Harry Moffitt: Former SAS Operator on High Performance & What We've Forgotten About Living Well
Empowering LeadersShow Notes
Harry Moffitt spent decades inside one of the world's most demanding institutions - Australia's Special Air Service Regiment. He's served in conflict zones across the Middle East including Afghanistan, lost friends, mentored some of the country's most elite operators, and now works as a corporate psychologist helping leaders, athletes, and organisations perform under pressure. He's also the author of Eleven Bats and The Fourth Pillar, a book about a pillar he believes most high performance programs are missing entirely. In this conversation on Empowering Leaders, Luke and Harry explore what it means to train the whole human. Not just the body or the mind, but the philosophical and moral interior that most people never think to tend to. Harry traces the idea back to a remarkable Australian coach named Percy Cerutty, who in the 1950s and 60s built what might have been the world's first institute of sport from a tin shack on the beach at Portsea. His STOTAN philosophy blended the best of the Stoics and the Spartans into a radical approach to resilience and human performance. Harry also speaks candidly about the Ben Roberts-Smith war crimes case, one of the most significant and divisive legal proceedings in Australian military history. Harry has worked closely with people on both sides of the investigation and brings a perspective that is measured, informed, and unflinching. He talks about what the case has done to the SAS community, why he believes there is worse yet to come, and what integrity looks like when loyalty and accountability are in direct tension. Harry speaks with the kind of hard-earned clarity that only comes from actually living what you're writing about - the cost of being away from home, what he now understands about presence, about community, about the difference between chasing things and building a life. He talks about grief for his friend Lochlan Muddle, about leadership under pressure, about walking the floor as a leader, and about why talking to yourself out loud might be one of the oldest and most powerful practices a human can cultivate.
03:29 The four pillars of high performance 05:50 Percy Cerutty and the STOTAN philosophy 09:33 The whole human: Ancient wisdom and modern performance 14:46 A philosophy for living a meaningful life 18:41 Absence, regret and family 20:45 The SAS brotherhood 22:33 Lochlan Muddle: loss and pride 25:42 Ben Roberts-Smith and a divided community 31:51 Fog of war, moral armory and where the line is 35:17 Afghanistan: did we win? 40:37 What great leaders do consistently 45:50 The ancient art of talking to yourself 51:15 Routines, habits and self first 57:05 Walk the floor: the one piece of advice 1:00:14 Who would Harry collaborate with? 1:04:34 The greatest leader in Harry's life
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