What this means is that if an organism or system can self-organize, then, by definition it can also adapt. If the hypothetical students above lacked self-organization, then they would’ve needed guidance from an external authority figure. But they didn’t. Instead, they moved from a setting under which their teacher measured their performance, to one where their performance was measured by their own willingness to perform—they unlearned and relearned.
Furthermore, if such a self-organized group of students can create “something from nothing,” then such an act also speaks to the emergence of leadership.
The “L” in PAL: Leadership
Contrary to common belief, leadership is not indicative of one’s position, status, or authority. Just because you are defined as a “leader” through semantics, doesn’t mean you know how to lead. Leadership does not fall upon the shoulders of the person with the loudest voice, but rather the individual who possesses both the character and competence that inspires others. To lead is to express oneself authentically through a display of decisions and actions that inspire others to think or act in a certain way.
Here’s a quick way to test your leadership effectiveness. Ask yourself, “Will people follow me because of my position, or despite it?” If the answer is the former, sorry, but you still have work to do.
Here’s how leadership unravels under the PAL Model©:
Every individual possesses the four pillars. The degree to which his or her physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual capacities are filled, however, differs as some people are more emotionally charged while others stem from a long line mental meatheads. There are two pathways here that lead to adaptability. The first is person A, whose four pillars of performance are completely satiated such that he doesn’t need time to rest and renew; he’s ready for greater self-actualization. Self-actualization is the practice of realizing one’s potential. To the extent that his four pillars are already maxed out, however, the only possible next step is to push himself further; to change his current state and adapt to a new one.
Conversely, person B lacks mental fortitude and is emotionally unstable. His four pillars are not maximized which, by simple definition, indicates that adaptability is inherent given a person’s intrinsic need to self-actualize.
The very act of adapting personifies leadership, as leadership is defined as a behavior of self-expression that creates value for oneself and/or for others.
Key Takeaways
The physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual capacities require fulfillment based on any motivational theory
Whether you lack fulfillment in one capacity or are satiated across all four, the only possible next step is to change something in one way, shape, or form, and change entails adaptability.
“He Fucking Shot Me!”
A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought forces upon the object that he has set before him. He should make this purpose his supreme duty, and should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. This is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. Even if he fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character gained will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting point for future power and triumph.
—James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
—John F. Kennedy
Diyala Province, Iraq 2007
I stacked up on my shooting buddy who was on the right side of the doorway. His body language told me that he was ready for a leg squeeze, which was the green light to initiate clearance. He (I’ll just call him J) opened the door inward while standing on the hinge side. As the door opened, he slowly cleared the room only to see a woman run across from right to left. As the woman made her dash, the door opened more, so using the door as concealment, J bumped across to the other side so he could clear the dead space behind the door that he had not yet seen. As he moved across, I took up the side of the door where J had been and began my clearance. I swept around to the uncleared corner of the room but, before I got there, I noticed something wasn’t right.
The individual we were targeting was a known al Qaeda leader within Iraq’s Diyala province, which had become a recent hotbed of insurgency. Intelligence had driven our strike force to a small farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.
Peering just over the muzzle of my rifle while scanning the room, I could make something out through the corner of my eye that was unlike anything on any of the other targets we had done. There was a man-like figure in the corner and…the more I swung my muzzle toward that area…the more I realized that it was not just a man…but an insurgent standing there with an AK-47. He was standing there with an AK on his hip pointed at us—me, rather—just waiting to fire. At that moment, I knew he had the drop on me.
“Oh, shit!”
It’s amazing how fast the brain processes context. The hundreds of thousands of hours that I had trained had ingrained in me not only habits but also judgment, and at that very instant of seeing this insurgent out of my peripheral vision, I knew that I could not swing my muzzle over to him, acquire, aim, fire, and kill him faster than he could kill me. My muscle memory knew its capabilities, and I knew that if I tried then I would lose and I would be dead.
As I tried to tuck back behind the doorframe, the unknown figure blasted off a short burst from his AK and I immediately felt the impacts both on my rifle and my chest. I remember thinking, incredulously, “He fucking shot me!” In fact, my teammates laugh now because apparently, I actually said it aloud. I was more insulted and pissed off than anything because it was difficult to comprehend the gall of this guy! Didn’t he know who we were? We were SEAL Team freakin’—! That was the arrogance—and ignorance—with which I operated at the time, because I lacked the experience to know better. I did not respect the enemy or his dwelling, and I took being at “the door” for granted.
The first round hit me in the lower left corner of the front plate of my body armor—about an inch high and an inch left from blowing out my left hip, and a few inches above the Boss Baby Maker. The second 7.62 round shot off the forward pistol grip of my HK 416 where I was gripping it—in that tiny, quarter-of-an-inch area where the grip attaches to the Picatinny rail system. The third round hit the rail of my rifle, followed by another. All in all there were three bullet impacts on the rail of my gun and one on me. Thank God for people smarter than me who can engineer this sort of protection, I later thought to myself. Four rounds, all from approximately eight feet away, were spat from an Iraqi insurgent shooting an AK-47 shooting from his hip.
In that moment, after getting shot, I knew instantly that I had become a member of a certain club—a club that nobody else wanted to join.
It’s the club of wounded soldiers.
But, unlike someone who falls down and chooses to stay down, I chose to get back up and keep going, to keep coming back for more, again and again, deployment after deployment, hardship after hardship. More importantly, so did my teammates. While I’ve been in some pretty nauseating circumstances, so have my brothers in arms, and they chose to return to the fight, too.
Meanwhile, my shooting buddy had a clear vantage point from his side of the door, where he engaged and killed the man who had just tried to kill me. I was more angry than traumatized that this guy had just tried to take my life, but I got over it pretty quickly—about twelve seconds to be exact—and