We dont want to blind our speakers. And if you will put all of your cell phones on silent. That would be wonderful. And if you want to post anything on social media, we would love for you to tag at politics rose and at each of you underscore events. So we can see your stuff and possibly reposted. My name at britney and i am the partner Events Manager at politics and prose and i first just want to thank all of you for coming out on a friday night for tonight his event. Tonight is the joint effort its our venue partner George Washington university and we are also pleased to bring you jim mattison conversation its david brooks tonight. Before we get to tonight his program i just want to tell you of a few other Exciting Events we have coming up in partnership its gw. So next week on september 11, we have an event its malcolm and bill at listener for his new book talking its strangers which will be part of a live recording of sam sanders podcast on npr. On september 12, right here we have Samantha Power as well as Josh Campbell its james comey on september 16th and on september 24th danny smith will be here for her memoir. Tickets for all of those events are on sale now so i hope to see you guys at some of those this month. Now into the event that your guys are all looking for. Secretary jim mattison is the Pacific North west name and that serve more than four decades as a marine and freight officer. Following two years as secretary of defense, he returned the northwest and is now the familys distinguished fellow at the hoovers in hoovers and cupboards and chaos at the account of medicine storied career. From wideranging leadership roles in three wars to ultimately commanding a quarter of a million troops across the middle east. Along the way, he recounts his foundational experiences of a leader. Exacting the lessons he had learned about the nature of war fighting and peacemaking. The importance of allies in the strategic dilemmas now facing our nation. It makes it clear why america must return to a strategic footing so it cannot just continue winning battles but fighting floors. Manis divides his book into three parts. Direct leadership, executive leadership and strategic leadership. In the first part he recalls his Early Experiences leaving rains in the battle. When he news his troops as well as his own brothers. In the second part, he explores what it means what it means to command thousand of troops how to adapt your leadership style to ensure your intent at understood by your most junior troops that they can forum their own mission. In the third part, metas describes the challenges and techniques of leadership at the strategic level. Where military leaders reconcile grim realities but political leaders human aspirations. Complexity rains and the consequences of an wooden his are severe. Even catastrophic. The cast is the memoir of the live of war fighting and lifelong learning. Following along from Marine Recruit to fourstar general. It is the journey about learning to lead in a story about how he through constant study in action, develop a unique leadership philosophy that made him into the man he at today. General matus will be in conversation tonight its david brooks. Political and cultural commentator who writes for the New York Times. And he at also currently a commentator on cbs news hour npr his all Things Considered in nbcs meet the press. He at the author his of but was in paradise the mu upper class and how they got there. And on Paradise Drive how we live now and always have in future debts. In march 2011, he came out its his third book, the social animal, the hidden sources of love character and achievement. It was the number one New York Times bestseller and his latest, the second mountain, will not stop flying off the shelves at politics and prose since it was a motion april. Please help me welcome to the stage david brooks and secretary jim mattis. [applause] [inaudible conversation] obviously the campaign has begun. [laughter] there are many surprises. I love right reading the book. There are many surprises, the first surprise was that you are hitchhiking around the west at age 13. Give us that basic facts about your founding but to give us the emotional tone of your founding what kind of house to drop in. Its the military was preparing you for the marine corps. Jim i was not brought up in a military founding at all. We like being outdoors. We camp the weekends. My mother and father traveled the world as young people. My father was a merchant marine for 15 years. My mother was in the army g2 crypto clerk. It went off to south africa and worked there for the world was a place to be explored. They didnt move i was hitchhiking at first. They figured out. It was more trusting time. You could hitchhike around america and be picked up by the crosscountry Truck Drivers in the afternoon and not knowing where you would stop at night or by the night nurse coming off duty early in the morning and pick you up to drive you to the next town. It was a great education. David you are not the most devoted student. Either high school or in the past for college. But you are perhaps rhonda the hardest working people i have ever met someone did that kick in. Jim ive never thought at what ive done it at a lot of work. Just enjoyment of being around people. It was sort of thing right wanted to be outdoors and wanted to go explore the world and i loved books. But i dont think i was much of a student because it seems to structure to me. Everyone has a different way of learning. But one thing when he joined the marines, everybody has to read certain books. Its a reading list. Then we do make folders and then even another whole new reading list and we do make sergeant here at another reading list. As matteroffactly generally general, they get handed a new reading list to go back to work. They werent really interested in your midlife crisis we do said i didnt have time to do the reading. They were very adamant about it. Little by little, i think frankly, i didnt like a lot of the jobs in the marines, i loved being around young infantrymen who would do the dirtiest jobs in the most dangerous jobs and i learned to hate mine fields at age 20 one but i loved being around Young Marines who would crawl into minefields fighting and biting the look still in their teens probing and looking for something that they didnt want to find. If they missed it they move that there but he could get killed and thats the only reason i stuck around that lowpaying outfit for 40 odd years. I just loved being around the young sailors marines who made up the units in the infantry. David this book at almost a leveler to the marine corps. When they are in its the trips especially infantry, you feel your happiness in the pros. And when they are often wrestles nato, a little less. So what did marine corps takes young men and women who were hanging around the 711 at high school or college and doing all of this stuff remote men and women do and it turns them into something different. How does that happen. Jim first of all they are volunteers. Whatever damage it did to our country, i came in at a time when i probably wouldve joined, i doubt i wouldve joined the marines had not been for the draft. You had to go. Thats all there was to it. You could try a duck out of it but you had your edit even a young age you dont want to look like your a boy you will be a man. So when off to canada, 1969 the vietnam war was going on. We thought we would never be able to come home for her brother his wedding. We didnt think theyd come home as heroes a few years later but they did. You signup and you go off to do your patriotic duty and thats where i found that the marines really valued excellence. Ive never once had running the Obstacle Course against another platoon and our whole cartoon running through to see you could get through fastest and i realized i was going to beat this guy. Physical things came easy to make. So i didnt give it everything i need it to, i still beat him. And you get to the end and you climb the rope and you touch the top and drop down any enterprise. The sergeant lit into me and said you were giving it a hundred percent. I am fed up its you. Communist assented to the marine force. He went all over me. Let it let me make it clear to you young man. We do give a hundred percent, i will be a hundred percent satisfied. You give 99 percent i will be a hundred percent dissatisfied. When someone at in your face like that, you get the idea. To start learning about its the word commitment means. Your flight from then on. Its a beach for your founding to community or wherever you go, that stays its you. Its a very formative experience. David there at one passage in here we said on government mice. Personal sensitivities are irrelevant. If there is a mistake. When i read that sentence, i thought the last 60 years of American Culture just crumbled. Because we in most workplaces in most schools personal sensitivities not making people feel bad, is the high priority. You think that comes at the expense of excellent supplies or does the marine or just his own place. Jim is the good. That the fact at on the battlefield there at no trophy for second place much less ninth place. So youve got to win. So you brought up its this very grim set of skills by people who have been there and done it and theyre not really interested in reasons why it cannot happen. Youve got to simply carry it through. A Pretty Simple carries you along at you move everybody beside you at also going to be there when trouble looms. They will come even at the risk of their lives so its humbling. Ed at energizing to. They are now something bigger than yourself. I think that is really what expands you. It does not shrink you to be part of an organization. It expands you to have that sense. David earlier in your career, you brent recruitment i think in your home. Sounds like you were working 80 hour weeks or some long amount. And there at always who did not want to do that. I challenged you and said maybe in a founding, i did it and you busted him and ended his career. What about worklife balance. Jim there is a worklife balance but what its gotta be at everybody at doing everything they can so you dont dove more of the work on someone else. In this case i made clear that the young man that you could be a marine i could be a quitter. But you can be both. Im not going to care more about your career at the new care. You tell me what you want to be. You are the marine i will coach you i will be its you all the way through. And he decided to test it. The thing to remember at especially its the number of young very good students. David and i got account before walked out. You always want to help people. They wont even waste my time as a couch and thats really what i did. About 95 percent of my time in the marines, i was a coach. But i will not waste my time coaching somebody who its not humble. It at worthless. You might as well just give it up. If theyre not humble enough to recognize they need coaching, if they are not and im not that humble, then really you cant help them. In any organization if you become a leader, you dont get to be a leader because you have a rank on your caller or a title your business card, your juniors make you a leader. They determine if you are a leader or not. They will boast whether or not you are a leader. On the battlefield, they will follow 19 yearold if the 28 yearold captain doesnt move abc at doing. Just remember to that at times even jesus of nazareth had rhonda 12 go to crack on him. [laughter] you can maintain a firing squad. You gotta get rid of them. [laughter]. David i miss that part of the gospel. [laughter] lets go to coaching. Connor who was his mentor, did you have somebody that that was my coach, thats the guy you may be who i am. Jim i had to think about who my mentors were. I and this tour, look back on things. The whole. Was to pass on lessons that i had learned and what works for me. For you to consider not to follow blindly but to say does this make sense to you. When they are in the infantry, you are oceans rise or fall on your ncos. They are living out there its 40 sailors and marines and they are in the mud and you have no Better Living conditions. The last officer and a chain of command so you must represent all of the orders that come down. To those in our line of her going to the intimate killing zone. The close quarters battle. In my first platoon sergeant was an immigrant from the british in the caribbean. His name was wayne johnson, corporal wayne johnson. Senior enlisted guy out of 40 sailors and marines and he was only 20 one years old and i was when one years old at the same time. And of course its a name like wayne johnson, everyone called him john wayne. Absolutely and then hed been overseas for a long time and he taught me not just what i did but he told me what not to do. When an officer doesnt do. Just leave them alone and let other people handle certain things. Im starting to learn right then about delegating decisionmaking and responsibility. My second platoon sergeant, also a corporal, was manual rivera. He was 1973 timeframe. He wasnt you work more was of you here in the audience. He was immigrant from mexico. He was the same way, he was stern, and yet he was a guy who could get down there and show a marine who was having trouble how to do something right. I used to just admire the way he could and a few sharp words get someones attention and then just turn the person in the right direction mostly spiritually and the physical the mental followed. Then my third sergeant, i finally had a Staff Sergeant its about 15 years in the marine corps remain the room, hes from quebec and were good again. I was also learning about the immigrant role. In the us military and just how they were overrepresented and it was a broadening experience because somehow growing up in my hometown, 99 percent of the people i was its were native born. That sort of thing. Why do i bring it up because the military by its very nation will expand you. In a way that no other organization will. In a sense of diversity. The mentors come in all shapes and sizes and they come from all parts of the world. David rhonda the things at in the book says that you have an affection for the rains yet i assume there are times when they are leading any size of unit, you have to be unpopular. Were you to the people you are were there always some distance between you and those under your command. Jim i use to encourage, i was taught this and used to encourage officers should come as close to the line that separates them from the true. As they can. And be themselves but that went out giving up one ounce of their authority. Because there at going to come a time when the chips are down and you are going to have to. To someone and. Towards the enemy and tell them to go. At that. , everything in that young mans body at dont get up and dont move against them, you move it can happen. They are going to need that authority. We do use a very critical word. Its only 25 years to come the word affection. You need to trust and unique respect. Trust is the. Of a brown. If you dont have that as a leader, you probably are going to accomplish much of anything. David i knew that the troops respected their leaders, marine corps anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of all of ready screen people who have tried to become officers but why were some units so good. I was some 40 man cocoons were as good as a hundred and 50 man. It took me a long time to figure out it was the other word. Affection for example, and foremost around me as a two star i had 29 sailors and marines and informants, 17 of the 29 were killed or injured around me. When casualty start getting around 50 percent, thats not good. They sculpt a landmark providence. This very tough fighting. Day in and day out. What held them together was an affection for each other that no matter what happened, it would keep fighting. They would keep fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting. The affection at the opposite in its own way of popularity. Popularity brings favoritism. That is rhonda the reasons why you will see the military so anti anything that would bring other impulses inside combat assault units. Because when they are putting someone and sending them forward, you can read in some very old textbooks about when favoritism rotted the unit right out from underneath the king here solomon. And others. The point at that affection is the sort of think that does not rest on any sort of favoritism. Son about being popular when they are going around making people get up and move. When they dont want to and you are telling people that the first thing they have to do when they have to clean uniform his job in a mud puddle, because you dont want them to be reluctant to hit the deck in the mud. When they get shot at, they are not doing things that make you popular. You find to that if you have been honest its your troops, if they had trusted you, then they will stick its you. For example, deep inside a city that we lost boys taken halfway through it, and we move at that the enemy on the run, and were told to pull out. A Television Camera gets shoved at a young light machine gunners face blonde haired filthy dirty marine, hes got his machine gun over his shoulders at coming out and the reporters are staying this at terrible you must feel terrible. You lost your buddies, at terrible and they are being told to do Something Else. These he has a slow talking kid from down south. He looked at the camera said doesnt matter, well just buy them somewhere else and kill them. The gist of the spirit of these young folks who sign up this blank check payable to all of you in this room. It at to this experiment we call america. I would also tell you that if we hadnt been honest that young woman all along, and we havent kept him informed, and he didnt trust us. He couldve said yes terrible. And when morale at down in a combat unit, you move right away they are going to lose more people. Its affection i think the bills on the trust and respect and its not popularity. David theres a thing called a brent study which meant graduated from college in 1940 and followed them through live. Some became colonels and privates or whatever. They wanted to move what correlated success in warfare. It was an iq and it was a socioeconomic status and it was a physical courage. It was relationship its mother. And that the men had received love from their moms knew how to give to their men. A deep reservoir. The first battle of falluja this was an unpleasant moment in the warfield were a lot of them who were given orders to take it