Adversity Leadership: Decision, Direction, and Destination – Michael Allison
Amplify Speakers Podcast
Host Chris Sund interviews decorated U.S. Marine Corps veteran and leadership expert Michael Allison about his journey from combat in Fallujah to becoming a bestselling author
Key takeaways
- Michael Allison earned a Purple Heart after surviving a 500-pound VBIED car bomb in Fallujah that killed his best friend and severely injured him and his Gunnery Sergeant.
- Post-deployment struggles included untreated PTSD, two divorces, a DUI, and a suicide attempt while living in Tampa, Florida.
Main topics
- Combat leadership & trauma in Fallujah
- PTSD diagnosis & mental health recovery
Notable quotes
"Complacency kills."
Conclusion
Allison's story provides a powerful blueprint for transforming severe
Transcript preview
Speaker 3 (0:06) Hi, everyone. Speaker 2 (0:07) Welcome to the Amplify Speakers podcast. I'm your host, Chris Sund. And today's guest is Michael Allison. He is a Purple Heart recipient and decorated U.S. Marine Corps veteran with combat leadership experience in Iraq. He is also the bestselling author, a TEDx speaker, Inc. 5000 entrepreneur, and the creator of Adversity Leadership. a leadership methodology built to help people perform under pressure. Michael has spoken for organizations including Amazon, Microsoft, NASA, Lockheed Martin, NBC Universal, United Way, and the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. His story and expertise have been featured on the Jennifer Hudson Show, Military Makeover with Montel Williams, NBC, ESPN, USA Today, and VFW Magazine. Today, he leads the Adversity Leadership Institute, where he combines leadership science, neuroscience, human performance research, and real-world executive experience to help leaders and organizations turn adversity into their advantage. Welcome, Michael. Hey, Chris. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with you. Absolutely. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. I think one of the things I would like to start off with is going back to that time that, first of all, I want to thank you for your service. Absolutely. And everything you did to sacrifice. I would love to learn a little bit about your time in Iraq. Speaker 1 (1:53) Man, wow. I tell you this, man. Iraq was one of the most interesting time in my life when it comes to handling pressure and dealing with pressure. And at 22, 23 years old, you never thought that you would actually be in combat, especially when at 17, when I joined the Marines, my mom and dad did not want me to join the military because. they saw what Desert Storm looked like and they were scared for their young son to actually join the military with the potential of going to combat and going to war. So when I gave them the call and told them that, hey, I'm getting deployed, I'm getting ready to go into Fallujah, their hearts sunk. And they were just worried about what is going to happen to their son. And, you know, we had that conversation actually when 9-11 happened. And once 9-11 happened, you know, The world has never seen anything like this so catastrophic and the impact that came from that. And shortly after that, I'm in California where they're training and training. I was an amphibious assault vehicle section leader. And then Captain Venning comes out to 29 Palms and says, boys, it's our turn to invade Fallujah. And the weight of that was so magnifying that. I'm thinking of all of these things that I've been training and training, preparing for. But now you can prepare and prepare, but now you have to actually go and put this into action. So I made the call to my family, say, hey, I'm getting ready to deploy. They make us do all of these things to prepare with like your wills and all these things in regards to like all of the bad outcomes that could potentially happen. So we leave from California to Seattle, from Seattle to Canada, from Canada to Germany, from Germany, we get into Kuwait. And we get into Kuwait and we sit there for about two and a half weeks training, preparing until we get the word. And we get the word that we're about to go into Fallujah with tanks, Hummers, five tons, about 120 vehicles rolling down the highway where it's desolate. There's nothing there. You just see nothing but tanks coming in. And we go into a convoy, man. And we pull into Fallujah in the middle of the night. And as soon as we go through the gate, the first sign that I saw was complacency kills. And it immediately told me that you need to keep your head on a swivel and pay attention to everything. And literally, we go in, we park our tanks. And after we park our tanks, we hear sirens goes off and we hear. Speaker 1 (4:29) All of a sudden, we hear incoming and we're running for cover. And what that taught me immediately was, no crap, this is real. But immediately, no one hesitated. Everybody did exactly what they were supposed to do because we planned, we trained, we prepared. And that was my first introduction into Iraq, into Fallujah, and into combat. The first day in, we're getting mortared. And I have tons of stories that I could follow up with from there. The first mission we go on, we get attacked and we have to start firing back. And then eight months later, we get attacked when I was leading another mission. And that's how I actually earned the Purple Heart from the VBID car bomb. But I'm pretty sure we get into that story as we continue going on. Yeah, I mean, I Speaker 2 (5:17) just think about being at work or everyone listening and they're thinking about a hard day or maybe a hard week and stretch of being there. And you talking about having to fill out a will before you are reporting for work is a different level than any. normal person in any job, for the most part, is ever going to experience. And I think that right there just tells the, you know, the gravity of what you guys do when you truly are serving and putting your life on the line. I, yeah, wouldn't mind digging into the car bomb right now, because I mean, that one, I just can't imagine even jumping in and doing that in the first place, what you're doing to serve. and run into where we needed people to be at. But then there's the grave reality of like, what can happen? What are those consequences? Speaker 1 (6:21) So I'll tell you what led up to that and kind of like put that in the sequence for you to kind of give you the magnitude and the moments of this developing into what turned out to be one of the most important days of my life. So we go on our first mission and I'm there with my gunnery sergeant and we're providing security outside of the city of Fallujah. And it's interesting that. you'll find that when you're tasked to go and do something, and just like in your regular day-to-day job, it could be mundane and just things just go over and over and over, and it seems like it's Groundhog Day. And for us, it kind of felt like that as we'll go two or three days while we're providing security and nothing happening. But you could hear gunshots. You could hear things going off at a distance while we're there in combat. So at our particular location, nothing was actually going on. But you still have to be prepared. You still have to be vigilant. And all of a sudden, one night while we're there, an RPG shoots over my tank. And it goes over my head and it lands behind me. And immediately, we lowered our weapons. We had our .50 cal and our Mark 19. We identified where they were shooting at us from. And we leveled the entire building with everything and everyone inside of it. And when I talk about adrenaline rush... But this goes back to being prepared and knowing exactly what to do. And this is what I always talk about with people. When you have that muscle memory and being trained of doing what to do, nothing could be going on. But when pressure is on and you know exactly what to do, you actually execute and do what you're supposed to do. I think I come with another level of discipline. Fast forward, my gunnery sergeant, he was our section leader and I was his assistant section leader. So I was second in command that's running our unit. He gets injured and he hurts his back and he gets sent back to the United States. So I'm in a platoon where there's other leaders. This is my first time in combat. And we have other sergeants. We have staff sergeants. We have a lieutenant. And I'm thinking they're going to put one of these guys into that leadership role since my gunnery sergeant has experience in combat. He's much older than me. They're going to put somebody else in this role. And they say no. We want Sergeant Allison to lead 1st Platoon, 1st Section. So we go out of the gate. The first person that sees everything is me. The first person that is speaking to anybody on the comm, the drones, is me. And all of a sudden, at 22, 23 years old, man, I'm like... Wow, what a position of... Trust where people feel like they could put their lives and hands into my hands. And now I have to make sure that I handle this with extreme safety, extreme delicacy, because I think one of the biggest thing the Marine Corps teaches us is to like always having your brother six, always having their back. Fast forward. We're tasked to go out and we're working with the Iraqi soldiers. And I'll be honest with you, Chris, we didn't trust them. We get sent out on a mission to provide security for another mission that we're on. And we go out and we're in the middle of