Podcast Interview: General Gary Brito

Episode Summary

General Brito never planned to join the Army, let alone spend 38 years in it. Growing up in a blue-collar family in Hyannis, Massachusetts, with almost no military background beyond a few relatives who had been drafted, he only encountered Army ROTC by accident, when a captain handed him a brochure at an information booth on Penn State’s Altoona campus during his freshman year. He joined mainly because the outdoor activities sounded like a fun extracurricular. His enlistment plan was four years. He committed to twenty around the ten-year mark, made lieutenant colonel and battalion commander around year seventeen, and never once set out to become a general. The guidepost he carried the whole way came from a master sergeant who told him, when he was a brand-new second lieutenant, to focus on the soldier in front of him rather than his own evaluation reports.

That same instinct shaped how General Brito led the Army’s last major organizational restructure, the command he ultimately inactivated. He opened with a town hall laying out plainly what he knew, what he did not know, and where the organization was headed, rather than projecting false certainty. Before building a plan, he did his own gut check on whether he personally believed in the mission, arguing that people can tell within seconds if a leader does not. He then pulled together a small group of four to six trusted colleagues, which he called a red team, specifically to surface blind spots he might have missed, and sorted every decision into three categories: what the organization absolutely had to do, what would be nice to have, and what could be cut outright.

When building a team, General Brito looked past rank for honesty, a refusal to tolerate corrosive behavior toward others, and a willingness to give credit publicly and specifically, naming the sergeant who actually solved a problem rather than absorbing the praise himself. He is candid that arrogance was disqualifying regardless of someone’s position, arguing that a single dishonest or corrosive person can fracture an entire unit’s trust.

Recruiting is where General Brito points to the clearest turnaround. When the Army faced a serious shortfall a few years ago, the fix came from leadership investment at every level, from battalion commanders to the Army’s most senior staff, combined with a new Future Soldier Prep Course that let recruits who fell short academically or physically train up before basic training rather than get turned away. The Army met that year’s recruiting goal four months early, a result General Brito credits to leadership more than any single policy change.

What You’ll Learn

Why General Brito credits a Harvard Business Review article he happened to read at an airport with sharpening his thinking on what makes leadership authentic rather than performed.

What an old staff sergeant once told General Brito about turning around during a hard decision, and why he still applies it to how he leads today.

Why General Brito insists there is no substitute for hard, standards-based training when it comes to actually motivating people, in combat or otherwise.

Why General Brito warns leaders to think twice before hitting send on a difficult email, since the same words can read as team-building to one person and offensive to another.

Why General Brito believes toxic leadership is easy to create and hard to reverse, and which specific behaviors he says leaders need to root out first.

Why General Brito closes with a single piece of advice, know your why, as the thing that keeps a leader motivated through the hardest stretches.

About General Gary Brito

General Gary Brito is a retired four-star general who served 38 years in the United States Army, most recently as commanding general of Army Training and Doctrine Command and, before that, as the Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff G-1, overseeing personnel policy for the entire force. He grew up in Hyannis, Massachusetts, and joined Army ROTC almost by accident as a freshman at Penn State’s Altoona campus, with no prior plans for a military career. Over nearly four decades, General Brito served in postings ranging from combat command to leading the Army’s recruiting and retention efforts. He retired roughly seven months before this interview and continues to mentor rising military leaders.

Related Episodes

Episode 347: Newell Brands CEO Chris Peterson
Chris sorts decisions using a similar rule of acting on seventy to eighty percent of the information available, a close parallel to General Brito’s three-bin system for prioritizing what an organization must do during major change.

Episode 342: The Knot Worldwide CEO Raina Moskowitz
Raina builds trust through transparent, structured communication across a distributed team, the same instinct behind General Brito’s town hall approach to leading the Army’s own organizational restructuring.

Episode 344: Former E*TRADE CEO Mitch Caplan
Mitch describes leading a company through the 2008 financial crisis with incomplete information, similar territory to General Brito’s account of steering a major reorganization under real uncertainty.

Episode 346: Techstars Co-Founder and CEO David Cohen
David hires first for character and motivation over credentials, the same standard General Brito applies looking past rank for honesty and a refusal to tolerate corrosive behavior.

Episode 334: WWT Co-Founder and CEO Jim Kavanaugh
Jim discusses accountability and team building at a company scaled past ten thousand employees, similar territory to General Brito’s account of leading an organization of forty thousand people.