Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: General David Petraeus

I recently interviewed General David Patraeus on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is a retired four-star general and former director of the CIA. General David Petraeus oversaw all coalition forces in Iraq, and is currently a partner at the private equity firm KKR. General Petraeus. Thank you for joining us.

General Petraeus: Pleasure to be with you, Adam. Thanks.

Adam: You grew up 50 miles outside of New York City as the son of an American mother and a father who immigrated from the Netherlands and you graduated from a West Point class that included three other future four-star generals, including a fellow Thirty Minute Mentors guest, then the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey. What were the key experiences and lessons from your upbringing in your time at West Point that helped shape your worldview and your success?

General Petraeus: Well, I think they were reasonably basic concepts. My father was not just an immigrant from the Netherlands, he was a maritime officer, a Merchant Marine officer, who was at sea with his ship, when the Nazis were over in Holland and so the entire ship sailed into Brooklyn Navy Yard and signed on with us Merchant Marines. He had some extraordinary experiences. During a time when the Germans were sinking more, more ship crews that could be produced, they could replace the ships, but then it was very, very difficult to develop the human capital. And so he was a captain of a Liberty ship at the age of 29 to run to Murmansk and survived it, unlike almost half of the convoy. And so, you know, a Dutchman to a degree to begin with, has a degree of innate stubbornness and determination. There's a degree of, I think, just sort of some somewhat common sense about others, that comes from being part of a ship's crew. And ultimately, being a captain of a ship's crew. There was an emphasis on education, on reading, on scholarship, but also on athletics. And of course, as you are engaging in all these different activities, you learn the importance of being as competitive as you possibly can but also competing to be the best team player that you can. So you want to begin to do as well as you can individually, but also, obviously, contribute to the overall outcome for the team, to the extent that you can, and if those come into conflict, you've got to go to be the team player, rather than the individual star. West Point really reinforced a lot of these ideas that again, that life is a really seriously competitive endeavor. And you don't get a t-shirt or a trophy just for showing up, you get it for demonstrating excellence. In West Point, I had a reasonable degree of accomplishments. I think there was only one other member of that particular class who was in the top 5% of the class, a star man, as they said, academically, who was a cadet captain in rank leadership and then also as a varsity Letterman, and so you had to try to be good at all of this. Again, one of the joys of the Army, at least for me, was that there is this variety, that there are intellectual challenges that are very considerable. And in fact, the army sent me off to graduate school at one point in time and allowed me to teach a couple years at West Point, international relations and economics. Huge premium, especially if you're an infantry officer, as I was on physical fitness, just sheer will and skill, as they say, but physical toughness, mental toughness. And then there is, of course, increasingly, this incredible opportunity, even starting at a young age to lead a fairly considerable number of fellow soldiers. So you put all three of those together, and the variety is very stimulating, very challenging, very rewarding, but it's all based on this foundational notion, if you will, that again, life is competitive, and you don't get trophies or promotions or medals for being proud to be average. You get it by excelling. And that's frankly, what I sought to do.

Adam: How did your leadership style evolve from the time that you left West Point, from your coming up as a young officer to your time as a four-star general leading in Iraq, leading as one of the senior-most members of the United States military, and can you share with listeners the role that mentorship played in your evolution as a leader?

General Petraeus: First of all, I think the way to talk about leadership style is perhaps to offer the answer that I gave in later years when I had achieved a few stars and people start to ask you about these kinds of things, and what I thought about it. And they often would say, how would you describe your leadership style? As if it is some kind of unchanging thing. Again, I don't know, firm but fair, or I'm a hands-off or a micromanager delegate. The truth is that I think one's leadership style should be designed to bring out the best individually of each of one's direct reports. And you might require a different leadership style for each of those individuals. And obviously, for the organization, collectively, and sometimes even subsets of the organization. If you think of the differences between, say, the analysts at the CIA and the operators, the Clandestine Service officers, the spies, I mean, they're two quite different cohorts. And you really, in a sense, need a different leadership style for each of those. And again, to try to bring out the best in each one is more, maybe you'd say, cerebral, more academic. The other is, again, a bit more action-oriented, tradecraft-oriented, operationally-oriented, and so forth. So the point is that needless to say, your style changes, should change dramatically. From when you were a young Second Lieutenant rifle platoon leader as I was privileged to be in the five and the battalion combat team in Vicenza, Italy, which is, you know, hard charged and physically fit. Paratroopers, all volunteers. And it's very physical, very visceral, very follow me, do as I do, who are leading from the front and everything else, literally leading from the front. And of course, that's very different from leading a huge coalition where you're doing coalition maintenance, coalition management, dealing with heads of state and heads of government, heads of ministries, and chiefs of defense staff and everything else. So, and with all kinds of sensitivities, and all the rest. So, again, leadership style has to vary, again, based on your assessment of what it is that will bring out the best in the organization overall, and again, individually, in each of those who report to you directly. As to developing the awareness of that concept of leadership style. I was very, very privileged to have some extraordinary mentors over the years. My wife's father actually had four stars and was an extraordinary mentor, a true soldier, scholar, statesman, which was in a lot of ways, you know, what I think I always aspired to be. General Jack Galvin, for whom I worked three different times, starting when he was a two-star division commander, then when he was the commander in chief of us Southern Command, and then when he was the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, for NATO, and also the commander in chief US European command, that was the title of those regional combatant commands in those days, who was very much a scholar, and a great soldier, highly decorated, Vietnam, incredibly forthright, incredibly introspective, a true intellectual, in very much, again, a statesman. He was a lifelong mentor to me, we had this voluminous correspondence back in the day when you write, you know, single-spaced multiple-page letters to each other. And again, there were tons of others. General Jack Keane, who had this incredible strategic judgment, and also was the best trainer I've ever seen and was willing to underwrite risk and training because he said, you know, we really got to try this stuff. And in peacetime and training, if we're going to try it in combat under what will presumably be much more challenging conditions, even though it increases risks- taking the seats out of helicopters for the conduct of training for air assault operations, or very aggressive live-fire operations. And sometimes these you know, there was risk. I took a round through the chest, not because it was something that he underwrote. It just happened to be a freak accident. But again, if you are conducting aggressive training, you will be better when it comes time to do it in combat. But there is additional risk and you have to have leaders that are willing to underwrite that. He very much was and I get to watch a bunch of others. Having sort of vantage point jobs again at the right hand, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Supreme Allied Commander, the Chief of Staff of the Army, and being able to watch to individuals performing those positions and watch others who interact with them. And then having mentors again, like Generals Galvin, Vaughn or Shelton, and a number of others. I can't over-emphasize the importance of mentors. And for those that want great mentors, this too is a competitive endeavor. Everybody wants to mentor the up and coming in a sense, the individual that they think might be one of them someday, you know? I'd like to think that these individuals invested in me because they saw some potential there. And that they saw maybe a kindred spirit there, that kind of thing. But you have to be a good mentee, you have to communicate with your mentor more than just when you need another letter of recommendation, or another bit of advice, or some phone call, or whatever it may be. I love receiving notes from individuals I've mentored over the years. And it starts out, hey, sir, I don't need anything, just writing to give you a quick update. But most of all, it's showing promise, because people want to help those who have promised. And they're not quite as quick to do that if they don't see someone trying to be all that he or she can be.

Adam: General Petraeus, you shared so much great advice around mentorship, you shared great advice around leadership. I want to ask you more about leadership. You shared a few of the characteristics of what makes leaders great, you talked about your own leadership journey and how important adaptability was, you spoke about some of your mentors and a few of the characteristics that you shared in describing your mentors, self-awareness, humility, the importance of communication, the commitment to developing others. Can you share with listeners? What do you believe are the key characteristics of an effective leader? And what can anyone do to become a better leader?

General Petraeus: Well, if you use, say, the intellectual construct that I developed for a program when I was a fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center for six years, and a team and I put together essentially a website on strategic leadership, and now it's really aimed at those who are true, no kidding, strategic leaders, which means the individual or if you have co-CEOs, or Co-heads, or co-founders, the two or maybe three individuals who are literally determining the strategy for an organization. But the truth is that those below the strategic level also have to make the same kinds of decisions. They just do it within the context established, the confines that are established by the strategic leader. So there were four tasks really, that any leader has to get right. If you think your way through that, this intellectual construct, and I think you can identify the tasks, the skill sets, the attributes, the knowledge necessary to be an effective leader. The first task is to get the big ideas right. The second is to communicate the big ideas effectively throughout the breadth and depth of the organization. The third is to oversee the implementation of the big ideas. And the fourth is to determine how you need to refine the big ideas to do it again and again and again. Now, this is, as I said, particularly key to the people at the very top. The commander, the surge in Iraq, the surge in Afghanistan, the Director of the CIA was privileged to be a strategic leader in each of those cases, and arguably in a couple of others along the way as well. When we overhauled everything we did prepare leaders, units, organizations, equipment, and everything else for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. So you've got to get the big ideas right. And you have to get the strategy right. And that sounds, again, painfully obvious. The reality is, though, in Iraq when the surge started, prior to the surge, we didn't have the big ideas right. We reversed them by 180 degrees. Instead of pulling our troops out of the population centers and neighborhoods and consolidating them on big bases, we went back into the neighborhoods, 77 additional locations just in the greater Baghdad area alone for which we had to fight and then took control back from the Iraqi security forces that have been battered, beaten up so much by the escalated violence, they were no longer effective. Then promoted reconciliation, recognizing you can't kill your way out of an industrial-strength insurgency and have to reconcile with as many of the rank and file of the insurgents and the Shia militias as you possibly could. Very integrated civil-military effort, unity of effort, the ambassador and I signed a joint campaign plan etc, etc. These are huge ideas. And you, you put those ideas out, you communicate them through every means possible in your first-day speech. I sent out a first-day letter to the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, coast guardsmen, civilians of the multinational force in Iraq, emphasizing that we must secure the people and the only way we can do it is by living with them. We're going back into the neighborhoods, as I mentioned. You change the base order on which everything is founded. You change all the annexes, and everything else. Over time you adopt a new campaign plan. And then the third task, this is what we normally think of as leadership, because this is where you oversee the implementation of big ideas. You are driving the campaign plan, you are providing energy, you're providing an example, you're fostering teamwork, you're promoting a learning organization approach to everything, you are attracting the very best people you can, you are incentivizing and rewarding them. Taking care of them. You're allowing those who aren't measuring up to return home sooner than they might have thought they were going to. And occasionally, you make sure that they're never going to Command or be promoted, or perhaps even serve. Further, you have metrics, you have to determine what they are, you have to ensure that they're really ratcheted down. And then you have to formally sit down and perform that fourth task, which is to determine how to refine the big ideas. So that you can do it again and again and again. But that's hugely important. And we had lessons learned from teams all over the battlefield, Army, Marine Corps, special operations, asymmetric warfare group, my counterinsurgency center, on and on. And they would convene at the colonel level, each of them was headed by a full colonel. And once a month, I would sit for the full colonels for an hour, no takers, and others say, oh, man, yeah, we got to capture that. Yep, that's a lesson we need to learn. But lessons are not learned, by the way, when it's identified by these guys. It's actually learned when you incorporate it in the big ideas, communicate it through one of the various means that you use to communicate sort of the breadth and depth of the organization and oversee its implementation. And I can give you examples of this, you know, in the civilian sector. Netflix, Reed Hastings, I have talked about this with him as he has a very explicit model fairly similar to this. And he can show how, you know, he's reinvented Netflix at least four times, you know, they went from putting Blockbuster out of business by getting movies in the hands of customers without the brick and mortar. The next iteration was they allowed people to download movies. The third one was content development, House of Cards, 100 million dollars alone, Breaking Bad, all these other iconic series. And then the fourth was to buy some major motion picture studios and make big, big time pictures and earn more Oscar nominations than any other production company in this last year. As I recall, that is a performance of these four tasks, just brilliantly, constantly updating the big ideas, communicating them effectively and overseeing the implementation. And his technique, of course, has no rules. Rules are just very appealing as well, because it puts the onus on the individual to determine what the rules should be. And by the way, there's an awful lot to commend. That’s the kind of idea that I captured in promoting initiative. And I had a quote in there from a company commander who had it on the door of his command post in Western Baghdad, and it said, in the absence of guidance, or orders, figure out what they should have been and execute aggressively. It's all about, again, as I mentioned earlier, trying to be the best you can be in the moment, but also trying to be as prepared as you can be for what could come down the road because, you know, that old saying that, in fact, I was constantly referred to as lucky and I was lucky. Timing does matter. The fact that I took command of the 101st Airborne Division, then, you know, six months before the invasion of Iraq, and then the division proved itself and so they call your number again, and then you do a pretty good job in that and they bring you back for a third time for the surge. But I'd like to think that I worked very hard to prepare for those opportunities and that the experiences, the self-study, the formal study, the assignments, the vantage point, the jobs, the mentoring, all of this sort of comes together. You have to sort of have a passion for this and you can hear me actually get a little bit enthusiastic about it because it is something about which I do have passion. I think you have to have that kind of approach. If you are going to be prepared should opportunities come along, noting that opportunities may not come along. You know how unbelievably fortunate I was- privileged- to man two different wars at their height, the Surge in Iraq and then if you will, the Surge in Afghanistan. But again, it's about being ready. It's about being prepared, it's about doing everything you can along the way, so that when the call comes, you know, as Napoleon used to say, every soldier has a field marshal’s baton and his rucksack and you know, when they call you forward, you got to be able to reach in- metaphorically- into your rucksack and come out with the kind of preparation that is represented by a field marshal’s baton.

Adam: In our remaining time, I want to ask you about topics that I know you're equally passionate about. And one of those topics is motivation. Dating back to such a young age, you were competitive in just about every aspect of your life pushing yourself to be the best that you could be. And as a leader, how do you motivate others? How do you motivate those who you're in charge of leading, but who don't have that same fire that you have to be their very best?

General Petraeus: You want to impart some of that fire. You want to provide not just enthusiasm, but hopefully infectious enthusiasm, you want to get people fired up about what it is that you're doing. Some of that sort of is innate, it comes naturally. But some of it also is just its circumstances and its people and it's, again, getting really invested and committed to what it is that you're trying to do and in the course of that, trying to be the very best that you can be, including being the very best team player that you can be as well. And, you know, it was just so fortunate over the years to have these great individuals. I remember when I took command of a battalion, there was a lieutenant colonel, probably 600 days 700 soldiers and the great 101st Airborne Division, which I would later command in combat. And in the previous company, a battalion commander was very gracious allow me into the battalion area ahead of time he cleared out of the office, got all set up, allowed me to meet with the company commanders ahead of time so that, you know, we could actually hit the ground running on day one and we did. He didn't have all the usual, okay, and now you're moving in and a week from now you're gonna gather everybody together when you squared away. And I got so excited talking to these company commanders that I literally couldn't sleep until you know, sort of dawn the next morning. I got up at something like four in the morning and went for a long run. I was just so fired up. And again, you can't fake this. It's either there or it's not just like they say you either really love the troops or, you know, you can't fool them over time. It has to be true. That is infectious. And you can impart that and you create events that are competitive and there are rewards for - we had standards for everything. We had the big four areas on which we focused and every time I spoke to the troops I talked about those four in detail about discipline, about physical fitness, about small units, live fires, and drills about aerosol tactics and techniques, and actually a fifth about rangering Because the Ranger course if you could get 20 enlisted noncommissioned officer Rangers in a single infantry company in an organization like the 101st airborne division then the unit runs itself. And you impart that you feed off it. It's something that's very, very special. We used to call it a high-performing unit and there are certain attributes and characteristics of high-performing units that actually do reinforce and they're either spiraling upward or one action reinforces another and pushes higher, excels you further, or you're spiraling downward. And we, needless to say, are always trying to be spiraling upward and you know, winners win stuff by the way, you know, if you want to have a winning attitude or winning spirit, you actually do have to win. In fact, a company commander made this very profound observation. He said, you know, Sir, winners win stuff. I said, right Fred, let's go win the Cross Country Championship and we did every year that I was a battalion commander. We went to football both years and were close in basketball. We went softball, we went to all the running events. I mean, I'm still, to this day, smarting from the fact that we only came in second in the chili cook-off in the Hometown Salutes Fort Campbell event. And we had such a great team, we were giving away free beer for your vote ticket. And then we got busted. Because we're selling the wrong kind of beer early. The sponsor was Budweiser. And we had the other one. But again,  you have to take this stuff personally. And guys, like the general, just fed this stuff to me as did other commanders along the way. They just, you know, they challenge you, they pump you up. I remember he said, hey, Dave, you think you can win that thing? Yeah. And it doesn't matter what it is. I mean, it's the association of the US Army memberships. We had more members than we had soldiers in the unit. I mean, this is like the Chicago school of voting. And they were proud of it. They didn't feel put upon; they felt, again, inspired. They felt it. And that's how you've got to do it. And you have to surround yourself with people who have the ability to do that, who reinforce your enthusiasm and stroke it, feed it and feed off it. And that's the approach that you've got to embrace.

Adam: Everyone listening to this podcast, has experienced highs, has experienced lows, has experienced ups, has experienced downs. However, as a public figure, the low points in your life personally and professionally, are out in the open. Everyone can see them, everyone can read about them. And I wonder if you could share with listeners- how have you managed and weathered the failures that you faced? And what advice do you have for listeners on how to approach and navigate failure?

General Petraeus: Well, you're exactly right. Life is not full of high five moments. You don't spend the whole game or the whole season or whole career just endlessly spiking the football in the end zone. There are setbacks, there are mistakes. Some of these are from members of your organization, some of these are individual. And the higher you go, as you noted, I mean, there's that old saying the higher you go up the flagpole, the more you can expose your backside. And everyone can see it. And, obviously I have experienced that war is full of mistakes, again, life is full of mistakes, you're obviously trying to limit them to reduce them to a minimum. But above all, the key is that when you or your organization or members of it make mistakes, you try to understand what took place, you know, determine the facts, understand how it transpired, sit down, do an after-action review as we term it in the military, apologize or make amends or acknowledge that the mistake was made publicly, as it may be called for. And try to, again, make amends to individuals who were hurt by it or damaged by it. And then you just have to pick yourself back up off the mat and dust yourself off. Maybe you have the help of you know, family members, or colleagues or mentors or whatever, all the above. And then you gotta start putting, you know, get the rucksack back on your shoulders and start putting one foot in front of the other foot and repeating the process. And you got to get on with it. And I think it's, you know, it's very easy to say. It is very difficult to do, it can be very painful, depending on the magnitude of the mistake, the shortcoming, the setback. In some cases in combat this involves casualties and involves sometimes civilian casualties, serious mistakes that cost people's lives. And of course, in a personal life, it can involve the most important relationships that one has. Again, the approach is the same. Figure out what happened, figure out why. Learn from it. Develop, you know, ensure that you distill the lessons from it, make amends and then try to learn and adopt what it is you should have learned from it and move on. But you do have to move on. Life goes on. And after a certain point, you just gotta get going. And that is not easy. You know if you're fortunate and you're in the United States, Americans are pretty forgiving of people that have experienced shortcomings, setbacks, made mistakes, whatever it is, or lead organizations in which serious mistakes were made within reason. And especially if someone acknowledges it, owns it, learns from it, adjusts based on it. And then again, drive on, but you got to drive on.

Adam: General Petraeus, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?

General Petraeus: Well, again, studying others; studying them in person, studying them through reading, through being self-aware, trying to understand the qualities that you like in others, and employing them yourself. Being a good listener, certainly. In fact, being an eloquent listener, which is even more, and you can look that up or sort of define that as you will. But it's those kinds of behaviors, if you will. Be considerate of others, being interested in others, be supportive of others, encourage others, and giving your most important resources, which, really, the most important one is your time. And again, just constantly being introspective, inquisitive, as thoughtful as you can be, and, and reflective. And I think those are really important. When I look at startups, for example, I'm a personal venture capitalist, in addition to being a partner in KKR. And we're allowed to invest in startups if they're approved, and so forth. I'm looking for a leader who has a certain set of qualities that often includes, again, self-awareness, because they're often very young, and you want people that are somewhat mature beyond their years. Of course, they also have to have a powerful, big idea. And ideally, you can determine that they will be able to not only get the big ideas right, but to communicate them effectively, oversee their implementation and determine how to refine them. In other words, to perform the duties of a strategic leader in that intellectual construct that I described. And that is captured at the website of Harvard's Belfer Center. And, again, these individuals, either explicitly or implicitly seem to get it about these various important tasks, the most important, of course, being to get the big ideas, right? What is the underlying proposition that a startup is pursuing? What is the strategy? What is the big idea? What is the technological breakthrough, or what have you. How does it compare to the state of the art in the field, and so forth, and so on. But an awful lot comes down to the qualities of the leader, of the founder, sometimes more than one individual, and the ability that you can sense to perform the duties of a strategic leader. And again, that all comes an awful lot of that comes from people who just have an understanding of themselves, of their own behavior, of how they interact with others, in addition to the sheer genius have, again, whatever better mousetrap they've come up with that is going to be the core of their endeavor. But again, I find the whole subject is really just fascinating. And, again, for those who truly want to improve, it is absolutely possible. Now, we all do have some, I mean, we all have DNA and genetic code. And you know, we are blessed in certain ways more than perhaps others and you have to be aware of that as well. You know, I was never going to be a basketball star at five foot nine or five foot 10. But there's certainly a lot of other things you can do. And again, if you're that way about your other qualities, attributes, skills, expertise, experience, and you're forthright with yourself, I think that goes an awfully long way to then enabling you to identify the areas in which you need to put more emphasis and where you can get the most return on the investment in developing your own leadership, qualities and capabilities. Great leaders are great listeners. Before you can effectively lead others, you need to be able to lead your own life and identify and tap into your superpower. 

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

General Petraeus: The pleasure was mine and 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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