Peak Performance with Justin King

In this conversation with Justin King, we emphasize the critical importance of self-care for high performers and addresses the overwhelming challenges faced in the profession, highlighting the need for mental well-being and support systems.

Takeaways:

• If you're going to be a high performer, you've got to take care of you.
• Self-care is essential for maintaining high performance.
• Mental health should be prioritized in professional settings.
• Support systems are crucial for high achievers.
• Creating a balanced approach can lead to better outcomes.

in-Justin King 

justin.king@commandcollege.org

www.commandcollege.org

Transcript

Vernon Phillips (00:01.513)

All right, welcome back to Critical Aspects of Law Enforcement. I'm your host, Vernon Phillips. And today we've got Justin King with us. And I'm going to turn it over to Justin, just let him kind of explain who he is, some of his background, his history in law enforcement and what he's doing now. So Justin, I appreciate you coming on. I appreciate you taking the time.

Justin King (00:22.52)

Thanks for having me, Warren. I really appreciate it. It's exciting anytime we get to visit with you. And I know your passion where it lies. And I think we kind of have a joint way that we see things about how we develop leaders and everything. And my background, like everybody, I've got a little bit of a story. I was in the Army and did that in my early 20s. And then I decided to go back college, finished my degree, went back into Army as an officer and really loved my time in the Army. Army was transformational for me. It really helped me to grow up and learn a little bit, but I started to develop kind of a passion for leadership in that time. And when I decided to transition out of the Army, I joined the Drug Enforcement Administration and did 21 years with the Drug Enforcement Administration, just a little over. So I had about 30 years of federal

time with the government between the Army and Department of Justice, but during my time with the the DEA, I actually stayed in the National Guard for a few years and taught officer candidate school. So I continued to to kind of grow that passion to develop leaders and throughout my DEA career, I was able to do some pretty interesting things. I started off on the southwest border in Texas and expanded that I went into the Foreign Deployed Advisory Support Team program, which was a program that we worked in conjunction with Department of Defense. Primarily what we did was go and embed with Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan to work counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics operations because of the connection and the nexus between the funding of the insurgency and the Taliban with drugs. And for that program, we had to have our own selection program. It was like our special operations for DEA, so we could actually work these ops. And what that did was give me the opportunity to not just work in Afghanistan, but work in multiple foreign countries with DEA. I did four tours in Afghanistan, three as an agent, one as a team leader, and ultimately would go back and run that program.

Justin King (02:42.317)

before they disbanded when we started pulling out of Afghanistan. We actually had stopped running those tactical operations mostly around 2015-16 just because the military was doing more of an advisory role. And we kept agents there, but we didn't deploy our teams back in the country.

And from there, I went to the officer training for a year, continued on with that training theme and finished up my last two assignments with the DEA was I was the assistant special agent in charge of in Arkansas, Little Rock, Arkansas for three years. And then I finally finished out when I was a special agent in charge of the Omaha division. So I had five states, 11 offices. But I kind of, when I got later in my career, I really had a few things that happened that changed me. And one of them was when I was in Arkansas, I went to the National Command and Staff College Command and Staff Program. went through that program. Six weeks are essentially 240 hours worth of online training and two weeks of in-person training and that's where I met Dr. Javidi and some of the team at the college. And over the next few years, Dr. Javidi and I stayed in contact and Mitch would come into Arkansas to do some trainings and actually brought him into Omaha to help train my people, our staff. And we just kept in contact and as I got closer to leaving the federal government, I was contacting him just about this time of year actually. And we were talking about the future and I said, really want my passion is to try to help people. How do we do that? How do we not just teach people leadership, but what he does and what the college does is we work very hard.

Justin King (04:33.901)

to help people understand the effects of leadership, the stress that comes with leadership, the time that it takes and the energy it takes. And Mitch was gracious enough to offer me a position and I got to come on Staff Cert for the last almost two years I've been with the college. And it's been a absolute blast and a lot of travel. I've done a lot of travel, a lot of teaching, but I've learned so much.

Vernon Phillips (04:36.467)

Yeah.

Vernon Phillips (04:59.101)

Yeah.

Justin King (05:03.765)

It's just solidified my belief that we're in the right space. We're over target. We're touching people and we're helping people. And there is so much that we can offer and we just are passionate about how do we go in and help develop the next generation? Maybe not even the younger people that we're talking about. Yes, we want to affect them, but some of our older senior leaders that are dealing with so much and because I think that working and being a leader in law enforcement is one of the most challenging jobs there is in the world right now. I think it's a lot and we just want people to be stronger and healthier and so I think we have a great team of people that strives every day to deliver that.

Vernon Phillips (05:48.521)

Yeah, and I appreciate that. I mean, I appreciate what you guys do at the college, but man, mean, to try to go back through and pick something from your career, but there's a whole lot there that we could spend time on and highlight and dive into. mean, I'm sure you've got a lot of just things that we can pull out, but when you look back at your career and also where you're at now, I mean, obviously, like you said, we know that law enforcement is stressful. We know that it demands a lot of the individual that's working in that space. when you were working, actively working law enforcement, and then even now, still as you continue on working with law enforcement, how do you keep yourself at a balanced level? So how do you take care of your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing?

Justin King (06:45.739)

Yeah, so it's really a great question because it starts off and it really is the nucleus of what we are. And as a college, what we teach and through Dr. Gaviti's theory in his science of 11 rings, we go and we set on that what we call our compass. And we talk about our family, our relationships, our spiritual connection and our social connection. We always bring people back to that. And what we see is that essentially like you get almost that fog inside your brain because you're making so many decisions and you're dealing with so much at work that we see people that you go home and we always say, you know, be where your feet are. And so when you get home and you're there, but you've seen to spend all your energy that day doing what you've been doing. And then all of sudden, you know, you need to be present. And so as I go through and I look back at my career, there's times whenever I wasn't doing that well. And so I strive every day to do that. And I start off with first off my faith and where I draw my strength and where I look to the Lord to guide me. And I've always done that. I've always asked for strength, courage and wisdom in anything I do. And I feel like that keeps me grounded. And then my family, you know, I've married a very strong woman who supported me through all of these deployments and things and has been there, you know, to walk with me and then with my children and focus on that. I will be the first to admit it, there's many times I didn't get it right, but I try every day to do better. And what we teach in our...

College is a lot of that is how do you get through that? How do you find that energy and Almost have to teach people to be a little bit selfish with their self in their time how do we go back and really focus and take some time and You know, we teach things like, you know reversal strategies for breathing how to get in the right headspace We want people to think like that But we also want people to understand if you're focusing on those things if you're focusing on your spiritual being your relationships your family

Justin King (08:53.327)

and your connection to other people and you do that, that's actually helping you be stronger. It's giving you that perspective. It's keeping you aligned with where you need to be. And one of the most common themes we see when we talk to people in law enforcement is how many people are...

When you ask them, hey, how many people like to mow their grass, for example, everybody shoots their hand, a lot of people put their hand up and you say, why? They say, I could just be alone. I want to be by myself. I put my AirPods in, I get on there and we see that and we say, that's actually not what we need to do. We don't want to isolate. We want to be with people and we all go through it. So helping people understand that I think is awareness. And then the other thing is, is what I've learned over the last couple of years is

It's a process when you come off of that, you're so used to running on that wheel, seems like making those decisions, putting out fires, that you actually become kind of immune to anything else at some times.

Vernon Phillips (09:52.563)

Yeah. Yeah, no, and I appreciate all that you shared. mean, there's a lot of things that, you know, we need to be focusing on, but I, what I liked is you said that I wasn't always good at it, right? because I think that that is where a lot of us get to where we, you know, we need to be honest with ourselves is like, yes, we need to be investing in taking care of ourselves and, being balanced, but we also need to understand thats not always going to be the case each and every day, day in and day out. And I also like the fact that you, you you definitely hit on your faith, which is a huge component, you know, for myself as well. And I also think that that's one area right now and law enforcement that I feel like we're lacking. I feel like, you we do good and I show this all the time. I feel like we do good with the physical, the mental, the emotional, but I feel like the spiritual kind of aspect is taking that back seat. And, you know, from from my own personal observation, looking into law enforcement and the first responder realm is that people who have that faith, right? They are just more resilient individuals. They just better process the different things they go through, whether that's their critical incident or whether that's just dealing with life in general, they just seem to have a better outlook, have a better perspective, and they just seem to handle things better.

But it doesn't mean like you shared that you're always gonna be on point. You're always gonna be hitting that mark 100 % of the time. But the whole thing is that we strive each and every day to invest in ourselves. And like you said, that requires us sometimes to be selfish, right? To take time for ourselves, carve that out. And people who are in a role where you serve other people, it's hard to do that, right? It's hard to kind of say, okay, hey, time out.

I need to dial it back, I need to start focusing on me, I need to really make sure that I'm where I need to be. Because if you are not at your peak performance, then you're not gonna be able to operate at peak performance, right? The healthier you are as individual, the healthier relationships you're gonna have, the healthier way you're gonna interact with the community, the healthier way you're gonna interact with those who are underneath you. So that's why it's important that we have to continue to invest in ourselves.

Vernon Phillips (12:18.809)

There's a lot of great points that you made when you were talking about that.

Justin King (12:23.463)

That investment in ourselves, think, is something that we really understand it when we're young and moving up in our career. We see a goal, hey, I may want to promote someday. I may want to go to be a dog handler. I may want to go to SWAT or I may want to be in investigations. We see that and we understand making those sacrifices and moving toward that. But it's the...compounding effects of stress and the job over time, it starts to erode some of the things. And unfortunately what we see, and I speak for myself first, is the places that I could always come back and say, I needed to do that. That was important. But then I would come home and I couldn't turn that off. I would be talking to my daughters like they were somebody I was questioning. That would be like, or I would try to fix something. it's not a fix. You know, they just wanted dad to be dad.

And you know, you why can't you just come in and give me a big hug? know and just tell me you love me and I would tell my daughters I loved them but it wasn't like that, you know, they felt it sometimes, you know because they they have that and I realized over time and as we go through this space and we talk about You know what you're saying is that sacrifice you're sacrificing something and when you start to give those sacrifices up

Vernon Phillips (13:18.035)

Yeah.

Vernon Phillips (13:27.774)

Yeah.

Justin King (13:42.166)

And you start to sacrifice, well, what are you losing? Well, you start to lose those connections with your family. You can't get that time back. You're not sleeping well. You're not taking care of yourself. And when you're young, those small injuries or those things don't affect you as much. But as you get older, all those things build up. And I think that one of the things we've started to really do is to get people to understand, you know, where is all their energy going?

Vernon Phillips (14:06.899)

Yeah.

Justin King (14:06.989)

And it's pretty simple. You know, we'll have people open up their phone and just go to their battery and you know, look on these new phones, you know, they'll show you where are your, are your battery powers going. And it's kind of like that. We want people to not have that burnout. We don't want people to not have that check engine light coming on on them, you know, doing that preventive maintenance and doing that and everything. Because what's the best part about all this, if you're actually doing it right, you'll have a lot more energy at work. You'll be a lot more focused and you'll be a lot more productive.

And we know in this profession, everybody's stretched thin. Everybody is, you know, we're promoting younger with less experienced people. So they're even more stressed. They don't have that experience. And so, you know, it's unfortunate that it is what it is, but it is what it is. And you can't change that. You can only work through the process and how do we grow. And when we see people who come to us, especially as a whole client, they come to us and they bring that culture

Vernon Phillips (14:42.222)

yeah.

Justin King (15:06.851)

of let's take care of ourselves, let's grow, let's develop. We see that holistic approach in an agency. You really start to see that organizational culture grow.

Vernon Phillips (15:16.317)

Yeah, no, that's important. mean, that's what we've tried to do. You we've tried to be very, you know, strategic in how we're dealing with stuff. I mean, especially for myself, my own life, but, you know, in all transparency, you know, in last several weeks, like I've really just kind of felt it just my own, you know, in my own life, just kind of feeling that pull, right, being stretched thin, kind of putting that, you know, if we're...

I'm going to start talking about Dr. Javidi here, starting to put that elasticity to test, right? Kind of, you know, I went in for my, I go in every three months and do a checkup at the doctor and, you know, they run my blood work every three months and then they do an HRV and they do an in-body and I go in and I sit down they're like, what in the world is going on? I'm like, what are you talking about? They're like, HRV is, you know, is terrible. They're like, your stress levels are like this.

Justin King (15:48.151)

Yes.

Vernon Phillips (16:15.027)

through the roof. They're like, your energy's tanked, like you're just, like you are like on the verge of, you know, like that burnout. And, you know, so for me, like, and I noticed that and I feel that back, you know, at home and, and it kind of just really makes you stop and say, like where, what's the, you know, what's the driving factor in this? And then what am I, what am I doing that's contributing to this? Or what am I not doing that's not helping me to kind of bring that down. And there's several things that I can look back on and say, okay, this, this and this, but we start talking about how we interact with our family. And that's where I noticed it, right? And we talked about this back in June when we were together and I brought up the ballet shoes. But just the other day, same daughter, she comes over and I'm just kind of just tapped out on edge, just like, all right.

I'm overstimulated, I'm kind of done. She comes over and she just wants to give me a hug. And part of you is like, don't want anybody to touch me right now. Just leave me alone, kind let me be. But then you have to think, well, how does that translate to her? Because her being 11, that doesn't compute to her that, okay, there's other things going on, just like, my dad doesn't want me to hug him. So those are the things that really key in on me. And then just, I got the boys and they're just full on all the time. They're five and three and they're just hard charging and just running, running, running, And so just noticed, I'm like, man, just my...

you know, my frustration level or my irritability with them, like, it's just really, really short. just talking to my wife, but I'm like, I got to like, make sure that I'm dialing this back and making sure that I'm, you know, taking care of myself because, you know, that directly affects things at home. Right. And for me, that's, that's the biggest support network. you know, my wife and my family,

Vernon Phillips (18:36.175)

And so if I am taking all of that home and then they're getting what's left of me, you they're not getting the best of me. And if I'm not investing in myself, I mean, you then I am not giving my best to them. And that's not fair to them. So, yeah, so for me, the last several weeks, it's like I've just been like really trying to like, you know, tackle that and really kind of tune that back in. And it's been.

For whatever reason, this time it's been a little bit more difficult than normal. when we talk about, you know, because I talk about dealing with your stress and making sure that we're, you know, you have those ebbs and flows, right? You're gonna have times where you're just, man, you're striking on all cylinders, you're just bam, bam, bam. And then there's times where you're just like, man, I am not running to full capacity. What's going on? What do need to do? you know, it's those times where we learn and we adapt and you we just continue to move forward and put the time in because eventually, right, we're gonna make our way back out of that and we're gonna be kind of hitting. But the more we do that, the less, you know, of the big ups and downs we have, right? Because there's gonna be some of that variability, but, and you want a little bit of variability, but you want it to be where it's a nice, steady back and forth like this, where

If you're not investing yourself, I mean, you're gonna go from here and you're gonna hear and it's just that that just wears on you as individual.

Justin King (20:11.917)

Yeah. I think, I think what you, you said a couple of things that really, really strike home to me and you're what you're saying, man, I've been there. There's times and also years like, why am I in this? Like, it's almost like I'm in this dark space. I'm not, I'm not all of a sudden things caught up to me and we see that that.

And when people start to get there and you feel I don't have that energy or whatever, something's off or whatever, the first thing is, is, you know, recognizing it. And you're like, I know something's not going right. And I think what's really important is us to look at that investment in other people. At work, we do that every day. You wouldn't have somebody come up and say, hey, boss, I need to talk to you and everything where you're like, I just don't want to, you you want to do that. But when we get home, why is that we become more vulnerable? We expose ourselves, we're out. And we talk about that elasticity. How do we bend, not break? We don't want to be like that oak tree that breaks. We want to be like bamboo.

Vernon Phillips (20:54.462)

Yeah.

Justin King (21:12.801)

bend and we can come back. And we want that to grow. And as what we teach and through Dr. Javidia, I know we're to talk a little bit more about him, but you know, going back to our late eighties, early nineties and developing this left of bang training where we make more resilient people through, know, understanding how to balance ourselves, how to regulate. And, know, one of the things that you said about the hug, actually that's what you needed right then. You didn't feel it, but you needed it because

Vernon Phillips (21:40.477)

Yeah.

Justin King (21:42.688)

you needed that connection back because that's a centering and it brings us back. Um, and we see that a lot. see it with people and, you know, you'll get the, uh, guys that are like older, like me, and they'll be sitting in class like this and they're sitting there and everything. And, I don't need that. Or I don't think that that's important. Or you talk about how many people sleep good at night. You know, most people, what we get on the, you know, this isn't scientific, but when I see us, you're a show of hands, it's four to five hours is the average, what people admit to.

Vernon Phillips (21:45.837)

yeah.

Justin King (22:13.077)

And then we don't know, but then you'll have. But at some points in our life, we were striving, we were moving, we had the energy, but we may not have had all those commitments. And I can remember a battalion commander I worked for who was phenomenal. I, when I was in the 101st airborne division at Fort Campbell, and he would always talk about family and taking care of our family. But as a young Lieutenant, I was just go, go, go, go, go.

Vernon Phillips (22:38.899)

Yeah.

Justin King (22:39.941)

And I think back, were many people told me these things. They told me, you know, but what we see is so many of us wait till we're like in our fifties to get it figured out. But we should have been doing it earlier and you and I are having this conversation and

It's a phenomenal conversation, what unfortunately we see is we should be pushing this at the Academy level. We should be teaching this. We should be implementing it. And just what you guys are doing is

It's that constant making it a priority and no, no different than going out and being qualified. You know, all your training, what are we doing to take care of ourselves? Because the reality of it is, is not only do we see a lot of fractured relationships in this profession, we see a lot of people who don't have a long lifespan after they retire. Stress is real. Stress takes, it takes energy. It takes from our day to day. And it really does you know, you need stress at some points, but too much is bad. And we also start to see over time people get, you know, rigid, they just get rigid and they don't want, they don't want that. And then we start to see some bad things happen. Unfortunately, but it's, it's why we're passionate, you know, if we can help people understand that and everything we do at the National Command Staff College in our parent company Magnus One is, you it's about performance. And we say, if you're going to be a performer, if you're going to be a high performer, you've got to take care of you. You've got to take care of, you would never see a professional athlete or a sports team who didn't say that they needed to be rested, recovered before the game, right? They need to be in the right head space. You would never see that. That's, there's so much work goes into that.

Vernon Phillips (24:15.368)

Yeah.

Justin King (24:31.585)

We're missing the mark in this profession because we're overwhelmed, honestly.

Vernon Phillips (24:36.403)

Yeah. Yeah. I don't think it's, it's across all the levels. It's not just, you know, the, the line level, you know, deputy or officer that's working. mean, it goes all the way through, you know, up to the ranks and, know, I think that it's taking that time and saying, okay, Hey, what are we doing? Like, how are we investing in our people? How are we really making sure that they are, you know, the best version of themselves and so taking that initiative and being forward thinking and investing in them on the forefront, right, just gives them the opportunity to be better individuals themselves, right? So if we're offering different things and we're offering different ways for them to manage stress or learn about finances or learn about just mindfulness or just talking about elasticity of being more pliable as an individual, that just makes them a better employee.

And if we're honest, who doesn't want a better employee?

Justin King (25:39.554)

Yeah, yeah. And it's just like, who doesn't want a better boss, right? Everyone wants a good boss. And, and, know, through going through and teaching people that it all works together and we all have areas in our lives that are stronger than others. And we have things that, that we need to work on. And, know, we are very good at, like you said earlier, after something happens coming in and taking care of this profession. But how can we prevent that? How can we grow those people? And ultimately, I think we have to think about this in a couple of different ways. We have to say, we're all going to time out in whatever job we're in. That organization, that agency is going to be there after we're gone. So we're always trying to leave it better than we found it.

But are we leaving healthier, stronger people? And so, you know, that can take this to the next level because the next few years are probably going to be just as challenging as the last few years. You know, it's not, it's not always going to be easy, but it's always hard to implement things whenever you're working every day and you can't just stop there. What we're doing in this profession is say, everybody go over here for three weeks of training. We're just going to stop. we're always having to do that. And how we implement that is a challenge because in our profession, it shifts. You have different groups of people coming at different times. And we've all seen those people that you say, how many people like nights and you'll have people raise their hand. They're all about it, right? Some people don't want to be on different, they get used to that. And so when we deliver that, one of the things that we've really tried to do over the last few years, is implement a more, more reinforced positivity training on the backside. You know, they're using our Magnus Leader app that we have those things. So if somebody has that heavy day, they come in and they say, okay, I need to, I need some help right now. I need to go in and what's some strategies. I can do some breathing, some tension release. I can get myself back focused before I walk in my fedora.

Justin King (27:36.172)

You know, where you're not like me who somebody, you know, I would come back from Afghanistan, you know, two days before I'm in Afghanistan, I'm sitting at my kid's ball game. And more than once, my wife's like, you probably just need to go back to Afghanistan because that guy who came home is still over there. Your brain is still there. And, and so I wasn't being present and everything. And then where I got frustrated was I was with a whole bunch of like-minded people.

I'm over there, everybody, Justin's great. He's doing, he's part of the team. We're doing all this great stuff. But then I would come home. My family is not.

Vernon Phillips (28:11.305)

Yeah.

Justin King (28:11.873)

You know, they're not in law enforcement. They're not doing that. They don't understand. They're like, whatever you did, I don't care. You're home, you know, be dad. But I wanted to come home and go mow the grass. I wanted to, I wanted to go build a table in the wood shop. I didn't want to say that, not that I didn't love them. I just didn't, I wasn't connecting with them anymore and how we do that. So what we've done in all of our trainings, as you've seen, but I think it's important is we have that post training in person development.

Vernon Phillips (28:22.472)

Yeah.

Justin King (28:41.807)

that we want to continue to connect to people and get people in a routine of self growth, self care. You know, we're not talking wellness, well-being so much, but we are hitting on that because we want people to understand who you are is so important and we need you to be there for the long haul, both at work and at home.

Vernon Phillips (29:04.765)

Yep, no, absolutely. And, you know, as we kind of start looking at, you know, law enforcement, the first responder kind of realm as a whole, what do you feel right now that we're doing well at? And then on the flip side of that, what do you feel like we're not doing well at?

Justin King (29:23.051)

Well, as one thing coming from the federal government, I have to start off by saying I did not know as much about local state level law enforcement as, and I've learned a lot over the couple of years. I still have a lot to learn, but I didn't realize just how vast the number of law enforcement people are out there and first responders across the board.

And so what I do think is is there is an awareness more of an awareness right now that we need to be taking care of people. Recruiting and retention, of course, are huge, but it's like that retention. And I think of what we're starting to understand more and more is we're not doing a good enough job of training people before they go into positions. Once they go through basic training and they get in there in their first years, but especially leaders, we're not giving them that leadership development. And so...

What we see is more people are becoming aware of that, but a lot of people just don't know where to start. And so how they do it. And then the investment, not just what it costs to invest in somebody, but the time when they lose them from their agency, they'd be trained. So I think having that awareness is something important. Where I think that we need to grow and develop is understand that if we...

look early on in somebody's career and we say, okay, that person we need to see them, not just where they're at now, but where are going to be five years, 10 years, 15, 20 years down the road. And we start to say, okay, this is the future. As I said, we're all time out and there's a, I like movies. One of my favorite movies of all time is the first Rocky movie. And there's a famous scene in that movie. If you ever watch it again, you, some people will glaze over it.

Justin King (31:11.095)

But there's a time whenever Rocky is going to have this fight, he goes to Mickey and ask him to train him. And Mickey says no, because Mickey just says he's a bum, right? Well, Mickey sees on the TV later where Apollo Creed is talking about fighting this fight and he gets mad. And he goes to Rocky and says, I'll train you. And Rocky's like, where were you 10 years ago? Where were you when I needed you?

And he has this kind of meltdown on him. He's like, you didn't. And so it's like, we got what we got, right? We had to see that, that development. And I think that we're seeing more of that, but I think we have a profession that has had been very reactionary to some things over the last few years that has taken away from that, maybe progress we had, and we're having to jumpstart that now and kickstart it. And ultimately we have to push many things at the profession to help grow that way to develop leaders of course, but we have to make well-rounded healthy people and keep them well-rounded and healthy and invest in them. It's almost like we have to look at it almost like how they do aircraft maintenance. know, aircraft maintenance is the standard that is set so high. What is our maintenance on our people? How are we taking care of them and helping them grow and giving them the tools? And I think that's one of the things that we're passionate about is that given the tools in person, online, but then reinforcing it afterward. But it's gotta be cultural. It's gotta be cultural for an agency, I think.

Vernon Phillips (32:45.065)

Yeah, and I think you're right because and it's also has to you have to have that buy-in you know from from all levels and you're gonna have individuals that are just You know, they're not gonna be into it. They're not gonna be sold on it Like you said, you know that the the old crusty guys with their arms crossed in the back, know, like Why do I need this? I haven't had this the last, you know, 20 years of my career You know, what what good is this gonna do me now?

But more often than not, if you can break through to that group, most of them will be like, man, why were we not teaching this 20 years ago? Why were we not talking about this stuff when people were coming in? And you see that often with those individuals where they start talking like that. But getting that buy-in, getting people to really see it,

A lot of it isn't until they actually do it or they actually try to implement some type of self-regulation method. Then they're like, man, so this stuff does work, right?

Justin King (33:59.192)

You know, it's funny because I can remember sometimes whenever early on I was like, you want me to work focused when Doc Gaviti, he was like, okay, we're going to do some box breathing. And I'm like, what's this, right? And you go through that and you're like, that makes me feel better. I start doing this little routine, focusing on myself. And I think that what we see

Also is, a big part of leadership or anything is communications and relationships, developing relationships with people. And if people see that and they see that buy-in at the top and they see that development, and hey, how are you doing? okay, everybody you go around as a boss, you say that, everybody's like, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. But it's like, you look at somebody and you get to know them, you're like, they're not good.

And a boss would have no problem telling somebody go take a couple of days. They need to help take care of themselves. But a lot of times the boss is the one that will never ever tell themselves to take some time. And, I was that, I was that person, you know, I mean, you know, I would, I would do that. And so as I go around, I, one thing that this last couple of years journey has revealed to me is how many mistakes I made. I will say that one thing I am extremely grateful for and proud of.

Vernon Phillips (35:01.918)

Yeah.

Justin King (35:21.325)

I think we talked about this when we were in Florida, when I went through that command and staff leadership program in 2018, it absolutely transformed the way I led. I was more of a transactional leader, I think up until that point, and I started to become a transformational leader. I really started to focus on people. I started to focus on those relationships and development and trying to create processes and systems that would be there after I left and helping people, even having conversations with people like, hey, where do you want to be five years from now? What are you trying to accomplish? More conversations about families and things outside of work than at work. And I'm not going to say I always did it right, but I think I did a lot better. And I'm grateful for that program. It changed the way I led for the last six years of my career.

Vernon Phillips (36:13.095)

Yeah, and I think that's important is getting people to that place, right? Where they, the whole way in which they view themselves and the way that they view their career, whatever that path is, whatever they decide to whether they're in leadership or not. And we talked about that when I was with you guys in June about leadership and it's like, well, how long you've been in leadership? Well, at some point or another, you're a leader, right?

Whether you're on the line level or you're the chief or the sheriff, you're a leader and you're a leader to somebody. So making sure that you're investing in yourself and actually learning that and then having that transform who you are and the day to day, what you do, how you interact with people, how you treat people, how you treat yourself. I think that's one of the biggest things is because sometimes the way we treat ourselves, we wouldn't even treat our enemy sometimes the way we treat ourselves, right? The way that we talk to ourselves. And my wife called me on that the other day. She, just cause like I said, full transparency, I've just been really, really stressed out lately for whatever reason. She's like, what? Like why? I I don't know. Like I can't pinpoint it. It's just, I think it's just everything is starting to really come together.

And I was sitting there and I was talking to myself and she's like, what are you saying? And I'm like, nothing, I'm fine. She's like, you're not fine. She's like, you're talking ugly to yourself. And I'm like, I'm okay. She's like, you're not okay. She's like, why are you talking so ugly to yourself? And I think that, I think there's a lot of people that probably get into that space more often than they really want to acknowledge but they are not willing to actually say it and be honest with themselves like, yeah, you know what, sometimes I am, you know, my own worst critic. You know, and something that, you know, Dr. Kathy Greenberg always says is, you know, be on your side, not on your case. so sometimes we to remember that like, hey,

Justin King (38:35.243)

Yeah.

Vernon Phillips (38:40.201)

Okay, it's okay sometimes to give yourself some grace. Yes, there are some times where you have to kind of you know Tighten yourself up and say okay. All right, you can do better. You can make better decisions You can act better, right? But then there are other times where you you can give yourself a little grace and say, okay Here's a little space What are we gonna do now moving forward? So?

Justin King (39:02.135)

You know, Cathy and Mitch, they're brilliantly smart people, right? And they literally write books. They have written books on these things. And one of the things that they bring up a lot is, I like where you went with that because do you have, give yourself some grace, right? Give yourself some credit for what you do. In this profession, we see so many people that...you know, because we're servants, you know, we want to serve people and we because of that we have that what Dr. Trevee calls that unconditional love, right? For the communities that we serve and because that sacrifice comes in and we want to do it right. The thing is, is nothing's ever perfect. And so we look so much and you know, one of the things we teach a lot, especially to leaders is to compliment the effort, not the outcome is to look at the effort that was put in. And we've all been there at our kids' ball game or something where they know they're trying hard, but they strike out. And we're like, hey, you'll get them next time and everything. we don't ever tell ourselves that. I mean, we're always looking at that. And it could be just compounding things like when you and I get into those places and I'm.

Vernon Phillips (40:08.701)

Yeah. Yep.

Justin King (40:18.635)

guilty of it too is okay, I know I'm here, I'm going into this and it couldn't be a combination of things. You you got cut off on the way to work and you know, you're running late, you spill your coffee or whatever, you know, you got air conditioner you gotta fix at home, it's gonna cost a bunch of money and things add up. And we have to understand that and what we'll do unfortunately is we'll go to work and we'll act like none of that's happening.

But when we come home, it's all just that cortisol and everything is sitting in that brain and we got to find a way to flush it out. We've got to find a way to do that. And we can only do that by going in and creating some reversal on that. And through, you know, reversal strategies that we teach that Dr. Javidi and, and people will develop years ago and he's just grown this through the years is really that ability to do it. Because when you get to that place,

How do I make myself get out of it? And sometimes it's not as easy as we think, but we've got to find a way to move through it. And we feel like that we have a very good framework for how to do that. And we go around, but developing people, just it's as simple as that. That's why when people will come like to our two day workshop, people will come out and they'll be like, it's unlike any leadership I've ever had because it was a lot about me but understanding me because we tell people all the time, we're not gonna have every leadership strategy that's gonna work for everybody. Can we help you be present? Can we help you have the energy? Can we actually help you communicate effectively to hear people, not just talk? Can we help you your, understand that if your finances aren't doing well, or why are you not occupationally fulfilled anymore? You say you got into this profession, you love it and everything, well.

What's changed? Well, you see some pretty tough things. You see people that are mad as sad as bad as says our friend Brian Ellis always says, we see people with those and we take that home. And some of these things we can't unsee, we can't unhear, we can't unsmell. But we have to understand we have to take care of ourselves.

Vernon Phillips (42:29.523)

Yep. So kind of focusing on that point there about taking care of ourselves.

what would you say to those that are just coming into the profession? Like what is a piece of advice that you'd give them? Obviously, you've got a lot you can draw from, from your career in law enforcement, also the military, but what is one piece of advice you would give to them? But then also on the back end of that, what is one piece of advice that you'd give to those who are getting ready to retire and exit the-

Justin King (43:04.109)

So the one piece of advice I would give to anyone coming into the profession is to be a sponge, to learn. And you're gonna learn so much, but you're not gonna learn it all at once. And that wisdom and that growth never stops. You have to have experiences to do that. And you have to also understand that...it's a process, you know, those opportunities will happen. Certain things will reveal themselves, but don't be so, don't be so quick to get to the finish line that you forget to enjoy the race. Right. and on the, on the backside of that, whenever I'm talking to people who are getting close to retiring and everything is, you know, be proud of what you've done and understand that you still have a lot of value. You still have a lot to give back and you are mentoring and nurturing the next generation. Everything you do is affecting them, but also make sure that you're planning to understand that.

What we teach is what Dr. Gavitti, you know, the new book that he wrote was this elastic identity is that identity has to be this job can't be your only identity so much that you identify with it that when this job's gone, you don't know who you are anymore. And if you're not who you should be right now, if you're so embedded in that, you've got to start peeling that back because the day you walk out your agency, a lot of those phone calls, people won't answer the phone sometimes.

You know, you're not in that position anymore. So don't be so connected to that position. think Colin Powell said that, you know, don't be so connected to that, position that when it goes away, you don't know what to do or who you are anymore. So have that identity. You're still a father. You're a, you're a sibling. You're, you know, a spouse. You're maybe a grandparent by the time you get my age. You hear, I got a grandson in here about a year and a half. He screamed a couple of you know, understand who you are, but you know, at some point in your, in your career,

Justin King (45:15.289)

You have to, you have to realize that people always said, you'll know when you know. And I did, I didn't regret, wasn't fighting it. I wasn't like counting the days, but I knew that I, I was time to turn the page and do something else. And, and the last thing I would say that is there's a whole lot you can still do after you retire and go into another area. And I think you start to see that giving back really becomes a big thing is how do I do that? and help people at all levels and,

Honestly, when you're doing that, it gives you a purpose, a new purpose.

Vernon Phillips (45:49.735)

Yeah, no, and that's great advice for whether they're just coming in or somebody getting ready to retire. Just some really good sound things. And as we kind of get close to here, wrapping up, the last thing I want to ask you, and you've already kind of hit on it earlier in the conversation, but as you look back over your career and where you're at now, how much has your faith played a factor into where you're at today and who you are and how it shaped you?

Justin King (46:19.593)

It's been everything. When I was a young captain and I was down at Fort Benning going through training, had my youngest daughter was just about to be born. So we're talking 26 years ago or so. I was a Christian, I was a believer, but I wasn't walking with the Lord the way I felt I should have been. I rededicated my life to Christ.

I'm not going to say I'm always, I'm an imperfect person, but all of my wisdom, everything I do, all the decisions we've ever made, we've gone to the Lord to guide us on those. I was told whenever I went to the FAST program that it was a bad decision for my career, but I felt like I was drawn to do that. And just like when I went back years later, people were like, it's not a good thing to do. But what I always said is the...

You know, my strength comes from the Lord and He's working on me still. And what I know as a believer is that, you know, as a Christian, you have hope. You have hope. You have a promise for tomorrow. And we're only on this earth for a certain amount of time. And I do feel like God puts us on this earth to do a job and to further his kingdom and we need to demonstrate that and you know if you say you know God says first and foremost to love him and then love your neighbor and we're supposed to be do that and and so as a Christian you know I'm still a selfish person I still don't do things right all the time but I'm trying to make the world a better place and through my example I hope to lead people to be faithful as well.

Vernon Phillips (48:02.897)

Absolutely, and I, you know, I think that's such an important factor is having that faith in your life, Is believing in, you know, Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and having that, you know, that hope and that encouragement that it gives us, but also that peace, right? I mean, it doesn't mean that life's gonna be easy, because you and I both know it's not. It's got its challenges and its struggles and its trials, but it...

That's what gives us the ability to face those and to kind of push headlong into that because we know that at the end of the day that we may lose this battle, but we know that the war has already been won. And that gives us that reassurance. That gives us that hope that we have. And I couldn't think of a better way to end our conversation than on that note.

Justin King (48:57.025)

Well, thank you for that. do believe that, you know, I said this, you know, working, working in this profession is a blessing. mean, it is, it's a hard job. It's stressful, but you work with some of the most incredible, amazing people and you meet some of the most, most unbelievable friends. I, this, this career took me all over the world. And my hope was by the time I left any place that people said that there was at least something about me that they saw and they understood that it was because of my faith. And I would hope that people would know that. And if I haven't displayed that, then I don't feel like I led the way I should have. And so I thank you for that opportunity. And it's always fun to speak. I can speak for hours on leadership and things. But ultimately, I will say that, you know, that servant leadership and that growth and everything is, like you said, it's not always perfect, but it is a blessing to do it.

Vernon Phillips (50:01.075)

Yep. Well, Justin, if somebody wants to reach out to you or their college, what's the best way for them to be able to do that?

Justin King (50:08.513)

Yeah, the best way is to go to commandcollege.org and that is our website or they can go to Magnus One Leadership as well. And then people can always just reach out to me directly you know, my number 501-548-1484 or my email is justin.king at commandcollege.org. And so we just say, encourage people. We love to talk about leadership and personal performance. And if people are interested in that, we'll be happy to see if we can work with them or point them in the right direction.

Vernon Phillips (50:42.633)

Absolutely. And I'll add all that in the show notes so that that information will be in there. But Justin, I appreciate your time. I appreciate your insight. Just the, you know, all those little nuggets that you shared.

Justin King (50:53.514)

Thank you. Thank you for what you're doing, Ernie. Anytime we can be of help, we will be there and thank you for everything. You bet.

Vernon Phillips (51:00.137)

I appreciate it. Thank you, sir.