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  • - Hi everyone, Sal Khan here from Khan Academy.

  • Welcome to our Daily Homeroom livestream.

  • This is a thing we started seems like a long time ago now,

  • but it was several weeks ago

  • when the school closures happened.

  • Just a way to continue to support you as a parent,

  • a teacher, a student, obviously,

  • Khan Academy has a lot of resources like that.

  • But there's something especially in this time

  • of social distancing, about being able

  • to connect people live.

  • And some days it's just me and it's here.

  • I'm here to answer your questions.

  • And some days we have incredible guests like today.

  • And so today, our guest is going to be

  • General Stan McChrystal.

  • I'm gonna be bringing him on a little bit,

  • but I'll tell you all ahead of time,

  • whether you're on Facebook or YouTube,

  • start thinking of questions that you would like

  • to ask the general and put them in there.

  • We have Khan Academy team members who are looking

  • at those questions and will surface them to myself

  • and General McChrystal.

  • I do like to remind everyone somewhat,

  • 'cause it's important that we are not for profit.

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  • I do wanna give a special shout out

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  • Novartis and Fastly to help us help you hopefully,

  • with what's going on school closures,

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  • So, whether you're an individual giver

  • or a corporation or represent a corporation,

  • please, please think about that.

  • So, with that I'd like to bring on General Stan McChrystal.

  • And General you're one of those people.

  • You're a very decorated person in your career.

  • I could probably read your bio

  • for about five minutes.

  • But the headlines, you are retired four-star General,

  • you ran a essentially a significant fraction of some of the,

  • or all of the US military operations and that we've been in,

  • in recent modern history.

  • And since then, you have gone into the private sector,

  • and you are focused on helping advise folks

  • on things like leadership and organizational structure.

  • Did I get that generally right?

  • - Well, you probably gave me more credit than I deserve.

  • I was part of the team.

  • But yeah, you're pretty accurate.

  • - So, maybe a good place to start.

  • You know, there's a lot of young people

  • who are watching this and they're always

  • thinking about their careers.

  • They're thinking about how do I navigate life?

  • How do I build a sense of leadership,

  • if you could just walk us through your career arc,

  • starting from when you were maybe a high school student,

  • but especially at once you went into the military.

  • And also a lot of us don't fully understand

  • how the military hierarchy works.

  • And what are the expectations as you become a lieutenant,

  • as you become a one-star general, two-star.

  • How does that work?

  • - Sure, yeah, I mean, you only kind of figure it out

  • in the rear-view mirror.

  • I grew up in an army family.

  • My father was a soldier.

  • And his father was a soldier and my four brothers

  • all were in the army and my sister married a soldier.

  • Then when I married my wife, she was the daughter

  • of a career soldier and her three brothers were so.

  • So, you kind of get it, we were the army business.

  • From the earliest age I can remember,

  • I wanted to be a soldier, like my father

  • 'cause my father was my hero.

  • He was a very low key guy, a decorated combat veteran,

  • but very self effacing, very quiet.

  • And so he was my idea of the model of a leader.

  • So, I wanted to do what he did and go to West Point.

  • So, at age 17, I went to West Point.

  • Now, that was 1972.

  • And to put it in context, the military wasn't very popular

  • in 1972, at the end of the Vietnam War.

  • So, statistically speaking, it was the easiest year

  • in the academy's entire history to be admitted.

  • So, here I am.

  • So, I got into the academy and I wanted

  • to be an infantry officer.

  • And West Point was 170 years old when I entered,

  • and they took themselves very seriously.

  • And I thought West Point was gonna be sort of

  • just a turnstile I go through to get to my career,

  • and I didn't take it very seriously.

  • And so we had this clash of cultures, me and West Point,

  • 17-year-old Stan and 170-year-old West Point,

  • you can guess who won.

  • And so, for four years, I had kind of a rough go of it.

  • First couple years, I did horribly in discipline.

  • I did horribly in academics, almost flunked out.

  • And then my last two years, I started dating this girl,

  • Annie, who I've now been married to for 43 years,

  • and she sort of set me straight

  • and I started improving on those things.

  • But you come out of West Point basically schooled

  • in things like character and a college education,

  • you're not a trained soldier.

  • And so, the first thing you do

  • is you go to some initial courses

  • and your desire is to become technically

  • and tactically competent.

  • You wanna know weapons, you wanna know tactics,

  • you wanna be able to land navigate.

  • So that when you go to your first leadership job,

  • as a platoon leader, you know,

  • you'll be respected and you'll be effective.

  • So, I went through about eight or nine months

  • of additional training schools to include Ranger School,

  • where they sort of try to break you down.

  • And then if you don't break, you get this Ranger Tab

  • and you go forward.

  • But I got to my first unit, the 82nd,

  • as a second lieutenant, and it was '70s army.

  • And it wasn't very good and it was still

  • kind of Vietnam hangover and the troops,

  • most of 'em came from a difficult background.

  • And so you walk in, a college graduate, trained,

  • and you think, okay, I'm gonna lead these people.

  • And then you realize that, in fact, they know an awful lot.

  • And although they would do some amazing things on weekends,

  • they actually take care of you.

  • You take care of them, but when it really gets

  • to doing business, they take care of you.

  • So from an early age, you learn that the fight

  • is gonna be won by the sergeants and the privates,

  • the lieutenant is going to enable them to win it.

  • And that gets more true the further you go up.

  • So, you spend the first, I spent four years as a lieutenant,

  • leading first about 30 soldiers as a platoon,

  • as a paratrooper lieutenant.

  • And then I went to Special Forces and led a team

  • of Special Forces non-commissioned officers, Green Berets.

  • Your next--

  • - Just on that first appointment,

  • I am curious, you know, you were probably what, 23, 24,

  • when you were leading that group?

  • - 22, 23, yeah.

  • - And I'm guessing most of them were your age,

  • maybe even a few of 'em were older than you.

  • How did you handle that?

  • Like, did you ever feel like an imposter syndrome?

  • Or you know, how am I gonna get the respect of these folks?

  • - Well, it's very interesting,

  • you do, the first thing is you wonder,

  • are they gonna mind me?

  • Are they going to respect me?

  • But it was really kind of a dangerous thing

  • because what would happen was the non-commissioned officers

  • would be more experienced.

  • And they'd have to be sort of the hard asses,

  • and the privates sometimes--

  • - And what does that mean?

  • What does non-commissioned officer mean?

  • - Means sergeant, so you have commissioned officers,

  • which are lieutenants up through generals,

  • and non-commissioned means you are an officer

  • but with no commission.

  • So, it's sergeants, it's from sergeant E-five

  • up through sergeant major,

  • and then below that are privates and specialists.

  • We call them our corporals.

  • So, the military is broken into enlisted ranks

  • and officer ranks, and typically people enter as a private

  • or they enter as a lieutenant.

  • Now, some people will enlist in it

  • and become an officer,

  • but the traditional way is to come into those two.

  • So, as you're a 22-year-old lieutenant,

  • you've got sergeants who are combat veterans,

  • who have been around the block.

  • And they have got to be the biggest sticklers

  • for discipline and standards in the platoon.

  • And yet you want to be in charge.

  • So, it's this interesting dynamic,

  • you have to earn their respect,

  • but you're not really as qualified

  • or as knowledgeable as they are.

  • Good platoon sergeants,

  • you have a platoon leader and then a senior sergeant,

  • sergeant first class, he's responsible

  • or he feels he's responsible for training you,

  • for developing you.

  • And if you get the right relationship, it gets very close.

  • And the lieutenant learns to keep their mouth shut,

  • learns to let the platoon sergeant guide them,

  • but the platoon sergeant also learns increasingly

  • to let that lieutenant take more and more responsibility.

  • Now, when you're young, you can make some big mistakes.

  • I made some very bad mistakes as a second lieutenant.

  • At one point I started listening to the privates

  • when they would complain about the sergeants to me.

  • I shouldn't have been listening to 'em about that.

  • But they would complain about 'em and they'd go,

  • you know, LT, those sergeants really

  • are a pain in the ass, aren't they?

  • And if you give them that ear, and you start to think, wow,

  • they like me, they don't like the sergeants,

  • so I'm actually a good leader,

  • that's exactly the wrong conclusion.

  • Because what really the reality was

  • they're, you know, wily people

  • and they are creating sort of a division.

  • And it takes a little mat, it took me some maturity

  • to sort of grow through that era

  • before I really learned how you lead.

  • Another time, or we all have times

  • when you learn about standards.

  • Once we went to this position

  • and I was pretty demanding

  • 'cause I wanted to have high standards.

  • We went to this position and I was leading a mortar platoon.

  • And I made them dig the mortars in,

  • which takes several hours, three or four hours

  • of really hard work for the whole platoon.

  • And we dug 'em in, and then we went to open the range

  • with the range controller, who allows you to live fire,

  • and they told us you're in the wrong position.

  • And I said, wait a minute, and it was my fault.

  • I had read the papers wrong.

  • So I had 'em digging in the wrong position.

  • I went to Range Control, I said,

  • would you please let us change

  • so that we don't have to move?

  • And they said, nope.

  • And so I had to go back to the platoon

  • and say we have to move.

  • It was dark, it was cold,

  • and it was starting to rain.

  • And I wasn't very popular.

  • I said, fill the holes in, which they did.

  • We went to the new location,

  • and then you have this moral question.

  • Am I gonna have 'em dig in

  • 'cause I said that's always the standard?

  • But because of my screw up,

  • they were gonna have to do it a second time.

  • And I remember that night,

  • I said, okay, we're gonna dig in,

  • we're gonna do it again.

  • And there was muttering and there was hate and discontent.

  • And the only thing I can do was

  • I got in and dug with 'em, of course.

  • But you know, you just go through that

  • and you learn that you're gonna make mistakes,

  • and you gotta own up to 'em.

  • You gotta look people in the eye and take 'em.

  • - Yeah, I could dig into each of these segments.

  • (laughing)

  • 'Cause I think there's so much there.

  • But sorry, I just, I,

  • and we're starting to have a lot of questions come in,

  • but continue with that narrative.

  • I mean, and some of this stuff

  • you're saying very nonchalantly,

  • like yeah, and then I started leading some Special Forces,

  • I mean, my understanding of Special Forces,

  • these are very hardcore types of training and activities.

  • - And you know, you do these things to test yourself too,

  • you wanna be in elite units because you wanna see,

  • can I do that?

  • Plus, you wanna serve with really good people.

  • So, I went to Special Forces.

  • And then I went to this advanced course for a year

  • where they really train you to go from lieutenant to captain

  • at about the four-year point,

  • and then I went and as a captain,

  • you're a company commander.

  • Now, company commander leads about 150 soldiers.

  • And so at this level, you're leading

  • essentially four platoons.

  • So, you were a platoon leader with 30, 40 people,

  • now you're a company commander, about 150,

  • and you have four platoons.

  • Now you're sort of minor level of executive leadership.

  • But you are supposed to be much more mature now.

  • In fact, behind your back,

  • they'll even call a company commander at age 25,

  • or six, the old man.

  • Yeah, I was very centralized as a company commander,

  • my first company, I had a mechanized infantry company

  • of 14 armored vehicles.

  • I put 'em all on the same radio frequency,

  • so that I said turn left, they all turn left

  • at exactly the same time.

  • And it was a small enough organization

  • where I could micromanage it,

  • you know, kind of put my fingerprints on everything.

  • And then I moved to another company command,

  • I went to the Ranger Regiment

  • where it's a more elite light infantry force.

  • And the non, the sergeant's there are very, very capable.

  • When I got there in 1985,

  • they were very good at their jobs.

  • And they wouldn't tolerate micromanagement.

  • And so I got in there, and I was sort of hard charged

  • and I said, okay, here's what we're gonna do,

  • and I started micromanaging.

  • And I got this incredible pushback.

  • I mean, I got in your face kind of pushback,

  • because they'd seen a lot of company commanders,

  • and they weren't particularly impressed with me.

  • And they said, we don't operate that way.

  • We are competent to do this,

  • step back and let us do our jobs.

  • And you know, it sort of started my journey of saying,

  • you know, okay, and when they forced me to do that,

  • we performed far better.

  • And so that became, started an arc in my career

  • where I started understanding

  • that my role wasn't to do things.

  • It wasn't even really to make a lot of decisions,

  • it was to create an environment

  • when really competent people could be really good

  • at what they do.

  • You're sort of, then you do some years on the staff.

  • I went to the first Gulf War and things like that,

  • but the next big level is a battalion commander.

  • And that's about 600 soldiers.

  • You're a lieutenant colonel,

  • you got about 17 years in service.

  • And you've got a staff of about 35 officers

  • and then 600 soldiers, I had paratroopers

  • in my first battalion.

  • And now you kind of are the old man.

  • Now, you are pretty darn experienced.

  • You've got a staff to make things happen.

  • And yet you're still close enough to the 600 soldiers

  • where you know most of 'em by sight and name at least

  • and you can lead by example.

  • Most officers will tell you that's one of their favorite

  • experiences because it's a big enough organization

  • actually do a lot and you get to do

  • a lot of professional development.

  • But you're still young enough to be vigorous

  • and leading from the front and deeply involved in it.

  • Every rank after that, you start to get further

  • from the soldiers.

  • When you command a brigade, you get about 3000 soldiers.

  • And you've got battalion commanders between you and them,

  • and you're still the commander.

  • But the reality is, you're starting

  • to be a greater distance,

  • you're starting to be a resource provider,

  • you're starting to be someone who shapes policy.

  • And then as a general officer,

  • that's really what you do, you lead by inspiration

  • and guidance, but you are shaping things for the people

  • who actually get stuff done.

  • - And what's the difference, you know, people hear

  • about one-star, two-star, three-star, four-star general,

  • is there a difference between like,

  • what divides those lines?

  • - Yeah, that's a really fair question.

  • By law, the army usually has 303 general officers,

  • half of whom have to be one-stars, brigadier general.

  • So, there are the four levels of general officer

  • except in World War Two and they had five.

  • One-star general, typically,

  • you're about 23, 24 years in service,

  • you've been very successful because

  • it's a real eye of the needle.

  • They select 40 people to be generals each year

  • out of about 2,600 candidates.

  • So, only 40 people in the year group that enter in any year,

  • get up and ever make one-star.

  • One-stars are operational.

  • They serve on some staffs,

  • they're assistant division commanders.

  • Two-star commanders, major generals, command divisions,

  • they command that's about 15,000 people.

  • They are operational commanders.

  • And then although they don't talk about it,

  • there's really a big difference

  • between two-star generals and three,

  • because three-star generals is a pretty small group,

  • I think it's about 50 in the army, and they run big things.

  • They run corps of 40 and 50,000 people,

  • they run agencies in the government, they do huge jobs.

  • And then above that, there's this another big jump

  • to four-stars, and there are typically 12 to 14 four-stars.

  • And four-stars run the army completely

  • in the Defense Department.

  • Four-stars have immense power.

  • All of the general officers have a lot of power,

  • but it's kind of like the Richter scale,

  • your relative influence goes up much more dramatically

  • at the three and four-star level.

  • - Wow, no, I could ask more.

  • I mean, I'm learning a lot just about

  • how the military is structured.

  • I've always been fascinated by this.

  • But I wanna make sure I get some questions

  • from from YouTube and from Facebook.

  • There's a lot of people are asking a lot of good questions.

  • You know, so from Facebook, Jenny Evans,

  • and this is kind of a good balance

  • between your military world

  • and what you're now doing in the private sector.

  • How do we respond to poor leadership?

  • So, I guess this could be a situation where,

  • you know, maybe your leaders,

  • how do you manage around that?

  • Or maybe someone in your organization isn't leading well?

  • - Yeah, that's always one of the toughest questions.

  • If you're in an organization,

  • say you're in the middle of it,

  • and the leadership above you is not effective.

  • It doesn't motivate you

  • or it doesn't get the task done well.

  • It's really hard to march into your boss's office

  • and say, ma'am, or sir, you're not doing a good job.

  • You need to do X, X and X.

  • It's easy to say you do that.

  • But most of us don't receive that kind of visitor very well,

  • for a leader.

  • What I think we do is several things.

  • First is we personify being a good follower first,

  • because then leaders will appreciate you

  • and they'll listen to you more.

  • Second, reflect the leadership behaviors

  • you want to see in your bosses.

  • Don't try to make it a difference,

  • don't in front of the people in the organization,

  • don't try to make yourself look better than your boss.

  • 'Cause it's just, it's disrespectful and not helpful.

  • But then have the kind of conversations that say,

  • ma'am or sir, this is what I think might work better

  • as we approach something.

  • But again, I would tell you put yourself in their position.

  • Don't be self-righteous, leaders are under,

  • often under a lot of pressure,

  • maybe sometimes they don't see it.

  • If you say it in a way where they are receptive

  • when you're communicating,

  • I think you have a much better chance then,

  • you know, being more negative.

  • - I like that a lot.

  • Like, you don't wanna just immediately

  • you know, create a stereotype around someone,

  • climb the ladder of inference,

  • and then somehow become insubordinate

  • or try to embarrass them, that's just gonna make it worse.

  • Try to empathize a bit, but speak your mind

  • in an appropriate way.

  • So, a lot of questions about raising money kids here

  • are around leadership.

  • From YouTube, Wahkeena M,

  • and then Adnan Aziz is asking variations

  • of the same question.

  • What advice do you have to raise kids

  • who think for themselves and become leaders

  • versus someone who will only do what they are told?

  • - Yeah, well, you certainly want your children to think

  • for themselves 'cause you're not

  • gonna be there with 'em.

  • I would say the first thing about leading,

  • you know, raising kids is a form of leadership

  • is reflect the values that you want.

  • I've told people this before,

  • but I had this wonderful father

  • and mother in my entire childhood

  • I never saw either of 'em do anything dishonest.

  • I never saw 'em take a parking place they couldn't have.

  • I never saw 'em, you know, take a wink and a nod

  • and keep change when it was given back,

  • too much of it was given to 'em at a store.

  • That just everything I saw them do was be kind to people.

  • Be respectful to people and even to us as kids.

  • So, you start by being people that the kids admire

  • and would like to be like.

  • I think after that, when you've got your kids,

  • each kid is different.

  • I mean, that's the thing we have to understand.

  • My son, he grew up and he's very much his own guy.

  • And I was a soldier and I was, you know,

  • pretty focused and whatnot.

  • And in high school, he had shoulder-length hair.

  • And you know, I never gave him a hard time about it.

  • I laughed with him.

  • I said, sometimes I'm keeping pictures of this

  • and when you get older,

  • you know, we're gonna have a good fun,

  • and then he had a mohawk through college.

  • He was seven years getting a four-year degree.

  • He had a mohawk of different colors.

  • He was a guitarist, lead guitarist in a punk rock band,

  • terrible music.

  • But they were pretty successful, I mean, they made CDs

  • and toured and all, but what the way I did it was

  • I maintained the relationship the whole time.

  • I never tried to say, you should be a soldier.

  • I never tried to say, I just said, great.

  • You know, you're gonna do that.

  • You know, I joked about his hair,

  • but we just, I thought maintaining the relationship

  • was gonna be more important than anything else.

  • Now he works for the US government in an Intel agency,

  • you know, who knew?

  • And he's a father of three daughters.

  • So I say, life comes around to pay you back for your youth.

  • - Your son's youth sounds a little bit like some of mine.

  • I tried to grow shoulder-length hair,

  • but my it turned more into kind of a sphere, but anyway.

  • (laughing)

  • So, from YouTube, there's a sixth grade teacher,

  • Virginia Garrett asks, what is the most difficult part

  • of being a leader and what would you tell

  • a high school child about being a leader?

  • - Yeah, I got an easy answer for this.

  • The most disciplined part is self discipline.

  • If all of us took a piece of paper right now

  • and wrote down those things we think good leaders do,

  • we'd end up with some pretty similar lists.

  • And then if we all looked at that list and said,

  • what do we in our lives actually do?

  • Our lists, we'd probably have to strike a few things off

  • 'cause leadership is sometimes inconvenient.

  • It's sometimes frightening.

  • It's sometimes awkward.

  • And so, the difference, in my view, between good leaders

  • and not good leaders is almost never ability

  • or charisma or celebrity.

  • It's the self discipline to do

  • what you know you ought to do.

  • And because that's hard,

  • because it's all the time I used to, when I was a four-star,

  • you go around, we had 150,000 troops under my command

  • in Afghanistan, and I'd go around,

  • and I'd interact with a bunch of soldiers

  • that I would only see once, they'd only meet

  • the four-star one time, probably in their lives.

  • And I'd have these interactions.

  • And I would try very hard to remember that however

  • that interaction was, they were gonna write

  • or call home that night and tell their spouse about it.

  • If it was a good interaction,

  • if I treated 'em respectfully,

  • and you know, that sort of thing.

  • They'd write and say, hey,

  • I met General McChrystal, it was great.

  • If I act a fool, they're gonna call or write home

  • and they're not gonna say that,

  • they're gonna say something else.

  • And it's not my reputation I think about,

  • it's the reality that, that interaction is important enough

  • for them to call home about.

  • It's important enough for me to be disciplined with

  • so that I treat them the way they ought to be.

  • Now, I didn't always get it right, you get tired,

  • you get frustrated, you get angry,

  • and I interact with somebody and as soon as it was over,

  • I'd know I blew that.

  • And then at the end of the night,

  • you go and you're you're going to bed

  • and you carry this sense of guilt.

  • You say, I wasn't the leader I should have been today.

  • But you don't say, okay, that's the new normal.

  • I'm just gonna lapse into that,

  • what you do say I'm gonna try to do better tomorrow.

  • And that is, the best leaders I've known are never

  • so self-confident in their leadership

  • that they just kind of go around

  • and let everybody bask in it.

  • They agonize over it

  • and I think that's important.

  • - Yeah, I mean, what I get from that is two things:

  • Discipline, being able to do the things

  • that you intellectually know are right,

  • even if you don't want to do them

  • or if they're uncomfortable.

  • And then the second thing is to just be constantly

  • self-reflective and not rigid in who you are.

  • I guess you let your ego drive things

  • is what I'm hearing a theme throughout all of this.

  • This is a question about leadership

  • from actually from Poland, Rafael Molechoradisky asked,

  • what is the right balance between challenging people

  • and caring about them?

  • And yeah, this would apply to leadership

  • it might even apply to parenting.

  • - Yeah, they used to say in the military,

  • and I think it was Erwin Rommel who first said,

  • the best form of troop welfare is first class training.

  • And so what I would tell people is

  • you don't have to be easy on people.

  • You can be extraordinarily demanding.

  • You can push people hard,

  • you can make their life challenging,

  • and that can be the best thing you can do for 'em.

  • Now, you don't have to be a jerk about it.

  • You don't have to be ugly about it.

  • But you can force people to do things

  • they didn't think they could do.

  • In fact, the leaders I remember most fondly,

  • that I owe the most to,

  • were people who were actually pretty hard on me,

  • I always felt like I had to be really working hard

  • to meet their expectations.

  • But most of 'em also had a personality

  • where it was desperately important

  • for me to meet their expectations,

  • meaning I respected them enough that their approval

  • was something that mattered to me.

  • But I would never shy away,

  • sometimes we think we gotta be popular.

  • Sometimes we think we've gotta be rubbing 'em

  • on the belly, you know, people on the belly all the time

  • and saying don't work too hard, etc.?

  • No, we gotta get people ready for the real world.

  • And the real world is challenging.

  • And so, in the real world, they're gonna have to do it.

  • So I think we owe them that.

  • - Right, you can be hard on someone as long as they know

  • in the heart of hearts,

  • that you're doing it for what's best for them

  • versus your own ego

  • or you're just trying to not be good about it.

  • So a lot.

  • I mean, there's a ton of questions.

  • This is great.

  • There, you know, this is interesting.

  • Beth Otto from Facebook asks,

  • what was your biggest challenge as a leader

  • in your career and how did you overcome it?

  • - Yeah, that's an interesting question.

  • I had a lot of challenges.

  • I think the first was being a micromanager

  • and I kind of got people beat that out of me.

  • And that was good.

  • Another thing is, I am by nature very, very introverted.

  • And so because of that, I think if I die and go to hell,

  • it'll be an endless cocktail party

  • where you gotta make small talk.

  • So, for me, it is being comfortable engaging with people,

  • not, I'm usually better engaging with people I work with,

  • soldiers and all, because I know my role,

  • but it was something I had to work at.

  • I'm not naturally gregarious and back slapping

  • and hanging around a lot of people.

  • So, that was really important to me.

  • And then I also find that when I get tired,

  • I get short tempered.

  • And it's really, it's more impatient.

  • I never yell or do that kind of thing.

  • But what I do is I just get curt.

  • And if I get pushed hard, and I get that way,

  • I'll start being very short with people,

  • most of whom don't deserve it.

  • You know, I've been lucky that people work around me

  • remarkably tolerable about it,

  • because they'll know at a certain point, yeah,

  • he's getting tired, all right.

  • He's starting to be the bad stand.

  • But but it's important for me to

  • constantly remind myself about that.

  • - But were there times, just following off on that question,

  • especially since you talked about it

  • when you were in kind of the earlier ranks in the military.

  • But once you were, you know, a four-star general

  • and you were deciding on things

  • that could affect thousands of people's

  • or even geopolitics broadly,

  • were there times where you questioned yourself,

  • or you just really said,

  • I don't know if I'm making the right decision,

  • or you kind of stayed up at night and just said,

  • the consequences are so huge that it was paralyzing for you?

  • - Yeah, most nights.

  • You would make decisions where you sent people

  • into an operation where you know

  • a number of them are gonna get killed or wounded.

  • And you just wonder if you've done it right.

  • Those are difficult.

  • But sometimes others are even more difficult

  • when you've gotta fire somebody

  • that you've known a long time.

  • And they're a good person and they're working hard,

  • they're just not right for this.

  • I would agonize over those things tremendously.

  • I remember, it was a much, you know,

  • reported in the media when I was a four-star in Afghanistan.

  • I recommended to the president

  • that we deploy additional troops,

  • we expand our ability to operate

  • and the president approved it.

  • And I remember right after we approved that, you know,

  • I went into this reflective mood and I said, okay,

  • I've just asked for 40,000 more soldiers,

  • a percentage of whom are gonna be killed.

  • What did I do?

  • And you know, I was able to come back to this and say,

  • well, I used my best judgment.

  • I think it was right.

  • And I do think it was right to this day.

  • But I asked myself those kinds of question all the time,

  • would it have been easier or better not to have?

  • And it's not the heat or the public

  • or media pressure that bothers you,

  • it's the mirror pressure when you look in the mirror.

  • Did I do the right thing

  • that I felt was right, was it my best judgment?

  • Do I really believe that I did the right thing

  • for the right reason?

  • - And how do you, that's a fascinating tension for me,

  • you know, how do you maintain that humanity

  • where you're just like, wow, these are 40,000 lives,

  • you know, not only they're gonna leave their family,

  • but some of them might be killed or injured in other ways,

  • lifelong consequences.

  • And so the empathetic side, that could be almost paralyzing

  • to just think about that idea.

  • But then at the end of day, you have a job,

  • you have to be rational about it.

  • You have to be kind of calculating.

  • Do sometimes feel like you erred too much

  • on one side of that or the other?

  • - I think I always was thinking about that,

  • there were days when I thought I erred one way or another.

  • You know, Ulysses Grant was famous

  • for pushing the the Union Army so hard

  • and causing so many casualties,

  • he would not visit field hospitals.

  • Because when he went to the hospitals

  • and he saw the tremendous carnage

  • that he was responsible for,

  • he thought it made him lose his resolve.

  • And yet he had concluded that the best thing he could do

  • with the nation was lower his head and just go on and win,

  • even though the costs in the near term would be high.

  • I think he'd make those balances all the time.

  • Because particularly in the military,

  • the force exists to prosecute American policy.

  • And if that requires us to put it in harm's way,

  • that's what it's for.

  • You just have gotta balance it against being cavalier

  • or doing it for the wrong reasons or not having done

  • enough due diligence on it.

  • There are a number of things

  • that as a military professional,

  • you better be asking yourself, because people look to you.

  • And they ask you, do we need to do that?

  • And you, based on your experience,

  • have enough respect usually from that group

  • that they listen.

  • And so you need to be very careful about what you suggest.

  • - Yeah, no, this is fascinating.

  • We're already out of time, we could go on,

  • well, you know, hopefully we can get you on this again.

  • We have a lot of questions for the message board.

  • Actually, let's us finish with one question

  • which I think is relevant to the time we're living in

  • with you know, the social distancing and COVID and all that.

  • This is from YouTube, Brian 10 Eight asks,

  • what advice can you offer for projecting

  • calm controlled confidence in a crisis?

  • Yeah, and a lot of times you know that stuff's going on.

  • But people are looking at you to and your temperament

  • to figure out what's going on.

  • - In a firefight,

  • as soon as it starts, the privates look to the sergeants

  • to see how they ought to act.

  • If the privates haven't been in one before,

  • so they're looking to see what are the sergeants doing?

  • Should I be scared?

  • What should I do?

  • Even though they've been trained in what to do?

  • They're looking for example, that's what leaders should do.

  • So, I would say the first thing is show calm.

  • That doesn't mean you should minimize the problem.

  • You know, there's this tension that says,

  • should I tell my people how serious this really is?

  • Am I just gonna scare 'em?

  • Or should I project this overconfidence?

  • No, I would be very candid with the team,

  • say this is the situation.

  • However, we are committed to getting through this,

  • we are committed to succeeding in this effort,

  • following through, and provide inspiration, say there,

  • we're gonna get through this.

  • And after that, we're gonna go on

  • to what we were trying to do.

  • So, the leader provides this candor, grounding in reality,

  • provides this confident commitment that says,

  • like Franklin Roosevelt did in his first inaugural address,

  • he said, we're gonna implement this new deal.

  • We're gonna try a whole bunch of things

  • and some of 'em won't work.

  • We'll stop those, but we're gonna figure out what works

  • and go through it, and suddenly provided hope

  • to the American people.

  • You don't ever wanna say it's gonna be easier than

  • it's gonna be because then you lose your credibility

  • when it's not.

  • And so I think that leaders

  • play an incredible role during this period,

  • even though we might not have the right answer.

  • You know, we might say, hey,

  • I'm not sure what we ought to do.

  • But I know we're gonna figure it out.

  • And we're gonna stick with it

  • 'til we get to the place we need to be.

  • - Yeah, I'm ready to follow you, General McChrystal.

  • (laughing)

  • So, thank you so much.

  • I think this was, I mean, I can see from the message boards,

  • I mean, this was really useful for a lot of folks.

  • And thank you for joining us.

  • And hope we can do this again sometime soon.

  • - Well, you're kind to have me, Sal.

  • And thanks for all you guys do at the Khan Academy.

  • It's amazing.

  • - Right, thank you.

  • - Thanks.

  • - So thanks, everyone, for joining.

  • Hopefully you found that as interesting as I did,

  • obviously, you know, it's a shame that some of these

  • only last half an hour, a little bit more,

  • but we'll try to get more time

  • with all of these folks that I think

  • we can all learn a ton from.

  • I'll just remind you,

  • we're gonna be doing this every day.

  • And so come on next week.

  • We're gonna have a couple of sessions with just me.

  • I'm happy to answer any questions y'all have about anything.

  • And we're also going to have,

  • we have a pretty fun lineup.

  • We're getting a lot of momentum

  • with really incredible guests like we've had.

  • Obviously, we had Ray Dalio yesterday,

  • we have General Stan McChrystal today

  • and next week we continue with this cast

  • of really incredible folks that I think

  • we can all learn from.

  • I'll remind everyone again, we are not for profit.

  • If you're in a position to do so, please think about

  • donating to Khan Academy.

  • It's those philanthropic donations that allow us

  • to do what we're doing.

  • And we are running at a deficit right now,

  • especially as we're trying to support the world

  • in our own way through the school closures

  • that are going on right now.

  • But with that, hope everyone has a good and safe weekend

  • and I will see y'all next week.

- Hi everyone, Sal Khan here from Khan Academy.

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