119: Rich Diviney — Navy SEAL Secrets to Master Stress with Retired Navy SEAL Commander

February 23, 2025 by Cal Walters in Intentional Living, Courageous Leadership, Leadership, Servant Leadership

The views expressed on this podcast and page are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy, position, or endorsement of the US Army, DoD, or the US Government.

In this conversation, retired Navy SEAL Commander Rich Diviney shares insights on leadership, stress management, and the importance of attributes in high-performance environments. He discusses the significance of humility, the distinction between being a leader and being in charge, and the challenges faced during BUD/S training.

Rich emphasizes the critical role of compartmentalization and attributes in determining success, particularly in high-stress situations like those encountered in military training and operations. In this conversation, the speaker delves into the importance of understanding personal attributes and skills, emphasizing the role of self-awareness in effective leadership.

They discuss how stress and fear can be harnessed for positive action, the significance of focusing on controllable factors, and the science behind motivation through dopamine. The conversation also explores the impact of identity on behavior, particularly in uncertain situations, and how recognizing and prioritizing identities can shape our responses and actions.

Rich Diviney developed his expertise in human performance during his over twenty-year career in the US Military, during which he completed more than thirteen deployments overseas and held multiple leadership positions.

While serving as the officer in charge of selection, assessment, and training for a specialized Navy SEAL command, Diviney was intimately involved in an extremely elite SEAL selection process, which required pairing down a group of exceptional candidates to a small cadre of the most elite optimal performers.

He also spearheaded the creation of a mental performance directorate that focused a strong emphasis on physical, mental, and emotional discipline to optimize individual and team performance, allowing operators to perform faster, longer, and more effectively in all environments—especially high-stress ones.

Listeners of this show can get 15% off the Attributes Assessment by using the coupon code INTENTIONALLEADER15 at checkout.

The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance

By Diviney, Rich

Masters of Uncertainty: The Navy SEAL Way to Turn Stress into Success for You and Your Team

By Rich Diviney

If you’re interested in discovering your core values and becoming a more self-aware and emotionally intelligent leader, I’ve built the perfect course to help you get there. Check out my Discover Your Core Values Mini Course, where I coach you through 3 exercises of guided reflection and help you uncover your core values in a way that you can apply them right away.

117: Charles Feltman — A Simple Framework for Building (and Rebuilding) Trust Every Leader Needs

January 29, 2025 by Cal Walters in Intentional Living, Courageous Leadership, Leadership, Servant Leadership

Cal and Charles Feltman delve into the intricate nature of trust, exploring its biological underpinnings and the personal experiences that shape our propensity to trust or distrust others. They discuss the importance of sincerity, reliability, competence, and care as key assessments of trustworthiness, and how leaders can foster a trusting environment by extending trust to their teams.

Charles Feltman has over 25 years of professional experience coaching, facilitating, consulting to, and training people who lead others. An overarching goal in all of his work is that his clients experience both success and wellbeing at work and in all areas of their lives. Prior to starting his coaching and consulting business he spent a decade in leadership roles in technology industry companies.

Charles is the author of The Thin Book® of Trust: An Essential Primer for Building Trust at Work, based on three decades of experience working with individuals and teams to build, maintain, and when necessary restore trust.

After completing his coach training in 2000 with Newfield Network, one of the premier coach training schools worldwide, Charles served as a mentor coach for Newfield’s programs. In this capacity he taught, mentored and coached others who were learning to become skilled coaches.

Charles holds a BA in psychology from U.C. Santa Cruz and a master's in organization development and communication from the University of Southern California. He has an International Coach Federation credential of Professional Certified Coach (PCC). He is certified in The Leadership Circle Profile, MBTI, DiSC Work of Leaders, and the Triscendance Trust Assessment for Leadership Teams. He is also a certified husband, father and grandfather.

The Thin Book of Trust, Third Edition: An Essential Primer for Building Trust at Work

By Feltman, Charles

104: Dr. Amy Edmondson — The Science of Failing Well

February 22, 2024 by Cal Walters in Leadership, Courageous Leadership, Intentional Living

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We used to think of failure as the opposite of success. Now, we’re often torn between two “failure cultures”: one that says to avoid failure at all costs, the other that says fail fast, fail often. The trouble is that both approaches lack the crucial distinctions to help us separate good failure from bad. As a result, we miss the opportunity to fail well.

After decades of award-winning research, Amy Edmondson is here to upend our understanding of failure and make it work for us. In Right Kind of Wrong, Edmondson provides the framework to think, discuss, and practice failure wisely. Outlining the three archetypes of failure—basic, complex, and intelligent—Amy showcases how to minimize unproductive failure while maximizing what we gain from flubs of all stripes. She illustrates how we and our organizations can embrace our human fallibility, learn exactly when failure is our friend, and prevent most of it when it is not. This is the key to pursuing smart risks and preventing avoidable harm.

With vivid, real-life stories from business, pop culture, history, and more, Edmondson gives us specifically tailored practices, skills, and mindsets to help us replace shame and blame with curiosity, vulnerability, and personal growth. You’ll never look at failure the same way again.

Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, renowned for her research on psychological safety over twenty years. Her award-winning work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Psychology Today, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, and more. Named by Thinkers50 in 2021 as the #1 Management Thinker in the world, Edmondson’s Ted Talk “How to Turn a Group of Strangers into a Team” has been viewed over three million times. She received her PhD, AM, and AB from Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the author of Right Kind of Wrong, The Fearless Organization, and Teaming.

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

By Edmondson, Amy C.

Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

By Edmondson, Amy C.

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98: Simone Askew — On Being the First Black Female First Captain at West Point, Authentic Leadership, and Advice for Mentors

January 11, 2023 by Cal Walters in Leadership, Servant Leadership, Courageous Leadership

It's great to be back after taking a few months off! I'm really excited about all we can learn together in 2023!

Today I have the privilege of sharing my interview with Simone Askew. In 2017, she became the first African American woman to earn the role of First Captain, the leader of the Corps of Cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point. This is regarded as a major step in racial and gender equality within the United States military. She was also named by Glamour magazine as one of the top 10 College Women of the Year. She is also a Rhodes Scholar. Askew earned a MSc with merit in refugee and forced migration studies from the Refugee Studies Centre and a MPP from the Blavatnik School of Government at University of Oxford.

She also recently published her first book, Citizen Skyland, a compelling story of a young black woman finding herself, her courage and her legacy when the world needs it most. If you'd like to learn more about Military Mentors and their upcoming event, The MMoment III, visit militarymentors.org.

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88: Gino Wickman — How to Find Out if You’re an Entrepreneur, Create a Personal Vision, and Get Over Rejection

May 12, 2022 by Cal Walters in Courageous Leadership, Leadership, Intentional Living

I'm really excited to have Gino Wickman on the show today!

An entrepreneur since the age of 21, Gino has had an obsession for learning what makes businesses and entrepreneurs thrive.

At 25 he took over the family business, which was deeply in debt and in need of help. After turning the company around and running it for seven years, he and his partners successfully sold the company.

Gino then set out to help entrepreneurs and leaders get what they want from their businesses. Based on his years of real-world experience, he created the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), a practical method for helping companies achieve greatness. He has personally delivered more than 1,900 full-day sessions for more than 135 companies, helping them implement EOS. He is also the author of the award-winning, best-selling book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, which has sold over 1 million copies, as well as five other books in the Traction Library that have sold almost 2 million copies. Gino is the founder of EOS Worldwide, an organization that helps tens of thousands of businesses implement EOS with the aid of an international team of over 450 professional and certified EOS Implementers and online support. There are over 130,000 companies using the EOS tools worldwide.

Gino is now devoting time and energy toward helping entrepreneurs-in-the-making get a huge jump-start on taking their entrepreneurial leap, which is why he created Entrepreneurial Leap. The mission of Entrepreneurial Leap is to find all of the entrepreneurs-in-the-making, at any age, wherever they are—to help them realize their purpose and live the life they were born to live.