Jocko Underground: Getting People On Board and Enthusiastic to Make It Happen.

Some simple nutritional guidance. How to get over imposter syndrome. How to raise the standards in the status quo around you. Some paths are not available to me... What should I do? Getting people on board and enthusiastic to make things happen. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 134, sitting here with Echo Charles.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  Let's get into some Q and A. What do we got?

• 0:11Speaker 01

  It's advice for the people.

• 0:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  One of those people is me, so I could have known this stuff too, you know, it helps.

• 0:18Jocko Willink?

  We're all learning all the time. That's what we're doing.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. All right. Howdy, Jocko and Echo. I'm 29 years old and I've been on the path for about two years now. I've been making good with my consistency in the day to day, but I know this is the path I need to be on and every day is a step forward. While I have been on the path, my wife and I have gotten more plugged in at our church and have now been on our church volunteer safety team for almost two years. We have met, we are members of a church, of the church who have been asked by leadership to carry firearms in an official capacity. Most of us, most of us have now been put through a course that makes us licensed security officers in the eyes of the great state of Texas.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  More recently, I was asked to take a bigger role in the team as an assistant leader and I willingly stepped up as I have every bit of confidence. This is where God is leading me to serve the big C church.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  While I'm very happy here where I'm at and I very much enjoy the men I serve with, the safety team leader and I've, and I find it difficult to motivate everyone as we're all volunteers at the end of the day. We are continually working on improving the team, but from my perspective, it seems that everyone wants to give their point oh two, like two cents as to how things should be better while not taking extreme ownership of their part. All this being said, I'm not perfect in my role and I fall sometimes as I strive to be better. What advice would y'all give to motivate volunteers?

• 1:51Jocko Willink?

  Right out, right on. And I think he also wanted to shout out to his brother Josiah. Got him hooked on the podcast, listening to episode 205, Dead Man Walking with Dynamite Dick Thompson. So, there you go. Uh, how do you do this? This is something you're gonna, I would love to tell you that this is a way you got volunteers. So there's some big difference thing you have to do because they're only volunteers. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Guess what you do? You start giving these people ownership. That's the best way to motivate people. Is to give them ownership, get them engaged. Oh, you need to train? You need to do some training? How do y'all think we should train this week? Right, Fred, hey Fred, we gotta do training this week. You know, if you want, do you want to run training this week?

• 2:36Jocko Willink?

  You had a couple of good ideas, you threw in your two cents yesterday. Let's get the whole dollar. Why don't you run this thing Fred? Jim, do you want to do next week? Bill, you got the week after that? You see what I'm saying? Hey, we need a plan for this Sunday. We're doing a, you know, we're doing a cookout afterwards and we gotta secure the courtyard. How do you guys think we should do it?

• 2:54Jocko Willink?

  Fred, do you want to run this? Bill, you want to run this? Jim, you want to run this? You see what I'm saying? You gotta be careful because you want to be like Echo. There's a difference between Echo, do you want to run this? And Echo, you run this. You see what I'm saying? There's a huge difference between those two. It's not even a subtle distance. Give them the mission. Hey, we gotta secure the courtyard this Sunday for the barbecue. That's the mission. How do you guys want to do it? Who wants to be lead, right? Who wants to be lead?

• 3:20Jocko Willink?

  Who wants to be lead today? I'll, I'll be following Echo. Hey, you want to take lead today? Well, what do you mean? I mean, you lead this. You, you run security. Well, aren't you the team leader? Yeah, but I mean, what if I'm not here? And I know you had some good ideas yesterday or last Sunday or when we did the, the, the Saturday night party, you did a great job. You had some suggestions. Why don't you run with those suggestions? I'll follow.

• 3:46Jocko Willink?

  You want someone to give you, if someone wants to give you their two cents, get their whole dollar, right? Let them run with it. Now, what do you gotta watch out for? Probably boiling up in your head right now as I'm saying this is your ego. Your ego is probably saying, you know, I've been selected to run this thing and I'm the one that's in charge and I have the best plan because I've been doing this for all those things. That's just your ego. Your evil ego. Don't let your ego do that. If they come up with a minimally viable plan,

• 4:19Jocko Willink?

  a minimally viable plan, that's all we're looking for. Cause guess what? When we secure the courtyard for the barbecue, does it really matter if we put one guy on the east side and two guys on the west side or two guys on the east side and one guy on the west side? Does it really matter?

• 4:37Jocko Willink?

  Well, you know, it does because the most likely route of enemy attack is from the west. Okay, cool. What are your chances that you're a hundred percent right on that?

• 4:45Jocko Willink?

  The chances that you're a hundred percent right on seeing the future is zero.

• 4:49Jocko Willink?

  So really you're arguing about something for no reason. It's just your ego arguing.

• 4:56Jocko Willink?

  So the chances are when you say, hey Fred, can you come up with a plan to secure the courtyard for the barbecue? He goes, cool. And he comes up with a plan that's going to be just fine. It's going to be just fine. It's going to be a minimally viable plan, maybe a little worse than yours, maybe a little better than yours, but as long as there are no glaring tactical errors that put people's lives at risk. If he's like, hey, you know, we should clear and save our weapons towards the propane tanks on the barbecues. Is that a good idea? No, that's not a good idea. We're not going to do that.

• 5:29Jocko Willink?

  If he says, oh, we're gonna, you know, set up all of us congregated in one small area.

• 5:39Jocko Willink?

  That doesn't make any sense, but guess what? Since you're all working together, chances are they're going to be able to figure out a minimally viable plan. By the way, Echo's 11 year old daughter could figure out a minimally viable plan on how to secure a courtyard. I guarantee she could come up with a decent plan.

• 6:00Jocko Willink?

  No offense to your daughter, Echo Charles, but she has no tactical experience. It's a compliment. Right? She could come up with a mentally viable plan. She'd be like, okay, well, here's the road. Here's the door. We need someone at the door. We need someone near the road. And there's a back exit. We should put someone there. And I guess since the line is out front to get in, we put one more person out there. Yep, she did it. She did it. Now you might be thinking, yeah, but you know what? There's actually a higher threat zone in this. Yeah, you know, oh, yeah. Yep.

• 6:30Jocko Willink?

  Fire her. You know what? I put trust in you to do this and you didn't do it right. I'm taking back control. You're an idiot for doing that.

• 6:38Jocko Willink?

  So don't argue over six in one or half dozen the other. It doesn't matter. Don't argue about those things. What you do is you give them ownership. And like I said, by the way, to everyone out there, this isn't just with volunteers. This is with all humans. All humans. No, it is with most humans. Some humans just want to be told what to do and they're good with it. There's a, there's, there's a decent amount of people that are like that. They're like, oh, hey, tell me what to do, boss. Hey, I need you to stand at the door and, you know, put people through the metal detector. Okay, cool. Got it. It's fine. People are like that. Some people want to, many people want to have some kind of control over their own destiny. Give it to them. Give it to them.

• 7:20Jocko Willink?

  And this is from kids to athletes on teams, to frontline contributors in companies, to managers in companies, to the C-suite executives. People want to have some control over what's happening. Give it to them. Give them ownership. Give them responsibility. Give them autonomy and authority. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen,

• 7:49Jocko Willink?

  go to jacoodunderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this. We're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you.

• 8:21Jocko Willink?

  More control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So, thank you. It's jocko underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.