Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Lieutenant General Robert Caslen

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

Adam: Our guest today is a retired general who led two major universities. Robert Caslen spent more than 30 years in the Army, leading at every level and rising to the rank of Lieutenant General. General Caslen was the Superintendent of the United States Military Academy and was the President of the University of South Carolina. General Caslen, thank you for joining us.

Robert: Thank you, Adam. It's great to be with you. I appreciate it.

Adam: Great to have you on. You grew up in the Northeast, spending time in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont. You went to West Point, enrolling more than 40 years before you ultimately became the Superintendent of West Point. You played a lot of football growing up and played center in college. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What experiences and lessons most significantly shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Robert: Oh, that's a great question. Athletics, in my opinion, played a significant part of my leadership skill set. Because it really teaches you how to be a member of a team, how to build teams, how to sacrifice for teams, why the team is so important. And in the military, even in the corporate world, it's really about building teams, teams that are effective, and to lead teams. But when you lay it on the line, and some of the sports activities for your teammates, you never want to let them down. You always want to be there for them. You're always going to go 110% for them, for the common good. And it's not about you as a person, it's about the team. I remember, our coach bought a whole bunch of T-shirts, and he had on the T-shirt, in big capital letters, big ‘T E A M.’ And then underneath the team were very, very small letters that said, ‘M E,’ big team, little me. And the lesson there was that it's not about you as an individual. It's about the team. And if you're really going to be successful, and you want to be part of a successful program and you want to win, then there's going to be some sacrifice to be a member of that team. I also really enjoy playing for Army. I didn't realize at the time I got recruited to play Army, I wasn't recruited to a lot of schools, but Army was interested in me. I played high school football in northern Vermont and it was a very short season because winter comes pretty quick up there. But I was surprised when Army was interested and then Navy picked up and they were interested as well. But what attracted me to the service academies was the opportunity to not only play football at the collegiate level, but to serve your country. And my dad was a World War Two vet. Other than that we weren't around the military all that much, but the idea of being able to serve a country in some capacity and being part of something really bigger than yourself, was something that I was attracted to. Now, the common leadership theme, and a lot of that is a degree of humility, because it's not about you. It's really about who you work for, who you represent, who you are playing for. What is the culture of that organization? How does it define your passion? Where do you find your passion in that? Those are all key leadership traits that really leaders need to instill within the organizations they lead. So I always say I learned more about leadership at West Point from playing football than I did about the West Point program itself. Just simply because it was just so much sacrifice and so much that you really learned about teams and being a part of a team and being the leader of a team as well.

Adam: You shared a lot that I want to unpack and we will over the course of this conversation, a word that jumped out at me that you shared: humility. And it's been a key theme in many of the conversations on this podcast. I put together a list of the key characteristics that I've identified in my conversations with the most successful leaders across all disciplines and right on that list: humility. What do you believe are the key characteristics of the most successful leaders?

Robert: Well, I believe the most important ingredient in successful leadership is trust. Stephen Covey wrote a great book called The Speed of Trust and the thesis of that book is really about, how do you create a degree of trust with those whom you are leading, those whom you are serving within that organization? And he characterized trust as a function of both competence and character. In other words, you can be part of the organization, but if you're incompetent, then no one's going to want to have you on their team. Either get yourself competent, learn what your skill set is, develop it and execute. But if you're incompetent, or you're not going to lead properly, because you don't know what you're doing. No one's going to have trust to follow you. The other one is character and character’s tremendously important because character really embraces the values that define the culture of the organization that you're a part of. The Army has a list of values that are important to all members of the Army: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. Those are the values that really define the culture and the culture really is the left and right limit of acceptable behavior that gives you the freedom to operate within those left or right limits. And then when you go outside that character set, then you have a character defect. This came home in a big way. I was a Division Commander in northern Iraq during the surge. Had 23,000 soldiers that I was responsible for. It was really an ugly time. It was not a fun – it's never a pleasant time, but it wasn't really a pleasant time to be there. We're losing soldiers, way too many and too often. But as far as our soldiers' behavior, if there were some soldiers that had character defects, and they violated some of the rules and regulations that we had had, for those of the senior level, I was the one that had to adjudicate them. And then halfway through my rotation, I found myself writing letters of reprimand and Article Fifteens to senior leaders, which were all the Officers and senior noncommissioned Officers. And I asked my lawyer, ‘So what's going on? Why am I doing this so often?’ He said, ‘we're no different.’ And most of those defects were character defects, mostly within the Forward Operating Base, not so much outside. In a 12 month period, I had 78 senior leader misconducts. One was an Article 15, or a letter of reprimand, that really was the termination of that person's career. I mean, they weren't going to get promoted, and they're going to have to leave the Army. But what I learned more than just what had happened to the individual was the impact that that had had, that type of behavior had on the organization itself. And it really brought the organization down. The morale was terrible. And when you're in a combat situation, it almost makes your organization ineffective. At one point, we had to pull a battalion out and put some new leadership in there, and then retrain them and get them back into the fight again. So the most important element in effective leadership is trust. Trust is a function of competence and character. And both of these are tremendously important in building that trust. Or if there is a failure in either competence or failure in character, then it's really important that what will happen is you're going to lose that trust. And when you lose that trust, leadership becomes ineffective. I've personally experienced this myself, through my own behavior, or lack of behavior, and glad to go into that later on. And someone may ask me, ‘What's more important, character or competence?’ and I would say, ‘Character will swallow competence every time.’ You could be number one in your class but if you fail in character, you fail on leadership. And it's as simple as that.

Adam: I do want to ask you about the examples of when you failed and what you've learned from it. We're going to go into that. But I want to ask you something else first, which is a question that I've been asked. I've been asked this question by students who I teach at UCLA, who look at leaders who they see from the outside and say, ‘This person has enjoyed a lot of success, and they don't have much character.’ You talk about how important character is. I'm a huge believer in character, morality, ethics, as essential to effective leadership. We're 100% on the same page, but how do you respond to those who see leaders who they believe are effective, successful, and lack character? How do you square that circle?

Robert: Well, my background is in the Army. And if you fail in character, you fail in leadership. And in other words, I don't see someone effective in leadership without character. It really comes to the bottom line of trust, trust between you and those whom you serve, trust between you and your subordinates and trust between you and your boss. If character denies that trust,  takes that trust away, then you become ineffective as a leader. And when you become ineffective as a leader, it's time for you to be replaced. If on the other hand, you're competent and you lead an organization, and the organization is producing, it's effective, it's meeting its goals, but you're not a leader of character, I'm not sure I would want to be a part of that organization. Because if you're not a leader of character, you're going to define an organization's culture that's going to be all warped with types of behavior that many people will not want to be a part of, that they're not going to invest or put their trust in. I'm not going to want to be like that. I acknowledge some of those organizations exist because the competence is more important than the character. But I would always argue that character is more important competence. I co-authored a book with a professor from West Point after I retired called The Character Edge: Leading and Winning with Integrity, and it's all about character and leadership and why character and leadership is so tremendously important. I do want to make the point here real quick, that culture is just not the moral aspect of leadership. It's also the grit, that tenacity, the endurance that's necessary physically and emotionally, that are also a part of the moral aspect. One of the examples I love to talk about is how the Army football team, they kept losing and losing and losing, and they lost to the Navy like 20 times in a row. And they had to turn this around. I mean, America expects their service academy to win. I mean, when these young men and women, when they graduate, they're going to go into harm's way, protecting America from the evils that are out there, and America expects them to do well and to win. So everytime Army goes out there and loses to Navy, over and over again, people say, well, they will rationalize it as a football team. But in the end, it's the trustful relationship between us and the profession of arms and the American people. They want to see the future leaders of our nation that are going to lead America's sons and daughters in harm's way, and they're going to win and win the right way. So that's part of that transformation. But the Army transformation took a lot of grit and discipline and tenacity and resilience. Those are character traits that are equally important, as honor and integrity. So when I look at character, I don’t just look at the moral aspect of the traits that are important leadership, I look at the other physical, and emotional aspects of it as well.

Adam: Which is a really important point because a key theme thus far in this conversation has been building winning teams, whether it's building a winning football team, building a winning team in the Army, or building a winning team within your company, the key principles are the same.

Robert: But the one point I want to make on both competence and character is, it doesn't happen automatically. We become competent over the years of learning our skill sets and refining them and doing them over and over again, to the point where we increase responsibilities and increase organizational structures that we’re responsible for. Character is also something that doesn't come automatically. You're not born with character. Character is developed. And the whole process of developing character is, a lot of people don't understand what that looks like and how that all occurs. Most people think that character is osmosis. You know, it comes from your family you grew up with and what were the values of the family or the teams that you were a part of in your growing up years and that sort of thing. But character really is something that is developed over time. And in the process of development, there's going to be young men and women that are going to fail. And how you fail in character and how you use that failure as an opportunity to learn so that you're not just throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In other words, can someone who fails in character learn from this through reflection and introspection and understanding where you are as compared to where you need to be? And can someone help guide you through that introspection, so that those value sets that you've learned as a result of your failure now become imbued in you, so they become part of your very essence? So you don't have to think unnecessarily about what's right or wrong. The natural reaction, if it's imbued in you, is something that is done and done right. So this whole iteration process of going out there and stretching and becoming stronger, and then making a mistake and become stronger as a result of that mistake, that's a process of building that character and building the competence that's necessary for growth, for growth to occur so that as you grow in leadership, you become more responsible for more duties, responsibilities, and whatever else you're going to be leading.

Adam: What were the most significant failures that have stood out to you in the course of your career in the course of your life? And what did you learn from them?

Robert: Well, yeah, in your introduction, you said, I was President of the University of South Carolina. Well, I lasted for two years, and then I resigned. So it was in the middle of the pandemic. And I was the President of the University and President of the University system. And within a week, you attend every single commencement event, to include all the other schools in the system as well. And it's about, gosh, maybe about 10 or 12 different events. And I found myself in the pandemic going from one event to another. And I realized halfway through that, ‘Hey, we're not telling the students and congratulating them what they had persevered through in the middle of this pandemic, particularly as you transition from onsite to online education, and that they had successfully done that.’ And we wanted to acknowledge their resilience. So I went to my speechwriter, I said, ‘Find something about resilience, and someone who has overcome resilience and put it in my next talk.’ So she frankly couldn't find anything. So I went to my – I don’t want to drag the whole story out – but I went to my list of key quotes, pulled a quote out there about resilience, and I gave it to her to put in there. And it wasn't attributed. So I found myself saying it the next time and I said it, and it was not attributed. It should have been attributed. So another word for saying something that is of somebody else's comment that was not attributed is plagiarism. So I was guilty of plagiarism. No, I did not do this for personal gain, or for my own benefit. It was something I was looking for, for the right words for the audience that I was talking to. But the whole thing really exploded. And I found myself, Adam, trying to defend myself but in the process of all that I was losing trust. I was losing trust with a number of the student body, with the faculty. Here's your President of a University, guilty of plagiarism. And I said, yeah, there's a lot of circumstances that went with that, but nevertheless, because I was losing trust, I went to my Board of Trustees and said, ‘I've got to leave. You cannot have a President that is not trusted. And as a result of this character defect, I lost trust.’ And then I submitted my resignation, and I left. So yes, I failed and failed miserably. I learned a lot from this, but one of the things I'm not so much proud of, but one of the things that I'm in the midst of this tragedy that I'm glad that I did is, I accepted full responsibility for doing this. I didn't pass the buck to nobody. I didn’t throw anybody under the bus. I said it, so I owned it. And as a result, as a leader, I accepted responsibility. And because I accepted responsibility for what I said, I have to accept responsibility for the consequences, even though it came to the point where I had to resign.

Adam: And that's what leadership is all about. No one is perfect. There is no perfect person. Everyone makes mistakes. What differentiates the leaders who others want to follow from the leaders, who others look at and say, ‘I don't want to have anything to do with this person?’ A big part of it is one's ability to take ownership. If you own it, it's a huge part of it.

Robert: Well, yeah, for the South Carolina thing, I accept the full responsibility, because I said I owned it. And it has significant consequences. But that's what leaders do. They live with the consequences because they have taken responsibility. I always said, if your organization is successful, it's not the leader's responsibility to accept credit for that. Push it down. Let your subordinates, especially those that contributed to that success, let them receive the acknowledgement and the praise for being successful and the leader steps away. If something goes wrong in the organization, then it is just the opposite. It's the leader's responsibility to assume responsibility for it. It's his duty to accept responsibility. If there was indeed something wrong by a subordinate, like a character defect, then you have to deal with that and handle that. But not in such a public forum, where you want to pass the buck to somebody else, so that you can be alienated from what went wrong. No, you're the leader, you own what went wrong. And that's what I did.

Adam: Leadership development, a focal point of your career. You were responsible for developing leaders in the Army. You led two major institutions of higher learning, including America's oldest service academy, and one of the country's premier leadership training grounds in West Point. In your experience, what are the keys to developing leaders? And what can anyone do to become a better leader?

Robert: That's a great question, Adam. Building a strategy on leadership development, and you first have to understand what the vision of West Point was, and that was to be the preeminent leader development institution in the world. And then the mission statement, which really accomplishes that vision, and that is to educate, train and inspire leaders who have character. So then, what are the ways to make something like that happen? And what we did is we realized that we developed leaders intellectually, through our academic program. We developed leaders militarily with the skill sets that they need to enter into the Army. We developed leaders physically. Why is the physical aspect of leader development so important? It’s because, in the crucible of ground combat, if you're going to lead, you're going to lead in the most adverse situation. And you as a leader have got to be able to come up with the skill sets, the tenacity, the resilience that's necessary to persevere through that type of environment. That's why the physical aspect was so important. One side note, I remember one of the senior leaders in the Army really did not like our boxing program at West Point because it produces concussions. So we did everything we could to reduce concussions altogether, not only develop and train and equipment and all that sort of thing, and our concussion rate went down significantly. But he wanted us to get rid of boxing altogether. And I said, ‘Sir, no way. There's no way that we're going to get rid of boxing, because boxing not only develops the skill set, on defending yourself or to be able to handle hand to hand type of activity, but it is the only thing at West Point that we do for every single Cadet that pits the one against another in full body contact, and it creates a fear.’ The purpose of boxing was to teach you to overcome fear to have the physical set and the physical tenacity to overcome fear. So we developed Cadets through physical, and then we developed Cadets through character because like I said, you can be number one academically in your class, but if you fail in character, you fail in leadership. And that's why character becomes so tremendously important. So that was our leadership development program. But the unique thing about West Point, and the thing I really enjoyed, is not only preparing young men and women intellectually to deal with some of these problem sets that they're going to have to deal with, in confronting our nation's adversaries, but it really had to develop them physically. It had developed them in character, and of course, had developed them militarily. And then equally important is developing them intellectually.

Adam: What can anyone listening to this conversation do to become a better leader?

Robert: Well, first of all, get yourself in physical shape and start reading. Leaders are lifelong learners. I mean, just because you graduate and got a degree doesn't mean you need to stop learning. Get in the habit of learning. Try to read to start with a book a month, and then read two books a month. And then if you get to it to the point where you can read a book a week, that's great. There are some phenomenal books out there that can really motivate and inspire you and really educate you to deal with some of these situations and challenges that are out there.

Adam: I love it. And you talk about the power of lifelong learning. It's a key theme that I've heard over and over and over and over again, through my conversations with so many of the great leaders that have gotten one on one with Thirty Minute Mentors. And something that I like to share with audiences that I speak to is, we all learn in different ways. For some of us, it might be through reading. The advice you shared, great advice: read as much as you can. If that's how you can learn best. For others it might be by listening to podcasts. It might be by watching videos. It might be by doing what I do. My way of learning is by doing this by talking to people who know as much as anyone out there about a particular topic, and asking them questions, and listening, and trying to take in as much information as possible that way. Do different things, but lean into however you learn best. Commit to it. 

Robert: Amen. 

Adam: A central part of your role as a leader was to motivate the people who you are leading. What are your best tips on the topic of motivation?

Robert: That’s a good question. First, you have to learn how to motivate yourself. If you can't motivate yourself, you're not going to be able to motivate others. So first, understand where you want to be in character, emotionally, physically, and with competence of the skill sets as necessary in the organization that you're working in. And then get yourself there, put yourself in the right programs that get yourself there. So motivate yourself. And then if you're going to motivate others, you either motivate them through yelling and screaming, or you motivate them by internalizing the why and internalizing the purpose. I remember I was a plebe at West Point, and the upper class, they would just yell and scream so you were motivated, because you didn't want to be yelled at. And that's why you did things. But you soon learned that that type of leadership behavior doesn't work in the Army. Fortunately, West Point’s kind of moved away from that to a degree. But really, if you really want to motivate somebody, define the why. And help them to internalize the why. Why are you doing this? Why do you need to do this? And when they understand the why, they have a purpose. When they have a purpose, they're not going to negotiate the price to be successful. They'll pay whatever price is necessary to be successful, because that's where their passion is. If you're at a point where, okay, here's success, and I'm starting to play these mind games with myself and negotiating whether or not I want to pay the price to get there, you're never going to get there, I'll guarantee you that. But when you have a why, and you have a purpose, you don't negotiate the price of success, because you're going to do whatever is necessary to get there, as long as it is done in character, as long as it is morally and ethically correct. When you don't negotiate the price of success, you're not going to take illegal and wrong procedures to get there, you're gonna get there with the right ethics and character that's necessary to achieve.

Adam: I love that. And there's this huge misconception out there that to motivate other people, you need to get in their face and yell at them and scream at them. And that the most successful leaders in the military are leaders who yell and scream at people and tell them ‘Do this, do that.’ But in my experience, as in your experience – I've interviewed many of the most successful military leaders in America, and I've heard consistently what you just shared. It's not about yelling and screaming. It's about defining the why. It's about explaining why you should do this. Not telling someone you need to do this or else. It's about intrinsic motivation, purpose driven motivation.

Robert: What's critical, Adam, is to reinforce the why you've got to lead by example. I mean, you have got to live that model of what you want your subordinates to achieve and they have to see it within you and they don't want to see something that's fake or put on. They want to see something that is genuine and authentic. So the why is something that you've already internalized. And because of the example that you set, and you're leading from the front, you're not just telling them what to do but you are out there doing it yourself and leading, that reinforces why the why is so important.

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

Robert: Well, you've got to really define what is success to you. And in that process of understanding yourself, what is successful, it's probably good to, especially if you have a career path, to get some mentoring and some advice from somebody whom you respect. Who understands this level of progress and success within the organization that you're in. So define what success is. But it's not just what you think success is. Have a conversation with a mentor, have a conversation with someone whom you respect, and say, ‘What do you think is success? And what do you think I'm capable of achieving?’ And then get to a point where you're going to stretch. A lot of people are afraid to stretch because they're afraid and they're going to make a mistake, and they're going to fail. I looked at living a life of excellence and excellence is living to the upper level of your potential, but your potential has the ability of growing. So when you go out into areas that you're unfamiliar with, and you're uncomfortable with, you're likely to make mistakes. Don't be afraid to go into those areas. Go into that area and make the mistake. If you're the boss listening to this, then one of your jobs is to underwrite the risk of a mistake, not necessarily as a mistake, but an opportunity to learn. If you break a bone and it heals and heals correctly, the bones are stronger where the break was. If you go out there and make a mistake, and you learn from that mistake, you're never going to make the mistake again, and you're going to be stronger as a result. And you're going to increase in confidence. And the upper level of your potential now has just now stretched. And now you've got the potential to go to the next level, and the next level on the next level. But the key is, don't be bashful about moving into those areas that you're unfamiliar or uncomfortable with. Get in there, because that's where learning occurs. And if you're like I said the boss, listen to this, encourage your subordinates again to those areas and underwrite the risk of a mistake as an opportunity to learn instead. And then you'll see your organization explode. The talent will explode. They're not going to do things that they're comfortable with. They're going to go into areas you're unfamiliar with as they bring your company, your organization, into these newer areas. It'll explode and grow and get bigger and that's what great organizations do.

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

Robert: No, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. I appreciate it.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally-recognized authority on leadership. Adam is 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. 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. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, 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. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

Follow Adam on Instagram and Twitter at @adammendler and on LinkedIn and listen and subscribe to Thirty Minute Mentors on your favorite podcasting app.