Apache Helicopter Pilot and CEO - Shannon Poulson

We speak with the founder of The Grit Institute and discuss our passion for the word grit! Shannon was one of the first women to fly the Apache helicopter in the U.S. Army leading line units on 3 continents. She is a speaker, author of The Grit Factor and North of Hope, and CEO focusing on developing leaders through executive education. We also discuss being a mom of two boys and instilling grit in the next generation. She is an inspiration so you will this episode!

Brian Harbin: Well, hello!

My name is Brian Harbin. Welcome to today's episode of the grit.org podcast!

Super excited about our guest today, Shannon Polson. First I wanted to get us kicked off with our sponsor for today, escrow.com, the number one online provider of domain name transactions. Recently closed sunlight.com through there, one of my favorite sales so far this year. But I wanted to give you guys a good intro on Shannon so somebody actually had a chance to meet a couple years ago.

We connected over the word grit, and we've kept in touch and really just love so much about what she does and her journey. She's the author of Grit Factor – Courage, Resilience and Leadership in the Most Male Dominated Organization in the World, as well as the memoir north of Hope.

She's the founder of the Grit Institute, a leadership institute committed to whole leader development and the host of the Grit Factor podcast. She teaches on the faculty of the Tuck School's Leadership and Strategic Initiative executive education program and is also one of the first women to fly an Apache helicopter in the US army, leading line units on three continents. She combines her passion and firsthand experience in the study of leadership, grit, purpose and story to address the needs of her clients and in the face of challenge and change with the world class keynotes and executive education that she offers.

After a decade in the armed services, she earned her MBA at the Tuck School at Dartmouth and later her mfa. She went on to lead outstanding teams in the corporate world and medical device and also Microsoft and raised $6.5 million to build a new library and civic center. And now she spends her time speaking to companies and organizations around the world and is consistently the highest rated speaker at her events. She lives in Washington with her two boys. They're actually on winter break as we speak.

So Shannon, super excited to have you on today! Thanks for joining!

Shannon Polson: Oh, it's so great to be back with you, Brian. I'm so happy for this.

Brian Harbin: Yes, and I really love to just kind of dive in like early years. So I know you grew up just outside of Anchorage, Alaska and so tell us about family life or some of those early principles you feel like were very impactful in shaping who you are.

Shannon Polson: Yeah, I mean Alaska definitely is just by virtue of the environment for sure. My father had been stationed at Fort Richardson as a JAG officer instead of being sent to Vietnam. So we ended up staying in Alaska throughout my childhood, although he was military for only one year of that.

And you know, Alaska is this place where really everybody has to pull their weight. There's no really division of labor in that way. Just because there's enough extremity even living outside the city that there's, you know, it's dangerous to drive on icy roads and on remote roads.

And so you learn how to be pretty self sufficient no matter who it is that you are. I also like to remember this bumper sticker that I saw on cars in Alaska. That was, Alaska is where men are men and women win the Iditarod. Because of course, we've had women Iditarod winners not once, but many times.

And so it's really this place where I think both in terms of how genders perform as well as how each individual performs, which is really the most important thing. We really all had to pull our own weight. And that was, by itself, in that environment, a really impactful thing.

Brian Harbin: And so growing up, I guess, kind of on the outskirts of town, right? And in the country, so to speak, and in Alaska, I mean, what were some of the early jobs, passions, any sports you were into? I know it stays dark for a lot of time and then it stays light a lot of time. And I guess you have to kind of work around all that as well, right?

Shannon Polson: Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah. And I grew up with a pretty demanding set of parents who divorced when I was 12. And so there was that challenge for sure that was thrown into our family life. We did a lot of backpacking and a lot of hiking. And certainly the outdoors will teach you a thing or two about grit and about adaptability because nothing ever quite happens the way you expect it to. And there's always challenges and difficulties that are part of just that natural world, especially in Alaska. Although, frankly, anywhere.

But I think that was a big piece of our growing up that both taught me a particular appreciation for that, both that mode of learning, but also that way of living in the world and with the natural world, which is an incredible gift. My sports growing up were soccer when I was little and then swimming.

And swimming was really my primary sport. I did a little cross country skiing, a little bit of track. And then my other big sport or big kind of area of focus in high school was debate. So I was the president of the debate team. It was debate, drama, and forensics was kind of our team. So I did the debate and the forensics and not the drama, which I think requires a whole nother level of courage. That's fantastic.

But I think that that was very formative. Both the swimming and the opportunity to debate were really incredibly formative in my life. And I think of sports, I mean, we talk a lot about sports for girls. Sports for girls and for boys are really important for all kids, for all people. Right? They're really important in teaching us how to push ourselves really hard. How to push through failure, how to fail again and again and keep going and keep getting stronger. So sports do that in any sort of a way for any kid.

And then debate, you know, somewhat similarly. You've got to think on your feet. You have to be confident. You have to be willing to put yourself out there. You have to be able to argue for both sides of an issue, which is something I think our country has lost its way in, which makes us not really appreciate the other side as much and not be able to have those conversations. So I appreciate the confidence that came from learning in both of those environments. I do have a special soccer story that I might tell if you want.

Brian Harbin: Yes, absolutely.

Shannon Polson: Your audience might appreciate. Yeah, so when I was just 9 or 10, and this again, wasn't my main sport, it was when I was younger, but I was just on the girls club soccer team, so nothing like these hyper competitive leagues that you have today. And I tell this story, actually, I think in North of Hope, should be in the Grit Factor too. But I remember I was defense, so I always played fullback. And there was a girl on one of the teams that we played often who was always a forward, so she was always offense. And she would come charging down the middle of the field just like a bat out of h***, and we would just part like the Red Sea, and she would score on goal every single time.

And I remember at some point, my dad came up to me after the game, and it was very… It was a very kind of quiet and supportive sort of a, you know, hug and good job. And he said, yeah, you know, Megan really ripped down that field again today, didn't she? And I said, yeah, she did. And he said, you know, why don't you charge back at her? And I looked at him like he was absolutely out of his mind. Like nobody, nobody charged back at Megan. And then the next time that we team, and it was this drizzly rainy day, and there's a huge puddle in front of the goal. Again, we're not in these fancy places that people are playing now.

And I remember Megan comes charging down my side of the field, and I went somehow charging back at her. We collided in the middle of the field. Both of us fell down. The soccer parents were silent, which never happens. And she never charged my side of the field again. And I think of that as just this gentle prompt from my dad and a life lesson.

Brian Harbin: Yeah, no, that's fantastic. Of just sometimes you got to stand up to them. Right?

Shannon Polson: Yeah, that's right. And find that courage in yourself and then you realize, wow, that actually has impact. Right? And I know you do a lot of work with kids, so I wanted to share that story.

Brian Harbin: No, I love that. And obviously you were a great student too, because you ended up… Tell us about kind of that decision to go on to Duke. Was that your first choice? Or tell us a little bit more about that whole process for you.

Shannon Polson: We didn't talk as much, and to our detriment, I think we did not talk as much about fit in those days. And so I applied to a lot of schools. I ended up looking at getting into Rice and University of Virginia, William Mary, Duke. You may see a little bit of a trend in that it's like the opposite corner of the country from where I was from.

And I think at that point, like maybe a lot of teenagers, I just wanted to get away. I wanted to do my own thing. I didn't want to go to a college where I knew other people already or where other people had gone. And I think part of that was a result of my parents divorce and the need to prove myself and the need to prove to myself and to my family.

And I don't know if that's all healthy in terms of motivation, but I think it was certainly part of that picture. And Duke was a place that when we visited, I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the people that were there. Had a better experience there than I did on a few of the other campuses. I had really wanted to go to Princeton and I didn't get into Princeton. And so just in case you think I got… I did not get into all my schools, but I also didn't have a good experience visiting the campus. So it all worked out perfectly well.

And I think it was a place that I was meant to be. And there were a lot of learnings there as well. It was a huge culture shock to go from Alaska to the south. That's just something that I had no experience with and no understanding of, especially in the late 1980s. So it's been a… Yeah.

Brian Harbin: I can imagine that transition. And so you did chorus and ROTC both at Duke, is that right?

Shannon Polson: Yeah, it was, I was actually a docent at the art museum. I sang in the Duke Chorale and the chamber choir for a couple of years. And then my primary activity was Army ROTC and you know, ROTC.

I remember receiving the information on ROTC in the academies, and my dad just sort of asking, you know, hey, have you ever considered this? And I definitely had not considered it. I was… wanted to be a liberal arts major. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to potentially teach, because I didn't know what else you did if you were a writer. And so that ultimately, I think when I arrived at Duke and I realized it was a huge financial strain for my family, like, it was a big deal. And I was the eldest child, so there were… there were going to be more kids coming and heading to college.

And so I was working two jobs already as a waitress and working in the East Campus housing office. And then there was some kind of a campus activity fair, and ROTC was there. And you know, I already had respected the military because my dad had been military. He was really proud of it. Our family really respects service, and that's part of our family values.

And I figured, you know, why don't I just try it, and if I don't like it, I can say I tried it. And it wasn't a good fit. But I ended up joining Army ROTC, as opposed to Navy or Air Force, because I knew I wanted to study in the liberal arts. Navy and Air Force both required you to be an engineer, and that was definitely not where I wanted to be.

And then I ended up loving it. I loved the people that were part of it. The cadre who are the instructors were really excellent, and the other classmates were amazing as well. And so I felt like they were kind of more my kind of people that had always… you know, we'd worked since we were old enough to work and been saving for college. And it was a lot different than part of the other culture there was…And with that.

Brian Harbin: So you spent, you know, four years. And I know the high school ROTC is more about building life skills. Right. So it's more than just, you know, military. But with ROTC in college is a little bit different because I know you still have to do your… your training, and so tell us a little bit more about kind of the commitment level of ROTC at a college level.

Shannon Polson: Yeah, so the commitment was, we took a class, I think every, maybe every Tuesday. We had to wear a uniform on campus, which was kind of a… you know, when you're a young person and you're not quite sure where you fit in and how it is, this whole identity thing works with various aspects of college. But Thursday was the leadership lab. And that's where we put our BDUs on, like the field uniform. And we went out in the woods and we did stuff in the woods.

So we had to do patrols and squads, you know, lots of things that required… things with your hands. And really the hands-on leadership piece that was both skill building, but it was really about learning about yourself, pushing through difficulties and leading other people while doing that. And it was essentially infantry tactics that they use because it's quite inexpensive… you don't need any equipment, you just need bodies to do infantry tactics.

And so that was what we did on Thursday afternoons. And I would come back from that Thursday afternoon leadership lab in the woods just off the campus of Duke and I would sprint over to my choir practice which started at 06:30. Sometimes I would still have camouflage on my face. And that was definitely a unique thing for the rest of the people who were singing in the choir and do the next activity.

So yes, it was usually twice a week and then we had a few weekends where we would go out and drill as well. And that was also out in the woods, sleeping in little tents or shelter huts, sometimes in the pouring rain, doing patrols through the woods. And again, kind of looking at these light infantry tactics that are how they train leadership in cadets in certain aspects of the army.

Brian Harbin: Yeah. And so immediately upon graduation, that's when you go to serve… initially your first four years. Right? Because I think you're committed for four to five at that point.

Well, you're committed to four if you follow a normal track. I knew that I was going aviation before I graduated and because of that my commitment was going to be flight school and officer basic course. And then six years tagged on to the end of it. Now it's even longer, I understand. So yeah, so it was going to be at least an eight year commitment.

Brian Harbin: And so tell us about that. So I mean at this point you were one of the first Apache helicopter pilots. I mean, how does that decision come about? I mean, what inspired that part of…

Shannon Polson: It, you know, I… So part of my scholarship for ROTC, because it was a National Guard scholarship, required that I drilled with a National Guard unit for my last two years of college. So I was doing ROTC, I was drilling with the National Guard and I was attending school and had my other job. So in that National Guard assignment, it was an aviation unit out of Raleigh, North Carolina, the first to the 130th aviation. And they were a mixed unit at the time. We had Blackhawks, Apaches and 58s all mixed in the same unit.

And then as soon as I graduated, it went to pure Apache units or Black Hawk units or Chinook units. And so I knew that I really liked aviation. Aviation's a big part of growing up in Alaska as well. It's just kind of how things get done. And kind of the largest private aviation community, I think, in the world, possibly, just because it's needed to be able to get to those rural environments. So I loved aviation in general. I requested aviation, applied, was assigned aviation.

But in 1993, when I graduated college, attack aviation was not open to women. So we were only able to fly lift, which was the 60s and the Chinooks. And so I remember going to receive my assignment for those years ahead, for those years that I thought that I would be in the National Guard. And I report to this colonel who's the state aviation colonel for the state of North Carolina at his office in Raleigh.

And you know, he's sitting behind this desk that's as wide as the room and these shiny windows behind him. And I'm just a cadet and just a college student. I haven't graduated, I haven't been commissioned. And I remember saluting. And he asked me to sit down, and we exchanged a couple of pleasantries back and forth before what I would never forget when he stopped mid sentence and he leaned back in his chair and he looked down his nose at me and he said, you realize, cadet, that you will never fly an attack helicopter.

And I looked back at him and I recognized his words for what he meant them to be, which was pretty small and mean and cutting, because at the time, attack helicopters weren't even open for women to fly. And I also understood there was nothing to be gained in having a conversation or pretending that I had any influence over that conversation.

So I just said, yes, sir. And I went back to the campus of Duke University, talked to the cadre again, phenomenal instructors that knew me. They knew my work, they knew all of us, and said, you know what? I don't want to be in the National Guard. I knew… I could tell from not just that interaction, but the several other meetings that I had that followed. I was going to be put in this backwater unit in western North Carolina that never flew and ran out of funding and said, you know what? I don't want to be in the National Guard. I want to be in active duty.

And so they changed my assignment to active duty. I showed up at what is Fort Rucker, might be Fort Novosel… can't remember what they're doing with names anymore. But Fort Rucker, Alabama, and went to aviation officer basic course in flight school. I graduated as an honor graduate and I requested and then I was assigned the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter.

So I was probably number nine or so in terms of the women that went through that flight training program. Important conversations to be had right now because there are no differences in the training for anybody in flight training programs. Not for men or women or people of a different skin color or anything else. The standards are the standards and they always have been. And I think that's an important thing to bring up in this conversation too.

Brian Harbin: No, absolutely. And you know, my wife and I were recently watching Lioness by Taylor Sheridan. And you know, there's an Apache helicopter. She's having a conversation with her dad and he references Googling it. And at the time, I guess currently there's like maybe 94. I don't know the number specifically. I think there's been 94 women out of… I mean, you're talking probably 15,000 or more, I think, but… And you were number nine. So it's… As soon as he said that, I'm like, yes, I know, Shannon. So…

Shannon Polson: Oh, that's great. I didn't know that. I will have to go. And you know, it's interesting because when I was researching for the Grit Factor, I actually did a number of different attempts to research, both through Fort Rucker as well as through the federal government to find out what the percentages were of women in aviation at that time. But certainly women in attack aviation. And they don't seem to have been tracking it, which is very strange. But there were really none. I mean, there just weren't any in aviation in general. I think we were maybe 2% at the time, 2 to 2.5. And that's again, a guesstimate. I'm not referring to a specific source, but the best of my knowledge and the best of anyone else's predictions or estimates, and then for attack aviation, I mean, it was negligible. There were very, very, very few of us.

Brian Harbin: And so I know you've written a whole book on this in terms of your military experience, but if we had time for one story in terms of just, you know, to kind of paint that picture of what it's like being an Apache helicopter… I know one of your speeches, you talk about being redlined and just the intensity of being in the moment and being there. I mean, you're basically the last source of rescue for, you know, majority situation. So, you know, can you provide kind of some color to what exactly that looks like in the moment?

Shannon Polson: Yeah, absolutely. And I'll just back up just a little bit and just say the Grit Factor came about because a young leader reached out and asked me to mentor her as she began the same journey of leadership and army aviation, actually, specifically through a military mentoring site.

And so I started to collect stories. And they are stories of leaders in the vanguards of their fields. They happen to be women. They happen to be military. They're general officers and admirals across the services. There are aviators from World War II to the present, and Army Ranger combat, rescue swimmers, like literally every kind of position that you can imagine. And they are all unbelievable leaders who have unbelievable grit.

And so the story of the Grit Factor is not just my story. It's also the stories of these other incredible leaders. And it really breaks out into a framework that is about owning our past, deeply engaging in the present, and then looking towards the future with that foundation and with the mindset of grit and resilience.

So I just want to set it up with that. And one of those stories that I think the one that you're referring to that really was… I was certainly redlined in my own ability to manage it, for sure. I think my backseater as well. We were flying in Bosnia in 1997. This was my second flight platoon. I had taken my first flight platoon at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and we had flown at Bragg. We had done a couple of domestic deployments to El Centro doing border patrol, and Fort Hood, Texas, just for training. But this was the first real deployment. And I asked to change battalions to take this platoon because we were going to Bosnia. We were finally doing something that we'd trained to do, which is what all of us want to do, is do something of significance and meaning.

And so I took the second platoon. We flew over to Germany. The aircraft had been boated over to Germany. We put everything back together, did the test flights, flew down through Austria and through Hungary, and then flew into Bosnia in 1997, right at the end of the conflict.

We knew that technically the war was over, but we were part of the NATO Stabilization Force. And we were there in support of the Dayton Peace Accord, so to help the Bosnian Muslims resettle their territory. And it was an incredible experience for a number of reasons. I mean, for the missions for sure, for the cultural awareness of what had happened and the absolute devastation in that part of the world. All of that was pretty incredible… and awe inspiring. Not always in good ways. Right?

Of course it had been an absolutely horrific war preceding the time that we had arrived. And we knew that there were 9 million landmines that were unmarked and unaccounted for when we flew into Bosnia. And it was such a severe risk that they told us that if our aircraft had a land-as-soon-as-possible emergency like chips, main transmission or something that could take down the aircraft right away. Normally you would have to put the helicopter on the ground. And they said even if you have that emergency, you should not land until you get to an airstrip because the risk of the landmines is that high. So it was a pretty tense environment.

And at the same time, because officially the hostilities were over, although there were still plenty of hostilities, we had a hard deck of 300 ft, and that means we couldn't fly lower than 300 ft, which is a really high elevation for a tactical helicopter in an… we called it an imminent danger zone. Not a war zone, but an imminent danger zone. Because we're just sitting ducks. You know, we're a lot slower than jets are. Of course, there's a lot of shoulder mounted and other types of surface-to-air missiles that were in the area. So that was the environment that we were flying in.

And one of the first missions that we flew in Bosnia was a reconnaissance of a weapon storage site. So the Serbs had these heavy weapons systems, tracked vehicles, wheeled vehicles. So they're big, huge weapon systems. And as part of the Dayton Peace Accords, they had to be kept in certain places and they were called weapons storage sites.

So our job was to fly out to that weapon storage site, hover above that weapons storage site, take a video of it with our camera that could see in day and night and infrared conditions, and then narrate what the vehicles were that we saw in that weapon storage site and we’d take it back to military intelligence.

Brian Harbin: And you would have to do that above 3,000 ft still. Right?

Shannon Polson: Above 300 ft.

Brian Harbin: 300 ft.

Shannon Polson: OK. And I know that 300 ft doesn't sound that like it's such a big deal to a civilian, because at 300ft you'd notice the helicopter above your house. But it's pretty high in terms of the tactical risk for a helicopter in that kind of a zone.

So we took off at night because we flew at night, we flew under infrared. That's kind of one of our competitive advantages in the military is our ability to operate at night better than most people can. Certainly in the Apache and we're flying under infrared. We climbed to 300ft. We're calling out, talking to all of the different agencies and the multinational division north. So we had the Germans and the Norwegians and the Brits and the Scots and all of these folks down on the ground calling to them to let them know where we were on that mission profile, going along that route.

And just as we pull into that high out of ground effect hover, so it's not being supported by the rotor vortices, it takes all the power of those two 1850 horsepower engines. Just as we're pulling into that high ground effect hover at night under FLIR, we hear a sound in our helmets that I've never heard except in the simulator. And we are being tracked by one of the most lethal anti aircraft systems in the world.

Now we know it's against the rules of engagement, of course, but it doesn't matter. The sound is unmistakable. And our tracking system is very clear. My back seater and I both puckered up just a bit because we're flying tandem configuration. I'm in the front seat, he's in the back seat. He said, what do you want me to do, lieutenant? Do you want me to break the hard deck? I said, hold tight. I called up to the controlling agency, that's the agency that controls all of the aviation operations in the sector.

And I said, this is Blue Max 5, 6. This is our location. We're at 300ft and we're being tracked by the most lethal anti aircraft system in the world. And as I waited for their reply, the sound of my helmet changed again. And now we were not only being tracked, but we had been acquired by this lethal anti aircraft system.

And I knew at that point, my backseater knew at that point we had seconds to make a decision. But I knew that this had not happened before in the 6 to 12 months prior. I knew it was outside of the rules of engagement. We knew that if we broke the hard deck, if we went below 300 ft, we would be breaking the rules of engagement. We would be grounded as aviators until they did an investigation, possibly even sent home. We knew that provocation was a lot more likely than actual engagement. And so we had to take all of those briefings that we'd had for days and weeks before we came into country and process that in a few seconds to make the decision. And at the end of the day…

Brian Harbin: That noise going in your helmet too. Right?

Shannon Polson: Right. Yeah. That alarm in your helmet. Right? And what we decided at the end is… and we knew like if they fired we were dead. Right? They'd already locked on… is we just turned down the volume on that radar control tracking device and continued the mission. And you know, I don't know. I don't know. I think you could have argued for lots of different things.

I think knowing that the provocation was much more likely than engagement, that we hadn't met the mission yet, all of that factored in in a pretty meaningful way. And you had to keep your head about. You kind of come back to your training. Right? Come back to those briefings and be able to make a decision that's based on a little bit more practical information than it is in the emotion that you feel in the moment. But that was certainly something that I won't forget.

Brian Harbin: Yeah, no kidding. And you know, I love the visual there of that happening and then you just turning down the volume to stay focused on what you're doing. And I think too, kind of on that point, Shannon, I mean obviously you were one of the first, you know, Apache helicopter pilots in like you said in your book, the most male dominated organization in the world.

Is that something that you kind of had to employ as a female in that organization of just kind of blocking out the noise and turning it down and just staying focused? How did you… Obviously you're providing mentorship to a lot of women that are following behind you, but what did you lean into in those moments? Did you have a mentor? How did you stay focused on the mission for yourself?

Shannon Polson: Such a good question. I do, I think of it a little bit as a… and I don't have personal experience with equestrians at all, but of kind of putting blinders on. Right? And staying super focused on being excellent. Because if you're excellent, people might say a lot of things, but they really ultimately aren't going to take hold if you are performing above expectations.

And so my requirement for myself has always been to perform above the expectations. I would go into a boss and say, I expect to exceed your expectations. If at some point that's not the case, let me know. And that was a constant conversation, of course. But I knew that I had to be better than what average was. And the average pilot's a very good pilot. Right?

In the military, we're trained really, really… but I needed to be a lot better than that average. I needed to be better than average as an officer, as you know, my physical conditioning in my training and in my execution. And even so, you're still going to be criticized. You're still going to have a lot of smack that's talked. That has nothing to do with anything, and half of which isn't based in any kind of reality. But your job is to just simply stay focused. And yeah, it's hard, I think. I did not have a mentor. I did work with some pretty amazing people, I will say. I had a phenomenal first battalion commander, phenomenal first platoon sergeant when I was a platoon leader. And your platoon sergeant teaches you a lot as a young lieutenant. You really don't know much as a lieutenant. Right?

But your platoon sergeant's been there for 15, 16 years. So Sergeant C. He lives in North Carolina still, and I think he's running a construction company. He was just excellent and he taught me so much. So yeah, in some ways, I guess he was a mentor. He was just a really good platoon sergeant. And my battalion commander was an excellent role model, I think, for me as well.

So both of them happened to be men because, again, there weren't a lot of women around. But that was a really important thing, was to be able to have those places to look for examples and… or support as well as just really working to stay focused. I do tell young leaders now, I think building your team. And that's chapter three of the Grit Factor. Building your team and thinking who needs to be in that constellation of people or your solar system of support? There's professional support, there's personal support, and you're going to need that both of those things in a leadership journey, because leadership is hard and it's lonely, and you can't just talk to anybody about the things that you're facing.

So those are… That's a pretty important piece of setting yourself up for success and then being able to block out that noise. You need to listen really well, right? You have to be aware. And really, strategic listening or active listening is one of the chapters of the Grit Factor as well. The most strategic leadership skill you can develop. But you have to know as well when to tune out the noise, when to stay focused on that mission, and to tune out the noise.

Brian Harbin: Yeah. No, I love that. And yeah, such great advice. And I have read Grid Factor, and there's so many great nuggets in there that apply to, you know, not just the military, but beyond. So yes, one of the things I really wanted to talk about, too, was your your book. Because one of the things that really inspires me the most about you is just not just what you've been through there, but even kind of in your personal journey.

Do you mind if I ask you about the book you wrote, the Memoir of Hope, and just kind of give listeners the color behind that book and what caused you to write it? Because that's, to me, is one of the most inspiring ways I've ever heard of anybody to overcome trauma. So I'd love to hear you talk about that.

Shannon Polson: Yeah. Thank you so much! North of Hope was my first book, and I left Microsoft after about four years because I knew that I needed to write… is a story that takes place after my time in the military. And I was actually working at Microsoft. I'd been there for about six months when I had a phone call from the police in Cactovic, Alaska, which is, again, I'm from Alaska, but Kaktovik is way, way, way north in Alaska, kind of off the northern northeastern coast. It's a barrier island. And my father and my stepmother had been kayaking there on their 16th anniversary.

And so the police called and told me that there had been an accident, that my father and my stepmother had been killed by a grizzly bear when they were on their kayak trip on the Hula Hula River in Northeast Alaska. My dad was a really important person in my life. I mean, he still is. He always will be an important person in my life. And it's been almost… this is 20 years. Years in 2025. June of 2025.

So I went into shock, essentially. I mean, I think that's the only way you can describe it. You start to move. You start to move, but you're kind of unaware of what's happening around you. There's just a… there's sort of a singularity of one foot in front of the other. Knowing that, you know, I needed to coordinate to get their bodies down to Anchorage. I needed to reach out to the church and schedule a funeral. I needed to do all of these things that nobody ever teaches you to do.

There's no checklist for doing this when this kind of thing happens. And my dad and my stepmom, you know, of course, that was the whole household. They were living in Alaska. None of us were in Alaska. My brothers were in the continental US as well. And so it was… it was a hard… it was the beginning of… of what is a lifelong journey. Anybody that has had that kind of loss, you understand that there is no getting over it. There's no… there's no kind of wrapping it up or processing to the point of being done with it. It's an ongoing journey.

And I went up to Alaska and helped to make sure the funeral happened and the burial happened. And I think a priest at the time, our old priest who was at my dad's funeral, said to me then, he said, you know, you think you're feeling this now, but be prepared because it's going to get a lot harder. And it's going to get a lot harder in around six weeks. Actually there's a time frame, it turns out… when kind of the shock wears off. And you know, everybody else who is shocked has already said they're sorry to hear this terrible news. And then you're by yourself and everything starts to settle in.

And so I worked really hard to try to set myself up for success. Like, I joined a grief group. I started seeing a counselor, tried to start to scaffold for what was going to come. And you can never really know what's going to come. It's not five stages that you progress through in any kind of an orderly way… But I had to take care of everything up in Alaska.

And then I had to come back to work and do my thing. So that work was… the first piece that I did was to sign up to sing with the Seattle Symphony Chorale. And I sang the Mozart Requiem in, I think it was February, the year after my dad died. Yitzhak Perlman was the conductor. It was a phenomenal musical experience, but also a phenomenal personal experience because my dad and I had both shared this love of singing and choral singing. And about that time is when I realized I needed to take that same trip. Like, I needed to do the… I needed to go back and see where he died.

And I needed to finish the trip that he wasn't able to finish. And so I made arrangements to raft that same river that next summer and went up with a stepbrother and a friend of his. They were the only people that I could find. And it was a really difficult and a really powerful experience. It was not cathartic. I guess I haven't experienced catharsis in my life. It's more of this gradual, iterative sort of a change. I'm too stubborn, I think, for catharsis. But it was a beautiful opportunity to be in the place that they loved and where they had died. And I took communion from my church up to the place that they had died. And so that's the story of North of Hope, and I hope your readers will love it.

The trick is, I have just got the rights back from it, so it's no longer owned by the publisher. So it's going to be available only through my website. And that will be available for download on my website at shannonpolson.com, probably not at the gritinstitute.com, but…

Brian Harbin: Yeah, well. And I think, to me, what I find so striking about that too, is like, literally facing that fear of, you know, as you're on the same literal journey that, you know, where your parents were attacked, and then you're living that every day. And it seems like… I mean, I personally would have been overcome by fear every single night. But you're faced with it, right, and have to overcome that. What do you feel like helped get you through those moments where you're just struck with fear or all the other emotions you have on top of that?

Shannon Polson: Yeah. I mean, part of it is, and I use this metaphor in the Grit Factor, and I believe in it wholeheartedly, is that we have to turn to face the wind. Right? The helicopter faces the wind on takeoff and on landing. And you have to face into that resistance in order to make it through. And when you do it the right way, it helps you to rise. Right? And in a lot of ways, I think that is running at the girl on the soccer field, right… or skydiving when I was in college. All of those things were purposely facing a fear because I know that when you do hard things, you get better at doing hard things.

And I think my dad brought me up that way. I've seen that in my life and in my work and in the activities that I've done. And so I knew that there was no way around facing directly into what this loss was, which was the thing that I had feared, honestly, the most at that point in my life. And we did keep a bear watch every night, which is certainly more than one needs to do in the Arctic. We had an electric fence around our tents, which is, I think, a good, safe practice.

And we had somebody stay up with a bear gun every night. It's bright. It never gets dark in the Arctic in the summertime. So you can certainly see well enough. And again… unnecessary, but it was necessary at the time from the emotional perspective, I think. And that was an important thing to do.

Brian Harbin: Wow! Well, and I appreciate you sharing that story. So inspiring. And so you talked a little bit about after the military. You, I know you had some work in medical sales with Microsoft. What was that? You know, what were some of the big transitions for you in terms of making that from, you know, to civilian life, working in the corporate world? I guess anything specific, looking back… and I know you teach a lot about this in your public speaking and a lot of work you do with companies, but what were some of the key factors for you in kind of making that transition to the corporate world? And some specific things that helped you, you feel like?

Shannon Polson: Well, it was really helpful to me to take those two years, and I'm very fortunate that I was able to do what I realized. But to go to business school, because in a lot of ways that helped that cultural transition. It's a big, big transition for veterans. And that's something that I'm also working on doing a lot more with in this coming year. Because it's hard to transition from the military into the civilian sector, not because you don't have the skills, but because there's kind of a different way of understanding the world and interacting with people, and you have to learn that.

And I think those two years of business school, I was pretty, probably clumsy at some of that navigation for part of it. But it was a pretty important part of me being able to move from this one insular environment to this much broader environment. And I'm grateful for those… for those years.

A lot of it then, too, is just that work on the job. And the nice thing about having served, if you've served honorably, is that a lot of those skills that you learn, and I would mention this for federal employees as well, who have faced layoffs recently, you've developed a lot of skills in the military or in a federal job, right, where you have deliverables and you meet them on time, you ideally are taking care of people.

I mean, that proved to be… it's always going to prove to be one of the most important leadership things that you can do is if you love your people and you take care of people. You can do a lot in this world and most people don't. Most people are focused on themselves. They either haven't learned or they don't care. One or the other, it doesn't really matter.

But I started to see those places where taking care of people… and of course you have to know what you're doing. You have to be technically and tactically competent and you have to have a vision and you have to understand things more broadly.

But at the end of the day, it's about people. And that piece of it is the same no matter where you go. And it's how I interviewed for my most challenging job when I was at Microsoft as well and had the question like, you're interviewing to take this team at Microsoft that you know you're going to have to turn over. But that was in the job description and what I understood was part of it. And that's a horrible thing to have to do, right… is to turn a team over as you're moving a lot of people on, and you're keeping a few people and you're redefining the team.

And I said, well, of course, I mean, I believe in taking care of people. Like that's my job as a leader. And that's the reason that I got that job, which was a promotion. It was a hard thing to do. It ultimately is one that resulted in the highest operational health index for our division after the turnover.

And that is one of the things that I'm proudest of in everything that I've done that isn't even on my resume, you know, is any time that you have the chance to do… excellent work and take care of people. And oftentimes that excellent work as a leader comes about because you took care of your people in that process. So that was finding those similarities in the skill sets that mattered the most is where that success came in translating it from the military to the civilian environment.

Brian Harbin: Yeah, love that too. And I think, you know, as everybody's so focused too on AI and all these things, at the end of the day, being good with people is a skill set that will just… it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Right?

Shannon Polson: It's not going anywhere. And that is something I would really urge people, first of all, of course, be smart on emerging technologies. Absolutely. I'm finding AI super helpful in marketing and other sorts of things. But at the end of the day, people are people. And if you are, you know, a kid and you're cheating, hopefully you're not cheating, but you're relying too much on ChatGPT for writing papers. You're robbing yourself of developing your brain. And your brain is a really… It's kind of one of your most important assets.

And so I think for any of us, whether we're kids or whether we're adults, making sure that we're continuing to invest in our own learning and development, continuing to be adaptable and realizing that things happen because of human beings. They don't happen because you could do something cool on the computer, right?

And I think schools are failing a lot in this way where they're just having kids generate PowerPoints and play with fonts, none of that is going to matter in five years. Literally none of that's going to matter. What will matter is the ability to think clearly and to be able to articulate your thoughts well, to be a good communicator, because that's how people interact with people and that's how work gets done. Yeah.

Brian Harbin: Oh, absolutely. And so, you know, five years in the corporate world and then you launched Grit Institute. And so this is where, you know, you and I connected actually through I think it was Sydney, right? He was one of your professors. I was playing pickleball in Fernandina. He asked me what I do and I said, grid. He's like, oh, do you know Shannon? And he actually made the connection. And so it was great that you and I were able to meet through him.

But okay, so one of the questions I just really want to know, because for me, I know when I saw the word grit, I'm like, this is the word that I've been looking for forever. So for you, why grit? Why is that word so meaningful to you personally?

Shannon Polson: You know, it was a word that we used when I was growing up. So I think that's part of it, probably a very big part of it, actually. And as I look back on the places that I have been successful in life, and again, I'll credit my parents and I'll credit a lot of that experience for being foundational in that… if I think about what the element of success that was most important, it was grit, right? And I think of grit as this dogged determination in the face of difficult circumstances.

So, of course, Angela Duckworth, as you know, defines it as passion and perseverance towards long term goals. And that's awesome. But I do feel like especially in the wake of COVID… there were horizons. And in the current political situation, no matter what your beliefs are, there's a lot that's up in the air. There's a lot of flux. Right?

And so when things are in flux and horizons are less clear, I think there's a dogged determination that's necessary in the face of those challenges. And that doesn't mean that you never redirect or that you never take a different course. I think that's important to caveat that, number one, grit is not a sustainable operating mode, although it's a critical operating mode to master. And it's also sometimes true that there are times to grit and there are times to quit. Right? So both of those things are true. And at the same time, that dogged determination is something that seems vanishingly rare in the population and a pretty important key to our successes.

Brian Harbin: No, absolutely. And you know, scientifically, I know a lot of the researchers and everything, they love using the word resilient. I guess it's a little bit more socially accepted. But to me, I feel like grit really kind of describes it and I think, you know, the whole analogy of how a pearl is formed, how a piece of grit gets inside an oyster, and the oyster can either die… because it has this foreign object in, or it figures out a way to build around it to shield itself.

And then when you open it up, wow, you have this beautiful pearl. And I think there are so many different uses and ways with grit that it just really resonates. So I know you and I have always kind of shared that passion for the word. So, but for you, in leaving the corporate world, what's been your mission with Grit Institute? And what do you feel like you're trying to achieve by that and teach?

Shannon Polson: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you!

So the Grit Institute has grown and developed from kind of the keynote specific piece, which is still a huge part of the Grit Institute, is my work that I do with companies and organizations and delivering keynotes at big conferences and that sort of thing, to the book, of course, the Grit Factor. And then there's also now a training element. And that training element includes two primary courses, and those are going to grow to five courses this year. And they are essentially courses for mid to senior level leaders.

Some of this is some of the same material that I teach at the Tuck School’s Leadership and Strategic Impact course… kind of more on steroids though, because it's over a longer period. So I currently have two six week offerings. You can combine them into one nine week offering and there will be some additional work that's coming soon.

One of them is called Going for Grit and it's self paced. It follows the Grit Factor and it really helps you to own those, not just the stories. Because of course, as you know, the Grit Factor is certainly narrative story driven. That's how we learn, that's how our brains take in and process information. But it's also heavily research based and combines with tactics and procedures and techniques that you can bring into your own life and work. And so the course itself goes even deeper into that. So you can really make that your own, really own that piece of it.

And I think of the last part of all of my keynotes as about the courage of ownership. You have to own this yourself to really make it yours. So you learn it, you work on it with your manager and your mentor, and you own it yourself. And so we give you the tools to do all of those things.

The second six week course is called… actually just changed the name to Leading with Purpose, more to align with what I'm doing in this executive education program at Tuck. And that is really going deep into purpose. And it turns out again during and after COVID, there's a lot of studies of the workforce that suggested that part of the challenge with employee engagement, which is at all time lows right now in the western world, not just the United States, is that people aren't connected to their own personal purpose. Right?

And I believe that that personal purpose, and this is where we're really building out at the Grit Institute right now, is this work on purpose. Because it underscores everything we do with grit and resilience for sure. That's the commit phase of the Grit Factor — owning your story and connecting to your deeper-than-why, your core purpose. Because this is values based stuff. It's the thing that you can go back to again and again anytime things get difficult.

So the goal really is to be able to help people own this for themselves and bring this into their organization. So this is training available for individuals and it's training available for more enterprise level work as well. And we then run those folks through cohorts. So the cohorts ultimately work together to go through this training and then you can change the vocabulary and the culture within the company and the organization. So it's pretty exciting. I really am very passionate about it.

The mission is building courageous leaders for a better world. And our world is shy on leadership right now, shy on courage, and I think shy on grit, resilience and the connection to purpose. So it seems like a really important place to put the work.

Brian Harbin: Definitely. And yeah, I love connecting people to their purpose. I think that is such a driver that helps find so many solutions. I think, you know, the world is so… it seems so focused on like finding a mentor or someone to help. And that's all important and everything. But I think for me, what's helped me find a purpose is finding someone to mentor. Right?

Who's someone that you can really pour into and share. And I know you've seen that through not just your work with the military and the women that you're helping, but the companies and everything else. And I think really having that opportunity to mentor makes you so much better at all the little things, but then gives you such a bigger purpose than achieving it yourself when you help somebody else do that.

Shannon Polson: Absolutely. And you know, it's both the right thing to do. But it's also interesting that the data shows that those people who are mentors to others actually perform much better in their own job. So it's a benefit to you and it's also just the right thing to do. I think both of those things are true. We turn out as mentors. You learn ideally in a mentoring relationship. You learn as much as the mentor as you do as the mentee. And so that ideally is a reciprocal sort of a relationship in that kind of sharing, which is pretty powerful.

Brian Harbin: It is. And I want to be respectful of your time here too, because I know you guys are winter break. But on that note, so you're mother of two boys and I know recently because I'm on your newsletter that goes out, I know you guys lived abroad with your boys. So tell us about as a mom entrepreneur, luckily you have a lifestyle that supports that as well, which is fantastic. But tell us about that experience for you and your family living in France.

Shannon Polson: Yeah, we have always wanted to do this and my husband jokes that I'm the person that does things on the five to seven minute timeline and he's the five to seven year timeline. So we usually come out at about five to seven days. So we, at some point, decided a good time. It was just after kind of things were opening up again post pandemic and that we should go while the boys were still young enough to be willing to and not go kicking and screaming.

So we moved to a small village in the Southern Alps in France, outside of Grenoble. It's a place that you probably wouldn't have heard of, called Villarder. It's an absolutely stunning little village. And it's very French, so it's not like going to Chamonix, where you could speak English and get around without speaking any French. You really had to learn French, and we didn't know fre… We dumped the kids in the public schools. And I will say that it took a lot of grit, I'll just say, especially for the kids, because our work, of course, is in English.

At the same time, there were days when all of us were in tears. It was very hard for the first six months. And I would say things continued to get better. And I wish we could have stayed a second year, because right at the end of the first year is kind of when you start to break through. But it was really a special opportunity for our family and to be in another culture who are just incredibly generous and incredibly kind and welcoming and, you know, would apologize for not speaking English, even though clearly our job was to speak French, since we were in their country. But it was… it was certainly a growth experience, I think, for all of us. Hard, a little to do, work off hours.

But to your point, we're entrepreneurs. We can make that happen. The boys really get the most credit for being able to jump into a school where they just had to learn the language, and it was sort of sink or swim. And there were some times they were gasping for breath and they ultimately swam. So I think that was something that I'm incredibly… I will always be so grateful for. I really miss that little village right now.

Brian Harbin: Yeah. And so in building grit in young people, and especially your kids, you know, obviously that's one way to do it. And they're both teenagers, I believe.

Shannon Polson: 12 and 15.

Brian Harbin: 12 and 15. Okay. Anything else that you would advise for parents or for young people in terms of building grit? Let's say they don't travel. That is one way, obviously, to get out and kind of immerse yourself in another culture. Anything else you feel like you do that's important for helping instill that in them?

Shannon Polson: Yeah, they're both required to always be playing a sport, whatever that sport is, all seasons. You have to finish your sport. They are required to do music. And, you know, we've lightened up on some of this a little bit. But there are just certain requirements that are part of… we talk about it as this is what our family does. We also don't do things like we don't play video games. There is an occasional weekend 30 minute Minecraft or whatever.

But at the end of the day, we held off on cell phones until our 15 year old, who was 14 last summer, hiked 1200 miles by himself on the PCT. And then we said, maybe you should have a cell phone. And it's still pretty heavily locked down. He's not allowed to have social media. He does have his YouTube channel where he puts up his hiking stuff.

So I don't want to pretend that we're pristine in any of this. The younger one is not going to have… we basically said we'll talk about having a phone when you're 16. There's no need to have one. I mean, there just isn't. And the studies are super clear that it's distracting, that it takes away from your learning, that it takes away from your ability to be out and with people. So we're pretty tired of that.

And I think having defined family values, this is what I would recommend. I would recommend doing the hard work to define family values. And we talk about in our family courage, compassion, and curiosity as three of the things. And we also have a whole little sheet up at the end of the dinner table that says respect and kindness and hard work. And we say we have a mantra, Polsons do hard things. It's not unique, I'm sure there's other families like that, but you've got to have that thing. And you say it, you reinforce it, you reinforce it again. And then talking about things with your kids.

I think it is a mistake to say, oh, just let your child find themselves and decide who they are. No. You decide when your child is at your house what your values are. And we say, these are our family values. This is who we are. We are a family who does this. And your children in their development are looking for that definition. So if you don't give it to them, then the world will give it to them. And I'm not sure about you or your listeners, but I'm not interested in the world giving my kids anything. Right?

So we say, this is who our family is. This is what we represent. We're going to go do service and work at the food bank at Christmas because that's what we do. We are a family that serves. Or we are a family that skis. Or we are a family that is kind. You talk about it in that way that reinforces the identity because the kids are going to ultimately decide how they live into those identities. But to help to give them that value base, I think it's critical.

And as a family and as parents, you've got to do that work to define those values and then hold to it. Like, it was hard to not give them phones for a little bit, and then you just make it a thing. It's just like, hey, that's not what our family does. So it's not really even a conversation. Again, that gets trickier as they get older. And then you decide when it's time. But it's easier when you've defined that value upfront instead of responding to what the external pressures are.

Brian Harbin: So, yeah, and I love too getting out front with, hey, Polsons do hard things. You know, that's just what it is when they come to you. Hey, Polson's do hard things. Yes, on that note, I know we're excited to see too, with the Grit Institute and all the new courses and developments that will come with that. I don't know if there's any new books on the horizon, but I'm sure.

Shannon Polson: There's a proposal going in in March.

Brian Harbin: Okay.

Shannon Polson: So I'm refining a proposal right now, and that should be… should be coming, and I will absolutely make sure you're among the first to know.

Brian Harbin: All right. TBD on that. Not sure if you had a chance to check out gritcree.com, but yes, those are 12 principles that, you know, speaking of values that we really try and bake in through Grit University, Grit Camp, the podcast, and all the things that we do. I love in reading those. Which one do you think resonates most with you and why?

Shannon Polson: So, first of all, I love the entire thing. Well done. And again, that goes to defining your values and defining what it is that you believe in, right. Which is important and helping those kids or people do the same. I love the I don't find an excuse, I make a way. I love that. And I think there was just actually about to put together a blog post… it'll probably come out next week on excuses and complaining, essentially. Right?

And I think there's a huge amount of that in the world. There's no need for that. It's not productive. It takes us nowhere that we individually or collectively need to go. But I will find a way… I mean, that's what we need to do. Right? And I love also, as part of that creed, you also have the idea that you're not going to just spot problems, you're going to solve problems. And that comes back around to… I think it was one of my early bosses in the military, and I think I came to him with a problem, and he said, come to me with three solutions. Let's talk through which one makes sense, right, how I can support you with one of those three solutions.

And I think that's the opportunity, right… is to get to that place where you're like, hey, come to me with some solutions. And so yes, I love that. That you're not going to make excuses. You're going to find a way. This comes back to the mindset piece of the… and I call it grounded optimism or measured optimism, and the Stockdale Paradox. And you know the Stockdale Paradox.

Yeah, it's… Admiral Stockdale was a lieutenant flying in Vietnam. He was shot down over the trees, captured almost immediately, held in the Hanoi Hilton for seven and a half years, and his legs were broken twice. He was tortured mercilessly. And when he was finally released, they said, what's the difference? You know, what's the difference between those who lived and those who died? And he said, it's easy. Said the optimists died. They were the ones who said, we will be rescued for sure by Easter. And Easter came and went, and nothing happened. Or the war will be over by September. But September came and went, and nothing happened.

So Stockdale, who was a stoic, which is why he said that it was the optimists, because he didn't believe in optimism, said, you can never, ever lose faith that you will ultimately prevail in the end, balanced with the brutal realities of what you face in the present. So you can never, ever lose faith that you are going to prevail. You just don't know which way that might be. You might have to change… you might have to change tack, but you will ultimately prevail.

And that Stockdale Paradox, which ultimately was supported by three separate independent Navy studies on the same cohort of POWs, said that optimism actually was the key to their success, the key to their being able to make it through this unbelievably difficult time and reintegrate into the world was optimism. So that idea that you will find a way, right… I will find a way or I will make one. Right? That's what the Stockdale Paradox is all about. And I absolutely love it. And every single one of your listeners and your students is going to benefit from that.

Brian Harbin: Fantastic! And yeah, too, I love the, you know, facing the wind, right? The obstacle is the way. You know, we would always use the analogy of buffaloes run towards the rain cloud, the cows run away from them. Same kind of thing, running towards the problem. So now it makes sense. That's the name of your newsletter as well, right?

Shannon Polson: FacingTheWind.substack.com.

Brian Harbin: Yes, now that you mentioned it, it makes sense in terms of why you made it that way. But Shannon, this has been an absolute pleasure. Always great to catch up with you and especially have you on the podcast. And thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom. Last thing I know we mentioned, where would people find out more information or where would be the best place to go?

Shannon Polson: Probably the best place is thegritinstitute.com and I'm also fairly active on LinkedIn, at Shannon H. Polson, Instagram at Shannon H. Polson, and you at the Grit Institute.

Brian Harbin: Fantastic! Well, thank you again! Really appreciate it! And thank you guys for tuning in to the grit.org podcast. And we'll see you guys here next time.

Thanks again!