My guest is Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Craig Whelden, who I’ve known for many years. He’s the author of “Leadership: The Art of Inspiring People to Be Their Best” (https://craigwhelden.com/buy-the-book/). The topic of our conversation is one of our Big 6 Leadership Principles®: “Do the Right Thing When No One is Looking.”
We also discuss the importance of character, taking responsibility, cultivating a great organizational culture, and more!
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Podcast Episode 12: Do The Right Thing When No One Is Looking — Craig Whelden interview
Robert Mixon:
So welcome everybody to the Level 5 Associates, “Journey With No Summit” podcast program — and today in our 12th episode in the series, we’re privileged to have Major General (Retired) Craig Weldon as our guest leader.
Craig and I have known each other off and on for many years, more than we should admit! We’ve had opportunity to be soldiers at a number of different levels, through our careers in the armored cavalry units.
Craig also spent, I believe, nine years as a senior executive service member, which is a general officer equivalent, working primarily for the United States Marine Corps I think at that point in time, Craig, after your retirement from active duty.
He’s written an outstanding book here called “Leadership: The Art of Inspiring People to Be Their Best” — and Craig, I’ve certainly enjoyed it.
Thanks for being part of our program today, as we talk about your work, your journey. I’ll ask you a few questions about one of the principles that I believe in, I think we both do, in “Doing The Right Thing When No One’s Looking.”
Craig Whelden:
Sure.
Robert Mixon:
Craig, good to have you.
Craig Whelden:
Thanks for the invite, Robert.
Robert Mixon:
The first chapter of your book “Leadership: The Art of Inspiring People to Be Their Best” is entitled ‘Character: Leadership’s Basic Building Block.’
Could you tell us why you think that’s so important?
Craig Whelden:
Yeah, so let me back up a little bit and tell you how the book came to be.
About two and a half years ago or so, I was the executive director for Marine Corps Forces Pacific in Hawaii, and I thought I was going to do that for a few more years, and then kind of retire into the sunset of the Pacific. My wife said she wanted to move back to the mainland, because we were too far from family. So, that changed my career path pretty dramatically.
I told the Marine Corps that I wanted to retire in about a year and then somebody asked me, “what are you gonna do next?”
I said, “I want to give back what I’ve learned over four or five decades to the next generation, so they can benefit from that. That’s the legacy that I’d like to leave.”
They said… “well you need a book” and I said, “are you kidding me? A book? I can’t write a book.”
I’d never even thought about writing a book. I’d written a few articles in my life, and I thought I was a pretty decent writer, but a book sounded awfully intimidating … particularly for a fellow that’s in his mid-60s.
To make a long story short, I wrote a book.
I wrote a manuscript, in the fall of 2018, and then I didn’t know what to do with it, so I reached out found an editor/publisher and I said can you help me get this across the finish line? He said sure.
I said, “the first thing I need from you, is to tell me what you think” so he read through it, he called me back and he said… “nobody’s gonna read this book”…
I said, “are you kidding me? What wrong? What’s wrong with it?
He said “it’s a memoir. It’s a story of your life. You are not Michelle Obama or Omarosa. You’re not famous, or infamous, and quite frankly you need to be a personality or a celebrity that people know to write a memoir and sell it.”
I said, “well, I didn’t intend to write a memoir. I intended to write a leadership book. What do you suggest?”
He said, “you’ve got all kinds of wonderful stories in here, and you’ve got lessons that are buried in those stories. Find them, pull them out, make them chapter titles, and then fold the stories up underneath.”
So… took a yellow highlighter, went through the manuscript, found those nuggets, those leadership and life lesson nuggets, picked certain ones to be chapter titles, folded my stories underneath, gave it back to him.
He says, “now we got something.”
So, that’s how this thing evolved.
He then asked me, “what’s the most important component for an effective and great leader.”
I said, “having strong character”… and he said, “well, that should be chapter one in your book” and I said “okay.”
So that’s the reason chapter one is about character.
When I try to define character, it’s really an umbrella term that includes so many characteristics like: ambition, perseverance and self-awareness, empathy, humility, honesty, trust, integrity, charisma… but always subordinating your personal interests — sometimes for the organization — for the interest of the organization.
There’s also a component of resilience which is what some people characterize as ‘grit’ — and I talk about that in my book.
I dedicated my book to my dad, who really taught me about character, and also taught me about grit as I watched him through his career.
So, character is the first chapter in my book, because I think it’s the most important trait for an effective leader. It’s a foundation for all effective leaders and without it, I think a leader stands a great risk of failure… particularly when the pressures start mounting.
Robert Mixon:
Okay thanks, Craig — that’s insightful.
I certainly agree with you that character is sort of the foundation stone on which leadership is based, and I can see why you’ve went to chapter one in that direction.
I’d like to ask also while we’re on this topic here, in terms of character… who’s the best example you’ve seen a leader doing the right thing, whether or not anybody was looking?
Craig Whelden:
Yeah, well I’ve seen that a number of times, as I know you have and let me tell another story if I can.
I have a chapter in my book where I talk about mentorship, and I talk about four different kinds.
One of them — which is the one that I ascribe to mostly — is what I call ‘virtual mentorship.’
So, imagine for a moment that you’re walking down a path, and the path represents your journey in life.
It can be your professional life, or your personal life, and along the path you see rocks… and each of those rocks represent an experience or a person that you come across in that journey.
What I tell people is, “pick up those rocks that you’re particularly impressed with and put them in your backpack and carry them with you.”
You can repeat those as you become more senior. But also, pick up the rocks of the ones that are not very endearing! The things you want to make sure you never do, and put those in your rucksack as well, to remind you of the of the things not to do.
I’m reminded and I think you remember this the NCO the non-commissioned officer, the sergeants, which are really the backbone of the Army… had an informal motto at one time: “never walk by a deficiency.”
If you embody that kind of principle, that even when nobody’s watching you’re doing the right thing … when you see something that’s wrong, you stop and you do what you can to fix it.
So I’ve probably got … hundreds, as you have, of examples of non-commissioned officers, civilians, and even young enlisted guys who are just in, who did the right thing at the right time even when somebody wasn’t watching.
Robert Mixon:
Well that’s true, there are dozens of examples. It’s kind of hard to pick out one that stands out above others.
I think it’s nice to have those ‘rocks in your rucksack,’ in terms of you were talking about, where you’ve seen examples of people doing right, or standing up for what’s right.
Craig Whelden:
So, let me give an institutional example.
You and I both grew up in the 70s 80s 90s of the Army, and we saw the evolution from the post-Vietnam era of the 70s which was a difficult time — that entire decade was a difficult time — into the 80s where it started to get better, and we instituted some things when we got into the 1980s which really changed the Army I think.
We had going into the 80s, in the late 70s, what I remember what people commonly referred to as ‘zero defects army’ and which means if you make a mistake, you’re gone, essentially.
So, what that did, was it got everybody’s ‘pucker factor’ to a point where they were reluctant to take any risk.
That started to change in the 80s, and we started to evolve. We started to power down authority, allow people to make mistakes. We introduced a concept which is very common now, broadly known throughout all the military, used in the corporate world, called the ‘after-action review.’
The after-action review was an opportunity to reflect back on whatever it was you just did, whether it was an operation or a training exercise, and say: “this is what we did right, this is what we did wrong, this is how we can make it better the next time we do it, let’s move forward.”
I’m oversimplifying it, but you get the idea. What was poignant about, that that I recall, is they encouraged the leader of the organization to be the very first person to stand up and say, “let me tell you what I did wrong.”
What that did, is it freed up everybody else in the organization to feel like they could step forward and admit things that they didn’t do right, even when nobody was watching.
Robert Mixon:
I think that leads in well to the next question I had in mind here, Craig about the last chapter of your book, you entitled “The Buck Stops Where” …
You cite President Harry Truman, “the buck stops here,” quote at the front of it.
Isn’t that also part of the framework that you’re talking about here, in terms of doing right and being accountable?
Craig Whelden:
Yeah, sure absolutely. Taking responsibility… when it’s appropriate.
What prompted that chapter in my book, was an experience I had in 2018.
I was in Hawaii, I was the executive director of Marine Corps Forces Pacific. I was attending an official event, on a Friday afternoon at the governor’s mansion, representing the Marine Corps.
At the table across from me, was sitting the director of the state civil defense — he was a friend of mine, he was a retired National Guard major general his name was Vern Miyagi. I remember when I arrived at the table, and I saw Vern sitting on the other side of the table, I leaned over and I said, “hey Vern, I just want you to know how well I sleep at night knowing that you are protecting us all the time.” He got a kick out of that, and he laughed, and I laughed, and we went on our business.
Now that was about one o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday. The very next morning… there was an alert on my phone, and there was a message from state civil defense… I’ll read it to you, it said, “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.”
Now, that made national and international news, because it was a false alarm. Somebody in the state civil defense watch team pushed the wrong button when they were doing a training event, and they sent out a real alert to everybody in the state. They absolutely panicked an awful lot of people and it took about 40 minutes or so before that got cleared up.
They put out another message saying “that was a false alarm, blah blah blah blah blah…” but you can imagine, in the days and weeks that followed, that everybody was saying, “how in the world could that have happened?”
The ramifications were pretty significant. Vern Miyagi stood up and said, “I’m the director of state civil defense. I take full responsibility,” and ‘I will fall on my sword,’ and basically turned in his resignation in that position.
Vern Miyagi is a hero in my eyes, because he stepped forward. He said, “the buck stops here”… well, the buck really stopped at the governor’s desk one could presume. The governor didn’t take responsibility for it, in fact he got reelected just a few months later! But Vern Miyagi … he became one of my heroes, because he stepped forward and said “That’s my organization. I’m responsible, and if anybody’s gonna point the blame, blame me.”
Robert Mixon:
Quite a story. Taking responsibility, and doing the right thing — and set an example by doing so. It seems to be harder and harder these days, to find leaders like that, at least in the ‘lanes of the interstate’ that I’ve been moving in here recently.
So I think the issue is, what can we do as leaders to help build a culture that others want to belong to, by doing the right thing.
I’d kind of like to know, Craig, in your view, what are the characteristics of a world-class culture?
Craig Whelden:
Well quite pragmatically, achieving a world-class culture is difficult to achieve, and once you do achieve it, it’s also challenging to sustain.
It involves the participation, the contribution, and the buy-in of everybody in the organization, obviously — and the bigger the organization the more difficult it is to manage.
But as you know, in the military, in our experience with the Army… and my experience, nine years of experience with the Marine Corps… it all starts out with a set of values… “These are the values that we hold dear in our organization, these are the character traits that we want people to adopt, these are the negotiables, these are the non-negotiables.”
When I wrote my philosophy of command as a battalion commander over 30 years ago, I put a section in there about non-negotiables. Non-negotiables mean: if you screw up doing this, then you don’t need to be in my organization, or quite frankly in the Army.
Violating people’s trust… lying, cheating, stealing, those kinds of things, violate the values of our institution, and our organization.
So, establishing the tone… the leader establishing the tone, early on — very early on — like the first day they get there… “this is the direction I want to go, this is my philosophy of command, or this is my corporate vision for the organization” …
Then telling people what you value, what your values are, and what your non-negotiables are… gets everybody established at a certain place where you can move forward. Then maintaining that, and having the discipline to respond when you see violations of that is important.
So yeah, in a perfect world world-class culture is achievable, but difficult to sustain. I’ve been in organizations where I thought we had a pretty darn good culture, and some that that were cracking at the seams.
Robert Mixon:
Like you say, you got to nurture the culture. You can’t just “Set it and forget it,” as they used to say in one of the infomercials!
Craig Whelden:
Yeah.
Robert Mixon:
You’ve got to nurture it, right?
Craig Whelden:
Yeah, absolutely.
Robert Mixon:
In your view, in your experience, your journey, Craig… who are your heroes, or one or two people who stand out for you as leaders who really were heroes to you, and why?
Craig Whelden:
One of them is on the wall right behind you… Colin Powell. Now, I never worked for him directly, and I know that you did.
He was a hero of mine all growing up through the Army as I watched him get up to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and so forth.
I’ll tell you a quick story about the connection between us.
I commanded the Buffalo Soldiers, the 10th Cavalry. The 10th Cavalry was famous for an all-black regiment back in the 1800s, very, very brave, nicknamed the Buffalo Soldiers by the American Indians. They have a tremendous historical significance to our Army, and so I was a very proud to be their commander. When the Buffalo Soldier monument was begun at Fort Leavenworth Kansas, which I know you’ve probably seen… I happened to be the commander of the 10th Cavalry, and I took all my stuff out there, I took a color guard out there, all the silver for the regiment. General Colin Powell was the guest of honor for that, and so I met him there. That’s the only time I met him, but I watched him from afar, and he was always one of my heroes.
Another one, that I think I’ve always admired, I learned about when I got to Purdue University and I joined a fraternity. The fraternity I joined had as a member, a generation before me, John Wooden… who was a basketball coach at UCLA for decades, and won more NCAA championships than anybody else.
But what John Wooden is not known for as much as his championship teams, is the way he pulled those teams together as a team. The way he developed, and encouraged, and taught character to his players.
He was a 5 foot 10, three-time All-American from Purdue University in his own right, but when he was a coach UCLA he turned out not only championship basketball teams, but some tremendously contributing valued citizens.
I actually quote him at the beginning of my chapter one on character, he said, “Talent is God given – be humble, fame is man given – be grateful, conceit is self given – be careful.”
Robert Mixon:
Well stated by the coach! He’s described as a Level 5 leader — and I think General Powell is too — in John C. Maxwell’s book on Level 5 leadership.
Coach Wooden is the the subject of the last chapter, where he talks about an example of a Level 5 leader who was represented by two things that stick with me, two qualities. One is personhood, and the other is respect. I think those two qualities give you the ability and the courage to do the right thing.
I’d like to get your advice Craig, on what advice would you give aspiring leaders on how to learn to develop the habit of doing the right thing, in the midst of all the threats that are out there?
Craig Whelden:
Well, having a strong foundation in character is a good start, I think and again that’s the reason it’s chapter one in my book. When I got done writing that chapter I thought, “have I given this topic sufficient focus?”
I didn’t want to write a book exclusively about character, but I wanted to make sure that the reader had opportunities to dive deeper into that topic, if they wanted to. So, I looked around for a couple of books I thought that were worth pursuing, and I recommended those, in my in my book at the end of the chapter.
I’ve got them right here… this is one of them: “Building Your Leadership Legacy: It’s All About Character,” by Robert C Carroll… he’s a retired Army Colonel, used to run the leadership department at West Point, you may know him.
The other one, which was just published this past year, is: “The Character Edge: Leading And Winning With Integrity,” by General Bob Caslin and Dr. Michael Matthews. Bob Caslin used to be the superintendent at West Point, now is the president just up the road from me of the University of South Carolina.
Both of those books take a pretty good crack at what it takes to have strong character… which again, I think, is the foundation of all good leaders.
I think next, I would tell people to focus on their relationship, and on trust.
Trust is the second chapter in my book. If you don’t have… I used to tell people when I came into a new organization and they kind of looked at me eyes wide open I said, “I trust all of you, until you demonstrate that you are not worthy of that trust.” That put what I think, was kind of a healthy pressure on them to not violate that trust.
Most of the organizations I joined, I thought that’s a pretty good roll of the dice because I think institutionally, the United States Army had people in it that were value-based, strong character, and you could assume a certain level of trust. I think Booker T. Washington once said, “the way you can determine whether or not you can trust somebody, is to trust them” …
… I think there’s a lot of value in that.
Robert Mixon:
Okay thanks Craig. That’s really good. I think very useful for our audience too, of leaders and aspiring leaders.
Lastly, I’d like to ask for your thoughts on… what’s a big idea to leave the audience of leaders, aspiring leaders, what would that be, for their journey?
Craig Whelden:
Yeah, the big idea… I’m not sure if I’m gonna answer this way you hope… but what I have seen over time, in the evolution of leaders from young leaders to very senior leaders, is that some of them start to crack when they become more senior — because they kind of forget those basic foundational elements of character, of integrity, of values, of remembering their roots, where did they come from? …They were there at some time.
They start treating subordinates differently than they would have would like to have been treated, when they were subordinate.
There’s a certain leader who maintains the same values, never forgets where he or she came from, and then there are those who don’t.
There’s a interesting story… I have a chapter in my book called ‘Memento Mori’… and in Latin that means “remember you are mortal.”
So if you imagine for a moment, the Roman general coming into Rome after a huge victory on the battlefield, and he’s being feted by all the Roman, they’re on either side of the road, he’s in his chariot going through and they’re dropping confetti, and throwing gold coins at him, and all that sort of thing… and standing behind him on the chariot, is his slave and one of the tasks his slave has is to lean forward whisper into his generals ear “Memento Mori,” which means remember you are mortal! “Tomorrow you could fall.”
We have seen too many examples — and I’m ashamed to say, in the military — of senior leaders who have fallen, because they had a character flaw… that shows either when they’re under great pressure, or when they become senior and they forget the roots, they forget the basics, and there’s a certain amount of arrogance.
… A technique I learned from a fellow you probably know, Monty Meigs who retired — for your listeners — as a four-star general … I worked for him three times.
I was his cavalry squadron S3, I was his base commander as a Colonel, then I was his chief of staff, when he was a division commander.
When he was a division commander as a two-star, he did this regularly: he would pull his immediate staff in, and he would say to… and I’m talking about the people who were closest to him every day… me, the staff, Secretaries General staff, his driver, his secretary, his aide-de-camp, his communications team… all those folks he would bring into a room every quarterm and he would say, “Look. I will never cross an ethical boundary by design. Circumstances may pull me, and you with me… because you’re with me all the time… across that boundary line. The more senior you become, the more temptations, the more opportunities there are to step over that boundary, and I’m not going to do that… or I’m not going to do it consciously. I’m charging all of you, who are with me every day, to keep your antenna up and let us know if you see us crossing those boundaries… and the lawyer here, is going to tell you now where those boundaries are.”
Then the lawyer would go through his little spiel — which I know you’ve seen many many times as I have — about “here are the ethic rules that you must abide by”… and so everybody including the driver, and the secretary and all those people, had an awareness of where the boundaries are and the General was telling him stay inside that boundary.
I thought “that’s a pretty good tactic, technique and procedure! … I think I’ll put in my rucksack and carry with me, I as I go forward.”
I did and when I became a general officer, and when I became a senior executive I did exactly the same thing. When I was in the Marine Corps, I saw a number of three-stars that I worked for do exactly the same thing.
Robert Mixon:
Well, that’s certainly great insights Craig. I want to thank you for taking the time today to come on the “Journey With No Summit” podcast series, and talk to us about your leadership journey.
Your book again, “Leadership: The Art Of Inspiring People To Be Their Best,” I know it’s available on Amazon… and I’m sure some people are gonna Google it … and hopefully buy it and read it.
I read it, and I thought it was really well done. A very readable account about a practical leadership tools.
Craig Whelden:
Thank you.
Robert Mixon:
I don’t think we need to be terribly esoteric in our lives as leaders, we just need to be authentic.
Craig Whelden:
Yeah.
Robert Mixon:
I think you are indeed authentic, Craig. So thanks for taking the time to be with us today and share your thoughts.
Craig Whelden:
Thank you Robert. Enjoyed it.
Robert Mixon:
Wish you all in the audience well, and we’ll talk with you next time on the Level 5 podcast series. Thanks very much.
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