Navy Seals are the elite. Their training is extremely tough both physically and mentally. Here are 3 lessons Major Incident Managers can learn from Navy Seals:
1 – Set milestone goals
Breaking down a goal into manageable milestones makes an overall big goal clearer, less complex and more manageable.
This kind of detailed planning requires discipline, but it makes positive outcomes far more likely.
Seals are excellent at planning and achieving big goals that are often complex with many variables.
2 – Visualise success to overcome failure
As you would expect, Seal training is tough. Throughout the training 75% of people who make it on to the initial 6-month training end up washing out.
Seals understand their objective, and they visualise the objective in advance, identifying potential scenarios, what could go wrong, and how they will respond to these obstacles.
Similar to professional athletes they use mental imagery to visualise themselves going through each action.
3 – Control arousal
When we feel stressed our body releases cortisol and endorphins, in this heighten state it can be easy to become very reactive, and consider only first order principles Forgetting to consider second and third order consequences of a decision can be damaging. Only focusing on the immediate outcome leads to poor decision making.
Seals also learn to control their stress levels so that they can think logically and clearly during the most extreme pressures and consider second and third order consequences of decisions.