056: Interview with Army-Retired Colonel and Author David Fivecoat

I am sharing my interview with Army-Retired Colonel David Fivecoat, Managing Partner of The Fivecoat Consulting Group (thefivecoatconsultinggroup.com). David has a book coming out in July which discusses the leadership attribute “grit.” During the interview, we talked about leadership, dealing with adversity and leading change.

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Transcript

Stephen McLain: 0:05

This week I am sharing my interview with army retired colonel David five coat. David has a book coming out in July which discusses the leadership attributes print. During the interview we talked about leadership, dealing with adversity and leading change. Please enjoy this special interview with David five coat. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host Stephen McLain. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. I have an amazing guest this week on the podcast I talked with army retired colonel David five coat. Previously Colonel five coat served 24 years as an infantry officer. He led men and women during contingency operations in Kosovo, and Bosnia, three combat tours in Iraq and a combat tour commanding a battalion in Afghanistan. He culminated his service by overseeing the gender integration of the US Army's Ranger School. David is also the managing partner of the five code consulting group. And he has a book coming out in July called grow your grit, overcome obstacles thrive and accomplish your goals. During the interview, David shares his thoughts on leadership, leading change, overcoming adversity, and what he did that helped him have a successful career. So please enjoy this special interview with army retired colonel David five coat. Today on the finance leader podcast, I have a special guest, retired Army Colonel David five coat, who had an amazing military career as a triathlete, and started a consulting business last year at the start of the pandemic. Additionally, David has written a book called grow your grit, overcome obstacles, thrive and accomplish your goals. And it will be released in July. David, welcome to the finance leader podcast.

David Fivecoat: 2:09

Stephen, thanks for having me. I'm really excited about being on your podcast today.

Stephen McLain: 2:13

Yeah, thank you for being here. And as most of my listeners know, I'm also a retired Army officer. And we're going to try not to use too much army speak or acronyms or terminology. So if we do find ourselves doing that, we'll try to correct ourselves immediately.

David Fivecoat: 2:31

Sounds good, good ground rules.

Stephen McLain: 2:33

All right. So please tell me, please tell us about your background, and why you joined the army, you know, everyone who comes into the armed forces to the military, we kind of all have different reasons for joining. So please tell us about your background and why you decided to join the army.

David Fivecoat: 2:51

Yeah. Thanks, Stephen. So I grew up in Delaware, Ohio, which is right in the center, the center of the state, and my family really didn't have a huge military background. My dad had been a teacher, and then a manager at a warehouse. And but I love to read as a kid, we went to the Delaware County Public Library, I would check out as many books as I possibly could. And most of those books tended to be on World War Two history. And as you know, most of the generals in world war two were from the army, and most of them had attended West Point. And so I you know, fell in love with Eisenhower and patent and Bradley, and all those guys. And so I in the the love for military history continued as I as I got older. And when it came time to apply to colleges, I applied to West Point I got in early. And at that point time, I decided, I'm going to go to West Point, and I'm going to try try the army. So went to West Point and actually continued my love affair with military history. I graduated with a degree in military history. Of course, as you would expect, I wrote my senior paper on World War Two, and parachute jump into Sicily, really enjoyed my time at West Point and made made a lot of great friends there and then went on out into the army after that.

Stephen McLain: 4:06

Oh, that sounds great. Yeah, I like that. Like your story. I want to ask you a couple of questions, particularly about leadership, because that is what the audience of the finance leader podcast is really looking for. So give me some some key lessons, especially about leadership that you learn from your army career.

David Fivecoat: 4:26

Yeah, so I did 24 years in the Army. I was an infantry officer. I lead platoons companies, battalions and then eventually a brigade a platoon is about 40 people a company's about 120 battalion about 670 and a brigade is about was about 3000 soldiers throughout that time and reflecting on it. There's two sort of simple things that I take away from the army that continue to to influence me even today and then went a little bit more complex. The first one is organization. You know, the army is sort of an organizational type of group every night, I still get out my little notebook and write down my list of things to do. For the next day, I'm sure you carried around the green notebooks I carried around the green notebooks in the RV. I've transitioned to mole skins now in my post army life, but the the organization was the big thing that I took away from the second thing was the importance of daily physical fitness that still influences me today. I got up this morning and rode my bike with a couple of friends that influenced at the army had really had a big impact on me. The third one which is a little bit more complex, is the idea of overcoming adversity. And throughout the 24 years in the Army, I did numerous things from learning how to parachute from 1000 feet, and in dealing with my my fears, they're making it through Ranger School and overcoming the adversity of the North Georgia mountains in the swamps in Florida. And then while I was out during the, during my army career, I deployed to Kosovo, which was a war torn country, right after bombing campaign, and help to try to put that country back together. I then went to Bosnia, and it's a peacekeeping and hunting for some war criminals, and learned how that you have to take a longer, longer term approach to doing doing that. I did three deployments to Iraq, I did the invasion of Iraq, and then went back twice, twice more for more counterinsurgency operations. And then I led a battalion in Afghanistan for over a year doing counterinsurgency operations down in southeast Afghanistan. Each of those sort of long term challenges taught me how both myself in organizations overcome adversity and reach long term goals. We'll talk more about that as we get into grit. But that was the third big takeaway that I took away from the army.

Stephen McLain: 6:51

Awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah. And I definitely have my daily to do list my checklist. I think I got checklists, and calendars everywhere that I'm using constantly. Tell me about your transition from army life to a civilian career and what challenges you overcame?

David Fivecoat: 7:07

Yeah, so in 2017, after 24 years in the Army, I decided that it was time to transition to corporate America. And so for the folks that haven't been in the army, it tends to be about a decision that you make about a year out, there's a lot of preparation involved in it, you've got to make sure all your personnel stuff is straight, and your medical stuff is straight. And then you make the transition. And it's it was a big transition. You know, I'd been in the army as an institution for 28 years. I joke that I was institutionalized for 28 years. And there is an army way of doing things that you and I are both comfortable with. And we would probably revert right back to if we had the chance. But corporate America is different community I live in which is Columbus, Georgia, which is about an hour and a half south of Atlanta, it was the first time that I'd lived in a community. I've now lived out here for seven, seven years. But this is the second place the second longest, I've lived anywhere. I you know, the town I grew up in, I live for 18 years, I'm gonna eventually come to a point where I've lived in Columbus, Georgia, more than Delaware, Ohio. But that was a transition. I bought a house nother transition became part of the community, joined some nonprofits to help out here in the community. And then also started started a business. One of the big things that I see a lot of folks struggle with is identity. And I had an identity as a soldier, I had an identity as an officer, an infantry officer, and a whole bunch of things that I did on that side. But I realized that I had to change and evolve and continue to improve. And then a couple big things that really helped helped me make that transition was to be able to shift identities and continue to be an athlete. So I took one thing from the army and continued on. And so I raced triathlons, I've raced bike races, and I continue to you know, like we talked earlier, the daily physical fitness. And then I also worked really hard on on being a dad, I've got a she's now 11 year old daughter, and that helped me transition my identity. And as I started got my footing as a business consultant, and leadership trainer, those two things helped me transition the identity until I felt comfortable with this idea that hey, you know, I'm now an entrepreneur. I'm a small business owner. And I'm helping out companies get better with some of the things that I learned in the army and some of the things that I've learned since the army.

Stephen McLain: 9:33

No, that sounds great. That's a great story. you highlight grit, as a leadership attribute. Tell me what grit is and how we can apply it as we lead others.

David Fivecoat: 9:45

Yeah. So for the audience out there that's listening. I want you to take a second and think about whatever you're most proud of as your long term achievement. It could be running a marathon. It could be going to grad school. It could be meeting yearly sales goal, or even, you know, doing the numbers to make the annual report, whatever it is, there was an immense amount of hard work that went into that. And so that hard work goes into achieving a long term goal, I defined grit as the will to persevere to achieve a long term goal. And there's some sub components of that, that I think are critical in order to have that grit. So you can actually reach that long term goal. And I think the first thing is, you know, personal purpose is, is incredibly powerful perseverance, that idea of being able to put one foot in front of the other and keep grinding and out resilience, the idea that, hey, I'm gonna bounce back from the setback that happens along the way, you know, you may get that bad grade and great in grad school, or the numbers don't work out. And then you got to have some courage. And the way I define courage here is having the courage to manage your fear of failure, because most of the time when you're trying to achieve this long term goal, you're pushing yourself outside of the comfort zone, it's not something easy to do, and you've got to work pretty hard to accomplish it. So having that managing those fears and understanding, hey, I'm gonna have some fears and doubts. You know, you'd maybe you call it the imposter syndrome, whatever it is, for your folks. Maybe it's when they make the leap to CFO, but they've got to manage that fear and understand that it's going to happen, it's going to be there. And then finally, their motivation, where are you getting the motivation to continue to persevere in accomplish this long term goal?

Stephen McLain: 11:33

No, that's great. I believe that what you described, you know, grit as this leadership attribute of overcoming, you know, tough obstacles, I think it's something that the finance and accounting professionals can really use, especially when this group of people know the numbers. And they have to show leadership and influence around the organization, particularly with senior leaders, and trying to apply what's happening, really, what's really happening in the numbers, to how it applies to the strategies the organization wants to achieve. And sometimes that's a little difficult. So that's why I really like and really grasped on to this concept of grit that you have, just like you're saying, you know, it definitely takes,

David Fivecoat: 12:15

there's certain folks that can take it to that next level that can take the numbers and then apply it to whatever challenge that they're having, and has that vision and inability to communicate numbers in the strategy. There's a lot of companies out there that don't have that. And that's one of the interesting things that I've seen. Now post army, is there's some really good companies out there that can do it. And there's some companies that are out there that are struggling with it.

Stephen McLain: 12:38

No, I completely agree. I think that's why this is such a good concept. So taking that concept of grit, my next question takes me to a area of responsibility that you had when you were leading. And that is you had that incredible opportunity to help lead the integration of women into Army Ranger School. Now, please describe how you had to lead change and had to overcome some cultural obstacles to ensure that this was done successfully.

David Fivecoat: 13:09

Yeah. So so for the audience that doesn't know what Ranger School is. The Ranger School is the United States Army's premier small unit leader leadership course. It's a it's an incredibly gritty journey. It takes 61 days to actually make it through most Ranger students lose about 20 pounds because of the physical activity and limited food that they get there. The Ranger students are averaging about three to four hours of sleep a night. In some folks have drawn the analogy that Ranger School is kind of the MBA program for the army. It sets you apart, it gives you a little bit different skill set and experience. And it gives you some confidence. If you even if you don't graduate, you still gained a little bit of confidence that's that you did something tough. And you gave a shot at it. Ranger School has been in existence in the army since 1952. In 2015, there'd been about 77,000 male graduates, and there have been no women, the army decided to do a pilot program to see how the gender integration of Ranger School would go. And I was tasked with the responsibility to lead that change. Classic organizational change challenge, but there was an enormous amount of resistance to change culturally, from the army, and a lot of it was expressed by folks that were retired. However, that same sentiment was actually carried by folks that were on active duty. We had 19 women come to the first day of Ranger School, and eventually three women earned the Ranger tab. The first two graduated in August and the third graduated in October. All three women in 19 in the 19 women as well. exhibited an incredible amount of grit as they persevered and earned the Ranger tap which as you know, Steven is a little black and gold piece of cloth that you get to wear on your uniform. It but it is one of the things that does set you set you apart in a couple of things for your listeners that are thinking about leading organizational change. And in this instance, I think a couple of things that really helped us. First we we worked extremely hard to make sure it was a level playing field that the school was going to treat every single student the exact same, whether they came from whatever walk of life, whatever experienced officer enlisted, noncommissioned officer. And even we have some foreign students that attend every year. The second thing that was what what helped us be successful was to have one standard. And so we actually had to go back to the Department of the Army, and make sure that every standard was just the Ranger standard. And so it didn't matter if you were a man or a woman, you had to meet the exact same standards. And then the third thing that I think helped us out was it's better to do it with a group. And then an individual from your time in the army, you'll remember the principle of mass. And mass has some value in the army uses mass, really to mean like number of troops or tanks or planes. But in this case, the fact that 19 women came in as a cohort, in eventually three graduated was one of the things that helped make it successful. And so I encourage folks that are thinking about doing organizational change, rather than doing one offs or two offs. Do it with a larger group, for instance, I don't know if you know this, but in 1947, in during the integration of baseball, you know, the person that everybody is familiar with this, who broke the color barrier, Steven D. Do you know,

Stephen McLain: 16:56

I was Jackie Robinson,

David Fivecoat: 16:57

right? Jackie Robinson was the first person to play first black person to play Major League Baseball in 1947. But another four black men played baseball that year in the major league, right, their story doesn't come out as much they don't, because he was the he was the glass ceiling breaker. And he was the focus. But the fact that five black men played in baseball was the same sort of idea that, hey, you need to have a group larger than just one, if you're going to try to do some of this organizational change. The third thing, or the last thing that I'll say, for folks that are leading organizational change, you're gonna have people that resist change at all levels. And one of the things that my sergeant major and I did at the end of Ranger School was we went around and did townhall meetings, two levels down at every part of the organization. In in retrospect, if I had to do it over again, I would do that town hall meeting two levels down at the beginning, the middle and the end of any big organizational change piece that you're you're leading. And part of that is just to listen. So you can hear the concerns of your team that's out there, you know, on the front lines, dealing with some of the challenges and problems. So you can hear that so that can influence you. And then it's also to make sure that you're putting out a consistent message, because sometimes your resistors to change are your direct reports. And so sometimes that message that you think is getting filtered down, especially when you're trying to lead incredibly large cultural, cultural change, it may not be making it down in the way that you think it would be. And so it takes a lot of extra time, we had to go around to nine different organizations, sub sub organizations, and talk to them, it took us quite a while to do that. But if I had to do it over again, I would do it at the beginning, the middle and the end, because you want to make sure that those folks that are out there on the frontlines that are dealing with this change, have an opportunity to talk to you directly. And then you have the opportunity to make sure that you're putting out the message that you want to make sure it gets down to them.

Stephen McLain: 19:03

Now that's a great rundown, because change is constant, nothing stays static, we're going to have to deal with change constantly. And when you and I both had a long army career, and we saw many different changes over those years, you know, from the early 90s. And all the way into a you know, just a few years ago, and the army continues to change today. And that's the same with any organization and even even our own country in our world. We're constantly dealing with change, and we're just going to have to, you know, find a way to lead change, lead, lead people who are resistant to that change. So thank you for that great rundown on how to leading change. Yeah, yeah. All right. And I want to get into some questions around learning leadership. Now, why do you think learning leadership would be important to a new or want to be a team manager in finance and accounting, where we normally would focus on becoming that technical expert and not really trying to lead or learn how Have a lead. And then also what future impacts can learning leadership help with your career.

David Fivecoat: 20:05

So let's let's start with a definition of leadership. And that leadership is providing a purpose, direction and motivation to an organization towards some, some objective, something a little bit larger than yourself. I know you and I were both inculcated with this idea that everybody is a leader. And you want these folks to be thinking and being a leader, no matter what their role is, because you might have that good idea that actually solves a problem and prevents, you know, things going sideways, I do believe that everyone's a leader, even if you are the lowest accountant in an organization, because you've got to lead yourself, you've got to lead your kids or your family, you're gonna be a leader in that team, because you have some value within that team. And then you're also leader in the community. Now you can opt out to try to not be a leader in one of those realms. But I think everybody has some influence in whatever group that they're part of, you know, you just have to acknowledge that you're going to be a leader, I think the most important thing out of being a leader is the impact that you can have on the people around you, you know, I still get calls or texts or emails from people that I worked with, you know, a decade ago, that have gone on to continue to do great things. And, you know, it gives gives you a sense of pride that, hey, you know, I had a small influence on them. You know, they picked up some some tips and ideas and are maybe doing some, or maybe are not doing some things, because there's some things that I messed up. And so I feel that that idea of having that impact on those people, and then also on the organization, you know, both of us have left the army in our rearview mirror, the army has not called me back at all. But I know that I had an impact on on part of that organization, for for a good two decades. And so those things that provided me value, I think that and I just think that the leadership piece of it, if you opt out of being a leader, you don't have that same impact. And to me that that's one of those things that drives me forward.

Stephen McLain: 22:14

No, that's great. No, I completely agree with you. And especially around that everyone can be a leader, anyone that comes up with a, an idea or a way to do something better. And even those finance and accounting professionals that are just individual contributors. Now you're working with numbers, anytime you have a discussion with a senior leader, or somebody that can have influence in the organization, and you're helping them achieve a decision or reach a conclusion to something you are exhibiting leadership so completely agree.

David Fivecoat: 22:46

One of the things that I talked to, in my executive coaching side of things, is I talked to folks about leading upwards, you know, there's a bit of skill in leading your boss, because, you know, for instance, I give you an example in the Pentagon, which which shocked me, but when I first got there, but now I think, Oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. We would write emails for our boss, because the Brigadier General, that was our boss was so busy, that he didn't have time to craft the emails. And when I first got there, I was like, oh, man, you know, he can't even write his own email, you know, what, what, what the heck. But then, after watching him operate in the Pentagon, and the amount of demands on his time, I learned that, hey, if you can pre write an email for the boss, that they can just hit forward to the appropriate people that will open doors for you and make things happen, and do all these things that you want. There's a skill to that, though, and there are some some folks that never got it, and weren't that good at it. But I thought, I'd like to think that after two years of writing emails for my boss, I got a, I got decent at it.

Stephen McLain: 23:57

I completely agree. I did the same thing during my Pentagon tour. We all, you know, the team that I served on, we were trying to do our very best for our immediate boss, and then his boss, also trying to set them up for all the different things that all the meetings that they were in all day, because they were in meetings like 80 to 90% of their day. So completely agree.

David Fivecoat: 24:20

Yeah. And the boss that runs from meeting to meeting the meeting, you know, you can set them up for success to have an impact in that meeting, you know, with a little bit of background information, and it makes your life so much easier. But

Stephen McLain: 24:31

no, no, no, that's a great point about leading upwards. I like that. Thank you. So the next question that I want to, to ask you and please help the finance and accounting professionals out there, because this is a question that comes up is what do you think is the difference between successful leaders and unsuccessful ones? And what advice would you give new team managers to help them achieve long term success?

David Fivecoat: 24:57

Yeah, for the listeners out there. Think about the worst boss that you've ever had. And everybody's had one note I can think of, I've got three right now on the tip of my tongue. But think about what they did or didn't do. And everybody, you know, whether it was didn't treat people well or didn't manage their time well, or whatever, it's easy to figure out what not to do, it's a lot harder. And we all have those leaders that we worked for that you go, Hey, I'm never gonna do X, because that guy did it. Or that woman did it. And I hated that. And I have those things that I still do today, it's pretty tough to figure, it's pretty easy to figure out what not to do, it's a lot harder when you work for a great leader, to figure out what they're doing that makes them so successful and makes you work as a follower. A couple of things that I would I would throw out for the new leaders out there, they inventories motto is follow me. And this idea of leading by example, is one of those things that successful leaders all have, you do your best to set the example that you want your team to do it and you model that behavior. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is, the biggest decision that you have, as a leader at any level is how you spend your time. And it's worth going back over your calendar for two weeks, if you're a new leader, and look at exactly where you're spending your time. And I, I would break it down by hour or half hour or even 15 minute increments. And you're going to be amazed at the amount of time that you're spending on email or in meetings, and you're not doing that development or walking around and talking to folks that really makes the impact on folks as leaders. And so reviewing where and how you're spending your time is that is an extremely big decision as a leader and can have a huge impact. And so between leading by example, and reviewing how they spend their time, those are the two big things that I tell the new leaders to, to start off with.

Stephen McLain: 27:07

No, that sounds great. One of the things that I try to encourage and advocate for is for even the individual contributors, they tend to have each have certain metrics or responsibilities that they have, and go and leave and go partner with an expert out there that they have to work with, with a BA another department manager or another senior leader that owns that metric, and connect with them and work with them, and how to deliver and understand that metric completely from you know, from step one to tip 20. And being able to get out from what you're doing your normal, you know, daily grind, to get out there and partner with other people and get out and talk with people and then exude, you know, exhibit that leadership. And I think that of course, what you were you said is that difference between that successful and unsuccessful leader, you have written a book about grit. And please tell us about why you wrote it and who can benefit? And also where can we get it?

David Fivecoat: 28:07

Yeah. So late last fall, I was talking with a client, and we were discussing grit and how they could build grit in in their organization. And Angela Duckworth is a incredible professor at the University of Pennsylvania that's done a ton of research on grit. I've read her book. And I started reading other folks books on grit. And the one thing that I came away from all of the books was that they didn't really offer a real solid process to actually developing your grit. They spent a lot of time telling you what grit is. They measure it. They talk about folks that have a lot of it. But they don't talk to you about how to grow it. And I started thinking about my experiences in my careers, from triathlons to the army to combat to parachuting. And I was like, Hey, I might be able to offer something. And so I said, I said, Well, I'll, I'll try to test drive some of these ideas on my blog. And so I rolled out some of the ideal ideas, and they really resonated with the group. And I started by buckled down and I wrote all winner put together a book called grow your grit. It's available on Amazon, in both Kindle, softcover and hardcover, depending on when this comes out. The book will actually release on July 12. But it's available for pre order right now, and will continue to be up on on on Amazon

Stephen McLain: 29:33

all year. All right, that sounds great. I think that book can really benefit the audience that I have out there because we've talked about a number of things around grit and leadership. So So July 12, is when the book is coming out. Please tell us how my audience can reach you. Tell us about your website, your blog, and some of the services that you offer and how our client can reach you. Yeah,

David Fivecoat: 29:59

so Over the past several years, I've had the incredible opportunity to work with amazing companies across the United States and in all, all shapes and forms from West Coast startup to large company in the oil industry to a small manufacturing company in Canada. And each has their strengths and things that they need to work on. And to me, that's been extremely rewarding. And so my company, which is called the five code consulting group, or TF CG, we do executive coaching, keynote speeches, and leadership training. For any of the folks out in the audience, I'd love to see if I can help you and your team at all with what I do, and the ways to reach out in contact me, I'm out on LinkedIn, I do I cross post my blog posts on LinkedIn twice a week. So you'll see those on Mondays and Thursdays. My blog is up on my my website, which is the five coat Consulting Group calm. And my email is david dot five coat at the five coat consulting group.com would would love to engage with your audience. Even if I can't help them, I'll direct them to somebody that maybe Can I would love to talk to the folks that follow you on a regular basis and make this such a great podcast.

Stephen McLain: 31:17

Alright, David, Thank you so much. And I really appreciate you coming on to the podcast today. And I wish you the very best to you and also wish the best for the release of the book, and also for your Consulting Group going forward. Thank you so much for joining us today.

David Fivecoat: 31:35

Thanks for having me, Stephen. I really enjoyed it.

Stephen McLain: 31:42

What a great opportunity that was to speak with him. I really appreciate David coming on the podcast. We are all going to have to face adversity and have to lead change. So this is why this discussion was so important. Please go get David's book. I have read it. It's on Amazon. So please check it out. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader podcast. I'm dedicated to helping you grow your leadership, because it is leadership that will set you apart from your peers. You can get this episode wherever you find podcasts. Until next time, you can check out more resources at Stephen McLain calm and sign up for my updates so you don't miss an episode of the show. And now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you