I’m a veteran of the infantry and when I took over a fire team for the first time I made the mistake of drawing hard lines in the sand this immediately alienated members of that team that had been together for some time I did not make that mistake again and I definitely learn from my experience so clearly there’s not a question there yeah and and I forget pulling this out from I get a lot of emails and messages and all that but I thought it was a good point to bring up to say you know this idea of drawing hard lines in the sand and what that does to your leadership position it’s it’s a it’s a difficult it’s usually not a good thing to do if you draw a lot hard lines in the sand and eventually you realize that they’re either unrealistic or people can’t maintain them you have set yourself up for failure what is that exactly so it’s no matter what we will not cut bla bla bla yeah there’s the leg no matter what we will we will win every single Road marks that we do as a fire team in this while while we’re here on this training thing mmm okay well guess what that’s a that’s hard there’s other there’s some other fire teams that are also want to win and and so you’ve drawn a hard line to send that’s not really a good example of a good example to take no matter what we’re gonna muster every morning at 4:30 in the morning mm-hmm no matter what and you know then the guys are out on patrol until 2:38 in the morning and now the next morning a good no matter what a similar one well it’s it’s not good for them it’s unrealistic so you do a hard line in the sand and now you got to back it down so and all you have to do is soften the statement a little bit hey guys to the best of our ability if we can we’re gonna get here every morning at 4:30 from muster there’s a little there’s a little room to play there right and that’s that’s fine so again I I there’s there’s not a lot of there’s not a question here but one of the reasons I think that that I that I wanted talk about it was because I think people look at me yeah and even hear me on a peripheral level and they think all I bet Chuck will just lay down the hard night it’s my way or the highway right yeah and and the the opposite is actually true and the reason that I came to that conclusion was because I worked for leaders like that and I hated working for leaders like that so I tried to never be a leader like that hmm and there’s a dichotomy right there’s a huge dichotomy because this doesn’t mean that you’re not driving and pushing this doesn’t mean that you’re not saying hey we’re gonna be the best whatever we’re to be the best task unit here doesn’t mean you’re not saying hey look we’re not gonna rest until we’ve done what we’re supposed to do doesn’t mean that mmm but man you got to find that balance yeah
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