Episode 1328: The Difference Between Command and Leadership with Robert W. Mixon, Jr.

The best leaders do more than give direction. They build the trust, clarity, and commitment that inspire people to succeed together. In this episode of Sharkpreneur, Seth Greene interviews Robert W. Mixon, Jr., owner of Level Five Associates Inc. and a Major General, USA (retired), who shares leadership lessons from more than three decades in the U. S. Army and from his transition into corporate leadership and consulting. He explains why authentic leadership requires vulnerability, listening, adaptability, and a culture of commitment rather than mere compliance. General Mixon also explores decision-making under uncertainty, tactical patience, organizational change, and the principles leaders can use to guide teams through increasingly complex environments. Key Takeaways: → Authenticity and vulnerability can distinguish exceptional leaders from purely transactional leaders. → Effective leaders listen to understand rather than simply waiting for a chance to respond. → A culture of commitment is more powerful than a culture of compliance. → Leaders need to regularly ask meaningful questions and assess organizational culture. → Becoming too attached to a plan can prevent leaders from recognizing changing conditions and from listening to valuable advice from their teams. At the time of his retirement from the Army in 2007, Major General (Ret) Robert W. Mixon, Jr., was Commanding General, Division West, First Army, and Fort Carson, Colorado, having previously commanded the 7th Infantry Division. Throughout his more than 30 years of active service, he commanded armor and cavalry units at every level, including platoon, company, battalion, and brigade. Robert also held critical staff positions, including serving as deputy executive assistant to General Colin Powell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Before assuming command of the 7th Infantry Division, he led the Army’s Task Force Modularity, an integrated team of highly skilled military and civilian experts charged with changing the Army’s force design while at war. After retiring, Robert joined Magnatag Visible Systems in Macedon, New York, as President. In 2009, he became Executive Vice President of CDS Monarch, a 501(c)(3) based in Webster, New York, that provides life and job transition services for over 1500 people with developmental disabilities. He also helped found the Warrior Salute Program for Veterans with PTSD and TBI. He and his wife moved to Melbourne, Florida, in 2020. Robert, co-author of the Amazon #1 bestseller Cows in the Living Room: Developing an Effective Strategic Plan and Sustaining It (2014) and author of the Amazon Best New Release We’re All In: The Journey to a World-Class Culture (2017), is an active blogger who publishes bi-weekly videos and blog posts. He has taught leadership in executive education programs at the Olin Business School of Washington University at St. Louis and the Cox Business School at Southern Methodist University. For five consecutive years, he has been selected for the Teaching Excellence Award at SMU. In December 2023, he published his latest book: The Power of Being All In: Why Today’s Transformative Times Demand Transformational Leadership. It immediately became an Amazon #1 Bestseller in 5 leadership categories. Connect With Robert: Website: https://robertmixon.substack.com https://robertmixon.substack.com/ https://www.levelfiveassociates.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LevelFiveAssociates LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/level-five-associates/ X: https://x.com/levelfiveassoc YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClp-MK0vsoRaI0yvMdZTs1A

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Shark Preneur Podcast with Kevin Harrington and Seth Green. Kevin Harrington is the inventor of the infomercial, one of the original sharks from the hit TV show Shark Tank, and has generated over $5 billion in TV and digital direct response sales. Seth Green is the world's first trusted authority on cutting-edge direct response marketing, a bestselling author, and the only three-time marketer of the year nominee. On the podcast, Kevin and Seth interview shark preneurs who share straight talk on what it takes to explode your business.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Forty-nine faces looked to him in triumph. Over the last 12 months, they had each taken turns and promoted his business for a week at a time, driving over $987,342 in revenue. What if you had a network of 50 centers of influence who promoted your business every week for a year? Grab your copy of the number one Amazon bestselling book, The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Business with a Podcast. It's 33% off the Amazon price by going to ultimatepodcastbook.com. Again, that website for 33% off the Amazon price is ultimatepodcastbook.com. Welcome to the podcast. This is your host Seth Green. Today I have the good fortune to be with Major General Robert Mixon, the retired US Army Major General and founder, co-founder of Level 5 Associates.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  He served more than 33 years in the Army. Thank you for your service. Commanded the 7th Infantry Division, worked for General Colin Powell when Colin Powell was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, led the Army's Task Force Modularity, which redesigned the Army Force structure while the country was at war, and then after retiring, moved into corporate leadership and later, leadership consulting. He's the author of We're All In and The Power of Being All In. General Mixon, thank you so much for joining us.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  Well, it's great to be here Seth and appreciate the opportunity to have a conversation today.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So, let's go back in time just a little bit. When you arrived at West Point as a young cadet, did you ever imagine that you'd become a Major General?

• 2:02Speaker 02

  No, not really Seth. I was, it was the six kids, you know, grew up in Georgia and North Carolina, and my aspiration was to go to college. And one of the ways that I could go to college was to be a football player. And Army provided me with the initial opportunity to pursue that dream. And so, you know, I stood on the plane at West Point on the 1st of July, 1970, dreaming of being an Army football player. And then whatever happened in conjunction with that, it turned out to be a sort of reverse engineering journey because I wasn't that good a football player and I ended up getting banged up pretty well. But the, but the experience of being a member of the Corps of Cadets was transformative

• 2:47Speaker 02

  in my life and began the journey that has brought me to this stage.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  What's the first leadership lesson the Army taught you that stayed with you your entire life?

• 2:59Speaker 02

  The first lesson that I learned in my Army journey was that you must do what you say you will do. And that level of commitment from a personal level was transformative for me professionally and personally and into my military and corporate life up to now.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Who was the best leader you served under and what made that person different?

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Well, certainly General Colin Powell was a Level 5 leader in my framework that John C. Maxwell and others have championed about, the levels of leadership. General Powell was a Level 5 leader in every respect because what you see is, what you saw is what you get. And he had two qualities Seth that were remarkable. First of all, he was authentic. And I think that's a characteristic of the best of the best. Next, he was vulnerable and he was willing to be vulnerable, which I think the greatest leaders in our history have had that, that level of vulnerability. Doesn't mean weakness. It means vulnerability.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  What's something about leadership at the highest levels of the military that us civilians would find surprising?

• 4:11Speaker 02

  I think one of the lessons that would be surprising to a lot of civilians or a number that I have encountered is that, you know, we are, we are focused on listening with the intent to understand, as Stephen Covey says, and not so much listening with the intent to reply. I think many civilian colleagues that I have met and worked with believed that the military was very transactional and information was passed, but not necessarily acknowledged as received and understood. And that's not the case, not the case at all.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  How did your leadership style change when you went from leading a platoon to commanding a division?

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Well, certainly the frontline leadership of a platoon leader was very direct. And, you know, I talked about in the book and other articles that I've written about getting your fingernails dirty and how Platoon Sergeant Mac Allen taught me that, you know, if you don't have dirty fingernails, Lieutenant, then you're not really leading the way your soldiers deserve to be led. Later on, as a division commander, I realized that I had to get my fingernails dirty in another context, and that was to resource the great men and women around me so that they could be all they could be, as we said in the Army then and we say now. And so, resourcing the pathway to excellence became my role as a general officer. Actually getting my fingernails dirty and being with the soldiers doing real work was

• 5:38Speaker 02

  what I did as a platoon leader.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  In the Army, you could give an order and people were expected to follow it. Yet, you've spent most of your post-military career teaching business leaders that compliance isn't enough. So, if command and control isn't enough in the Army, why would a CEO think it's enough in a company?

• 5:59Speaker 02

  I would hope that he or she wouldn't think that compliance is the right answer. I grew up in a culture of compliance about doing what you were told, when you were told to do it. I saw that later in my corporate life that that was still a standard in too many companies. I believe now we must live in a culture of commitment where people are all in. And that level of commitment is generated by listening with the intent to understand, by being both authentic and being vulnerable, and by setting the standard and being the standard.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  What's the difference between an employee who complies and one who's genuinely committed?

• 6:41Speaker 02

  An employee who complies is simply doing what he or she has been told to do, or they understand through some SOP to do. Leaders who are all in want to do the right thing when no one's looking, which is one of my Big Six principles, as you know Seth. They, they want this, the organization to succeed because they have bought into the greater good. Their personal welfare is now associated with the welfare of the organization. You know, we're tribal animals by nature, but belonging is a powerful motivator. And I believe that's where commitment lives. It lives in that buy-in, in that wanting to be the best and for all of us to be the best.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  How can a CEO or owner tell what type of culture they have?

• 7:29Speaker 02

  Well, there are a number of ways that I talk about in the book and other articles and Substack that my platform nowadays and LinkedIn. You know, one of the ways is you've got to, you've got to ask. You've got to learn to ask the right questions, to benchmark the culture of your organization. What is our ecosystem at this stage of the game? In my book, We're All In, I talked about five levels of culture, just about like five levels of leadership, as I mentioned earlier. You've got to go out and interrogate your, your organization, and I mean that in a positive way Seth. You've got to ask power questions to determine where your people see themselves in the ecosystem that we're in.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  And there are levels of culture, and if you don't go out and measure them and then seek to achieve more than you've got right now in terms of that buy-in, then your culture will decay. It won't improve.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  You, you talk about how you once ignored your staff's advice during a major training exercise. You stuck with your plan and you lost the battle.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  What happened?

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I, I had developed a plan, which I really thought was outstanding for some weird reason. And as a result, I became fiercely loyal to this plan. And there we were in a major training exercise. I was commander of a thousand soldiers and I had some really smart people that were trying to advise me that the enemy also has a vote. And, you know, when you have a great plan, which I think many of us in military and corporate included, you know, you become wedded to the plan and then truth be damned. And that's what happened to me. I became wedded to the plan. My staff tried to advise me that the enemy was going to have a vote and I was going to attack into their strength. And I did not listen with the intent to understand, you know, I violated one of my six principles and we promptly got our noses bloodied.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  And I admitted to my staff in the after-action review that this was indeed my fault.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  You've made decisions where the consequences were a lot greater than missing a quarterly earnings target. You've had life and death of many, many people on the line. What does the military teach you about making decisions when you don't have enough information?

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Well, I think we are always seeking certainty, Seth. But one of the qualities that the military taught me and a number of others is that you need to make a decision in time. And if you don't make the decision in time, then that lack of it can be fatal in its own right. So you have to generate enough information to make an informed decision, where you're taking some risk, but you're not gambling. But you can't wait for certainty. Because if you do wait for certainty, it's going to be too late in most cases.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  So that kind of segues into my next question. So you wrote in the book about tactical patience. What does that mean?

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Tactical patience is really a mindset. And it's a mindset that you accept the fact that the first report is almost always wrong. That sometimes, in fact, most times, if you let the situation develop to a certain point, then you can make an informed decision. Again, going back to that risk, you make an informed decision, but you're not just launching off. As we used to say in the Army, the fire-ready aim technique does not work. And tactical patience is not rooted in fire-ready aim. It's based in making an informed decision because you've garnered enough information to make an informed decision that has a reasonable chance of success.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  You were asked to help redesign the Army while the Army was fighting wars. How do you fundamentally change an organization while it still has to perform every day?

• 11:05Speaker 02

  This was a very difficult challenge, Seth, and I know many of the people who are watching and listening here have been there. You know, change is hard anyway. And a number of smart people have written about this, you know, the Eight Steps of Change and things like that. Changing the Army at war was, in many ways, opportune, because we were committed to a global campaign. And, you know, we wanted to be able to adapt. And as you know, all-in adaptive leadership is my touchstone. And I learned from a lot of smarter people, you know, I've made 99.5 of the leadership mistakes you could make. I'm pretty confident in that. And one of those in transforming the Army while at war

• 11:48Speaker 02

  was that, you know, there was no right answer, but there were some other options that people were willing to entertain because we were in the crucible of war. Otherwise, I think the traditional hidebound resistance to change, and that's true in any organization, would have been stronger to overcome than it was at that point in time.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  You left, when you left the Army and entered corporate America, what did you discover business leaders were getting completely wrong about leadership?

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Well, I think most business leaders that I encountered early on were very transactional. And they believed that it was my way or the highway. And the person that was in charge was the one who had all the good ideas. And when in doubt, he or she would simply say, it's my way or the highway. And if I'm the one that's, you know, writing paychecks, then I guess that makes me pretty much right. I believe that that's a fundamentally flawed approach. And, you know, half the Fortune 500 companies of 50 years ago no longer exist. And they no longer exist, Seth, because people were hidebound, and they didn't listen with the intent to understand. And they had a view of the world that was based on my way

• 12:58Speaker 02

  or the highway. And I saw that in the business world, and with very damaging effects, when people were stubborn to the point of being like I was in that first battle at the National Training Center in 1991.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  On the other hand, what did business teach you that the military hadn't?

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Well, business taught me a lot. And one of the lessons I have learned is that, you know, there's always a meeting after the meeting. And if you don't develop relationships with your peers and your superiors, as well as those that you are in charge of, then you're going to find that the meeting after the meeting usually ends badly in terms of accomplishing the intent of what we want to achieve in the organization. You're going to set the conditions for success before the meeting, during the meeting, and after the meeting. And in the corporate world, that dialogue is fundamental to success, to being faster, getting to market faster, having a better product, making the customers thrilled

• 13:56Speaker 02

  with the experience of dealing with you. Those are all products of those meetings.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  You use, as part of your Big Six leadership principles, you use the military concept of setting the azimuth. What does that mean for a CEO?

• 14:10Speaker 02

  It means four elements that you need to establish and nurture as a CEO. First of all is, what is our mission? Who are we? What do we do? Why do we do it? Second, what's our leader's intent? I don't like the idea of vision because I think it's too broad. Intent is more discreet. And I learned that from the military because it focused on the end state. What does success look like in some defined time parameter, right, in terms of our mission? Then what are the key tasks we have to perform for that success? And then what's our purpose? What's the why? The third component is the values. What do we believe in? And the fourth is the cultural behaviors that bring those values to life. A lot of times, we have esoteric values, but we don't have any behaviors to bring them to life.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  So if a CEO has the azimuth in his or her hip pocket, and they stay focused on it with regular quarterly reviews, and team buy-in, and not just dictating what it looks like, you can really make something happen.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  That's amazing. You have affected so many lives, both in and out of the military. What's your biggest challenge now?

• 15:12Speaker 02

  My biggest challenge now, Seth, is to tell the story of all-in adaptive leadership to business leaders and leaders of really all walks of life for the rest of the time I have available here on my watch. I believe that all-in adaptive leadership is the answer to the chaos that we're in. We're living in a world of chaos, politically, economically, business, socially, you name it. To be effective leaders in the chaos we're in, the Big Six principles should come to life in every leader's toolbag, toolbox. And that's what the message is I want to send.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Your passion is obvious. What do you like best about what you're doing?

• 15:55Speaker 02

  I really like helping people see themselves in the world around them in a more positive light. I think positivity is the hallmark of adaptive leadership. And if I can help leaders better understand themselves through building a personal leadership philosophy, through taking the Big Six and incorporating them with their teams and their organizations with that positive approach, then I think it's more of, it's more of an opportunity for all of us to live the premise that we can and we will.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Well, we know your time is incredibly valuable. We greatly appreciate you spending it with us. For our folks watching or listening, where is the best place for them to go to learn more about you and to get the book?

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Hey, if you could download Chapter One of the book, The Power of Being All-In Free, you can do that on my website, level5associates.com. I'd also invite you to come to my Substack platform, robertmixon.substack.com, and come join the All-In Adaptive Leadership Legion. We'd love to have you.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  All right. This has been Seth Green with Major General Robert Mixon. General Mixon, thank you again for joining us.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  Wonderful. Be part of the conversation, Seth, and I wish you continued success in your journey.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Thank you. And thank you, everybody, for watching or listening. We'll talk to you or see you next time.