Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Lieutenant General Lori Reynolds

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

Adam: Our guest today was the highest-ranking woman in the Marine Corps for almost a decade. General Lori Reynolds spent more than 35 years serving in the Marines breaking barriers as one of only three female, three-star generals in Marine Corps history. General Reynolds, thank you for joining us.

General Reynolds: Well, thank you, Adam. It's great to be here. Thank you.

Adam: You grew up in Baltimore. You're a big Baltimore Orioles fan. And you played a ton of sports growing up before going to college and becoming the captain of the women's basketball team at the Naval Academy. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What drove your interest in pursuing a career in the military? And what were the key experiences and lessons that shaped your worldview and shaped your success?

General Reynolds: I did. I grew up playing soccer and softball. I played basketball in high school. It was one day I think in the summer of 1980, that my family, we took a day trip to Annapolis. And for me, it was just wandering around the yard, as we call it at the Naval Academy. And I knew that that was a place that I wanted to go to school. I had no idea by the way that it was so early in the days of women being allowed to graduate from the service academy. So that would have been the summer when the first class of women graduated, I graduated, that would have been the summer of ‘80. I graduated in 1986. Really my first thought was I want to go to that school, I want to be from there. It did an amazing job of helping, Adam. I went to an all-girls Catholic high school in Baltimore. And from there, I went to the Naval Academy where I was a pretty good minority, learning a lot about how to just interact in a new kind of environment like that. But what drew me to the Marine Corps was really just the culture of the Marine Corps, the Naval Academy, the faculty, a lot of civilians, but Navy and Marine Corps officers. And I really was just drawn to the officers there at the Naval Academy. My coach at the Academy, I played basketball, as you said, my coach was a Marine. He was a reserved Lieutenant Colonel, and he was the leader that I wanted to be. So I think early on, again, just drawn to the mission of the Marine Corps, drawn to the culture of the Marine Corps. And then the Naval Academy did a wonderful job of preparing me to be a Second Lieutenant in the Marines. In terms of strategies for success, you start out in an organization like the Marine Corps, and you know pretty well intuitively and certainly as a woman, that you have to compete physically. That the mission of the Marine Corps is a very physical mission. Her job is to be the readiest when the nation is the least ready. It's our job to be forward deployed, to be there by time for our national decision leaders. But it's a very physical mission. And so you know, that as a young officer, in order to gain the respect of your Marines, that you got to physically, and then you focus on whatever your job skill is. Mine was communications. I was raised as a communications officer, and that is to install, operate and maintain communications networks, not the public affairs side of communications. So just learning your job and doing that, well, building teams around you. And then you just start piling on leadership lesson after a leadership lesson and as your influence and your impact can grow, as you stay in.

Adam: I'm gonna ask you about a lot of those leadership lessons over the course of this conversation. But before I do, I want to go back to something you mentioned right off the bat, which is your experience learning how to be a minority in an environment where you are one of a few women in an overwhelmingly male dominated system. And so many of our listeners may not have been the only woman in a male dominated industry or in a male dominated company, but you could be someone who thinks a certain way and feels a certain way in an organization and you feel like a minority. You could look a certain way and that might make you a minority. But we've all been a minority in some shape, form, fashion, experience, in our life. In your case, it was stark right at the get-go and continued to be over the course of your career. What were the best lessons you learned early on and what advice do you have for anyone listening on how to best navigate that circumstance?

General Reynolds: Yeah, the first thing that I would say, Adam, is I learned early on to not seek bias. Bias will find you, when it does, you deal with it and you keep moving. I knew as a young, even as a midshipman, when the early days of women going through the academy, or early in my time as a Marine, that I wasn't going to fix any of those institutions overnight. The way that I could change people's minds was one person at a time. And so when you find yourself in a position where you're the only person in the room that looks like you or feels like you, first you got to figure out, am I where I want to be? Do I want to contribute to this mission or to this team? And if the answer is yes, then you just find the confidence to do your job. The longer I stayed in the Marine Corps, the more I knew that I had a responsibility to fix more of the things that I could fix, and to find my voice, right? There was a time in my career, certainly, I found, Adam, as a one star, as a brigadier general, fairly new, brigadier general. There had been a two star general Angie Salinas and she retired. And when she retired, I was the senior woman in the Marine Corps. And so I knew then that I needed to find my voice. And I needed to provide my commandant, and other senior leaders a perspective that only can speak for every woman in the Marine Corps, but I needed to be available to them to give them that perspective. Because I think that's really what diversity is, is a different perspective to show you things that maybe you haven't seen from the viewpoint, that you have as part of the majority. So I think the best advice is this: if you allow yourself to be consumed by the fact you're in the minority, it will absolutely color the work that you do, the attitude that you bring to work. I just found that wasn't productive.

Adam: How did you find your voice? How can anyone find their voice?

General Reynolds: You grow confidence a day at a time. For me? It took men, in this case, it took male leaders to say Lori, we care what you think, or what do you think about this? It takes advocates to help people find their voice and to actually let people like me know that their voice is valued. Nobody wants to be singing into the darkness. I think that's thing one, is finding people around you that will listen. And that will help you with the things that you're trying to do in the organization. And I certainly found that, in my case, Adam, it was other general officers that gave me time. And who were just fabulous leaders who had listening skills, which I think is that we don't value enough people who are in leadership positions who can listen, and who gives you time.

Adam: You shared a couple of great points there. First and foremost, find a mentor, find multiple mentors, and be a mentor. Just as you want someone to be an advocate for you. Be that person toward others. Do what you can to be a champion for everyone around you and advance those around you. Be that person. And secondly, something that listeners have heard me say many, many times, great leaders are great listeners. The best leaders don't walk into a room, intent on speaking, they walk into a room intent on listening.

General Reynolds: Amen. Amen. Amen. Early on in my career, I learned this. I was a major and I had been assigned as a recruiting station commander. And one of the things that I learned in learning about recruiting is that if you really want to take care of young men and women who are coming into the service, you listen to what it is that they want from their service, from their time in the service. And so the good recruiters and good people will need satisfaction selling. But as I listened to this, Adam, and as I talk about it all the time, do you listen to respond? Or do you listen to understand? And when you really think about this, I found myself back then listening to respond. And the longer that you find yourself perhaps in a leadership position, for me standing in front of a formation or feeling like I had to always have the answers. The more that you can breathe, count to 10 and say, wait, Lori, are you listening to really understand? It changes your relationships when you can discipline yourself to really be a good listener. Changes your personal relationships that changed my work relationships. And actually what I learned from that is that sometimes people don't expect you to do anything with what they're saying. They just want to be heard. And the fact that you can give them, that it is a gift. It is a gift, and it changed the way I lead. So Amen. Keep saying it.

Adam: I'm with you 110%. What else would you add to that list of the key characteristics of an effective leader? And what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become a better leader?

General Reynolds: I got a long list of lessons learned. One of the things that I have also learned is, I learned this, as a basketball player back at Navy with a coach who taught us to do the basics well. Whatever the basics are of your job, do it with precision. Be able to lean on those basics when times get hard. That kind of guidance really helped me when I felt overwhelmed as I was taking Marines into Fallujah, Iraq in 2004. And you're thinking about all the various things that could go wrong. My job then was to just do the basics. Well, take care of the Marines, take care of the network, take care of the way that they lived, build the team around, and it worked for me. I didn't ask anything extra from anyone other than do the job that we were meant to do, and then bring them all home. And so things like that and I'm leading with humanity. I have this idea that has stuck with me. Sometimes I think, as leaders, we forget that our lived experience is not the same as that of those we lead. And one time I was visiting a group of Marines that were in a schoolhouse in Georgia, and I hadn't been invited to be the guest at their Marine Corps ball. So we always celebrate the Marine Corps birthday. 10 of November is our birthday. And so I visited with the group in the morning, and then we went to the ball in the evening. And in the morning, as I was talking to this group of young marines, I think 18, 19, 20-year-old Marines who were going through a course there in Fort Gordon. And I talked to them about all kinds of things that were happening in the Marine Corps. But we also had this problem was suicide that was happening, and it's still happening. And so we talked a little bit about this. And I said, marine suicide shouldn't be an option. You need to understand that there are all kinds of other options. There are all kinds of ways that you can be helped. And you just need to let us know. Does somebody know that you're hurting? And I got to a point in the conversation, Adam, where I said, “Look, I don't know if anybody needs to hear this right now. But you are loved. I respect what you're doing with your job and your career. So we love you, I love you. Please, if you're thinking if you're hurting, ask for help. Because you matter”. And Adam, later that night, I was at the ball. I was talking to some Marines. And I could tell that there was this young Marine who was just waiting, he wanted to talk to me alone. So I walked over to him. I said Happy Birthday Marine. I just wanted to tell you what you said today when you said that, that you love this. He said I wasn't raised in a family where we talked like that to each other. And in fact, he said, no one has ever said that they loved me. And so I really appreciated that. I was raised in a family where we were told we are loved every day. And so my lesson there was you don't know who you're leading until you kneecap the kneecap, you begin to understand where they come in from, what was their life, like, why did they join? How can I help them be the person that they came in to be? In this kid's case, he's looking for a family, he's just looking to be a part of a group that cares about him. And so this is what we're supposed to do as leaders, right? We're supposed to understand this team that we lead, and help them to be successful, whatever it is. So I was a two-star then and that was a new lesson for me. Never think that you understand the lived experience of the people that you lead until you ask them. Leadership doesn't have to be hard. It just needs to be filled with humanity.

Adam: You share so much great insight that I want to dive more deeply into. And I want to recap a few things that you share with listeners. First and foremost, something that you said which I just love, is our experiences are not the same as those we lead. Don't make assumptions. You don't know who you're leading. All too often we think that our experiences, our wants, our needs, what we like, what works for us, what resonates for us, is exactly what's going to resonate for the people around us. And when you do that, you do that to your own peril. Because what works for you very well may not work for the person to your left, for the person to your right. And it truly comes down to the lesson that you just shared, which is take the time to get to know the people you're leading. Take the time to build and develop relationships with the people around you. So that on a human level, you can understand who they are, what they want, what they need. And that can allow you to deliver a level of leadership that will allow them to become their best selves. Because if you make assumptions, it may not work.

General Reynolds: That's how you build a team. That's how you build trust. People know that you care about them and their success. And listen, in the military, it's all about trust. I remind people that we're an all-volunteer force. And the foundation of the all-volunteer force is about trust. People need to know that when they raise their right hand and say, I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, that they are handing over their livelihood and their success to you as a leader. We should never take that for granted. That's all about building trust.

Adam: How can leaders build trust?

General Reynolds: One day at a time, one day at a time. Getting to know people and helping. What you just said, right? How do I build a team around me? How do they know that my agenda is not my personal agenda? It's about the agenda of the team. It's about the mission of the team. How do we enable each other's success? No, look, the Marine Corps is just a giant team, it's just a big team. And, at least in my experience, there's room for everybody's success. And one of the things that general Nellore used to say all the time, one of our former Commandants was, I just want Marines to be successful. It's that simple. It's really that simple. This is what I mean about doing the basics. Well, you don't have to be sexy, you just have to care about the people that you serve alongside. You have to find ways for them to be successful as well, you have to leave it better, you have to be there in the hard times. Those kinds of precursors to the really big times, because they're the times when you prove the fact that you're going to deliver for them. So as a leader, you remove barriers to production, you change policies that don't work for your Marines anymore. You're sensitive to things that are harmful for families. There's so many ways but again, it goes back to being able to listen, being open to new ideas, being open for the team, and the strengths of the individual team members for those voices to actually be heard.

Adam: Admiral Jim Stavridis, one of the great military leaders of our day, once told me that most people think of military leaders as Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men. That's the association that they have. And it couldn't be further from the truth. And in my experience, having so many great military leaders on the podcast, anyone who's listened to Thirty Minute Mentors knows that it's the exact opposite. Anyone who's listening to this conversation knows that it's the exact opposite. Everything you're sharing, it's the exact opposite. What you told that troop, who had never heard anyone tell him in his life, that you are loved. That's what leadership is all about. How you build trust by caring about the people around you. Or having a love of people is essential to effective leadership, whether you're leading a small business, whether you're leading a Fortune 500 company, whether you're leading on the basketball court, or whether you're leading in the Marines, it's a universally applicable principle. It's core to great leadership.

General Reynolds: I totally agree. So many lessons in my 35 years. Many of them, by the way, go back to the time I spent on the basketball court as part of a team and the hard work that goes into that. But it really doesn't have to be hard. And in the Marine Corps, we teach leadership traits and principles and so forth. And there's an academic piece of that, but at the end of the day, the thing that has continued to inspire me is two things. Really, when I was a young captain, I heard a lesson about the ethics of military leadership. And that is that, as a military leader, unlike many professions, you may be authorized to spend the lives of the people that you love. And when you really wrap your brain around that, as a leader, knowing that this young formation of young people willingly give themselves to you to be led men, if that doesn't humble you every day to be as good as you can be for them. If that doesn't inspire you to make it better than it was that day before, then you're probably in the wrong profession. And this isn't something that you talk about, you just do. Right? People need to see in you the things that you talk about, you gotta live it. And there's been so many times out of my career. In fact, I tell people this too, that when I was commanding general of Parris Island, something happened. It doesn't matter what it is, I don't remember. But some marine walked up to me and he said, Ma'am, I just wanted to thank you. Because three years ago, I served with you and you wrote me a note, or whatever it was, he remembered something that I did that I don't even know what it was. But for three years, that simple act of a note, a handshake, a coin, a thank you, that stuck with him. So it's these little things along the way that tell people who you are, that you care about them. And so I had this little yellow sticky on my desk, at home, and somewhere, I still have my yellow sticky, it just says it matters. You showing up every day as a leader every day, doing something for somebody, it matters. Your personal attention to the lives of the people that you lead matters, they are noticing whether you think they are or not. And they're noticing more than you think they might be noticing. And certainly the longer I stayed in, the more rank I accumulated, the more impact you can have, the more meaningful those impacts are. And so it just motivates you to come to work every day. And what are the little things I can do today that are going to make somebody's career, it was just fun. And not hard. 

Adam: You're 100%, right. It's not hard to treat people well. And it fundamentally comes down to how you treat people. People remember how they are treated. And if you treat someone kindly, with respect, with dignity, with honor, they're going to remember you fondly, and it's something that everyone should be able to do.

General Reynolds: Adam, it just happened to me again. Yesterday, I happened to be down in Quantico, Virginia. I was given a leadership class and they asked me to come back and give a class to this group of majors. And there was a young major who introduced me to the class, but she said, “Ma'am, you may not remember me, but I was a corporal with you in Fallujah, Iraq, and I was a satellite operator. And one time you came by, and the lieutenant started to talk about the satellite. And you said, ‘Lieutenant, I really like to hear from the corporal’. And you gave me a chance to show you what I was doing”. And I still remember that. But these are just these little things, right? It's just this interaction with people. You hear people say, it's not what you say, it's how you make people feel. And listen, for each one of these where I may have had a positive impact. I regret the impact, I wasn't able to have that. That's where my brain is. So this is how you're constantly trying to keep yourself honest, as a leader. But for those of you listeners who are thinking, what does it take? How can I do it? To your point, just be a good person. Just care about the people that you lead. Ask them, how can I make you successful? What are your next three goals for your career? And is there anything I can do to help you? They will remember that forever.

Adam: You commanded at every rank, at every level. How can leaders build winning teams, and build winning cultures?

General Reynolds: That's a really, really good question. Because it's the team part, the longer I stayed in, I was able to pick my team. But I think leaving with a little bit of humility, giving everybody on the team a chance to weigh in and do what they do best and feel good about the team that you're building around you. I can do teams all day long. My whole approach to being a Marine has been, how do I best contribute to the team, that culture piece? I think that you have to be very deliberate about the culture that you want to leave behind. I don't think it just happens. I think you have to really think your way through that. I think you need some help. I think you have to know who's speaking for you. Sometimes, people can undermine the call that you want to have in an organization. And of course, the larger the groups that you lead, the harder it is to really know who's speaking for me right now, who's saying yes or no with my name. So really understanding, how does my organization really function? What are those principles that we're all going to live by? And how do I measure that? How do I measure that? You can't just say something one time and expect it to take hold. I wish it was that easy. It's not. You got to hear yourself say the same thing over and over and over again. And then people have to watch you deliver on that. So I think culture is a little harder to take hold. I think building teams is an everyday thing. And again, the longer I stayed in, the more that I could build the team that I knew what I was looking for. Good teams inspire more people to want to join them. And so when you have people asking to be part of the team, you know you're onto something.

Adam: If building a culture is challenging, building a truly diverse and truly inclusive culture is all that much more challenging. And you're really at the forefront in bringing diversity and inclusion to the armed forces. How can leaders build truly diverse and truly inclusive organizational cultures?

General Reynolds: I think the message around diversity right from the beginning is really important. I will tell you that I was a Marine for 35 years, we didn't have a message on diversity. For most of my career, diversity for much of my time in the Marine Corps across DOD was: a Women's History Month or African American month. That's not really the message around diversity. The message around diversity for me is, how do you build a team that represents all of the American people in the Marine Corps case? How do we build a team that not only represents the society that we come from but where we are taking advantage of every talent, every strength, every background that we have available to us? And here's the story I have for this one, right? I remember coming out of the Marine Corps showing some of us a commercial that the Chinese Navy had created. It was really well done. I mean, it was a ship at sea steaming, and there's this big elevator that rises up out of the well deck and a platoon of Chinese sailors come running off of it. They are in lockstep; they're covered and aligned and the music put out. And when you looked at those faces in that platoon of Chinese sailors, it was all five, nine, Han Chinese, they all looked the same. They're all raised the same, they were taught to think the same. Diversity is not encouraged. In fact, diversity scares the heck out of the Chinese. And so as an example, here, you look at that and you go, well, that's not motivating at all. That's their weakness. Their weakness is that they all think, alike, they all come from the same schools. And so the art form is to have the discipline of an armed force, with the diversity of thought and perspective and background, that allows us to engage with any partner to represent all of the best of the American people, and to still be as lethal as we need to be on our worst day. That's the power of diversity in the U.S. Armed Forces. And it's only in the last couple of years that we've really started thinking about it like that. And so for leaders who are trying to come across a more diverse workforce, think about the talent that you might be leaving on the table. If you're not looking in places that you've never looked before, think about the perspectives and the skill sets. And there's talent, where you're not even looking for it. And so it's delicate, in some cases, because it might look like some folks are getting an unfair advantage by advancing diversity. But boy, if you can just begin to talk about the bottom line, which is how to become better through diversity. And having a really meaningful message around that. It's going to take convincing, there's no doubt about it, because some people feel threatened by changing the status quo. But where there's so much talent, there's so much talent out there. We just got to challenge ourselves to go out there and look for it.

Adam: What advice do you have for women in male dominated companies, in male dominated organizations, on how to excel in those environments? And what advice do you have for the men in those environments on how to be the best allies possible?

General Reynolds: Let me start with the men about women. I would just say one, try to understand what it might be like for those women. Things that you probably would never even think about, the extra responsibility that they feel to perform, the extra burden that she might feel every day, feeling like you have to prove yourself in that mostly male environment. So the thing is one, try to really understand what that might feel like every day. Mentorship and sponsorship are important sponsoring women into jobs that maybe a woman has never built before finding those opportunities to let their talent rise. Here's the thing, you should not pamper the women, you should not treat them specially, you should not do anything that would alienate them from their male peers. But for the women, again, I start with, don't seek bias. Don't go in with a chip. You got to go in and you perform every day. You have to find those men, those advocates that you can trust. And you have to have some peers that you can find that safe place to say, what am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? How did this come across? How would this sound? And then you just got to find the courage to find your voice. I'm an introvert, Adam. And so many times in meetings, I would say nobody really cares what I think right now. You got to follow your gut, your gut is never going to steer you wrong. It hasn't steered me wrong. My problems happen when I don't follow my gut, when I don't say the thing that was on my mind. And I didn't because I didn't want to call attention to me because I didn't think it was important. And every time I didn't I kick myself because it was actually important. And people did want to hear from me. So you build your reputation one day at a time. And you can be thoughtful and deliberate about that. The thing that I tell women is think about the reputation that you wish to have. How you want people to think about your leadership and your style, and then go do that. It doesn't just happen.

Adam: What can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?

General Reynolds: You have to have goals. You have to have those mileposts in your career that makes sense. Give yourself a break. You don't have to become rich and famous overnight. But it's the everyday things that let you know that you're doing the right things. It's the team around you. Follow your gut, Adam. It's those kinds of things. Find the confidence to be able to follow your gut and to find your voice at the right time. And then again, as we've been talking about, finding a way to strengthen the team that you're on. People noticed, in my case. I'm grateful that they did. And being ready to rise to the opportunity as they're presented to you.

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

General Reynolds: It was fun. 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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