PPP 494 | How to Stay Poised When Everything Starts to Slip, with author Andrew Wittman

Summary

In this episode, Andy talks with Dr. Andrew Wittman, former Marine, police officer, federal agent, and leadership coach, about his new book Inner Armor: Perpetual Resilience. If you lead projects and teams, you already know pressure is coming. The real question is what you do when it arrives.

Andrew explains why the brain can work against you under stress, and how the questions you ask yourself shape the options you can see. You'll learn the Two Minute Rule and how it can help you shift from "we can't" thinking into problem-solving mode. Andy and Andrew also explore how filters and assumptions influence what leaders notice, why limitation can be more dangerous than fear, and what it looks like to build a First Responder Mindset so you can hold your poise when stakeholders push back.

They close with a powerful discussion on identity and a practical look at raising resilient kids. If you're looking for insights on leading with clarity and composure when the stakes are high, this episode is for you!

Sound Bites

• "The first thing you have to understand about the brain is that it is the original search engine. Like it has to answer a question."
• "The brain knows that you're a genius. Even if you don't consciously recognize that you're a genius, your brain knows it. It'll never go against your genius self. So if you say things like, I don't know how we could do this, your brain says, 'Oh, we don't know.' So it stops searching completely for any answer."
• "Just for two minutes, pretend that you could do it. It's amazing that your brain will just go to work and find like 15 ways you actually could do it, whereas seconds ago, we thought we couldn't."
• "When bad news happens, get happy. Whenever you hear bad news, you should get happy because this is your biggest opportunity to have the greatest comeback ever."
• "My question is, no matter what the bad news is, I'm going to ask myself this: how can I use this to my greatest possible advantage?"
• "I want to know what the holes in this project are. I don't want to hear rainbows and sunshine, right? Positive thinking will get you killed quicker than negative thinking."
• "We take in 11 million bits of information per second. Every second we see, hear, feel, touch, 11 million bits. Only 126 bits go to our conscious mind for action, which means we're filtering out 99.9% of all that information."
• "When you walk into a room, and you think no one supports you, you're going to see every cue that you could find to back that up. And you'll discard anything that would go against that."
• "The world is always ready to define you if you don't define yourself."
• "My identity: I'm a man of excellence who always keeps his word. I aspire to always keep my word. And so everything that I do is pre-decided by that identity."
• "Excellence is if I give my best effort, I could sleep tonight."
• "Welcome to Planet Earth, everybody has to deal with the externals. It's the great equalizer. We all have to deal with it. You're not special. I hate to tell you, CEO, you're not special."
• "Those pressure situations, they don't create your habits. They actually reveal them."

Chapters

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:40 Start of Interview
• 02:07 Andrew's Backstory and Early Influences
• 04:23 Unhelpful Questions Under Pressure and the Two Minute Rule
• 07:27 Applying the Two Minute Rule When a Key Dependency Slips
• 12:12 Training Practices to Make Resilience Automatic
• 16:49 Recognizing When Your Filter Is the Real Problem
• 18:33 Exposing Assumptions and Filters in Project Plans
• 22:21 A Personal Example of Misreading a Situation
• 25:10 How Beliefs Shape What You Notice in a Room
• 27:35 Why Limitation Is More Dangerous Than Fear
• 32:02 Building a First Responder Mindset and Holding Poise
• 36:07 Identity and Defining Yourself
• 40:37 Parenting Practices That Build Resilience in Kids
• 43:17 End of Interview
• 43:42 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 47:47 Outtakes

Learn More

You can learn more about Andrew and his work at GetWarriorTough.com.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 448 with Marie-Helene Pelletier. It's an insightful discussion on resilience and burnout, and I think it would be a great follow-up to this discussion with Andrew.
• Episode 477 with Jess Baker. She's a business psychologist and coach who offers a refreshing perspective on how to increase your resilience at work and in life.
• Episode 398 with Dr. Neha Sangwan. It's an episode that will give you another perspective on avoiding burnout for you and your teams.

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Talent Triangle: Power Skills

Topics: Leadership, Resilience, Stress Management, Decision Making, Mindset, Emotional Regulation, Stakeholder Management, Communication, Self-Leadership, Identity, Team Performance

The following music was used for this episode:

Music: Imagefilm 034 by Sascha Ende License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Synthiemania by Frank Schroeter License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license