David Livingston on Optimizing Teams

Managing Partner McChrystal Academy. David Livingston leads a team of subject matter experts, learning designers, and dynamic facilitators who develop and deliver custom learning courses and programs that leverage a variety of experiential learning methods to drive individual growth and higher performance for teams and organizations. In this episode, we discuss what David notices with regards to polarity when working with organizations (5:45), cultures of confrontation (7:23), leaders (10:04), how he balances wanting to be liked with having to make difficult decisions (12:32), balancing holding people accountable with knowing one’s roster is not very deep (15:56), why people struggle with paradox and instead like things to be neat (21:13), resilience (26:15), values (30:50), what led David to explore this field (33:43), where he starts when working with teams (35:39), how many teams have clarity on their purpose (36:32), what the military doesn’t do well that certain businesses do well (40:02), the relationship between the military and creativity (41:45), the importance of roles for high functioning teams in the corporate world (43:13), academia and application (45:03), religion and science (48:06), how he thinks about balancing tradition with his children and giving them space to make their own experiences (51:29), autonomy in organizations (54:45), what he does to make sure his own business is operating as its best self (58:23), flow state (1:04:30), organizational development in the future (1:09:08), and Jon Gruden (1:12:05). Make sure to check out The McChrystal Group website here and to see what David is up to on LinkedIn as well! Thank you so much to David for coming on the podcast! I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers. Thanks for listening. -Brian