I recently interviewed Lieutenant General Karen Gibson on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:
Adam: Our guest today is one of the highest-ranking women in the history of the United States Army, and was the Sergeant at Arms at the United States Senate. Lieutenant General Karen Gibson served as the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for National Security Partnerships, Director of Intelligence for the United States Central Command, Deputy Commanding General for the United States Army Cyber Command, and Director of Intelligence for the Combined Joint Task Force. General Gibson, thank you for joining us.
Lieutenant General Gibson: Thank you, Adam. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Adam: The pleasure is mine. You grew up in Bozeman, Montana, and as a kid, the last thing on your mind was becoming a general or even serving in the Army. You went to college at Purdue, and to pay for college, you joined the ROTC, and the rest is history. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?
Lieutenant General Gibson: So I think I would certainly start with, of course, my parents and the values that they instilled in me and my sister, particularly regarding hard work. We always had a lot of chores to do. Many people that I’ve encountered later in life who have done well professionally also woke in the morning to find long lists of chores from their parents, or spent a lot of time working wherever they were. And I think a sense of discipline, but also a sense of service. My mother was a homemaker. She did not work outside the home, but she was always engaged in the schools, in the community. In her church, she was one of the women who volunteered to provide custodial services in her church and did things for the battered women’s shelter in my town. And so I think both my parents, my mother and father, instilled in us very much a sense of how fortunate we are to be born in this country, the blessings that come to us, and that we owe a debt to society, and that it’s incumbent on us to give back in some way to our communities or to the nation. And so while I did not think about joining the military growing up, it really wasn’t something little girls dreamed about, I think, in the 70s, once I was in the military and found it to be a deeply rewarding and fulfilling career, it just seemed very natural to continue in a career that was largely defined by service. I think there’s one other thing I would highlight that was really largely my parents, but also that atmosphere of Montana in the time that I grew up. We had a lot of dirt roads. We didn’t have a McDonald’s. It’s a very, very different town today, if you’ve ever been there, but there was an atmosphere of very rugged individualism, and frankly, people that I would characterize as having a lot of grit. I think that extended to men, women, children. Growing up, we had snow at some point every month, September through June, and never a snow day. The only time they ever canceled school was when Mount St. Helens covered the whole state with volcanic ash. In 1980, you were still expected to make it to school. I had friends who would ski to school. I had friends who would refuse to live indoors during the summer. They said, I’m going to sleep outside every night. It was just a lot of grit and tenacity under challenging physical circumstances. And the last aspect I’d say about that was that whatever we had planned to do on a weekend, maybe we’re going hunting or fishing or camping, or we go pick huckleberries up in the mountains, whatever the weather was, it did not deter us. We would go anyway. My dad would tell me to stop feeling sorry for myself and just kind of get it done. So my first duty station, once I did join the Army, was in Alaska with the Sixth Infantry Division, largely at Fort Richardson, Alaska, but a lot of time in the middle of the state at Fort Greely or Fort Wainwright. And it was also a very harsh physical environment. One exercise in particular, BRIM FROST 89, we set temperature records and high-pressure records for the state of Alaska. It was 50 below without a wind chill. And we were out there sleeping on the ground in a tent, where you turn the stove off at night, and you wake up in the morning and crawl from the bottom two feet of your sleeping bag, where you’ve kind of huddled in a fetal position, to find the ice at the head of your sleeping bag, and you just kind of had to get it done. And it was very interesting to see people that I might have otherwise thought of as a strong leader who just could not cope and really imploded in those conditions, and others that rose to the occasion. And I often thought of that experience, as well as my experiences growing up in the state of Montana, where the tennis team is shoveling the courts until April, and they only get to start practicing when spring comes, that many times we don’t get to pick the conditions of our operating environment. You are given a task, and you have to get it done anyway. And so you assess the environment that you’re operating in, and you develop a plan that will enable you to get it done even under those conditions. You don’t get to say, this is too hard, I’m going to quit, but just really adapting and finding a way to get things done when the conditions around you are less than ideal.
Adam: Wow. You shared so much there that I would love to dive into. What a different upbringing than someone like me growing up in Los Angeles. When it rains, that means that it’s time to stay inside. When it gets below 73 degrees, that means that it’s time to stay inside. Snow, not really sure what that is. But at some point in all of our journeys, we have to develop grit and tenacity to be successful. And in your case, you were able to develop it early on that allowed you to seamlessly transition into the Army. But no matter where you’re from, no matter where you are in your career, being dedicated to getting things done regardless of the condition that you’re in, to your point, we oftentimes have very little control over the conditions that we’re in. But what can we control? What can’t we control? And ultimately, bringing what you can control in a way that you’re performing at your best, that’s what it’s all about.
Lieutenant General Gibson: Yes, you might have to modify your plan. I thought about this a lot during the pandemic, frankly, that sometimes when we think about the future, there are things that we believe will continue and the world changes. There are things that we kind of thought of as facts, and it turns out they’re assumptions. And when the future takes you in a very different direction than you expected, that’s also something that some people deal with better than others. And it’s okay to mourn the future that you thought you were going to have during the pandemic. My heart just broke for high school seniors who were looking forward to being the captain of the basketball team, say, or someone who just opened a coffee shop or got their big break on Broadway, and clearly that’s not going to happen. And it’s okay to mourn that. But people who can’t let go of the fact that the future is not going the way they thought it would, who get stuck, may have a very difficult time. But those who are able to look around and see how the world is changing and identify opportunities, because there will be opportunities, and then retool, refit, readjust, retrain, and go in the direction of those new opportunities, may do very well, as opposed to the folks who just really have a difficult time accepting that the conditions around them have changed, and either what they wanted to do or the way that they wanted to do it is not going to work anymore.
Adam: I love that. And a quote that I love and often think about is a quote from the great Satchel Paige, who was one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball. And he didn’t make his Major League debut until an age in which most Major League Baseball players are home on their couch, completely retired from the sport, and the reason why was because of his skin color. He played in an era when if you had dark skin, you couldn’t play Major League Baseball, and his famous quote, don’t look back, something might be gaining on you. And circumstances might not be to your liking, circumstances might not be fair, but we can’t control so many of the circumstances around us. What we can control is our mindset. And if your mindset is a mindset of adaptability, flexibility, agility, recognizing that change is inevitable, and if you’re stuck in the past, if you’re stuck in what could have been, what should have been, you’re not going to be focused on doing what you need to do to excel in the future.
Lieutenant General Gibson: Absolutely, that’s very well said. I appreciate it.
Adam: How, as a leader, can you create a culture of agility, of flexibility, of adaptability?
Lieutenant General Gibson: Well, I think it’s important to keep in mind what it is we’re trying to accomplish. In the military, we’d say the desired end state, the goal and objective. Sometimes people get very hung up and focused on the process, and it can be upsetting when we’re not able to follow the process. But I think it’s Simon Sinek’s book, Start With Why. He gets a lot of credit for that, thinking about why are we doing this and what do we want to accomplish. I think the military had a lock on that long before his book. The most important part of an order is the commander’s intent. Not what are we going to do specifically, but what is it that we hope to accomplish? And that’s really important in distributed military operations. Say you’re operating with a small team, alone and unafraid somewhere on the battlefield, understanding what the team is trying to accomplish and why, so that as the circumstances around you change, instead of fixating on the specific orders you were given, still working and changing to achieve that intent. And I was fortunate to grow up in the military with leaders who really promoted that concept of mission-based orders, not just here’s what I want you to do, but why, so that when things change, you have the ability to adjust your plan. I would say there are a couple other aspects to that too. It’s important that a leader ensure the people under him or her know what you expect them to do, and that they have the ability to change how they’re going to accomplish that. Micromanagers are really not very good at that. They want you to do it exactly as they would have done, and a micromanager will, over time, stifle all initiative. And I have worked in a few organizations where the standards for execution were so high, and there were leaders within that team that wanted things done exactly as they would do them, the penalties for doing it wrong were so much higher than any incentive for getting it done on your own initiative, that people just stopped making decisions and waited to be told exactly what to do. That’s a very pernicious environment. I’m fortunate I only encountered that a few times. To your original question, Adam, about how do you foster this ability to be agile and flexible, if you crush people every time they do something a little differently than you would have done it, you’re not going to create an agile or flexible team. You’re going to create, over time, a team of people who are afraid to act and will just wait to be told exactly what to do. So you’ve got to be forgiving. When I speak to young officers, I’ve done several commissioning ceremonies or spoken at their commissionings, and I tell them, I don’t know what you’re going to do, if you’re going to be active, Guard, Reserve, deploy, stay in garrison, but there are a couple of things I can guarantee. One, you’re going to make a difference in other people’s lives. And two, you’re going to make mistakes, and so will people under you. And you have to be forgiving, assess those mistakes, see what we might have done differently, an AAR, an after-action report. And sometimes it’s really hard to forgive ourselves when things don’t go right, but you need to do that. As long as the people under you aren’t doing something immoral, illegal, unethical, or just really grossly unsafe, give them some grace and talk through how you might have done that differently, and then put in some measures that will allow you to do that in the future. But if I tell someone under me, I expect you to make these decisions, and they don’t do it exactly the way I would have, I need to let that go. Otherwise, I say, I’m going to make these decisions, and you will find, over time, that you are making all the decisions in the organization, because people will be afraid to act on their own.
Adam: That’s such great advice, and it really centers around, as a leader, not only being focused on what you need to do, but being equally focused on what you need to make sure you’re not doing. Yes, it’s important to create an incentive structure for the people within your organization to take chances, take risks, do things that will lead to innovation. It’s equally important to ensure that you’re not penalizing people for taking chances. You’re not penalizing people for making a mistake here or there. You’re not penalizing people for doing what they need to do to ultimately get your organization to be flexible, to be adaptive, to be innovative.
Lieutenant General Gibson: That’s exactly right. I’m not being specific, and I have stories, because I just don’t want to call out publicly in a podcast some of the individuals or organizations that I’m speaking about, but I have seen it firsthand, and it’s pernicious.
Adam: What do you believe are the key characteristics of the very best leaders, and what can anyone do to become a better leader?
Lieutenant General Gibson: I think someone who provides clarity and vision, someone who is calm in a crisis, someone who is consistent and a good communicator, someone who is values-based. There’s so many, so many things. We could go on for quite a while about the characteristics that make a really strong leader, and certainly I’ve had a couple that I would follow anywhere and do whatever they asked of me. But in terms of what people can do to be a more successful leader, I kind of think that falls in probably four buckets. One that people often talk about is reading, reading about leadership. We can learn from people in history. My favorite is probably Ernest Shackleton, who did not accomplish his mission of reaching Antarctica and the South Pole, but he, under exceptionally trying circumstances, preserved the lives of his entire team and kept their morale up until they were rescued. I forget, was it like six months, eight months, nine months, just really an incredible ordeal. So reading, reading about leaders. Another would be mentors, seeking out mentors, and I think most of us benefit from having more than one mentor who can advise us on various aspects of our professional or personal lives and careers. Another is to be reflective about your own activities and your own leadership style, and always kind of thinking about how you can improve. I think we should be lifelong students of leadership. It’s kind of like a tennis swing or learning a foreign language or a musical instrument. We can always be working on it and getting better for the duration of our lives. But really, for me, a key, this fourth bucket that I would mention, is observing the leaders around you. And I spent a lot of time as a young officer, and even as a general officer, looking at the officers in the positions I aspired to fill someday, looking at company commanders when I was a lieutenant, looking at battalion commanders when I was a major, and thinking about what they were doing that I really admired, some of their practices that I wanted to embody myself, and also looking at things that I said, I’m never going to do that, or that doesn’t work. It’s actually, I think, often easier to learn from a very negative example than a positive one.
Adam: That’s such great advice. It’s critical to commit yourself to this journey. You mentioned that the journey is a lifelong journey. It’s never too early or too late to get started. You could be just out of college, you could be a retired general. No matter where you are, we are always learning. If we are committed to learning, we will always get better if we’re committed to getting better. And you shared some great ways, reading, reflecting, having mentors. Not a big surprise that I’m a big believer in the power of mentorship. But on that last piece of advice that you shared, observing the leaders around you, what do you like about what they’re doing? What do you not like about what they’re doing? And a key is not trying to copy the leaders around you, not trying to emulate the leaders around you, in the sense that you see a leader and you say, I’m going to be that person, but to really study those leaders and understand what they’re doing and then do it in your way, because you’re never going to be the best version of yourself if you’re focused on being the second best version of someone else, but you’re also never going to be the best version of yourself without learning from as many people as possible, without studying the greats, and it’s really finding that balance between studying, learning, and then knowing who you are and being as authentic a leader as possible.
Lieutenant General Gibson: You’re exactly right. Adam, I love that advice. I’ve said something similar to others. I say, my husband’s quite a good cook now, and he can take a recipe, and he’ll look at it, and he’ll tweak it a little bit. He’ll make it his own. He’ll add some different seasonings. He’s got his own way, the best way of doing brisket, and he makes it his own. He’s starting with basics that someone else has provided, but he tweaks it and changes it and really turns it into something delicious. The best leaders are very authentic, if I may. I’d like to share a story, an early leadership lesson from my own career. So when I started in Alaska, not only was it a very harsh physical environment, but it was a very demanding, unforgiving leadership environment. And I’m brand new. I don’t know any better. I just figured this is how people lead. There was a lot of yelling, a lot of screaming. People would throw things to show that they were serious. My battalion commander would turn purple, cuss you up one side and down the other. He actually put a hole in the wall during a training meeting. And I had friends down the street in the infantry battalion; they were experiencing the same thing. There was one man who was known for standing on the conference room table to scream at his staff. And all I know about military leadership is what I’ve seen in Hollywood, whether it’s Gomer Pyle or McHale’s Navy or some World War II movie, there was always a lot of yelling. So I didn’t know it was wrong. I just kind of thought, this is what we do. And I have to say that when my battalion commander would yell at us, because everybody took their share, you just kind of think, screw you, buddy, I’m going to go out and do this, just to show you, but it did not inspire loyalty, devotion, any positive feelings towards this man. He was just incredibly hostile, and he fired a lot of people and ended a lot of careers. Well, one day, I failed the arms room inspection. I was young, second lieutenant, battalion S2, the person responsible for, among other things, physical security in the arms room. And I just thought the world was going to end. I walked down to the battalion headquarters. I had to see the XO. He’s the number two guy in charge, and I went to see him. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t curse or use any profanities. He didn’t demean or belittle me. He just told me how professionally embarrassing it was, and then laid out all the things I was going to do to fix it. And I walked out of his office feeling two inches tall. His name was Major Ron Burgess. He went on to be a three-star general and the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. I didn’t know he was going to be so great, but it was a very powerful moment for me, and a revelation to see what a difference it made to work for someone you respect and admire and you want to do a good job because you don’t want to let them down, as opposed to the man at the top, who you just went out and did it because you wanted him off your back. And I saw how powerful it is to be a leader who inspires through their own competence and mutual respect, as opposed to one who tries to lead through fear and belittling and demeaning others. Back to the point of emulating people around you, I said, I’m going to try to be like Major Burgess. I want to be that kind of leader. And then later in my career, when I had a job like his, I was a battalion XO, I would also often think, hmm, what would Major Burgess do? But it can be very powerful to observe the people around you and see what works, what doesn’t, what you want to emulate or adopt in your own authentic way, and what you say, I’m never going to do that.
Adam: That story right there, that’s leadership. That is the essence of what leadership is all about. Leadership isn’t about being the loudest person in the room. Leadership isn’t about yelling and screaming. Leadership isn’t about trying to drive results through fear and intimidation. Leadership is about inspiration, motivating people by getting to the essence, getting to the core, getting to the why, getting people to a place where they want to be their very best for you and where they want to achieve the mission that everyone is focused on achieving out of their desire to achieve it, not because they’re afraid of the consequences.
Lieutenant General Gibson: That’s right. Absolutely, in the military, we say that leadership is really about providing inspiration. Here’s why we need to do this. This is why it’s important, and it’s not about me, it’s about us, it’s about the team, and it’s about our collective effort to accomplish this worthy goal.
Adam: Do you have any other advice around how anyone can be an inspirational leader, how anyone can effectively motivate the people around them?
Lieutenant General Gibson: So I think it’s important to be your authentic self. No hidden agendas. And I will say, the people that work for you, I think, can tell when you want to do a good job because you’re committed to the team and the mission, and when you’re trying to get everyone to do a good job because you’re trying to get promoted. Does that make sense? The people above you may not see it, but the people who work for you do, and it can be very subtle, but being authentic and genuinely committed to the members of your team is just really inspiring.
Adam: Something unique about your career as a leader, you spent so much time leading in crisis, leading in the highest stakes situations possible. What advice do you have for anyone on how to most successfully lead in crisis? How to most successfully lead when the stakes are at the very highest?
Lieutenant General Gibson: That’s a great question. Adam, I actually have a whole keynote speech that I give on that with 10 imperatives, and we don’t have time to go through all of those, so I’ll probably highlight two. Part of what I talk about has to do with decision making and communication, and delegation, and you could talk for an hour on each of those. But of the 10 imperatives that I go over, there’s two that folks often don’t think about. And the first one is the need to take care of people physically. Make sure that everyone’s getting enough sleep. They have time to grab some food, hopefully healthy food, and everybody has a little time to take a break, walk around the building, meditate, go for a jog, something. And so many times in a crisis, those things go out the window. People either underestimate how long it’s going to take to deal with this, and they overestimate their own stamina. I don’t do well without sleep, and in a matter of days, you’re no longer making good decisions. And a crisis can last a lot longer than that. If you doubt me, just think about the last time you ever took a red eye, and maybe you get off the flight on the other end, and you’re expected to go to a meeting, and you’re just not very articulate, and your head is very fuzzy. You feel like you’ve got a skull full of cotton. None of us are at our best if we’re not getting a good night’s sleep, and so that’s especially critical in a crisis. So again, sometimes people underestimate how long it’s going to last, and they overestimate their own stamina. Another fallacy I often see is people who recognize the severity of the crisis, and they think it’s so important they need to be involved in every aspect of it, and so they also will just stay up and never get any sleep. And that’s just really key. You don’t hear about it a lot when people talk about decision-making in a crisis environment, but taking care of yourself and the people under you, making sure that everybody’s getting enough sleep, a chance to eat, and some form of mental break. The other one I think people don’t think about a lot, and I didn’t really until the last few years when I was working in the US Senate, is when the crisis passes, to be prepared for an emotional aftermath of some kind, aftershocks. We don’t often recognize it in ourselves or others, because we’re so focused on the problem at hand. The first time it kind of came to mind for me, I was at US Central Command Headquarters, a busy 24/7 operational wartime headquarters managing combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and some other places too. And when we evacuated for the hurricane, which was very complex, we couldn’t just hang a sign on the door and say we were gone. We sort of had to leapfrog and establish alternate locations at other places, and kind of say goodbye to all your stuff in the house and think, I don’t know what’s going to happen in Tampa, but when I get back, when this is over, it could all be gone. I was very focused on the mission, and when the hurricane did hit Tampa, but my house was still standing, I felt this euphoria. I didn’t even realize I was stressed, but just this stress that lingers in the back of our minds. That’s a simple example. I’ll use one other. I went to the US Senate, and I was the Senate Sergeant at Arms. I replaced the guy that was fired on January 7 after the attack on the Capitol, and I took charge of a team that was demoralized, defeated, downtrodden. Everyone’s talking about failures of security and what went wrong, and there was a lot that went wrong and a lot of things that didn’t go right. But it was remarkable to me to see how pervasive this defeated attitude was across the entirety of the staff, people who had peripheral roles, maybe a parking lot attendant, or someone who worked in the print plant or the post office, but somehow felt that they should have done something differently. And so at my second town hall, I said, I am banning the F word. I do not want to hear about failure again, because it was just this very heavy weight. And when I speak with colleagues who’ve perhaps worked at one of the banks that failed in California a couple of years ago, or experienced a major cybersecurity breach, or other kinds of negative things that can happen in the corporate world as well, we don’t think a lot about the emotional impact that this is going to have on our team. We’re very focused on solving the problem, as we should be, delegating, communicating, decision making, but when it’s over, don’t be surprised if there’s this lingering, sometimes unanticipated emotional aftermath on the part of the team. And I’m not a mental health professional, so what I advise folks to do is just make sure that resources are available to people and to never denigrate mental health concerns. But there does come a time when we have to get back to work and step up to the plate. So I think in that kind of post-crisis environment, particularly if it didn’t go well, celebrating even the simplest wins, getting the team back on track, not false cheerleading, but identifying things that are going well and bolstering the team, that’s really part of that inspiration and motivation. And so thank you for the question about leading in a crisis or high-pressure environment. There’s so many things we could talk about there, but those are two that I really don’t hear a lot about, and those are related to the human side.
Adam: You mentioned your time in the United States Senate, a very different experience in many ways than your 33 years in the Army. What are the similarities between leading in an environment like the military relative to an environment like the US Senate? What are the differences, and what did you take away that leaders can apply to effectively lead regardless of the environment that they’re leading in?
Lieutenant General Gibson: Those are great questions, Adam. So I wasn’t looking for a job when I was asked to come to the Senate. I had retired from the military, wanted to take time off, spend it with my family, and I was very specific. I said, I’m not looking for a full time job. But regardless of how you feel about the election that preceded it, it was really quite shocking to see the violent entry into the building. It’s what I see in countries I deploy to, not the United States of America. And I had just said, if I could do anything to ensure this never happened again, I would want to know that I had done that. And then I’m offered this opportunity to make some permanent fixes and restore confidence in the security institutions of the legislative branch. Of course, I said yes. People told me it’s going to be hard. It was hard, but it wasn’t CENTCOM hard. People told me it’s going to be busy. It was busy, but it wasn’t CENTCOM busy. Nobody told me it was going to be fun, and I really enjoyed it. It was one of my top three jobs ever. I just loved going to work there. I had probably 28 good days a month. That’s an incredible ratio, and I don’t think I ever had a really good day at the Pentagon. So it was just so pleasant. And people would say to me, what do you miss most about the Army? And I’d say, not a lot. I mean, there were some things I missed being an intelligence analyst and intelligence professional, but I got to come to work every day with men and women who were working together as a team to accomplish things together for the good of the nation, really concrete, specific things that we could see every day. It was very inspiring and motivating and deeply rewarding. And I found that the things I missed most, most of the things I missed most about the Army, like leading teams, I got to practice there. And so really it was, in that regard, a very similar leadership environment, but the environment was very different. It is not a hierarchical place. I used to say I worked for 135 small businesses. That’s 100 senators and their staffs and 35 committees, and nobody’s in charge of any of the rest, and they pick and choose and decide what they want to do. And it’s a little different in the Senate than the House. Anything that I was going to do, I really needed to run it by both the majority and the minority leaders and their staffs. So in my case, it was the McConnell and Schumer teams. Fortunately, although they have very differing legislative agendas, they asked the same thing of me regarding how I would take care of the institution of the Senate, and that made my life a whole lot easier. It was not very politicized, but I still needed to seek approval from them for even very simple things, and if one side says no in the Senate, you don’t do it. So I’d say to people, if you get a yes and a no, that means not yet. You really had to have a consensus from the entirety of the Senate before you could move forward. Well, I would see other military leaders who would come to work there full-time, and the staff at the legislative branch, and they’d be very frustrated by this, because it is quite different in that regard than what you see in the military. And in particular, if they came from the Army, this is how I would talk to them. I’d say, look, because again, I started in the Light Infantry Division in Alaska, I’d say, these are the conditions of our operating environment. You’re given a mission, and before you start, you analyze the environment. There’s a cliff over here, there’s a river over here, it’s going to be below freezing tonight, here’s the phase of the moon. You can’t change that, yet you still have a mission to take the bridge or keep the hill, and you have to develop a plan that allows you to accomplish that mission in that environment, in the conditions you can’t change. Now, these are the conditions of the Senate. It’s going to drive you nuts, but you can’t change them, so you have to understand that this is how decisions are made. Find a plan and a way to get it done within that environment, instead of fretting and griping and complaining about these cultural elements that have been around for hundreds of years and are bigger than you.
Adam: As you’re talking about the elements that you had to deal with that were completely outside of your control, in the Senate, in the Army, a big element outside of your control as you joined the Army was the male-to-female ratio in the Army.
Lieutenant General Gibson: Yeah, that’s for sure.
Adam: And in your 33 years in the Army, the Army became more diverse as your career progressed, but nonetheless, still such a heavily male-dominated organization. What advice do you have for women on how to excel in male-dominated environments? What advice do you have for men on how to be great allies to women in male-dominated environments?
Lieutenant General Gibson: So you’re right, Adam, it was a heavily male-dominated environment. It’s what I expected. All the female officers at Fort Richardson, Alaska could get together for lunch, and we’d sit at one round table, and people would kind of look at us askance, as though we were plotting something. In my company, which is probably about 120 people, there were two other women. And I’m a brand new platoon leader. I’m 23 years old. I’m in charge of 30 soldiers. All but one of them are men, and all but one of them are older than me. And even the 19-year-old has more time in the Army than I do, and yet, I’m in charge. It was very awkward. The first time I had to counsel a Sergeant First Class about something he was doing wrong, I felt like I was chastising my grandfather. I mean, he was probably only 35, but to me, he just seemed ancient, right? And it was very awkward. And what I tell folks is actually young male lieutenants go through the same thing. They’re younger and in charge, and those uncomfortable conversations can be really uncomfortable, but the more we have them and have them with integrity and have them as soon as possible, the easier they get. So kind of back to that leadership is a lifelong journey and something we’re always working on. I found that the more often I did the right thing right away and with integrity, the easier it got to do hard things, and I think that’s true for men and women. It’s really not a gendered comment, but sometimes when you are in the minority in some way, it can feel like you also have that against you, not just your inexperience. But to your broader question, I say I exceeded expectations from the moment I joined the Army, because nobody expected anything from me. I mean, I really felt like I was just written off right away. So I’m in Alaska, been there a couple of months. I arrived Labor Day, right after Christmas they sent me to Fort Greely, which is in the middle of the state, for a two week winter warfare course where you’re skiing, snowshoeing, building snow caves, and sleeping in them. It’s just a lot about Arctic warfare. Not only was I the only woman in the course of about 40, I was also the only second lieutenant, and there was only one other first lieutenant. So I’m way younger than everyone, and I’m the only girl. What I didn’t tell people was that growing up in Montana, Nordic skiing was my winter sport. I ran track and cross country in the spring and in the fall, and in the winter it was Nordic skiing, and our culminating exercise for this two week event was a combat biathlon, just 10 kilometers on military skis, not the little lightweight fiberglass racing kind, with a 25 pound rucksack, Kevlar on your head, an M16, one rifle stuck in the back of your ruck, and you had to go do 10 kilometers through the frozen woods of central Alaska and drop a couple of times and engage a target. But again, I didn’t tell anybody that was my winter sport in high school. There are no expectations that this girl is going to do anything in this very rugged physical competition, but when it was over, there were only two people that beat me, and one of the infantry company commanders took off his crossed rifles, that signify infantry, off the collar of his shirt and gave them to me because I had beat him, and I still have those in a jewelry box. Life got a lot easier for me after that, because what I found is, once I demonstrate competence, people stopped worrying about which bathroom I was going to use, and if I demonstrated excellence, they were going to fight to have me on their team. So what I tell folks is, if you’re working in an environment or for a boss who is more concerned about your gender or your skin color or your religion or who your partner is, if that means more to them than what you bring to the table, then maybe you should look for another place to work, because there are good leaders out there who really are looking for the best, regardless of those other kind of qualities. And today, most of us have a lot of other options, that we don’t have to put up with that. And then, in terms of men being allies, I was very fortunate to work for some amazing men in my career who did exactly that, who wanted the best. You establish a reputation, and people start asking for you. And I was fortunate to work for men, and I found, interestingly, the more serious, the higher the stakes, the more important that was. So on my deployments in particular, people only wanted the best. They didn’t care if you were a man or a woman, and once you established a reputation for excellence, good leaders, men or women, will fight to have you on their team.
Adam: So much great advice. Don’t let other people define you. Don’t let other people set expectations for you. Let your output define you. Perform at a level of excellence that will force everyone around you to understand you for what you can bring to the table, not for whatever biases they may have.
Lieutenant General Gibson: You’re exactly right, Adam. There are bad leaders all over. It’s important, I think, to look for good ones and try to work for those. And the opportunities that we have today and the expectations and cultural environment is very different from when I was young, and I think, in general, we don’t have to put up with toxic leadership in the way that it was tolerated when I was young and just kind of seen as normal.
Adam: Amen. No one should have to put up with toxic leadership. And if you find yourself in an environment where you have a toxic leader, and you try to do whatever you can, and it’s not going anywhere, maybe it’s time to leave. A great line, a line that I love, that I heard from a previous guest on Thirty Minute Mentors, Leroy Butler, Hall of Fame safety for the Green Bay Packers. You can’t change the people who you’re with, but you can change the people who you’re with. Very difficult to change people who don’t want to be changed, but you have the ability to decide who you surround yourself with.
Lieutenant General Gibson: That is great advice. That’s great advice.
Adam: What can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful, personally and professionally?
Lieutenant General Gibson: I’ve already mentioned some of that in terms of growing as a leader, whether it’s through reading, mentoring, self-reflection, really important, and then observing and learning from people around you. I think, in terms of improving in your professional life, I would just offer one thing, and that is kind of understanding what your gaps are, what your strengths are, and where you need to get stronger. And there are two ways to approach your weaknesses, and both, I think, can be valid, or either can be valid, under different circumstances. One is, at this point in my age, I’m never going to compete in the Olympics, right? So if you understand that there are some things that are just perhaps not best for you, pursuing things that you are strong at, that is one approach. Another approach, particularly if you’re trying to be a very multifaceted leader, is to seek out experiences that will help you in those areas where you are weak or where you need to be exposed, perhaps to a different work environment. And I’ll use just as a brief example, for one year I worked as the executive officer for the Army G2, the three-star general in charge of all the Army intel officers. And they would bring to the G2 this slate of where we want to put our high-performing lieutenant colonels. And one day, there was an argument. We want to send this one woman, she’s really good. We want to send her to Fort Hood, Texas. She’s been there so many times. She knows everybody there, she knows the system, she knows the organizations. She’s really going to excel. Everybody wants her there. She’s perfect for the job. And the G2 said, that’s exactly why I’m not sending her there, because when she gets to the next level, people are also going to expect her to understand these things about, say, the three-letter agencies, NSA, or the CIA, or something. She’s going to be a one-trick pony if she keeps doing this one thing she’s so good at. And the G2 was very committed to looking one or two jobs down the road at where she thought you might want to be and sending you to an assignment that would help prepare you for that, that would help you in the areas where you were weak, really by exposing you to things you’d never done before, instead of letting you repeatedly do the same kind of job that you’d already demonstrated excellence in. Those are two different ways, I think, to approach thinking about areas where you may be weak or lack experience and how you could address that.
Adam: General Gibson, thank you for all the great advice, and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.
Lieutenant General Gibson: Thank you, Adam. It’s really been a pleasure to talk with you.
