The final day of the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Show 2018 started off strong, with keynote speaker Robert O’Neill, a former SEAL Team Six leader with the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group, delivering an inspirational speech that drew a standing ovation from the crowd.
O’Neill is a highly-decorated combat veteran and author of the New York Times best-selling memoir “The Operator: Firing the Shots That Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior.” He deployed more than a dozen times and held combat leadership roles during more than 400 missions. He has been decorated more than 52 times, including two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars with Valor, and a Joint Service Commendation Medal with Valor.
During his presentation at the Las Vegas Convention Centre, O’Neill drew from examples from his 16 years of military service and combined them with every day events to offer some key lessons about the importance of letting go, never giving up, taking challenges — especially the big ones — one step at a time, and learning to communicate effectively.
He says the success of high-performance teams in the military, particularly the SEAL teams, can be attributed to traits that are applicable to normal life, such as working in the private and public sector. “We were successful because of our people skills and because we knew the difference between over-planning and being prepared,” says O’Neill. “Too often people just want to sit in a planning room and plan, and not leave until they have the perfect plan. But once you leave to — what we call execute the perfect mission — Murphy shows up. And everything changes.”
He also touched on topics like stress and emotions, and reminded the audience that they have the ability to not only leave emotion at the door, but also to choose how it affects you. “It’s important to take a second even if a second is all you have to make an informed decision. Take a step back and take a deep breath. Go ahead and type that angry email — just don’t hit send for 24 hours. If you’re still mad after that, fire away,” says O’Neill.
Letting go and never giving up were two prominent themes, and he provided dealers with a powerful yet extreme example of what it means to give it your all. During his presentation, O’Neill told a story about a friend he did his training with to become a Navy SEAL. One of the tests they were given, known as underwater knot tying, involved tying five different knots, during five separate dives, to a rope across the bottom of a pool that is 14-feet deep. “The test is simple: tie five knots in a row the right way and you pass.”
Once they accomplished the first knot, they would rise to the surface, take one breath, which was enough time for their instructor to give them the next challenge, and then they descended down to the bottom of the pool to tie the next knot. To continue their SEAL training, they had to pass all five challenges or risk being kicked out of the program entirely.
“A friend of mine named John was on his last attempt (to tie the fifth knot). If John didn’t tie five knots right now, they were going to kick him out today and he will never be a Navy SEAL. (It was) a lot of pressure,” said O’Neill. “So on his fifth knot he drowned. The instructor brought him up, threw him over the side of the pool” and “started to give him CPR.”
O’Neill says the moment John spat the water out of his lungs, he asked his instructor if he had passed the test. The instructor said yes — not because he tied the fifth knot, which he failed to do, but because of how far he pushed himself.
According to O’Neill, he said “I’m in a really good mood right now, so I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I don’t care whether you tied the knot or not. I don’t care about that — my job as a Navy SEAL is to see how far you’re willing to push yourself. You just killed yourself. You passed the goddamned test.”
Many of these challenges are meant to encourage trainees to develop the ability to focus on a task, relinquish the need to panic and remain calm, and keep going forward no matter what. The example provided by O’Neill may seem extreme, but it may serve as a reminded to dealers and their managers about what it takes to reach their goals.
Next year’s NADA Show is set to take place in San Francisco, California from January 24-27, 2019.
