Adversity Leadership: Decision, Direction, and Destination – Michael Allison

Chris Sund (0:06)

Hi, everyone, welcome to the Amplify Speakers Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Sund. And today's guest is Michael Allison. He is a Purple Heart recipient and decorated US Marine Corps veteran with combat leadership experience in Iraq. He is also the best-selling author, a TEDx speaker, Inc. 5000 entrepreneur, and the creator of Adversity Leadership, a leadership methodology built to help people perform under pressure.

Michael has spoken for organizations including Amazon, Microsoft, NASA, Lockheed Martin, NBC Universal, United Way, and the US Department of Veteran Affairs.

His story and expertise have been featured on the Jennifer Hudson show, Military Makeover with Montel Williams, NBC, ESPN, USA Today, and VFW Magazine. Today, he leads the Adversity Leadership Institute, where he combines leadership science, neuroscience, human performance research, and real-world executive experience to help leaders and organizations turn adversity into their advantage. Welcome, Michael.

Michael Allison (1:28)

Hey, Chris. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with you.

Chris Sund (1:31)

Absolutely. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. I think one of the things I would like to start off with is going back to that time that, first of all, I want to thank you for your service.

Michael Allison (1:44)

Absolutely.

Chris Sund (1:45)

And everything you did to sacrifice. I would love to learn a little bit about your time in Iraq.

Michael Allison (1:53)

Wow.

I tell you this, man, Iraq was one of the most interesting time in my life when it comes to handling pressure and dealing with pressure. And at 22, 23 years old, you never thought that you would actually be in combat, especially when at 17, when I joined the Marines, my mom and dad did not want me to join the military because they saw what Desert Storm looked like, and they were scared for their young son to actually join the military with the potential of going to combat and going to war. So when I gave them the call and told them that, hey, I'm getting deployed, I'm getting ready to go into Fallujah, their hearts sunk. And they were just worried about what is going to happen to their son. And we had that conversation actually when 9-11 happened. And once 9-11 happened, the world has never seen anything like this, so catastrophic and the impact that came from that. And shortly after that, I'm in California where they're training and training. I was an amphibious assault vehicle section leader. And then Captain Venning comes out to 29 Palms and says, boys, it's our turn to invade Fallujah. And the weight of that was so magnifying that I'm thinking of all of these things that I've been training and training, preparing for. But now, you can prepare and prepare, but now you have to actually go and put this into action. So I made the call to my family, say, hey, I'm getting ready to deploy. They make us do all of these things to prepare with like your wills and all these things in regards to like all of the bad outcomes that could potentially happen. So we leave from California to Seattle, from Seattle to Canada, from Canada to Germany. From Germany, we get into Kuwait and we get into Kuwait and we sit there for about two and a half weeks training, preparing until we get the word. And we get the word that we're about to go into Fallujah with tanks, hummers, five tons, about 120 vehicles rolling down the highway where it's desolate. There's nothing there. You just see nothing but tanks coming in and we go into a convoy, man.

And we pull in to Fallujah in the middle of the night. And as soon as we go through the gate, the first sign that I saw was complacency kills. And it immediately told me that you need to keep your head on a swivel and pay attention to everything. And literally, we go in, we park our tanks, and as after we park our tanks, we hear siren goes off, and we hear, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

All of a sudden, we hear incoming, and we're running for cover. And what that told me immediately was, no crap, this is real.

But immediately, no one hesitated. Everybody did exactly what they were supposed to do because we planned, we trained, we prepared. And that was my first introduction into Iraq, into Fallujah, and into combat. The first day in, we're getting mortared. And I have tons of stories that I could follow up with from there. The first mission we go on, we get attacked, and we have to start firing back. And then eight months later, we get attacked when I was leading another mission, and that's how I actually earned the Purple Heart from the VBID car bomb. But I'm pretty sure we get into that story as we continue going on.