Trust & Leadership: a conversation with CQ Brown, Jr. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [Podcast]

Conversation Highlights

Responses have been edited for clarity.

On leadership

I've spent a lot of time thinking about leadership. I think the key part is credibility, and credibility is built on earning respect versus demanding respect. And earning respect is really about how you carry yourself, aspects of vulnerability, so when you do make mistakes, you're willing to admit those, but you're going to learn from those mistakes. 

When I was a commander at the Air Force Weapons School, our mantra was humble, approachable, and credible. You're credible based on the position you hold, but humble and approachable. As a leader, if people are afraid of you, people will do things just so they don't get in trouble, and they're only going to do the minimum amount to make sure they don't get in trouble. When you've earned respect, people will do things because they don't want to disappoint you, and they will go above and beyond because they respect you as a leader because of the way you carry yourself and you have their best interest at heart.

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On leadership in a democracy

I think that the key part here is dialogue and allowing voices to be heard. And it is important, I think, when you're trying to lay out a case of what you're trying to do that you communicate that it's not all or nothing. 

As a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, when talking to the President, Secretary of Defense, National Security Council, you just don't come in and say, "This is the only way to do it." You lay out options. Even if the selected option is not the option you wanted, think through how you would help implement that option. I've advised folks, when you're being asked to do something that you're going to have difficulty implementing, just don't push back and say, "This will be hard." You need to do a little bit of the math and show how hard it will be. And then sometimes, people look at it and go, "I didn't realize it was going to take that much to do this."

On how trust makes hard leadership calls possible

When I talk about leadership, I often say you never want a cold call in a crisis, and you never want to burn a bridge. You have to have a network of people that you're talking to that are the most likely people you're going to engage with, particularly when there's going to be a crisis, because in a crisis, it's going to take some trust to pull things off.

I also talk about not burning a bridge because sometimes there are some people that you have difficulty working with. I don't necessarily turn away from them. I may not talk to them as much, because there may be a time due to their expertise, we need to work together. And so, I try not to burn any bridges. I try to be diplomatic in every engagement I have.

On encouraging innovation in an organization

Now, you can't do all the innovative ideas, but we've got to pick some, and we can't just keep talking about innovation and not doing things. And that was really my point in writing an “Innovation Letter to Airmen” to articulate how do we generate action in certain areas, encourage our Airmen to come up with ideas, and not be discouraged because someone pushed back? And one of the things I talk about is, I call it the five stages of no, like the five stages of grief. And when you're trying to do something, sometimes you have to get through all five stages: Hell no. No. We'll think about it. Not a bad idea. We should be doing it already.

If it's really important to you, you may have to get through all five stages and you may have to adjust your approach to get through each stage, and being persistent and consistent in your message helps you to get others to start to buy into the idea, and then we'll get you to, "We should have been doing this already."

• Read the complete episode transcript.