Forge Ahead: Transformational Leadership Secrets

You're moving, you're applying heat, you're applying drive, applying grit, you're applying determination,

forge, never become static.

Day that you become stagnant is almost as bad as the day that you stop learning,

“because if they use stop learning, you need to return from whatever endeavor you're in,”

because you've just become days. Dr. Joel Smith is a battle-tested, disciplined, and transformational leadership expert, executive coach, and former US Army Aviator who helps CEOs and high-performing leaders lead with clarity and purpose. Love your people intentionally.

I like to teach him to notice, to nourish, and to navigate. You came in the room, we came in the room, how did you arrive? It's not what mode of transportation did you arrive in? What was your hit space where you happy, where you sad? When you as a leader can pick up on the vibe of your people,

you can get ahead of a lot of things. I've had many, many suicide cases without lost friends and not lost soldiers.

“There were things that you absolutely noticed, but did we take the time?”

No, actually. It's not over, I'm telling, I'm here! The living your legacy podcast, for those who live, to leave a legacy. Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'm your host for today, Jason Tyler, and I am joined by Dr. Joel Smith.

Welcome to The Show. Hi, feeling. Thank you so very much for having me. I am a static, I'm happy. I love the good energy, the good vibes, the good vibes. Now, you just finished recording your episode.

What would you say is like the number one lesson you want people to be able to take away from your story? My three-piece, my three-piece framework, people, purpose and perseverance. To love your people, selflessly, to selflessly provide vision and purpose and to lead them through with perseverance.

Man, coffee was not lying, you got bars, man. I was not prepared for that.

Out of you saw, I was taking it back a little bit, so this is the audience's first time

getting to know you, giving a little bit of your background your story.

“What brings the Dr. Joel that is in front of me today?”

How do we get from a young Joel to the one sitting here today? We're going to do some sound bites for this one. Barn on four Campbell Kentucky, group in Clarksville, Tennessee, right outside, based on neighborhood called Berchwood estates, predominantly African-American military families, very athletic, very much in everything.

Father was a soldier, mother was educated, first African-American teacher on four Campbell, so if you know anything about growing up in a house full of educators, yeah, I do, I do a little bit, it's not my popsicle's one of them. Not negotiable at his best, so any homework that wasn't legible and that she couldn't read, she would just tear it up, you couldn't copy it and

read, do it, you had to start over from scratch, so you learned to get it right the first thing. Group, like I said, in Berchwood, which was just outside of Fort Campbell, so on one side of me was Fort Campbell, which had the military helicopters. On the other side of me was Outlaw Field, which was the small civilian airport,

so I grew up knowing from second grade just laying out in the yard that I always wanted to be

a pilot. Took my first flight at the controls at the age of 16, my degree was an aerospace, my backlit degree was an aerospace, joined the military, came a pilot for the military flying attack helicopters, little birds, all those kind of fun things, also flue military intelligence, airframes at 32 years in the military. Came out of the military, started off with United Express, COVID went to Atlas flying Amazon Prime, COVID in, back to United flying jambos at a

dullest primarily South America in Europe, lost my medical due to multiple surgeries due to 32 years in the military, had a challenge finding my own identity because like I said, I never wanted to do was fly. My spouse and my coach on rice helped me to understand that I was

as the operational deployments, I had a vein into the leadership spectrum that was unlike any

“of the others. So bringing my 3P framework to the table from that is where we got to where we are”

today. The Wolfpack leadership initiative was based off of my first state side of unit, which was the Wolfpack, Fort Bragg North Carolina 82nd Airborne Division,

I always had an affinity for wolves, rupture kipling, the jungle book, the strength of the pack

is the wolf, the strength of the wolf is the pack. Folks while he messed with me, lines and taggers and bears are bigger and more powerful. I said, but the wolf doesn't perform in the circuits. I know that's right. Hold on. Yeah, it's family oriented. The breeding pair, the family, the pack in itself, they take care of their young, they take care of their elderly, everybody has a role in the hunt, whether you're hurting, whether you're taking them down, whether

you're watching the rear or the front to make sure nothing gets away, the family unit. So that's what the Wolfpack. Because human beings, as humans, we are communal animals, right? And I feel like I'd love to get your perspective on this. I feel like our major drawback in society right now is that technology is kind of pushing us trying to nudge us in the direction of being individuals, where we are naturally have a tendency to lean towards being more communal animals.

Would you say that's correct? I would agree, not only to becoming individuals, but becoming inherently dependant on technology. If you look at it from chat GPT, the Gemini, the claw, the many others that are out there, you can basically write emails, get your virtual assistant, to answer your emails, answer phone calls, do everything, and you do absolutely nothing, so the human element is being moved. But as I teach clients, and I teach my kids, and students,

and all the above, AI can't feel. There's that emotional intelligence that is missing from AI. You can train it up to the best of your ability, but it still can't feel in the moment. It's funny because as we try to push, push, push in the direction and the name of efficiency, you try to get an individual person to do the work of a team. And on the one hand, you might see it as a virtue for one person to be able to do all of these different things,

do the emails, do the back end, do the marketing, do the creative, do all of these different things.

“It's honestly impressive to see one person be able to handle all those things, but what you've”

lose is the ability to work within a community, work within a team, and build relationships. I think that's one of the main things that we are kind of looking at, we're looking around right now, myself included, we're looking around right now and we're saying, I'm missing something,

and I don't know what it is. And in the reality is, we're missing the community. We're missing

being able to look to our left and our right and know that these are our brothers and arms. And that's, you know, there's an interesting dichotomy in your story, and I don't know if maybe you might have covered this in your episode. By the way, if you guys are still too knitted at this point, make sure you check out Dr. Joel's episode, which will be coming out shortly after this podcast. Shame is plug. But there's an interesting dichotomy in that, you know,

your parents had both the military route and the educator route. And you went through your 32 years in the military, and then on the other side of that now you've gone to the other side and

“become an educator. Yes. And I think that's so interesting. What do you say to those out there”

who are seeking that community, but don't know where to find it? To back you up, I've been an educated the entire time because part of my job in the military was as an instructor, standardization instructor pilot meeting, and I taught other instructors, but I was an instructor in some

an examiner, so I was always teaching. But the one thing that I would say that is missing that we all

need is love. And I say love in the acronym sense, and I'll give you three for each letter. The the bar is about to come out again. Yes. Love. First listen. Own. Value. Empower. Love. Lead. Open.

vulnerability, authenticity, recognition, the things that we, as humans, thrive, need. We,

or communion, as you say, we need that. I need to be recognized for certain things. I need to have effective communication. I need that vulnerable space. And more importantly, I have to be authentic. And those are things that like you can't, you're not going to see those on a spreadsheet. You're not going to see those on a spreadsheet, and you know, efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. We try to optimize for things. But those are the things where those, those things, the intangibles are where

purposes found in my, in my estimation. Like when you're doing the work and you're, you're being

this individual that's able to do all of these different things, I find oftentimes what you'll

start to look for as a sense of purpose. Absolutely. And I think that's exactly where you find it is in the learning, the observing, the validation, the empowerment, and being able to empower another human being, being able to encourage another human being, being able to be empowered and encouraged by those that you're sharing space with. I think that's where that sense of purpose

“comes from, and that's what people are missing. When we look at business versus just a regular”

relationship, we have to understand that people are alive. Actually, our life life, they're hard being, without our heartbeat. So love your people intentionally. I like to teach them to notice, to nourish and to navigate. Notice some, I mean, you came in the room. We came in the room. How did you arrive? It's not what mode of transportation did you arrive in. What was your hit space? Were you happy? Were you sad? When you as a leader can pick up on the vibe of your people, you can get ahead

of a lot of things. I've had many, many suicide cases that I've lost friends and I've lost soldiers and I lost people that I noticed. There were things that you absolutely noticed, but did we take the time to nourish and hate? Look a little off today, what's going on? Not that I have to jump up and down on your neck and shoulders in immediate, but you've been a plus performer. You're off. Let's go

“get a cup of coffee. That's the biggest thing. I think sometimes it's as simple as notice. It's just”

being able to say, hey, let's go grab some coffee. A simple gesture can go such a long way. I usually do these pods a lot more structured, a lot more just, you know, I have like a list of questions that I have in my head before I even go into them, but I find this to be a much more conversational pod. I want to get your take on, you grow up with a lot of structure. What is, for, you know, our audience, they're very entrepreneurial, they're very business-minded. What is your sort of take on

structure and systems as it pertains to, you know, organizations, right? Because at the end of the day when we talk, we were here talking about being communal animals, structured, structuring an organization is structuring a community of people that all want to go to the same place. I had a business partner in mind a couple of years ago and I told them, we both have the same destination in mind. Why don't we just carpool? And so, what's your take on structure and being able to implement

systems to take people to that destination that we as a community all want to go to? Structure and systems are paramount, but only if they're adaptable. If they become so rigid that you can't flex left or right, you're going to do that. What I like to call them and wheeze and just go right off the cliff because your emotions are going to be involved. And a good friend

of mine always told me he's brother than Mike Dorsey. He was saying emotions are great passengers,

“but they're terrible drivers. And he's done the trip. You know, you need to have them,”

we need to have those conversations hard conversations sometime. We need to have those love conversations sometimes. We need to understand you have a job, I have a job, but our destination

I don't want to get there so far in front of you. I want us to arrive together so that we can

“push this thing for. Well, if our emotions get too tangled in this, the process, you know,”

we fool around drive ourselves right off the cliff because we're big green. It's good to have them, but they're great passengers. I don't need them behind the wheel. My father is a psychologist. And, you know, I grew up my entire life. We had this huge psychology library in the house. And so I grew up around a lot of that. And he had this, uh, there was a book that he read that he really loves and he implemented it in his strategy. And it goes over this concept. You have,

every person has the human, the chimp and the computer. The human is you. That's your decision making frameworks. The chimp is your emotional center of your brain. The chimp is on your shoulder, telling you, I don't like the way he's looking at me. I don't, I don't like the way that person talked to me. I don't think, um, or if you're an athlete, my dad works with a lot of athletes, it'll tell you, I don't think you're ready for this. I don't think we trained enough. That's the

“emotional center of the brain. Terrible driver. And to your point, you should never let the”

chimp drive at all. The whole purpose of what my dad does is to get people to tell their chimp to shut the hell up sometimes. And then you have the computer, which in athletics is what you've trained your body to do. So for example, you same boat, you same boat trained his body to run those times. The chimp might have told him the day of, hey, I don't think we're going to be able to make that best time today. But the computer had already been programmed to do the work. So he got the

chimp out of there and you'll notice before every race where he ran an amazing time or set a world record, he's smiling. The, the negative emotional center of his brain turned off. We have, I'm have, I'm out here to have fun. I enjoy this. I get to do this. I don't have to do it. I think that's a, that's a huge, huge part. And guys, if you're still tuned in at this point, again, I just want to reiterate, make sure that you check out Dr. Joel's episode. It'll be coming out shortly after this podcast,

airs for the audience. Doc, I always ask this towards, you know, as we kind of wind down the pod,

“what would be your one, you know, we're here at Inside Success? What is your one key tip for success?”

I have so many of them, but I have one, my, my one favorite key to success. It's forge, forge, just just the bird, forge, you're moving, you're applying heat, you're applying drive, you're applying grit, you're applying determination, forge ahead, never become stagnant. They that you become stagnant is almost as bad as the day that you stop learning. Because they you stop learning, you need to retire from whatever

endeavor you're in because you've just become dangerous. And you know it all and you can no longer learn dangerous. I, I bored you. I totally agree. I totally agree. Doc, it has been an immense pleasure having you on the show. Thank you again. So much, so much, so much. I'm, this is probably one of my

favorite episodes that I've done so far. There's a million dollars worth of game in this episode.

So if you're still tuned in, you're welcome. Again, this has been another incredible episode of the Living Your Legacy Podcast. And Doc, where can people find you on social media, on the internet? Where, where are you located? My website is djolsmif.com. I've got a school account, which will be the Wolfpack Leadership Academy. I'm getting ready to do a webinar here within the next month. I'll be starting my own podcast along the lines of the Wolfpack Leadership initiative.

If you need any help without you, let me know. Absolutely. I've got my second book, which is the three peas, people, purpose and perseverance, love selflessly lead, boldly, which hopefully will be out within the next week and a half or so. My previous book is already on Amazon the leadership advantage, how to cultivate leadership skills that drive success. Hmm. All right. Well, now you guys have a new Amazon wish list. So make sure you

go check out Doc's book and the new one, which by the time this podcast airs, it will probably be published and be readily available for you. So make sure you guys go check that out.

But again, this has been another incredible episode of the Living Your Legacy Podcast. And I will

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