10

PEAK PERFORMANCE APPLIED

NOW THAT YOU HAVE LEARNED the tools of peak performers, and the practices to help incorporate them into your own mental strategies, it is time to apply them in real-world scenarios. The real world is not a pretty one nowadays. It is a world characterized by four major barrier forces: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. First highlighted by the U.S. Army War College and the National Defense University in alerting the armed forces to the nature of war fighting in the future, these are key characteristics of today’s performance environment. The acronym VUCA became a popular way of depicting the nature and impact of these forces, and was integrated into the lexicon of strategic thinking and planning.¹ Let’s look at it more closely.

VOLATILITY

Volatility is characterized by explosive change. Volatility calls for vision. Leaders need to visualize and “see” potentialities and possibilities. Volatility impacts an organization by creating fear and an aversion to taking needed risks. Volatility leads to reverting back to basics. Peter Vaill, professor of management at Antioch University, known for his innovative approaches to organizational behavior, coined the phrase permanent white water in his book Learning as a Way of Being to describe the rate of environmental change in the world as we know it.²

UNCERTAINTY

Uncertainty is about the unpredictability of change. Will things stay the same for two weeks, or change tomorrow? Executives in the food distribution industry, highly dependent on gas as a means of business, are well versed in the uncertainty of our times. Should we raise prices of our product to make up for high gas prices? Or should we not risk alienating customers when the cost of gas might go down? It is also about when people have a lack of clarity and awareness of what is happening, and cannot get a grasp on understanding the issues and events. Uncertainty calls for understanding. Leaders need to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Uncertainty can cause paralysis by analysis—not doing anything in a ceaseless quest to understand first.

COMPLEXITY

Complexity is about the intricacies of key decision factors, the multiplicity of forces and events, and the chaos that can surround an organization. Public relations companies are faced with complexity in today’s world. Gone are the days when a great media campaign meant coming up with good radio and television spots. Today’s marketers need to be well versed in Internet advertising and social media. And the job of marketing is ongoing; it does not stop once the campaign is launched. Real people need to handle tweets and Facebook posts in real time, reacting to current events in a way that is appropriate for the company. Complexity causes a search for black-and-white solutions when none might exist. Our instinct is to revert back to the time before the chaos, when things were simpler. But success comes from moving forward. Complexity calls for clarity and an ability to see solutions.

AMBIGUITY

Ambiguity means that there will be a sense of vagueness about the current situation and potential outcomes. There will be a lack of certainty about the meaning of an event. For instance, was the Ebola outbreak in West Africa going to be a pandemic, or could it be contained? Ambiguity exists when a given event or situation can be interpreted in more than one way. It is the confusion over reality and its potential for misreading events, especially over cause and effect. Leaders need to develop flexibility, agility, and decisiveness to exercise intuitive decision making. Ambiguity calls for action.

PEAK LEADERSHIP

Achieving sustained high performance in such a world is a daunting task. Traditional emphases on organizational and workplace solutions for meeting challenges have not produced the desired results in performance improvement and productivity increases. These methods have typically focused on peripheral issues and have not addressed the heart of the challenge, which is how to fundamentally change the manner in which people approach their own performances and tap into their full potential.

Leadership performance excellence can be viewed from three different levels.

Organizational leadership would be the CEO of a company or the division commander of an army division. At this level, the leadership is more indirect and calls for some leadership competencies that are different from the other two levels. Vision and clarity of strategic thinking become paramount. The capability to see the big picture and not get bogged down with details is essential. This level of leadership influences organizational performance.

The next level is leading others. This involves leading small teams, small units, special projects, and so forth. This level of direct leadership is defined by both unit size and the extent of direct contact between the leader and followers on a regular daily basis. This level of leadership directly influences team performance. It is at this level that the leader has the most direct personal influence.

Self-leadership is the ability to control and manage oneself, and it affects individual performance within the organization. This is where concepts like self-discipline, self-control, and self-mastery come into play. A key principle taught at West Point is that you cannot successfully lead others until you are able to “lead yourself,” so our focus will be on this.

SELF-LEADERSHIP IS ABOUT INNER CONTROL

The ability to be in “the zone,” to focus on the present with no thought of the past or future, concentrating only on what you are doing, not on how you are doing, is fundamental to all levels of leadership. By practicing the skills learned earlier, you will be able to focus better, throughout all the turmoil and upheavals and pressure that is omnipresent in today’s work environment.

The Five-Point Plan is your tool to inner control. Setting goals focuses your direction and gives you a clear point to work toward. Then, through practicing and improving your mental agility when it comes to positive effect thinking, stress and energy management, attention control, and imagery, you improve your overall mental abilities. When you are calm and confident in your own mind, it is only natural that you exude those characteristics to others, which are important qualities of any good leader.

In real-world, day-to-day scenarios, you may be called on to utilize any one of the five different techniques, or you might find yourself using multiple techniques in conjunction with one another. Increasing your mental capabilities provides you with the strength you need to meet the challenges of your daily environment.

REAL VUCA WORLD PEAK PERFORMANCES

Given the inherent challenges of a business world filled with complexity and volatility, CEOs have identified creativity as the number one leadership quality that is essential for traversing this kind of environment. Creative leaders can bring qualities that are uniquely made for this kind of a business challenge. According to a study by IBM, creative leaders seek “disruptive innovation, consider unorthodox ways to change the enterprise, are comfortable with ambiguity, and are courageous and visionary enough to make dramatic decisions that change the status quo.”³

What is essential for leaders to thrive in a VUCA performance environment? Good leaders must respond quickly and effectively to challenges from rapidly evolving, ever-changing situations. They must do this by providing vision, direction, simplicity, a sense of control, and confidence. For this kind of turbulent performance environment, leaders need to possess the following capacities:

Situational awareness

Mental agility

Learned instinct

Commander’s calm

The challenge for leaders is to be especially effective in extreme conditions. Anything less will not carry the day. Leaders owe it to the organizations they serve and the people they lead to bring their very best to the challenges faced in high-pressure and high-demand situations. Anyone who has ever served as a leader in a VUCA environment quickly comes to realize that much of what they knew and learned was insufficient. I have been in such situations and quickly realized that I needed more to get me through. I had to reach within myself for something deeper, something that reflected who I was, not just what I knew and what I did. In a VUCA environment, leaders need to be at their best as the person they are, harnessing the power of who they have become over the years. Personal strengths such as confidence, adaptability, agility, calm, and focus will carry the day far more than competencies or skills, knowledge and abilities, or desired behavior lists.

DEVELOPING PERFORMANCE CAPACITIES WITH MENTAL SKILLS

How do the mental skills you have learned interact to best develop the performance capacities of situational awareness, mental agility, learned instinct, and commander’s calm? They all have a part in the overall development of each of the capacities, with some playing a greater role than others.

Situational awareness requires exceptional attention control, learning to “pay attention to how you pay attention” and razor-sharp focus. Imagery provides an intuitive sense for what is happening around us. It is much quicker than the normal thought processes we use for analyzing and solving problems and thus a powerful tool for developing situational awareness.

Mental agility incorporates elements of adaptive thinking, attention control, and imagery. Flexible and fluid thinking are critical in a constantly changing situation. Staying focused on what is most important regardless of the distractions enhances the ability to shift quickly and seamlessly between tasks. Using the power of imagery to envision possible outcomes before they happen provides the plasticity for rapid assessment and decision making.

Learned instinct is what drives intuitive and gut-feeling types of decisions and execution. We actually operate with “three brains”: the brain in the head, the brain in the heart, and the brain in the gut. Recent research has demonstrated that the heart and the gut have nervous systems and thus are able to “think.” We can become more intuitive and instinctive in our actions by listening and trusting what the heart and gut have to “say.” Such instinctive behavior can be learned and developed through repetitive, deliberate practice and experiences that directly target elements of the heart and gut that affect what we do and how we do it.

Finally, we are all familiar with the cool, calm, and collected commander who never seems ruffled by anything. Commander’s calm can best be developed by learning to directly control the mental, emotional, and physiological responses to stressful and high arousal situations. It is keeping the fight-or-flight response in check. It is not so much about trying to control events as it is about controlling yourself, especially your thoughts, self-talk, and emotions. Learning self-regulation to minimize stress responses and optimize energy levels that match the situation is crucial to remaining calm in high-stress situations. With today’s much more sophisticated yet accessible biofeedback and neurofeedback technologies, the ability to control otherwise involuntary mechanisms is a potent tool for performing at our best when it matters the most, and it matters the most under extreme conditions.

Following are real-world situations demonstrating each of the skill sets.

SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

Definition: perceiving salient elements of a rapidly changing environment in order to anticipate, understand, and act on future events

Application of the Five-Point Plan: The combination of improved positive-effective thinking and attention control improve a person’s ability to have situational awareness and make good choices when decisions need to be made.

NORTHWEST FLIGHT 188

At 5:41 p.m., October 21, 2009, Northwest Flight 188 departed from San Diego bound for Minneapolis. As the Airbus 320 flew to an altitude of thirty-seven thousand feet, the crew made regular contact with Denver air traffic controllers. A short time later when Denver air traffic control tried to reestablish contact with them, there was no response from the cockpit. Controllers tried texting the crew: nothing. At 7:56 p.m., the FAA designated the flight NORDO status, short for no radio communications. Denver center handed off tracking responsibilities to Minneapolis center. Controllers in Minneapolis could not make radio contact either. Fighter jets were mobilized in Madison, Wisconsin, with fears mounting that Flight 188 might have been hijacked.

Four and a half hours after takeoff, this plane was supposed to descend, but it never did. It kept on flying. It flew over Minneapolis and kept right on going. Flight 188 overshot Minneapolis by more than 150 miles. There had been no radio contact for more than an hour. Finally at 9:14 p.m., air traffic controllers were able to connect with the crew. By that time the plane was well past Minneapolis and over Wisconsin. Controllers asked the pilot to make a 180-degree turn and ordered him to make a series of maneuvers to make sure he was in control of the aircraft, not hijackers.

The pilot’s explanation for overshooting Minneapolis? The National Transportation Safety Board said, “The crew stated they were in a heated discussion over airline policy and they lost situational awareness.”⁴ At 10:02 p.m., the plane finally landed safely in Minneapolis, one hour and fourteen minutes late. This was a frightening demonstration of the loss of situational awareness.

I want to make a specific point about the difficulty of having situational awareness in especially routine and often dull attention tasks. In such situations, it is difficult to maintain a high level of alertness and stay narrowly focused. For example, in fairness to the pilots on Flight 188, once the takeoff is complete, the plane flies itself for the most part, and the pilot has little to do other than remain aware. In such a circumstance, it would be easy to get distracted by some other interest, as was the case here. Another example would be security guards watching an array of security monitors. Imagine spending endless hours watching these monitors and nothing happens. Boredom quickly sets in, and attention wanders. Some companies have become creative by inserting some sort of action or visual change into some of the monitors. This periodic change on the monitors keeps the security guards more aware and alert, and reduces the possibility of boredom and reduced vigilance.

Being aware of our surroundings, having the ability to recognize a constantly changing situation, and remaining focused on what is important are critical attention survival mechanisms that begin at birth and continue to develop with experience. Without them, we would be unable to respond with the appropriate thoughts, feelings, and actions. As we develop, we become increasingly more proficient at attending to the right thing at the right time. However, at some point, we discover that the normal development of our attention is no longer sufficient to meet new and ever-changing challenges as the world becomes more and more complex and the demand for our attention increases exponentially.

Highly successful performers discover ways they can accelerate the development of their ability to focus and concentrate. This is crucial, especially for situations that are unclear and ambiguous, where recognizing and understanding the most relevant information and then being able to act on it are paramount. Everything begins with attention or inattention. The practices outlined in Chapter 9 can help you improve your own abilities to maintain attention. For example, it matters little how adept you are at making decisions or how much problem solving you know if you are attending to the wrong thing! Focus comes first, then awareness, and then action.

Lack of situational awareness has been identified as a primary factor in poor decision making and in accidents attributed to human error.⁵ This is especially true for work areas where the flow of information is very high and the consequences for inattention and making poor decisions is serious. The required level of attentiveness in any given situation is determined by the performance demands of that situation and the inherent distractions that accompany it. As we grow and develop in our personal and professional lives, we take on added roles and responsibilities that require concurrent improvements in our ability to pay attention. For example, firefighters learn what to pay attention to in their unique environment, police officers and soldiers in theirs, organizational leaders in theirs, and so on. This is necessary and provides the attention framework for accomplishing the desired tasks.

However, as a situation becomes more unpredictable and unclear, more like a VUCA world, situational awareness based on past training and experience becomes much more difficult. There will come a point where ambiguity and lack of clarity leave little to go by in terms of where to look, what to listen for, what to focus on. Some of the skills, tools, and techniques offered in this book will go a long way in developing situational awareness in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous situations.

MENTAL AGILITY

Definition: the ability to apply a creative solution to a complex problem in a timely manner

Application of the Five-Point Plan: Setting goals, controlling stress, having confidence in one’s decisions, and being able to maintain focus all work together in helping improve a person’s mental agility.

A CRITICAL PICKUP IN AFGHANISTAN⁶

In November 2003, a U.S.-led coalition launched Operation Mountain Resolve in the Nuristan and Kunar Provinces of Afghanistan in order to disrupt anti-coalition militia operations and prevent militia members from seeking sanctuary in the rugged Afghan provinces. Members of the Tenth Mountain division called for a CH–47 helicopter to pick up Afghan Persons Under Custody (prisoners). Pilot Larry Murphy, Company G, 104th Aviation Regiment of the Pennsylvania Guard, answered the call. Upon arriving at the scene, Capt. Murphy quickly recognized the extreme ruggedness of the terrain with rocks and sharp slopes all around. Tenth Mountain soldiers had assembled the Afghan persons in custody for evacuation on a small rooftop, precariously perched on the side of a cliff. It became quickly evident that there was no other place for the helicopter to land.

Very much aware of the urgency of the evacuation and the speed with which he needed to accomplish this so that U.S. soldiers were minimally exposed to possible enemy fire, Capt. Murphy gently hovered and then set the back end of the helicopter down on the rooftop while keeping the front end hovering in midair. Experts tell us that this was close to impossible. As noted by one seasoned helicopter pilot, “Now how many people on the planet you reckon could set the ass end of a chopper down on the rooftop of a shack on a steep mountain cliff and hold it there while soldiers load prisoners in the rear?”⁷

Note that the definition of mental agility has three parts to it: creative solution, complex problem, and timely manner. All three are required if one is to be mentally agile. Mental agility is about being fluid, flexible, and adaptive in what and how you think about a situation. It determines how well you can come to a quick solution and decision, and how quickly you can act on it. The chopper pilot in the Afghanistan evacuation story clearly demonstrated the presence of all three.

Mental agility is developing the mind to move swiftly and correctly. It is about having a balance between speed and accuracy as we process and work to understand an ever-increasing barrage of information. Optimizing both in a rapidly changing and uncertain situation is essential. As mentioned earlier, a key part of mental agility is what and how you think, and a large part of that is how well you control your thoughts in the moment. The bad news is this is difficult. The good news is control can be taught and developed, as you have seen in the practices laid out in previous chapters. That control can become just as automatic as your other instinctive responses. In reality, it is not what is happening to you that matters, but how you think about what is happening.

Adaptive thinking builds greater capacity for displaying mental agility. It places much greater emphasis on training how to think, rather than just what to think. The meaning of the oft-used phrase thinking out of the box is a useful way to describe adaptive thinking. To think out of the box requires openness to new and different ideas and perspectives. It provides more insight into the strengths and weaknesses of one’s own thinking. To be adaptive is to recognize not only the various parts of a given situation but also the possible patterns derived from various combinations of these parts. The gestalt principle, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, is an important element of mental agility. Pattern recognition is a critical brain function mechanism. Some of our best thinking is achieved when we understand causes, connect those causes, and then make sense out of them. In a VUCA environment, causality is difficult, but not impossible, to discern. Since the brain likes patterns, anything we can do to help it make connections is worth our effort. Making connections can be trained. It is the brain’s most natural function.

Mental agility means thinking while performing. It means developing fast and simple heuristics, simple rules of thumb that fit the environment in which they are used. In an uncertain and hard-to-predict environment, decisions still have to be made, but it will be much more difficult. In such environments, highly successful performers learn and use trial and error. The brain’s pattern recognition bias aids in the ability to develop such rules of thumb.

LEARNED INSTINCT

Definition: taking action based on learned behaviors that become automatic in time through repetitive, deliberate, and repeated practice and experience

Application of the Five-Point Plan: The repeated practice of skills necessary in the Five-Point Plan turn those mental skills into learned instinct that helps you succeed in times of stress and volatility.

US AIRWAYS FLIGHT 1549, MIRACLE ON THE HUDSON⁸

On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 left New York’s LaGuardia Airport, heading for Charlotte, North Carolina, with 155 people on board. Just minutes into the flight, the airplane encountered a flock of geese. The pilot had no choice but to fly straight through the flock of geese. Still ascending, the bird strike caused both engines to fail, leaving the plane without power. Capt. Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot, immediately radioed back to LaGuardia Airport and described the situation and asked for instructions to return to LaGuardia. As the plane turned around and descended with both engines off, the plane flew over the Hudson River, heading back toward the airport. Capt. Sully realized he was not going to make it to LaGuardia and made an instant and instinctive decision to land the airplane in the Hudson River. With a near-perfect glider-like desent, the plane skidded across the water and came to a halt totally intact and afloat. Emergency procedures had been started by the crew at three thousand feet, actions that are normally accomplished at thirty thousand feet in an emergency. All 155 passengers exited the airplane safely and were rescued by boats in the vicinity. To gain a real appreciation for how this potential disaster unfolded, here is the actual conversation among Capt. Sully, an air traffic controller (ATC), and the airport tower (Tower).

[ATC] Cactus 15-four-niner departure to contact, maintain one-five thousand.

[Capt. Sully] Maintain one-five thousand, Cactus 15-four-niner.

[ATC] Cactus 15-four-niner turn left heading 270.

[Capt. Sully] This is Cactus 15-four-niner. Hit birds through . . . (garbled), turning back towards LaGuardia.

[ATC] OK. You need to return to LaGuardia. Turn left heading 220.

[Capt. Sully] 220.

[ATC] Stop all departures. He’s got an emergency returning.

[Tower] Who is it?

[ATC] It’s 1549. A bird strike. He lost all engines. He lost thrust in both engines. Returning immediately.

[Tower] Cactus 1549. Which engines?

[ATC] He lost thrust in both engines, he said.

[Tower] Got it.

[ATC] Cactus 1549. Could you get here? Do you want to try to land on 1R13?

[Capt. Sully] We are unable. We may end up in the Hudson.

[ATC] Cactus 1549. There’s going to be less traffic to runway 31.

[Capt. Sully] Unable. (Pilot makes decision to try to land in the Hudson River.)

[ATC] OK what do you need to land? Do you want to try to go to Teterboro?

[Capt. Sully] Yes.

[ATC] Teterboro, aahh . . . (garbled) LaGuardia emergency inbound. Cactus 1549 over the George Washington Bridge, wants to go to your airport right now.

[Teterboro Tower] Wants our airport. Check. Does he need assistance?

[ATC] Ah yes, it was a bird strike. Can I get him in on runway 1?

[Teterboro Tower] Runway 1. That’s good.

[ATC] Cactus 1549, turn right 28 zero. You can land on runway 1 at Teterboro.

[Capt. Sully] We can’t do it.

[ATC] OK. Which runway would you like at Teterboro?

[Capt. Sully] We’re gonna be in the Hudson.

[ATC] I’m sorry. Say again Cactus. Cactus 1549, radar contact is lost. (3:31. Plane lands in the Hudson River.) You also got Newark airport at two o’clock in about seven miles. Eagle 2718 . . . (garbled) 210.

[UNKNOWN] 210. 2718. I think he said he was going in the Hudson.

[ATC] Cactus 1549. You still on? (Silence)

I have provided the transcript of the conversation among the tower, another air traffic controller, and Capt. Sully to highlight two key points: the disconnect between the tower and air controllers and Capt. Sully, and the calm and poise Capt. Sully demonstrated as he made his almost matter-of-fact decision to land in the Hudson. He later said in an interview, “It was very quiet as we worked, my copilot and I. We were a team. But to have zero thrust coming out of those engines was shocking—the silence.”⁹ Sullenberger calmly walked the nonflooded part of the passenger cabin twice to make sure everyone had evacuated before retrieving the plane’s maintenance logbook and leaving the aircraft, the last to evacuate.

From where did this calm and poise come? His pilot training? Was it something inherently different about Capt. Sully? If ever there was an example of instinctive behavior in a critical situation, the actions and demeanor of Capt. Sully certainly exemplified it. To answer these questions, we need to know a little about his background. In addition to his years of experience as a US Airways pilot, his record speaks volumes of experience as an instructor and aviation accident investigator. But these are not the primary reasons for his heroic deed.

What makes this a good story about learned instinct is that Capt. Sully holds a Commercial Pilot Certificate rating in gliders! As a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Class of 1969, he was selected as one of a dozen other freshmen to start a cadet glider club. By the end of that first year, he was already a glider instructor pilot. Capt. Sully continued flying gliders throughout his career and served as a master glider pilot instructor. This experience played an immense role in his success in landing Flight 1549. Dr. Frank Ayers, chairman of the flight department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, said this of Sully’s glider experience: “It certainly would help, because in a glider, every landing is an engine-out landing.” To safely land Flight 1549 on the frigid Hudson River, as with other water landings, Sullenberger had to fly “as slow as you can without diving,” Ayers said, adding that the process is similar to landing a glider.¹⁰

In other words, through a long period of deliberate and repetitive practice, Capt. Sully honed his skills flying a powerless airplane. His actions became automatic and instinctive. What he was able to do on that day over the Hudson was learned instinct. It was a situation that required an instant, automatic response, not thinking.

So what is this idea of “learned instinct”? We are all familiar with the idea of basic instincts and how critical they are to our very survival. The most basic instincts are inborn and come with our genetic blueprints. They are triggered automatically. We also recognize that there are many other responses in our behavioral repertoire that are also automatic, also seemingly “instinctive.” We all use phrases like “gut instinct” or “go with your instincts,” or “my gut tells me.” Have you ever thought about what that really means?

The fact is that we can and do develop learned instincts. In addition to the repetitive and deliberate practice, developing learned instincts also requires the controlled use of the “nervous systems” of the heart and the gut. As detailed earlier in this chapter, recent neuroscience discoveries tell us that both the heart and the gut have nervous systems, and can be trained to react in certain situations, especially when you know how to control those reactions with your mind.

Until recently, a common method for training in the U.S. Army has been through rote repetition. Rote repetition is basically running through an exercise or training activity over and over again in hopes of changing behavior and improving performance. For example, a typical training activity for a squad of soldiers would be the clearing of a room in a hostile building. This can be practiced on nearly every army base in simulated buildings and rooms. In this training exercise, the squad would enter the room in a specified formation with each member carrying out assigned roles. During a typical exercise, a sergeant would run the soldiers through the simulation over and over and over again until they get it right.

This kind of training is much akin to Einstein’s definition of insanity, “doing the same thing over and over again while hoping for a different outcome.” Today, that exercise looks very different. Instead of just repeating the exercise over and over, the sergeant will give deliberate and targeted instructions each time the soldiers clear the room. Targeted means having a clear and specified goal for each and every repetition. The brain learns through repetition, but not just any kind of repetition. It learns best through repetitive deliberate practice, which means that each and every repetition must have a specific and defined goal.

We know from neuroscience that the brain’s prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is responsible for executive function—judgment, problem-solving ability, and so on—works most efficiently and effectively when it has a clear and precise goal or target. Learned instinctive behavior is developed primarily through repetition. We now know it is not any kind of repetition but deliberate practice that incorporates a specific and precise goal with every repetition.

In building the leader capacity of learned instinct, we develop core mental skills that contribute significantly in developing automatic learned behaviors. For example, with setting goals we learn the importance of having clear and precise targets for our behavior. Having a clear goal helps shape the precise behaviors needed to achieve that goal. Since automaticity develops best with simplicity and precision, a good goal-setting process can contribute to that. Voluntary control and regulation of involuntary autonomic nervous system mechanisms (fight-or-flight response) are critical for developing learned “instinctive” behaviors. Recognizing attention cues and being able to direct our attention to them is key in any situation, but especially in critical situations.

COMMANDER’S CALM

Definition: responding mentally, emotionally, and physiologically in a cool, calm, and collected manner

Application of the Five-Point Plan: Positive-effective thinking, stress and energy management, attention control, and imagery all play important roles in a person exhibiting commander’s calm.

GENERAL DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER AND D-DAY AT NORMANDY¹¹

D-day was the first day of any military operation during the war. Over the years, however, the expression D-day has come to mean the greatest single Allied operation of World War II, the invasion of Normandy. In the spring of 1944, Allied forces engaged in a massive buildup on the British Isles. They were preparing to launch Operation Overlord, the invasion of France. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander in Europe, had to make one of the most critical decisions of World War II, the date for the invasion, and time was quickly running out. Hundreds of thousands of Allied troops, sailors, and airmen awaited his orders to begin Operation Overlord. Eisenhower had already delayed Overlord for a month. He postponed other military operations to allow the Allies time to build their forces and amass the landing craft they needed. A date was set: June 5, 1944. General Eisenhower gave orders for all officers and men to be ready. However, there was one factor that was very troubling and it was beyond the Allies’ control. The weather.

The Allied planners knew they could not control the weather for D-day. Late on the evening of June 2, 1944, Eisenhower, his top generals, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met to review the weather forecast. The news was not good—D-day, June 5, promised cloudy skies, rain, and heavy seas. Under such conditions, the invasion stood little chance of success. Under tremendous pressure from both those who wanted to go and those who said wait for a better weather period (later in June), Eisenhower decided to wait another day to see if weather conditions might improve. Less than twenty-four hours before the scheduled invasion, Eisenhower gathered his advisers again. The forecast indicated that the rain would stop and there would be breaks in the clouds by midafternoon on June 5.

With the massive buildup weighing heavily on his mind, Eisenhower calmly and decidedly changed the date for D-day to June 6. He knew that the tides would not favor an invasion again for nearly two weeks, long enough for the Germans to possibly learn of the Allies’ plan. Eisenhower gave the order and set in motion the largest amphibious invasion in world history: an armada of more than 4,000 warships, nearly 10,000 aircraft, and about 160,000 invasion troops. The hard-fought invasion was a success, although casualties were heavy in some of the beach landing areas and in the airborne drop zones inland. Eisenhower had won his gamble with the weather. In less than two months, Allied forces broke out from their Normandy beachheads and pushed through France and on to Germany, resulting in the eventual collapse and surrender of Nazi Germany and the liberation of Europe.

What was especially noteworthy about Eisenhower’s actions and demeanor in those final days before the invasion? I am using his story as an excellent example of commander’s calm, a label I use to describe the behavior and demeanor of leaders who demonstrate exceptional calm, poise, and composure under extreme conditions. General Eisenhower kept his wits about him while surrounded by strong disagreements among his staff; generals with strong egos; planning challenges of the largest armada ever assembled with multiservice, multinational components; and, of course, the great uncertainty of the weather. Through all this, he was a calm and confident leader, very much informed and very much in control.

In reading about and personally observing commanders of military fighting units, it strikes me how the best leaders always appear so calm and composed in combat, while the poor ones always seem to be in a tizzy. On a personal note, I had to quickly learn how to be more like an Eisenhower to successfully lead a company of men in combat.

While I was serving as an officer in the war in Vietnam, there were many times when my company came under fire. It was a hard-fought war, and we were on the front lines. I always kept in the forefront of my mind what I had learned from my first sergeant: A true leader does not just dictate what others should do, but leads by his own actions. One night, my men and I were moving through the jungle when we were ambushed by the enemy. Gunfire seemed to come from all around. I positioned my men to where we were able to hold off the attack, but then realized the enemy’s point element was working to establish crossfire over our unit. While the men of my company held off the enemy as much as possible, I was able to crawl to the enemy’s emplacement and destroy it with a hand grenade. Then we were able to move forward with an assault that got us out of that dangerous battle. I was later awarded the Silver Star for this action. While I am very proud of the honor bestowed on me, this was just one instance of many during Vietnam where my training and ability to focus on the moment allowed me to take the actions that were needed to achieve success.

My combat experience is one of the factors that led me to want to study leadership and leader development and, eventually, human performance in a broader sense, especially performance under extreme conditions. My own experiences throughout my career continued to develop my interest and passion for the field of sports and performance psychology, eventually bringing me to where I am now.

The ability to remain cool, calm, and collected under fire is critical to performing well in any situation, but absolutely essential in a VUCA environment.

Commander’s calm is the capacity to respond mentally, emotionally, and physiologically in a calm and composed manner, regardless of the tempo, clarity, or comfort level of the situation. Interestingly enough, in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, one definition of calm is “a period or condition of freedom from storms, high winds, or rough activity of water.” The same could be said for human calm. It is not so much the presence of a certain state, for example, being relaxed or steady, but the absence of a certain state, for example, stress, worry, or anxiety. Of course, the absence of a certain state is most effectively derived by the presence of a different state. You cannot be stress- or worry-free without applying something you have specifically learned through experience or deliberate training.

Mental skills play a crucial role in the development of the leader capacity for commander’s calm. As I mentioned earlier, it is not what happens to you that really matters; it is how you think about what happens to you that matters. We act on what we perceive and how we interpret the world around us. The interpretation is totally within our control, if we choose to exercise it. We have the opportunity, through our thoughts, to choose whether a situation is perceived as threatening or comforting, good or evil, helpful or hurting. And most important, that choice determines how our mind and body responds mentally, emotionally, and physiologically.

Learning to exercise voluntary control over otherwise involuntary mechanisms goes a long way in achieving the sense of calm and composure that is a distinguishing feature of successful leaders who excel in extreme conditions. I learned quickly in my early days of commanding an infantry company in Vietnam that one of my primary responsibilities was to maintain a calm and collected disposition and ensure that my men sensed it. Had I known then what I know now, that disposition would have been much easier to achieve and would have come a lot faster. Of course, experience teaches many of us about the capabilities that mental skills training provides, but specific, targeted training accelerates the learning, acquisition, and application of these mental skills.

GET COMFORTABLE WITH BEING UNCOMFORTABLE

One final point: One of the groups we have worked with is the Special Operations Command of the army. They need to be exceptionally effective under extreme conditions. Nothing less is acceptable. In a VUCA environment, warriors need to be at their best on a personal level, significantly adding to their technical, tactical, and physical proficiency. They must possess certain capacities that are significantly enhanced by mental skills that have been demonstrated to be critical for exceptional performance in extreme conditions. They need to have capacities that most effectively respond to challenges from rapidly evolving, ever-changing, ambiguous situations by providing a sense of control. In the VUCA battlefield, the most critical are situational awareness, mental agility, learned instinct, and commander’s calm. This applies to everyone living in a VUCA world, including business executives.

In Special Operations scenarios, the windows of opportunity open and close quickly. Warriors need to prepare themselves ahead of time by developing mental skills that provide them with the tools for recognizing, understanding, and acting on those windows of opportunity. Certainly using the mind to envision a future is right at the top of such skills. The ability to create a clear image of the desired end state and then articulate that vision to others is critical for unit alignment.

The best way to communicate that vision to others is through storytelling. If the right story is told at the right time in the right way, others will see the same “picture.” Fewer words, less paper, and no PowerPoints! In addition, sensing a situation accurately calls for fine-tuning all our senses, and then trusting them to provide the needed clarity for simplifying complex situations. The ability to be adaptive and agile, to be comfortable being uncomfortable, is fundamental for timely and effective action. The VUCA world places an absolute premium on the mental skills that develop confidence, awareness, adaptability, agility, and resilience.