402. “You’re only seeing half of the full picture” | Look Beyond the Headlines with Jeffrey Sanow

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Jeffrey Sanow:
And, you know, if we're sick, we want to be able to get taken care of, things like that. So, in that respect, people are the same all over. So, if you are working with people, you have to understand that, and you want to try and appeal to that, the fact that they are the same.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Hello and welcome to the Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster. Food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. Each episode, you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strived to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And our guest today is as fascinating as he is brilliant. Jeffery Sanow is a veteran CIA intelligence officer and security expert with a decorated career in critical global operations. His extensive tenure at the CIA and background as a social skills instructor has enabled him to be a highly effective communicator in training others for complex subject matter. His ability to weave together real-world insights with practical strategies for risk management and decision-making under pressure is unmatched and his perspective is both powerful and grounding. 

There's so much more I could tell you about Jeffrey, but we're going to talk about a lot of things from his time at the CIA, as well as his new book, which is available everywhere, HUMINT for Humanity: The Road Less Traveled. Jeffrey, welcome to The Daily Helping. It is awesome to have you with us today. 

Jeffrey Sanow:
Thank you. Dr. Richard. It's my pleasure to be here

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well, yeah, I read up on you before and there's so many things we can talk about. But what I love to do on the show is to jump into the time machine of our guests and kind of find out what it was that put them on the path they're on today. So let's just jump back in time and tell us a little bit about how your journey began. 

Jeffrey Sanow:
Well, my journey began in the 1970s and '60s. As was fairly common at the time, my parents were divorced and I had an unhappy childhood. And I'm not going to go into that because it's ancient history. Not just history, but ancient history. And again, it doesn't define me, but it is what inspired me. So, I went to Ohio State University for two years. And after going through two winters, the winter of '77, I believe was a horrid one, where the wind whistles through those buildings, I decided to run away from home. 

So, I joined the Peace Corps, because I wanted to run away from home responsibly. So, that took me to North Africa, where I worked on farm machinery for two years. At the end of those two years, I really didn't have anything else, a place to go other than back to Ohio State University and those freezing winters. So, I extended and transferred to another country, this time Gabon in Central Africa, right on the equator, and, again, working on farm machinery. 

With that experience, I learned to speak French, I learned to speak Arabic. I obviously was able to assimilate into two drastically different cultures, not just different from the US but different from one another. One's Arab, North African, and Muslim. One's Black African, Central Africa, and mostly Christian of one variation or another. So, my ability to do that assimilated me successful. I, then, went back to university in Texas, finished up my bachelor's and master's degree. 

And my first job out of college was at a turkey processing plant in Waco, Texas, killing 23,000 turkeys a day.  After about my second day, I was pretty sure that this was not the job that my mama had in mind for me. So, I spent the next year looking for other jobs and eventually got jobs working overseas in international business, did that for a while, and then gravitated to the CIA because the last sentence in my book is, "Crack havoc and let slip the dogs of adventure," which I'm sure you recognize from Julius Caesar, only as the dogs of war, but I don't want war. I want adventure. So, that's been my motto. I realized now as I look back, that was my motto through most of my life.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, you sought the CIA, you applied to work there, you worked there for a long time, tell us some of the high-level experiences you had with the CIA?

Jeffrey Sanow:
Well, first, let me say that the agency is staffed with some amazing people. They're hardworking. They're dedicated. And I know politics is everywhere these days and it always has been, but we never talk politics in the office because nobody cares. It doesn't affect our job. Our job is to provide our policymakers with information of intelligence value for them to make good decisions with respect to the United States. And I can assure everybody who's listening that you have a fantastic staff of people there that take their job very seriously, take the security of the United States very seriously. 

So, probably,  the biggest lesson that I learned when it comes to leadership is the importance of taking care of your people. And this lesson came to light after I had been supervising or overseeing the monitoring of the movement of some weapons of mass destruction-related material. It was in the Middle East on a boat. And we spent about a month monitoring it 7 by 24.

Eventually, we got the material and it was removed and destroyed. And good job everybody, off we go home and let's get some sleep. Well, about two days later my boss comes up and says, "Yeah, we got another boat. You might need to bring your people in over the weekend." Bordering on insubordination, I said, "No, sir. We have worked my people to death. I'll come in and I'll decide who needs to come in, if anybody." And he was satisfied with that response because I had a proven track record and I was taking responsibility. 

So, we ended up not coming in but the important part of that story is my boss, when it came time for promotion to the senior intelligence service, he went to the panel and told them that story, not because I was borderline insubordinate but because I was taking care of my people. There is nothing more important for any leader to do than to take care of his people. 

And not all leaders do that. I can tell you, in the agency, we have plenty of managers and supervisors who are interested in the next promotion, not in making sure that their people get the next promotion. And when you focus on getting your people promoted, the promotions will come to you automatically. When you focus on yourself getting promoted, you're going to have much less chance of having that happen. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Makes sense. Makes sense. I imagine there's a lot of life lessons, life skills that you learned also in the CIA that could translate to an individual, whether they're in a leadership position, whether they're a parent, whatever walk of life they are. Give us maybe your top two that you learned from your time at the CIA.

Jeffrey Sanow:
One, as I said, is taking care of your people. The second one would be the importance of communication and being able to communicate with your people. And I'll tell you the first lesson that I learned when I came back and I got the dreaded phone call that said, "We want you to come be a manager,." I'm like, "Okay." So, I was managing a small team of folks who were mostly deployed overseas. And my boss at the time said to me, he said, "Jeff, you need to learn how to communicate with each individual that you work for or that works for you rather. Each of your staff, you need to learn how to communicate with them. What is the button that they need pushed to be happy, et cetera, et cetera." 

And that was a very important lesson. And we need to learn, what do our staff, what do our employees, what do they need to get out of the daily job. It's not what I need out of it; it's what do they need out of it? And so, that is a very important lesson. 

And then the ability to communicate. I, at the time, I think this was about a year later, I was very good at communicating. I got it figured out. The emails that I sent out to people who were deployed overseas, they were by themselves, it's the end of a very long cable, okay. So, they didn't have a lot of in-house support. So, I'm communicating with them. I'm writing them emails. And one of the things that my boss taught me was, you know, the first paragraph of every email that goes out is, "Hi . How are you doing? How's your wife? How's your husband? How are the kids? Did you guys enjoy your blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." You get what I'm talking about. The personal touch, reaching out for some warmth. 

And so, I was in the habit of doing that. Actually, that was usually the last part of the email that I wrote because I'd have to go back and add it in once I got all the business taken care of. And I had a lady who was working for me who, when she came to the office, said, "Would you please stop doing that? Because you don't really care. I know you don't really care. I know we're here to do a job. Let's focus on the job. So, please stop wasting a paragraph asking me how I'm doing." "Okay."

So, we have to learn how to communicate with each of our staff because every one of them is going to be different. And again, you got to figure out, what do they want? How can you communicate with them? So I quit doing that with her. And, again, we got along great. So, it's important that you learn how to communicate. And then, you learn how to communicate what buttons to push. If you can communicate and you know the buttons to push, then everybody's job gets a lot easier. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Makes total sense. I'm sure you could tell us some really neat stories. Like you mentioned the weapons, mass destruction material. I'm sure you've got hours and hours worth of stories like that. Maybe we'll slip a few in but I want to spend a good amount of time talking about your book, HUMINT for Humanity. So, most of our listeners are not versed in intelligence gathering. So, give us HUMINT 101. And then, we'll talk a little bit more about the book.

Jeffrey Sanow:
So, there are many different types of intelligence that we collect as a government. There is what's called OSINT, which stands for open source intelligence. That's what you read in the newspaper or, nowadays, we read on the Internet. That's OSINT. Then you have SIGINT. That's signals intelligence. That's intercepting microwave transmissions or whatever, however, transmissions. That's what NSA does. That's what they collect. They intercept it, process it, and then publish it as intelligence. That's SIGINT.  Then, there's HUMINT, which stands for human intelligence. And that was the intelligence that I was collecting because I would speak to people, and it came from a human source. That's the nature of that name. 

So, HUMINT for Humanity is the title of my book because I try and take people through some of the places that I've seen and experiences that I and my wife and my two daughters had where we were living overseas regardless of what we were doing. The job is not nearly as important as it is to understand the environment and understand the people. 

Right now, I think that in the US, we tend to have a very myopic view. There is a news media out there for every opinion. And if you want to get your opinion validated, if you're far left, if you're far right, if you're middle, it doesn't matter, there's someone that's going to validate that. That doesn't make it accurate. That just means they agree with you. 

So, what I've tried to do is give an accurate reflection based on first-hand experience of what I have seen and witnessed, what my wife went through, what she witnessed, what my daughters went through, what they witnessed, and how the global perspective perspective that we had impacted them. That's the whole idea behind the book is to give people… and it's not all positive, I can assure you, but I want to give people an opportunity to see the places that are being talked about. 

Right now, Lebanon is in the news and for horrible reasons, but that's beside the point. In the book, I talked about Lebanon. I've been to Lebanon many times. I compare Lebanon to Whitney Houston. You may be old enough to remember Whitney Houston when she came out. Was there a more beautiful or a more talented singer at the time? I don't think so. And yet, she had an unfortunate demise that saddens us all. Lebanon is very much the Whitney Houston of the Middle East. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Wow, okay. Let's hear why. 

Jeffrey Sanow:
It was a French colony. It's a port city. Beirut is a port city. So, it's had a lot of people moving through it over the centuries. So, it's got a significant blending of cultures. Most of the good for most of them, because we can pick and choose what we want of a culture, I don't like this about the French, but I like that about the French. I like the food, I like whatever. And so, it was able to blend cultures, religions, ethnicities were all blended in Beirut and in Lebanon. And it made for a beautiful, fascinating country. You could go there and you could get the best food you could imagine. The women, now there are some who might argue this, but they're going to have to accept the fact that they're wrong, the women in Lebanon are the most beautiful women in the Middle East. Most people that know the Middle East will tell you that. So, you have that. 

Now, again, this is where the comparison with Whitney Houston comes along. And then, we have the civil wars. We have the radical Muslims. We have the Hezbollah and the terrorist organizations and all the unfortunate outcomes that we're seeing today. That's why I compare it. That's why I say it's the Whitney Houston of the Middle East. Beautiful country, fascinating country, fascinating and wonderful people, and yet here we are.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, what lessons are we to take from Lebanon?

Jeffrey Sanow:
Boy, that's a big question. I'm not sure I can give you a good answer to that one. We have to do what I think most Americans would want. We have to get back, I want to say the rule of law. That's the one thing that Americans are raised well with. We have a relatively lawful society. And the rule of law, you know, the lady holding the scales, she's blind. She's got a blindfold on, right? They say justice is blind. Unfortunately, in many other parts of the world, justice is not blind. It depends on the tribe that you come from. It depends on the mosque that you go to. 

And that is a real challenge for us as Americans to understand, and then how do we overcome that? How do we help people understand that they need to try and blindfold themselves when it comes to the rule of law. Most every country and the other country in the world operates under the rule of man. Not that many of them operate under the rule of law. And we need to get more and more countries to adopt the rule of law. 

Western Europe, or I should say Europe these days, but they eventually came to respect the rule of law following World War II. And so, that's why we get along so well with them. Australia. Australians are hilarious. I find that most Americans get along better with Australians than they do anyplace else because Australia has a very similar history in culture and religion to the United States. So, that means it's easy to get along with Australians, if you can understand their accents. Sometimes, that's a challenge. But they're great folks. I've had some really great friends from there, and we tend to think alike. I'm not sure that's a lesson we can take from anything, but we have to learn to apply the rule of law.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well, that's for sure. Let's give some love to our Aussie listeners as well. I know we've got a bunch of you down there. So, we appreciate every one of you. I want to revisit something you alluded to earlier when you talked about why you wrote the book, some of the experiences your wife went through, what your daughter went through. When somebody describes it that way as something they went through, that usually implies it was something challenging. So, talk to us about that.

Jeffrey Sanow:
When I went to South Asia, it was the first time that my, now, ex-wife had ever lived overseas. So, it was quite an eye-opener for her. And I'll give you an example of one of the fun times that she had. Her parents had sent us a Christmas package, a Christmas box, you know. And we lived in New Delhi at the time, and so they mailed it there. And so, my wife gets this little green postcard or whatever it is that says, "You have a package, it's too big to deliver."

Well, the first thing that struck us was, how can it be too big to deliver? What did they send? Because we see people in Delhi carrying refrigerators on the back of mopeds. And this box is too big for the postman to deliver? Are you kidding me? So, we didn't know what to expect. So, my driver takes my wife to the post office, and she shows her passport and a little green card. And the man goes, "The package is addressed to your daughter, so I can't give it to you. I have to give it to her." "All right, that's wonderful."

So, my wife had to go back home,  get my, then, I think, one-year-and-now-six-month-old baby girl, take her passport and her, and go down to the post office, wait in line again, and then get up and say, "Okay, here's my daughter. Here's her passport. Can we please have this package?" And so, they went and brought out the package, and it turned out to be just a regular medium sized box. 

And, you know, again, my wife was a little mystified, and she picked it up, and took it to the car, and we got it home, and opened it up, and it was empty. They had stolen everything out of it except for one piece of wrapping paper. How do you deal with that kind of frustration? What can you do? There's nothing you can do. That's just the way it is. 

And so, dealing with things like that, being able to accept things like that. In India, you did not put a letter with a stamp on it in a post office box. You know, you got the post office boxes on the streets, we have them here, you open them up, you toss in a letter and off you go. Because what would happen is, they would take the letter out, take the stamp out, which had not been cancelled, throw the letter away and resell the stamp. So, if you wanted something mailed, you took it to the post office and you stood there while they canceled the stamp. So, it's things like that that you have to learn to adapt to. 

In Southern Europe when we lived there, traffic, you can't even imagine what traffic is like. You have ancient cities there, and they haven't really learned to drive very much better than they did a couple thousand years ago when they ruled the world. So, you just have to learn to adapt to those things. And those are lessons that you have to take home. 

And I knew some Peace Corps volunteers that were with me and not everybody is destined to serve overseas, whether it's as a Peace Corps volunteer, a businessman or in the CIA. That career path is not cut for everybody. I was lucky, and I do give credit, and my book is, in fact, dedicated to my ex-wife because of everything that she did and everything that she went through supporting me the entire time.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Jeffrey, what I'm hearing is that the lessons from the stories that you share in the book, getting a package stolen, driving in dangerous areas because they just don't know how to drive - and I've driven in Southern Europe, so I know what you're talking about - I feel like these are good because they're life lessons, right? They're  life lessons to say, "Look, essentially, there are things we as human beings can control." We control how we choose to treat other people. We control how we get up in the morning and if we're gonna be happy or angry. 

But then, there's a lot of things we can't control. We can't control the weather. We can't control politics. We can't control if somebody's stealing our packages, right? So, it feels like there's a lot of grounding in this book with lessons that are applicable to anybody, whether they're in leadership roles or not.

Jeffrey Sanow:
The book is not designed for leadership. It's designed to help people understand, what do major parts of the world look like? India has been our trading partner since the end of the Cold War. Prior to that, it was not. And they have become a close ally of ours, of the United States government. And that's a good thing. So, that's been the change.

But the biggest reason why I wanted to share and what I share in the book is to give people an optic, so that they can see what that place is like at the ground level. And that's not to say they're right or wrong. I mean, I picked on Lebanon a little bit. That tells me I love the country and the people and the culture and everything else. I'm very sad for what's going on there right now. There are other countries in the Middle East, I'm not quite so sympathetic towards. 

Another one that I love is Oman. I'm not sure if you read Sinbad, the Sailor when you were a young man growing up. I know that I did. And he sailed from Oman. There's actually a mock-up of his ship at one of the traffic circles in Oman. A fascinating country. Again, a port country where there's lots of commerce and people coming and going, so they get exposure to lots of cultures, much like in Lebanon. And that makes them a very, very interesting place to visit. The currency in Oman, for centuries, was the Indian rupee, because that was one of their major trading partners. So, you find countries like that. 

Another story that I relate in the book talks about that I was there with my wife, my two daughters, and my cousin, who was a flight attendant for United. And Oman has wonderful beaches. And so, we were all hanging out on the beach, and then I see a group of about, I don't know, six or seven guys riding up on horses towards where we are. Yeah, okay, no worries. Well, they stop right in front of us, and the leader of the group gets off, comes over to me and says, "That's my uncle and he would like to offer 12 camels for your cousin." 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Did you go for it? Take the 12 camels?

Jeffrey Sanow:
I hesitated, only to irritate my cousin and my aunt, who is my godmother, and she's still alive to this day. And she knows I love this story. The answer was "No, thank you very much. We're very honored by your offer, but we're good. Thank you." And then, they left, and we immediately left the beach. But it's just things like that. 

And if anything, you learn, you have to be able to think on your feet. How do you deal with something like that? And we dealt with it pleasantly, that's rule number one. You have to be pleasant. That doesn't mean you have to give in to everything or agree to everything, but you have to at least be willing to be nice in your declining offers like that, because the offer was sincere. I'm absolutely convinced of that. So, you learn how to deal with those kind of situations. And that's just part of life in the world.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
You know, I think about this book almost as some giant qualitative study on different cultures. And I love works like this because by nature of writing a book, you probably were able to identify some common threads, common themes that ran across all of humanity in your travels. Share a couple of those with us.

Jeffrey Sanow:
I think it's one that we would probably all agree on and that people are fundamentally the same all over the world. I'm still in touch with my Arabic instructor from when I was a Peace Corps volunteer. God bless social media, he popped up on there about a year ago. And we've been comparing pictures when I was a much younger man, as was he.

And so, what did he want when I was in North Africa? He was married. He had a baby. He wanted good for his baby, he wanted good for his wife, and he wanted to take care of his family. And isn't that a universal want? That's what I want. That's what I know my daughters want. That's what people in South Asia want. That's what the Greeks want. They just want to take care of their families and do right by their kids. That's a universal desire, I believe because as I said, I think people are the same all over. We all want to protect our families, we want our kids to be successful, we want to be able to have, not necessarily an opt-in life, but we want to be able to have enough to eat every day. And, you know, if we're sick, we want to be able to get taken care of, things like that. 

So, in that respect, people are the same all over. So, if you are working with people, you have to understand that and you want to try and appeal to that, the fact that they are the same. And that once you understand what their needs are, and you can only do that by listening, not an American strength, once you understand what their needs are, then you have a much better chance to communicate with them.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well said. I have thoroughly enjoyed our time together, Jeffrey. As you know, I wrap up every episode by asking my guests a single question, and that is, what is your biggest helping, that one most important piece of information you'd love for somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today? 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Everybody should be empowered to fail. If you don't empower your staff, your employees, whatever the relationship is, if you don't empower them to fail, they are not going to try their hardest to succeed. Failure is part of life. 

And I'll just give you a very quick story. We were chasing down… I was responsible for a group that tracked weapons of mass destruction. I had an analyst come up to me and say, 'Yeah, we have a shipment coming out of Asia, going to the Middle East. It's computer components. They probably shouldn't go there, but it's already gone. So, I don't know if we're going to be able to catch it." And my response delivered ever so politely was, "We swing at every pitch. You do what you need to do to get the emails out to find this shipment and stop it." And she said, "Okay." And she went about and did her business. She was empowered to fail, but the next day she came into me and said, "We got it. And we turned it around."

Everybody that worked for me was empowered to fail. If you're not failing once in a while, you're really not trying your hardest. You're not trying new ideas. How old is espionage? When did Joshua send the two spies into Jericho? In Joshua 2, I believe, that's right after Moses. So that's how long we've had spies. We've had spies forever. It's just the nature of how we correlate countries and regions and cultures.

So, we have to come up with new ideas. Not all new ideas are gonna work. That's just all there is to it. That doesn't mean we stop trying to come up with new ideas and better ways of doing things. So, empower people to fail.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
That was an awesome story and anecdote for the lesson. I'm grateful you shared that. Jeffrey, our time today has been a treat for me. The book is called HUMINT for Humanity: The Road Less Traveled, available everywhere today. But tell us where people can learn more about you online.

Jeffrey Sanow:
My website is my full name with my middle initial. So, it's Jeffrey S, as in Scott, Sanow. I'll spell that out. jeffreyssanow.com. That's my personal website. It has all kinds of pictures, and media connections, and more information on my background. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Awesome. And for those of you in the car, we got you covered. Everything Jeffrey Sanow will be available in these show notes for this episode at drrichardshuster.com Well, Jeffrey, thank you again for coming on today. Loved the conversation. What you did was fascinating. 

Jeffrey Sanow:
Thank you Dr. Richard. It was my pleasure and I appreciate the opportunity. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Absolutely. And I want to thank each and everyone of you as well who took time out of your day to listen to this. If you liked it, if you're excited, if you're gonna go run out and pick up this book, go give us a follow and a five-star review on your podcast app of choice because this is how other people find the show. But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are, and post it in your social media feeds using the hashtag #MyDailyHelping because the happiest people are those that help others.