Lead Into It
Lead Into It is your go-to podcast for real, actionable leadership insights—no title required. Whether you're leading a team, a project, or just yourself, host Sara Greco brings you powerful conversations with leaders from corporate, nonprofit, hospitality, the U.S. military, and beyond. Each episode delivers tactical tools, fresh perspectives, and lasting inspiration to help you lead with confidence in your career and life.
Because leadership isn’t about a title—it’s about action.
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Lead Into It
47. Fueling Leadership Through Empowerment with Maj Gen Dan Tulley
In this powerful episode of Lead Into It, I sit down with Maj Gen Dan Tulley, Director of Operations at U.S. Transportation Command—and someone I had the honor of serving with over a decade ago.
We trace his leadership journey from his ROTC days at Duke University to commanding at a global scale, uncovering the real-world lessons that shaped his leadership style. Tulley opens up about a pivotal in-flight moment that cemented his trust in training, the decisions he faced as tensions with Iran rose, and how he kept his team informed, empowered, and motivated during COVID.
He also gets real about what makes leadership sustainable: humility, trust, and letting go of the need to have all the answers. One of my favorite takeaways? “Nobody wants to be that single leader that everything depends on.”
Whether you’re leading five people or five thousand, this conversation is packed with practical wisdom on:
- Building high-performing, resilient teams
- Making decisions under pressure (and creating space for them)
- Leading with humility and intention
- Balancing strategic and tactical thinking
- Spending your “leadership capital” wisely
Grab your headphones—this is one episode you don’t want to miss.
Let’s keep the conversation going—connect with me on Instagram and LinkedIn, subscribe to my Sunday newsletter, or reach out at sara@leadintoitco.
Excited to be back with you!
You're listening to episode 47 of the Lead Into It podcast. Welcome back to Lead Into It, where we dive into leadership lessons from real life journeys, and today's guest brings a lot of them. I'm your host, sara Greco, and I'm beyond excited to reconnect with Major General Dan Tully. It's been over a decade since we worked together at MacDill Air Force Base and now he's the Director of Operations at US Transportation Command. No big deal, right. In this episode we talk about everything from his ROTC days at Duke to navigating pressure-packed moments throughout his career.
Sara Greco :We get into what it really means to build trust, make tough calls and lead with humility, as well as empower your team to do great work even when you're not in the room. Dan is the kind of leader who owns his growth, invites feedback and knows the value of a good strategy and a good question. There's a ton of insight here for any leader, no matter where you are in your journey. Let's get into it. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm so excited to have you on lead into it and I'm excited to talk to you more. It's been a while since we've had like an in-depth conversation. I mean, I worked with you when I was stationed at MacDill in Tampa and I've seen your career kind of just grow from there, so it's exciting to talk to you. After what? 10 years, yeah.
Dan Tulley :I think it's about 10 years. Might not want to admit it, but yeah, about 10 years. Yeah, I think it's about 10 years. Yeah, might not want to admit it, but yeah, about 10 years.
Sara Greco :So just again, thank you so much for coming on the show, excited to talk to you a little bit more.
Dan Tulley :Same here. Sarah, it's great to see you again and really great to see how you've grown in your career, and I look forward to it.
Sara Greco :Yeah, thank you so much. So I knew I met you when you first came on as wing commander at MacDill and now you are working at Transcom Transportation Command and it's been kind of a journey for you.
Dan Tulley :Yes, a lot of joint experience. Good heavens MacDill was 2014 to 2016. And now in a joint job as the director of operations at US Transportation Command In between lots of different stops on the air staff Wing commanded AUD for two years. Holy cow, covid. Everything else that's happened since then. There's a lot in that 10-year period.
Sara Greco :Yeah Well, and we'll definitely get to that 10-year period, but I kind of want to go a little bit earlier than that. You've talked to me a little bit about your leadership experience, leadership inspiration. I guess I'd love to start with really what inspired you to become an officer in the Air Force and start that leadership journey.
Dan Tulley :I love that question because it's so easy for me to answer. So when I was a little kid I always heard about my father having spent the first year of my life in Vietnam. He was deployed for that entire year and my mother God bless her, she had my two older sisters at the time we were each 13 months apart, and so just hearing that really got me interested in the military and I think as I grew up, just hearing his approach towards service and leadership and then my own desire to serve kind of came together in a very fortunate way.
Sara Greco :And so you ended up going through Reserve Officer Training Corps and that whole wicket.
Dan Tulley :Yeah, reserve Officer Training Corps at Duke University Go, blue Devils it was. It was an interesting path. I knew since I was in high school that I wanted to be in the military and and I knew that I wanted to be a pilot. And it's because I had great mentors. I had my dad, and then I had a high school guidance counselor who asked me hey, what would you want to do if money and all of that just didn't matter? And so it's 1986. Keep in mind, top Gun had just come out. So I kind of like to do that. That sounds like a pretty awesome way to spend my life. So I kind of like to do that. That sounds like a pretty awesome way to spend my life. And I ended up looking at the Naval Academy and really had a tough time deciding between the Navy and Air Force, but went with the Air Force and really grateful that I did.
Dan Tulley :Yeah, the Air Force is glad that you did too, as those two stars say on your shoulder Well thanks, it's humbling.
Sara Greco :What would you say some of the leadership learnings that you gathered early on throughout the experience, like through ROTC as a first lieutenant pilot, like all of that?
Dan Tulley :What would you say you kind of saw early on in your career.
Dan Tulley :You know, in ROTC and any commissioning source, we take people and we try and shape them, we work on character formation and we really help to grow them and root them in the service.
Dan Tulley :And I will just say that the Air Force had a blank slate with me, so a lot of work to be done there. But ROTC was a great foundation. And then, really starting in pilot training, I would say that's when I learned how to learn, to learn and beyond pilot training as an aircraft commander in a large aircraft with a lot of crew members and I started out in the KC-135, you can't help but find yourself learning to lead and that's what the Air Force is trying to teach you. So, first leading in small settings you know that crew, it was great. There was frequently pressure, there was a mission to be accomplished and everybody loves that environment and then progressing to become an instructor pilot and then you're teaching others, you're showing them the ropes and what they need to do. It was, I hate to say, an ideal leadership growth opportunity, but it kind of feels like that in retrospect.
Sara Greco :Do you have a particular story of you being an aircraft commander that just like resonates with oh, this is what it means to be a leader.
Dan Tulley :There are so many, so I'll offer. I've got a couple, because I've flown a few different aircraft but the C-130. We were at then Fort Bragg. We were the last aircraft in a large formation of 20-some C-130s. I was flying with our German exchange officer.
Sara Greco :Oh cool.
Dan Tulley :He was in the right seat, I was the instructor pilot in the left seat. The weather wasn't what most pilots would want for a large formation. It was pretty bad. It was right at minimums, pouring down rain, and we were listening on the radio because we couldn't see the other aircraft and are all taken off. You could hear the first one get off the ground and so on and so forth. By the time it was our turn, there was a phenomenon where wake turbulence settles on the runway and can really cause some disruption to your aircraft. We're rolling down the runway and it hits us immediately, despite all the techniques that the air force teaches you to to avoid wake turbulence. The aircraft's rocking and rolling to the right and we keep control of it and we're climbing away and you could just hear. It wasn't your standard formation takeoff. There was a lot of chaos, uh it was a training event, so that's by design.
Dan Tulley :But we heard other aircraft break out of the formation. We heard the lead aircraft having some issues with some range space as the formation headed into the range for training to drop these paratroopers. We were carrying All that to say. It was an environment where you had to say and do the right thing. You really didn't have the space to make a mistake or to say the wrong thing, given that it's an airborne orchestra, you know, rather than a bunch of instruments just making noise, that formation is trying to make music and we're trying to put those paratroopers on the drop zone.
Dan Tulley :Coming across the drop zone, I will not ever forget the sight of paratroopers in front of us emerging out of the rain at a safe altitude just below us, as they should be. But the entire thing was unsettling, and so I tell you that, to come back to the training that we received, the confidence that we had in our skills, you don't appreciate it at the time. You're gaining that experience and you're learning those lessons, but then, once you see it in action, you gain a different appreciation for it and I'm very thankful for what I had learned all of the lessons, all the instructor pilots who had put the time into developing us. It was pretty interesting.
Sara Greco :So it kind of created the reaction that was desired from you as a leader. Because you had all that training in place, you knew what to expect even in the unknown. You knew how you wanted to react in the unknown.
Dan Tulley :I like the way you put it it's the unknown, and you're prepared for it, whether you realize it or not, and so then, fast forward. That translates into experience over many years, and, when it comes to leadership, I think you can't shortchange experience. You have to get as much experience as you can, and that, ultimately, is what's going to make you a better leader.
Sara Greco :And even if it's practice scenarios, training scenarios, those training scenarios are what create that experience for you, as well as real life scenarios.
Dan Tulley :Right and we always talk about in the Air Force how we like to train, like we fight.
Sara Greco :Right.
Dan Tulley :That night we were training like we were going to fight short of an adversary shooting at us. Those conditions were as bad as it gets and we're still allowed to train. And here we are, a bunch of airmen, a bunch of soldiers from the 82nd out there getting it done in the middle of the night.
Sara Greco :Yeah, Successful you too.
Dan Tulley :Thankfully yes.
Sara Greco :Yes, you have had so many military assignments stateside and overseas and now have a leadership position at Transportation Command, so you deal with situations around the world, I mean. Correct me if I'm wrong at any point of the day.
Dan Tulley :Yes.
Sara Greco :So you have to make a lot of decisions, you have to kind of gather and grab information as you can. How would you say that your previous experience maybe even what we've kind of talked about when it comes to training or your leadership experience kind of influences that approach to leadership that you do today?
Dan Tulley :Right. So leadership at Transcom and the director of operations. So leadership at Transcom and the Director of Operations the J3 as we call it is one of the best jobs I've ever had. It's amazing. It is nonstop, 24-7, all around the globe, every combatant in command working with all of the services, lots of allies and partners.
Dan Tulley :The experiences I've had have prepared me in so many ways. Frequently in the military, a senior leader will tell you, as you're about to take a new position or a new command, you've got this, you're trained for it. You may not think so, but you're trained for it right and you'll be ready, you'll be great at it. So I've gotten similar advice over the years. But at Transcom you can feel just like that night over Fort Bragg. You can feel all of your experience to date coming to bear. But you're on a larger team.
Dan Tulley :So at Transcom and one of the things that's grown about my approach to leadership is how do I leverage the entire team? How do I take the best that everyone on the team has? How do I set conditions where I can leverage that team? Nobody wants to be that single leader that everything depends on and then, heaven forbid, something happens to that leader. They go away? Can the team carry on right?
Dan Tulley :The measure of success now is what kind of team can we build? Can we have a high performing team that's able to carry on regardless of what disruptions, whether that's the leader moving on or something along those lines? Can they keep the mission going and make it happen? Well, not suffer setbacks? So all my previous experience, but getting to command over it how you did in CENTCOM's AOR, the wing command experience in MacDill, the group command experience I had at Fort Bragg and flying the different aircraft I did they all contribute. They give you a perspective. They ground me in. Okay, I know a little bit about this. I might not be the expert here in 2025 on that, but I have an iron major who is and I can ask her, I can ask him and they can get me the answer without batting an eye. So I could probably go on there. Does that trigger any additional questions or anything specific?
Sara Greco :Well, I think what was coming up for me was it seems like part of your leadership philosophy is empowering the people around you, because you can't be the sole leader in a way for the organization, because if that's the case, then it could possibly lead to failure. But if you empower the people around you with knowledge and decision making, then that leads to success.
Dan Tulley :Right, and you know, one of my approaches is I like to describe to my team as I walk in the door to some new opportunity or some new position, some new role. Here's what I think a high performing team looks like, and I'd like to ask them what do you think a high performing team looks like? And invariably you'll describe what that looks like. People act on their own initiative. They get things done in a timely manner or sooner. They deliver outcomes and results. But there's a connection there, and once you start to realize that everybody's coming to work trying to do a great job, by and large nobody comes to work because they don't want to or because they're miserable. This is how they chose to spend their life. So how do you tap into that resource that's at your disposal? Sometimes the greatest challenge is trying to find what are the obstacles or barriers to different members of the team being able to perform at their best and contribute.
Sara Greco :So you say that you ask the question what do you think a highing team is when you come into a new role? I do, and now I'm just curious what has been the most surprising answer you've ever received?
Dan Tulley :So typically as a general officer now I'll walk into an organization that I might not have experience in. For example, I'd never signed a transcom before and walking in the door to transcom I have a number of direct reports. I've got my deputies and I have a number of division chiefs typically colonels and GS-15s and the value in asking them because many had been at transcom before or they had spent quite a bit of time there in their civilian career. They will open my eyes to things I never would have thought of, I would never have seen. Within the J-3 portfolio at Transcom there's a lot. I won't go into the specifics of all that's there, but they open my eyes to that.
Dan Tulley :So then my challenge becomes okay, how do we fit this together? How do I understand where things are and how do we take it to the next level if that's necessary? How do we keep the organization from being stagnant? Right, if it never changes, everything will change around it and it'll just kind of fade into obscurity. It'll become not a high performing team. So how do we keep challenging ourselves?
Sara Greco :This is very interesting because it's almost like you're saying and please correct me if I'm wrong that you don't have the most experience in that particular area or the most knowledge, so you rely upon your teams and all the people around you to help when you're making those decisions.
Dan Tulley :Absolutely, and I think any leader has to get very comfortable in that. There are some cases or some examples, and my mind goes to accountability. Right, a leader is accountable for the organization. You're putting a lot of faith and trust in your team because you need to. You can't be the expert on everything. The reason general officers are called general officers is precisely that. Right, you can't be an expert in everything, so you're a generalist. How do you then empower the team and leverage their expertise?
Sara Greco :That's really interesting. I've never heard that before and I appreciate that insight because when there's a perception about leadership, there's sometimes an outside perspective and perception where, when you reach a really high level of leadership, you have to know all the ins and outs to really make a good decision. And it's interesting to hear and have that acknowledged where actually it's almost the not the entire opposite, but it could be kind of on the other end of the spectrum where it's like you have general knowledge and you have to trust the people on your team and those that are the experts to help make those decisions.
Dan Tulley :Absolutely, and you know I trace my experience with this all the way back to my early days flying large crew aircraft, right In the KC-135, we'd have a navigator and he or she would navigate the aircraft, you know, across the ocean. We'd land on some airfield that we had never heard of before and we trusted that it was there and that the navigator was going to get us there, and it always worked out. So maybe from an early age in the Air Force they kind of inculcate you and make that part of your leadership development.
Sara Greco :Yeah Well, I mean, it's the trust that had to be built in order to survive and be mission successful.
Dan Tulley :Yeah, trust is a great topic to dive into a little bit. Right yeah, with any team I work with, I talk about trust in terms of character, competence and judgment. And there's a there's a great book called professionalism Can't recall the author right now, but in that book they talk about those three things and that lets any leader very easily talk to their team about what it means to have trust. And the author also talks about how it's held together with a bit of an emotional glue. So there's a little bit of emotion in there, but it's really interesting. You cannot underestimate the role of trust in an organization. It's a two-way street.
Sara Greco :Well, and that creates you mentioned accountability from earlier. That creates accountability too, because if you trust the person, you're going to hold them accountable, and vice versa.
Dan Tulley :Absolutely, and you can't have a simplistic view of accountability. You know I'm telling you to do this. If you don't do this, then there's this consequence. That's the wrong approach almost all the time. It's okay, let's agree on the end, the end state or the outcome. Let's start with the end in sight, and then how can we work together to figure this out and get it done within the right timeframe? You know what I would call it the speed of relevance.
Sara Greco :That's a good one. So, speaking of talking about decision-making trust and accountability, I'd love to hear a little bit more about, maybe, a time where you had to make a decision under pressure. What did that look like, and maybe could you tell us a little bit about it and kind of your emotions and feelings in the result.
Dan Tulley :So what? I'd tell you, my two years at AUD were one of the best experiences of my professional career. Professional career I had the opportunity to command all five of the Air Force's core functions in combat over a two-year period, serving under two different three-star commanders. So I was the one-star commander of Valued Air Base in the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing. 2019, june of 2019, is when I started and I ended that command tour in June or July of 2021. This COVID these were the racial tensions in the United States. A lot was going on. Iran was really adversarial throughout the entire two year time frame, to put it diplomatically. And so when I got there, one of the observations of my three-star boss was hey, are we as ready as we can be should something happen with Iran? We took a look at the base. A lot of new commanders come in every year. There were a couple who had had a previous year with us and we agreed when we sat down hey, this base needs to increase our readiness, we need to be ready should Iran do something.
Sara Greco :And so in the military, just like the rest of the Department of.
Dan Tulley :Defense and government. Sometimes there's reluctance to change. What we thought we needed to do was increase our ability to protect the population. We needed to rebuild bunkers that hadn't been tended after and cared for in years. We needed to prepare the base should there be some sort of attack. We needed to understand how quickly the base could recover All that to say.
Dan Tulley :We started to do those things and that was a series of rapid-fire decisions to just get it done. The whole team leaned into it. Airmen who had deployed from all over the United States active duty, guard and reserve were building bunkers, they were drilling, they were working through all the things we needed to do should Al-Yadid ever be attacked heaven forbid. A few months downstream we got to the Soleimani attack and that was an emotional event for both countries. Following that, there was an attack on Al-Assad Air Base and I will never forget watching the tracks of those missiles from Iran crossing into Iraq and thinking, wow, thankfully that's not us, hopefully our comrades and teammates out there are okay, but we had the satisfaction knowing that we were ready should something like that happen. So it validated all of our hard work, but it reinforced. Sometimes, as a leader, you know something needs to be done. You just have to do it. You just have to get it done. Might not be popular.
Sara Greco :Yeah, and that's and that's really hard because you probably face a lot of resistance sometimes when kind of trying to create that environment where you knew it would be valuable to do these things and obviously that was proven, but also having to face that resistance from people who might disagree with you.
Dan Tulley :Right and it highlights a key thing for any leader it's not a popularity contest, it's about doing the right thing. It's about doing what your organization needs to have done. I think Colin Powell talks about this in his biography that in his experience there are many times when a leader will need to do things that won't be popular and a lot of times people will not appreciate being led in that moment, but later on or downstream they probably will. The example I'd offer you is our public affairs office at IUD received a number of calls, letters, emails from concerned parents back home.
Dan Tulley :And they were asking the question what are you doing to protect my son or daughter? Is your installation as ready as it can be? And we could sleep well, knowing that we had done everything we could.
Sara Greco :I'm sure that there's leaders listening to this podcast. They're like well, I'm in a corporate setting, so thank goodness, I don't have people's lives on my hands. But knowing that you have people's lives in your hands is an additional pressure and it makes decision making even more important as you're proceeding in your career.
Dan Tulley :All right, Let me say one other thing on the under pressure decision making. So it might be something that a young leader wouldn't think about. But consider the benefit of creating decision, what we call decision space, Specifically, so that it doesn't become this constraint where we have to make an urgent decision or rush to something that we might regret downstream. And that same concept, I think, applies at every level downstream. And that same concept, I think, applies at every level all the way down to when I was a co-pilot in the KC-135. One of the instructors would talk about okay, so you have an emergency in the aircraft training scenario and engine's on fire. What's the first thing you do? And this instructor would teach pause. You have 10 to 15 seconds where you can think about it. The world will not end. Far better to get things right, shut down the correct engine, than to make your emergency worse.
Sara Greco :What do you foresee the decision-making space looking like for other people, or what have you seen it look like in your career that you have found valuable, in addition to that 10-second pause that you just mentioned?
Dan Tulley :So in my work supporting other senior leaders, where I was either working on their staff or directly for them, providing options, if there's only one option that they're considering or looking at, if I could come forward and go you know what there's two or three other options here or other ways to make this happen or to get to. Yes, that is tremendously helpful.
Sara Greco :And I'm sure you're grateful to receive that, especially in the position that you're in today.
Dan Tulley :Yes there, there's always another way, almost always another way.
Sara Greco :Something that I've noticed, too, is, even if those aren't the best options, they provide a brain power like the decision-making thinking cycle that helps you make a decision in that space, Like, yes, that might not be the best decision, and that's why this decision is actually a really good one.
Dan Tulley :Yep, Just going through the process or the act of planning. It's typically not the end result that is the greatest benefit. It's the process or the act of planning. Get the right experts together, it's the process or the act of planning. Get the right experts together to have the necessary conversations and see what else might come up as an option.
Sara Greco :There's also the cognitive aspect right.
Dan Tulley :So, if your team, if you're a leader and your team provides you one option. We really recommend this. In the military there is common practice. A lot of leaders will ask for at least three what we call courses of action or options. That helps you avoid the cognitive trap of just locking in on one and all the cognitive biases and the things that are the way they are because we're humans. Right, how do you set yourself up to avoid that and then avoid the challenges of human judgment? Right, you can create or construct an environment where your decisions are better. The whole field of decision science gets after that.
Sara Greco :I mean, it's a very interesting field, especially as a leader, to kind of dive into this, because lots of your day is decisions. When you're answering emails and meetings, and I mean when you're walking down a hall and somebody talks to you to ask you a question, it's a decision probably.
Dan Tulley :It is yeah, and then your mind is always thinking, okay, how can I get in front of that decision, how can I think three steps ahead and how can I set conditions for the decision to be made such that it goes the way that benefits our organization or the mission we're trying to accomplish?
Sara Greco :What are some ways that you have personally seen or you have helps to build confidence in decision-making for leaders?
Dan Tulley :That's so easy. For me it's one simple thing is practice. How do I create an environment where leaders can practice? It's one thing to watch another leader and we talk about this frequently with my Air Force friends who've been commanders. There's being the commander and there's being the deputy. There's a world of difference in being the commander. Who's responsible and accountable? The deputy learns tremendous amounts, sees lots of things, but at the end of the day they're not the one that has to answer for it. So put yourself in the position of that commander, be that person in the ring, so to speak. And the more you can do that in any you know it can be small things volunteering to sit on a board, to host some talk, to command that organization, to deploy and command that deployed organization. The more practice you can get, the better you'll be to command that organization, to deploy and command that deployed organization.
Sara Greco :The more practice you can get, the better you'll be. It's very true. So you were talking earlier about leading during COVID in a deployed environment. There were a lot of unknowns. We talked a little bit about your decision-making and making sure that there was a lot of prep for situations that might not or might occur. You didn't know, but you knew what needed to be done. How did you proceed to lead those teams with the unknown and kind of make sure that they felt one taken care of and two knew the direction in which to proceed to help the mission be successful?
Dan Tulley :That is a great question because it's a great challenge, also my approach has always been transparency and be able to explain the why as a leader.
Dan Tulley :So what you just described, in those situations, especially during COVID, we couldn't always explain the why. In the military sometimes it's somewhat simpler I won't say easier because we just get direction, but what you articulated, sometimes we receive direction that's conflicting. We see direction from multiple sources or we receive direction through military channels that might conflict with direction we're hearing from other sources, maybe the CDC or elsewhere. Right, you just read the open press. And so, as a military leader, my approach has to be total transparency. Let's gather the facts, let's understand why we're being asked to do this and explain that, and if we can't, we'll go right back up the chain of command and ask is there a why here that we can articulate to the men and women who are serving our country? I think those go a long way towards helping.
Dan Tulley :Then you get into how quickly things are changing in the decision cycle, what we call the OODA loop. Observe Orient, decide Act. When that OODA loop gets so small that you can't keep everyone aligned on where you stand, then it gets a bit chaotic. Then it gets a bit chaotic. So create some space, build some time in and then align them. Here's where we're going and here's why. And if you have some folks who aren't willing to come along with you, then how do you address that? And typically commanders in the Air Force at least group squadron commanders, flight commanders do a phenomenal job communicating down and then communicating back up the chain.
Sara Greco :How would you recommend to somebody who might be receiving some of that resistance for those that won't come along, what recommendations or advice would you give to them to either help proceed or to help influence them to bring them along in the decision?
Dan Tulley :If you have the time. Sometimes in an urgent situation you might not, but if you have the time, I would give those people who aren't coming along a voice. I'd want to meet with them and I'd create the opportunity. So if I put 500 people in a large theater which would do a lot at LAD, at Airbase, there's this human cognitive, behavioral science tendency to not want to speak up. But if you give them a means to speak that's anonymous and you could use texting there's all kinds of apps that will display their text responses on the screen at the front of the theater. We would use that Then you'll start getting some, some insight and there'll be some some wheat and chaff that you have to separate a little bit there. At the end of the day, you're looking for the feedback that you can act on. It's constructive, it will make the organization better, it will address the problem at hand and invariably you can get that.
Dan Tulley :And so a couple of situations in my experience. One was when I was the wing commander at MacDill Air Force Base. I walked into the position and people had explained to me well, there's a strong desire to have a charter school on this Right. So the first thing I did was I asked all of the airmen who served at McTale Air Force Base do you all want a charter school? And help me understand why. I think that out of the 2000, 3000 people we asked, one or two hands went up 2,000, 3,000 people.
Dan Tulley :We asked one or two hands went up, the young man who answered yes. He stood up in the theater and said well, I heard the charter schools are better and so I'd like that for my child. And that was the only person who said he had a reason why. That was insightful and led to the outcome that exists there today. There's a K-8 school on base sponsored by Hillsborough County, which is a great partnership between the base and the local school system. And indeed I took the same technique there and we began to ask the airmen Chief Master Sergeant Kenny Bruce was my command chief master sergeant there.
Dan Tulley :So we began to ask the airmen as they arrived you know theater's full 500 a ton. What do you want? What's the most important thing for you? And there were two things that stuck with me. One was fast, free Wi-Fi was the most important thing for these airmen. They were paid about 80 to $100 for Wi-Fi. That's just not right. We're sending you to IUD, you're deployed for 90, 100 and some days. We should be able to provide you Wi-Fi and with the help of our senior leaders, we were able to get fast, free Wi-Fi for all of them.
Dan Tulley :The other one really threw me. Our airmen said that we've made it too confusing. We've taught them standards, basic standards. You know you salute a senior officer when you're outdoors. You wear your hat outdoors. They said we'd made it too confusing with all of the rules and so consistent feedback from our airmen was just do away with all of the no salute zones and all the special car valves for rules. Just let us use the rules that you taught us in basic training and we did that. It was profound how happy it made most of our younger airmen. So things you don't expect but your team will teach you.
Sara Greco :I love these stories because they speak to a fun choice of words. For me, they speak to giving a voice for people to be heard, and it's almost like it's transparency in both directions, because you, as a leader, are giving transparency to the people, but also the people are being transparent to you, and so, by creating a channel in which there's receiving and giving, it creates accountability and transparency and communication and a dialogue that helps give more momentum and positivity to a space, to a team.
Dan Tulley :Yes, it's a better relationship if you think of it as a relationship. It's just a better relationship.
Sara Greco :And I remember you used I wasn't working with you for too long, but I remember distinctly having a town hall with all the airmen and we used an app to provide that texting tool for the airmen, and I remember how profound it was to see people's voices on a screen in live time. Uh, and you receiving that feedback and, from what I remember, we didn't give you too many notes. You didn't like most all calls with a wing commander. We would have a lot of notes, a lot of talking points, and you were very much there and receive mode and you gave what you could. But also there was moments where you're like, well, I don't know this, we need to find out more information.
Sara Greco :I'm going to take it and I appreciated that at as like a young airman trying to figure out okay, what does leadership actually look like? What does it, how does it feel too? And it was interesting to see the dynamics in that room when it first started to when we left and it there was a dialogue that was created that created openness, and I mean, when you walk into an all call or all hands, everyone's like, especially with the new leader, what's this going to look like? What are the directions that we're going to receive, what are his standards, what are his or her? And it was very open and calm and I think that was just a very different dynamic than what I had seen in the past.
Dan Tulley :Right, yeah, and it took a while to learn that right. It took some experience at two or three other locations and positions, but the benefit for you as a leader is really hard to underestimate. I can't say enough good things about it. And then it opens up all these other feedback avenues. So I'd be at the base gym or I'd be at the dining facility or a restaurant and people would come up to me and they'd say you know, I didn't send this in, but here's something else you should think about. And then you're starting to get feedback from all over the place.
Dan Tulley :Pulling that thread, there was another time at Al Udeid in the theater. We were doing the same thing. Chief Bruce and I and I won't use names or locations but a young airman from a stateside base had just deployed there and it became clear he was having some real difficulties or some real challenges, and I have a video of this. I wouldn't put his video out there, but the public affairs team was recording at the time and so he stood up and it was the most amazing thing I had seen in a base theater type of setting the entire mood change as he started to explain his own personal struggles and how he was feeling a bit lonely and so the loneliness resonated with a lot of our younger airmen because, as you probably know, there is a challenge with loneliness these days and it might be right in front of us and we don't see it, but there was open for all to see and so everyone else you could just feel it in the crowd they started to.
Dan Tulley :Some of them were tearing up, some were. You could see on their faces. How do we help this guy? So I asked the crowd okay, so this young man is asking for some help. Who here wants to help him? Every hand in that theater went up. It was unbelievable. I wish I could articulate the reaction and the palpable feeling in that theater, but it was us as an air force and army, marine corps, navy, coast guards. We're all in this theater because it leads to joint installation. But it was pretty amazing and to me it highlighted the responsibility of a leader, things you don't see coming, that you have to be ready for. And how do we train that into leaders for tomorrow? Right, I'm a big believer that all of our future leaders, they're people I'm probably working with today. How do I make all of them better than I could ever be, so that they handle that situation even better.
Sara Greco :Right.
Dan Tulley :So pretty, pretty interesting experience.
Sara Greco :That sounds profound actually to see the power of providing that forum somebody being brave enough and having the courage to stand up and say something and then creating a environment that people felt open enough to help. That says true leadership.
Dan Tulley :Yeah, and it's the character of that crowd right these servicemen, women how they're leaning in to help this guy. It makes you feel pretty darn good about the organization you're a part of.
Sara Greco :Kind of going back to the space that you created in the theater. That sounds like it was a tough time for everyone around. I mean stateside it was rough for during the pandemic and then I had heard through channels about how tough it was to be deployed, especially how uncertain it was. Channels about how tough it was to be deployed, especially how uncertain it was, how things kept changing. How did you figure out or learn to keep the morale I wouldn't say high, but at least good, so that people felt like they were taken care of and had a little bit of fun?
Dan Tulley :Right. So that was a challenge throughout all of 2020. I remember we got away from Al-Yadid briefly for a vacation over the holidays 2019. And then we came back and three, four, five weeks later, a sequence of events started to unfold from Soleimani, some Iranian attacks, covid, developing all the way through the rest of that year, and so it changed and shifted.
Dan Tulley :A couple of topics were coming together and, as a leadership team, I couldn't have had a better leadership team. We were there and we were on it because of the folks on my team, the group commanders and squadron commanders really had a finger on the pulse of the organization. I think IED was a little over 10,000 folks at that time, but we're flying the mission every day up into Afghanistan, up into Iraq, down into other locations. We had also taken on the responsibility to activate another wing at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, the 378th Air Expeditionary Wing, and so I was splitting a little bit of time between Al-Yadid and Saudi Arabia. All of that to say, we kept our finger on the pulse of the folks at Al-Yadid and Saudi Arabia. All of that to say, we kept our finger on the pulse of the folks at Al-Yadid and keep in mind, these are forces that were flowing in and flowing out.
Dan Tulley :So the direction from the Department of Defense was to keep force flows going and moving. So that meant we had to quarantine people. So we began a quarantine operation that ultimately, I forget, processed 10,000 to 20,000 folks through a quarantine period. And then we learned, okay, is quarantine really effective? We hadn't been testing when we began to test. It just kept changing and evolving, and so our approach, working with our public affairs team, was to just keep pushing what we knew, and here's what we understand. The guidance is here's what we know and here's why we understand. The guidance is here's what we know and here's why we're doing these things.
Dan Tulley :That really kept most people in as good a place as they could be and then listening to their requests. So IED has a number of restaurants and some that serve alcohol. There was a request to can we find a way to let people have a beer, you know, night? And so our chief master sergeants, our senior NCOs, we empowered them and said, okay, if you can come up with a way, we'll sign off on it. Outdoors, you were able to unmask at the time. You had to keep a certain distance, spacing, and all of that based on the policy that was set by our elected officials, and so we empowered them to do that and they did it and it was wildly popular. Things didn't get out of hand, but I think folks were as happy as they could be and we got a lot of feedback that some folks were happier than if they were at home. State or city that they might live in back home was much, much more strict, much more restrictive, given all the COVID era regulations. It was interesting.
Sara Greco :It sounds like it. I mean you can only do so much with what you know. I mean there's the known unknowns and unknown unknowns and all of those.
Dan Tulley :So one thing that stands out is sometimes I lose sight of it, but the men and women that you serve with never do. We had a mission to do. We actually had several missions to do that focused our time and attention in finding solutions to succeed at those missions and to deter our adversaries. That probably drove a lot of the morale that we saw and we set high standards. All the leaders that I worked with over there set high standards and I've never seen an organization with high standards and low morale, even during a difficult time such as 2020.
Sara Greco :That's very interesting. Thanks for sharing all of that Especially. I mean again, it seems like we're always in unprecedented times, but maybe it's just the perspective and maybe keeping high standards is a good way to proceed and kind of the baseline.
Dan Tulley :Yeah, you certainly will know it if your standards begin to erode.
Sara Greco :And I still think it was interesting how the airmen brought up just keeping the basics earlier in the conversation when you're deployed instead of the no hat. Earlier in the conversation when you're deployed instead of the no hat, no salute zones. It seems like a lot of times we want that, but maybe what we want is consistency.
Dan Tulley :Yep. That will forever stick with me as a key lesson taught to me by our youngest airman. My advice is to listen to your youngest members of your team.
Sara Greco :For sure, for sure. So in the role that you're in today, versus previous roles that you've had, I imagine that your mindset and leadership probably have to switch between viewing the strategic of the strategy, of the whole situation, how every piece is going to impact every other piece, kind of dialing it down to a tactical where okay, other piece. Kind of dialing it down to a tactical where okay, here's this and that's going to have a very tactical response to it. How do you switch between the strategic leadership and thinking super high level down to tactical and really trying to figure out how those impacts are going to happen at the lowest level?
Dan Tulley :That is something I wrestle with how to best articulate it, so I'll take a shot here. It's very clear what the President and Secretary of Defense have asked us to do and so I would expect with the new administration there'll be a new national defense strategy, new national military strategy forthcoming, and we'll respond to those and align with those so as professionals we know to anticipate those. In the meantime, we listen to the direction that we've received and we're executing so that strategic direction from the President and Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff. We take that broad guidance and then we're implementing down at the operational and tactical level across all the combatant commands. But at the same time we're still supporting operations in CENTCOM's AOR, indo-pacom's AOR, ucom's, aor, and so there are tactical to strategic threads in each of those areas of responsibility.
Dan Tulley :Our approach as a functional combatant command at TRANSCOM is to scan. Every morning we scan the world for general reid, our commander, and we look at what we need to highlight to his attention. Most of the tactical issues we don't need to highlight, but from time to time there's a tactical issue with a strategic effect. More often than not we're updating him on the strategic outcomes and the operational outcomes of our support to his fellow combatant commanders. Does that make sense?
Sara Greco :It does. And I think the question that comes up most for me is how do you figure out what tactical level information should go up to? The strategic level should go up to the strategic level Just because I see when we have meetings and things where some people will overshare because they're like, well, I don't really know what the highest level leader needs, and this feels important to me, so I think that we should share it up. But how do you kind of filter through those efforts and make sure that the strategic level is in fact what they receive, even if it has a little bit of tactical in it?
Dan Tulley :I love that you brought this up, sarah, because I'm very passionate about this and you might recall. So, at the current point in my career, my recommendation to my team, my direction to my team, is we really need the right input at the right time from the right person. It's that simple. Now that encompasses a lot, right, and so I'm also a fan of brevity and clarity, and excellent communication skills help tremendously in any leadership role. So how we do that, you have to set conditions where you can provide that guidance to a fairly large team and then have them effectively implemented.
Dan Tulley :Right, and so our notion of command and control. There's joint doctrine and joint publication, three TACO, and there's lots of writings on this. But for our combatant command, a functional combatant command with global, all the main responsibilities, it has to be simple guidance. And I'll give you the example that a lot of our service members at Transcom seem to really enjoy. If you watch the Star Trek series of movies, you'll see what I think is called the Senate and you'll see these, maybe hundreds of thousands of different representatives in a circular auditorium and there's so many voices that one slides out, says something, goes back. So if you have that image in your mind, that's what I would call command and control 1.0. If I have 10 to 20 people on my team, we can do that. I can take 10 to 20 inputs.
Dan Tulley :If I have 50, 100, 300, now it's starting to look like the Senate in Star Wars and I need a better command and control 2.0. So for us that's the guidance Make the right input at the right time. You the right person. This could be a representative from one of the three-letter agencies. This could be somebody from another combatant command, like a liaison officer. It could be somebody on our own staff.
Dan Tulley :But the world is moving so quickly and there's so much going on. We really need to get together and have that right input made. That right input might be strategic, operational or tactical, but our team, through a lot of practice, has gotten very adept at this. I would say I don't want to jinx us, but I'd say we've gotten exceptionally good at this. But then we have to take it to the next level and prepare for you know, heaven forbid the next war that our nation might, might find ourselves in, right? So if I increase the scope and scale of those interactions 10 or 20 fold, will our system, will our approach withstand that? Will it be sustainable? That's something we work on every day to make sure that we are able to sustain that.
Sara Greco :And it's interesting that you mentioned kind of no matter what the level is. It's the right person, the right information at the right time, like it's. That's what's most important, it's not the level of information.
Dan Tulley :And if I can trust the team to do that which I do every morning at 730, then we're cooking with gasoline, so to speak, because they're making the right input and I'm not or another leader in the building is not having to try and figure that out. And then I go up and I present the information that came from the team to General Lee for his awareness and if he has questions we come back and we sort through it come back and we sort through it.
Sara Greco :And this can happen at any organization, at any level, because even for corporations, companies, nonprofits, the higher the amount of people and the higher the amount of levels that exist in an organization, the harder it is to do something like this.
Dan Tulley :Absolutely, and I would say you should use technology and all the things that are out there that help you do this better. And we're in the probably in the fourth month of a new technology initiative that is making worlds of difference. I won't get into the specifics of the software and the system and how we're employing it, but the theory is that we democratize the data and the information that's available, because then I get more eyes on it and maybe one set of eyes is more willing to speak up and say you need to know this than another set of eyes. But it also helps to align the team on a very large scale, and that's priceless.
Sara Greco :I know we're kind of coming up on time and there is something that I definitely want to talk to you about before we end our conversation. But in your LinkedIn bio, you mentioned being both a coach and a water boy as kind of an analogy. So how do humility and servant leadership play into effective leadership? Specifically, how has it played into your type of leadership?
Dan Tulley :Right, humility and credibility are critical for any leader. Humility is also a bit of personal preference in there. Right, some leaders, it's just their nature they're more humble than others. I would hopefully put myself in that category, but I'd have to ask for feedback from the folks on the team, the team. The humility makes you approachable. The humility makes you not the expert on everything, not the smartest guy or gal in the room, but you have to.
Dan Tulley :At the higher levels of leadership, the further you progress, you have to really be aware of how you're perceived and that can't happen without feedback all the time. And I'm forever asking for feedback. I love 360 feedback. Like I say, I love 360 feedback for the benefit. It's not always fun to go receive, but that feedback will make you as a leader better. So, being a coach, you have to develop your team. That's my theory of victory is that every one of the folks on my team will probably and should be better than I am at some point, hopefully in the near future. And if I put that level of effort into their development and coaching them and bringing them along, then that only helps the team grow stronger, helps all of them, which is the intent.
Dan Tulley :Humility is interesting. I've wrestled over the years with, as I watch, other leaders are they humble or not? And then maybe, for example, I worked outside of an organization, then I got to be a part of it and my perspective would change. People form all sorts of perceptions about leaders, especially if they're in highly visible positions, because the leaders I've met, certainly in the Department of Defense, pretty humble once you get to know them, and not necessarily what you might see in social media or in the news media and in other locations if that's your only interaction with them.
Sara Greco :It's interesting that you say that, because I have seen over the course of my career that and as a joke I say this like I just pinned on Lieutenant Colonel and I'm like, oh, now I'm funnier because I'm a higher rank and so people have to think I'm funnier. So as people get higher in rank, I often wonder if they realize how much their rank affects how what they say is received from others. Because a lot of times if a colonel says hey, I wonder if this would be a good idea. When it trickles down it's like hey, colonel so-and-so wants this done now, and I'm like but did he actually, he or she actually say that, or did they just wonder aloud and speak aloud? So I've often wondered, I guess, how it feels to be in a position where you're like I want to make sure that what I'm saying and how I'm saying it is perceived in the way that I would like it to be.
Dan Tulley :Yeah, that's great. And, lieutenant Colonel Greco, you are the funniest Lieutenant Colonel I've ever met.
Sara Greco :I appreciate that.
Dan Tulley :I think of this in terms of leadership. What you just touched on I think of in terms of leadership capital, and I forget where the notion came from. It certainly wasn't my original thought. But give some thought. As a leader, who's spending your leadership capital and how are they spending it? If there's somebody below you in the organization who's saying, well, General Tully said to do this, you need to be aware of that. But you know, in fairness, you really can't fault anybody if you didn't give them guidance. So I try, into my initial guidance with the team in that first conversation, to say, hey, I have no problem with you spending my leadership capital so long as I'm aware that you're doing it and I'm comfortable that you would align with me. There are examples of really doing that well. And then there's examples of, you know, burning somebody else's leadership capital they might not even be aware of, which doesn't help them or the organization.
Sara Greco :That's interesting because I have heard that methodology. I haven't heard it called leadership capital and it's an interesting dynamic to seek and it also builds trust and empowerment.
Dan Tulley :Yep, one thing I watch for when I'm sitting in a forum with a senior leader certainly someone who outranks me I watch for how many people nod, especially as the senior leader is new in the position, just on the table and notice all the nods Approach. But you're signaling something and it's what you observe. When I went to my wing commander course for the Air Force for the first time before going to MacDill, the senior mentor, a major general about to retire, cautioned that you know you are now the sun and you're about to be surrounded by thousands of daisies who are going to look up at that sun as you track across the sky, smiling brightly, and it's a great analogy. It makes me laugh every time I think of it, but it's very true and it's something to be aware of. And so how do you get through that?
Sara Greco :and to have the real conversation, Well, and that's also where humility comes in staying humble throughout those moments, it's like, instead of seeing yourself as the sun, you're looking at the daisies and be like are they actually getting what they need at this point and really understanding their perspective, instead of just assuming that everything is all sunshine and daisies.
Dan Tulley :Right, and you know. Another great point for humility is make your folks know, make them aware that you two are human. Surely they know this right, but sometimes it doesn't hurt to remind them. You know, if I told you the story of my wife and how we met, we're introduced by a golden retriever. That one at some point, or any of the things, deal with the challenges we deal with with our children. There's a lot there.
Sara Greco :And I? Just a reminder no matter how, what your rank or if you have the corner office and the highest level of a building like you are still human and, as my dad says, each person still puts on pants one leg at a time yep, absolutely.
Dan Tulley :And then, uh, you know, it comes home when somebody else you know maybe you're having a busy day as a leader, maybe you're a little frustrated or whatnot. Invariably there's somebody who will come along and even ask you how are you doing? Might be a senior NCO, might be somebody on your staff, but take that as great feedback that somebody recognizes you're human too, and don't be too hard on yourself.
Sara Greco :Right, just give yourself a little bit of grace as well. Yep, I do have one final question that I'd love to ask you, and it's really as you look throughout all your experience, all that practice that you've talked about, and building that humility and empowering others and kind of learning, your leadership philosophy, what is one piece of advice that you give to those that are in their emerging leadership role right now?
Dan Tulley :One piece of advice for emerging leaders be to maintain an open mind, and an open mind to me means that you're constantly pursuing knowledge, you're reading, you're learning. You're not just relying on your own experiences. You're going back and correcting. You're learning from mistakes you may have made. You're looking at your past performance critically. Have an open mind to all of that feedback that you give yourself and the feedback others give you. That's really the only way I think you're going to grow as a leader, but it starts with an open mind.
Sara Greco :I love that. Well, sir, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciated our conversation. I learned a lot, and I know that our audiences will learn a lot too. So thank you again for your time.
Dan Tulley :Thank you, sarah. It's been an honor and, just like serving with you, it's always a blast. So thank you so much. Really enjoyed it.
Sara Greco :Thanks for listening to another episode of Lead Into it. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean a lot to me if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help future listeners. If you want to learn more about the podcast or me, go to leadintoitco. That's leadintoitco. Thanks again.
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