of maybe going to the other division head or other people to ask questions and get answers to some of their questions. How do you think that is impacting the corporate culture?
- [18:00]
B
I think it's impacting it quite a bit. It's like anything else. It's like when the I'm old enough to remember when email started, fax machine started and all that. And the best leaders said, look, we can email each other right now. That does not obviate the best practice of standing up, go down the hallway, knock on that guy's door and go talk to your colleague in person. Email does not replace human interaction unless there's distance involved. And so I'm a big fan of AI. I think if you're not using AI or trying to see how you can use it in your company, you're falling behind. But again, the technology will never replace human judgment and the human interaction. So I don't mind people using AI chat GPT to ask for answers to a solution. But he should still, if it's a marketing issue, he should still go talk to chief marketing officer and say, look, I educated myself before I came here, but what do you say as a marketing professional? And that marketing executive is probably going to say, you know, AI got it 80% right. Here's what they didn't get that my 30 years of experience can inform you a little bit better on. So it's a tool. It's a supplemental tool, not a replacement for collegiality and collaboration.
- [19:21]
A
Yes, and hopefully they follow that because some people are really even going from fundamental human questioning go to AI to ask for it. So yes, it's a tool. And you also have written books and tell us a little bit about the book that has done as well as you mentioned earlier before the podcast. What can they get from it?
- [19:50]
B
So I wrote a book early on when I was coaching. I realized I had a lot of knowledge and people said, mike, do you have all this stuff written down anywhere? And I realized I didn't. So I ended up writing a 574 page textbook and the title of it is Trust Based Leadership. Marine Corps Leadership Concepts for Today's Business Leaders. Because as you alluded to earlier, I'm not. There's millions of us that have done it. I did manage to go from the Marine Corps, which is a lot different environment than corporate America. The people are the same, but the different environment. And I managed to get into the senior executive ranks right away, knew nothing about business. But I realized within weeks my leadership can apply here. Like I, in fact, I'm a better leader than a lot of them because they haven't had any formal training and all of that. So I've written that book. I use it for all my coaching and training engagements. And it is the syllabus. You know, people that know what they're talking about, a leadership training, if they look at the table of contents, they say, geez, Mike, I could, I could use this book as my own course content. I'm like, yes, nothing would make me happier. And I am aware of companies that, you know, they can't afford me. They don't want to spend the money on training. But they bought that book for everybody and they're holding their own training, following that syllabus, which is a high compliment to me.
- [21:16]
A
Yeah.
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B
So it's done very, very well. I quote it constantly. I'm in the process of writing the second edition, but it served me admirably. It really has.
- [21:26]
A
So, okay, you make a good point. Some people can't afford your workshops and your training and your executive coaching. What happens if somebody is thrusted in a leadership position but has no formal training? What's your recommendation?
- [21:44]
B
Yeah, yeah. Let me preface that with a little cute saying that I invented and it's, you know, this is the quote for the untrained. Leadership is a school in which the tests are given before the lessons. In other words, you're gonna learn. And if you haven't had any kind of formal leadership training or mentoring, you are gonna make classic, entirely avoidable mistakes that have been made for generations because you don't know any better. So you will learn. It's better to learn up front. And so that's basically what I say, you know, and so the people that don't have formal training, I would say this. I, I gotta tell you, Katrina, I am so envious of these. I'm so mad that YouTube didn't exist when I was 25 years old. If you can't afford an executive coach and all that. There is world class content out there on the web, guys. Giving up free content, your videos, my videos, podcasts. And so it's one thing that your company won't pay for it and you've never received it, but it's your own negligence if you're not taking advantage of all of the free resources out there.
- [22:58]
A
Okay, thank you. So we're coming to enter of our podcast. Where can people get a hold of you?
- [23:05]
B
So My website is fidelisleadership.com and that's a play on the Marine Corps motto of Semper fidelis, which is Latin for always faithful. So it's F I, D E l I s. Fidelisleadership.com you can buy my books there, you can see my books, you can my training there, you can get in contact me through there. I also post daily on LinkedIn and via my website. There's a lead magnet on my website. I will send you a free copy of one of my books if you sign up for my mailing list. And if you do that, you'll get two email leadership lessons a week and a leadership newsletter every other Friday.
- [23:47]
A
Thank you very much for sharing your experience and your knowledge. Much appreciated. I'm sure the listeners have appreciated it as well. Thank you, Mike.
- [23:58]
B
It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Katrina.
- [24:03]
C
Thank you for listening to the excellent executive coaching podcast. You can subscribe to all Future podcasts@excellentexecutivecoaching.com join us each Wednesday to learn more about the latest trends in leadership techniques and bring your coaching to the next level. To learn more about Dr. Burris CEO mastermind, use the contact form@excellentexecutivecoaching.com.