What does your boardroom assembly have in frequent with a platoon of Navy SEALs dropping right into a struggle 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 discover ways to stroll confidently into the unknown, whether or not it’s a significant life determination 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 relation to management, whether or not it’s in a struggle zone or an workplace—not less than, from a neuroscience perspective.
“Management is pretty ubiquitous in the best way it’s performed,” 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 nicely isn’t the measure of a high-performing workforce. The secret’s to take a look at how a workforce 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 capacity to drop into chaos and carry out, our capacity to do what most individuals suppose are pretty superb issues,” he explains. “It grew to become very attention-grabbing to me to attempt to dissect what these parts about us are—and have been—after which see if I might translate that into common, on a regular basis life.”
How you can grasp uncertainty
What units those that make the lower as Navy SEALs aside, apart from the 70–85% attrition charge?
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.
Worry isn’t inherently unhealthy, regardless of how we are inclined to understand it. Diviney describes concern as a “human threat evaluation software,” referring to analysis performed by Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, Ph.D.
“Worry is solely a mixture of two issues… anxiousness plus uncertainty,” he explains. “What’s taking place in that setting 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 known as autonomic overload, or amygdala hijack.”
And that’s the place we keep, except we attempt to grasp it. “Uncertainty exists in our brains when three features of our surroundings should 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 via these environments is… creating our personal DPOs,” he says. “That is performed via 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 operating for hours whereas carrying heavy boats in the course of the night time. As an alternative of specializing in getting via all the night time, Diviney moved the horizon. “I bear 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 come back again and do it once more and say, ‘OK, what’s my new horizon?’”
Should you’ve ever performed one thing related, you’re actualizing your neurology, in line with Diviney. “We’re bringing our frontal lobe on-line, and we’re starting to chunk the environment in a means that creates these DPOs and permits us to step via these environments,” he provides.
Attributes matter greater than abilities
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 correct chief, it’s good to look previous abilities and nil in on attributes, the character traits that come out in high-stress conditions.
“[Our] attributes present up essentially the most visibly and viscerally throughout instances 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.”
“Expertise inform us what’s. Attributes inform us what might be. Expertise present the ‘now,’ and attributes present potential,” he provides. “We angle towards abilities as a result of they’re simple to see, simple to measure… so we frequently overindex on what abilities are required. That’s when most individuals get in hassle with the hiring or succession course of: They rent the very best, most expert individual, and that individual seems to not have… the qualities which can be required for really doing the job.”
Diviney and his workforce have provide you with 41 attributes which can be innate to all individuals, although our ranges of every attribute differ. “We’ve an evaluation software 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 contemplate what an organization must get to the following degree, slightly than what’s labored to this point. Appointing somebody similar to you, for instance, may be the mistaken selection for reaching this objective.
“Everyone knows that within the startup entrepreneurial section, what acquired an organization via the primary 5 years is just not essentially what’s going to get that firm from yr 5 to yr 15,” he says. “Oftentimes, the management has to alter as a result of it takes a unique chief to play the lengthy sport.
“Now, you may want somebody who’s somewhat bit extra affected person,” he provides, “somebody who may be extra discerning, somebody who may be extra deliberate… somebody who’s maybe extra persistent.”
No matter who they choose, the smartest thing leaders can do throughout a time of succession is to maintain their workforce within the loop as a lot as doable. “I believe transparency and communication [are] the important thing to serving to individuals via uncertainty, problem and stress,” Diviney continues. “[In] SEAL groups, the whole lot… was about communication. We communicated seamlessly.”
Deciding on the correct attributes for management is daunting, particularly since attributes are, by their nature, dynamic and might be altered—although not with out appreciable effort. Diviney explains that adjusting the degrees of any attribute requires the information that it’s missing, the need or motivation to develop it (as a result of it’s not all the time vital) and eventually, 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 goal to check their persistence.
“Human beings in any setting are continuously dialing up or dialing down our attributes,” he says. “The secret’s it takes aware thought for us to do this.”
Developing an attribute dream workforce
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 workforce with various attributes, you possibly can 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 do this collectively as a workforce, one of many superpowers of the SEAL groups—or any high-performing workforce—is, ‘I don’t solely know my attributes, I do know the attributes of my teammates as nicely,’” he provides. “And now you’re clicking, as a result of now you recognize precisely how [and] whenever you’re going to lean on individuals, after they’re gonna lean on you, and also you’re totally clear and totally susceptible about… strengths and weaknesses, and the workforce begins to run at tremendous, tremendous excessive ranges.”
As we proceed to endure unsure, high-pressure conditions, the power to navigate them with confidence is a necessity. Surviving chaos is one factor—however thriving in it? That’s the place the magic occurs.
Should you’re able to fine-tune your management abilities, register for the SUCCESS® Management Lab, the place Diviney presents “Outline Your Management Id,” which is able to provide help to make clear your management imaginative and prescient, fashion and strengths. Diviney is one in every of 10 specialists on this 18-day digital course for rising leaders who wish to lead with readability, affect and confidence. The hybrid expertise combines expert-led classes with dwell teaching to give you sensible instruments to construct belief along with your workforce, navigate chaos and crises, form a wholesome, pushed work tradition, and extra.
This text initially appeared within the July 2025 challenge of SUCCESS+ digital journal.
Photograph courtesy of Wealthy Diviney
