ABOUT THIS EPISODE
I sat down with Tony Lena, retired Navy SEAL Command Master Chief and General Manager of Virginia High Performance, where he and I work together daily with active duty and retired Navy SEALs. I've learned more about leadership from this man in casual conversation than I have from most books, so I figured it was time to actually put it on record.
Tony spent 27 years in the teams, leading 500 personnel in garrison and commanding multi-branch task forces overseas. He never planned to stay that long. He just never found a reason to leave until he did.
In this episode Tony breaks down the leadership framework he built across three decades, why high performance organizations don't have accountability systems they have self-accountability, the difference between being a laser beam and a light bulb as a leader, and why the best lessons he learned came from the worst leaders he had. He talks about the transition out of the teams, the identity crisis that follows, and how he found purpose again doing what we do every day at VHP.
We also get into school safety and security, the SEAL teams' culture of attrition and what that does to a person over 27 years, veteran suicide, and what actually happens inside the huddle program at VHP where operators from Vietnam to present day sit in the same room and finally start talking.
Tony is the kind of guy that everyone in the teams knows and nobody outside of it has ever heard of. That's by design. But what he has to say is worth hearing.
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