Mark: Alright, Michelle. Quick role-play. You're a Navy SEAL commander. I'm your new recruit, a former CPA. What's your first order? Michelle: Simple. 'Forget your spreadsheets. Your new calculator is courage. Now go stare down that wolf.' Which, coincidentally, is exactly what today's book is about. Mark: That is a perfect summary. Today we are diving into Staring Down the Wolf: 7 Leadership Commitments That Forge Elite Teams by Mark Divine. Michelle: And this isn't just another leadership book. The author's background is what makes this so fascinating. Mark: Exactly. What's wild is that Divine wasn't a career military guy. He started out as a CPA with an MBA from NYU. He was on a very conventional path to success and then made a hard pivot to serve two decades as a Navy SEAL officer. Michelle: Wow. A CPA to a Navy SEAL. That’s not a career change, that’s a species change. What kind of leadership book does a guy like that even write? It can't be about optimizing quarterly reports. Mark: It’s absolutely not. He argues that in our modern, chaotic world, the most important battles aren't fought in the boardroom or on the battlefield. They're fought inside our own heads.

Michelle: Okay, I'm intrigued. A SEAL commander focused on internal battles. Where does he start? Mark: He starts with a concept the military coined in the 90s to describe the post-Cold War world: VUCA. It stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. Divine says this is now the permanent state of the business world, and our old leadership playbooks are useless against it. Michelle: VUCA. That sounds a lot like my Monday mornings. So, if the old rules don't work, what’s the new enemy we’re supposed to be fighting? Mark: That's the core of the book. The enemy isn't the competition or a market downturn. It's what he calls the 'fear wolf.' It's a metaphor for our own internal baggage—our deep-seated fears, our biases, our negative patterns that we're often completely blind to. Michelle: The 'fear wolf.' That sounds a little dramatic. Isn't that just a new-agey way of saying 'deal with your issues'? What makes this concept different? Mark: It's different because of the stakes. Divine argues that this isn't just about personal wellness; it's about leadership effectiveness. Your team feels your fear wolf, even if you don't. It's what makes you micromanage, avoid tough conversations, or chase validation instead of the mission. And he learned this the hard way. Michelle: Oh, I sense a story coming. Mark: A painful one. After he left the SEALs, he started the Coronado Brewing Company. He thought his SEAL training and leadership skills would guarantee success. But the venture failed spectacularly. Michelle: Wait, a Navy SEAL failed at starting a brewery? How? Mark: His fear wolf got him. He admits he had deep-seated codependent tendencies from his upbringing. When his business partners—who were also his family—started making bad decisions and diluting his equity, he didn't confront them. He avoided the conflict. He wanted to be the 'good guy.' Michelle: He was afraid of the judgment, of the family drama. Mark: Exactly. His fear of confrontation was stronger than his business sense. The partners ran a "scorched earth campaign" against him, and he ended up walking away from a business that became incredibly valuable, losing a ton of money and creating a huge family rift. He had all the external skills but was taken down by an internal enemy he hadn't faced. Michelle: That's brutal. And incredibly relatable. It shows that no amount of training matters if you haven't dealt with your own blind spots. So this 'fear wolf' is our personal collection of unresolved issues. Mark: Precisely. And he links this to another concept he calls the 'Five Plateaus of Development.' It's a framework for our worldview. Most people, he says, operate from the second, third, or fourth plateau—like the 'Protector' or the 'Achiever'—without ever realizing there's a higher, more integrated way of seeing the world. We're stuck inside the bottle, unable to read the label. Michelle: And the fear wolf is what keeps us stuck on our plateau, inside that bottle. Mark: That's the idea. You can't lead an elite team into a VUCA world if you're still fighting a shadow war with yourself. You have to stare down that wolf first.

Michelle: Okay, so we've identified the wolf. It's my own baggage, my fears, my outdated programming. How do we fight it? I'm guessing it's not with a silver bullet. Mark: No, it's with a training regimen. Divine lays out seven commitments, which are essentially character virtues you have to forge through daily practice. The very first one, the foundation for everything else, is Courage. Michelle: Courage. That makes sense for a SEAL. But what does that look like for, say, a project manager in a tech company? They're not storming a beach. Mark: Divine tells a story that I think perfectly illustrates what he means by courage, and it's not just about being fearless. It's about taking a stand when it matters. The story is from Mogadishu in 1993, the 'Black Hawk Down' incident. Michelle: I know that story. An absolute catastrophe. Mark: A complete disaster. A team of Army Rangers was pinned down under heavy fire. They called for backup from a Quick Reaction Force, or QRF, from an allied nation stationed at the UN compound. But the QRF refused to roll out. They said it was too risky. They were paralyzed by fear. Michelle: So they just left the Rangers to die? Mark: They were about to. But a small team of four special operators, led by a SEAL officer named Eric Olson, heard the call. They weren't even part of the primary mission. But Olson decided they couldn't just stand by. He and three others grabbed their gear, jumped in a Humvee, and drove straight into the firefight. Michelle: Wow. Just four of them. Mark: Just four. And their action had this incredible ripple effect. Seeing this tiny team drive into hell shamed the much larger QRF into action. They finally rolled out and joined the rescue. Olson’s courage wasn't about having no fear; it was about acting on a moral principle despite the fear. He took a stand. That's the kind of courage Divine is talking about. Michelle: That's a powerful example. It’s leadership by action, not by title. But again, how do you develop that without going through a literal war? Mark: He says you train for it incrementally. The 'crawl-walk-run' method. You create small, realistic challenges that push you just outside your comfort zone. You build your tolerance for risk and failure in training, so you're ready when a real crisis hits. Which brings us to the second commitment: Trust. Michelle: This seems like a big one. I've read some reviews of the book that praise its practicality but note it's best for people who are really willing to do the work, and building trust is hard work. Mark: It's the hardest. And Divine's take is counterintuitive. He says trust isn't built by being perfect. It's built by being transparent about your failures. He uses the story of Commander William McRaven, who would later lead the Bin Laden raid. Michelle: Another heavy hitter. Mark: Absolutely. Early in his command of SEAL Team Three, McRaven was observing a training exercise in Morro Bay, California. The surf was dangerously high. One platoon leader called off the mission, and McRaven questioned his lack of a backup plan. Later, another platoon was training with a Special Boat Unit. The boat leader was confident they could handle the surf. McRaven, despite his own reservations, decided to join them on the boat to test their limits. Michelle: I have a bad feeling about this. Mark: You should. A massive wave hit the boat, it capsized, and several people were seriously injured. It was a huge screw-up, and it was McRaven's call. There was a formal investigation. Michelle: Isn't that career suicide for a commander? Admitting you made a call that got your people hurt? Mark: That's what most corporate leaders would think. But McRaven did the opposite. He was completely transparent. He took full ownership of the decision. He didn't hide, he didn't blame. And because of that, the investigation cleared him, and it led to massive improvements in high-risk training. More importantly, his team's trust in him soared. Michelle: Because he was human? Because he didn't pretend to be infallible? Mark: Exactly. He showed humility. He proved that failure wasn't something to be hidden, but something to be learned from. That's how you build unbreakable trust. Not by being perfect, but by being authentic when you fail.

Mark: And this is where the book takes a turn I didn't expect. After all this intense focus on building yourself and your team into an elite unit, Divine introduces a final, eighth commitment. Michelle: An eighth commitment? I thought there were only seven. Mark: He saves it for the conclusion. It’s the commitment to a bigger mission. It's about taking all that strength you've forged and dedicating it to something larger than yourself, your team, or your company. Michelle: So it's about service. Mark: It's about world-centric service. And he tells this incredible story to drive it home. It's about a man named Damien Mander. Mander was an Australian special forces sniper who served 12 tours in Iraq. He saw so much violence and destruction that he came back completely disillusioned. Michelle: I can't even imagine. What does a person do after something like that? Mark: He felt lost. He went to Africa, looking for adventure, maybe some kind of meaning. And there, he witnessed a different kind of war: the war on wildlife. He saw the brutal reality of poaching—elephants and rhinos being slaughtered for their horns and tusks. But he also saw the incredible dedication of the park rangers trying to protect them. Michelle: So he found a new fight. Mark: He found his mission. He sold everything he owned and founded the International Anti-Poaching Foundation. At first, he used his special ops skills—running military-style operations against poachers. But it wasn't working. It just created more conflict with the local communities, who were often driven to poaching by poverty. Michelle: He was applying the old solution to a new problem. Mark: Exactly. He realized, as he puts it, that you can't solve these problems by investing in more violence. So he pivoted. He came up with a radical idea. He started a program called Akashinga, which means 'The Brave Ones' in the local language. He started recruiting and training women from the local villages to be anti-poaching rangers. Michelle: Women? In that kind of role? Mark: Yes. Many of them were survivors of domestic violence, orphans, or single mothers. He gave them the same elite training he'd received. And the results were astounding. Poaching in their patrol areas dropped by 80%. Because the women were from the community, they weren't seen as an occupying force. The money they earned went directly back into the villages, improving healthcare and education. They were protecting their own heritage. Michelle: Wow. So he went from a sniper in a war zone to a conservationist empowering women to save their own communities. That's... an incredible transformation. Mark: It's the ultimate example of the book's message. Mander had to stare down his own wolves—his trauma from the war, his disillusionment. He had to build his own courage, trust, and resilience. But he didn't stop there. He aligned all of that strength toward a mission that was about healing the world, not just winning a battle.

Michelle: That story really brings it all together. The whole journey Divine lays out... it's not just about becoming a better CEO or a more effective manager. Mark: Not at all. It starts with that internal battle against your 'fear wolf.' It's fought with the daily practice of the commitments—Courage, Trust, Respect, and the others. But the ultimate purpose is to prepare you for a bigger mission. It's about evolving from being self-focused to being world-focused. Michelle: It makes you wonder, what 'wolf' are we all avoiding, and what bigger mission are we missing out on because of it? The book has been praised for its practical exercises, and it seems like that's the real starting point. Mark: It is. The very first exercise in the book is called a 'Ruthless Self-Assessment.' It asks you to honestly identify the negative patterns holding you back. Maybe the first step for all of us is just to be brutally honest about one pattern we need to confront this week. Not next year, not next month. This week. Michelle: Stare down one small wolf, and see what happens. I like that. It feels manageable. Mark: It's how you start. One day at a time. Michelle: A powerful framework and a profound message. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.