Episode 186: The President’s Briefing Explained

—————————–

Today Counts Show Episode 186

Preview

Stephanie: After going to the Naval War College, I returned to the CIA, and I had a very supportive boss. He knew that one of my bucket list jobs was to be a PDB briefer. We bring everything that we know about that subject to the forefront, and we track those storylines, for lack of a better word. As we get new information and new intelligence, that storyline or that analysis may change.

One of the big, important things that the entire intelligence community does, not just the CIA, is not only identify analysis but also determine how things change and why they change. This particular congressman or senator wants to know all about this topic. It could be expanded into something that’s more—

Appreciation of our Supporters

Winston: Hey, before we jump into the podcast, we want to thank all our donors and supporters who make the Today Count Show possible. It’s through your generosity that we’re able to shape leaders through this content and this podcast. Be sure to like, subscribe, and follow wherever you find yourself coming across this content. All right, let’s get to the podcast.

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position or views of the U.S. government. Nothing in the content should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.

Introduction to Stephanie Sellers’ Background

Jim: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Today Count Show. And if this is your first time watching or listening, glad that you have joined us and are going to give us a try. Today, I have a special guest on the show. Her name is Stephanie Sellers. I met her by way of another lady that I met in France, and this is a very interesting one. This lady’s got education and experience in things that—

Well, you know what I’m going to do is read her short bio. And as I do that, it is a mouthful. I almost thought that I should practice it, but I’m not going to practice this. Here we go.

Her name is Miss Stephanie Sellers, and Stephanie most recently served as the Central Intelligence Agency, as of course we all know as CIA, representative to the U.S. Army War College and the General Walter Bedell Smith Chair of National Intelligence Studies. Woo! I got through that sentence.

Stephanie Sellers’ Extensive Career and Education

Miss Sellers has over 27 years of experience in the U.S. government as an intelligence educator, tradecraft facilitator, analytic manager, military analyst, science and technology analyst, and missile system engineer. I don’t even know what some of that is. But anyway, from 2018 to 2019, she served as the President’s Daily Brief—otherwise known as the PDB—briefer to the Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

Before joining the CIA, Miss Sellers served as a Department of the Navy civilian aerospace engineer, where she directed program operations, developed hardware, and conducted thermal structural stress and flight dynamic analysis simulations on re-entry vehicles for the Navy’s Trident submarine launch ballistic missile system. This is crazy.

Academic Achievements and Personal Life

Miss Sellers holds a Bachelor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the University of Dayton, a Master of Science and Professional Degrees in Aerospace Engineering from George Washington University, a Master of Arts in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College, and a Certificate in Leadership Coaching for Organizational Development from George Mason University.

In May, she completed an Education Policy Fellowship with the Education Policy and Leadership Center. She teaches trauma-informed yoga to support recovery and resilience among veterans, military families, and communities, particularly those working through PTSD. She enjoys spending free time with her four children—sons 16 and 15, and daughters 11 and 9.

Woo! Stephanie, that’s a lot. Welcome to the show.

Stephanie: Thank you. Happy to be here.

Jim: Yeah, you must be a driven lady. That’s all I can say.

Stephanie: Probably a fair statement.

Jim: Were you kind of nerdy in high school or what?

Stephanie: I was really nerdy in high school. Yeah, I think so.

Jim: That’s awesome.

Stephanie: I can own that now, I suppose.

Jim: Well, you know, most of us civilians and lay people—we certainly know about the CIA. We like to watch movies all based upon that kind of stuff, espionage and all those crazy things. And we’ve also heard about this briefing. I think that our listeners would be interested—because we have certain assumptions, but very few of us get involved in that. So what is a brief? How is the information gathered, filtered, assimilated? Can you just tell us a story about that? That would be a great place to start, I think.

Stephanie’s Journey to Becoming a PDB Briefer

Becoming a Briefer

Stephanie: Sure, absolutely. Well, again, thanks for having me, Jim. I’m really excited to be here. I might start with how I became a briefer because I think that flows into the story of what a briefer does, if that’s all right with you.

I came into the agency, as you mentioned, back in 2003 after working for the Navy for a bit. One of my colleagues was a PDB briefer, and I thought, “Okay, well, this is really interesting,” and she was briefing the director at the time. So after going to the Naval War College, I returned to the CIA, and I had a very supportive boss. He knew that one of my bucket list jobs was to be a PDB briefer. He kept an eye out for vacancy notices.

Taking on the Challenge

One day, he said, “Hey, come to my office. You’re going to be really interested in this.” There was an opportunity to apply to be Vice President Pence’s briefer. I was like, “Oh gosh, I can’t do that. That’s scary.” I thought it would have been phenomenal, but I was terrified. I said, “No, I’m going to wait till the Secretary of Defense briefer position comes out. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do.”  I worked for the Defense department, I worked at the agency.

He looked at me and said, “Do you want to be comfortable or do you want to be challenged?” I thought, “That’s really good. I’ve never forgotten that.” So I said, “Well, of course I want to be challenged.” You read my bio. So I applied for the job, and about six weeks later, I got a call.

Landing the Role

The answer was, “Hey, sorry, you didn’t get the job, but would you like to brief the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and the Deputy Secretary of Defense?”

I thought, “Wow, this is a great match.” Eventually, the deputy that I had flighted up became the Acting Secretary of Defense. I can talk a more about that detail if you’d like but basically–

Jim: Yeah, I’ve got all kinds of questions. Keep going.

Stephanie: That’s kind of how I got into being a briefer. You asked a bit about who gets the PDB, and a lot of questions I always get are: is the content the same for every recipient?

The President’s Daily Brief (PDB) Process

Understanding the President’s Daily Brief (PDB)

Jim: Yeah, that’s one of my questions.

Stephanie: The PDB is tailored to the specific needs and preferences of each recipient.

PDB customers change depending on the administration. The frequency and delivery of the PDB are determined by the president and the DNI—the Director of National Intelligence—who work together in a partnership to ensure the briefing meets the needs of the administration. Likewise, the distribution of that product is at the discretion of the president and the DNI. It’s typically provided to senior policymakers within the National Security Council, or the NSC.

I apologize in advance if I use a lot of acronyms. It’s a very CIA and military things to do. A key feature of the PDB is its commitment to providing all of the same intelligence to all the NSC principals. That means every decision maker is looking at the same information. You could extrapolate that to any type of business or any type of career field—you want those people making the decisions to all be on the same page.

Tailoring and Delivering the Briefings

In addition to receiving PDB articles, each customer gets a tailored briefing based on policy, which includes additional intelligence reporting and analysis. That’s a very brief, how do you become a briefer and then who gets to the PD briefer. How do they receive it? I think that’s another question that I always get.

PDB briefers are the voice of the intelligence community with the executive-level decision makers of the administration. They serve as the primary link between various components within the intelligence community and the CIA, and the president and as well as senior officials in the administration. Normally, it’s about a one- to two-year tour, depending on the briefer, the administration, and who they’re briefing.

PDB briefers play a critical role in informing high-level decision makers. Contributing to national security, the complex global dynamics that we look at. Every customer takes their briefing differently. Sme like to read, some like to ask questions, some just want a short briefing.

As with my case, when I was asked, “Do you want to apply for this position?” and then didn’t get that one, the office that does the matching does a really good job pairing briefers with policymaker customers because, at the end of the day, intelligence is a relationship business.

The Source and Structure of the PDB

I think I went a little off track but I hope I answered the question.

Jim: So, is there an original source document, and then it is dissected from there? I mean, how does this work? I’m just trying to think of some efficiencies. Is this a daily briefing? Does daily mean seven days a week, 365 days a year? Is there an original source document and then is that exegeted into different directions? How does that work?

Stephanie: Sure. The PDB itself is a compilation of a set number of documents and– I’m sorry, a set number of documents goes to everybody. It’s written to the president, even in first person—it’ll reference “you” if they’re talking to the president.

That’s the basis of every policymaker’s briefing. However many articles are in that PDB for the day will go to everyone the president and DNI want to see the PBD.  That happens Monday through Saturday. So it’s almost a 24/7 business. In fact, many policymakers will take what they call a “drop book” on weekends, where they may read it as opposed to getting a full briefing.

Timing and Format of the Briefings

I can a little bit about timing of briefings as well. For example, I had 30 minutes with each of my customers every day, Monday through Friday, when I was briefing the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the USDI. When I moved up to the Secretary of Defense, I would create a book that would be dropped off by me or a colleague at the Pentagon on Saturday mornings.

Jim: So is it prepared very consistently? Does it have a template with certain subjects that are on there all the time? Is it bullet points? Is it narrative? I realize you’ve already explained that they’re tailored. I get that part. If there is an average, is it five pags of bullet points? Is it one page? 10 pages? What topics are included?

Stephanie: It’s typically short text form in paragraph style, a few pages. The neat part is that we can now use tablets because technology has come a long way. There are often embedded graphics to help illustrate points made in the product. It still reads like an article, but it’s written with analytic judgments up front and sourced with evidence from various places that you could imagine that intelligence collects for.

The Work of Analysis and Overnight Developments

It’s not particularly long, and it varies by day. Things you would expect. I can talk a little bit about some of things that have been declassified and put out in the public. It may be something that happened overnight. For example, I can’t tell you what was in the PDB on September 10, 2001, frankly, because I don’t know.

But I could tell you what was on it. Really, I should say the 11th because the morning that the briefings had probably already been given for the most part by the time 9/11 occurred. But I could tell you what was probably in it on 9/12. I’m going to guess that there was something to the effect of, “Here’s an analytic document on what just happened yesterday.”

So there are those kinds of things that take place overnight, for example, that we may want to get out there to our policymakers as soon as possible with as much information as we have. Some of the really interesting parts of being an intelligence officer is—I’m an analyst by trade—and I’ll talk about how many types of topics you have to follow as a PDB briefer.

But I could tell you what was probably in it on 9/12. I’m going to guess that there was something to the effect of, here’s an analytic document on what just happened yesterday.

So there are those kinds of things that take place overnight, for example, that we may want to get out there to our policymakers as soon as possible with as much information as we have. Some of the really interesting parts of being an intelligence officer is—I’m an analyst by trade—and I’ll talk about how many types of topics you have to follow as a PDB briefer.

Managing Information and Adapting Analysis

When we do analysis, we bring everything that we know about that subject to the forefront, and we will track those storylines, for lack of a better word. As we get new information and new intelligence, that storyline or that analysis may change. One of the big important things that the entire intelligence community does, not just the CIA, is not only identify analysis but how things change and why they change.

Kind of bringing that back to being a briefer, there were probably—I’m going to make a number up here—but 15 to 17 different threads that are kind of major things. You could probably imagine what most of those are—maybe countries that we’re following or types of technologies that we’re following.

When you come in as a briefer, you have to learn that bottom line that I just discussed for all those stories all at once. Some of the comparisons that briefers have made in the past are that it’s like coming in and reading 15 graduate essays every night. The one that I really liked, which was what my trainer said to me, is it’s like coming in and trying to get up to speed on 15 different soap operas—you don’t know who these characters are, you don’t know what they’re doing, you don’t know why they’re doing it.

Those first few months of being a briefer, it’s like drinking from the fire hose.

Temperament and Comprehension in Briefing

That’s really interesting because I think when you and I talked before, didn’t you mention to me that you’re a believer in temperament assessments and those kinds of—

Stephanie: Oh, like MBTI?

Jim: Yeah, like the MBTI. So, for those who don’t know, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. It’s kind of a temperament—I like calling it temperament versus personality only because I view personality as a wider, broader topic than temperament.

But anyway, so now you just gave me this picture, Stephanie, where—okay, I’m reading what you say, 10 to 15 college-level essays a night, and now I’ve just got a nightmare about– Remember when they tested us in high school or even in middle school or junior high about comprehension?

Detail Orientation and Qualities of a Briefer

Stephanie: Oh, yes.

Jim: You would read a paragraph, then they’d ask you questions.

Stephanie: Yes.

Jim: And because I tend to look at things at 30,000 feet, to comprehend the details in a paragraph, I really have to pay attention. I have the ability to do it, but words usually send me out into more words, not less words. That’s the typical intuitive, right? The typical intuitive.

Stephanie: I was going to say, you’re an N on the test.

Jim: Right, I’m an intuitive. So, I’m going to go wide versus narrow. So, I would imagine that alone is one of the qualifying characteristics of a briefer. They’ve got to be able to comprehend and remember details in it. Because if you do banter back and forth with the customer, as you called him or her, you’re going to look kind of silly when you go, “Gosh, I don’t remember. It’s in there. I don’t remember.”

How Many Receive the Briefing

Just some machine gun questions here real quick. So, what would be your guesstimate of how many people in our government receive a briefing of some sort?

Stephanie: Of the PDB or just–

Jim: From that document.

Stephanie: From that document?

Jim: Yeah.

Stephanie: It really depends on the administration. I mean, if I had to guess, you could look at the president, his inner circle of people—chief of staff, national security adviser. You could argue that probably every one of the cabinet members will get it. And again, it varies by administration. So, you’re going to typically see the cabinet, the people that are sitting at the cabinet meetings, are going to have seen that more than likely.

I know that’s kind of a wishy-washy answer, but it really does change from administration to administration.

Different Levels of Briefings Across Government

Jim: Yeah, that sounds like 12, 15, 20. What about senators, congressmen? I mean, certainly they must be briefed somehow, but are those different verticals, come from different sources? Is that—

Stephanie: So, the PDB itself is like the very highest level echelon of what we collect and what we present. But from there, I think you kind of captured it well—there’s like echelons. So, if there’s a particular topic that a particular policymaker is interested in but they aren’t a PDB recipient, as we call them, what may happen then is they would go back to the agency or the IC and the DNI, and they would say, “Hey, we would like a briefing on XYZ topic.” And what might happen is the PDB gets taken and kind of expanded maybe to satisfy that policymaker.

How Policymakers Use and Expand the PDB

So, let’s say a PDB is two pages, for example, but this particular congressman or senator wants to know all about this topic—it could be expanded into something that’s more granular, I think, for lack of a better word. So, yeah, I think it all intertwines together. And in the agency, we have several different offices who cover different things, whether it’s regional or topical. And so, it’s a real communication process between the briefers, the policymakers, the intelligence community, the agency being one of those 18 members of the intelligence community.

Is that kind of what you were looking for?

Jim: Yeah. Yeah. And so, I’m imagining now that this is an important but one form of communication because, in one sense, it’s fast and consistent in that it’s every 24 hours, X amount of days a week. Yet it’s slow in the sense of a national emergency. If something happened now, we’re not talking about briefing. That’s probably a different form of communication, I would imagine.

Going back upstream, then—the analysts, are they analysts? Are they researchers? They must all have assignments about different specifics. Maybe some are focused on the 50 states, maybe some are focused on international concerns, maybe some are focused on military.

Would you say—I’m thinking about if you were giving me a brief, I would already know what I would prefer. And if it’s like, do you think the average is like two pages? Is that what you’re saying?

Stephanie: Well, so the PDB itself is the same length no matter who gets it. It’s written for the president and at that particular length.

Jim: Okay.

Customized Briefs for Each Policymaker

Stephanie: But in each book, or in each— I should say briefing, I guess, for each customer that we have, that’s going to be longer. Because I think exactly what you said—each of those customers has a different portfolio, has different policy initiatives. So, we’ll use mine as an example. When I briefed the Deputy Secretary of Defense, I would probably put somewhere between 12 and 15 products in there every day.

So, you’d have, let’s say there were three to four pieces in the PDB that the president gets. I would add another eight or 10 pieces depending on the day. For example, if the Deputy Secretary, or when he became the Secretary, was going to meet with a Minister of Defense from another country, I might put in some analysis on that particular leader and say, “Hey, here’s what we know about the person that you’re going to meet with tomorrow, for example, or next week.” We would do it a little bit ahead of time.

Using the Briefing as a Leadership Tool

You might put things like raw intelligence—maybe there was a really critical piece, and it’s like, “Hey, this source is really important. Let me put that source in there so that you can read what that source said.” That kind of bolsters our analysis.

Jim: So, it almost feels like it’s not so benign as just information, but it might also be—I don’t want to go as far because we’ll talk about leadership here in a little bit—but it almost sounds like it’s kind of a coaching document too. If I’m willing to take it that way. With the example that you just gave, “Here’s some more information about this meeting that you’ve got coming up. Okay, so now I’m going to be changing my posture perhaps for this or that.”

I’m trying to think of what kind of person I would be in receiving it.

You know, I think about how the Wall Street Journal and the USA Today has that column on the left—at least they used to—that were just the little snippets. And I used to love that because I could get a global perspective really fast just by reading, as long as they weren’t just hooks. If they were somewhat informative titles, then I could land on the ones that I wanted to read and then turn into that.

But on the other hand, I could see myself slamming down some breakfast while you’re reading me the bullet points, and I’d go, “Oh, this, back up.”

The Role of Intelligence in Policy

Jim: I can see myself doing both of those. What other ways do some of the customers—have you seen—that they like to receive it?

Stephanie: So, I’ll answer that question, but I’ll back up to the thing about coaching. I would actually use the term—or the term that we use is that intelligence informs policymakers. We do not create policy.

So, what we’re doing is trying to understand what the policymakers’ desires are and provide them as much analytic, objective information as we can so that they can go make those policies, since we don’t make policy. So, I think that’s the first part of it.

The second part of the question is how you receive the briefing.

Yeah. Wait, wait, wait, wait, Stephanie, let’s back up. So, here comes my N—my intuitive—right here. Here it comes. All right, I’m following you on that. And so, you know, remember that old detective show, you know, “Just the facts.”

Yet, a lot of times—let’s see if this makes sense—a lot of times we have statements, we have leanings, we have maybe a variety of circumstantial ideas that seem to indicate something.

So, we’re not going to say, “Here’s what 1 + 1 + 1 equals,” but do they sometimes list, “Here’s the one, the one, and the one,” leaving the sum to the imagination and to more research? I mean, if it seems like something is brewing, how do you say that on a brief when you don’t really know that it’s brewing? Does my question make sense?

The Role of Intelligence Analysis

The Challenge of Intelligence Analysis

Stephanie: Yes. You’ve just basically kind of dug and jumped right into why intelligence analysis is so challenging.

Jim: Okay.

Stephanie: Okay, so that’s exactly it. And we live in a world of uncertainty in intelligence. We can’t predict the future. We are not future tellers, right?

In my experience, the policymakers I’ve worked with have all understood that—they don’t think we are future tellers. But what they do want is for us to take the information that we have—and intelligence and information, you mentioned both of those words, those are also two very different things. Information is just data. And if you just have data and you don’t do anything with it, it’s not analysis, it’s not intelligence.

So, what we’re doing is taking all that data and we are actually analyzing it. We’re saying, based on all of these things—and it’s going to come from lots of different sources, historical, everything we know about a specific topic—and we’re going to analyze that, and we’re going to make our best analytic judgment. And then we’re going to support that with evidence. And that’s what we’re going to present to the policymakers.

The Arc of the Story

It’s funny, right before our call I was working on an essay, evaluating an essay, and saying just that. When I coach—I know we’ll talk about leadership and coaching and some of the other things I do—but when I coach my students, I always say, we have this thing we call the arc of the story. So, you basically start with: what do we know, right? What are the facts, like you said, kind of “just the facts, ma’am.”

But then: why is this happening? How is this happening? Who are the players? That’s kind of the second phase. The third is the “what”—what is the impact so far, what happened, and what can we visibly see or discern from what is going on right now?

And then there’s the really hard part—and this is interesting you talk about MBTI—because you’d never use MBTI to hire or fire, but I used to teach leadership and critical thinking, writing, and briefing. And we would partner people that have complementary MBTI types, and they work even better together.

So typically, I’m an ISFJ, right? And so I am really strong at data, right? I’m an aerospace engineer. I’m really good at that—what’s happened, why is it happening, what have we seen so far—that really tangible stuff.

MBTI and Analytical Thinking

Jim: You’re an ISFJ.

Stephanie: ISFJ.

Jim: Okay, got it.

Stephanie: Now my friends that are NPs, they’re intuitive, right? And so they can look out at what we call the last two parts of the arc of the story, which is our outlooks and our implications. So, okay, now we know what’s going on. We think we know why it is or how it is. Maybe we don’t, but maybe we do. We can see what impact it’s had. And so that in itself is very important critical analysis. But then let’s look at the outlook and let’s look at what that means for the future. And then let’s look at those implications, particularly for U.S. policy.

And again, we don’t create policy, but we would say a particular event might end up a certain way if—trying to think of how we would word this without being policy— We call it policy prescriptive. So, if you’re telling a policymaker how to do their policy, that’s a big no-no. That’s policy prescription. We don’t do that, or politicization. But if we’re just saying, “If you took this action, this adversary may react as such,” we’re just saying that. And it’s kind of similar to what we do in the military, right? Courses of action.

Predicting Implications and Policy Boundaries

So, if you took course of action one or two or three, then here would be the implications of courses one, two, and three. We’re not trying to give them a menu to choose from, per se, but we’re trying to say we are taking information, analyzing it, putting our intelligence hats on, and telling you what we think that means in the future.

Jim: I want to move on to the other topics, but I don’t because I’m still fascinated with this.

Stephanie: Maybe we do a part two.

Jim: Yeah. I still need to take one more attempt at this question. Okay. So, I’m going upstream again, right? And I’m trying to figure out because when a president comes in—Well, I guess some presidents—when they come in, they would be very informed about this briefing process, but others who maybe—and I know there’s been few—but those that are on the outside who come in, business people who come in and go, “Oh, this is cool.” They probably get some kind of briefing in their business world that looks different.

So, if you go upstream far enough, I’m still trying to figure out who decides, because the president didn’t create it. Who decides what we’re studying? How do they gather the information? Who decides what gets into this original brief? Is it synthesized through AI? Are there just a couple of really good writers? I’m just trying to figure out how it doesn’t get corrupted somewhere through that process.

The PDB’s Origins and Community Collaboration

The Intelligence Community and the PDB

Stephanie: Okay, I’ll try to answer those, maybe not in the same order. There are hundreds of authors. It really is a community product. So historically, the PDB was published by the CIA, but following 9/11– I’m going to read this, I actually wrote this down– the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, IRTPA, possibly one of the worst acronyms but a very important act.

It was passed in 2004, and that took a lot of things from what was then called the Director of Central Intelligence, which was one hat that the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency wore. So, they were both the Director of the Agency as well as the Director of Central Intelligence.

They took those DCI roles and gave them to the DNI. And I think so much goodness has come from that because now the DNI focuses on the whole intelligence community—and that’s another podcast altogether—but the CIA Director can focus on CIA and its equities, and so on and so forth.

I give you that history to say it’s a community product. And it very much is—as I mentioned, intelligence is a relationship business—it very much is a partnership between the president, the DNI, and the broader intelligence community. So, when a new president comes in, for example, no matter what their experience is, whether they are a seasoned politician, whether they’ve come from something different, if they’ve come from business perhaps, they are going to have a transition period with the PDB office.

They will have discussions to say, “Hey, President Jane Doe or Joe Smith, this is how they like to take their briefings.”

Tailoring Presidential Briefings

Jim: We’re getting closer to a Jane Doe.

Stephanie: Yeah, I just made those up. But yeah, so let’s say I come in as president and say, “Hey, here’s how I like my briefings. I’m a very visual person, so I’m going to be focusing on some of the more graphic products that you’re going to provide to me. I’m going to ask a lot of detailed questions. I would like to have a longer briefing. I want to make sure I understand everything that goes into your analysis and what that means when I’m creating my policy.”

But I don’t know if I’m explaining it well enough. I’m trying to get to the fact that it really is this partnership and that it is very tailored to each president. Some presidents like to read first and then maybe get a briefing later, or maybe get one a few times a week. Some presidents just want to get a briefing or maybe something longer.

I’ll use my example since I haven’t actually briefed the president, although I did get to fly on Air Force One a few times, which was very cool.

Jim: That is cool.

Stephanie: One of my favorite parts of my job.

Jim: You got to fly on Air Force One? That’s awesome.

Stephanie: It was fantastic. I apologize for my ding—it’s all my kids’ alarms going off.

Inside Air Force One

Jim: Did you get to eat on Air Force One? Was there food?

Stephanie: I did.

Jim: Wow.

Stephanie: Oh my God, the chefs on Air Force One are phenomenal.

Jim: We could do a podcast just on your experience in Air Force One.

Stephanie: I would love that. That would be amazing.

Jim: Yeah, I’m hearing that there are a lot of cogs in the wheel.

Stephanie: Oh yes.

Jim: And there’s a lot of accountability. And one question I had for you before we move to leadership is—how is this brief classified?

Stephanie: What do you mean, how is it classified?

Jim: Well, there are different levels of classification, aren’t there?

Classification and Briefing Preferences

Stephanie: Oh, it really depends on the data that’s in it. It’s going to change based on the day. So, every briefing or every product is going to have a different classification.

But back to the question of how different people take their briefings—I can give you my experience with the Deputy Secretary of Defense, for example. When I had him, he wanted a 30-minute briefing. He wanted to hear from me as the briefer what the intelligence community had to say about a particular piece, as we call it.

Let’s say, remember I said, there were probably 15 to 17 pieces. I would give him the bottom line up front. I’d give him the roadmap. “This is our assessment, sir. These are the high points of this assessment, and here’s the evidence that supports each of those sub-judgments, and here’s our conclusion.” I’d do that for each piece, and I’d have about 30 minutes with him every day, Monday through Friday.

There were times when it’d be like, “Hey, I’m just going to give you the bottom line,” and he might say, “Hey, okay, great, got it, thanks, move on.” Other times, he may want everything in detail. And sometimes he was like, “Hey, I actually want to read that.”

Leadership Styles and Learning Preferences

But he approached it as a conversation, and I think a lot of customers do. But like I said, there are some customers—presidents and otherwise—that are readers and want to read that. They’re completely visual learners, and that’s how they take in information best. And then after the fact, they can ask the questions they have.

Jim: I think this is a fascinating thing when you look at the size of our country and the communication. Super important. And it’s neat to hear your story about that. For the sake of time, I should probably transition, but I could probably keep you on this for another two hours trying to drill down.

So, I’d like to transition by talking just a little bit about temperament and an observation.

So, as an ISFJ, there are different nicknames given to the temperament and the type. One is a guardian as far as your temperament and type. Sometimes it’s called protector, defender, moderator—those types of words. But your sensing and your judging tend to lean toward exactness, detail, black and white if you will, using some slang, some street language, just to try to—and then introverted—and then your F is kind of interesting. It kind of softens the S and the J.

I liken feelers as fond-hearted and thinkers as tough-minded. Not that feelers aren’t logical—I mean, obviously, you’re a rocket scientist, so you’ve got to be pretty logical. I think your abstract. Here’s what I think is weird—I would think that in abstract thinking, you would probably not score super high. Yet, I recognize that when you reverse-engineer physics, it really is logical.

The Balance of Personality and Leadership

But some of us who are intuitives, we have a hard time getting down to that elevation, that perfection of detail, right? And I really like what you said about surrounding yourself or teaming with complementary temperaments. I think you and I would probably be a pretty good team because I sometimes test as an E, sometimes as an I. That tells you I think my true self is an I. But when I’m on mission, I probably look more like an E—but just a little bit—because I know what drains me. So, I know I’m an introvert.

I’m definitely intuitive. I’m definitely a thinker. And I’m definitely, like you, a J—which we would call, if we go with the INTJ, which I think is my true self, we’re talking about a rational and then a mastermind. So, kind of like an architect in that sense.

But an architect doesn’t cut every corner of the molding—I’m looking at the molding in my studio—that would drive me nuts, getting the detail of the molding cut right. I’ll see it and criticize it, but I don’t want to be the guy that fixes it.

But it is fascinating, isn’t it, how the Creator made us very similar yet different, and where we need one another because we don’t have everything that we need.

So, here you are. You’ve excelled in education. You’ve excelled at engineering. You have excelled in the roles you’ve had with the CIA. You’re a mom. You have traveled quite a distance, and now you continue to study leadership.

Leadership Philosophy: Resilience, Passion, and Gratitude

Can Leadership Be Taught?

What are your initial thoughts about leadership? Is it a real thing? Is it something that people can get better at? Should they get better at? I don’t really know how to position the question, but what would you say your core beliefs are about leadership? And I’ll let you go as high or as low as you’d like, because I think you probably have a lot to say about it.

Stephanie: Yes, I think I taught leadership for a long time, and so the first one of the questions, I’ll just take them kind of as they naturally flow, is yeah, I absolutely believe that leadership can be taught. Like you, I am an I because I know what drains me, but I need to be an E and be on, I feel like, all the time in the types of jobs that I’ve chosen that bring me joy. I think really, truly good leaders are doing things out of love and out of joy for what they do.

Resilience, Passion, and Gratitude

When I talk about leadership, when I talk about my life philosophy, it’s resilience, passion, and gratitude. And those are the three things that I live by. In fact, I have a tattoo on the back of my arm that says resilience, passion, gratitude in Sanskrit that I got when I was old enough to understand what I was putting. It was only a few years ago. We’ll leave it at that.

But that’s really my personal mantra. I know I’m getting a little bit off the topic of leadership, but I think we’re all whole human beings, and I think you can’t necessarily take everything and compartmentalize it, which is probably funny to hear from an intelligence officer because that’s all we do is compartmentalize data and things.

For example, the agency has this great wellness division, and I took a lot of classes that would ask us to identify your core values or your themes, and those three things always came to the surface: resilience, passion, and gratitude. And so I kind of weave in some of my other interests. You talked in my bio about my yoga practice. That’s really guided me through challenges and triumphs. And so I think I’ve had a lot of achievements, but I can tie them all back to those three things.

Teaching Leadership Versus Management

And I think back to the question, can leadership be taught? Absolutely, leadership can be taught, but you have to have something behind that. It’s not just a set of rules. That’s management. So I used to teach a class called—it was a first-time supervisor course basically for all agency officers. So after I left the PDB briefing staff, I ran into an old friend, and she’s like, “Hey, what are you going to be doing when you’re done briefing?”

She had briefed Condoleezza Rice for two years, and she was an amazing leader and an amazing mentor to me. She said, “What are you going to do next?” And I was like, “Something that involves sleeping at normal hours,” because I know we didn’t have time to get into it, but as a briefer, I would get up somewhere between midnight and 1:00 in the morning, go in about 2:00, be done about noon. Again, that could be a whole other podcast or two more hours of this one.

Work-Life Balance and Career Transitions

But I said, “I want something that brings me some balance.” And I also don’t believe in work-life balance. Okay, I believe in work-life balance, but I think it’s a little different than sometimes people portray it. I think there are parts or positions in your career where you’re going to be completely and totally wedded to your work. For example, when I was a PDB briefer, I was, and I had a lot of time for my family, but what fell off was my health.

Now, while I was a briefer, I was in fantastic shape. I ran four times a week, five miles, I ate well. I had my friends. And I was very structured and very routine, which I think also can be, for at least my MBTI type or my personality, very effective in my life. It’s what’s made me successful—having that routine. So get up, go to work, get off at noon, have some time to myself, have my kids from 3:00 to 6:00 every day, then they would go to their dad’s house, and then I would go to sleep and rinse and repeat.

But what I also did was only sleep five hours a night, and that is not a sustainable thing. And so when I was asked, “What do you want to do next?” I’m like, “I want a job where I can sleep. I need to find that balance.” So I was asked to come over and help stand up our first-time supervisor class that we had across the whole agency. That was the first time we’d ever had a supervisor class go across all of the directorates of the CIA.

Building Community Across the Agency

We always had stovepipe directorate leadership classes, which were all very phenomenal, but this was an attempt to bring everybody in and back to that community building. As an analyst, I went through an analytic training program where I’m still in touch with several of those friends from 22 and a half years ago, and we kind of grew up through the analytic core of the agency together. Now we’re trying to do that across our management core and get all of these officers to grow up together.

So five years down the line, you’re like, “Oh, I’m working on XYZ project, and I know this person over here can really be helpful to that,” and so now I know and I can go and find that person. So I’ve kind of gone a little bit off track on my values and how I see life, but that was, to me, the next level of balance.

Unfortunately, it was 2019, so 2020—right? COVID came. Not as much balance as I would have hoped for, but I got myself into a job where it was fairly much an 8-to-5 job, so I could leave at the end of the day and not have to worry about, is my DNI phone going to ring? Am I going to have to go into the office at 10 o’clock at night or stay until 3:00 in the afternoon after I’ve been there since midnight?

Finding Renewal and Perspective

And to a place where I could focus more on my health and even more on my children while still getting the job satisfaction that I wanted and still being able to be a leader in the organization. And I think anybody who knows me knows I just rave about the agency. I absolutely love it. It’s been the most amazing career. It’s very hard to believe that I am retiring very soon.

But we do a good job of supporting our officers in their career wherever they are. We try to meet people where they are. And when we taught that leadership class with my colleagues, our team tried to instill that in our officers—lead from where you are, meet your people where they are as well.

Gratitude as the Fuel for Leadership

Jim: That’s good. I was looking—I wrote down the three values that you shared with us, and again, using my imagination, I kind of see gratitude as probably the fuel for your other two values. It’s just such an important thing. The next book I’m working on, the working title I have right now, is either Reimagining Leadership or The Reimagined Leader. And it’s basically laid out in three dimensions: person, people, and place.

Really trying to create a little bit of differentiation and isolation—not necessarily a linear idea—but just to step back out of our lives for a little bit and realize that the center, if you imagine three encompassing circles—I don’t know if that’s the right word—you probably, being a physics expert, can give me the right word. But I’m thinking kind of like a dartboard, right?

So you’ve got the bullseye in the middle, and I label that person. That’s my person. That’s your person.

And there are certain things that I need to do to take care of that person. Then the next encompassing circle is people. One of the key principles I believe there is we have to choose our people very carefully. We don’t have the capacity to say, “Come one, come all.” I think it was Aristotle who said, “Somebody who is a friend to all is a friend to none.” I think that’s true in a lot of things in life. It takes focus.

Leadership as an Inside-Out Journey

Then that last circle is place. That’s the context of my life. It’s the season that I’m in. It is the workplace. It’s what have you. But I’ve noticed that for me, leadership is an inside-out proposition. And so, though it’s not linear, if I want to change something, it’s got to start with me.

I’m not saying this to be agreeable because I’m not that kind of person. I’m also not argumentative, but I cannot agree with you more when you said you do not believe in work-life balance. I don’t know what that is. A farmer works his tail off putting the seed in the ground, and then he gets a break, and then the farmer works his tail off harvesting the crops.

There are times where the calling of leadership is to go above and beyond, and there’s no such thing as work-life balance. Then there’s a time for rest and reflection, and yeah, you’ll get some time—you’ll get some months here and there where it’ll feel like you have found balance—but that’s when you find out you have cancer. Where’s the work-life balance there? It’s called attack, or whatever your method says.

The Importance of Joy and Purpose in Leadership

I really like those three values, Stephanie. Those are powerful. I also like what you said earlier. I never really thought about it this way before, but I think you implied—or maybe you’re even stating it more as a principle—that as a leader, you really have to love and have joy for what you’re doing, probably to have any chance of being a good leader.

A lot of times we create goals, which is usually the what, but we don’t spend enough time thinking about the why underneath that goal. Why is it an important goal? So many goals we’ve adopted from society that really aren’t our goals, but are projected upon us by our loving and well-meaning parents, by friends—“Here’s the next step, here’s the next step”—and that’s not always the case.

Future Aspirations and Retirement

Approaching Retirement After 27 Years of Service

Well, you mentioned that you’re going to be retiring here in the near future from the CIA.

Stephanie: Yes, I am—from federal service after 27 and a half years.

Jim: Well, first of all, congratulations.

Stephanie: Thank you.

Jim: So what are your aspirations after that? You’re not the kind of person that’s going to sit by the pool and drink umbrella drinks the rest of your life, I don’t think.

Stephanie: Maybe for a few months.

Jim: You know what? It’s so funny that you said that because I told one of my clients about six months ago—he’s kind of in that place in his life—and I told him, we’ll call him Bob. I said, “Bob, I don’t see you as the kind of guy who is just going to retire and just relax, play golf, or whatever.” He pauses, looks at me, and goes, “Well, dang it, Jim. I think I’d like to give it a shot.”

Are you thinking about—I can understand taking a season off—but what are you thinking about?

Life After the CIA: Family, Health, and New Dreams

Stephanie: So yes, I will disclose my age and give you a few remarks that came from my retirement speech a few weeks ago here at the War College. I tell people I’m retiring at 48, and they’re like, “Whoa.” A lot of times it’s like, “Lucky you,” but there’s a mix of shock and real curiosity—like, “You’re too young. What will you do with yourself?”

And I said in there, my answer is really simple. I’m going to focus on the four not-so-little people in my life—the children that you mentioned at the beginning in my bio. They’re my world. I’m going to spend more time on my health—running, practicing, and teaching yoga and gratitude.

But I’m also really excited about the future-future. There are so many things I want to do when I grow up, is what I say. I want to attend culinary school, I want to write a memoir on resilience. I think I have an interesting story and some things that I would like to share.

A Vision for Helping Others Heal

I would really love to open a wellness center in Northern California dedicated to helping veterans and civilians who are working through PTSD. So I have so many opportunities that I want to explore and make hopefully some, if not all, of them a reality. I guess in the short term, those are more some of my long-term goals. I want to get more involved in my community, more involved with the policy center that I mentioned.

And I actually have just signed up to be a substitute teacher when I retire at the local schools—to which my children were mortified. One even remarked—you can probably guess which one, the high school junior—he said, “If you show up in my class, I’m calling in sick.” And I’m like, “I don’t think you can call in sick from school for that reason, but okay.”

Jim: Nowadays we could. Yeah, nowadays there are a lot of things we could probably do. I don’t know.

Continuing to Serve and Teach

Stephanie: Yeah. I’m working towards trying to continue working with the senior service schools. I’m obviously not just passionate about gratitude for veterans and addressing some of the more challenging things like PTSD, but I love supporting all of our military and civil service members. That has been my world.

We’re probably running out of time, but I have a story to tell about how I came to be in the government, and it has to do with my grandparents and being semi-raised by my grandfather, who was in the Army Air Corps and eventually joined the Air Force. So I think the world is my oyster. I want to stick with a lot of what I’ve done for the Army War College and the other service schools—maybe working in their distance programs, staying on hopefully as an adjunct.

Yeah, so many possibilities, but at the end of the day, we’re retiring here where the Army War College is in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, because it really offers such an amazing community. I had the opportunity to go back to D.C., and I was like, it’s so crowded. There are so many people. There’s so much traffic. It’s so expensive. I have so many friends there. There are so many wonderful things. But this has really become our world.

Speaking of, there’s my high school junior coming down the stairs.

A New Chapter and a Change of Pace

Jim: Well, let me say this—I was right. You’re not going to retire. You’re going to do something different. Just one more fun question. So where in Northern California?

Stephanie: I love the Bay Area. It’s one of the only places I feel like that I’ve ever been in the world—and I’ve been all over the world—that you can be at the beach or in the mountains within an hour.

Jim: That’s true.

Stephanie: And I have friends that are like family out there in the northern area. I have family who are also friends down in the southern part of California. While I didn’t grow up there, we spent quite a bit of time in Southern California growing up, and I spent a lot of my time in Northern California between a very close friend and also spending time out there with work.

When I worked for the Navy, we had a contractor out there. I would go probably every six or eight weeks and just fell in love with the Bay Area—Monterey in particular.

How Carlisle Became Home

The other story I always tell, and I told it at my retirement here, is that I actually didn’t pick Carlisle. So I think sometimes the universe—or whatever your value system is—maybe picks for you. Part of my leadership philosophy that I didn’t really talk too much about is that I always tell my students, or when I’m coaching, never say no to an opportunity.

And I didn’t apply for this job. I say this to a lot of people, I had actually accepted a position at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, which had been my dream job for years—about seven years. I picked out a house overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Carmel. Six months later, there’s a budget cut, and California’s not in the cards anymore.

So I was offered what my then-supervisor called a better place, which was Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Before I could stop my inside voice from becoming my outside one, I said, “Have you looked at a map?” Carlisle, Pennsylvania—Monterey, California—I don’t know that I’d make that comparison.

Embracing Opportunity and Gratitude

But what I say is never say no to an opportunity unless you have a compelling reason. Maybe someone sees something in you that you don’t. Maybe there’s an opportunity you never dreamed of. For me, this move to Carlisle became the best choice for my kids and for my career.

And so I’ll be forever grateful to whatever that was—whether it was the universe, the agency, or all of those things that came together to bring me here and to give my family this opportunity. We may not stay here forever, but it’s an awfully great place to raise a family.

Jim: Well, Stephanie, thank you so much for being on the show. I would like to have you back, and there are all kinds of other questions I’d like to explore with you. You have that kind of mind that, if you’re willing to take the punches, I would love to ask all kinds of questions.

Stephanie: I would love that, Jim. I’d be happy to come back anytime.

Jim: All right. Thank you so much.

Stephanie: Thank you.

Outro

Winston: Hey, thank you so much for joining us on The Today Counts Show. We’ve got so much more planned for you, so stay tuned and stay connected on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and subscribe on YouTube. And remember, today counts.