Martial Edge is pleased to be in conversation with martial artists and leadership expert Richard Strozzi-Heckler. From a fully working horse ranch north of San Fransisco, California, the Strozzi Institute offers courses in leadership that incorporates many martial arts principles. Richard has recently been working closely with NATO in Afghanistan where he has been helping to train the Afghan national army in martial arts.
Lesley Jackson speaks to Richard, who is a 6th Dan in Aikido and holds a PhD in Psychology, about how his ideas in leadership could benefit anyone.
Martial Edge:First of all, can you tell us about your martial arts background? What martial arts do you study and why?
Richard Strozzi-Heckler: I began when I was about 13 years old in Judo because I was in a Navy family and every time I travelled I’d be the new kid on the block and there would be pushes and cat calls and taunts. I was the type of personality to fight back, my mother didn’t know what to do with me and the principal at school said, “why don’t you put him in Judo?” She was a little bit horrified because she thought that I would fight more but that’s when I fell in love with martial arts. So I began with Judo and then went through to Jiu Jitsu and Karate and gained ranks in those. I have also taught hand to hand combat in the Marine Corps and I’ve been doing Aikido now for approximately 38 years. That is primarily the martial art I’m married to although I’ve done some Kali and Caporeia as well.
There is also another type of martial leader, one who has chosen to lead their own life and to fulfil a vision they want.
Martial Edge:You hold a high-rank (6thDan) in Aikido, and therefore have trained in it for a number of years, what is it about Aikido that motivates you so much?
Richard Strozzi-Heckler: When I began with Aikido I had really gone through all of my competing days. When I first looked at Aikido, I had the very same feeling as when I first saw Judo; it just looked beautiful. I don’t mean beautiful in the trivial sense of the word but something very ancient like the bull dancers of Mineola or people that had done something deeply mind and body integrated over the centuries. I also liked the ethic of how you blend with an opponent’s energy so that you can neutralise their aggression as opposed to hurting them. That made the most sense to me both in the martial arts sense and also in the sense of living my life.
Martial Edge:Within your leadership training programme, you adhere to the principles of ‘Somatics’ can you explain what those are?
Richard Strozzi-Heckler: Somatics comes from the early Greek and it means roughly translated “living body in its wholeness” and it’s really another way of speaking about this mind-body-spirit continuum; instead of having these elements in different smoke stacks they are actually in a single piece. Many of the notions of Somatics are that we have the possibility of being self educating, self healing and self generating. If we really live deeply in the self sense and the living sense of the body, we can learn how to learn, we can heal ourselves and we can be more creative and innovative. I’ve also taken in my leadership training many principles from Aikido; principles like centring, grounding and extending; also dynamic relaxation and Musubi from the Japanese, which means how you tie into your partner. A lot of those principles have been used as a training format for a basic ground on which to train leaders.
Martial Edge:Are there any other aspects of the martial arts do you like to include in your leadership programme?
Richard Strozzi-Heckler: I would say that almost everything I do is informed by Aikido and the martial arts. In one leadership programme we do I take a lot from the Filipino martial arts where we do knife work and Kali and we also do another programme where we use elbows and knees from Muay Thai. Essentially, we teach not so much practical martial arts but that a leader needs to be able to fight for what he or she cares about. A leader needs to be able to stand for what matters to them and from using the body and using the martial elements it actually becomes part of who the person is. There’s a quote I heard when I was studying in Japan in the mid-70s where at the end of the day, our group of Westerners would come together and we would talk about our day and the techniques we had learned. There was a young kid from New Guinea who studied at Oxford and in one of these conversations he said, “In my country we have this proverb that goes, ‘knowledge is only a rumour until it is in the muscle,’” which I thought was extraordinary. It means that you can say what you want to say, you can have your beliefs and concepts but it’s not until you take the action that they show that they are part of who you are. That’s when you gain your expertise and respect for others.
Martial Edge:Do you require your leadership students to train in any aspect of martial arts? What in and why?
Richard Strozzi-Heckler: They’re not required to take any kind of martial art and even when we do the practises, principles and distinctions of the martial arts; we talk about them more in the Somatic sense. We do that because most people think that the martial arts have a Bruce Lee or Hollywood mentality about them and I’m really trying to keep them much more grounded. Although it does come through and we have a great number of people, maybe fifty to seventy percent, who will then begin to investigate a martial art, which I highly endorse. For example, we use the staff or the Japanese Jo or Bokken as part of our practise. It is not as part of a martial art narrative but it’s about how you co-ordinate with other people. For example, with a move from a centred posture, how do you pay attention to another person in a positive way? They end up learning these ideas from both the Jo and the Bokken. Inside of these processes they begin to integrate these into their everyday lives and sometimes for years thereon, they’ll do the Jo or Bokken Kata before a meeting which helps them co-ordinate conversations.
Martial Edge:How do you think a martial artist may benefit from your leadership programme?
Richard Strozzi-Heckler: I think generally there are people who lead other people and as such they have followers. They may lead a team, a business unit or they may lead an entire company or a military squadron or platoon. A person might have a martial arts studio and they have a team of people working with them, they might do their martial art well but they don’t have the leadership attributes that would be valuable for them. There is also another type of martial leader, one who has chosen to lead their own life and to fulfil a vision they want. The programmes we do are very much about that at the same time.
Martial Edge:Do you believe anyone has the capability to become a leader? Are the skills inherent in some people and not in others and what skills or character traits does a person need to develop leadership?
Richard Strozzi-Heckler: First of all, to be an effective leader you need to have intelligence. What I mean by that is some capacity to hold multiple horizons of time, multiple commitments and you need to have a vision for your life, not just locking step with somebody’s other idea but thinking of your own. If you have that plus the ambition to make some sort of contribution to make a difference in the world and you are aligned to your purpose, I feel that anyone can be trained to be a leader and to learn the essential pieces we teach around leadership.
Martial Edge:Do you think a martial artist may be predisposed to leadership, or is this something they too must learn?
Richard Strozzi-Heckler: I definitely think a martial artist is predisposed to leadership because have already chosen something they want to learn mastery in. They have chosen something that has a mind-body connection and where they’ve had to confront both their negative and positive traits and they’ve chosen something where they have to constantly interact with other people to find out ways to resolve conflict. Now inside of that you have to be able to have a certain kind of ambition to become a better fighter and you have to have a wider, deeper view of the world to be a leader.
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Martial Edge:You call your book ‘The Leadership dojo’, what was the thinking behind the title?
Richard Strozzi-Heckler: I had the opportunity of working with people in leadership in the mid 80s, one of the things I was producing for them was an environment in which they could actually train and practise these leadership distinctions and principles. Then I realised that was what a dojo is. A dojo in Japanese means. ‘a place of training’ and that word has been taken from a very old word in Sanscrit that means ‘place of awakening.’ Therefore, a dojo is a place of awakening where you can learn the techniques of the martial art. So when I called it ‘The Leadership Dojo’, it means a place of training where you learn how to train in and actually embody the main leadership principles.
Martial Edge:Do you believe that a leader in a martial art or from the military would demonstrate similar skills or character traits as someone who is a leader in business or who leads a large corporation, such as Microsoft or British Telecom?
Richard Strozzi-Heckler: I found that over and over again we will see these traits appear in all sorts of environments. These traits appear where people have a vision of the world, where they feel human beings are their biggest resources and they want to develop, motivate and mobilise them. These traits will show up over different discourses. I helped design and implement the Marine Corps martial arts programme in 2000 and this basically was the genius of General Jim Jones who was the commandant. He became the supreme Allied commander in Europe. He asked me to develop a programme in partnership with the Marine Corps and wanted all these young men and women be able to have a martial art where they could handle themselves both on the battlefield and where there might be a crowd control situation in which they couldn’t use force or to take care of themselves on or off the base. However, the real genius of it was he wanted to use the martial arts as a delivery system for leadership skills. What we found in following these young men and women over the years was that by studying the martial arts in this way; drug and alcohol abuse dropped off, absence without leave dropped off, domestic abuse dropped off and also fighting outside of the barracks or garrison also dropped off. What we should really begin to look at is not only the old uses of a martial art in that you can use to defend others and yourself but also as an instrument where you can deliver your leadership skills that value character and principles.
Martial Edge:How do you believe your martial arts training has benefitted your life personally and specifically improved it in general?
Richard Strozzi-Heckler: I don’t think there is an area in my life where it has not benefitted me; even though I might not put it out front when I’m talking to people. My joke is that if I take a flight and get talking to the person sitting next to me and they ask you what you do and I say, “I’m a black belt in a martial art” they go, “wow, I’d better be careful with you,” they really live in that cliché. I found on the return flight people say to me what do you do and I say, “I have a PhD in psychology” and they say, “ooh, I’d better be careful what I say to you!” I say that because everything about how I carry myself; my world view, the wide range of possibilities of neutralising and reconciling violence, how to take care of other people, leadership, how I can continue to support my children and grandchildren, it basically informs everything. It’s a whole world view and it really occurred when I moved through this notion of competing and fighting. I thought there’s something much deeper and much powerful here that you can tap into and have a much more positive effect on not only ourselves but the communities in the world.
Thank you very much Richard, that was very interesting and our readers at Martial Edge will be most interested in learning about your ideas on leadership.
Interviews 
Martial Edge is pleased to be in conversation with martial artists and leadership expert Richard Strozzi-Heckler. From a fully working horse ranch north of San Fransisco, California, the Strozzi Institute offers courses in leadership that incorporates many martial arts principles. Richard has recently been working closely with NATO in Afghanistan where he has been helping to train the Afghan national army in martial arts. 
elements in different smoke stacks they are actually in a single piece. Many of the notions of Somatics are that we have the possibility of being self educating, self healing and self generating. If we really live deeply in the self sense and the living sense of the body, we can learn how to learn, we can heal ourselves and we can be more creative and innovative. I’ve also taken in my leadership training many principles from Aikido; principles like centring, grounding and extending; also dynamic relaxation and Musubi from the 
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