Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Interview with General Barry McCaffrey

I recently interviewed Barry McCaffrey on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is one of the most decorated military leaders of our era. General Barry McCaffrey is the recipient of two silver stars, two Distinguished Service crosses, a member of the US Army Ranger Hall of Fame, a retired Four Star General, former cabinet member, and Vietnam veteran, and leader of the decisive battle in the Persian Gulf War. General McCaffrey, thank you for joining us.

General McCaffrey: Adam is good to be with you.

General McCaffrey: A topic I've explored with many guests on this podcast is overcoming setbacks. And there's no linear path to success. Getting to the top requires overcoming all kinds of bumps in the road. But there are setbacks and then there's the kind of setbacks that you've had to encounter. And for listeners who may not be aware, you sustained some really, really serious wounds back in your days in Vietnam to the point that you were expected to die. Can you take listeners back to those days on the battlefield and your experience battling, and ultimately overcoming, the injuries that led to your three purple hearts? And what are the best lessons that you learned from that time in your life?

General McCaffrey: Well, that's a lot. You know, I think, part of, in my own background, I was a West Point graduate, a professional soldier, my dad was a retired three star general. My father-in-law was a wonderful world war 2-11 Airborne Division, paratrooper. So we had a family history of being involved in the armed forces. So the Vietnam experience, although it was exceedingly demanding and difficult, and I ended up in hospitals, often on Navy hospital ships and Air Force evac hospitals, and Walter Reed, which was one of the best experiences of my life, wonderful medical community. But basically, I never thought that I was in over my head. I never felt abused, you know? And, and so that wasn't a significant drawback when I ended up in Walter Reed with my left arm basically shredded by a machine gun. I was there off and on for a year or two for various surgeries. I was in graduate school, I was there, you know, the army was so good to us. And we were all pretty high in morale. You know, we took care of each other, we loved the nurses and the doctors that were our caregivers. So that period of my life wasn't a dark chapter. And I'm still involved with, every two years, my rifle company, I commanded on my third combat or as a reunion, they were a bunch of 19 year old boys. The first general and I were the only ones who were old guys, I was 25. And he was 35. You know, you raise a good point, though. If it’s working beyond setbacks or failures, then, you know, God, I've had my share, man, but one thing I remember my dad telling me, he said, you know what? When it comes to the army, I think it applies to business life. Also, if you end up with a really bad boss and it's early on in your life, it's a setback. If you end up with two bad bosses in a row, you'll probably quit and go find something else to do. And I never had two bad bosses in a row. So I worked for these incredibly good people over the years. And when I would get something off-kilter and not achieve an objective, I tell them, hey, this thing, we screwed up, here's how we're fixing it. And so it wasn't only a learning experience, it was just accepted by the people I was working with. I knew what I was doing, and now he's going to go back and correct it. But I do think if you have some setbacks early in life, and you're working for a jerk, it's better to challenge and I never really faced that kind of challenge and 32 years in uniform and five years and the civilian government and now in business. But I just got to add one other comment about business; you're always astonished. And people I say this, I've been on 10, 15 boards over the years; pro bono, big boards, little boards, I've never heard a dish on a statement in a boardroom, or when somebody who suggested something that would be mildly illegal or unethical, or we'll put out shoddy product products for a high price. I never heard an illegal statement in a boardroom. I met these incredibly gifted, energetic- all younger than me almost without exception. They are more likely to be 40 than they are in their 70’s. So, again, one of the ways to have a great life is work with good people. Yeah. And that's quite been part of my success.

Adam: And what you really brought out to listeners was several important points. Number one, the importance of perspective. A moment that I think objectively listeners would look at as a dark time- you're recovering from life-threatening injuries, you look at as a warm time in your life, you look at the positive; the camaraderie, the fact that you had this great experience at Walter Reed where the support help you recover from these injuries. Number two, really talking about the importance of ethics, which is such a critical part of effective leadership. And number three, the importance of leadership in general, how, if you have a bad boss, if you have two bad bosses that could truly set you back. And with that in mind, I want to ask you your perspective on leadership. You've led historic battles, you've led cabinet departments, what are your core leadership principles? What is your philosophy as a leader?

General McCaffrey: Well, there's two things I always tell people. One is you simply have to be an expert at what you're doing. And there’s always been this notion that a General can do anything, you know? You can manufacture cars, you can run a pharmaceutical business, you can run a, you know, a small retail operation, but I, I have- one of the fortunate aspects of my life, I only did two things in the armed forces in 32 years- when I was involved in the tactical army, the fighting army, the CIO training, preparing to run air, land battle operation, and the other one was strategic, political, military, you know, issue. So I've served in headquarters, NATO in Brussels, and headquarters in the Army Staff in the Pentagon and headquarters of the Joint Staff and been a joint commander, so either political military affairs or the fighting army. And that went on for three decades. So every job I got to the foundation of expertise was there. And plus, in the armed forces, unlike civilian business where we have to pay for it, I used to tell people, I was a runner. The middle four star General, but I had five and a half years of full time, postgraduate education, you name it. I mean, if not just two years of graduate school, at American University and the Harvard security program, the Harvard Business program, and you know, if I'd go someplace where I needed to revive my language skills in French or Spanish, the armed forces would pay to put me in immersion Spanish or French again. So I think being an expert, getting to a job and saying, oh, I understand the broad aspects of this whole thing I'm doing, now I’ve got to learn maybe this job- that's vital. A second observation I got from this wonderful community manager in Germany- and a boy what a tough man he was a lot of fun, rascal, old guy and he said, there's only one consistent aspect of successful people. He said, successful people, sometimes aren't too bright. They don't look too good. Sometimes they're a little lazy around the edges. He said, the one thing you always find is they have learned how to surround themselves with good people who they empower and push forward. And so if you're talking about the superintendent of a large school system, or the CEO of a business, or somebody who's now a brigade commander in the army, they have learned how to take their subordinates and package them in ways where they succeed and then push you up the career prospect. I think those are probably the two key things; be an expert, and take the team of leaders that you're assigned and empower and develop them and reward them and correctly say, you're the reason I'm being successful.

Adam: I want to dive a little bit deeper. And I agree with everything you said there. So much of your success was your ability to build winning teams, and ultimately get the most out of your troops, whether you're motivating troops on the battlefield or motivating troops in your business. What advice do you have for listeners on how to best motivate the people in their organizations?

General McCaffrey: Well, one thing I'm sure of is that we're all different. And leadership is completely situational. You know, I was given a keynote speech to an annual Red Cross meeting luncheon, and this marvelous CEO of the Red Cross sat up and said, the Red Cross and General McCaffrey's background have one thing in common; we're both volunteer organizations, which got a chuckle out of the audience, because obviously, the armed forces and Red Cross are quite dissimilar in how they are structured and how you motivate people and incentivize people, etc. But, you know, I think the broad contact that you simply have to look at the resources you have, and the situation that you're in. One anecdote I'll use on talking to leadership to civilian audiences, I'll say that, here's a historical question coming up in so many rooms- always knows the answer, you know? 300 people sitting out there, I'll say, between 1865 and today, you know, 2021, the US Armed Forces have been in innumerable small and large wars. World War I; 18,000 killed in action in World War II, 420,000 killed in action. So during that entire period of time, how many soldiers, airmen, sailors, and Marines were executed, under their Uniform Code of Military Justice for cowardice in the face of the enemy from 1865 to today? The answer is one. And somebody will always remain; a private Eddie Slovak was shot during the terrible days of the Battle of the Bulge in World War Two. Many have been convicted of desertion in the face of the enemy, but he was the only one that ever executed, and all of a sudden, they ended the Civil War. And so I use that to underscore look, when it comes to motivating people, is it the power of fear and authority? Or is it the power of trust and affiliation and reward that gets people to do difficult things when your life is at stake? I tell people, it definitely isn't the enormous authority of a military commander in combat over the subordinate. It's the fact they say, well, we think she knows what she's doing. We understand we got to rely on each other. So there's a coterie of positive aspects that cause somebody to do what they've got to do in their own life at risk. And the same thing happens in business, you know, people basically, yeah, they understand the CEO can promote them, promote their compensation, additional schooling honors, yeah, they understand all that. They have tremendous authority power, but basically, it's the positive aspects of leadership that creates strong institutions, hot, elite, high-performing organizations. And so I think that's important for people to take into account when they when they face crisis management leadership challenges,

Adam: What are ways that leaders can build trust? You mentioned the importance of building trust in the battlefield. And that's such an important topic, no matter what context one is leading. What advice do you have for listeners?

General McCaffrey: Well, you know, a much used term is servant leadership. I never liked really the connotations of that, but what I do think is that in any organization, you're a bench scientist, you have three colleagues who work on your loose supervision, on up to- you're the CEO of a 60,000 person organization. And almost every contact, you are the most visible figure on the horizon. People are watching you constantly there and so they're going to judge, first of all, number one character. Do you want to find your leaders, expert, the guy knows what he's doing? You know, when she's telling you to do something, she told us 10 times before to do something and it turned out, okay, she must know what she's talking about. So get that expert power. And I think the second thing people are looking at, there's sort of a fancy word for it and effective association with leadership. They're looking at your character, and they're saying, you know, is this person actually looking out for our interests? Are they developing, as an individual, when they tell me something? Do I know it's going to be the truth? And, you know, it gets down to the military telling you as a brand new Lieutenant sitting in a class at Fort Benning in pre-lieutenant. Sometimes it's just a bag of tricks where the trick is, I always get last in the food line, I'm always on the first helicopter out into the, you know, hospital. I'm in the motor pool when it's freezing rain, and I don't leave until the last soldier is also out and dry. And so over time, you start developing that reputation. And at that point, people say no, when he tells us to do something we can trust, he's going to be there with us that, if it goes wrong, he'll step forward and say it was my responsibility, I'm standing with you. One of the earliest CEOs I worked for, Dr. Barry Carlin, Stanford PhD, said, you know, I told him, I admired how he would synthesize difficult situations for our investors or any, it's a very sad look in business. He said, you know, we validate complex agreements with three feet of legal paper. But basically, it's your word. And in business, if people learn we can't trust your word, then you're out of the game, though, again, trust is not a desirable trait in a central trade.

Adam: And that's such important advice that is universally applicable. And to give an example, to listeners, millions of people around the country, and really around the world, know you as a general, but also know you as a TV analyst, initially, for CNN, and in more recent years for NBC and MSNBC. And you've always been extremely outspoken, no matter what side your comments fall out on. And they could be against the US government, if you believe that the US government has taken actions that are ethically wrong. And to give one example, back in the days when we were torturing detainees during the war on terror, you were extremely outspoken on how unethical that was, and how that needed to stop and how that did not represent who we were as Americans, and just how wrong that was. And I think that that is as important as anything- coming out and speaking what you believe is true, and not being afraid of the consequences.

General McCaffrey: Yeah, and I think much of that, to be blunt, is baked into us at West Point. But one of the major gifts you get out of West Point is if you got to work for 20 hours straight to get a job done, you do that. And the second one is make sure that people can trust your word. But let me sort of back up. And simply, one was certainly the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and that you simply have to obey the law. There has to be a sense of ethics in your decisions. And, you know, ethics do get tested over time and everything isn't black or white. There are gray areas where you have to sort through the- but, you know, the advice I give short to mid-career people- and if it really relates to Apple polishing and telling the boss what he wants to hear, she wants to hear, and you know, and big organizations like those ones, you do find out what the pet peeves of your boss are, that they don't want to hear certain kinds of things. And so the temptation is to back off. And just for equity, peace, don't rile the old guy with what you're telling him. But I also tell people look, if you'd like to be famously successful, then you better have pragmatic, objective, unadulterated feedback to the people you work for. And by the way, you might get fired for it. There's no guarantees. If you work for some shady jerk, you might get nailed for it. But as a general rule, if you're working for good people, and you're giving them that kind of blunt feedback, the word spreads. You know, when there's a troublesome issue, they'll say, you know, Sue Smith is the kind of person we want on this job, because she'll get into it and sort out what's going on and get a pragmatic solution. And she'll tell us what's not going right. But I actually think you get rewarded for being bluntly candid. You have to be gentle on the old guy if it's something that is dear to his heart, he might start off with words of praise to help a man get with it. First, I tell people to write a letter when you object to something. Paragraph one, tell them how grateful you are for their leadership. The last paragraph is, you're a good guy, or the first order in the middle three paragraphs, or when you tell him he's all screwed up, this isn't working. And here's what we got to do to fix it. I think you actually get in good organizations, you get rewarded for candid blunt feedback, even, you know, in the armed forces. People's lives are at risk. That's the payoff. And then business, you can't be a profitable organization with people that are feeding the boss with what they want to hear, though. And then the easy one is- I shouldn't say easy. The Aztecs and rule of law questions are a little more straightforward. And I think people do make mistakes. And they can propose things that are inappropriate or unethical or you find a nest of- I always love these. For all the companies I'm with, you have a number and solicit and browse the company area. Call this anonymous complaint line. They're all pretty good men, totaling 90% of the Balderdash. And oh, somebody is trying to even a score or somebody misunderstood what's going on or whatever. But frequently, you get feedback anonymously, and you find out something's really broken. And at that point, you get to look at the person in charge and say, why didn't you know about this? Why didn't you tell us what the problem was? Sometimes the answer is, look, I'm weak, I didn't want to punk everybody off, I didn't want to tell you if your pet project doesn't work. You have got to have candor in what you're doing. And I personally think in most organizations, you'll get rewarded for it.

Adam: I want to ask you about a couple of experiences in your career, that lead to a really important topic, which is decision making. Early on in your career, you're returning from the battlefield in Vietnam, you were teaching in a very highly coveted position as a professor at West Point, and you could have spent the rest of your career in the classroom. But you missed leading troops in the battlefield and decided to go back to the frontlines. And it was a decision that changed the trajectory of your career and really changed the trajectory of history. When you fast forward to Operation Desert Storm and the historic left hook, which I want to ask you about as well and really wanted to know if you could share with listeners, your decision making process, both in terms of how you thought through the key decisions that impacted your career, and that ultimately impacted the course of history with that historical as well.

General McCaffrey: You know, the first time I taught at West Point, I was probably 25 or 26. Two combat tours, had a very young family, and my youngest daughter was born at West Point during our teaching in the Department of Social Sciences, a very unusual department. It's an elite organization inside the army and they carefully recruited kids like me and put us back in the first line graduate schools and brought us back to teach. And that was a joy, being a teacher. So you're dealing with what West Point could- 15,000 kids apply a year, 1,000 get into West Point. They're really fun to deal with. They're smart. They've been successful all their life. They're curious. Having put three children through University of Washington, and now grandchildren. It's an incredibly supportive, high cost operation. So we loved it. From a family perspective, we were, you know, living around friends. And it was just like the kids all had sports programs. I coached kids hockey and kid soccer. But at the end of the day, I had really loved being in the tactical army, and dealing with sergeants, professionals, with teenagers, in those days, mostly young men, teenage boys as combat company commanders. And there was a big world out there and I wanted to get to Europe and serve in Europe. I'd lived as a kid. So I was almost reluctant to make the choice to not stay. My wife said, now we have to go back to the army. She's an army brat. Well, I credit, you know, a lot of the turning points in my life as being a force for common sense and good decisions. And back we went. And you know, that was a nursery. I went from West Point, teaching comparative politics, American government, economics, and national security. And I got back to one of the lowest periods in both Vietnam and in Germany. Oh, it was dreadful, dreadful. Crime, drugs, alcoholism, the maintenance of equipment was abysmal. We just stopped the draft. And now we are trying to do a volunteer army. And so I was there for five and a half years in Germany, four and a half years in the same mechanized infantry battalion. And during that fairly short period, President Reagan came and we loved President Reagan, you know, he gets a lot of credit in my mind for a whole bunch of things that started going right in American society. But during that period, the army went from a disgraceful, partially shattered force, post Vietnam, to getting back on our feet. So I have no regrets for having what left that wonderful environment of teaching political science at West Point to get back to the real army.

Adam: Can you talk about Operation Desert Storm and what ultimately went into what changed the course of history?

General McCaffrey: Yeah, well, you know, I was the army strategic planner, and in general, I was desperate to get out of the Pentagon and get back to being a man of division. So I went into the chief staff, the army, and essentially told him, hey, we're going to be in a war with the Iraqis here, and they're completely out of control and a tremendous menace in the Middle East. I'd done my Army War College thesis on the Middle East, trying to educate myself about what's going on here. Anyway, so wonderful Genera; Donald said, yeah, go to the 24th Infantry Division, which was a mechanized division at a port. And so it was the division that was going to go to the Middle East in the event of a high-intensity war in the middle age, I got there and went on closed-circuit TV, the post families, etcetera. And we had just seen the invasion of Kuwait. I guess it just occurred. It was about to occur and I shouldn't call the division. We're gonna be deploying here in three months. I think it sort of alarmed him wondering who had shown up the commandos division. I could see this thing coming. And then sure as heck out we went. And the state of the army by then had fully recovered from Vietnam, the Malays of leadership, we had re-equipped ourselves with the most modern technology imaginable. We had instituted tremendous training programs for the sergeants, the noncommissioned officers at the army. We had started centralized boards to select our battalion and brigade commander. So that, you know, in the worst years in Germany, when I first got Germany in the 70’s, on a weekend with an 800 man Battalion, I might have one or three or five ugly incidents over a long weekend. Alcohol, stupidity, assault. Here I am commanding a division with 18,000 soldiers in a desert storm. And over a long weekend, there have been no incidents. Interesting, you know? So it was just a totally different environment. And out we went, we deployed, we knew what we were doing. We had been trained at the National Training Center in instrumented, high encount, intensity warfare. We got out to the desert. And what we had to really learn was with real forces in the field, how do you make higher-level thinking be integrated. We had five months to get ready for the attack. And so, you know, before the attack started, I went to every one of the 36 Battalion- an 800, soldier unit and my division. I gave him a 15 minute talk, and I took questions and a 15 minute park. I'd say, look, this war is going to be short, I thought it'd be two to six weeks. I said, we're going to have very low casualties. I didn't tell him I thought that meant a couple of 1000 killed and wounded. By the way, it turned out we had eight killed and 38 wounded in the Division. I told him, I said these people were facing us like, tethered goats waiting for us to fall on them. And that's exactly what happened. I think they were the second largest Air Force, after the US and Russia, in the world. They were like the sixth largest army on the face of the earth. And within a matter of essentially four days, the coalition, NATO forces, and also Egyptian and Syrian partners, totally cracked the organization. It was a very low casualty at the end of that military operation. And at the end of the operation, I have two New York Times report in my office, and they were being very laudatory, and what a great man you are, and how well you did today and I said, look, if I'd had a heart attack the day before this attack started, there were 10 people who would have given a shout of joy, and tried to be the one that replaced me and the battle would have come out the same way. So yeah, I knew what I was doing. And so did that handful of combat veterans from the Vietnam era that were in the division, but mostly, at every level, down to Staff Sergeant, tank commander, people knew what they were doing. And it was a great source of pride. And by the way, I don't think we killed that many Iraqis, either, thank God, you know, it just stunned them, they came apart, it was like an NFL football team playing a high school senior football team. They couldn't deal with it. We have different challenges today. But that's what we faced and Desert Storm.

Adam: That's incredible. And listeners are hearing a truly humble leader, and are hearing a story of an incredible team. And it goes to show leadership requires not only an individual capable of doing everything we spoke about over the course of this conversation, but each individual within the organization coming together. And that's what this is all about. Before we go. I want to ask one last question, which is, what can anyone listening do to become a better leader?

General McCaffrey: Well, a lot of things. You know, what one of my favorite gang commanders said- it was actually during the Desert Shield, Desert Storm experience, you just have a business card, had a bunch of stuff on it, he was artillery, and his slogan was something to the effect of, average people doing a hero's job. And so I am persuaded to have been more of my life that you don't have to copy CAD, successful leaders, you have to be yourself. But that leaders are developed. And by the way, it's always painful to watch somebody who hasn't been developed and is suddenly thrust into a leadership role where they don't know, you know, the mechanics of their job and they don't know the people and there's a crisis going on in a very difficult situation. So I think most of the men, young men and women out there, you know, they don't understand that one of the least distinctive attributes out there in leadership is intelligence. There are a lot of smart people out there. And you know, it's almost background noise. And so well, what is the distinguishing thing? Well, people look at their career, they don't need to plot how they're going to be CEO of General Electric, they do need to plot over the next five years, what am I going to do and sell it myself. If you're an engineer with an undergraduate degree from MIT, go get an MBA, don't stay in the office where your family grew up in Boston, accept an assignment on short notice to go to California. So commit yourself to developing yourself as a leader and a person. And, you know, I think lots of folks don't want to do that, and they shouldn't have to. If you're quite happy being a research scientist and bioengineering then stay in that job, but if you want to be running the Cleveland Clinic, then it seems to me you have to gradually expand your responsibilities. And that means education. And again, I go back to telling people, you know, I was sort of an average, run of the mill, four star general.  I had five and a half years of postgraduate education. Each of them has their own unique path forward. But if you like responsibility, if you like being in charge, and lots of people don't, then step forward, you know? When I tell people to volunteer, say there's a terrible situation going on, and who out there can solve the problem, raise your hand and say, send me, I'll try. So that's my advice to the next generation of leaders. And God knows we've got some, this new generation that’s come along is phenomenal. They're smart, educated, sophisticated. They're honest. They're willing to work hard. There's some aspects of dealing with each generation differently. But I'm very upbeat about America's future, given what I see out in the business world in the armed forces.

Adam: General McCaffrey, thank you so much for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

General McCaffrey: Very glad to be with you. Thank you.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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