Bearing is the way you conduct and carry yourself. Your manner should reflect alertness, competence, confidence, and control. To develop bearing, you should hold yourself to the highest standards of personal conduct. Never be content with meeting only the minimum requirements.
Episode Transcription [INTRO]
? Trenches by Pop Evil ?
*Alex*
Welcome to Morning Mindset. A daily dose of practical wit and wisdom with a professional educator & trainer, Amazon best selling author, United States Marine, Television and Radio host, Paul G. Markel. Each episode will focus on positive and productive ways to strengthen your mindset, and help you improve your relationships, career goals, and overall well-being. Please welcome your host; Paul G. Markel.
*Professor Paul*
Alright, hello, and welcome back! And according to my show notes calendar, this episode of Morning Mindset is going to be released on a Monday morning, so welcome to a brand new week. We’re looking forward to helping you start each and every day of this week off on a positive and productive note. Now, just in case you’re brand new, this is your first time listening, brothers and sisters let me tell you what, you’ve got some catching up to do.
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Right now we’re a little bit more than halfway through the United States Marine Corps Leadership Traits. JJDIDTIEBUCKLE, and we’re going to do the B in BUCKLE. And yes, I know, JJDIDTIEBUCKLE is nonsensical. Doesn’t matter. In the military they make up acronyms so that young privates and PFCs and Lance Corporals can remember them. And old Corporals, 30 years later, can remember them too. *chuckle* So…
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Let’s talk about Bearing. Bearing is the way you conduct and carry yourself. Your manner should reflect alertness, competence, confidence, and control. Now, many of you who have been listening to me know that at one point in time I was a police officer. I was a law enforcement officer in my native Ohio. I spent, well, almost two decades working as a police officer for various municipalities.
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One of the things that an instructor of mine said, a guy named Ed Nowicki, he’s retired now but he was a really, very good, competent police instructor, and he was a mentor of mine. He said ‘you can always tell a cop, a good cop, you can always tell them, who they are, even in civilian clothes. And the reason you can tell a guy is a cop, even in civilian clothes, is because he looks as if he owns the very ground upon which he stands’.
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So, if you ever look at a good street cop, in street clothes, when you look at them, stand off and watch them, observe them, they look as if they own the very ground upon which they stand. That is how they behave. And that is Bearing. A person who stands tall and erect, keeps their head up, pays attention to what’s going on around them, and exudes competence, confidence, and control. That is what you want in a leader, and that is why Bearing is part of the Leadership Traits.
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Now, when I became a United States Marine, obviously they focused very heavily on Bearing from the very, very beginning. There was this thing that we were taught in basic training, and of course it carried on throughout, called Your Military Bearing. Standing tall and erect, head held high, your spine is like an iron rod, like there’s an iron rod from the ground through your spine. You’re as tall….I don’t think Marines could possibly be any taller physically than they are. They don’t slouch, they don’t lean. They stand up straight. They keep their heads up and they pay attention to what’s going on around them.
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Consider the world in which you live. Whether it is, you go to school everyday, or you go to work everyday, whether you’re interacting with people socially. Take a second, step back, raise your OWN head, and look around, and observe people. Watch how they conduct themselves. Watch how they stand. Observe their Bearing. How many people do you encounter, or will you encounter do you believe, if you’ve already been paying attention, that do not stand alert? Do not exhibit confidence and control, but instead slouch, lean, look at the ground. They’ve got that attention vampire in their head. Yes, they’ve got that phone in their hand, and everything else in the whole world is just carrying on around them and they’re slouched over in the corner with their head down, looking at their phone.
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Is that Bearing? No. Is that good Bearing? Positive Bearing? Is that Military Bearing? Well, no it is not obviously. If you want to be a leader, if you want to inspire confidence in other people, because, and, if you’re a parent, I know you might not have signed up for the job, or thought that’s what you’re going to be doing when you became a parent, but you are indeed acting as a LEADER when you are a parent.
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Your kids, or the people who work for you, or the people you are coaching, or what have you, they are going to look at you. They are going to watch you. Your children are going to... they constantly observe you. That’s all they do. They’re watching you constantly, and they’re waiting for you to screw up, of course, because that’s what they are, they’re kids, but they will watch and they will mirror your Bearing. If you are alert and competent. How do you become competent? You become competent by diving into education, by reading, by taking training, by understanding what your job is, what your mission is.
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When you know that, when you know that you’re able to perform the job to the highest of your ability, then you will have confidence, will you not? You should. Bearing is something that we probably don’t think about a lot. *chuckle* I’ve got a story for you. This is a bodyguard story. Many years ago...I’ve done a lot of things, I’ve worn a lot of hats, in my lifetime. I was a United States Marine, I was a police officer, I was also a professional security provider. I was an executive protection agent. Most of you guys know an executive protection agent as a ‘bodyguard’.
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When I was working as a bodyguard, I would have to work, not only with executive men, but also with their families, with their children, and so on and so forth. I was working on a team where there was myself and there was a woman, and we were working with the clients family, the kids, the wife, and so forth. I was standing off to the side, watching the children, watching all the area around the children, of course, and I was standing erect, I had my arms folded across my torso, my chin up, and I apparently exuded competence, confidence, and control.
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This woman said to me, bless her heart, she said “you, you shouldn’t stand like that, you look intimidating”....That’s kind of the point….”well, you’re standing out, you look intimidating”. This is the way con…*chuckle* and I said “Well, Ok, this is how I stand. This is how men stand”. And that was something, that, she didn’t quite get. She was, you know…. She, and the reason that you have women on executive protection teams is because, number one, women blend in very well with children, in like a child setting.
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If you have children, clients children, especially if they’re elementary school aged, no one thinks twice of a woman taking elementary school aged kids on field trips, or in and out of school, or around school, or school activities, or what have you, but if there’s a large, imposing man with these little, elementary school children, people are like ‘what’s this guy doing? That’s not their Dad. Who’s this big guy?’ but if it’s a woman, even if it’s not their mom or whatever, people are like ‘oh, must be their friend, or their aunt, or whatever’. They never think twice about it.
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So, women can be very effective protection agents because they can go places where they won’t draw attention to themselves or to the clients. But they’re not men. And the way I was standing, was the way confident, competent men stand. I was exhibiting Bearing in that case. Now, what does the Marine Corps say as far as helping you increase or improve the Trait of Bearing?
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‘To develop Bearing, you should hold yourself to the highest standards of personal conduct. Never be content with meeting only the minimum requirements’. Oh Wow. I like that one. ‘Never be content with ok. Never be content with average. Never be content to be a C student. Stand up straight. Hold yourself to a higher standard of personal conduct’. I like that, I like that a lot. If you can do that, you are on your way to being an effective leader.
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Alright folks, that’s it for today. Like I said, according to the show calendar, this one dropped on Monday morning, so I’m looking forward to being with you for this whole week, and we will finish out…. Well, today and the rest of the week, it looks like next Monday…..the Marine Corps Leadership Traits. All fourteen of them. I’ll talk to you again real soon.
[OUTRO]
? Trenches by Pop Evil ?
*Alex*
Thank you for spending time with us today. To get show notes, submit a topic request, for more from your host Paul G. Markel, visit MorningMindsetPodcast.com. That’s MorningMindsetPodcast.com. Please leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player, we appreciate your time & effort, and we look forward to reading your honest feedback.
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