A surprising discussion about why members of SEAL teams need to learn public speaking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Boise Public Library I found a 2025 book by Mike Hayes titled Mission Driven: The path to a life of purpose. Mike was former commanding officer of SEAL Team Two. There is a preview at Google Books. Chapter Three discusses The Meta-Skills That Matter, which are:

 

META-SKILL 1: Understand and Create Value

META-SKILL 2: Know How to Influence Others

META-SKILL 3: Never Stop Learning

 

His discussion of how to influence others (starting on page 81) describes how important public speaking is:

 

“Influencing others is a vitally important meta-skill to have. When you can influence the behavior of the people around you, you become someone who can get things done for the mission you’re pursuing, organizational or personal. When you understand what motivates someone, you can drive their behavior to help you achieve your goals.

 

.…Embedded within this lesson are three points. One is about political capital. When you understand what motivates someone, you can choose what to ask of them, and how to ask it. You can get people to want to do something rather than having to convince them or, if you’re in a position to do so, to force them.

 

.…The second point is about challenging the status quo. When you understand what drives people, you can push for change in constructive ways.

 

….The third point here is about communication. Communication is about more than the concrete outputs we typically associate with people who work in a communications role – website content, white papers, etc. Communication is about being able to effectively transmit your thinking process. And it’s a critical meta-skill no matter your job. To wit: If asked to list the kinds of skills a SEAL needs, most people would land on a few predictable answers – strength, agility, calm inrensity, focus. Which is why my teams were sometimes confused when I’d sit them down on a day when the weather was keeping us from training and I’d give each SEAL a topic. ‘Take the next two minutes to prepare a two-minute speech on this subject,’ I’d say.

 

‘Public speaking?’ they would ask, incredulous. Why did they need to work on public speaking? It made no sense to some of them, until I explained it on two levels. First, at some point all SEALs will have to represent themselves and their unit to people in the community or to leaders we might have to interact with. Just like they needed negotiation skills, they also needed to be able to express themselves well, in case I or another leader was unavailable and the responsibility fell to them. Second, becoming a better speaker is really about becoming a better thinker, organizing thoughts and defining goals – and that is a skill that transfers to everything we do.

 

The best communicators have a tightness of thought. They set goals at the beginning of a meeting, to put everyone on the same page. They stay focused on the mission. They avoid needlessly wasting other people’s time. We’ve all been in rooms where someone starts vacuuming up attention needlessly by asking a question that either never gets to the question mark or is being asked for a self-indulgent purpose rather than focused on the end value. This is a communication problem (also sometimes an attitude problem, another meta-skill we’ll look at in a moment), and if you are the one being stared at by a bunch of people who feel like you’re wasting their time, you’re doing something wrong. There’s an age-old saying in the SEAL Teams, where platoons are made up of sixteen men: ‘When fifteen men are wrong, look in the mirror.’ It may well be that you are failing to influence in a positive, effective way.

 

In my public speaking exercise, all the SEALs listening gave feedback to the presenters, just like we did after missions. The feedback was another way to make us all better.”  

 

This book has two sections, on The Long Game and The Short Game, with the following chapters and starting page numbers:

 

THE LONG GAME

CHAPTER 1: Who, Not What You Want to Be  15

CHAPTER 2: Defining Success  43

CHAPTER 3: The Meta-Skills That Matter  69

CHAPTER 4: Helping Others Helps Us More  97

CHAPTER 5: Plans Will Always Change  119  

 

THE SHORT GAME

CHAPTER 6: Getting Comfortable Making Decisions  143

CHAPTER 7: Mission Driven in the Ways We Spend Our Time  161

CHAPTER 8: Mission Driven in Our Relationships  189

CHAPTER 9: Mission Driven through the Stages of Life  207

CHAPTER 10: Mission Driven to Change the World  221

 

The insignia for SEAL TEAM 2 came from Wikimedia Commons.