Why Communication is a Navy Seal's Greatest Asset

This episode first published in January 2025.

Communication is the most important weapon a Navy SEAL can carry. More vital than physical strength, endurance, or even firepower.

I was in Salt Lake City recently at a conference and saw former Navy SEAL William Branum speak. He served for 26 years with the US Navy and 23 of those years was a Navy SEAL. In his presentation he talked about how clear, concise, and often nonverbal communication plays a critical role in high-stress, life-or-death situations—whether underwater, in a firefight, or clearing a house. He broke down the lessons SEALs learn on the battlefield that can be applied to leadership, teamwork, and personal growth.

So, when I had a chance to sit down with him in the lobby, I grabbed my mobile phone, and we recorded an episode together. This is a conversation about the power of communication and how simplifying your message can lead to greater impact.

Listen For
4:26 The Power of Nonverbal Communication
6:36 Simplicity is Key in High-Stress Environments
10:33 Self-Communication Shapes Success
12:24 Adaptability in Crisis Situations

Guest: William Branum, former Navy SEAL
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

It was a moonless night. In May 2011, deep inside the borders of Pakistan, two black helicopters flew low and fast, skimming the rugged terrain with pinpoint precision. On board, a team of elite Navy SEALs sat in silence, their minds focused on the mission ahead. They trained for this moment over and over, each movement choreographed, each contingency planned. The objective? A heavily fortified compound in a boardabad. The target, the most wanted man of the world, Osama bin Laden. But then something happened. As the first helicopter hovered over the compound preparing to insert the team, an unforeseen vortex of hot air caused the aircraft to lose lift. In an instant, it crashed into the courtyard, sending a shockwave through the team and alerting the compound's inhabitants. Now, imagine yourself in that moment. A critical mission years in the making, and in the blink of an eye, everything had changed. Panic? Not for these seals. Through years of disciplined training and an unshakable reliance on one another, the SEALs adapted instantly. They switched to their contingency plan quickly, silently, with hand signals, and clipped radio transmissions. Their calms discipline was unwavering. Within moments, they were back on track, pressing into the compound, clearing each room with lethal efficiency. Upstairs behind a locked door, they found him. In seconds, the man responsible for countless lives lost was neutralized. And just as quickly the SEALs secured their evidence, prepared their ex-fill, and destroyed the down helicopter to prevent sensitive technology from falling into the wrong hands. The mission, though compromised, was a success. And how did they pull it along? Not just through strength, not just through skill, but through communication. Clear, concise, and disciplined communication. Today, on stories and strategies in the fog of uncertainty, in the chaos of combat, communication is your greatest weapon. Without it, stories end differently. William was a Navy SEAL who served 26 years in the Navy, 23 of those years with the SEALs, and cultivated a powerful mindset. He has extensive experience in high-pressure situations as a sniper instructor and leading teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. I literally cornered William in the lobby after hearing him speak, and I asked him if he would do an interview for this podcast with me right then and there with my phone. At the highest level. Communication is number one. That's from a Navy SEAL. Enjoy this episode.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

You were William a Navy SEAL for how many years? Yes, sir. I was in the Navy for 26 years, and 23 of those 26 years I was in the SEAL teams.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Navy SEALs underwater, holding your breath, pushing physical to the limit, mind over matter.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Oh, comms is probably the most important thing that you can do. You know, yesterday when I when I gave my presentation, I showed you that SEAL delivery vehicle, and I didn't really talk about how we communicate in the back of the boat. So you have two guys in the front, underwater, four guys in the back. Well, how do we communicate back and forth? We're in the water. So we have to use nonverbal communications to communicate with one another. And what we found is nonverbal communications are oftentimes much better than verbal communications.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

You're not talking body language there. You're talking deliberate signals to one another.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Yeah, deliberate signals. So uh I can give you so many different examples of nonverbal communications, whether I'm clearing a house with other teammates, or I'm underwater, or I'm in a gunfight, daytime, nighttime. We're we're much more effective when we communicate nonverbally versus verbally. And the reason for that is we simplify the communication. Most people, what I found is most leaders in any organization, they become very verbose and they over they they try to over-explain something rather than just getting straight to the point and telling people exactly what they want. Instead, they try to tell people how smart they are with all the words that they're using. So if you can like I I tell I tell people, if you can explain your message in seven words or less, you're gonna be very effective.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

That's the narrative. Absolutely. Um that's about staying in contact and in communication. To what extent would a Navy SEAL study different ways of communicating, how to make a message resonate with people? You just touched on it. Shorten it, make it seven words or less, and it has a higher likelihood of sticking. I mean, Navy SEALs, again, I think about working out, I think about pushing the physicalities to the limit, I think about fighting bad guys and bad women to some extent. Do you study human communication, how the brain remembers a message?

SPEAKER_01 6:27

I study it now, but I don't I don't think that we were really studying communication back then. We just studied what was effective on the battlefield.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

And what we found, high stress, when you're talking about a high stress environment, life or death scenarios, underwater, no matter what it is, the more simple and clean you can make it, the least probable the less probability there is of any sort of miscommunication happening. Like I if you give me a hand-and-arm signal, or you do something with your laser, or wave your gun a certain way, or squeeze me a certain number of times, I know exactly what that means. There is no question in my mind, I know what my next move is. But those are SOPs that we have to build in. So you have to figure out how you want to communicate, what you want your message to be, so that you can then break it down and make it extremely simple. So yes, you have you do have to study what is effective communication and what the effective words are, what the effective uh methods of communication are. They have to be very deliberate and very direct. What percentage of candidates for Navy SEAL actually make it? About 25 to 30 percent actually make it through training.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Okay. And is it always the biggest, the strongest, the most physically fit? It's almost never the biggest, strongest, and most physically fit. It's like guys like me that are just average, mediocre, just guys with a ton of grit that just don't want to quit ever.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

You had two of your main messages in your presentation to the group we're seeing in Salt Lake City. First one was never quit. The second was accept failure. Those two don't seem to agree with each other. What do you mean about the difference between the two?

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Well, you know, never quitting, you're you're gonna run into obstacles, you're gonna have hard times, you're gonna, you're gonna you're gonna hit roadblocks, and you're gonna achieve failure over and over and over, and that's okay as long as you learn the lessons from that failure and you keep going. Most people they'll try something and they'll fail and they'll quit. If you try something and you fail and you try it again and you fail and you try it again, and then you just keep going until you actually get to the end result that you're looking for, you're gonna be successful. It doesn't matter what you're doing. Um if you're I mean, we could just use examples like uh what's the guy's name? Um holy crap. I used to talk about him in my presentation, the guy who who created the incandescent light bulb. Um Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison, thank you. He learned more than 10,000 ways to not create the incandescent light bulb. What if he stopped at like 9,000? 9,999. Oh, that there's no way to create this light bulb, then he never would have done it. He he accepted failure and he never quit.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

If three out of four candidates for Navy SEAL end up quitting because they've accepted failure, is there a form of communication that is used or could be used to help those candidates last longer? And I guess supplemental to that, tell me about communication in theater of war, where because I know you've been to Iraq, Afghanistan, in um to what extent does communication play a role, not just amongst each other, but but but sometimes with those you're at war with, those those individual people that you're you're in battle with.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

So communication, there was a two-part question. There was one in about training or guys going through training to become a Navy SEAL, and if there was some sort of communication that could uh help them actually make it to the end of training. And I don't know that there is, it's really actually there is. It's the communication that they're having with themselves. Whatever that story is they're telling themselves, that's the communication that needs to be fixed. So if they can fix themselves and fix the story they're telling themselves, fix the narrative, and communicate with themselves and like, okay, so what? We failed, we learned something, let's go and and and keep going. Oftentimes they're like, this is too hard, I don't want to do it, I'm not, it's not worth it at the end. The end result isn't really what I'm looking for. When they tell themselves this is what I'm gonna do, and no matter what, I'm gonna make it to the end, then they're gonna make it. Uh, the second part of your question was communication in in combat and in in in those sort of scenarios. I will tell you, we've probably lost more people in training and in combat due to poor communication, lack of communication, because we were relying on maybe old ways of doing stuff, or we got lazy in the way that we communicated, and or the other party wasn't listening to what we were saying. I mean, we've dropped bombs on our own people, we've shot our own people, uh, we've killed our own people, and I'm not talking just in the SEAL teams. I guarantee you it's happened to us in the SEAL teams in training, but it it has happened, you know, uh, where we've, you know, killed our partner force also, or they've shot at us. And because, you know, things get chaotic, things get crazy and and and stressful, and and our rational thoughts sometimes go out goes out the window, and we just get emotional and we just like, oh my god, we're scared. Fear is a very powerful, a very powerful player out on the on the battlefield. And so when you're in those extremely stressful environments, communication is critical. Whether, even if it's, you know, oftentimes we're we've been very successful on the battlefield because we have the ability to sometimes listen to the communication that the enemy is having with one another. And I'll say that, you know, sometimes we don't shoot the guy with the gun, sometimes we shoot the guy with a cell phone or the guy with a radio. Because he's out there, you know, he's in his little tracksuit on his cell phone, coordinating all the attacks that are going on. And me in a in a sniper position, you know, once I see that and I recognize what's happening, I read the battlefield and I know that that guy that's communicating with all the all the other forces coordinating what's happening. I shoot him, I take him out of the picture, all the all the uh the opposition force, they stop fighting because they don't know what to do, because they don't have eyes on the inside anymore. So communication, and that was something that we had to learn also. We were, you know, we go into combat and we write after action reports and we pass them out to you know our our teams and and the other forces in theater so that we know the the enemy's TTPs, tactics, techniques, and procedures. Well, you know what, the enemy's doing the same thing to us. We've had to change our TTPs time and time again because we go overseas, you know, we use these techniques to go in houses or you know, fight the enemy. The enemy learns our techniques, they start, you know, sharing them. We go in, we try to use the same thing, they counter us, so we have to change the way that we're doing business. So communication in everything that we do, it is the most important thing that we can do in combat or in training.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Okay, last question. You talk you talked a bit about fear. And what I loved about your presentation was you have to accept fear. Fear is going to be a part of it. Giving into it, that's a whole other that's a whole other thing. Rather than tell me your theories on fear and overcoming fear, I want you to tell me a story, and I'm asking this of the Navy SEAL, a time that you experienced sincere fear, maybe the most you've ever experienced, and how you communicated with yourself to overcome that fear and to do what needed to be done.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Wow, I have to think about this really quickly. The first story that pops into my head, I told it yesterday, and it was about the guy that I didn't shoot, that maybe I should have, uh, because you know, right after that, you know, I saw this, you know, Iraqi police officer. I was I was in Iraq, I saw that I there was a gunfight going on on our right side as we're going to go find someone else. And we come around the corner, we're you know, driving very fast at night, blacked out, night vision goggles, the whole thing. And an Iraqi police officer sees us like as we come under the streetlights, and he gets on the phone and starts calling some people. And I was like, something about that's not right. I feel like I should shoot that guy, but I didn't really have a good reason to yet. Uh about two minutes later, an IED went off. Like, literally, I was in the back of the Humvee, and it went off about 10 feet away from us. And I was like, oh, that's not good. And then people started shooting at us, you know, and we're just hanging out like in the back of a pickup truck. And then about a minute later, and again, we're hauling the mail at night, and the next IED goes off. And the only reason that we live, we're here to, I'm here to talk to you about it, is because we were driving so fast. That IED barely missed us. And so, you know, we're, and like I said yesterday, like the number one rule of being an AB SEO is you have to look cool. Like, it's a joke, but you know, we you know, we're we all we have we have some ego and we're like, oh, we're we're indestructible or whatever. We die all the time. But, you know, and I and I'm like, oh, this is like number one, something I didn't share yesterday is when I was 15, I was shot hunting. So I've already been shot one time. And so my my thought process and what I share with everyone in combat, I'm like, I've been shot before. What are the odds of me getting shot again? They're pretty low, I think. So anytime it was in a gunfight, it was like, no big deal. Still a little scared, but I've never been blown up before. So now like I've got like two bombs have gone off, and I'm like, oh my god, this is not good. And so, but you know, all four of us that were in the back of that truck, we were like, hmm. Um we were scared, but we weren't saying anything. And it was actually the new guy, the guy with only his tube deployments under his belt. It was this was his second deployment, was like, hey, what do you guys think about maybe getting a little lower in the truck and like being less uh visible to the enemy, a smaller target? And we were all immediately like, yep, we're gonna get down and like hunker down and try not to die on this on this op tonight because uh that was two very close calls. You know, when we got back from that mission, you know, the whole side of the Humbee was just like littered with with uh bullet holes where the rounds had like bounced off. And I was like, How are we alive right now? This is crazy. So yeah, that was probably the most scared on a on a combat mission. I mean, I you know, actually I have some other some other stories about being scared, but yeah, just you know, you just have to hunker down and and move forward.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

The thing I pull from that is you listen to the new guy with uh the good idea. So I I pull from that in crisis, crisis communications, listen to the new ideas. Follow process, follow procedure, follow your training. That's what that exists for, but be flexible enough to listen to the new stuff. The other thing I got from what you said, because you talked about the Iraqi police officer with the cell phone, uh that sorry to add humor here, but I got shoot the messenger.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

That's yeah, that's exactly right. I never thought about it like that. But yeah, 100%. Shoot the messenger, never be the messenger. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

That's right. I I really appreciate your time. I loved your presentation. I love that a Navy SEAL, who I I'm obviously physic physically so far removed from that and mentally probably quite far removed from that, but in in your presentation, I got that maybe somewhere in my head there's a Navy SEAL within me, somebody that follows their training, faces up to their fears, and addresses things and gets things done. I I hope that's the message that you want to get across.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

That's 100% it. I mean, I want people to start thinking more like Navy SEALs, and the the thing that we that we do that sets us apart from other other people, we just think about things differently. You know, we tried to not be uh have this conventional mindset, and I think that's what you're doing with the mastermind. That's how you, you know, you run your programs, how you run your business. You just do it differently than everyone else. And that's the thing that sets you apart. And I think that every the more people that can start thinking about things differently, less conventional, more unconventional thinking, the better the world will be and the more innovation that we will have. That's a beautiful wrap.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Thanks for your time.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yes, sir. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

So here are the top three things I got from former Navy SEAL William Branham in this episode. Number one, simplicity is key. Effective communication is about keeping messages clear and concise. Seven words or less, William says, can often be the most powerful, most impactful way to convey critical information. Number two, nonverbal communication is also powerful. In high stress environments, hand signals, gestures, and other nonverbal cues are often more reliable and effective than spoken words. And number three, mindset drives success. Success in any challenging situation comes down to mental resilience and the internal dialogue we have with ourselves, whether to push forward or give up. If you'd like to send a message to my guest William Branham, we've got his contact information in the show notes. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies podcasts. If you liked this episode, please leave a rating and possibly a review. Thank you to our producer Emily Page, and lastly, do us a favor forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.