Leadership lessons from General (Retired) Stanley McChrystal - What did you take away from his talk?

General (Retired) Stanley McChrystal gives a TED Talk on military lessons learned from his 34 years of service. This is a great watch for all members of the military and also has application to the civilian workforce as well.

The first few minutes of the talk is dedicated to what it is like for a paratrooper going through the airborne timeline. It is quite entertaining as he must simplify everything for the audience to grasp exactly what we go through. This is quite amusing for the fellow paratroopers out there although everyone should get a good laugh out of it, airborne or not.

Following this short vignette he goes into many of the lessons he learned as a senior leader within the United State Army. He talks to the importance of training, transparent leadership, being adaptive, building trust, being open to listening and learning from subordinates (reverse mentorship), inversion of expertise, and the list goes on.

I will take some of the concepts discussed in this short video and apply it to my own leadership philosophy.

What did you take away from GEN (RET) McChrystal's talk? I find talks such as this more effective than if I were to read the same information in an article.