I immediately believed the five SOF Truths could hold up as a leadership doctrine for just about any organization, military or not. Below is my slightly amended version.

Humans are more important than hardware.

No matter what type of gadgets, technology, systems or equipment your organization has access to, people are always the number one resource. Since any organization’s mission requires the ability of a team to work together, leaders must focus on the human elements first. People and results are compatible, not competitors. As many SOF operators say, “Mission first, people always.” What this looks like practically speaking is taking time to understand one another’s challenges, needs and objectives in respectful and professional ways before, during and after stepping out.

Quality is better than quantity.

When it comes to leadership, quantity doesn’t necessarily lead to effectiveness. In fact, sometimes it can have the opposite effect. One organization I consulted had a director whose philosophy was that the more people who joined the (non profit-producing) department, the more they would be able to accomplish. The unfortunate result was the team had very little clarity on who was supposed to do what and quickly became a bloated expense to the organization. Eventually the workforce had to be cut back down to size. Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy frequently said to focus on getting better, and if you do, your customers will demand that you get bigger.

When it comes to building a leadership team, a small team of highly capable, focused and committed leaders is always preferable to a large group of generalists.

Leaders cannot be mass produced.

If highly effective leaders could be produced simply by taking a course, everyone would be enrolled on day one of each new job. The reality is that leadership development is time consuming, labor-intensive and takes quite a lot of individual attention. Sure, we need leadership programs, but as Jack Welch says, 70% of a leader’s role is developing the people around him or her. Leadership development depends on an organization’s leadership infrastructure. It also depends on the ability of effective leaders to impart their lessons learned to new leaders and work with them at each stage in the journey. Does this take longer? Absolutely. There is no shortcut when it comes to effective leadership development.

Competent leaders cannot be created after emergencies occur.

When the need for leadership arises, it’s too late to begin the development process. This requires a proactive approach to leader development, instead of reactive. How deep is your leadership bench? If your top leaders goes down, who will take their place? Being promoted into a new leadership role is not the time to learn to lead. That would be a miserable experience for leaders and followers alike! Each person needs to be prepared to perform and ready to lead no matter where they sit in an organization. Then, regardless of business as usual or crises, nothing will stand in the way of flawless execution.

Most operations require outside support.

This truth can be a hard one to accept, as was initially the case with the SOF community. But very rarely does any team act completely independently. If you are an Army special operator, you still need backup support. If you are a special agent, you still need professional staff support. If you are a lawyer, you still need a paralegal. If you are a loan officer, you still need an administrator. If you are a physician, you still need a nurse. All of these roles require additional built-in infrastructure in order to operate effectively. No one operation occurs in a vacuum. The presence of a support function shouldn’t reduce the accomplishment of the team on the front lines of any operation. The sooner we learn to acknowledge that everyone in the organization has a specific role that contributes to the success of ONE team with ONE mission, the easier it becomes for everyone to work together.

You can reference the original SOF Truths here on the Special Operations Command website.

Which SOF Truth does your organization need most right now?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

As enthralled as I was with the presentations, one poignant leadership lesson stood out which I knew I’d have to eventually share.  It came from a story Richard Melhart relayed to us.  Melhart was an American survivor of the Pan Am Flight 73 hijacking in 1986 in Karachi, Pakistan which resulted in 22 fatalities and over 150 casualties.  It was a horrific ordeal and ended with the passengers fleeing the plane through emergency exits as the four hijackers began an all-out assault following failed negotiations to acquire a new pilot for the grounded aircraft.

According to Melhart, the survivors stayed in the airport until the next morning when they were boarded onto a new flight since the one that had been hijacked was a connection for most of the passengers.  Imagine getting back on a plane that soon after such an experience!  After the passengers were reboarded, a group of mental health professionals entered the aircraft to deliver a message, and that is what I want to share with you because it has such a huge implication for resilience in the face of tragedy.  Here are the four things they shared, with my commentary:

The responsibility for recovery is your own. You have the power to overcome.

When adversity strikes (as it does for all of us), many times we have a tendency to focus on what happened to us instead of what we can do about what happened to us.  The ability to overcome isn’t out there.  It’s in here, where we control our response.  This is where I’m reminded of Viktor Frankl’s immortal words: “between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.”

Get back to normal quickly.

Taking time off can allow emotional trauma to fester.  This is one of the unfortunate realities we see with soldiers returning from tough overseas employments who are expected to immediately use all the leave time they’ve accrued and can’t find a productive way to employ their abundance of free time.  Activity aids the healing process.

Tell your story often and as soon as possible. Then write it down. In this way you will treat yourself.

When we recount and record our experience, we are forced to interpret it in our own words.  We openly acknowledge the damage that was done – perhaps to others, but more importantly, to ourselves.  We cannot change or heal what we do not acknowledge.

Realize there will be a way to use this situation positively at some point in the future.

Once again, this is speaks to the heart of Viktor Frankl’s message in his book Man’s Search For Meaning, which he wrote upon surviving the atrocities of the holocaust in Auschwitz.  Frankl believed that life is not primarily a quest for pleasure or power, but a quest for meaning.  Meaning can be found in many places, including (and sometimes especially) tragedy.  What a waste of an experience that was acquired at a high price if it cannot be employed to benefit others!

In no way do I want to hold myself up as an expert in overcoming tragedy.  My experience is nothing like the experience of anyone involved in the Pan Am flight 73 hijacking (or any other hijacking).  But it is a fact of life that everyone will experience adversity at some level.  As a leader, your ability endure to the end depends on your ability to overcome.  There are many examples of “one and done” leaders who eventually broke under the pressure of adversity.  The resilient ones are the ones who carry on despite the scars.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.