Dalton Fury spent more than 20 years in the US Army as a Ranger and then as a Delta Force operator.
Fury is the pseudonym he uses for his writing, since his time in Delta Force, one of the US's most secretive and elite forces, has required him to conceal his true identity.
He made one public appearance, in Hollywood-grade facial prosthetics and colored contact lenses, on "60 Minutes" in 2008 to discuss his role leading the Delta Force mission in the 2001 Battle of Tora Bora intended to eliminate Osama bin Laden, as depicted in his New York Times bestseller, "Kill Bin Laden."
Fury said he wrote the book to set the record straight and donated all profits to a veterans' organization. He has since made a career of writing novels.
Fury sent us a collection of leadership lessons he learned in Delta Force and Rangers, which we've summarized below.
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1. Play well with your team, but remain the alpha.
Fury says that you need to "play well with others," as they say, but as the leader of a team you need to embrace the role of being a model for your subordinates.
"Arrogance, in measured amounts and used prudently, actually benefits an organization," he writes. "Of course, you have to be able to back this up with results versus rhetoric."
2. Let things go.
In 1994, Fury and his fellow Rangers would take monthly visits to the Ft. Benning cemetery to pay respects to the Rangers who were killed in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. After several of these visits, now retired Lieutenant General Frank Kearney gathered his unit and told them that it was time to move on from their grief and frustration, and that the cemetery visits would stop.
"We had done what we could for those heroes, and it was time to honor them by physically and mentally preparing for the next action," Fury writes. "It was respectful, spot-on, and the right thing to do."
He says that this moment stuck with him, because it showed him that focusing on failures and disappointments held a team back.
3. Trust your instincts.
There have been several moments in his military career, Fury says, where a leader's confident, quick decision-making meant the difference between either a massive failure or victory.
For example, in the 2002 Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, the Army's plan was falling apart from the outset. Senior leaders on remote bases were recommending Delta Force retreat, according to Fury, and couldn't agree on a plan. Then the Delta Force commander in charge of the operation, Pete Blaber, contacted his leadership and gave them a concrete plan of action. It ended up a major victory.
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