A General’s View on Boyd, Leadership and Agility with Maj Gen Brook J. Leonard, USAF | Ep 8

Maj Gen Brook J. “Tank” Leonard, USAF is an experienced leader in the U.S. Air Force. He has extensive leadership experience with a wide range of organizations of various scales; in several complex and uncertain environments, including combat. He is currently the Deputy Commander and Director of Operations at Combined Joint Task Force - Space Operations, leading planning and operations for United States Space Command. He has flown numerous aircraft, including the F-16 and F-35, with over 3,000 flight hours, including 576 combat hours. Maj Gen Leonard is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, USAF Weapons School and has attained multiple masters degrees throughout his career.

Chapters in this episode include:

• Iron Eagle vs. Top Gun
• Why Fighter Aviation
• Energy-Maneuverability (Agility) Theory
• Navy TOPGUNs Take Boyd to School
• Distributed Leadership, Weapons School (Top Gun)  Style
• The Art and Science of the Debrief (Feedback Loop)
• Leadership Lessons from Secretary Mattis 
• Bounded Applicability: Effects-Based Operations (Value-Focused Thinking)
• New Domain, New Culture and the Power of Cognitive Diversity
• IOHAI: The Secret Behind Team Orientation
• Red Teaming: Challenging Assumptions and Improving Decision Facilitation 
• Leading a Fearless Organization (Psychological Safety) 
• F-16 vs. F-35? 
• Merging Cultures
• The Space Imperative 

Be sure to use the Chapters Feature on Apple and Spotify to quickly browse and navigate to segments of this episode.

Maj Gen Brook J. Leonard Bio
Maj Gen Brook J. Leonard LinkedIn
U.S. Space Command
Debrief To Win
TOPGUN: An American Story

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Transcript

Transcripts are machine generated and are not edited for grammar or spelling.

00;00;01;01 - 00;00;02;29
Mark McGrath
Sir. Tank Leonard, welcome to No Way Out.

00;00;04;25 - 00;00;09;19
Maj Gen Leonard
Awesome. Great to be here. Thanks both to you, moose and ponds, for inviting me on.

00;00;09;19 - 00;00;23;14
Mark McGrath
So the three of us being Gen Xers, we've got a Top Gun Naval Aviator, we've got a marine that grew up on Full Metal Jacket. We just have to know from the F-16 pilot right away, it was Iron Eagle, wasn't it?

00;00;24;07 - 00;00;36;21
Maj Gen Leonard
All the way. In fact, my favorite thing speaking to Iron Eagle is that everybody still thinks that Top Gun is an Air Force movie. So the Navy's done more for Air Force recruitment than you can both.

00;00;36;21 - 00;00;38;19
Mark McGrath
Okay. All right. Yeah. No.

00;00;38;28 - 00;00;49;25
Maj Gen Leonard
I wasn't iron Eagle, that's for sure. Although the you know, when he puts the soundtrack in and blows up the enemy, that that was pretty cool. But other than that, top gun beats iron Eagle every day.

00;00;49;26 - 00;01;11;18
Mark McGrath
So you did not take an F-16 and bust your father out of a hostage situation based on that. Yes. Good stuff. Well, we're glad we're glad you can join us and we're really happy to have you here. We'll get right into it. No parties itching to ask you something, so hit it punch.

00;01;12;15 - 00;01;23;27
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
There's a common connection between Iron Eagle and the Navy, isn't there? There's Chappie who played the drill instructor in an officer and a gentleman. Same, same, same person.

00;01;23;28 - 00;01;24;19
Mark McGrath
Marine, you know.

00;01;25;17 - 00;01;26;19
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Right, right, right.

00;01;26;19 - 00;01;39;11
Mark McGrath
And it was like it was Lew and Art who was a marine in the it who fought in Okinawa, who was a marine aviator that fought in Okinawa. That was one of the first pilots in the Israeli Air Force that produced that movie.

00;01;39;11 - 00;01;44;25
Maj Gen Leonard
I'm willing to switch I'm willing to take ownership of Top Gun, give Navy ownership irony of.

00;01;44;27 - 00;01;59;22
Mark McGrath
Any effective point is, is that join is something that we all learn very young in our careers and we're showing a really good example of how it's supposed to work. We all get along and we're going to have lots of fun things to talk about here.

00;01;59;22 - 00;02;00;19
Maj Gen Leonard
Absolutely.

00;02;01;09 - 00;02;09;15
Mark McGrath
Why don't you give us the background of from a high level view, what was it that attracted you to fighter aviation? And and why don't we start with that?

00;02;10;29 - 00;02;33;09
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah, most thanks. I'll tell you, it really boils down to teamwork. I mean, that's I grew up playing sports in high school, you know, loved being on a team, love take in sort of individual talent wiring in parallel, you know, going through tough practices, you know, trying to outthink the enemy and then executing on game day and then learning, you know, rinse, lather, repeat, you know, across many different disciplines.

00;02;33;14 - 00;02;56;10
Maj Gen Leonard
And the mental, physical exertion, the camaraderie, the connectedness, you know, that's really what I want. Wanted my my dad was actually in the army. So that kind of completes are full circle here there you go but he was an army aviator and I saw him, you know, with his Army buddies, you know, just a great family life. And so I wanted to go in the military for sure.

00;02;56;10 - 00;03;18;28
Maj Gen Leonard
But when it came down to what would I do in the Air Force, you know, I went out and actually looked there's a program called Operational Air Force out of the Air Force Academy where we got to visit, you know, an entire wing and all the different organizations on base. And I'll tell you, there's there's teams all over the Air Force, but I didn't see any teams stronger than the fighter community.

00;03;18;28 - 00;03;44;20
Maj Gen Leonard
And just again, how we every day kind of gather together, think through problem sets, go out there and execute, debrief, you know, and then take time to enjoy each other's companies and just build those relationships. And so that's what I wanted. And so once I saw that boy, I was hooked in that flying fun to and I've enjoyed that as well as well as leading airmen in the Joint Force, you know, across all kinds of different situations.

00;03;44;20 - 00;03;47;05
Maj Gen Leonard
But really the answer your question is all about teamwork.

00;03;47;06 - 00;04;02;26
Mark McGrath
When you were coming up, you know, in selecting when you're a senior at at the academy was was fighter aviation the number one choice for for pilots or you know, people say, no, I want to fight, I want to fly C-5, I want to fly.

00;04;03;14 - 00;04;24;04
Maj Gen Leonard
Right? Yeah. I think, you know, and culture is kind of ebb and flow. You know, we're we're talking earlier about Top Gun and an Eagle. So, you know, there's a lot of influence out there in the media for sure. But absolutely, I would say the majority of the people that wanted to go fly wanted to go fly fighters, that was sort of the culture at the academy at the time.

00;04;24;20 - 00;04;47;08
Maj Gen Leonard
And a lot of people wanted to go do that. There is, I think, some other really strong cultures out there too, inside the Air Force, our special ops community and a couple others just to mention that. But yeah, fighter aviation I think was sort of at the top of the list. That's what most people are aiming for. And that's was really where the competition was and the camaraderie we live.

00;04;47;08 - 00;05;11;17
Mark McGrath
We live not far from right pat. And that's my boy's favorite place to go. I've been going there since they were toddlers. And what a what an amazing museum to go in there. First of all, places I know you've been there places ginormous, but it's a really cool. They set it up high. You really see how things have evolved all the way up to the planes that that you've flown.

00;05;11;18 - 00;05;24;23
Mark McGrath
You know, starting with the original raid fliers and and everything in between is such a great place to tell the to tell the story. And certainly things have changed quite a bit.

00;05;24;23 - 00;05;44;16
Maj Gen Leonard
Oh yeah. It's going to that museum. I've been there are several times and it's actually interesting to see all the experimental planes. You know, we tried flying saucers, we tried, you know, all kinds of different designs. And back then they didn't have the advantage of digital technology modeling and same. But you know, if we thought something work, we went out and tried it.

00;05;44;24 - 00;05;57;06
Maj Gen Leonard
And, you know, it's been pretty amazing the amount of learning we did and the adaptation to be able to get after aircraft that keep you out there and do their purpose. And that's that museum is really a history book of all of that.

00;05;58;02 - 00;06;18;06
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Speaking of museums, the aircraft that I flew in is the A 14, the iconic F-14 that everybody knows from the movie Top Gun. But the aircraft you flew in is the Viper, the F-16, and it's still being built, I believe, in something. And one of the Carolinas, actually. Yeah, but but there's a nice connection there. Back to John Boyd.

00;06;18;06 - 00;06;33;27
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Right. And that connection belongs really works with the why of 17, which is featured in the new movie Maverick Top Gun, the F-18. So can you talk about the development of the F-16? It makes some connections. Back to John Boyd.

00;06;34;28 - 00;06;56;14
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah. First of all, just, you know, during that time frame, you know, we were trying to figure out, you know, what sort of design choices we really wanted to make. And, you know, you mentioned the F-14, which has a little bit higher wing loading, but a variable geometry. And so there's benefits to that. And then obviously, each service kind of has their own sort of needs.

00;06;56;18 - 00;07;30;09
Maj Gen Leonard
Like, you know, I just recently, you know, flew the F-35. And to digress just a little bit, you know, across the ABC models, the Navy model has beefed up landing gear, etc.. And obviously you've seen and done that piece. And so there were service specifics, you know, integrated into that as well as sort of historical specifics coming out of the Vietnam War and the four, I think, was probably one of the historical, obviously iconic plane, if you will, F-1 005 as well.

00;07;30;09 - 00;07;55;22
Maj Gen Leonard
106 And so, you know, we were looking at what we learned in terms of the need for maneuverability. And I think where we were heading is for a higher wing loading. You know, bigger type aircraft. And and John Boyd, through his energy maneuverability theory, was able to reorient really the bureaucracy, which is just phenomenal. That's that's a really hard thing to do.

00;07;56;14 - 00;08;18;10
Maj Gen Leonard
But through that theory, he was able to show kind of the cost benefit analysis of design tradeoffs. And so now you have this low cost lightweight fighter known as the F-16, gets selected way back when and now is the most prolific fighter really probably in history, or at least modern history for sure. And we've been able to do tremendous things.

00;08;18;10 - 00;08;52;20
Maj Gen Leonard
You mentioned the production line in South Carolina. So they just rolled off the block 70. Lockheed Martin did. And so, you know, it's it's continued to be sold and modified and adapted, conformal winged tanks, better electronic countermeasures. You know, all the systems have updated on it. And but yet it's still sort of that basic design that gives you, I think, an incredible amount of range, obviously incredible amount of maneuverability and agility and an ability to maintain it as well.

00;08;52;20 - 00;09;16;23
Maj Gen Leonard
And so it's just it ends up being just sort of this great trade off that started from getting our overarching perspective right. And that's kind of my one over the world. I know you guys know a lot more about Boyd's contributions, but what I really found is that he reoriented the bureaucracies mindset using mathematics, using his background, and obviously influence a lot of elbow grease.

00;09;17;18 - 00;09;21;26
Maj Gen Leonard
But by doing that, you know, just opened the door to an incredible platform for sure.

00;09;21;26 - 00;09;45;01
Mark McGrath
And to your point, Hank, one of the things that he did was at Eglin Air Force Base, the the lead designer of the F-111, which was something that Boyd was very much against, was at a bar. And I think Boyd called them out, but he was able to do so by specific things about, you know, what the plane could do from a performance and weights and balance and everything.

00;09;45;01 - 00;10;05;17
Mark McGrath
And he was very critical of things like the swing wing, whatever and whoever that I can't think of the guy's name off the top of my head, but whoever he was, he became affected or influenced by by Boyd to the point where he was involved on the F-16 project. After after that, I think he was the lead guy on the on the F-16 project, too.

00;10;05;17 - 00;10;14;04
Mark McGrath
But it was all with Boyd's kind of he wasn't expecting a pilot to tell him all of the engineering points.

00;10;15;02 - 00;10;44;12
Maj Gen Leonard
In the plane. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, you mentioned you mentioned the F-111 influence as well. And there's there's sort of a follow on story in history for the Air Force. So you mentioned kind of as I was coming on board, choosing fighter aviation, the iconic plane at the time was the Strike Eagle in the Air Force. And it was interesting, as we closed down the the one elevens the F-111s and we sort of brought up the F-15 e community.

00;10;44;26 - 00;11;04;08
Maj Gen Leonard
We took a lot of pilots. In fact, the majority of the pilots that went into that came from the the 111 community. And so it grew up as with a very air to ground focus. And once we started mixing in f-15c, pilots and pilots from other backgrounds were able to get it to that multirole fighter that it is today.

00;11;04;22 - 00;11;20;13
Maj Gen Leonard
Just phenomenal. But there's an interesting culture piece, right? There's the technology that allows you to adapt to different circumstances. But there's also sort of the people and the culture and sort of how you organize around the technology. That's, I think, key as well.

00;11;20;16 - 00;11;27;17
Mark McGrath
Well, that's a big point difference, right? People, ideas, things not not things. Ideas, people. Right.

00;11;28;16 - 00;11;46;00
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Think tank. There's a there's a story from Dan Peterson's book. And I want to share with you, maybe you've heard this, but it goes back to England, I believe, was I going back in the early seventies? And there's a quote from Dan Peterson. And Dan Peterson is Captain Peterson, the founder of our weapons school in the U.S. Navy, which is known as Top Gun.

00;11;46;13 - 00;12;05;16
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
But I'll read this phrase to you and I'll kind of paint a picture for you, because back then, John Boyd wasn't all about people, ideas and things in that order. He was about things and ideas as far as the theory goes. So he wrote it. He said this to some Top Gun brewers back then, and it was You cannot fight MiGs in an F will lose wars that way.

00;12;05;22 - 00;12;29;26
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So he was very opinionated on how we can fight the air war in Vietnam with the technology that we had. But it goes on to say that one of the lieutenants that was from the U.S. Navy at this an air conference pointed out that there's a problem with Boyd's m theory. It excluded the skill, heart and drive of the pilot in the cockpit right?

00;12;29;26 - 00;12;57;05
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah. So back then, you know, we you know, the Navy went to with a different direction. We went with the really maximizing the use the M theory. And I think the Air Force stayed with the legacy forward for I can remember the name of the formation, but the Navy kind of split, a split away from that and went towards combat, spread a defensive combat spread what we have today and you know the outcome and some can argue that, you know, correlations, not causation.

00;12;57;22 - 00;13;20;29
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
The U.S. Navy was able to increase the kill ratio significantly. I'm not going to go through the numbers because they vary from place to place. But I find that pretty remarkable that here we have a Air Force fighter pilot training, a theory that really is responsible for a lot of the design in today's fighter aircraft. But back then, in the early seventies, was focused on just the theory, the engineering, not the humanness, if you will.

00;13;21;09 - 00;13;31;24
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
And but that's changed over time. And I think what you and I went through when we went to flight training and experienced aviation fighter aviation is the people side of things. Can you comment on that?

00;13;32;25 - 00;13;55;15
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah. And I think it's I mean, what you guys have been showing, I think, through all these podcasts is that that's such a huge critical element. You know, it's the human that reorients over and over again and kind of drives the machines are the tactics and techniques to be able to do that. We have a saying here in space that our most important weapon system lives and breathes.

00;13;56;07 - 00;14;19;02
Maj Gen Leonard
And so, you know, you talk about people that are even further removed from their machines as we fly, you know, satellites out there on orbit. Very hard to understand what you're doing, what the enemy's doing in a environment like that. But yet it still comes back down to how people are trained, how they are equipped, and then how really how they think, what's their mindset?

00;14;19;02 - 00;14;40;18
Maj Gen Leonard
Do they have that warfighting mindset? Do they have agility of thought? Do they have the imagination not to get trapped by any preconceived notions or history and to really absorb the information that they're getting and then be able to fight through that, both at the tactical, you know, operational and strategic level. And so, yeah, I just I've come to find that out time and time again.

00;14;40;18 - 00;15;17;28
Maj Gen Leonard
And, you know, really in the end, and I and I know, you know, we don't want to sort of simplify it too much because there's so much rich richness there with Boyd. But in the end, it's a1v1 match. I mean, it's a wrestling match. I have a wrestling background. It's you versus a thinking opponent and it's it's gritty and, you know, and so, like, if you remove that and don't really talk through the piece that that's what we're fighting is at its core that you really miss the importance of the human in the loop and the ability to reorient and and react and counteract.

00;15;17;28 - 00;15;40;03
Maj Gen Leonard
And in fact, in reality, we don't really want to compete. I think competition is kind of a trap. In other words, I don't want to do something that's just slightly better than my opponent, and then they do something that slightly better than I do. I basically want to change the game so where they don't even know what game we're playing and they just don't have any capability against me whatsoever.

00;15;40;03 - 00;15;59;09
Maj Gen Leonard
And so, you know, that kind of thinking, that big kind of thinking, but that I think all originates back down in in sort of the core mindset that you need to instill in people and then give them the machines that can allow them to really get after you. I think you know, that's absolutely the right order.

00;15;59;09 - 00;16;24;03
Mark McGrath
And I don't think Boyd could have said that better himself, as we want them to not understand what's going on so that they unravel and we have yet to emerge victorious. So staying on that point of of 1v1, you're a graduate of fighter weapons school and also were an instructor there just like just like Boyd, who spent years and years at Nellis Air Force Base where you train the the 1v1.

00;16;24;03 - 00;16;37;29
Mark McGrath
Why don't you tell us a little bit about that experience and what what you learned as a student and what you learned as an instructor and how it's informed your your thinking around that that sort of edge that somebody has and they and 1v1 situation.

00;16;38;27 - 00;16;59;02
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah. No, absolutely. I was able to go there as a student, like you said, and then come back as an instructor and then as the 16th weapon squadron commander later on. So I don't know if I spent as long as Boyd did there, but I've had a couple of laps around the flagpole and really in the end and this is what we used to say to all the students, this is a leadership school.

00;16;59;17 - 00;17;24;08
Maj Gen Leonard
And so, I mean, literally all the way back 1998, when I got I went through as a student, you know, the instructor pilots even back then talked about this is a leadership school. Now, obviously, you're going to learn, you're going to get your doctorate in F-16 flying for sure. But they always pointed back to the bigger picture of this is we are we are teaching you to be a better officer.

00;17;24;08 - 00;17;49;07
Maj Gen Leonard
We are teaching you to be a better strategist, and then you're going to contribute as an F-16 pilot as well. And so and in between that senior officer leader and being a great F-16 fighter pilot was really the crux of what they're getting at. That's how to be a great instructor. And so, you know, they were focusing on you obviously needed the skills, but you needed to be able to pass those skills to others.

00;17;49;07 - 00;18;09;19
Maj Gen Leonard
And I saw plenty of guys across my time there that were really good fighter pilots. I mean, they were outstanding, but they couldn't teach. And if they couldn't teach, they didn't get through the course. Because if you can't pass along that information, you know, you can't bring the whole team along. And so that was really the litmus test.

00;18;10;06 - 00;18;34;29
Maj Gen Leonard
And so that's that's the way it started day one as I showed up for 98 Bravo, that was kind of, you know, hit into us. We're obviously going to learn to be good, but if we can instruct really well, you know, the Air Force doesn't need us because we can't pass our information out to everybody. So again, with that as as a backdrop, it was really interesting to see how things progressed across the course.

00;18;35;17 - 00;19;01;24
Maj Gen Leonard
And we ended up learning about the F-16. You know, we learned everything we could about everything that it did and all the components. And it was just it was super in-depth, which was great. But we real quickly went from there to how do we employ the F-16 alongside the F-15? C So we get together and we do a lot of offensive counter or defensive counter, or we learn how to employ it with the A-10.

00;19;01;28 - 00;19;28;07
Maj Gen Leonard
You know, in close air support scenarios, we learn how to employ it now with a multi ship package, with bombers and fighters, AWACS, and then even inside the F-16 community, across air and addiction surface, you know, suppression of enemy air defenses. And so really quickly, it became how do you employ this, you know, in much larger formations with a multitude of different aircraft capabilities?

00;19;28;18 - 00;19;47;19
Maj Gen Leonard
And then the scenarios just got harder and harder and harder. But so real quickly, we learned it wasn't about just can I win in Vietnam? And so kind of Boyd's example of expanding that OODA loop, but still keeping that as your sort of core processor. Now to be able to solve larger and larger problem sets with larger amounts of people.

00;19;48;01 - 00;19;49;02
Maj Gen Leonard
It was really I mean.

00;19;49;02 - 00;20;14;02
Mark McGrath
Really elaborate on that because that's that's unique. And I think a lot of people might be surprised is that there's almost a very distributed leadership approach where you're expecting students at the youngest level of being pilots to become teachers, that they can go and turn share with peers and they learn how to evaluate each other. I mean, tell us more about how they you know, how they nurture that and how they throw gas on that, because that seems like a massive competitive edge.

00;20;15;10 - 00;20;35;29
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the weapons school and the weapons school model, both the top gun model and the Air Force weapons school model is distributed leadership. It's it's distributed instructor ship and leadership because they're teaching you, they want you to be able to go out, you know, whether it's into the fleet or into the air wings and be able to teach other people.

00;20;35;29 - 00;21;00;25
Maj Gen Leonard
And so you go back to your squadron and you're the chief instructor, and that's a very specific word, and you're not the chief or best fighter pilot, you're the chief instructor. And so you're working with the other instructors to up their game so that they could then, you know, teach other people. And you're obviously teaching, you know, the younger students yourself, but it's that distributed leadership model where they need you to go out and make other leaders and other instructors.

00;21;01;16 - 00;21;27;16
Maj Gen Leonard
And so right from the beginning, they're teaching you that in the class. And so, you know, it was great as a student, we kind of didn't see it as much. But then as an instructor, we saw it in spades, where by the end of the course, you know, you'd have a couple lessons written down and the student would just go and be checking all of them off and be offering instructional fixes and even coming up with some things that maybe you hadn't even thought of before.

00;21;27;16 - 00;21;46;12
Maj Gen Leonard
And you're adding that to your toolkit, and they're doing that with all kinds of students from all kinds of different walks of life. And at the Air Force Academy or not, the Air Force Academy, the weapons school, I mean, you have everything from all your fighter aircraft, all your mobility aircraft. You have intelligence, you have command and control.

00;21;46;12 - 00;22;12;25
Maj Gen Leonard
You have you have these you have special operations forces. And so, I mean, everybody wants to have a weapons school graduate. And so you're bringing together, I mean, really the whole Air Force in terms of operate, at least the operational side. And so by the time you do that and learn from all your students and are instructing in that environment, you're incredibly equipped to be able to go out there and continue to do that.

00;22;12;26 - 00;22;37;08
Maj Gen Leonard
So you might be in a squadron, but you're will real quickly reaching out, trying to make those connections. And then definitely when you go off to combat those relationships, multi ship operations, but also multi-domain thinking is key. So it is it is distributed instructor ship and leadership in school for sure.

00;22;37;08 - 00;22;51;13
Speaker 4
You are listening to No Way Out sponsored by AGL X. Now let's get back to building your confidence in complexity tank.

00;22;51;13 - 00;23;11;03
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
There's a very important feature of the loop that I think we need to talk about that connects back to this idea of distributed leadership and improving the future and that's the feedback loop. And at the weapons schools we learn effective debriefing techniques. In fact, I'm very good friends with couture owner who had the author of the debrief to win.

00;23;11;09 - 00;23;37;04
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
What I've learned through him is at the weapons school, he was a subject matter expert on that, on how to show others the art and science of debriefing. His book covers a lot of that. And then we learned recently that our March course for the Marine Corps, they copy that as well. And then but bottom line is it's how important is the debrief in improving performance, not just with an individual, but with a team?

00;23;37;13 - 00;23;39;12
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Can you talk a little bit about that?

00;23;39;12 - 00;23;58;28
Maj Gen Leonard
So I, I can't oversell how important it is, obviously, you know that as well. We used to say, you got to turn JP four into knowledge, right? So you spend all this time, you know, your crew chief goes out and get the plane ready. I mean, you're spending, you know, millions of dollars on technology fuel. I mean, you name it, right?

00;23;58;28 - 00;24;24;27
Maj Gen Leonard
And so to walk away from that without increased lessons learned, I mean, what a shame. And so and so we focus on the debrief, right? Where that's where you get everything, you know, out of what you put into it. Same thing from a physical perspective, right? You go to the gym, but if you don't spend time rebuilding those muscles, all you do is break down your muscles and so same kind of analogy here, but we started the debrief in the planning phase.

00;24;25;09 - 00;24;45;08
Maj Gen Leonard
It was so important and we would teach our students that. And so as they're making planning choices, what tactic they're going to do, what weapon selection versus target pairing, you know, we're telling, hey, take notes like you made this trade off. Why did you make this trade off right now? Because those are going to be good notes for later on.

00;24;45;12 - 00;25;08;29
Maj Gen Leonard
Same thing within, you know, the brief. As you go through the brief, what did you feel like you covered? Well, what did you did not cover? Well, is that going to result in mis execution down the road? So take notes like prep for the debrief execution wise. You and I talked about this on a separate call. Are you able to observe in detail about what's going on that real time in the cockpit?

00;25;09;15 - 00;25;30;15
Maj Gen Leonard
Understanding of the fight is really important. Obviously, you're going to get a lot out of tapes and when you watch other people and what they've done or the playback of, you know, where everybody was, you know, you don't necessarily have that data, but that real time, you know, sort of almost feeling as you're observing the fight and listening to the fight, that's important, too.

00;25;30;15 - 00;25;47;17
Maj Gen Leonard
And now you get in the debrief. And so how do you bring all that together? Right. If you've prepped well and done all that, you have a ton of information. And what was happening was like when I went through as a student, people would teach you how to debrief. But a lot of people had a lot of different techniques and they all were good.

00;25;47;17 - 00;26;10;11
Maj Gen Leonard
But we needed a little bit more formalized and standardized way to do it one so we could efficiently and effectively not waste a lot of people's time run out of sort of mental energy at the end of the day. So we needed to be able to do that and then we needed a methodology really reinforce it from educational standards, how people learn and things like that.

00;26;10;11 - 00;26;32;00
Maj Gen Leonard
And so we kind of wrapped that all together. Cujo was a huge part of that, and we came up with a standardized way to do that, as well as standardized terms. And so things like, you know, you walk into a debrief, you should already have some debrief, focus points. So in other words, you're already trying to orient your learning to what you think is important.

00;26;32;00 - 00;26;49;21
Maj Gen Leonard
That doesn't mean you close your mind to that. Then you go out and you sort of gather facts based on those debrief focus points and maybe you end up with another debrief focus point. Maybe you get different answers than you expected, and you go through that process and you try to figure out, okay, what are the root causes based on what happened?

00;26;50;07 - 00;27;14;24
Maj Gen Leonard
And then you want to offer instructional fixes and lessons learned. Kind of wrap that all up. And so we had a very formalized way we did it, and then we had a very formalized set of terminologies and it really ended up great because now you can take that format and you can walk into anybody's part of the weapons school and everybody's going to go, Hey, this is how we're going to go through it.

00;27;14;24 - 00;27;35;07
Maj Gen Leonard
So we're already mentally on the same sheet of music. We just have to fill that in with data and we know what's kind of expected and coming next. And so all of that just made our learning just so much more robust. And then it also gave students, quite frankly, something to hang their hat on, you know, because as you're learning, you really don't know.

00;27;35;20 - 00;28;00;24
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So I want to build an idea of your tank. And this is something that connects back to your point about understanding of fight. And we can talk about situational awareness, having the bubble and, you know, making sense of our environment. But when you go back to when you were a student, when I was a student, and we're going to that merge where some of that fight, we come back to a debrief and a lot of times we couldn't tell you which side we were on, where the sun was.

00;28;01;00 - 00;28;17;13
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
We couldn't reconstruct anything and the reason behind that is because we didn't know what to pay attention to. Right. So the art of debriefing, I believe, helps us understand what to pay attention to. The next time we see this. How do you see that tank? Is that about the same?

00;28;17;25 - 00;28;36;28
Maj Gen Leonard
No, that's a really good way of point kind of frame in that and really kind of thought about that. I in some ways, I thought you were going. It helps us focus on the important information for what has happened. But what you said what I heard you say was that actually helps helps us focus on the next time.

00;28;36;28 - 00;28;59;21
Maj Gen Leonard
And wow, I think that's super powerful. I would I would kind of say it's definitely both. It's not only looking back in terms of what's the most important information to focus on and learn. But yeah, what you added I think is super powerful because it really is about getting better the next time. And so that sort of looking forward into the future piece.

00;28;59;21 - 00;29;20;15
Maj Gen Leonard
And and then I think what you're doing is you're powerfully connecting that loop. In other words, we're looking back over what we decided and acted upon and then now we're reorienting and we're starting that loop again, but we're doing so based on the information that just came out in the last cycle. And so I think that's a super powerful way of looking at it.

00;29;20;15 - 00;29;44;25
Mark McGrath
So here's the killer question for all the business leaders and leaders of teams that are listening, everything that you're describing from distributed leadership, from pure feedback, from debriefing, what effect does that have on culture and cohesion? And do you think that those principles apply outside of an airwing?

00;29;44;25 - 00;30;12;25
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah, absolutely. I think they do. And I like culture and cohesion because again, like I talked about, that's that's why I got into flying was the teamwork piece. And so if you can have that in your organization where everybody has a shared understanding of the environment, their thought of it is a valuable part of the team and now you're able to execute really well and sort of that that feels really good to be able to do that.

00;30;12;25 - 00;30;31;04
Maj Gen Leonard
And even when you lose, you know, some of my best flights ever was when we just got totally defeated by the enemy, but we learned a ton. And so, you know, it's great to be able to do that. And I think the relationships that you build through kind of those ups and downs of learning and getting better is totally invaluable.

00;30;32;02 - 00;30;53;09
Maj Gen Leonard
And so kind of to your question, though, you know, business wise and so forth, this applies to everybody. I mean, it's I think you've said it before, if there's humans involved, Boyd applies. And if there's humans involved, we can think about the culture and connectivity piece and what we've learned from fighter aviation and apply it, you know, into the business realm.

00;30;53;09 - 00;31;33;02
Maj Gen Leonard
And so I think individuals I think it was Daniel Pink said it. They want autonomy, mastery and purpose. And so the ability to go, hey, here's your left and right limits, here's your planning factors, you know, here's mission type orders. This is kind of guidance intent overall. And then you allow them the freedom, you know, the freedom and the autonomy that's built from repetition and training to be able to go out there on a real playing field, whatever that looks like for you, whether it's, you know, Sunday afternoon for an NFL player or, you know, into a business negotiation from someone, you know, in the business world or out in the combat.

00;31;33;19 - 00;31;56;24
Maj Gen Leonard
Now they've had those reps and labs. The teams rehearsed really well. You've learned and now you're out on the field and they're able to make those decisions and they understand the environment. They have teammates around them that are working together. I think that's just super powerful and people want that. And I just think as humans were built for community and I think we enjoy when.

00;31;56;27 - 00;32;15;02
Mark McGrath
It seems like it also takes a lot of pressure. You know, you as a general officer, right? I like all the it takes a lot of the pressure off when you know that the leadership is distributed, that your intent is being followed, that learning is occurring at all levels back and forth, peer to peer up and down. Everybody's learning from each other.

00;32;15;17 - 00;32;32;02
Mark McGrath
It seems that that's one of the the secrets of leadership that that a lot of people could take from this that creating that kind of environment builds the culture and cohesion that your organization, your team is going to need to adapt in a volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous environment.

00;32;33;16 - 00;33;01;16
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah, it makes it a great place to work, you know, in peacetime. And it certainly makes a great, you know, you get your hand raised in combat, right? And so you win. And that feels good too, because losing definitely in that environment doesn't. But yeah, I think you're exactly right, Moose. You know, as a leader, when, when I have a team or the privilege and honor to lead a team where folks are making decisions and they understand guidance and intent and they're moving out.

00;33;01;16 - 00;33;21;23
Maj Gen Leonard
And then also I would include myself in that process. Like if I don't feel like we as an organization to include myself are learning and reorienting, I get a really suspicious and I get really nervous because for me that's always been, hey, we're missing out on something or we're not putting as much energy into it as we should.

00;33;21;23 - 00;33;43;26
Maj Gen Leonard
I might I read a lot about Secretary Mattis. General Mattis, and I think he's one of the greatest exemplars of a guy that would go out there and rehearse his team. You know, there's stories of him moving a bunch of dirt, you know, for a ginormous sandbox. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. And you know, he did it with Legos.

00;33;43;26 - 00;34;14;10
Maj Gen Leonard
That's another great story. And, you know, he basically built relationships with other people. He went out there, rehearsed concepts, and people were, you know, understood the plan and he was able to move out. And another great thing I liked, just as an ad about then Secretary Mattis, we got to spend some time with him. And he told us a story about when he was out at the National Training Center and that he could tell which teams, you know, which units that came out there would succeed or fail.

00;34;14;24 - 00;34;52;07
Maj Gen Leonard
And he said the attribute that really was the deciding factor was no kidding, that they had affection for each other. Now, I almost fell over when I had a marine. Four-Star, now secretary of Defense, tell me about affection. That was probably the last word I thought would come out of his mouth, but I can't think of a better word, you know, and he's obviously the warrior monk, and he had a lot of stories to back it up, but it was really neat because that affection he went on to describe was really sort of the lubricant that allowed everybody to be able to press each other, to be able to trust each other, to be able

00;34;52;07 - 00;35;02;19
Maj Gen Leonard
to learn from each other, and then to do it again and again and again in the face of a thinking enemy. And so just phenomenal leadership and a lot of really great lessons.

00;35;02;19 - 00;35;36;16
Mark McGrath
I'll tell you from a cultural standpoint, just because you brought it up, you know, the Marines, I mean, I've been off active duty for a long time. And I still get mentorship from my peers, my former commanders, my subordinate Marines. We still take that with us everywhere we go. That's the kind of, you know, back to the topic of culture and cohesion, because that environment was built like that to learn from each other, to have, as Mattis said, the you know, the affection for each other.

00;35;36;16 - 00;35;59;19
Mark McGrath
It doesn't it doesn't fade. You know, I'm going on Thursday to see my one of my roommates from the basic school get promoted again, you know, so it's like we continue that. But he's learning from me. I'm learning from him. We're learning from each other. That's that's how it perpetuates. And I you know, that's I think that no company is exempt from that.

00;35;59;19 - 00;36;07;23
Mark McGrath
No organization is exempt from that. No team is exempt from that. Anybody can do it because the principles are pretty, pretty simple when the culture is in place. Yeah.

00;36;07;26 - 00;36;09;02
Maj Gen Leonard
So absolutely.

00;36;09;13 - 00;36;25;07
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
In general, there's a story I want to bring up from General Mattis I think is very important and it's going to connect back to your and my time back at Air Command Staff College. And I think when you were at SAS, we were learning a lot about effects based operations back then, you know, value focused thinking, that type of approach.

00;36;25;19 - 00;36;49;18
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
To me, it worked quite well in an aerospace operations center, straight to task matching weapons to targets and things like that. It worked well, but it didn't work at the strategic level of warfare, if you will. And I think General Mattis, you know, he got rid of that when he was over here in Norfolk. I forgot which command he had over here, but he recognized that we can't apply that like peanut butter spread across everything.

00;36;49;18 - 00;37;11;17
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
You just can't use effects based operations. And today, many organizations are using value focused thinking, which is loosely connected to effects based operations, to try to apply that same approach on their organizations. And we warned them about it is it's contextual, right? So even though you and I learned about it in all our brothers and sisters learned about it almost 20 years ago, jeez, it's horrible.

00;37;12;25 - 00;37;28;12
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
It doesn't mean it applies everywhere. It has. It has bounded applicability. And I think the general saw that. So his ability to reorient not just him, but the whole force is phenomenal. No question. You are using Ebo in space or what do you use it now?

00;37;29;03 - 00;37;57;22
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah, now that's a great question. And just a little bit of of sort of my journey through effects space. I actually wrote a paper on it at XY. And so but you're exactly right. When you have the capability to do more or better, sort of causal linkages, like if I drop a bomb on, you know, two feet of concrete and, you know, at this angle, whatever, you can model that pretty well that's, you know, very known science.

00;37;58;08 - 00;38;30;14
Maj Gen Leonard
And instead, if I don't want to drop a bomb on the building, I know that I can send, you know, SEAL Team X, Y or Z in there to zip tie everybody that's also very effectual. And, you know, given their track record, they'll probably have a 90% or even higher chance of doing that. So you're exactly right. But when it comes to, you know, a VUCA, volatile, uncertain type environment in humans and you mentioned at the strategic level, you just can't, you know, get down to that deterministic level of thinking.

00;38;30;14 - 00;38;58;05
Maj Gen Leonard
And so so it's great here in Space Command because, we really focused on that. We call it Space Command 2.0. In other words, Space Command was stood up. It was stood back down after 911 when we stood up near NORTHCOM, because at that time, the law only allowed us to have nine combat commands. But now that we've branched out, stood up CYBERCOM and Space Command, what we're really looking at is no one's ever fought a war in space.

00;38;58;28 - 00;39;27;01
Maj Gen Leonard
And so, you know, we have historical lessons from warfare. We have an understanding of the space environment and the astrophysics that go into that environment. So we do have some understanding, but it's peripheral understanding. And so, you know, even taking air doctrine or land doctrine or naval doctrine and saying, yes, space is like, you know, a great big ocean or spaces like this, those things aren't for certain.

00;39;27;12 - 00;40;05;22
Maj Gen Leonard
And so from the beginning, we really tried to make sure that we had a really and what I mean by Divergent is that we're considering other possibilities and not just doing one for ones between domains. And so we actually stood up a strategic initiatives group here in the command, and we try to bring in some design thinkers and we actually try to design that into our planning process where we kind of start off the process really focusing on what is the problem we're trying to face and what are some other ways of thinking through this problem before we got into sort of the more deterministic planning.

00;40;06;11 - 00;40;35;00
Maj Gen Leonard
And so I think, a, the newness of the command is allowed us to bring on that culture and by all means, it's not fully grown out. We're definitely kind of building and growing that mindset. I think it's a it's a little bit counter from what the historical military process has been, sort of more on the deterministic side. So I think we're fighting a little bit against human tendencies and military culture historically, but we're fighting that fight, which I think is really good.

00;40;35;14 - 00;41;10;00
Maj Gen Leonard
And so we have the newness of the command to try to build that culture, but then we also have the newness of the domain. And so I think that's been very powerful. And so that's the way we're kind of trying to approach it, is build that, you know, sort of doubt, maybe I'm not sure how to actually capture it, but lack of certainty and lack of cause and effect, you know, that obviously effects based operations allows you to consider multiple avenues of cause and effect, which allows you to do targeting as you just brought up, you know, from sort of a more holistic perspective.

00;41;10;00 - 00;41;31;17
Maj Gen Leonard
But how do you back that up a little bit and then actually bring in different things at the strategic or or problem framing piece of planning and really considering the multitude of options at that level, which, you know, you could say that's what effects based off that's the goodness of effects based operations that you just consider more than sort of the bomb on target solution.

00;41;31;17 - 00;41;51;28
Maj Gen Leonard
But at the strategic level, I think the way you do that is you approach your problem sets from just, hey, I'm not sure exactly how this is going to play out. I have some other examples that could inform it, but hey, what's the counter intuitive? And then and then take that counterintuitive and what's something else that could happen, what's the complete opposite of that?

00;41;51;28 - 00;42;06;02
Maj Gen Leonard
And really trying to do that future framing. And so how we're handling that, we're trying to put that into our process and teach that as well. And again, we're not at sort of 100% success, but we are growing in that area.

00;42;06;23 - 00;42;33;13
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Could you do us a favor and talk about being a general officer and I'm going to anchor you a little bit. You don't you don't have all the answers right now. Okay. So many leaders today believe they have the answer and that their teams must just do what and how they tell them to do it. Right. Can you walk us through that type of thinking or the type of thinking that we should have or our organization leaders thinking about as far as having the team?

00;42;34;06 - 00;42;53;25
Maj Gen Leonard
Right. So I think anybody can get trapped in that even general office. Well, probably mostly general officers get trapped or, you know, people that are of higher ranking because, you know, we do you know, we do get the ultimate decision yes or no. And we have seen a lot. And so I think you and I have talked a little bit about The Apprentice leadership model.

00;42;53;25 - 00;43;15;11
Maj Gen Leonard
Right. So you really if you're going to do something, you really want someone that has experience to kind of talk through that. And so that's valuable. But you can't overvalue that experience, particularly in a VUCA world, right? So so that's really the point. It's almost back to your effects based operations point, you know, experience and cause and effect and things that you've seen before.

00;43;15;11 - 00;43;36;09
Maj Gen Leonard
Those are valuable pieces, but those aren't the most valuable pieces. And so really what you need to do is, is utilize the diversity of the team and diversity of thought to be able to do that. And so you have to bring people along and develop them to be able to do that. And then you have to have processes in place because you can have the most diverse, empowered team.

00;43;36;09 - 00;43;55;05
Maj Gen Leonard
And if you come into a meeting and you're sitting at the head of the table and you're in, you're like, I really like option A and then any any questions, any comments you're going to get? Yes, sir. I like option A as well. And, you know, you get one courageous soul to go. So I like option A, but it will offer something that's not really meaningful.

00;43;56;02 - 00;44;25;29
Maj Gen Leonard
So I think it's really important to foster that culture of where you're approaching the problem set together. And as a leader, I think our responsibility, obviously that culture where you're speaking last, I think Simon Sinek talks about that. If I get the author right, you know, don't speak first, try to speak last, ask a lot of questions. I feel like as a leader, I really as a person, if I can ask better and better questions each day, I'm improving as a leader for sure.

00;44;26;15 - 00;44;47;16
Maj Gen Leonard
And then I think as a as a leader, it's also important because everybody's trying to imagine the future. Right. History is actually hard enough to get agreement on the future is even harder. And so how do you take your team through visioning the future? And actually are you teaching people to do that and so on. The apprenticeship sort of.

00;44;48;03 - 00;45;10;03
Maj Gen Leonard
I think the first thing in apprenticeship and I feel like, you know, as a leader I need to be a part of of helping someone through an apprenticeship, which I think for me, first of all, it means I need to model the right behavior. And so I'm thinking through the future. I'm speaking it out loud. Even though I might be wrong, I'm not ashamed to do that.

00;45;10;03 - 00;45;33;17
Maj Gen Leonard
I'm very clear on my assumptions. And then I talk about how I made sort of the decision or why I think this future is going to turn out this way. And so I'm very transparent with my thinking. And then I think the next step in sort of apprentice leadership is, is scaling. And so that means I'm going from what I would call above the waterline events.

00;45;33;17 - 00;45;58;02
Maj Gen Leonard
So hey, the holiday party, you know, I'm thinking about this and why would that be a good venue, you know, so I'm thinking aloud about things that don't matter much, and then I scale it to more complex, more important problem sets. And then the the third part about apprenticeship is I actually fade out, you know, in other words, not the guy maybe at the head of the table or I don't open up the meeting, I don't speak first.

00;45;58;15 - 00;46;10;27
Maj Gen Leonard
I really wait and I really force other people to have ideas and bring their best to the table. And I'm I'm taking myself out of the problem that maybe not showing up at all the planning of that. I'm not having that many iPads.

00;46;11;15 - 00;46;33;20
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So we want to build on this more. I think a moose is grabbing a document. I don't know if he has it yet, but we talked to Chet Richards recently and the individual loop is going to be a little bit different than a team with a loop. And there's an acronym that Boyd use for the team organization and it's right in front of you.

00;46;33;20 - 00;46;37;02
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
And I think Mark or Moose, could you go and read some of those names?

00;46;37;04 - 00;47;38;01
Mark McGrath
So I o, I was inside orientation, harmony, agility and initiative and insight was the ability to peer into the peer into peer into and discern the inner nature, inner workings of things, orientation. Of course, you know, the second part of moving around is the many sided cross-reference or implicit cross-references referencing process that involves mental images and impressions of the phenomena that we're all interacting with and dealing with harmony is a the web of interconnecting feelings, thoughts, values, action among otherwise differently oriented individuals that permit them to operate, cooperate in a focused way, and then agility the ability to shift from one unfolding utterly pattern to another by being able to transition from one orientation to

00;47;38;01 - 00;47;44;28
Mark McGrath
another. And then the last one was initiative, the internal drive to think and take action without being urged.

00;47;46;11 - 00;47;51;29
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Yeah. So this is what you described, I believe, in the last few minutes. Would you agree?

00;47;53;02 - 00;48;07;20
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah, absolutely. Although I think it's more well said. There was a point where I was rambling on, but yeah, that's pretty powerful. I like this is the first time I've ever seen that. So I really appreciate you guys letting me in on this. That's really neat.

00;48;08;21 - 00;48;29;07
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
No one should pointed out recently that, you know, we can't take the genetic heritage approach to a group, we can't apply it across the board. So we need a different type of orientation for a group or a team. Right. And that's what this is. And we're still going to we need to explore this more. But what you were talking about a few moments ago, I just wanted to let Mark bring this up and go ahead.

00;48;29;07 - 00;48;35;01
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
This is what it looks like in a group. You do look from the orientation standpoint.

00;48;35;16 - 00;48;57;25
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah, I love that. It's, you know, interesting to me and I'd love to unpack, you know, like, why did he choose insight over observation? You know, and one of my maybe guesses that that you guys know more than I do about this, but kind of my first thoughts are, you know, observation. That's an individual sort of collecting data.

00;48;57;25 - 00;49;22;20
Maj Gen Leonard
But inside is sort of the collection of all those observations is kind of prior to reorienting, you know, in the In Space Command, we've kind of moved away really in the whole space enterprise from space situational awareness, which is data where a satellites to space domain awareness, which is what is the enemy's intention for those satellites or why are they building out into this orbit?

00;49;23;10 - 00;49;56;24
Maj Gen Leonard
And then the other thing that sort of strikes me is harmony, which I think you want to arrive at. Harmony I love that sort of collective tapestry of, of people and thinking, but I also love disharmony. I tried not to make a decision without having somebody adamantly disagree, because otherwise I think we might be missing something. So I don't know if I would sort of or maybe he includes sort of the harmony disharmony or the process of getting and analyzing disharmony to get the harmony but the right harmony, if you will.

00;49;56;24 - 00;49;58;25
Maj Gen Leonard
So those are kind of my reflections on this.

00;50;00;23 - 00;50;25;27
Mark McGrath
Yeah. I mean. Well, I guess so. Let's let's stick on this harmony for a second. So, you know, as a general officer and you're in command and and you have a lot of people around you that have varying opinions. How do you ensure that, you know, the you know, the respectful learning disharmony that you need to hear? How do you how do you promote a culture that wouldn't prevent somebody from saying, I, I know what the answer is.

00;50;25;27 - 00;50;31;18
Mark McGrath
I don't want to say it. I want to bring this up, but I don't want to say it. How do you create that environment?

00;50;31;18 - 00;51;01;13
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah, I think moves kind of on three different levels at the tactical level as an individual and how you relate to other people. I think it's body language, it's listening more than talking and then not chopping people's legs out from underneath them for whatever the reason is, or no matter how much you have. And so just being someone that they feel safe around and is curious and they understand that you value curiosity and and dissenting opinions and that you value people.

00;51;01;13 - 00;51;27;15
Maj Gen Leonard
So that's at the tactical level. At the operational level, I would say you have to have a process of doing that. In other words, some people create red teams. You know, some people appoint people to talk about the other side's point of view. I like doing a pre mortem. You know, that's something I learned throughout my growing up is is literally not asking, what do you think about this decision?

00;51;27;15 - 00;51;50;26
Maj Gen Leonard
It's how will this decision fail? It's like a positive question, but in the negative. And so, hey, let's talk about how this decision is going to fail. And when you actually make that, the question now, people are like, well, the general wants answers on how this is going to fail, so I'm going to give them an answer. And the I wouldn't say they get tricked, but, you know, you sort of open up the gates to get their dissenting opinion.

00;51;50;26 - 00;52;12;07
Maj Gen Leonard
But it's done under the blanket of, hey, I'd like to hear this from you. And then I think at the strategic level, I think it's really important to understand the history and have examples of, you know, where you just didn't get it quite right. And, you know, people didn't speak up, you know, you know, the tragic accidents with the space shuttle.

00;52;12;07 - 00;52;33;14
Maj Gen Leonard
There's, you know, there's there's there's some really good case studies that really strike your heart because there are humans lives lost. And it was super tragic. But to go through that with your team, I think kind of builds that mindset and it's a strategic level. I think you need to operate with that as a sort of top cover and like I said, bring it all the way back down to how you interact with people.

00;52;33;29 - 00;52;43;26
Maj Gen Leonard
And so that's that's kind of my approach into making sure that people bring the, hey, that's not a good idea or, hey, I just thought of this and that. People feel safe to do that.

00;52;44;02 - 00;52;48;27
Mark McGrath
Yeah, it's important to have those assumptions challenged right? Because yeah, it's.

00;52;49;03 - 00;53;08;24
Maj Gen Leonard
Well, yeah, yeah. And then you can't challenge assumptions unless you get your assumptions out there. And so, you know, kind of a line of questioning that I like to use is, you know, we're discussing something, you know, why do you think that? You know, what are you know, what are the facts and data? You know, that led you to believe that?

00;53;09;06 - 00;53;40;00
Maj Gen Leonard
Why did why do you prefer that option? You know, trying to, you know, not in a condescending way or not in that sort of an attacking way, but really trying to tease out what's behind that person's perspective and position really then leads to, wow, okay, we have different perspectives. So the team recognizing that and then, you know, go back to military planning, turn your assumptions into facts if you can at least get them out the table, though, because otherwise you're not going to make a good decision.

00;53;40;00 - 00;54;20;29
Mark McGrath
I use the quote a lot that they attributed to either Mark Twain or Will Rogers, but it's not what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you're absolutely positive about. Positive is true which which turns out not to be true. Not to be true. And if it's not, it's not challenged. Yeah. If it's if it's sometimes unfortunately you see in the business world where ranking position also means that I'm right every I speak and a lot of leaders don't have the they don't create the environment where challenge is acceptable, where it's psychologically safe to do so, even bringing bringing up even if you know, and then, you know, we come from a

00;54;20;29 - 00;54;42;29
Mark McGrath
culture from, you know, between the Marines and Naval Air and Air Force fighter aviation. You're a brand new lieutenant and you see something wrong. And you didn't tell the the colonel. And he got behind the stick of a plane and died because you didn't say anything. You know, that's on you. You know, that's that's a failure of that.

00;54;43;03 - 00;55;07;03
Mark McGrath
That's a failure of leadership. And taught that from a very early age, that in our in our military careers. And I think that that's a principle that can easily be translated to to a nonmilitary environment, that when people have insights and inputs, they should be able to share them. We should be able to gather as many perspectives as possible with rank and emotion outside of the door in order to learn effectively.

00;55;07;03 - 00;55;15;11
Mark McGrath
And and then what we're talking about earlier, to also to reinforce the culture and the cohesion of our of our of our team, of organization.

00;55;16;20 - 00;55;36;09
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah, I, I was reading Ray Dalio's principles and he talks about his organization in there where they have baseball cards and, you know, if they're talking about a certain type of decision, they get the best people who have made the right decision, you know, in the past. And there's a little bit of sort of maybe looking back, doesn't necessarily predict the future.

00;55;36;22 - 00;56;02;00
Maj Gen Leonard
But I find it very interesting from a merit based system that, you know, they're looking at your track record and in fighter aviation, you know, the guy that was best at BFM, the guy or the guy was best to BFM, everybody would go to that instructor to try to learn how to do BFM. And so expertize and, you know, historical good decisions were sort of the merit based system.

00;56;02;00 - 00;56;20;02
Maj Gen Leonard
And regardless of rank or how old you were or whatever you were looked to contribute and your your your perspective was, was taken, was valued. And so I think that's a powerful piece that definitely can, you know, span across, you know, all situations, business, military, etc..

00;56;21;10 - 00;56;42;26
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So take I want to start to bring this home a little bit and that is one of the questions I have for you, is that as a general officer, are you seeing a lot of effective debriefing happening today? And then the second question would be, why is debriefing so hard to do? Why aren't more leaders doing this outside of the military?

00;56;42;26 - 00;57;02;00
Maj Gen Leonard
Right. Yeah, I think it's a mixed bag. I think humanly debrief is hard because, you know, in the middle of the debrief, they're going to show your tape. And I think you've been there probably and maybe not as much as I. But, you know, you see a total failure. Right. And it's really hard to be exposed like that.

00;57;02;00 - 00;57;21;16
Maj Gen Leonard
I think just humanly that's really tough. And so unless you're raised like we were, you know, as we were once and, you know, and above, you know, that was the culture that was the expectation. So I just I think it's humanly really hard and, you know, no one wants to be seen as a failure. And it really it's also very time consuming.

00;57;21;16 - 00;57;43;14
Maj Gen Leonard
You know, I'm sure you know, I know both in the Air Force, Navy, Marines, etc., you know, the debrief in some cases, you're talking about 2 hours minimum, like for the simplest, you know, of activity. And so, you know, you get into a larger multi ship kind of phase and that debrief could go on forever because there is so much to learn.

00;57;43;14 - 00;58;04;12
Maj Gen Leonard
So I, I think it's time consuming. I think it's humanly hard to be able to do that. And quite frankly, I don't think that we spend, you know, the amount of time also teaching people how to debrief. I mean, I just went through what we have, you know, at the weapons school to has written this book. There's been some other, you know, papers that are done out there.

00;58;05;01 - 00;58;24;20
Maj Gen Leonard
But, you know, I'm not trained to do that other than how I was trained to do that in my you know, my flying career. And so I think that we need to educate folks and we need to do that also in our in our training from the very beginning, you know, it'd be very interesting, I think, if you went to basic training or even my son just graduated from the Air Force Academy.

00;58;25;09 - 00;58;48;27
Maj Gen Leonard
And what a what if you went through training sessions and then, you know, you're the student, right? You might be the new Dula at the Air Force Academy. Do you call sort of time out and then debrief? Right. That event? Like we would do that with our students at the weapons school. And so, you know, why wouldn't you do that with new trainees and teach them not only how to debrief, but then also teach them the value of the debrief.

00;58;48;27 - 00;59;11;04
Maj Gen Leonard
And so, in my opinion, I think we need to begin very early on in the military and inculcate that into our very initial training and session sources. And I think that will help us sort of downrange in the end product. And then you just have to dogmatically spend time to do that. So really what I think ends up happening is we're not trained to do that.

00;59;11;04 - 00;59;25;09
Maj Gen Leonard
It's it's really hard. And then and then spending the time on that is really hard because we're just off to sort of the next thing, if you will. So it's a I think it's a full spectrum change if you want to be able to get to really, really debriefing. Well.

00;59;25;26 - 00;59;28;20
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
All right. Next question, F-16 or F-35?

00;59;28;20 - 00;59;51;18
Maj Gen Leonard
F-35. And I hate to say that because, you know, the AR sixteens, my first love, you know, and I understand every inch of that plane and, you know, I can flip any switch with my eyes closed. But I'll tell you, the F-35. So in the F-16, I used to spend a ton of time trying to put together information and really kind of fuze it into a holistic picture.

00;59;51;18 - 01;00;15;13
Maj Gen Leonard
In the F-35. I spend my time trying to give that to other people, and it's it's a very easy plane to fly. It's a very hard plane to operate as a as a mission system, not just a weapon system, just because it's so capable, but phenomenal aircraft. The other part about it that a lot of people don't know that I got to see what I was the wing commander at Luke was.

01;00;16;09 - 01;00;37;15
Maj Gen Leonard
It is very maintainable. You know, you might have heard stories of, you know, the low observable coating on like the B two or the F 22 requires, you know, specific hangars. I mean, this is the crew chief out there with some low putty. And I'm obviously making it more simple than it is, but it is very easy to maintain it's its own engine test bed.

01;00;37;15 - 01;00;57;27
Maj Gen Leonard
You don't need to have a huge house to run the engine. It does engine diagnostics after you do an engine change. So when you're talking about what we're looking to do with agile combat employment, you can put this thing down, you know, on a runway in the middle of the jungle and maintain it at its fifth gen state very easily.

01;00;57;27 - 01;01;30;10
Maj Gen Leonard
And so I think that's another incredible piece of the airplane. It's not only operationally is it super capable. And then one last F-35 plug is and this is really important. So we, you know, like the F-16 grew into an international fighter. The F-35 started off as the joint Strike Fighter and Coalition Strike Fighter. And so when I was at Luke, we were training Australians, Israelis, South Koreans, Norwegians, you know, just and I forgot a bunch of them.

01;01;30;10 - 01;01;57;19
Maj Gen Leonard
But we were training a whole coalition and oh, by the way, we had a marine guy that we put through that we sent up to the weapons school to sort of start tying together models. And then as the F-35 came on board, we did the same thing with Navy pilots. And so, you know, the Navy's and again, I'm simplifying this just based on classification, but the Navy's, you know, F-35 is going to talk to the Egis cruiser and they're going to figure that piece out.

01;01;57;19 - 01;02;15;12
Maj Gen Leonard
They probably have already. And so by happened by you know, by sort of relation we're going to now because the Air Force flies in F-35 be able to be able to tell you do an Egis cruiser. And again, I'm just offering that as an analogy. But what I'm saying is this thing was born, joint born coalition and training together.

01;02;15;12 - 01;02;36;22
Maj Gen Leonard
I mean, I fly an Australian jet, you know, against a Norwegian in a U.S. jet. You know, we just we maintenance, we shared aircraft. And so you're talking a phenomenal fighting force that the F-35 brings as well. It's just it's sort individual platform capability.

01;02;37;01 - 01;02;51;26
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So you highlighted the importance of information flow between the generation of aircraft. Right. You didn't say much about the performance. You know what the what was it like to fly it? You talked about the information flow and that's surprising. Most people don't talk about that.

01;02;52;04 - 01;03;04;09
Maj Gen Leonard
Well, we used to joke that. We used to say, you know, like F-16 as an example not to get on it, but, you know, you buy an aircraft and you get free software. Now we buy software and we get a free aircraft.

01;03;04;09 - 01;03;06;03
Mark McGrath
It's I was.

01;03;06;03 - 01;03;30;13
Maj Gen Leonard
In there when we transitioned the block, one of the black tapes in the F-35. And it went from, yeah, this is a really awesome airplane to this was an incredible airplane. We just changed the software. We didn't change out any parts, you know, any hardware whatsoever. And we got like four fold capability like in a, in 30 minutes when, you know, it probably was a little bit longer than that to upload the tape.

01;03;30;13 - 01;03;49;04
Maj Gen Leonard
But literally, I mean, just overnight and so the software integration just incredible. And you're right, it's about information flow. It is a pretty sweet dogfight machine, although it doesn't have the sustained rate that the F-16 does. So you can get Landshark if you try to fight an old fight like that.

01;03;50;12 - 01;03;59;12
Mark McGrath
I was going to say, you know, F-35, A, B or C. Yeah, yeah. That's a good Marine question. You know.

01;03;59;12 - 01;04;13;13
Maj Gen Leonard
It seems that the sea's a little bit heavier and not as much gas. The B doesn't have a gun, you know, onboard gun. You can get gun parts. And so obviously I'm biased, but I like the airline.

01;04;15;00 - 01;04;20;05
Mark McGrath
It's all good. Yes, it's all of the same. You know, we're all on the same team, I guess, when it's all.

01;04;20;16 - 01;04;48;12
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah, well, it's the B's pretty cool. I mean, to be able to take off and land, you know, straight up and down. Yeah, we got so you can fly all versions in the simulators that we had. And so, you know, I'd go up there and load up a B model and practice landing on an AB amphibian. You know, I haven't been trained as a Harrier pilot, the stall and all that stuff, but it's so simple and easily matched that, you know, you can put it right down on the middle of an armchair with no training whatsoever.

01;04;48;12 - 01;04;49;03
Maj Gen Leonard
Pretty phenomenal.

01;04;49;03 - 01;05;14;22
Mark McGrath
That's really interesting. As a you know, I was you know, I was an artillery guy. But to see that the VMs, you know, the fixed wing Marine attack squadrons, they're now re designated VMs. So they're back to fighter. So it's effective fixed wing fighter attack. So it's neat to see that capability as part of the MEU, it's really, really something.

01;05;15;00 - 01;05;27;28
Mark McGrath
And they are I mean, it's really cool to watch. You know, I always that Harriers are cool loud and you see a lot of black smoke come out but it a really cool thing.

01;05;28;16 - 01;05;43;13
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
So on the topic of capability, are you concerned at all with automation reduced in human capability with these fifth generation fighters? And let's move that on to space and what we're doing elsewhere with AI and machine learning. Any concerns there?

01;05;44;04 - 01;06;06;22
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah, so that's a good point. And I would say again, it's sort of a mixed bag. It depends on kind of how you're looking at. So as an example, the F-35 has great speed control and angle of attack control to where you can land it, hands off. I mean, you just point the thing where you want to hit and it'll basically land itself, rotate, put out the speed brake, slow down.

01;06;07;16 - 01;06;35;05
Maj Gen Leonard
Awesome. So our young lieutenants, when we first these are oh one or two lieutenants in the Air Force, they would when we did our first class, you know, so these are young guys right out of initial pilot training, and one of them had an autopilot problem coming back and he had a hard time landing it himself. And he was just so used to the automation, so we realized that obviously he got, you know, safely on the deck.

01;06;35;05 - 01;06;56;12
Maj Gen Leonard
That's the rest of the story. But we we basically had to put him through practice, you know, in the simulator. And then also we sort of decided that, hey, until you've soloed, you can't land this thing with the automation. And then later on you have to have you know, you have to do it yourself every so often and so so there is there is some of that, right?

01;06;56;12 - 01;07;16;15
Maj Gen Leonard
When the automation fails you and it's not always perfect, it's a machine. You know, if you don't have the skills to do it. And so you got to be real careful about that. On the flip side, the amount of it's I don't know if I'd call it automation quite yet, but definitely the integration of information and displays and and so forth.

01;07;16;28 - 01;07;34;27
Maj Gen Leonard
But yeah, the automation of the plane practically flying itself at the exact not in altitude and foot and angle of attack that you tell it to fly it while you're working. All your other mission systems is just incredible. And so you know, it's flying you up or it's freeing you up from some of those other flying tasks to be able to do mission tasks.

01;07;35;12 - 01;08;10;00
Maj Gen Leonard
And then it makes the mission tasks just that much easier with how those systems are mapped. And so super impressive from that piece. I would tell you, though, Ponch, to maybe answer a larger question is an automation, whether it's AML or sort of whatever level of sort of human machine teaming that you're at. I just wonder why don't we just use sort of the same process that we use with just humans, which is, hey, we start off taking baby steps, we put it through tests, you know, in the simulator or sort of above the waterline type events.

01;08;10;19 - 01;08;32;00
Maj Gen Leonard
And then we, we train it, we certify it, we inspect it and we monitor it, and then we command and control it. And so, you know, that's the way I look at it is is how do we do that, you know, across the board. And if you have a machine in there, same thing you got to, you know all the machine learning like what is the data set we're using?

01;08;32;00 - 01;09;11;24
Maj Gen Leonard
If it's not a diverse data set, then we could corrupt sort of the decisions in the training that machine learning or computer algorithm has. And so, you know, just like if we only gave, you know, a new lieutenant certain task, they're going to be good at that, but maybe not good at others or not good to Moose's point earlier on, you know, understanding how to work in a team or understanding how to think agile and so I think as long as we sort of take whatever mixture of human and machine and we put it through some really tried and true processes and monitor it and then, you know, and then put the right level of

01;09;11;24 - 01;09;21;28
Maj Gen Leonard
authority and automation, you know, based on are we risk, etc.. I don't think it's as scary as maybe some people make it out to be.

01;09;23;24 - 01;09;45;04
Mark McGrath
I got a question for a tank about, you know, a lot of a lot of people that tune into this in various businesses. They maybe oversee or lead divisions that have different cultures running. They have they make widget A over here. And then in another part of the country or the world, they make widget B or they do something completely different.

01;09;45;04 - 01;10;16;08
Mark McGrath
Or maybe it's a holding company and they have, you know, different companies with different cultures know you're in a leadership role, in a joint command. And for civilians that don't know much about joint commands, I mean, it's a fusion of all of the branches of the military. And now we have, you know, some recent recent additions of Space Force, you know, as an Air Force officer and as a general officer, you know, what have been some of your strategies of leadership when you're you're fuzing and combining people from different cultures and different backgrounds?

01;10;16;08 - 01;10;29;15
Mark McGrath
Because, you know, companies work with partners at different, different firms. You know, where do some of the things that you've learned. Yeah. When you when you had that kind of differentiated cultures and that sort of thing, right.

01;10;30;08 - 01;11;06;29
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah. Most that's a really good point because as the chief of staff, you know, since the beginning of Space Command, that's one of the problems we ran into, you know, and so we were building out the command starting in August of 2019 and throwing people at the fire as fast as we can. And it was interesting as some different services came together with different backgrounds and different terminologies and different expectations, we ran into a lot of issues, just interpersonal issues, and and our teams in some cases weren't as functional as they could be.

01;11;07;22 - 01;11;47;10
Maj Gen Leonard
And we real quickly noticed that. And then what we did very quickly was as we onboarded people, we did certain things very simply. We had an inner service panel, and then we added to that inner service panel, civilians, and then we added our contract responsible officer to talk through the nuances of contract because we had a lot of contractors, because you could pay for that manpower, you know, faster than you could fix a lot of people in and I think, you know, one of the big lessons learned is to start off with a familiarization and understanding of, you know, if you do have different tribes across your business and so in the in the military,

01;11;47;10 - 01;12;10;27
Maj Gen Leonard
we have services in a business, you probably have people that grew up maybe more on the h.r. Side or more on the up side or more on the marketing side or more on the business development side, more on the accounting side. And so and then maybe you have and we do to people from, you know, different eras. You mentioned Gen X and millennials and so forth.

01;12;10;27 - 01;12;35;01
Maj Gen Leonard
And so I think just an understanding. So first of all just real, quite frankly, talking through the characteristics without putting, you know, definitive labels. And so that's one of the things we talk through in our our inter-service culture. I grew up as an Army brat, but I spent 30 years in the in the Air Force, and I've spent a lot of time around guardians now that I've been in Space Command.

01;12;35;01 - 01;12;59;04
Maj Gen Leonard
And so anyways, we all have sort of a mixed bag. And so that's my, my next point is not only educate and bring out examples and open communication, but then also when you when you go through that and you build that sort of common understanding, you know, really the next step is to recognize people, those individuals. And so not just to label them like, oh, you're an Air Force guy.

01;12;59;04 - 01;13;24;09
Maj Gen Leonard
So, you know, you like effects based operations and you love your F-16 and technology. Going back to maybe Karl Car Builder and the Mask of war, you know, like each service has their own characteristics. But really what I like to say is, is they actually get to know the person deeper than their uniform, you know, deeper than sort of the accouterments we wear, whether it's a suit or whether it's camouflage or whatever.

01;13;25;07 - 01;13;44;21
Maj Gen Leonard
So I think that's really important. And then the last thing I'd offer you just there's real little easy things to do. So I was like the chief of staff when I did my staff meetings, I actually created the site template because I had a decision authority to do that. And the very first bullet, as each staff section reported out, was a thank you.

01;13;45;14 - 01;14;06;08
Maj Gen Leonard
And I put it on there, I put thank you's and I expected someone to fill it out and talk about it. And the idea was they were supposed to say thank you, someone not in their division or branch or whatever. And so it just brought this sort of sense of gratitude in recognizing the strengths of each other and that we're a team and we depended on each other.

01;14;06;08 - 01;14;25;12
Maj Gen Leonard
And so, you know, kind of my third point would be there's a lot of just little things that you do every day that can help you build past that. So recognizing it, educate, it makes sure that you get to know people as people and you don't get so trapped in your labels as you're trying to educate people on them.

01;14;25;12 - 01;14;48;20
Maj Gen Leonard
And then there's a lot of just real little things, consistency over time where you can overcome overcome those things. And then you just got to repeat, repeat, repeat, because, you know, at least in the military, you have people coming in and, out, you know, every two years or shorter for the military. And then, you know, sometimes on the civilian side, definitely on the contractor side as well.

01;14;48;22 - 01;14;50;07
Maj Gen Leonard
So that's kind of what I would offer.

01;14;51;00 - 01;15;16;06
Mark McGrath
Do you ever observe any interesting learning? Like, you know, I mean, coming from a very unique culture in the military, Marines, I mean, do you see cross-pollination of ideas and traditions that people become more open to or aware of as they where do you start to see people waking up at zero four with the Marines going out and and doing pull ups or what?

01;15;17;00 - 01;15;18;07
Mark McGrath
Oh, yeah. Well, yeah.

01;15;18;07 - 01;15;40;26
Maj Gen Leonard
And that's that's a great point because, you know, all of that that I just mentioned, if you can get away from work and get away from and you'll get into other environments, you know, physical fitness, playing sports, you know, taking some time on Friday, you know, just, you know, go to the officer's club, enlisted club, you know, and just spend some time with each other.

01;15;41;14 - 01;15;55;20
Maj Gen Leonard
We we took our joint directors. We did an escape room. We hiked to Pikes Peak, you know, just ways that we can, you know, build a familiar entity with each other outside of work. And then if you ever can get everybody to suffer together.

01;15;55;27 - 01;15;59;18
Mark McGrath
It's the best part that. Builds cohesion and culture. We did, Murph.

01;16;00;19 - 01;16;09;11
Maj Gen Leonard
Back in the day, if you're familiar with that CrossFit workout, you know, that's a lot of suffering. So like that, there's a lot of camaraderie and breaks down a lot of very well.

01;16;09;12 - 01;16;17;27
Mark McGrath
I imagine, too, if somebody, a marine or a sailor comes up and ask where the head is, you know how to direct them to the proper place. So. Yeah, exactly.

01;16;18;01 - 01;16;51;18
Maj Gen Leonard
Well, yeah, that's that's another great point. Right. So, you know, this we were on an Air Force base now Space Force Base. We have Department of the Air Force civilians because our combat command servicing agent right now is the Air Force. And so we had a lot of Air Force routes. And I encourage people not to use Air Force jargon to try to use joint jargon or if there isn't sort of a joint term to actually use kind of the full gamut of of service terms, if you will, you know.

01;16;51;18 - 01;17;15;19
Maj Gen Leonard
And so, yeah, they had the deck, you know, third deck, fourth deck, whatever. Okay. We actually we gave out. You guys from the maritime community will love this. We had a plank owner. We took we took it from the Navy. You know, where if you were the first crew on a ship, you know, you would get your a plank holder, I think is what the Navy calls it.

01;17;16;02 - 01;17;40;28
Maj Gen Leonard
And so we actually have four all the original members in space command that have served for the first time in each one of our you know, our manning positions. You get a plank and we talk about Navy culture and why that was so important, because the culture that grew up on that ship is super sticky. And I've talked to a lot of, you know, old retired Navy guys and they're like, yeah, the USS such and such.

01;17;40;28 - 01;18;05;00
Maj Gen Leonard
She was always like that. And and it's true, I think in other organizations, it sounds like it's super true on ships. We can talk about more for that later. But my point is we used terminology, we used traditions. We celebrated each other's birthdays in mass. You know, the Air Force element just didn't go celebrate the Air Force birthday.

01;18;05;00 - 01;18;07;05
Maj Gen Leonard
We all celebrated together, things like that.

01;18;07;25 - 01;18;11;03
Mark McGrath
You know, it November 10th is really the 10th of November. You know what to do, right?

01;18;12;03 - 01;18;20;23
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah. Well, so one of my sons is born on November 10th. There you go. And then I have a daughter born on October one.

01;18;20;23 - 01;18;24;11
Mark McGrath
Oh, so you got the naval service is covered then.

01;18;24;11 - 01;18;35;27
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah. So so what I first do on those days is celebrating my kid's birthday and then call it my favorite, you know, sailor or Marine and congratulate them on their birthdays.

01;18;36;09 - 01;18;49;17
Mark McGrath
Well, that's that. Well, I know now it's interesting. So I don't know the date, but I know it's 1947 and the plane that the the order was signed to share it right. Pat where the Air Force was born. They say it was born inside this airplane.

01;18;51;05 - 01;18;58;11
Maj Gen Leonard
Yes. Yeah, that's where it was signed out. Yeah, that's pretty it's a pretty neat museum within a museum.

01;18;59;02 - 01;19;19;01
Mark McGrath
It's yeah, it's a phenomenal, phenomenal spot. Well no I mean you hear I think you hear people ideas. Thanks you you nailed it there with with a very good and it's it's interesting to see to a new culture emerges when when people get together and they can share and learn from each other and and it at them.

01;19;19;16 - 01;19;44;19
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah. And you know, that's the space command culture. I know the guardians in the Space Force really focus on creating a war fighting culture. And, you know, it's been neat to walk through that path with them, particularly, you know, because they're in our department, you know, the Air Force Department. So as an Air Force and a Space Force team now, it's been neat to of see them grow and walk along that with them.

01;19;44;19 - 01;20;05;24
Maj Gen Leonard
So I'm super excited as they grow their culture as well because space, I mean, it's incredibly ubiquitous. You know, we can't we need the timing signal to use our credit cards at the gas pump. I have what I call my space cheap. In other words, I look at space delivered weather to figure out if I'm going to take the top off or not.

01;20;06;07 - 01;20;28;04
Maj Gen Leonard
I have space delivered music, you know, even when I'm out on those trails, I have space, you know, navigation through the GPS. And so it just it affects, you know, in all seriousness, it affects every walk of our life and it definitely that way in the military. And so it's been neat to see how joint spaces and how we need to be a team.

01;20;28;23 - 01;20;43;16
Maj Gen Leonard
And I would tell you, you know, what's going on in the commercial sector and the civil sector, too, you know, we you know, this is a calling for joint interagency, commercial and civil approach to space. And and here in space command at Echelon, we're trying to build those teams.

01;20;44;10 - 01;20;49;00
Mark McGrath
Well, hopefully with the Marines there, the aggregate scores increased.

01;20;49;00 - 01;20;51;11
Maj Gen Leonard
So they got Marines based on officers.

01;20;51;11 - 01;20;58;23
Mark McGrath
Now, also, you know so well, you have a marine Marine senior enlisted advisor and space command master gun.

01;20;58;23 - 01;21;13;14
Maj Gen Leonard
I'll tell you, a phenomenal individual. And yeah, just a great example of what the Marine Corps produces in terms of leaders and then just a phenomenal part of our joint team. And so that's super exciting.

01;21;13;23 - 01;21;34;00
Mark McGrath
I got to tell you, you know, back to the topic of Gen X, when you were a kid, you thought in 2023, if we had a Space Force and space command, I never thought I'd be wearing camouflage. For those that are that are listening, you got your camouflage utilities? I thought there'd be some kind of helmet and some badges, you know, like Captain Kirk.

01;21;34;00 - 01;21;34;07
Mark McGrath
Yeah.

01;21;34;17 - 01;21;38;03
Maj Gen Leonard
Let's see. I'm still in the Air Force space, but that's true.

01;21;38;04 - 01;21;38;21
Mark McGrath
That's true.

01;21;39;05 - 01;21;59;25
Maj Gen Leonard
Yeah. The Guardians, they grabbed the blue. Although I think if we sort of had to redo it from scratch, we probably give Army Black Air Force would take blue. Well, actually, space Space Force would take Black Correction. I think maybe the army would take space brown and the Air Force would take blue. So we kind of were a little rearranged.

01;21;59;25 - 01;22;01;18
Maj Gen Leonard
But then we're doing all right.

01;22;02;03 - 01;22;28;23
Mark McGrath
There you go. Well, I didn't realize that we had in common, too. I'm the son of a career army officer as well. I'm also the black sheep of my family. So. That's right. That's super exciting. Awesome tank. We really appreciate you coming on on no way out and bringing it home with a perfect a perfect description of culture, of people, ideas and things in that order.

01;22;28;23 - 01;22;48;18
Maj Gen Leonard
Well, thanks. I really appreciate that. Both Moose and Bunch, it's been an honor to be on here. And thank you guys for what you're doing about you know, bringing a great airman's philosophy to an incredibly large audience. I'll tell you, just in the last, I think you've done four. And I always listening to your last one on mission command.

01;22;49;05 - 01;22;53;07
Maj Gen Leonard
I learned a ton about Boyd. I just learned a ton about everything. So thanks for what you're doing.

01;22;53;24 - 01;22;58;28
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
And thank you for your service. Really appreciate everything you done for our country. So thank you.

01;22;59;15 - 01;23;04;07
Maj Gen Leonard
All right. Awesome. You guys keep going strong. And and again, thanks for the opportunity.

01;23;04;07 - 01;23;05;06
Mark McGrath
Thanks again. Thank.