Leadership: 7 Special Forces Operator traits you should adopt

If you are in charge of a team in an organization or a company, you know how hard it is to motivate, influence and lead people. You might know what you want(and that is not even so often the case), you might tell them what you want (the best way you can), but it does not always seem to work...

Luckily, you are looking for solutions and you want to learn how you could do better as a manager.

In this article, we offer you to look at the leadership traits a Special Forces Operator implemented in his journey from a simple citizen to a trained and respected Special Forces Team Leader.

Why should/could you learn from Special Forces soldiers?

Special Forces teams often have to operate in secrecy behind enemy lines. When this happens, they are cut off from their chain of command and that means that they have to rely on themselves to take though decisions and adapt to high stake/risk situations with potentially deadly consequences. 

Special Forces Operators are therefore selected for not only out of the ordinary physical attributes, but equally for mental and psychological traits that they naturally possess. They are then taken through the best technical and psychological trainings possible to ensure they can perform at their very best in life threatening situations and stay true to the reputation of their elite units. 

Let’s discover the 7 leadership traits that Chris, a recently retired Special Forces Operator developed in his career and through his deployments in war zones like Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya…And see how you can also develop these leadership skills.

1      Responsibility

As stated by retired Navy SEAL Jocko Willink in his book “Extreme Ownership”, you need to take responsibility for what happens under your command. You cannot point fingers at people when something goes wrong.

“Everything that happens under my command is my fault, my responsibility”says Chris. “Maybe I could not choose the people who joined my team. Maybe they don’t have the right skills and that creates problems. But it is then my responsibility to train them so they reach the level needed to perform.”

Unfortunately, when you work for a big organization or company, it is easy to be seduced by the idea of finding faults by other people or blaming others, other departments and play political games to cover your ass…

It is harder to take responsibility for what happens and to learn from your mistakes, but if you want your team members to respect you, this is the only way. How do you think they are likely to feel if you blame them when something does not go according to your plan?

2      Hard work

? Everything good in my life today is the result of hard work ? says Tim Kennedy, former Special Operator, US Army Ranger.

There are no two ways about it. You need to raise your standards and aim at being the best you can. “Every time I am facing a task, or trying to learn something new, I am trying to be the best at it, to be better than anybody else.” Says Chris. “It is important to be a good professional and to know what you are talking about, to be reliable, for you, for the others and for the unit you represent”. “In Iraq, it was 50°C during the day, so I used to wake up really early to train and would do a second training session after the sun went down. Not everybody would do that, but I considered it to be a minimum.”

Nowadays we hear so much about the importance of collaboration, working as a team, that we loose track of the importance of competing and being hard on yourself. 

Yes, of course helping others and working as a team is important, but we also need to recognize the importance of challenging and competing with your standards in order to create the best version of yourself. Hard work will be extremely rewarding and a source of self-confidence that will benefit everybody around you as well.

“I always get to work 30 minutes before the official start of the day. People say that I lost 30 minutes of my life, I don’t see it like this”.

Set high standards for yourself and for the people around you…

3      Knowing yourself

When I started my journey in the Special Forces Group, I was not a good leader. I didn’t know it either. Retrospectively, when I look back, I made a lot of mistakes, but I learned about myself and developed later the skills needed to be a better leader. 

This is one of the most important aspects of the selection process of the Special Forces. It is physical of course, but it is mostly a mental journey. They break the applicants down physically, but at the end of the day, it is the mental aspect that matters. 

“There were stronger guys than me, physically. Better athletes, faster, bigger, but they quit during the selection, and I didn’t. We started of with 100 guys, and only 6 of us remained at the end. I can still remember looking at the phone they gave me to call if I wanted to quit. But I told myself I had invested too much; we (my wife and I) had sacrificed too much to pick up the phone and call to say I wanted to drop out selection. At the end of the process, you are beaten down, physically and mentally broken…But you know yourself, you know how you might react if you face difficult situations, if you get scarred or too tired.”

Luckily, you don’t need to go through Special Forces selection to take this ancient advice to heart. “Know yourself” as Socrates used to say hundreds of years ago. 

When you know yourself, you know how you react, what you need to feel good, what you are good at, not so good at…And you can take your place in the group knowing how to better interact with others for the good of the mission, you know how to better serve the common purpose.

Know yourself!

4      Humility

When you think about Special Forces soldiers, humility is probably not the first word that comes to your mind. Indeed, Special Forces units are often populated by type A personalities, strong egos, “won’t quit” type of people…

Still, one of the most important qualities you could develop as a SF operator is humility.

“There is so much to learn, so many things that you need to know, that you have to remain humble. Sometimes I see people that have a diploma, and think that they know it all. Everything changes all the time, and you need to stay up to date. Only by remaining humble can you keep an open mind for new things.” Says Chris.

This is a common issue with young Special Forces Operators. Because of the strength of character and determination that is needed to pass through selection, you often meet a “I know it all now, I can do it all” attitude. As Ant Middleton (former SBS Special Forces Operator and TV show “SAS, who dares wins” phenomenon) would say; “you think that after selection, you are there, you are the best…but you are just another new guy for the team”.

To make sure egos don’t explode after having passed selection, a Special Forces Operator of the Belgian DSU told me that as a “new guy”, you are told to “stay in the corner, keep your mouth shut and listen.”

? Humility is the best value for a great leader ? continues Chris. ? The best operators I have met were also the more humble. They had seen so much, lived through really hard situations, and yet, were discreet and reserved about it. This was extremely inspiring! Sometimes, it is better to take a step back and let somebody else leads for the good of the mission instead of fighting to be recognized as “the boss” which will in fact make you loose your credibility in your team?.

Remain humble, continue learning, never think that you have arrived, that you know it all…

5      Flexibility

As explained earlier in this article, this is one of the most important skill that a Special Forces Operator has to develop. As they say: ? no plan survives first contact with the enemy ?. Or as Mike Tyson use to say: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”:-)

Senior Special Forces Operators that supervise the selection process will observe the candidates during the various activities to assess many different traits. Among them, resilience, mental and physical strength, creativity and flexibility…

The young recruits will be asked to perform tasks that require creativity, flexibility, problem solving abilities…

Because, when they are dropped in enemy territories, SF Operators cannot rely on their chain of command to decide what to do if they face unexpected situations. They need to be flexible, adaptive if they want to survive and accomplish the mission.

But to be flexible, paradoxically, requires one important thing says Chris: “You need to anticipate everything that can be anticipated. Of course, being flexible is a great skill, but the more you plan, the easier it becomes to adapt if you have to ?.

So here, the skill is double: You need to plan and anticipate as much as possible, and then you need to be able to adapt to what happens. Success in Special Forces Operations comes from both proper planning and anticipation and flexibility in the execution.

Identify what is your natural tendency. Are you more of a planner that struggles with the dread of unexpected change? Then, learn to let go of your plan and try to be more flexible.

Or you are more of a “let’s see what happens” type of guy/girl. Then learn to plan and research as much as you can before hand…

6      Empathy

Have you already seen how ? job title ? does not equal ? great leader ??

I am sure you all have had ? a boss ? that was the antithesis of leadership. They bark orders, they act ‘do what I say, don’t watch what I do ?, they can’t seem to build relationships with their team members… And as a result, they can’t get anybody to follow their lead for long.

On the other hand, you also know great leaders that always manage to take the time to build strong relationships with their employees. Resulting in committed and motivated team members.

“As a Team Leader, you have to know what each member of your team is capable of. As a conductor of an orchestra, you can’t play all the instruments, but you know how each musician can contribute to the overall piece of music”.

"It means that you can place the right person at the right place. If you know that your sniper has a new gun that is capable of shooting at a 1.200 meters target, you can place him properly on the battlefield. But it also means that you need to know your team members personally. You need to know their personal struggles, what is going on in their lives, happy moments, difficult moments… You need to build trust and for that, you need to listen to them, be available for them, remain approachable. This is why I believe it is important to train with your men as much as possible…” says Chris. 

This is unfortunately what we too often see in big organizations or companies. People work in silos, by departments; managers don’t go on the floor or in the warehouse enough resulting in a lack of respect going both ways.

If you are in charge of a team, make sure you get to know your team members personally and spend time with them, ? in the trenches ? as much as you can. This will build trust and respect between you and them.

7      Taking initiatives

I still vividly remember my first leadership class ever. Back in my employee’s days, we had a 2 days seminar on “how to manage your team better”. On the second day, we each received a piece of paper with an odd statement. “I can hear the neighbor’s cat, I smell coffee nearby, my house is the 2nd one of the street, my front door is red.”…We all looked at each others trying to understand what was going on, but the trainer was silent. Finally, I stood up and proposed that we all shared what we had received. I could not take this chaos any longer and I knew that if we all put what we had individually received together, we might be able to solve this riddle. I started to structure the different sentences with the help of my fellow students slowly finding out that it was in fact a map of a street. Suddenly, one of my colleagues erupted loudly and said: “who do you think you are Pierre-Yves? The boss of this team maybe?”. I was so shocked and surprised that I immediately sat back down. Chaos resumed, until another student of our class started to continue the process that I had started to finally indeed, complete the map of our street.

The lessons I took that day were invaluable to me.

1)  Leadership is: when you see that things are chaotic around you, and you think you can fix the situation, you need to stand and take matters in your own hands.

2)  When you do so, you take the risk to be shot at ! Don’t sit back down…!

“We were in charge of the protection of a diplomat in a very unstable middle east country.”Chris explains. “He wanted to go to a location near the beach to get some rest and spend time on the beach, so I went there to do a reconnaissance before hand. When I got there with my teammates, we saw that a local militia occupied the place. There were guns, rockets, grenades lying around…They were friendly to us, but I sensed that this was not the best idea and that the whole situation was potentially dangerous. Unfortunately, I was not in charge of the team, and my team leader of the time decided to positively answer to the diplomat’s request for some beach time. We were there for a short moment when a bullet shot from the hills landed near us. This was the sign that we were indeed not welcomed there. I wanted my team leader to stand up to the diplomat and tell him that we had to go, but he didn’t have the courage to do so. When we go shot at for the second time, I could not just wait there and witness the situation degenerating. So I pushed my superior to convince him to get to the cars so we could extract ourselves from this situation before we took in casualties. It was risky because if we had a problem on the way back, this could have backfired at me and politically this attitude was not really well perceived, but I sensed I had to do it to be able to bring everybody home safe. ?.

Sometimes, being a leader means that, in a chaotic situation, you are going to have to take risks. Take a decision, make a statement… You have no guarantees that it will go smoothly and that you will not have to face some unwanted consequences. But being a leader, also means you will not wait for someone else to stand up and take matters in his/her own hands…Indeed, what if nobody does…?

I hope that you liked this article and that you see you can adopt or develop some of the leadership skills and traits that Chris learned in his Special Forces journey and make them your own…

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