Jocko Podcast
Hosted by Jocko Willink
Understanding strengths and weaknesses. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content
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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
This is the Jocko debrief podcast episode 11 with Leif Babin and me Jocko Willink. Leif? Let's debrief.
What do you got? So this particular leader was was just over tasked, a lot of things going on, you know, with with this particular leader and she was she just she had she had a lot of things on her plate and there were a lot of people moving a lot of different directions. And so what she was asking for was some help interviewing her people and and trying to understand their strengths and weaknesses and trying to set them up for success to to move them forward. So it was it was we obviously we talked to her about how how we could help her and and and how we were going to improve the situation. And I think particularly because of you know, some of the COVID issues and people working remotely and there's a lot of people that are
that are not in person. It's obviously harder to engage with people and you know, you've got you've still got pieces and parts of the company that are moving in different directions. So, you know, she had her focus on that strategic growth that she needed to. As we were digging into this, you it was pretty clear too that this leader was this leader was very focused on efficiency and and really wanted us to to just to to understand like like build relationships for a team. And so I was talking to her, I was like, listen, we can, I can interview your your team and we can certainly focus a training effort, we can run that. But I can't, I can't build relationships with you with the team. And this is it was a, you know, there were there were
this was there were some fairly new people on board the team as well. So you know, this there's there's some element that's just you're never going to be able to delegate. Some element of like, okay, this is who I am. I need to get to know you. And and we need to move forward together. So we know each other, we have a relationship, you know, and I I've, you know, I talked a lot about our relationship. And as you know, so many of the things that we were able to do and be successful in tasking a bruiser was just based on our On our, the strength of our relationship, you know, moving forward. And so you, you know, you initially had very tight reins over me and provided a lot of guidance and mentorship to the point where I was like, super frustrated. And I talked to her about this. You know, I was,
I was frustrated. I felt like Jocko was micromanaging me, you know, and yet when we, when we deployed, after we've been working together for about a year, like your guidance to me in Ramadi was often, hey, this battalion TF13, Task Force 137, the bandits, they're going to have the lead on going into South Central Ramadi. Why don't you go talk to their company commanders and see where we can help them. And that was the broad guidance you're giving me, which I'm coming back to you in this gigantic operation with a thousand soldiers and 50 tanks and, you know, all kinds of giant, you know, engineering vehicles and support. And I'm telling you like, here's what we're going to do. We're going to support here, here, here. And, you know, you would look over those plans and tweak things or say, hey, we, why don't we want you to take
some more guys here? We could put some more resources here. And you could, you could guide those plans, but you gave me massive free rein to run with that because you knew I was going to, you know, the decisions I was going to make. And, and we, we had a relationship. You trusted me to be able to, to execute. And I trusted you to know that, you know, I understood what your vision was, what the strategic goal was. So that's what I talked to this leader about, you know, I told her like, look, you just can't, you can't delegate building relationships. It's really important that you do that. So we'll interview these folks. We'll actually, you know, talk about where strengths and weaknesses are. We'll figure out, you know, where we can best drive some lift in your company with solving some problems through
leadership with a leadership development, development alignment program, LDA program that, that, you know, that Dave runs, but I can't, I can't delegate the relationship.
What was the difference between, what, what was the indicator that told you that she wasn't asking for just an assessment, which is what we do all the time. You know, we go into a company, we're going to interview everyone. We're going to find out what's going on. We're going to interview frontline people. We're going to interview mid-level managers. We're going to interview the folks in the C-suite and everybody in between, well, not everybody in between, but a cross-section of people. What gave you the indication that this was more an attempt to outsource relationship building? What was it in the verbiage or in the conversations that, that clued you into that?
The verbiage was, I don't have time. I just don't have time for this.
And that's a pretty clear verbiage.
Yeah, so you know, it was, it was, um, obviously, look, we all get busy and we all have to, we all get pulled in a lot of different directions. And I think that's, that's always the hard part of, you know, you and I've wrestled with this as we launched Echelon Front, you know, nine years ago. When you're down in the weeds trying to get problems solved and you realize like, hey, we wanted to move in a strategic direction, but we're not going that way. Like, someone has to do that and that's important. So, so it was great that, that she was focused on strategic growth. Uh, and that's awesome. But like, you know, as, as you have said many times, you've got to make time for the things that are important and you, and you just can't, you can't delegate building relationships with people to say, hey, get to know that person, understand who they are,
understand, you know, their, know their families, know, you know, like, you gotta be close with your troops. I mean, as we talk about with the dichotomy of leadership, close with your troops, but not so close that, that they become, one becomes more important than the other or the good of the mission. But you, you have to be close with your troops. You, you have to know them. You have to understand them. And, uh, and I think that's just one of those, your team is never going to be successful if you don't, uh, you know, if, if, if you don't do that, you have to make time to do that.
Yeah, it's interesting. Uh, the podcast, the Jocko podcast that we just did, number 151.
General Clark, this, this, you know, renowned leader, and he breaks down for a company commander and a platoon leader. The most important thing, and he uses a quote from Valley Forge, the most important thing was to build that bond, to love and take care of your troops. And so when someone chimes in with, I ain't got time, that's going to be an issue. That's going to be an issue.
Leadership Strategy and Tactics.
Here's a quote, "Relationships up and down the chain of command are the foundation of a team." I mean, there you go. So, that's good.
We talk about that and cover and move as well. Like, what, how do you cover and move for each other? You have to have relationships. Relationships are paramount. And if you don't have relationships, you can't cover and move with each other. That's, that's what drives the entire thing. And as, to quote the great Jocko Willink, "Relationships are stronger than the chain of command." So, the power of relationships is even stronger than you as my boss saying, "Leif, I order you to go do this." Far more important to have a good relationship with me to say, "Hey, I need you to do this and here's why."
Think about the difference. That's, if you think about that direct contrast, think about the strength of my directive as your superior officer versus the strength of my directive as your brother that wants to help you win and we have a strong relationship. Those two things are not even, they're so far distant from each other, they're, they're almost unrecognizable. They're, they're almost unrecognizable. Me, the commander, ordering you to do something, the strength of that order is, is,
is, is pitiful compared to the strength of a bond, of an execution based on a relationship. You can't even compare the two. Can't even compare them. So, that's good advice. Hopefully, she heeded your advice and started to build some relationships.
I think so.
What's the next one?
The next one is, is about tactical patience. We had a leader that was in a tough situation with, with the company and he was...
He was offered, so, so his, his boss suddenly left the company. And it was, it was unexpected. I think not only for, for him, so his boss is leaving, but his boss's boss was kind of in a tough predicament. All of a sudden, this is a key leader, this has been, you know, running the organization for a while. And all of a sudden, another opportunity comes up and that this key leader in their organization is gone. And they're going through a tough time. They're in a pivotal time right now. I mean, this, this company is, they're a good company and they've got some great people, but they're obviously,
they have been impacted severely by COVID lockdowns and some of the economic issues that we've been dealing with here in 2020. So it was, it was a very tumultuous situation. And they're like, man, this is terrible. This is, this is horrible. So, so this leader reached out and said, hey, I want to step up and take on that role. I can step up and make this happen. And I, you know, I want to go talk to, you know, now it's the boss's boss. So the, her, his immediate boss left. And, and so it's, it's the boss's boss now that's the, the big boss, man. I'm going to go talk to the big boss, man, and make sure that I, I'm going to step in that role. I'm going to make things happen.
And, and so I told, I told him, look, man, you got to exercise some tactical patience here. Obviously, the last, the last thing you want to do is, is rush right into that situation. I mean, they just got thrown a massive curve ball of like, a key leader just got pulled out of our organization. We're already struggling. They got a lot on their plate. There's, they're probably thinking about the strategic survival of the company at this point. So you going in and trying to lobby for a leadership position, it's, it's probably not the right time to do that. Number one. Number two.
Try to understand the strategic perspective of the big boss man and where you know, where this company is going to go and what his thoughts are. I was like, so exercise some tactical patience. And that's a term we use in the military. It's one of the hardest things to do because I'm a pretty default aggressive person. We talk about being default aggressive. You gotta make things happen. You know, seize the initiative. Problems don't solve themselves. You gotta go out and solve those problems. So it's very hard to balance that dichotomy of like, hey, sometimes you gotta exercise some tactical patience and that means I'm gonna wait and let things develop before I actually make the call to move the team in the direction. So
talk to that leader about that and he listened to the advice and understood it and kind of waited and just started playing the long game by building some relationships, seeing, you know, where, where he could help in that situation and eventually about a couple of months down the road, the opportunity to step in that role was, was, was offered.
What made you lean towards giving the advice of, hey, take it easy, just would you just take it easy? What, what made you lean in that direction versus going, hey, opportunity is there? Yep. Roll in there and go, go default aggressive and let's make this happen. What was it that indicated you in the situation to take a less aggressive approach?
Yeah, I think what, what drove that guidance was understanding that, that the company was in a tough situation already and, and that there was probably some, some real strategic decisions that had to get made. And that, that, that filling that role immediately was not going to be a priority. Like that, that, that was pretty clear. I think from my detached perspective. Because we see that a lot where leaders.
So because you assessed that that role might not even get replaced. I mean, look, during COVID, somebody leaves. You're like, cool. We just, we just took a big payroll off the, we just took a big, a big chunk of pay off of our overhead. So you're thinking, hey, it's probably not a good time to waste leadership capital trying to jump up and yell, hey, pick me, pick me.
Yeah. So leadership capital is exactly why. And that's a great way of capturing it because.
In my mind, it was very clear that what he needed to do was build a better relationship with the big boss, man. Like, hey, boss, where can I support? I'm standing by. You know, like, I'm standing by. What do you need?
Think about the difference. Think about the difference
of what you think of these two people. One person says, hey, boss, I want that job. Pick me. The other individual says, hey, boss, is it a tough time? What can I do to support? Think about those two people and how you view them. And it's so obvious when you take that step back and you you you put yourself into the shoes of your boss and you see your boss's perspective. It makes the answer very clear. Because we all know that the person that comes out looking for me, me, me, instead of looking for team, team, team, how can I help? We don't want that person. And does that mean you don't show any initiative and you don't, you know, you don't ever say,
hey, I got this. I'll tell you what, I would much rather show you that I want to step up and lead than tell you I want to step up and lead. 10 times over. I'd much rather, if I got two people working for me, and there's a leadership opportunity, and one person tells me they want to lead, and the other person starts taking ownership and leading, it's a no brainer who I'm gonna pick. So that's, once again, that's some solid advice.
I was just gonna say, what you're saying there is it's tactical versus strategic, right? The tactical is like, hey, I might get this job. Let me lobby to get myself in that position. Even if that you might think that's the best for the team versus strategic thinking like, hey, let me demonstrate that I'm here to support the team. And it's going to be pretty clear. Through my my success, I'll earn the opportunity to take that position, or I won't, you know, and if I don't earn it, then that's on me.
Don't hire me.
But thinking strategically is obviously is going to set you up for success every time. I mean, and that's, well, you got asked that question at muster last year. And one of our musters, like, when should I be thinking tactically? When should I be thinking strategically?
Yeah. And I gave the overly hostile answer of you should be thinking strategically all the time. Got fired up for that one. This also reminds me of a chapter in Leadership Strategy and Tactics. The title of the chapter is, Don't Go Overboard, Rambo.
You want to be a leader. That's great. But don't be offensive about it. What does that mean? It means don't run around saying, I'm the leader. I'm the leader. I'm in charge. Listen to me. I'll make the decisions. That attitude will offend many people. It's the equivalent of, look at me, I'm important and it doesn't go over well. Rambo might be a cool movie character, but charging out alone without regard for others doesn't work in a team environment. So there you go. Got to watch out for that one. Don't go overboard Rambo, which is, by the way, Rambo is a is a very derogatory term to call someone in the SEAL teams. Hey, what are you doing over there, Rambo? That's how it gets used. You don't go, dude, nice work, Rambo.
So, sorry there, John J. Rambo.
Although we did, Mark Lee often quoted, Rambo, what mean expendable?
All right. So my turn here. And I, you know, lately I've been talking a lot about about culture being the ultimate form of decentralized command. I know that I talked about it when we were at Gettysburg. I know I've talked about it on E F online and
what's awesome about culture is it's the ultimate form of decentralized command. If my organization has a strong culture, then everyone can make decisions just based on the understanding of that culture and that's awesome.
That's awesome. Now, if you go a little bit stronger, a really strong culture can actually develop into something
that I, something that I've read is officially called peer discipline.
Which I, I, I didn't call, I didn't use to call it peer discipline. I guess that's the official politically correct term. The, the term that I've always used, and I'm sure you've heard me say this, is gang mentality.
And, and what's positive about having a strong culture and what's positive about peer discipline and what's positive about a gang mentality is that the gang polices itself. That's what's awesome about having a strong gang mentality inside of a team is that the gang actually polices itself. It takes care of itself. It's a self policing organization. So when someone was late in tasking to Bruiser, I didn't, I didn't ever say anything to anyone for being late because the gang tightened them up. If someone forgot a piece of gear for an important operation, I didn't ever have to say a word because the gang tightened
them up. If somebody did something that denigrated the team, the platoon, the task unit, I didn't have to say, I didn't have to say a word because the gang would handle the problem because we had this culture and, and, and as a leader, that's what you want.
Because as we lead, we want to be leading by minimum force, by the minimum force required.
And every time you have to open your mouth to reprimand somebody, you actually lose leadership capital.
Even a little tiny thing, even a little tiny thing. Anytime you have to correct someone, you expend leadership capital.
So we want to have that gang mentality. So then the question becomes, okay, how do we create that culture? And it's very hard to script and create a culture and impose it on people. It's very difficult. It takes, it will take generations to pull that off, in my opinion. It's, but if you can, if you can have it develop in an organic manner, that will take hold tighter. Now, make no mistake, just because I'm saying you can't impose it on people, doesn't mean that it doesn't come from you because it does.
And what's awesome about this, when I say it comes from you, I mean you. And it doesn't matter where you are in the chain of command. You are in charge of culture. Leif, I hear you talking about this sometimes. I will say, I was never in a bad SEAL platoon. And first of all, people got to understand that there is such a thing as a bad SEAL platoon. And it might not be that they're a total disaster, but they're not a tight unit. And they don't do a good job. They do an okay job, they're acceptable, but they're not what you want. They're not, they're not how you want it to be. And that's because in every platoon I was in, I always had a little gang of guys. You know, and no, I'm not just talking about me. I'm talking, I hung around with good guys and we created this culture.
And when you have that good culture, it's a powerful thing. But, but culture isn't one big monolithic singular structure. It's not one person.
It's more like a field, like a giant field made up of individual blades of grass. But you take that whole field and you know, I'm coming back from being out west and you see these majestic fields.
And that thing, when you see all those blades of grass unified together, that thing has power and that thing has energy and that thing has strength. And every one of those blades of grass actually matters, just like every person inside of an organization matters. So if you are part of a team, then you actually set the culture. I don't care where you are.
And we always hear the, we always hear the quote, leading by example. We always hear that quote, you know, you gotta lead by example. But that is especially true when we're talking about culture. Because how we behave.
And what we actually do, what we actually do, how we behave and what we actually do is the root of culture.
And if we can set the right culture and we can thereby imply the right intent and we can have people making decisions with no guidance whatsoever, with no guidance whatsoever. You mentioned on the podcast we just did that my goal is to go out on an operation and not say a damn word. And that was my goal because if we're pulling that off, that means everybody understands the culture and everybody already knows the right thing to do. So we have to pay attention to that when we're part of a team.
But on top of that, there's another place where you set the culture and that is in yourself. You set culture in the way you behave in yourself, the things that you actually do. What you allow yourself to be, the words you speak, the things you say and the things you don't say. That sets the culture in your head, in your mind and in your life.
So pay attention. Pay attention to those little things. Pay attention to every little blade of grass in your head. Pay attention to what you do, not just to make your culture better or your team better, but to make yourself better.
Probably a good place to stop.
And if you, well, anything on that?
It's not what you preach, what you tolerate. I mean, that's, that's exactly, you know, what we wrote in Extreme Ownership. And it's, uh, that is what, that's driving the culture. You're maintaining the standards. Uh, but obviously the hardest place to apply that and the most important place is yourself. And if, if you are setting that standard, um, you know, I mean, that's, that's just the way it's going to be, you know? And, and we had that in Task and Bruiser because you set that at the very top of the organization. And it was something we all took great pride in like, hey, man, are we going to stay up all night? Get this thing done? Yeah. If that's what it takes?
Yes.
We'll do it. No factor. It's not even a question. We don't need to ask you if that's what we're going to do. Hey, Jocko, we just got tasked with this, uh, you know, with this, this, uh, this, this target package here, you know? Should we just hang out and do nothing and just start planning tomorrow night? Like, we didn't even ask the question because we knew what the answer was. We knew what the right call was. You set that tone and, and, and we were able to make those decisions.
Yeah, it's, you know, I got very lucky in the fact that when I was young and I, and I, I watched the leaders above me and I watched them very acutely with a, with a, with a,
with a critical eye. And I watched, I watched the, when, when they were late, I watched when they were, when they forgot a piece of gear. I watched when their face revealed the negative attitude.
I watched those things. I tracked those things. And when I got into a leadership position, I, I could feel those eyes. I could feel those eyes. Cause I knew, I knew what those eyes were. I knew who they were. And, and that is the thing that I always had and still have in the back of my mind.
If you've got people on your team that are counting on you, they're watching.
So you've got to do the right things.
Anything else?
Probably a good place that was a good place to stop and listen. If you're out there and you want to dig deeper into all aspects of leadership in in any arena.
You can join Leif and myself and the rest of the Echelon Front team. At efonline.com where we solve problems through leadership. There's. We have courses on there that you can take. We get granular on these various principles that we utilize in combat and that we help. Organizations utilize all the time, every day. So there's courses on there. There's also live Q and A's. There's other little seminars that we do on certain subject matters. What else? What else is there? We have.
We have the Brigade, which is our our member only leadership forum, which is awesome. So you not only can engage with me or Jocko or any of the Echelon Front Strucker team, but with leaders from all over the world, from pretty much all industries you can imagine. To really help help solve problems, which is awesome.
Yeah, and you know what? I haven't been talking about much and I feel bad because it's just such a powerful tool is look. EF Online is open to enterprise clients. If you've got a company, there is there is. Ground zero for moving your company in the right direction. Ground zero is having a common language to discuss. Leadership and problems of leadership and solutions of leadership. So right out of the gate, you know, if you've got a company of 50 people or 500 people or 5,000 people. Let's get them aligned. Let's get everyone on the same sheet of music of what it means to be a leader.
And so I know I haven't been talking about that very much and we've got some some of our, the reason I'm thinking about this is some of our enterprise clients and just. Seeing them get that alignment is just a powerful thing. So if you want to do that, we got enterprise options. If you're just an individual out there that wants to improve your leadership, just go to efonline.com and check that out. We also have a leadership.
Consultancy where we come into your organization, which we do physically and virtually, is that the right word? Do we debate the virtually word?
We did debate that for a while. You didn't like virtual initially, but it's a pretty commonly used term that we're not doing it in person, but through the internet.
I think that's what you were trying to explain to me in 19 different ways into my hard head was like, "Hey Jocko, what you're trying to explain is called virtual training." So yeah, so we do it virtually. We also come into, go into businesses. We, we will work with every level of your chain of command. We'll do an assessment. We'll interview people. We'll find out where the friction points are and we will help you solve those friction points through leadership. Also have a bunch of books on the subject of leadership, Extreme Ownership, The Dichotomy of Leadership, Leadership Strategy and Tactics. Got some other podcasts. I got a podcast called Jocko Podcast, another podcast called Jocko Unraveling. And I unravel those words in my mouth. We got a podcast called Grounded and the Warrior Kid Podcast.
And if you want to support any of these podcasts, including this one, you can get some gear from JacoStore.com or OriginMaine.com. Thanks for listening to the debrief. Now go lead. This is Leif and Jocko. Out.
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