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General Stan McChrystal is known for deep and successful change management during his years in top military posts, including as commander of US and International Security Assistance Forces Afghanistan, where he led more than 150,000 troops from 45 countries.
Since 2011, he’s advised business leaders as CEO and chairman of McChrystal Group. We caught up with him in mid-January to hear his views on the impact of political changes in Washington, return-to-office initiatives, AI, and other urgent leadership issues. Here are excerpts from our conversation, edited for space and clarity:
In your own work and discussions with clients, what are the biggest challenges everyone is wrestling with right now?
The one that seems to be pervasive is uncertainty. I’m not sure it’s new. If you go back to almost any period, leaders would cite uncertainty about the marketplace or about geopolitics or about the workforce—it just seems to be heightened now. There seems to be a political uncertainty in America. Although our economy is doing pretty well, there seems to be a lack of confidence that the economy is going to continue to do well in the international sphere, and there’s also a lack of confidence in the generational continuum. When I was young, in the 1960s, people thought that the up-and-coming generation was rebellious and, of course, over Vietnam and different issues, there was a lot of friction. But over time people found that generations age and there’s more continuity and consistency than there is difference. I’m not sure people believe that now. I think they believe there’s a greater difference and that increases some angst.
Especially given your military leadership background, what’s your advice to leaders in the face of uncertainty?
You can’t show false confidence. The worst thing a leader can do is get up and say it’s not raining when it’s raining. But at the same time, a leader can hold in his mind a little bit like admiral Stockdale, who was of course the Medal of Honor winner from the Hanoi Hilton. He had the ‘Stockdale paradox‘ and that paradox said that you have to admit the circumstances that you are in and—if you have no control over them, they may be very difficult—at the same time be able to hold a confidence that in the end, in the long run, you’ll succeed. Organizations really do well to have leaders who understand that idea.
You can get in front of your group, you can say, ‘It’s tough right now. There are other periods when it will be tough. But over the long haul, if we do the right things, if we stay focused, if we stay loyal to each other, it’s going to come out.’ And if you look at a leader who’s got a track record, then particularly younger members of the team can look and say, ‘That person’s been through a lot, and so they know what they’re talking about.’
Are there any particular leadership or workplace issues that you and your clients are most focused on as the new administration comes in that you feel most have the most potential impact or relevance?
I see concern over things like tariffs and taxes and whatnot, and organizations will all, for the most part, be able to adapt to those. Some will have to decide whether they’re going to onshore production. Those are big decisions that can’t be made real quickly, but they will deal.
There are some others that are more subtle, but important. One might be where are things like DEI going to fit in. Granted, some of the popular terminology is going to be tamped down. The putting pronouns on every email and whatnot may recede. But, the idea that people get equal pay for equal work, the idea that people get a fair shot, the idea that we are going to have a workplace where everybody can feel respected and comfortable. I don’t think those are fads. Those are a trend that is moving in a direction and I hope people will say, ‘Okay, I hear we may not call it DEI, but we’re going to do the right thing and we’re going to make people want to work here.’ So I think that those would be important.
The other, which is more of a hot button to a lot of people, is the return to office. I just saw some stuff about the president-elect wanting to mandate people in the government returning to office.
Everybody’s got a view on that and they’re all over the map. I’m the CEO of a small company and I’m also an aging guy. I want everybody in the office. I want them all lined up at 8:30 or nine o’clock in the morning. I want to see them smiling, faces working hard, and that’s just my natural proclivity. Now, that’s not realistic in a world connected as we are. But, when I get up in the morning, that’s my dream. Companies are going to have to work with that because they’re going to have to work with how do we actually build the interpersonal relationships? How do we get the synergy between what makes humans a value add to the process? There’s an argument that says that the first jobs that AI will come after are remote white-collar jobs because they are the most replicable by artificial intelligence. I tell people at my company, ‘Make yourself indispensable.’ That will be one issue that people do a lot of talking about, but I think it’s an ongoing evolution. People say, ‘What’s the right answer?’ I say, ‘I don’t know, but the market will decide.’ The market will figure out because companies will try different things and whatever’s most effective over time will become the norm simply because that’s the capitalist system
You’re saying that your own experience supports the idea that people should be in the office five days a week and there are advantages to that, but you’re open to seeing where the market, where talent and business performance nets out on the question?
Yes. I’m not at all sure five days a week is necessary. But the way I try to describe it to my team is you’ve got to be together enough so that essential human interaction is built on trust and familiarity and affection for each other. Then things happen so much more efficiently. Conversations that always take 30 minutes on a Teams or Zoom call can be three minutes by the coffee pot because you’ve got that ability. We need to marry those together and we need to convince the workforce. It’s not either or. It is human beings trying to make each other and the team more effective, and we tend to think, ‘I do my job well.’ Well, most of us don’t have a job. Most of us are part of a team and our job is to be a good part of that team. If we think that way, sometimes we view it differently.
I’ve heard you previously talk about trust between leaders and workers, and one of the things you said is the heat of a battle is not the time to build trust with a colleague. We’re seeing a decline in worker trust in leaders in business leaders. Are you concerned about that? And what are you telling leaders to do about it?
Yes, I’m very concerned about it because it’s harder than it sounds.
I believe a lot in transparency. A wise person once told me, ‘A person will be forgiven for not being the leader they should be, but they won’t be forgiven for not being the leader they claim to be.’ A genuineness combined with more transparency than we had to have in the past says, ‘Here I am. I’m doing my best. It isn’t perfect, but take a look at this.’ You’ll get a certain amount of grace in the organization just from that.
Trust comes from interaction. The more they see you, the more they hear you, the more they see the decisions you make, the more they understand the context of those decisions, it gives you the ability to build up a track record of trust. That’s when we get to the comment you referred to: When you’re in a crisis and you tell everybody, ‘Shut up, I need everybody to go over there.’ You don’t want 15 people going, ‘Why?’ You want a bunch of people going, ‘Okay, I’ll go over there. I know he’ll either explain it to me or he thinks that’s the best thing to do.’ There are times you have to do that.
You work with leaders across different sizes and types of organizations. Is there an area that stands out for you that pretty much everyone could work on and improve?
The most obvious one is just communication. I’ve seen some corporate leaders who are magnificent at it and they communicate often and they use a combination of techniques. They put out memos and things which are policies, but then they talk to people, they go down and listen. They talk to people. They’re constantly interacting. They’re explaining, they are trying to make sure that everybody’s on board.
That’s probably the biggest part of a leader’s job now because if a leader’s doing it right, they don’t make very many decisions. They make two or three about budget strategy, key hires at the very highest level, and then the rest of the time they are making sure that the organization is as aligned as possible on the strategy of the organization, and that means values, that means execution and that sort of thing. The best leaders I’ve seen don’t have to be master communicators from the standpoint of they’re really good on CNBC. They have to be genuine and relentless at that communication because whenever you don’t, it comes back to haunt you.
Read a full transcript of our conversation, including more on best practices for managing multiple generations and how to lead teams as AI spreads throughout the workplace.