Ep. 59: Resilience, Trust, and Growth: O2X Founder Adam LaReau on Creating High-Performing Teams
Meeting Adam LaReau, you’re struck by the quiet confidence he carries into the room. He isn’t there to make a splash or dominate the conversation, yet the way he listens and the clarity with which he speaks makes it obvious: here’s a guy who’s been in high-stakes environments and knows what it takes to perform when it matters most.
Adam is the co-founder and President of O2X Human Performance, an organization dedicated to optimizing the health and performance of tactical athletes, first responders, underserved populations, and elite sports teams. Before building O2X, Adam served as a Navy SEAL, a world where trust, resilience, and execution aren’t optional. They’re essential for survival.
When you listen to Adam talk about performance, leadership, or building high performing organizations, you hear echoes of those lessons, but what stands out most is how he translates them for people outside of the military. Whether you’re a firefighter, a CEO, a coach, or an athlete, the principles Adam shares are both universal and deeply practical.
In our conversation, one theme kept rising to the surface: high-performing organizations aren’t defined by a single great leader. They’re defined by systems, cultures, and shared practices that elevate everyone in the group. That’s the DNA of sustained excellence.
Today, I want to share some of the key insights from that conversation and offer you three actionable steps you can apply to your own teams, whether in business, sport, or life.
What Makes an Organization High-Performing?
When you ask most people about “high performance,” they default to thinking about individuals. The star athlete. The visionary CEO. The outlier who pulls off the “impossible”.
But here’s the problem: individuals can only carry things so far. In the SEAL teams, you could have the most physically gifted operator in the world, but if the team didn’t trust him, if communication broke down, if clarity of mission was missing, the whole operation could fail.
The same is true in organizations. You don’t build resilience by banking on one superstar. You build resilience by creating systems where:
People know their roles and trust each other, mistakes become opportunities for growth.
Stress and pressure are addressed with preparation, not denial.
Leaders don’t just dictate, they cultivate clarity, purpose, and accountability.
Adam emphasized that resilience is both individual and collective. You can train for toughness on your own, but organizational resilience comes from a shared culture. That’s what separates good teams from great ones, and that’s what O2X helps their clients build.
Lessons from the SEAL Teams
Adam’s background as a Navy SEAL inevitably shapes how he sees performance. And while most of us will never experience the intensity of a SEAL training pipeline or a combat deployment, the lessons translate.
Three stood out in our conversation:
Clarity is everything. In high-stakes environments, ambiguity is deadly. Everyone needs to understand the mission, their role, and the desired outcome.
Trust is non-negotiable. You can’t fake trust. It’s built through shared hardship, accountability, and consistent follow-through.
Resilience isn’t about never breaking. It’s about being able to adapt, recover, and grow stronger when stress or failure inevitably hits.
These aren’t abstract ideas, they’re practices. And the organizations that thrive under pressure are the ones that embed these practices into how they operate day-to-day.
Why After-Action Reviews Matter
One of the most practical tools Adam highlighted is the After-Action Review (AAR).
In the SEALs, no mission ends when you return to base. It ends with an AAR: what happened, what worked, what didn’t, and what needs to change next time. This process isn’t about blame, it’s about taking responsibility for your part in the process and learning what you can for the next time.
Imagine a world where this was a non-negotiable in business, education, and sport! Instead of punishing failure or glossing over mistakes, these guys created a clear rhythm of reflection and improvement. Over time, those small cycles of learning add up to massive growth.
The lesson here is simple: organizations that systematically learn will consistently outperform those that don’t.
Three Actionable Steps to Build a High-Performing Organization
So how do we take these lessons from Adam’s journey and apply them to our own teams and organizations? Here are three concrete steps you can start with today.
1. Establish Radical Clarity
Clarity isn’t about overloading people with information, it’s about making sure everyone knows what matters most.
How to do it: Start every project, practice, or meeting with a clear statement of purpose. Define roles explicitly. Ask: “Who owns this?”, and “What’s the expected outcome?”. Check for understanding. Don’t assume alignment, ask people to repeat back the mission in their own words.
Why it matters: When people know what they’re aiming for and what’s expected of them, decision-making becomes faster and execution becomes sharper. Ambiguity breeds hesitation. Clarity feeds committed action.
2. Build a Culture of Trust and Accountability
Trust doesn’t happen by accident, it’s built through consistent alignment between what you say and what you do, and is reinforced by accountability.
How to do it: Keep your word. If you commit to something, follow through. When you don’t (because we all fall out of alignment sometimes…), take ownership of your mistake clearly in front of your team. Create systems of accountability that are transparent and fair. Encourage vulnerability in small ways: leaders admitting mistakes, teammates asking for help.
Why it matters: High-performing teams don’t just rely on technical skill. They rely on knowing the person next to them has their back. Accountability ensures that trust isn’t fragile, it’s reinforced daily.
3. Make Reflection a Habit with AARs
The After-Action Review is one of the most underutilized tools outside of the military, and one of the most powerful.
How to do it: Schedule time for AARs after every major project, event, or performance. Capture the answers, and make sure the learning informs the next cycle. Adam highlighted a critical piece of this process: make sure that everyone in the room has a voice and shares their perspective!
Why it matters: This simple framework creates a feedback loop of constant improvement. It removes the fear of failure and replaces it with a culture of growth.
Bringing It All Together
When I think back on my conversation with Adam LaReau, what stands out isn’t just his experience as a SEAL or the impressive work O2X is doing. It’s the reminder that performance isn’t about individual heroics: it’s about habits, systems, and culture.
High-performing organizations:
Eliminate ambiguity by establishing clarity.
Build trust and accountability into their daily rhythms.
Normalize reflection through practices like AARs.
And here’s the kicker, you don’t need to be in the military or a pro sports team to implement these steps. You can start tomorrow in your business, your team, or even your family.
Because at the end of the day, performance under pressure comes down to preparation. And preparation is a choice we can make every single day.
Adam’s story reminds us that performance isn’t just an individual pursuit. It’s a collective one. Whether you’re leading a company, coaching a team, or simply trying to be a better partner or parent, the principles of clarity, trust, and reflection apply.
The organizations that thrive in the long run aren’t the ones with the flashiest talent or the most charismatic leaders. They’re the ones that build systems where everyone can contribute their best, and grow stronger together.
So, ask yourself:
Where can I create more clarity?
How can I reinforce trust and accountability?
And what would change if I built reflection into our culture?
Start there. And watch what happens.
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