With special guest:
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Bram Connolly
… in conversation with Bill Kable
When Bram Connolly started writing his book The Commando Way: a Special Forces commander’s lessons for life, leadership and success he was thinking that he was an average type of man. The working title of the book was The Risk of Being Average.
However Bram soon realised that he is not your average man in the street in 21st Century Australia, just as anyone who hears his story will also very quickly realise. Bram is talking about jumping out of planes into enemy territory, being surrounded by people with weapons who wanted to kill him and at the same time inspiring a group of soldiers to put their life on the line to do their job. Clearly we are talking about a leader of men.
That is where we come in. Bram has a way of connecting with his audience by telling his stories in an everyday way which somehow allows you to insert yourself in the scene he describes.
The really interesting part is that Bram is then able to apply all that heroic experience to life in civilian clothes. Bram draws on all his experience to reveal for us what it is to be a leader. Bram believes that to be a good leader you first have to be a good follower. But to be a great leader you have to remember that being a good follower wasn’t easy.
We put to Bram that all our leaders would benefit from this book and that includes the leaders of the Western democracies as well as the coach of the football team or the manager in the factory. All of us can expect at some time in their life to be put in a situation where we have to be a leader. How will we respond?
Bram provides in his book The Commando Way some tried and true methods to deal with these situations. There are advantages to being scared but we can be clear headed and calm in working through a decision making process. Bram gives us personal instruction on OODA which stands for observe-orient-decide-act. This can be done quickly, in fact sometimes it has to be done quickly. This is just one tool you will pick up from hearing Bram speak in his honest, self-deprecating and entertaining way.
Bram Connolly
Bram Connolly DSM turned to writing after a 20-year career with the Australian Army, retiring from the Special Forces as a Major in 2011. He is the author of two works of fiction, The Fighting Season and Off Reservation. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for leadership in combat in Afghanistan in 2010. He has also served in Somalia and Timor, and was a founding member of the Tactical Assault Group (East). He has a highly successful weekly podcast WarriorU and is a popular corporate speaker.
Song selection by our guest: It’s My Life by Bon Jovi