What does your boardroom assembly have in frequent with a platoon of Navy SEALs dropping right into a conflict zone?
Apparently, greater than you’d suppose. Each contain the concern of the unknown, and each require a mastery of that uncertainty to succeed.
We sat down with Wealthy Diviney, a retired Navy SEAL commander turned entrepreneur and thought chief, to learn to stroll confidently into the unknown, whether or not it’s a significant life choice or the following stage of your profession.
From fight to company
Diviney accomplished 13 abroad deployments—11 in Iraq and Afghanistan—and served because the officer answerable for choice. In 2017, he put aside his fight boots, and in 2020, he stepped into totally different footwear as founding father of The Attributes, the place he teaches management workshops and delivers keynote speeches.
Working with the likes of Google, American Airways, the San Francisco 49ers, Zoom and the Financial institution of America, he transforms organizations utilizing the identical classes he picked up throughout his time within the SEALs. Turns on the market’s not a complete lot that’s totally different in terms of management, whether or not it’s in a conflict zone or an workplace—no less than, from a neuroscience perspective.
“Management is pretty ubiquitous in the best way it’s finished,” Diviney explains. “Excessive-performing groups exist in every single place…. They’re actually on the battlefield, they’re in sports activities arenas and so they’re within the enterprise world.”
Excelling when issues are going properly isn’t the measure of a high-performing group. The secret’s to take a look at how a group handles strain within the worst circumstances. This shut examination drew Diviney into his present position when transitioning from his Navy profession.
“As a Navy SEAL, there have been sure distinctions… that allowed us to do what we did: our skill to drop into chaos and carry out, our skill to do what most individuals suppose are pretty wonderful issues,” he explains. “It grew to become very fascinating to me to attempt to dissect what these components about us are—and had been—after which see if I may translate that into common, on a regular basis life.”
The way to grasp uncertainty
What units those that make the reduce as Navy SEALs aside, aside from the 70–85% attrition price?
Bodily prowess is actually a part of the image, however Diviney explains that Navy SEALs’ minds operate in a different way. It’s about how they deal with concern, a subject he delves additional into in his newest e book, Masters of Uncertainty.
Concern isn’t inherently unhealthy, regardless of how we are inclined to understand it. Diviney describes concern as a “human threat evaluation instrument,” referring to analysis carried out by Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, Ph.D.
“Concern is just a mixture of two issues… anxiousness plus uncertainty,” he explains. “What’s occurring in that surroundings is that your frontal lobe—your aware, decision-making mind—is beginning to take a again seat to your limbic mind, your emotional facet on the extremes. That is referred to as autonomic overload, or amygdala hijack.”
And that’s the place we keep, until we attempt to grasp it. “Uncertainty exists in our brains when three points of our surroundings are usually not current… length, pathway and final result (DPO),” he provides.
However there’s a technique to get again within the driver’s seat. “One of many instruments that we as Navy SEALs, or any high performers, use to step by means of these environments is… creating our personal DPOs,” he says. “That is finished by means of a course of that I name ‘transferring horizons.’ In different phrases, we choose one thing to concentrate on.”
Diviney explains this utilizing the analogy of working for hours whereas carrying heavy boats in the course of the evening. As a substitute of specializing in getting by means of all the evening, Diviney moved the horizon. “I keep in mind pondering to myself… ‘I’m simply going to concentrate on the tip of this sand berm…’ As quickly as I… created that DPO and picked that horizon, I created a objective in my head,” he says. “And so, after I acquired to that finish of that sand berm, [my brain gave me] a dopamine reward… [allowing] me to return again and do it once more and say, ‘OK, what’s my new horizon?’”
In case you’ve ever finished one thing related, you’re actualizing your neurology, in keeping with Diviney. “We’re bringing our frontal lobe on-line, and we’re starting to chunk the environment in a method that creates these DPOs and permits us to step by means of these environments,” he provides.
Attributes matter greater than expertise
This method is transferable to simply about each problem, together with main choices like succession planning—although it goes even additional than that. To decide on the proper chief, it is advisable look previous expertise and nil in on attributes, the character traits that come out in high-stress conditions.
“[Our] attributes present up probably the most visibly and viscerally throughout occasions of stress, problem and uncertainty,” Diviney explains. “It’s as a result of in these environments, [our] attributes inform us who we’re at our most uncooked.”
“Abilities inform us what’s. Attributes inform us what might be. Abilities present the ‘now,’ and attributes present potential,” he provides. “We angle towards expertise as a result of they’re simple to see, simple to measure… so we regularly overindex on what expertise are required. That’s when most individuals get in hassle with the hiring or succession course of: They rent the most effective, most expert particular person, and that particular person seems to not have… the qualities which can be required for truly doing the job.”
Diviney and his group have provide you with 41 attributes which can be innate to all folks, although our ranges of every attribute differ. “We have now an evaluation instrument that stacks your attributes out of your high one all the best way all the way down to your backside one,” he says. “[But] your high 5 attributes [and] your backside 5 attributes [are] not strengths and weaknesses. Your success as a human is as a lot due to your high 5 as your backside 5.”
Evolving management
Diviney explains that it’s essential for leaders to think about what an organization must get to the following stage, fairly than what’s labored to date. Appointing somebody similar to you, for instance, is likely to be the mistaken alternative for reaching this objective.
“Everyone knows that within the startup entrepreneurial part, what acquired an organization by means of the primary 5 years shouldn’t be essentially what’s going to get that firm from 12 months 5 to 12 months 15,” he says. “Oftentimes, the management has to alter as a result of it takes a unique chief to play the lengthy recreation.
“Now, you would possibly want somebody who’s a little bit bit extra affected person,” he provides, “somebody who is likely to be extra discerning, somebody who is likely to be extra deliberate… somebody who’s maybe extra persistent.”
No matter who they choose, the neatest thing leaders can do throughout a time of succession is to maintain their group within the loop as a lot as potential. “I feel transparency and communication [are] the important thing to serving to folks by means of uncertainty, problem and stress,” Diviney continues. “[In] SEAL groups, all the pieces… was about communication. We communicated seamlessly.”
Deciding on the proper attributes for management is daunting, particularly since attributes are, by their nature, dynamic and may be altered—although not with out appreciable effort. Diviney explains that adjusting the degrees of any attribute requires the data that it’s missing, the need or motivation to develop it (as a result of it’s not all the time mandatory) and at last, the trouble to hunt out environments that check the missing attribute, like driving in site visitors or selecting the longest strains within the grocery retailer on function to check their persistence.
“Human beings in any surroundings are continuously dialing up or dialing down our attributes,” he says. “The secret’s it takes aware thought for us to try this.”
Establishing an attribute dream group
Good management ought to perceive that altering an attribute isn’t all the time possible. If that is too troublesome, Diviney suggests a a lot simpler different: Depend on teammates with attributes which can be reverse to yours. By establishing a management group with different attributes, you may cowl all of your bases, it doesn’t matter what is thrown at you.
“We’re confronted with uncertainty, [the] problem of stress, each single day, and it’s actually about producing that behavior of introspection with ourselves and our teammates and serving to them perceive and determine that out for themselves,” Diviney explains.
“If we try this collectively as a group, one of many superpowers of the SEAL groups—or any high-performing group—is, ‘I don’t solely know my attributes, I do know the attributes of my teammates as properly,’” he provides. “And now you’re clicking, as a result of now precisely how [and] if you’re going to lean on folks, after they’re gonna lean on you, and also you’re absolutely clear and absolutely susceptible about… strengths and weaknesses, and the group begins to run at tremendous, tremendous excessive ranges.”
As we proceed to endure unsure, high-pressure conditions, the flexibility to navigate them with confidence is a necessity. Surviving chaos is one factor—however thriving in it? That’s the place the magic occurs.
In case you’re able to fine-tune your management expertise, register for the SUCCESS® Management Lab, the place Diviney presents “Outline Your Management Id,” which can allow you to make clear your management imaginative and prescient, model and strengths. Diviney is certainly one of 10 consultants on this 18-day digital course for rising leaders who need to lead with readability, affect and confidence. The hybrid expertise combines expert-led classes with dwell teaching to offer you sensible instruments to construct belief along with your group, navigate chaos and crises, form a wholesome, pushed work tradition, and extra.
This text initially appeared within the July 2025 problem of SUCCESS+ digital journal.
Picture courtesy of Wealthy Diviney
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