Ep 10: David Holahan
on applying combat experience in Iraq to business, 6 leadership principles, making 500 decisions a day under stress, and why failure is not to be celebrated
David is a retired US Marine Lt. Col. with real combat experience in Somalia and Iraq, where he commanded a unit of 1 200 soldiers. He then served as the Defence Attache to Latvia in Riga. Since retiring from the military David has been applying the lessons he shares in this episode to both secure millions of USD in contracts for the businesses he worked for as well as to teach leadership both in Europe and the US.
It turns out there are more parallels in business and military than you may think. In this engaging episode, David shares the learnings from his military career that will help you in your day-to-day combat with deadlines, KPIs, and competitors.
CLICK one of the links below to listen to the episode
By listening to this episode you will learn:
To get enough sleep, otherwise, you’ll make bad decisions
That stress for a person in a business can be as high or even higher than for a soldier, so needs to be addressed and managed to ensure performance
To make a plan based on carefully considered assumptions, execute the plan, measure performance metrics and reiterate the plan
To be serious about being good at your job - prepare, make notes and use them as cheat sheets in real business situations
David’s 6 leadership principles
The importance of clarity in communication. Especially in remote work times if needed, make the other person repeat what you said to ensure no miscommunication
To set expectations on performance from the start and regularly articulate those expectations to achieve better performance from your team
To never tolerate lies
To invest your time and effort in creating a team identity
Centralized planning and decentralized execution. Make sure your team knows what exactly needs to be done, and empower them to take care of how to do it
To reward initiative and accept failure instead of celebrating failure
Support for this episode comes from NexPay > https://paynexpay.com/
