Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Interview with Lieutenant General Tom Trask

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

Adam: Our guest today has flown rescue in Special Operations helicopters for more than 3,200 hours and over 50 combat missions around the world from Panama to Kuwait to Kosovo. On one mission during Operation Desert Storm. He led a team that saved 17 lives in what the Airforce recognized as one of the most meritorious flights of the year. Lieutenant General Tom Trask spent 33 years in the United States Air Force retiring as the vice commander of the United States Special Operations Command, where he was responsible for securing the funding and equipment for all Special Operations Forces and for managing a $12 billion budget. General Trask thank you for joining us.

General Trask: Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Adam: I alluded to it in the intro, but in 1991, as an Air Force captain, you and the team you led were awarded the Mackay Trophy for extraordinary heroism and self-sacrifice. Can you tell listeners what happened and how that experience impacted you as a leader and as a human being?

General Trask: Yeah, the particular mission you're referencing was actually to rescue one of 14 pilots that was shot down on the fifth day of the air campaign during Desert Storm and my crew of eight people on the helicopter that I was flying, plus eight more people on the wing. A man that was flying with us spent about eight hours flying around in the middle of daytime in Iraq in the very early days of the air campaign there and that was important because we had lost a number of aircrafts in the conflict by that time. And we had not managed to pick up any of the pilots that were shot down, just due to the ease of finding them and the Iraqis had snapped up most of them. And so we were really determined to try to show that there was a full-scale effort to try to bring folks back if they ended up in that situation, in this case, was a F-14 Navy with two crewmen on board. The other one, the backseater, ended up being captured and was held a prisoner and then returned after the Gulf War was over. And we were able to pick up the pilot. So it was, it was important because we had spent a lot of time focusing on that mission going into the war, and we had not had a lot of success. And so we felt like finally getting one kind of breaking down the door for the first time, it was justifying the work that we had spent, and kept our crews motivated to continue that same effort. But more importantly, it showed the rest of the air crews from all the nations that were participating that there was an all-out effort to come get you if you ended up on the ground in Iraq, and that was important.

Adam: You were responsible for life and death decisions over the course of your career and have had to execute them in extremely high-pressure situations. Can you describe your approaches to decision making and managing pressure and any advice that you have on those topics?

General Trask: Most people, I think, when they talk to somebody that was in the military, and there's a feeling that every decision is a combat decision and though I was in most of the combat operations that occurred during my career, it's still a very small part of what you do and a small percentage of the number of decisions that you have to make. When it comes to, you know, combat or life and death rescue decisions that you make with the crew, it comes down to preparation, and have you trained properly. Are you ready for what's going to happen? And typically, in the military, we try to rehearse and train to the point where when you get to combat, it's actually easier than it was in training and then you will revert to your training. And everybody, when they get really in a tense situation will revert to their preparation, even without thinking about it. And so, one of the things we always had to stress is you have to train like you're going to fight. And if you don't, you're going to do what you did in training when the real thing comes. So if you kind of pass over the hard things or simulate parts of it and then just assume that when it's real, you're going to handle it differently, you won't. You're going to revert back to your training in those highest pressure situations. So it's about being prepared, thinking through contingencies, and then practicing the way that you're going to need to do it in real combat.

Adam: Really interesting perspective and to talk about something that definitely is not life and death, but I know like me, you're a huge baseball fan. I remember as a kid, I was always blown away by Rey Ordonez, the great shortstop for The Mets. And he was, at the time, the best defensive shortstop I'd ever seen. Maybe other than that, there's Ozzie Smith and Omar Vizquel. But Rey Ordonez was incredible. And I remember Rey Ordonez being interviewed and he was asked, “How are you so good defensively? How do you make the plays you make on the field?” And he said, “It's all about practice. And when I take infield practice, I'm taking thousands and thousands of ground balls in all kinds of situations, all kinds of angles. So by the time it's game time, it's just muscle memory. And it's easier when the game comes on, because I've already done these kinds of exercises when the lights are off.”

General Trask: Yeah, think about it from a perspective of, you know, the first inning. You have a game early in the season and the ground ball comes to you and you're thinking about it. You're not stressed over it versus a playoff game. Someone runs on third base, and the ground ball comes to you. And now the pressure and the stress is tripled or quadrupled. For what it is that is a normal point in the season. Sure, that's when the muscle memory really kicks in, you have to know that your training is going to kick in, you're going to execute it just like you would any other ball that comes to you in practice. Sure, sure.

Adam: That's tremendous advice. You know, one of the first guests on this podcast was Dan Helfrich, who is the CEO of Deloitte Consulting, and Deloitte Consulting is a company that every business school student wants to work for, and it's a $10 billion company. You're responsible for the oversight and management of a $12 billion budget. So that puts things in perspective. How do you develop the skills that enabled you to manage such an enormous budget, and what are the best lessons you learned from your experience of overseeing $12 billion for the United States military?

General Trask: I think that you could look at it as either hard or easy one to stop my money. However, it is your money. So when you're thinking about that you're responsible for how you're going to spend taxpayer dollars. Hopefully that puts even a greater stress level on how useful it is. You need to make sure that every dollar is to take care of our forces. But to me it wasn't my personal oversight on every spending decision. It was creating a process so that you brought all the necessary people that had a piece of the discussion and you made sure that their perspectives and their thoughts on what was the best way to go and made sure that that was brought into the discussion every time. And you know, the Congress puts a lot of oversight into this process. And there are staffers on the hill whose only job it is to go through these endless lines of program lines and to make sure that every one of them makes sense that it matches up toward an objective that has been stated by your command, or is in the national defense strategy, and that it all lines up, and eventually they have to find things that they're going to cut every year and so you've got to make sure that everything that's in your portfolio is lined up, it's prioritized, and realizing that things that you leave as a lower priority have a higher likelihood of being cut for something else that's important to the government. But that's an important part of the process that taxpayers expect us to do. So it's, in my mind, it's a combination of getting the right technical experts to make sure that the equipment we're buying is the best value to support our forces on the ground that you've got somebody from those forces, the experts is going to use the tool part as part of the process either in the original decision making or in the testing or in whatever it is if you're buying equipment, but it's also down to paying for everything else. It's the daily operations and maintenance of every one of our units. Every baton, every Squadron has a piece of that budget that they're going to operate with. You're going to hand a small piece of that budget down to a local commander and you've got to make sure that they have what they need to operate daily to make sure just what we talked about before that that training is done ahead of time of every combat mission, to give every single squad team crew the best opportunity to be successful, and to survive and accomplish their mission in combat.

Adam: Managing budgets aside, what are the best lessons you learned from your time as Vice Commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, and can you share with listeners from your unique perspective? What are our special operations forces all about?

General Trask: Yeah, I think it was easy to grow up in the operational part of the military and at some point, some of us get kind of channeled away to work on budgeting and programming, because it's a critically important part of the military. But let me tell you, nobody joins the Air Force to build budgets and do programming in the Air Force. They come in to do things like I.T. Most of the dude's fly helicopters in support of Special Operations Forces. But you learn over time how critical that is and it's easy to lose track of the fact that it still is all about that. That was the start of my leadership. At the youngest point in my career, it was all about people, it was all about the gunners, the pair rescue men in the back of the helicopter, the guy in the squad that you're supporting on the ground, or whatever the mission may be, or the person that you're trying to rescue; it all comes down to people and so you have to fight hard not to lose that perspective. When you're in the Pentagon working at the highest levels of the Defense Department, and realizing that still now you're making decisions that are affecting, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars at a time, that every one of those things is going to have some effect positively or negatively on the people that do the job. So to get to the second part of your question, you know, what is our Special Operations capability and what's unique about it, you know, there was, to go by history, a little bit of our special operations forces. We've had this capability for a long time. Most of the units were created out of World War Two out of specific needs to do certain missions, but they were kind of haphazardly taken care of. And when budgets went up, they did okay, when budgets went down, they were cut away. And during Vietnam, we built them back up. When Vietnam was over, we tore him down to nothing. When we tried to rescue hostages in Iran in 1980, most of our Special Operations capability had been decimated and was not available anymore, that, only 10 years before in Vietnam, was very capable. And so there was a decision made in the 80’s to provide a budget to Special Operations similar to the way we budget our services. So the Special Operations community operates like a small service. They don't have to go to the Air Force or the Army to get their budgets, they have a part of the budget that's protected just for special operations. So you have to think like a service in that regard. When you have to take care of today's problems, these issues are ready, but you also have to have a vision for what those horses are going to be 5, 10, 15 years out in the future, just like the services have to do, and that's a tough trade off, when you may be taking money away from something that somebody could use today, to prepare to go on the, on the battlefield tomorrow, so that you can, say, five or 10 years from now. If we want to have the best capability five or 10 years from now, we have to start today. And you have to allocate money for that. And when you're balancing operational requirements and current operations on the battlefields around the world, for whatever the government deems important, that becomes the toughest balance to take care of those horses to make sure that you're giving them what they need today, but also thinking a lot far enough down the road that in 10 years, the next generation is going to have the best tools as well.

Adam: You rose the ranks of a highly competitive and what I would imagine is a pretty bureaucratic organization. What advice do you have for listeners, whether they're soldiers or civilians trying to understand how they can rise within the organizations that they're working for?

General Trask: The thing I've always told people that I've mentored was, the best way to prepare yourself for the next job is to focus on the current job. Now there may be skill sets that you want to think about two or three jobs down the road, if you have a vision of something that you think you want to be able to do. Think about the skills that you will need to do the job at that level. For example, for me, it would have been while I was a primary pilot flying helicopters and leading a crew. I wanted to be a squadron commander. I knew that that was a couple assignments down the road. It was a very competitive process. Every time somebody gets put into any command in the military there's a selection process. My focus was being a squadron commander, what did I need to do? So you would think about the skills that's needed when we would start reading about leadership and thinking about organizational leadership, rather than just leading a small squad or a small crew, and what the differences would be. So you can start preparing, but really, it was about the job I have today, being the best I can be at it. And that will prepare me for the next level. And that worked out pretty well. Most of the time, the folks that think too far ahead, spend all of their time thinking about how to become the General Officer or the Wing Commander or the CEO, or whatever the position is. You're missing all those important things that you need to learn in the interim, in order to be successful if you get to that level. And so that's what I try to keep people that I'm advising and mentoring focused on is focus on what you're doing today and being really good at it and there are skills that you're learning that are going to be important to you if you get to that next leadership level.

Adam: Can you describe your leadership style and your philosophy on effective leadership? Something that you've told me in the past that really stood out to me, and that I've actually quoted several times in interviews that I've done and when I talk about lessons that I've personally learned from my conversations with America's top leaders, is that throughout your 33 year career in the military, you never once said, “Do this. And that's an order.”

General Trask: Yeah, I think there's an expectation from folks that don't have military experience, that leadership doesn't really work the same way in the military because you just give an order and everybody jumps. But what they forget is that our military today is built from the same exact people that are out there in society. I mean, there are certainly some folks that come with a very focused idea of what they want to be to be; a soldier or an airman or sailor. But there's tons of reasons that people decide to serve and they can be the opportunities to get education, some of it is travel, some of it’s adventure. And they come for all the same reasons that people are motivated to do everything out there in society. So our military really is a cross-section of the country and, in fact, most minority groups are represented more highly in the military than they are in the civilian population. So all of those motivations are out there. So to get them to perform the same types of motivational techniques have to be used in the military and it comes down to making people feel like they have a part in the decision and that their opinions are going to be considered. That doesn't mean everybody gets to have it their way all the time, but whenever there's time, the wider that you can cast out the opportunity for people to contribute to a decision that's being made, the more likely that the team is going to carry that decision forward as their own. I had one boss that was a Two Star General when I was a Wing Commander, and he described it as, “I go by the one, ‘but sir,’ rule. Everybody gets one, ‘But sir.” So when the decision happens, and you're not crazy about it, everybody gets to speak one time, and the boss will listen. But after that, we make a decision because it's impossible in a large organization like the United States Military or the Air Force, or even a squadron to get everybody to agree on everything. But you can ensure that, whenever it's possible, everybody's voice and opinion gets considered. To me, that's the best thing you can do to make people feel part of the team, but it's also the best way to ensure that you get the best decisions because I found that really high performing teams will function by doing things or coming up with solutions that no single person could have done by themselves. The smartest guy in the team could not come up with this solution. It's only from the inputs of all the people participating, put together that allow the team to get to that, that best ideal solution.

Adam: How, if at all, do you believe leadership has evolved over the years? Do you find that millennials respond to or require a different style of leadership, and did you find that you personally evolved as a leader over the years?

General Trask: We started looking at the differences in generational leadership styles and what motivates generations even before millennials, you know? When I was a young captain, and I was learning to be a Flight Commander and an Aircraft Commander, we would study the difference between, you know, the greatest generation, some of our senior leaders were still part of that, and at that time, the baby boomers, which I was kind of one of the last parts of and the differences between them and Gen X folks, and you could look at what motivated people but really, it came down to similar things. I think, you know, the last several years most of our military is made of millennials and their motivations are still pretty similar. They want to be part of the solution, they want to be included in the decision making. They may have different styles of getting there but that motivation is the same. They're much more talented than that. I think every generation is smarter, better educated, and more talented than the one before, just because the nature of our society makes sure that that's true, because of the opportunities that are there for each generation that are greater than the one before even if you just look at it, measure it simply in the amount of information that's available. And I believe that, you know, the millennials, that are the large part of our military today are the reason that our military today is the greatest military that's ever existed in the history of mankind. And it's better than the Gen X generation when they were the young part of the military. And it's better than when I was a young captain in the 1980s. And so I'm convinced that the motivations are still the same.T he techniques may be different, the way that you communicate the willingness to use tech is something that will affect millennials differently than it will my generation. And so you have to learn it to effectively communicate with them, and to not only to communicate one way toward them, but to receive what they know and think about whatever the problem or the situation is, you've got to be willing to reach out and understand how they communicate. It comes down to, you know, back 20 years ago, it was, well, hey, does your boss talk in person? And does he like emails? Does he? What is that person's unique way of communicating? And I'm just trying to understand that and then communicate with them in that way so that you're going to get the best feedback from that person. It's the same way with the millennials. I think there's just a whole lot more options and it can be challenging for somebody who's not a digital native, that's kind of getting used to it, but if you take the effort, I think you can connect with them and find that the motivation is the same. And the path of success is not that much different.

Adam: How did you evolve as a leader over the course of your military career,

General Trask: Early in my career, I was convinced that I was probably the smartest guy around most of the time. And so I would be willing to be tolerant of others and to realize that I could use the capabilities or the knowledge of somebody else. But then in the end, I probably had as good idea as anybody. I learned really quickly, after going through school, and, you know, in high school and in college, right? I did very well without putting a lot of effort in so I thought that that was going to be the way life would work for me. It did not take very long for me to realize there are a lot of people way smarter than me and that to be a good leader was to find the best way to make sure all of those people were in a situation to take advantage of their skills the best way and that the best way to be successful was to make the team successful, not to make yourself successful. So very early on, I would say by the time I had made Captain, which is about four years after your commission, I'd learned that that was true. That if I think I'm the smartest person around then I’ve pretty much guaranteed that I'm not going to get to the ideal solution of whatever the problem is we're trying to solve.

Adam: You have a really interesting and somewhat counterintuitive perspective on the topic of trust. Can you share that with listeners?

General Trask: Yeah, sure. I try to teach this to people that have worked for me and to people that I mentor, and some of this is perhaps a little bit unique to the military, because we change jobs so often. But I find more and more that's the same on the outside. People are changing careers and changing jobs. So I think it may apply to anybody. But, you know, trust is a very, very important thing to have in an organization that's going to run well and it's typical for people to come into a new position and, and kind of look at the group that's working with them and say, “Well, I'm going to see how they earn my trust.” And the best way for trust to develop between you and subordinates and peers and your bosses is to really give trust. Giving trust is the best way to get trust from somebody else and so I always felt that if I walked into a new position and a new job and I immediately forced myself to trust everybody to do their job, in the best way possible, that it was pretty rare that I was disappointed in the outcome. And what it did was it really accelerated that process of working with a bunch of people that you're not as familiar with, and developing trust between you. And it was by giving it as soon as you walk in the door. It surprised a lot of people because I think there's always normally a hesitation until you kind of work out a relationship and you kind of get a feel for how this person operates or how they don't operate or what you have to be careful of whether that person's your boss or a subordinate, or a peer doesn't matter. There's always that hesitation. So the quicker you can break through that, the better you're going to get to being a high functioning organization. And I always felt the best way was just a walk in the door and trust that everybody's going to do the right thing. They know their job well.

Adam: You've led all kinds of people, as you mentioned, with all kinds of backgrounds for three decades. What advice did you give your troops on how to optimize their daily performance?

General Trask: Yeah, I always thought it was really important to balance your life and there are a lot of people in the military, not as many as some would probably guess, who's focused so hard on accomplishing the mission that the focus on the short term ends up costing the performance of an organization in the long term. And I always told people, “Hey, this is a marathon, not a sprint.” You've got to do this in a way that, you know, we need a certain percentage of our leaders in the military, both on the enlisted and the officer side to stay for 25, 30, 35 years. You can't do that if you burn yourself out in two years. So developing balance in your life between your family or personal life, faith if that's important to you, your job knowledge and preparing yourself for the next level of your career, you have to put effort into all of those things in order to be successful, and to still be around 5, 10, 15 years ago, and still have the energy to put into the to the fight. A lot of folks come in the military, they work incredibly long hours, they focus on nothing but the mission and then we're surprised that they're getting out of the service in a couple years, when we really could have used their experience and leadership further down the road. So maintaining that balance is something that's different for every person, and everybody has to kind of find what that is for them. But if it's only work, and you're working seven days a week, 14, 15 hours a day, and just focusing on your current problems in your job, eventually that's going to cost you in being prepared for whatever it is around the corner or having the energy and the intuition and the experience to be successful at the next level. It's going to end up costing you

Adam: What can anyone do to become a better leader tomorrow?

General Trask: I think part of my balance that I just talked about was always making sure that I was reading and So I've studied leadership from the very beginning, it’s not always, you know, it's not leadership textbooks. I find by reading biographies, and reading biographies of people that are in different fields in my own, certainly I've read, you know, I loved reading about General Patton and people in the military, but reading about other people in different fields, I think is is equally important, gets you out of your kind of daily focus on your problems. For one, it expands your breadth of knowledge for another and you understand that people are fighting the same challenges in lots of areas of life. And leadership is just as critical, whether it's a handful of people, whether it's a huge organization, thinking about how to get the most out of teams, thinking about how to, to help people be the best they can be, is a key part of leadership and no matter what field you're in, so part of my balance was always making sure that I was reading something that was helping me develop my own technique or my own style of leadership and it changes and it wandered through my career, depending when I was reading and who I was reading about.

Adam: How can leaders build a winning organizational culture?

General Trask: That's a great question that, you know, one of the key things I talked about is making sure everybody's prepared to be the best they can be. But it also has to be a demonstration as the formal leader, that you're trying to be the best person you can be as far as preparing yourself, as far as thinking about other people. So the example that you set on how to do your life. Sometimes that example is how to do that balance that I just talked about. I find lots of leaders that like to talk about that balance, but they want to make sure they're the first one in the morning and the last one to leave. And that's the example they're setting. And their example becomes different than what they're preaching. You're preaching balance, but their example is “I'm the hardest working person here.” So if you expect people to have that balance in their lives, you have to demonstrate that you have it in yours and sometimes it was doing things purposely that were visible to the team to make sure that they saw that this was happening. You could easily do it in a way that everybody wouldn't see it, whether some of it's a bit theatrical, right? Whether it's leaving a book on your desk that you're reading. You may not read it at work, but it might be important to have it sitting on the corner of your desk. When I was a squadron commander, I would try to cut myself off at a certain time of day unless there was something really driving me. If I wasn't on the flying schedule that day, I would try to get myself home from work at this time. And, you know, my office was on the end of the building, my car was parked out there, I could have easily just gone out the side door, got in my car and drove home. But I would typically walk down to the operations counter, where all the crews that were flying that day were preparing to fly. Most of our flying training happened in the evening. So if you weren't flying, I'd be going home at a normal time. But I would walk down where all those crews are preparing to go fly, check on the flight schedule, kind of loudly ask a couple questions of the operations officer and then say, “Have a good night, fly safe.” and walk out the front door and then walk down in my car. So when they saw that when I was not on the schedule, I was going home to have dinner with my family. I had balance in my life, and that I trusted that they were all going to do the job. Well that night that they were going to be well planned. They were going to fly safely, they were going to accomplish the training objectives for that evening. And then I didn't have to watch over them, and that they knew that. So a bit of it in leadership has to be theatrical, just to demonstrate those things that you think are important to the team.

Adam: Final question and a question that is extremely topical today, but is going to be topical anytime anyone listens to this podcast and that is, in your experience, how important is ethics to a leader and to anyone? How should listeners approach challenging ethical decisions?

General Trask: I’ve always felt it was huge; probably the most important thing that you had to demonstrate for a couple of reasons: one was because the unit. The nature of the job that you chose when you decide to serve the military, you're going to have life and death decisions potentially. And anybody that serves in the military, even at the lowest level may end up in that situation where they're having to make a life or death decision. So if you're not thinking about how you do everything else in your life with regard to ethics, it just goes back to the same thing we talked about at the beginning of training, the way you fight. If you don't train your mind to think about every question and every problem set in an ethical way, when it gets that most important, most critical decision when you're under the most stress, you're not going to consider that either. And now you're doing it at a time when you may be costing somebody their life. And so you have to build that in from the beginning. But anybody I think that serves others, whether it's as a first responder, as a police officer in the military, serving in some other agency of our government, either local, state or federal government, you're serving the people. You owe them-tThose people that are writing your checks, they are the reason that you're there- to have the most ethical look at how you do your business. We have people that fail in the military, we have senior officers that fail at that in the military. But I would argue that we also have the most aggressive look at how we behave, ethically, codified in the rules of how we do things. Everything from what kind of rental car I could get when I was on active duty, and I was a general officer and I was on a trip and had to rent a car. There was a rule on what kind of car I could, there was a rule about whether I could wear my uniform if I got upgraded to first class just because I paid for it on my own. If I was wearing a uniform, it created an ethical question of whether or not I was wasting government money. So it's built into our DNA in government service, I think, but it has to be and so we teach it at the very beginning of your military training, considering ethics and we look back into combat situations, budgeting to situations, what are the ethical problems and situations that people have found themselves in and we work through it and discuss it an argument. And you have to do that, and that's part of that. That's part of the training to do to be able to perform your best under pressure to do the same thing with ethics. If you haven't talked about it ahead of time. You can't just assume everybody's going to know right from wrong, and they're going to make the ethical decision. You have to spend time on it. You have to study it. You have to talk with other people about how you work through ethical questions.

Adam: General Trask, thank you for joining us.

General Trask: This is great fun, good to see you.