INTRODUCTION
When I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see anything but dust. So much dust. I felt a searing pain in my legs, and I heard my guys in the back of the truck screaming and voices shouting on the radio, but it all felt muted and a million miles away because of the deafening ringing in my ears. I looked over to see my gunner in the turret—unconscious. But there was my driver, turning the key in the truck’s ignition over and over again, though it wouldn’t start. And just like that, it all came back to me.
The explosion had occurred on the commander’s side of the vehicle, just against my door. I had heard the pop of the initiator first, like the sound of a match strike, just before the big boom of the improvised explosive device (IED) that blew up our Humvee. It was the middle of the day in Baghdad—sunny, dry, felt like 140 degrees. The wind puffed on our faces like a hot blow-dryer, and our skin was cracked, hardened and darkened, as if it had been baked in the sun for months.
That afternoon, we were on a normal patrol, securing a portion of the city and trying to gather information on high-value targets from the local people. Halfway through our mission, we received word that another unit was under attack. We started moving immediately, taking the quickest route to them on a bypass we had never traveled before. The time we would save to get there was worth the risk—this was a calculated, thoughtful decision. These guys were in a bad firefight. It was when I started turning to get off the bypass that the IED hit our truck.
Suddenly, I heard a loud banging to my right, and through the swirling smoke and dust, I saw my medic’s face pressed up against the window, his palm banging against it over and over again. He was trying to peer inside to see if we were OK, to see if we were alive. The door was too mangled to open, so I screamed for him to get back in his vehicle. I knew the enemy often exploded one IED to bait help, just to explode a second one.
Moments later, I felt the medic’s vehicle hit the back of ours, pushing us forward, and finally,finally, our truck cranked to life again. But it wouldn’t go past idle, so the vehicle behind us inched us forward, little by little, as we limped our way out of the kill zone on four flat tires.
When we got to a safe area, we exited the vehicle to assess the damage. The trucks were all totaled. The bomb was so big that it had ruined all four vehicles we had on that patrol, bending the frame of the first truck and shooting off enough shrapnel to annihilate all the others. Thankfully, our group of men were in better shape than the trucks. The guys in the back of my truck had flesh wounds from shrapnel, my driver’s ears were bleeding, we were all concussed, and the door had slammed into my right leg so hard that I was barely able to walk for four weeks after that.
A piece of shrapnel about four inches long went through the door armor next to me. Instead of traveling up, it traveled down and went right through the seat that I was sitting on. This piece of metal cut through the paneling, ripped through the vehicle, and embedded itself into the frame. If that piece of shrapnel had gone up instead of down, if it had entered the door just two inches in any other direction, it would have sliced me in half at the waist. I’d be dead.
My guys were shaken up. I was shaken up. But there was no doubt—we were lucky to be alive.
Back on base, my platoon took some time to regroup, debrief the mission, and recenter ourselves. Then, we started reloading and getting ready for the next one. We were back out on patrol a few hours later. There was no rest. There was no period of relaxation and recuperation because we had gotten hit by an IED. We had to get right back out there and do our jobs. This was the mission. This was the expectation. Soldier on.
I’ll never forget this experience—the disorientation, the ringing in my ears, the dust and smoke, the screams of the guys in the back of my truck, the sheer chaos of it all. I’ll never forget the look in my guys’ eyes when we realized that we were all OK but were also punched with the reality that we would have to go right back out there and do it again, put ourselves in danger, and risk our lives, knowing what awaited us. I’ll never forget what it felt like to lead my soldiersthat day. I didn’t have another choice. I had to figure it out. I had to draw resilience from where I had it and pass that strength, pass that confidence, pass that belief on to my soldiers. I had to lead them back into the war zone—focused, calm, steady.
It was during these days, in the thick of combat, that I discovered many areas in my own life that I needed to work on. These, to this day, are some of my hardest-won leadership lessons, many of which you’ll hear in the pages to follow. I put in the work. I put in the preparation. I put in the time and whatever else was needed to strengthen my own leadership capabilities so that I could keep saving my soldiers’ lives, keep taking care of them, and keep ensuring they were ready and motivated for the battle before us.
I begin with this story because I want you to understand that I know what it feels like to dig deep—even when you don’t want to—to find courage, to find strength in others, to find love and gratitude in so much abundance that it trumps fear . . . every time. I know what it feels like to believe that you can accomplishanything so that when things do get hard, you can lead through it. I know how bad things can get. And I also know what leaders are capable of.
And that’s just it—anybody can lead through chaos. Anybody can lead through attacks on their life. But it takes intentionality; it takes health; it takes a certain level of unselfishness to put yourself in a position to do that. To lead from a place of internal steadiness so that you can show up for everyone else—externally—as a truly steady leader who can guide their people through even the fiercest of storms.
For me, this posture of a steady leader was hard-earned. It
