Sheepdog Skill: Self-Regulation

If you can't regulate yourself, then you can't lead anybody.

Self-regulation is your governor, the system-level skill that keeps everything else reliable.

Between the stimulus and your reaction, there is a space if you create one.

Instructors weren't testing rank or experience, they were testing character.

Bottom line, if you can't lead yourself, you can't lead others.

Self-regulation, mastering yourself before leading others.

There was a moment in SEAL training that I've thought about a lot, not because it was super dramatic in the usual sense, no one got hurt, no mission hung in the balance, but it, because it revealed something about leadership under pressure that no classroom could reveal and has stuck with me for a long time.

Our class leader was a lieutenant.

We called him Battle Star.

That was a nickname because it sounded like his last name, which I won't reveal right now.

Battle Star was the senior officer in the class, so he was the class leader, designated by virtue of his rank, not necessarily his skill.

So he was in charge during all team evolutions.

The instructors, as you can imagine, always created crazy situation designed to test leadership and composure under pressure, also teamwork.

Of course, that can include conflicting orders, chaos, incomplete information, physical exhaustion, sleep deprivation, time pressure, and other devious things.

Well, barely a week into our training, Battle Star went straight into freeze mode during a particular charming evolution.

He was running around like a chicken with his head cut off.

He was confusing the heck out of all of us.

While he was unraveling, I noticed the enlisted leading petty officer was a former EOD guy named Futurelli.

He took a couple deep breaths, had a smile on his face, and, and literally calmly took control of the class right away from this lieutenant.

The instructors took note, and the next day they actually began the process to remove Battle Star from the class.

That lesson was surgical.

If you can't regulate yourself, then you can't lead anybody.

And self-regulation is the last skill that I'm gonna talk about in the Sheepdog Strong series here.