Meikles & Dimes

92: Navy SEAL Rich Diviney | ”If you call yourself a leader, but no one’s following you, I’ve got bad news.”

Sep 18, 2023

13:53

Rich Diviney is a retired Navy SEAL Commander, who completed more than thirteen overseas deployments—eleven of which were to Iraq and Afghanistan. In his 20 years as an officer and SEAL, Rich was involved in the specialized SEAL selection process, which whittled a group of hundreds of extraordinary candidates down to a few of the most elite performers.

As the officer in charge of training for a specialized command, Rich also spearheaded the creation of the SEAL "Mind Gym" that helped SEALs perform faster, longer, and better, especially in high-stress environments.

Since his retirement, Rich has worked as a speaker, facilitator, and consultant, training more than five thousand business, athletic, and military leaders.

Rich shares his work on his website, theattributes.com, and in his excellent book, The Attributes.

In this conversation, we discuss the following:

Being in charge and being a leader are two separate things. The former is a position; the latter is a behavior.
We don’t get to self-designate ourselves leaders. Other people decide whether we are someone they want to follow, and they do so based on the way we behave.
“If you call yourself a leader, and you look back and there's no one following you, I’ve got bad news for you.”
“I was always in charge of something in the Navy. But whether or not I was a leader depended on how I was behaving and what the people in my span of care thought of me.”
“There have been people who outrank me hierarchically, and I wouldn't follow them anywhere. And meanwhile there's someone over there by the water cooler who has no hierarchical rank whatsoever. And I would follow that person to hell and back because of the way they behave.”
You can manage and supervise people, but no one likes to be supervised. They want to follow a leader.
One of the most important leadership behaviors is accountability. I own my decisions. And I own the consequences thereof, whether good or bad.
As a leader you can always delegate responsibility, but you can never delegate accountability.
Rich was commanding officer of a NAVY seal squadron and had delegated the responsibility of the jump to a new jump master. As a result, they missed the mark badly. But Rich owned the results, even though he had delegated the responsibility of the jump.
When we take accountability, we increase our control. When we blame others, we give up control.
Leaders aren’t born or made, according to Rich. They’re chosen, based on their behaviors. And one of the most important behaviors for leaders is accountability.
Accountability puts us in the driver's seat, compared to blame, which immediately cedes our position to the back where we give someone else control.