341: Simple Rules To Become A Better Person and Leader.

From Col. Glover Johns, who taught us how to lead. With Good Deal Dave Berke. 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 Jocko Podcast number 341 with Kerry Helton and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Kerry. Good evening. Also joining us tonight, Dave Berke. Good evening Dave. Good evening.

• 0:13Jocko Willink?

  To Steve Przenka, who showed us how to soldier, to Henry DeBoer, who showed us how to die, to Glover Johns, who showed us how to lead, and to all the doughboys, the ground pounders, the grunts, the American infantryman, past, present, and especially future, to them, this book is dedicated.

• 0:41Jocko Willink?

  And that, of course, is the opening dedication to the book about face by Colonel David Hackworth. And I guess it's been a steady, sort of just constant in my life to be reading this book over and over and over again. And I was thinking about that line the other day, to Glover Johns, who showed us how to lead. And that's a, that's a bold statement, right? For him to put in the beginning of the book, to talk about Glover Johns, who showed us how to lead. And I, and I started thinking about, I don't think I'd really given the, the attention that I needed to, or that I've, that I've needed to, to Glover Johns. Now, look, we've

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  talked Glover Johns, we've covered Glover Johns on this podcast. He wrote the book, The Clay Pigeons from St. Lo. We covered on Podcast 87. But in this book, Hackworth kind of breaks down some of the stuff that he said, some of his, some of Glover Johns' leadership philosophy in a simple, straightforward, and powerful way that is well worth studying. Definitely some things that we can get into. So yeah, if you want to go listen to Podcast 87, go back and do that. This is going to be about the leadership principles, not about the Battle of St. Lo at the, the Clay Pigeons. So before we get into that, let me give you the, a little bit of background in case you're just going to jump into this podcast about

• 2:11Jocko Willink?

  Glover Johns. This is from About Face. Here's a little intro.

• 2:16Jocko Willink?

  To who Glover Johns is. Hackworth says, "I was to report to 8th Division, 1st Battle Group, 18th Infantry. It was a nice twist of fate. The unit was a direct descendant of the US 18th, which my great, great grandfather Jeremiah and his oldest son, George Washington Hackworth, belonged to when they fought their Hackworth cousin Billy, who was with the Bedford Forest 4th Tennessee Cav during the Civil War." So this could have a connect. Can you imagine having your relative be fighting for the Union Army and you're in the same unit? Legit.

• 2:57Jocko Willink?

  "The 18th was military perfection. Men stepped smartly across meticulously kept grounds. Starched uniforms, blue infantry scarves, dazzling shined brass and boots, snappy salutes and cheerful 'Good afternoon, sirs' marked my journey to the HQ where I'd sign in. The spirit of this fine unit was already infecting me. The hot stifling windless day, the ragweed pollen that blew in from the adjacent fields, covering the camp and immediately activating my hay fever. The rundown boring camp itself, none of it mattered. I was inwardly, as inwardly, I was transported to an island oasis untouched by turbulent seas. And it was all thanks to one man.

• 3:43Jocko Willink?

  The Battle Group Commanding Officer, who would forever after be my model, mentor and friend. Colonel Glover S. Johns was the finest senior infantry commander I'd ever seen or would ever see again.

• 4:01Jocko Willink?

  We shared a mutual, abiding respect almost from the moment we met. He was my kind of soldier and I was his. He was a warrior, Patton's aide before World War II. Then during the war, he'd hit the beaches of Normandy as part of the 29th Division and fought from those bloody beaches, from those bloody shores all across Europe until victory was achieved. As a battalion commanding officer, he'd headed the task force that captured the critical French town of Saint Lo, chronicled in his own hard-hitting book, The Clay Pigeons of Saint Lo." In Korea, he'd served as XO, then regimental commander in my own 40th Division. His reputation there was awesome.

• 4:42Jocko Willink?

  One story that made its way through the division was that a wild new XO had come to the 224th, gotten down on his belly in the mud to check the unit's machine gun fields of fire, and promptly moved two-thirds of the machine gun bunkers that had sat there for two years.

• 5:00Jocko Willink?

  I'd immediately thought of my own fighter company renovations and wished to hell that this savvy character had been assigned to the 223rd.

• 5:11Jocko Willink?

  I noticed that his blue eyes sparkled like those of a wise and truly tested man who'd long since realized that humor could be found in just about anything. He had seen his share of horror. His cheeks were rosy, and the dueling scar that crossed one of them in no way detracted from his rugged yet gentle old soldier face. The scar, maybe the scar even enhanced it, I don't know, but it sure gave him more character and provided a good yarn to boot. In any event, Colonel Glover Johns was a 49-year-old stud.

• 5:50Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. I think stud, if you don't know anything about Hackworth, stud is the highest category of a human that you can give. That's, that's the pinnacle of, of, uh, respect coming from him. Stud.

• 6:08Jocko Willink?

  And in fact, he has studs or duds. He says that a bunch in the book. There's the two kinds of people, studs, duds.

• 6:16Jocko Willink?

  Some basic info, some more info. Let me give you some more info on Glover Johns. Born in 1912 in Austin, Texas, grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas. His father went to VMI, class of 1908, but got kicked out for hell raising. I mean, what, what does that even mean? Is that in your record? Does it go in your record? Are they like, oh yeah, Dave Berke was kicked out of this school for hell raising?

• 6:42Jocko Willink?

  So his dad gets kicked out, but his uncles, he got two uncles, they go to VMI, 1915 and 1921. He Glover Johns ends up going to, going to VMI. He's rifle pistol marksman, good at cross country. Graduates with a degree in chemistry, class of 1931, goes over to Germany. Studies for a semester, he gets married, he has a son, he gets divorced and he's a civilian, by the way. You know, and I couldn't quite figure out, I think he's a National Guard guy. But he's working at a bunch of just normal, normal work life. Some alkali company, works at the Chamber of Converse, he writes for the local newspaper.

• 7:24Jocko Willink?

  But as part of the Texas National Guard, he gets called to active duty in 1940. And he pretty much begs and maneuvers to get a job going into combat, which he ends up getting. And going to Omaha Beach, he goes on, goes into Omaha Beach on D-Day. And D-Day plus one, so one day deep into D-Day, he takes over the battalion. Because apparently his, the person that was the battalion commander was not getting after it.

• 7:53Jocko Willink?

  So he replaces this weak commander. And it goes right into the, the hedgerow fighting, which Band of Brothers, you know, if you, if you know anything about D-Day, that hedgerow fighting was insane. They take crazy casualties. In his first day as battalion commander, he loses two radio operators and three is, three of his battalion staff. Battalion staff. You're losing battalion staff. This is not a battalion staff that's sitting in the rear when you lose two radio operators and three of your battalion staff.

• 8:25Jocko Willink?

  Constant combat. He, he's in a leadership position in the Battle of St. Lo. And just to refresh your memory on that, the 29th Division lost more soldiers in the Battle of St. Lo than they did on Omaha Beach. So.

• 8:41Jocko Willink?

  He ends up 11 months in command. He's awarded three Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars, and a Purple Heart. By the end of the war, John's unit, Glover John's unit had lost 2,400 men casualties. That's two and a half times bigger than the number of people in his unit, right? You know, your battalion size is, what, 600 people, 700 people, 500 people, something like that? And they had had 2,400 casualties.

• 9:20Jocko Willink?

  He's married, gets married again after the war. Does, has another couple of sons. He does peacetime tours in Bulgaria and Turkey. Korean War kicks off. He maneuvers again to try and get to go over there. He does. Commands the 224th Infantry Regiment, the 40th Infantry Division. Fought in the Punch Bowl in Korea. Gets done with Korea, goes to Army War College. Goes to VMI. As the ROTC leader, eventually becomes the VMI Commandant. And in 1960, he becomes Commander of the First Battle Group 18th Infantry, 8th Infantry Division. And he goes into this whole Berlin standoff when, when they were building the wall, when there's all these tensions.

• 10:04Jocko Willink?

  And he has to march, or yeah, pretty much marching 1,500 soldiers right into, right into Berlin. Right through East Germany. They kind of faced down the Soviet Union. There's a little, there's a little anecdote in here that there was some guard, some Russian guard, or some East German guard that wasn't opening a gate when they showed up. They needed to get through and he, it was a bridge or something like this. And the guy says something, you know, like, "We're not opening this gate." And he says, "Well, you know, you have to open this gate." He's like, "No." This'll start World War III if you come here and then Glover Johns pulls out his 45 and says you're gonna be the first casualty of World War III and that dude opens the gate.

• 10:49Jocko Willink?

  It sounds too good to be true, right?

• 10:52Speaker 01

  It almost does.

• 10:52Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:53Jocko Willink?

  But I don't know, man.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  It it sounds like legend.

• 10:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it could be. It could be. Oh, by the way, the scar on his face. Everyone said he got it in a duel, but actually there's a footnote about it here. Johns received the scar in an automobile accident in Taipei. He was drunk at the time and barely missed receiving a general court martial upon his recovery.

• 11:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Because they call it a dueling. So everyone thought it. So legends, man.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Legends.

• 11:21Jocko Willink?

  There's some word that can come out. It's not true.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  I I really want to believe the one about the first casualty of World War.

• 11:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're gonna be the first casualty. They're private. But it was a big deal and this was a huge event in in the early 60s, that whole standoff with the with the Soviets. And after that was done, he took a job as an attache in Spain. That was his last army job. Retired in Austin, Texas. He was a technical advisor on the movie Patton. Pretty legit.

• 11:54Jocko Willink?

  Died of cancer in 1976. His ashes are spread at at VMI. So.

• 12:02Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Now Hackworth worked for him and he worked for him during that march for into Berlin. And there's great account of all that stuff and what they thought was gonna happen. I mean, World War III was on the line. This was a standoff between two giant nuclear superpowers. And the the the word was if World War III starts, all these that entire regiment's getting wiped out immediately because they're just they're just no one's gonna be able to help them.

• 12:31Jocko Willink?

  There's a quote in here that's from Colonel John. In the book about face, he says, I drove hard and raised hell when I didn't get what I wanted. I made waves. I bitched about supply procedures. I fought for my men if I fought them unjustly accused by a higher HQ. I fought problems too hard from a love of my men as opposed to someone else's men or my own boss's interests. Because I had identified too closely with them due to my World War II experiences. I think I saw too many men killed and bled too deeply inside with the result that I was overprotective.

• 13:10Jocko Willink?

  And Hackworth goes on to say, "Overprotective he may well have been, but Colonel Johns translated his love for his men into one thing that would save them when he was not there to wield the sword himself. Good, realistic training, esprit de corps, and high morale. Or unabashed cockiness, some might say, within the units in his command." So... The last thing is, uh, Johns eventually got orders out of the battle group in Berlin. So, so Hackworth is there with him in Berlin, and he gets orders to go do something else, and he gives a farewell speech.

• 13:54Jocko Willink?

  And during this farewell speech, according to Hackworth, he... Johns broke down the basic philosophy of soldiering, which he had, which Hack said was like being let in on the secret ingredients of some magical formula. That's... Think about that. This is Hackworth saying he gets this list of things, and it's in the book. And you read it in a page, and you're like, "Okay, cool." And, and Hack says it's like a secret ingredients of a magical formula. This is obviously something we should be paying attention to, and this is why I kinda got drawn back into it. So, here is leading and soldiering according to Colonel Glover Johns,

• 14:39Jocko Willink?

  who taught us how to lead.

• 14:45Jocko Willink?

  The first one is strive to do the small things well. Strive to do the small things well. There's a quote, "How you do anything is how you do everything." This is a similar idea, right? Because if you let the little things go, then what happens to the big things? You guys had to be super anal in, in the fighter pilot community.

• 15:10Dave Berke?

  Yeah, there are things you gotta be anal about, and I think you certainly have to have a philosophy of it's the little things that will kill you. If you don't do the little things well, it's really hard to do the big things well. Obviously, there's a balance inside there, but yes.

• 15:25Jocko Willink?

  How do you so you know, some people are really detail oriented. Some people are not detail oriented. You got every spectrum in between, right?

• 15:31Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 15:32Jocko Willink?

  How do you get a like who's who's in charge of the plane's maintenance, your plane's maintenance? So Dave Berke, you have your plane. What do you have a tail number on your plane? Is that how you identify your plane?

• 15:41Dave Berke?

  Yeah, you have a number and your name on it.

• 15:43Jocko Willink?

  And your names. So so Dave Berke's plane.

• 15:45Dave Berke?

  But I don't always I don't fly that plane all the time. But yes, I've got a plane.

• 15:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 15:49Dave Berke?

  But it's not like my plane.

• 15:51Jocko Willink?

  Is there someone that's in charge of that plane?

• 15:53Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 15:54Jocko Willink?

  And is he own that plane more than you do? Kind of?

• 15:56Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 15:58Jocko Willink?

  And what's his? What's his job?

• 16:00Dave Berke?

  He's a what we would call a power line mechanic, and that means the aircraft itself, he's assigned to that aircraft, and he is responsible for that aircraft being airworthy, meaning it's legit to fly.

• 16:11Jocko Willink?

  How many aircraft is he responsible for?

• 16:13Dave Berke?

  Usually one.

• 16:13Jocko Willink?

  One.

• 16:14Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 16:14Jocko Willink?

  So this is your this is your guy.

• 16:17Dave Berke?

  Yeah, if you're gonna have a relationship inside the squadron and you're flying an airplane, the plane captain of that plane, you should have a good relationship.

• 16:24Jocko Willink?

  So he's called the plane captain?

• 16:25Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 16:26Jocko Willink?

  What rank is he?

• 16:27Dave Berke?

  Probably a Lance Corporal or a Corporal.

• 16:30Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 16:30Dave Berke?

  It's a young kid with huge responsibility.

• 16:33Jocko Willink?

  Twenty two years old.

• 16:34Dave Berke?

  Twenty two year old Corporal.

• 16:35Jocko Willink?

  Twenty two year old Corporal, and he's the plane captain?

• 16:37Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 16:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so well, the question I was gonna ask is, and man, I thought that guy was gonna be an E seven.

• 16:44Dave Berke?

  No.

• 16:46Jocko Willink?

  Marine Corps, don't play. They're like you are responsible.

• 16:48Dave Berke?

  Hundred percent.

• 16:50Jocko Willink?

  So the question I was gonna ask is, you got people that are naturally very detail oriented. You got people that aren't. Do are they screening people out when they go to a school? Are they going to a school where they're like, oh, yeah, slip not over here. He ain't gonna be in charge of a plane. We're gonna put him in charge of, you know, something else.

• 17:08Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I would imagine the criteria to make sure those people get to where they're supposed to be and eventually be responsible for an aircraft. There are some things along the way that they've had to screen for.

• 17:17Jocko Willink?

  But I mean, this dude's only been in the Marine Corps for like three years.

• 17:19Dave Berke?

  Well, that's the Marine Corps.

• 17:21Jocko Willink?

  God.

• 17:23Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I mean, even getting into aviation, I think there's probably some attributes that they screen for initially, you know, on even which basic MOS or what basic part of the Marine Corps you go to. And then inside that certainly, even though it's, I think, a relatively fast screening process, the process to be qualified to be a plane captain is no joke.

• 17:40Jocko Willink?

  And then how many people does he have on his team?

• 17:44Dave Berke?

  He'll probably have one or two other guys. So, you know, a guy who's responsible for an aircraft, he'll have probably one other person who's in like the training pipeline, you know, getting certified and getting evaluated. So when I walk out to a jet and I'm going to go man up that jet and go fly it, the plane captain is there and he'll have somebody with him. And he's watching, observing, and then he'll be doing more. And then at some point, he'll go out a couple of months later and like, hey, sir, you know, you know, this other Marine is going to take the lead on today's mission, or whatever that might be. And he's kind of doing what we call a left seat, right seat, or sort of a training run.

• 18:15Jocko Willink?

  So you're saying that the guy, the plane captain, he's doing work or he's not doing? Is he turning wrenches?

• 18:22Dave Berke?

  Absolutely. Well, the other key responsibility that the plane captain has, and this is different in other services, but in the Marine Corps, it's very specific. The plane captain, they call it power line, because you're responsible for the line, the aircraft line, all the jets. You're also responsible for the power plants. So these are your engine mechanics. So in the Marine Corps, the engine mechanic, his other responsibility is the nose to tail responsibility of that aircraft. So not only is he the guy, like literally from the nose to the tail of that jet, make sure that thing is ready to go, he's also the one that is responsible for the engines. Corporals in the Marine Corps. And as you might have imagined, I had a very, very good relationship with every single plane captain in the squadron. And in fact, my first

• 19:06Dave Berke?

  real leadership job, when I first got into the Marine Corps, into a fighter squadron, you know, you spend some time in operations, you learn how to write the schedule, then they give you a real job. And my first real job was called the Power Line OIC. So I was the officer in charge of the Power Line Division, the engine mechanics and the plane captains. And to this day, probably the best job I had.

• 19:26Jocko Willink?

  And what are there, 18 planes in the squadron?

• 19:29Dave Berke?

  12.

• 19:32Jocko Willink?

  And there's one officer in charge of all these Lance Corps. Is there a senior enlisted guy?

• 19:36Dave Berke?

  Yeah, there's a, there's a gunny who's

• 19:37Jocko Willink?

  Like the most squared away guy in the world?

• 19:39Dave Berke?

  The most squared away guy I've ever known, you know, Rich Pilgrim, if you're out there listening, who knows who he is. Huge, huge impact on my life. Massively influential Marine and 30 plus young Marines. You know, there's sergeants, there's a staff sergeant, but it's, it's almost all Lance Corps and Corpses making it happen. It's the best job ever.

• 19:58Jocko Willink?

  Freaking legit. So obviously in that scenario, that doing the small things, right, is mandatory.

• 20:07Dave Berke?

  It, it's, I mean, I remember going through the certification process myself because I wanted to, I wanted to know what it was like to be certified as a plane captain. So I was young enough in my career that I had the time to be able to do that. And even just the questions that get asked on these boards to certify these Marines, the level of detail inside that was indicative that the message was they wanted the Marines to understand how important these little, little details were because of what, what was at risk if those small details get missed, especially in, you know, a really expensive, really fast machine that has this huge amount of responsibility and this massive asset you can't just replace. And that philosophy of the little things will kill you was embedded from the very, very beginning.

• 20:55Jocko Willink?

  So I read a book a long time ago. It's about Desert One. And one of the reasons that Desert One failed was aircraft couldn't complete the mission. And I'll do a podcast about it at some point. But so, so they wanted to get the best pilots for Desert One to go there, fly into Iran and do this refueling and rescue the hostages, right? Some of the pilots were, at least one set of the pilots, the helicopter pilots came from flying Air Force Two. What's the helicopter? What's the president's helicopter?

• 21:26Dave Berke?

  The Marine Corps, it's HMX One.

• 21:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 21:29Dave Berke?

  That's the Marine Corps helicopters. That's the presidential helicopters.

• 21:32Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So maybe it was those guys. And those guys, they're not playing around. Any issue with any of that bird at all, and it's not flying.

• 21:40Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 21:40Jocko Willink?

  And so there's in the main rotors on a helicopter, there's hydrogen.

• 21:46Jocko Willink?

  Inside, there's like a tube that has a hydrogen in it and then there's a hydrogen sensor that will tell you if there's something wrong, if there's a crack, if there's something wrong with those blades, this hydrogen sensor goes up, oh, we got a problem with our blades, we need to land. And that's, that's the way that they keep those things safe because you can have, you know, some kind of a stress fracture or something in your, in your rotor blade. And if that thing comes apart, you know, you've got major issues. Well, the, the, like the Navy pilots in, in the Sea Wolves, they just flew with the freaking hydrogen thing. Just they would just like take it out. They didn't want to hear about it. Like they're flying this thing. The Army pilots were

• 22:27Jocko Willink?

  like that. So there was a lot of pilots that were just saying, hey dude, you know, like whatever, pretty much whatever. Hey, get it fixed later. And, but they had this, this attentiveness to details that will say, nope, hydrogen, we got a hydrogen, we got a something wrong with the blade, we gotta land. And they left and all of a sudden now they're short on aircraft. It's one of the things that led to it was we didn't have these kind of combat experienced pilots. Like if that would have been a Sea Wolf pilot, bro, this guy would have been like, what? So just like anything else, you, if you go overboard with the small things, you're going to miss some big things, including executing a mission.

• 23:08Dave Berke?

  Yeah. What's cool about understanding how important the small things are, rather than overlooking them, is that actually gives you some insight about what you can and can't tolerate. Meaning if I don't pay attention to any of the little things because I'm a big picture guy and I don't care, there are some little things that are going to kill me and I might not, might not know about it. But if I'm sort of obsessive about knowing all those things, what it actually gives me in an airplane and really in anything, it gives me an understanding of that, that little thing, that is a little thing. We're going to ignore that and we're going to press. Or that little thing, it's fine now, but if it leads to this and this, then we got a problem that could get worse, or that little thing will get us killed. You gotta know what those little things

• 23:48Dave Berke?

  are and know whether to ignore them, pay attention to them, or respond to them. And those are three different kind of key criteria. But if you don't know what those things are, you can't make those smart decisions. So you gotta know those things. You don't have to react to all of them, but you gotta know them.

• 24:02Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take to study to get your certification and how, like, did you have to put in some work?

• 24:08Dave Berke?

  Oh yeah. The, I mean, I did the whole thing.

• 24:12Dave Berke?

  That was a several month thing and I had a blast doing it because it was a great way to get to know my Marines and what and really for me more than anything it was to get to know what the challenges were and why it was a big deal for me is we were getting ready to go in a carrier and they called them brown shirts. They were brown jerseys on the carrier. Those are your plane captains. Those are your crew chiefs and they have the most unappreciated, unforgiving job. They're the ones out there at two o'clock in the morning trying to fix an engine hanging over the side of an aircraft carrier. So that jet is on the flight schedule the next day. Really underappreciated the amount of work and how important that work was and I wanted to understand that so I could help advocate to get them the things they needed to be successful. And the only way to do that is to know what they were

• 24:53Dave Berke?

  going through. So I went through the entire process to get certified to learn about that. It also is a great way to get to know the Marines extremely well, but being a brown shirt, being a crew chief, a plane captain on a carrier, man, those young kids are putting in just the most ridiculous hours doing the hardest job in the world with almost no thanks, no appreciation at all. Cause what they need is to get a jet to make the flight schedule and then, you know, Dave Berke mans up the jet and gets all the glory because he launches off the carrier.

• 25:23Jocko Willink?

  Goes out for a 45 minute air conditioned flight.

• 25:25Dave Berke?

  Totally.

• 25:25Jocko Willink?

  Comes back, lands it, turns the keys over and say, here's my rental.

• 25:29Dave Berke?

  Yeah. I mean, that's the joke is like, hey, I took this jet. I come back and I go, hey, this thing's busted and I give them the keys and I leave. And obviously I didn't want to be one of those pilots and those pilots, those pilots exist.

• 25:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:43Dave Berke?

  Right now, just so you know, there are thousands of power line Marines listening to this conversation that are stoked that you're talking about.

• 25:50Jocko Willink?

  How many parts? Do you know how many parts are in an F-18?

• 25:54Dave Berke?

  I couldn't even guess.

• 25:56Jocko Willink?

  Do they have to know every individual system or do they just know?

• 26:00Dave Berke?

  The engine? The engine, yes. I mean, we're talking every single thing in an engine from the front to the back. Now you have airframes, you have electric, you have hydraulic, you have other major subsystems that these plane captains have a general understanding of, but nowhere near the detail. But when it comes to the engine, every single thing. And I'm sure it's true for all of them, but a Hornet engine is a complex piece of machinery.

• 26:25Jocko Willink?

  So from a leadership perspective, if you strive to do the small things, if you strive to do the small things, well, it's going to help you. You can't become obsessed with them. We have to be careful of that. That becomes, that becomes OCD, right? You work for an OCD person? Yes. I worked for an OCD seal and it was, you know, you know, we work through it, but it's, it's, it's, it's just like any other sort of like a mental health issue where the person just doesn't understand that they've got it, you know? And you're like, sir, I, do you really want? Yeah. Yeah. We, we, I can't, we, we, you know, whatever, whatever the case may be, whether it was all the fonts need to, we get those fonts straightened out, or, you know, the drying cage needs to look like, just whatever the thing is.

• 27:10Jocko Willink?

  Then they're losing their minds about it and it's not healthy and you can't convince them of otherwise. It's hard to even address it with them because they just look at you like you're crazy. So don't be that person. Yes, do the small things. Well, yes, pay attention, but don't get obsessed with them because then you won't be paying attention to the things that you need to pay attention to. So that's number one. All right, next one. Colonel Glover Johns, to be a doer and a self-starter. Actually, let me rephrase that. He actually says, be a doer and a self-starter. Aggressiveness and initiatives and initiative are two most admired qualities in a leader. But, he throws the dichotomy in there, but

• 27:55Jocko Willink?

  you must also put your feet up and think. This is interesting on 97 different levels. All right. So we're talking about being default aggressive and this is something that clearly he's talking about it as well. And clearly as a human, you got to make things happen. And talking and planning and dreaming and all that stuff doesn't matter. It actually doesn't matter. What matters is taking action, making things happen. That's what's going to be good. And The Marine Corps has an awesome mentality. They want their leaders to have a bias for action, which is this, which is exactly what is being said here.

• 28:37Jocko Willink?

  Being a doer and being a self-starter, that means having a bias for action. Your, your, your general move is I'm going to take action. And that's what the Marine Corps wants their Marines to have is a bias for action. Now, when I was teaching young SEALs, I told them they needed to be default aggressive, which is a little stronger. It's actually probably quite a bit stronger than a bias for action, right? Bias for action is like, okay, yep, I'm gonna, yep, if I'm gonna make a decision, I'm gonna take action. Okay, cool. I need guys to be aggressive. Make things happen. And the reason is because the situations I was putting these young SEALs in was it needed more than just a bias for action to get them going in the right direction.

• 29:20Jocko Willink?

  They needed to actually be like, oh, I'm not doing anything. Bad things are happening. I need to get aggressive right now. So that's where that comes from. And, and like I said, if you're a person in life and you find yourself hesitating, you might need to program yourself to have a default aggressive attitude, not just a bias for action. And not just, well, I'm gonna be a doer. Even be a doer is pretty soft. That's not gonna push you through some mayhem where things are blowing up and you're like, I'm not sure what I should do. I'm just gonna sit here and wait to see what happens. No, need to go.

• 30:02Jocko Willink?

  Now he says this, but you also must put your feet up and think. This is the most interesting, well, I guess one of the most interesting descriptions of detachment that I've heard. And what a good one. Let's face it, there's no possible way you can literally put your feet up and think unless you, unless you detach. So he's saying you gotta do more than just, you know, think. You gotta put your feet up and think. And he's saying that for a reason. He's saying that because, well, I guess I'm assuming he's saying that because he's told plenty of guys, hey, you need to think about what's happening. And they're like, ugh, and they still make a bad decision. You know, they're just like in brain imploding. He's saying, hey, take a step back. Look, sit down.

• 30:47Jocko Willink?

  There's all this chaos going on. Cool, put your feet up and think. That's what I need you to do.

• 30:54Dave Berke?

  Thinking of the literal sense of that too, and you, you once described talking about the idea of detachment of when you said you're writing, when you write things down.

• 31:03Jocko Willink?

  It's a good one.

• 31:03Dave Berke?

  You were, it's a literal form of detachment. And I'm thinking of, especially like if you're a soldier, it's really hard to do anything when your feet are up, literally. Like, and I have this picture of this person who's at a desk, his feet are up on the desk. And you actually can't do or go or move anywhere when your feet are up. And even just to start contrasting your mind of what he means by that, which isn't just to stop and think, it's actually put yourself in a position where you are not doing anything while you're thinking. And then of course, the dichotomy inside there, and I just can't help but imagine the idea that he understands that, and I think you did too, in Task Unit Bruiser is when you start correlating a little bit of risk

• 31:44Dave Berke?

  of not doing something, it's not like, hey, we get a little behind on the project, or we gotta, we'll finish it Monday instead of Friday, or we get a little over budget. If you don't get this thing done in combat, the risk of that is astonishing. And when you understand the natural human bias is not to do those things.

• 32:03Dave Berke?

  Sometimes pushing to the default aggressive is actually where you have to go to get them to get away from that natural state, which is to do nothing.

• 32:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think I've got this somewhere else in this, in the, in the, in my notes here, but the power curve, which is a real thing in life, and I know it's a real thing in the air, but we used to use that term that, oh, you, you don't get behind the power curve. That means all the stuff that you have to get done, you get behind the power curve and you're done. You can't catch up again.

• 32:32Dave Berke?

  That's right.

• 32:32Jocko Willink?

  So that's what happens in an aircraft, right? How does it work?

• 32:35Dave Berke?

  So, yeah, the power curve in an aircraft is a place, literally, it's a curve that they draw and it's based on like factors like thrust and lift, is if you get behind the power curve, it requires more power.

• 32:48Jocko Willink?

  Than you have.

• 32:49Dave Berke?

  Than you have, which in, again, in that literal sense, and the curve is like, once you get past that curve, you know, I think the saying is like more power to go slower, like you don't have the power or the thrust to keep the aircraft doing what it's doing. And if you get behind the power curve. You, it is an unrecoverable thing, you know, unless you do some other things and give up some other things which you don't want to do.

• 33:11Jocko Willink?

  Well, if you're at altitude, you can put nose down, you can regain your speed.

• 33:14Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 33:14Jocko Willink?

  That's what I would usually do.

• 33:15Dave Berke?

  Yes, that's what you're doing. But to your point, like, there's, you can, if you do these other things, you don't have to get there.

• 33:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there was a, Stoner was getting interviewed, talking to some like command historian or something like this. And he, he told this command historian, and the command historian showed it to me. He was, he said something along the lines of, yeah, well, in Ramadi, Jaco had to beat his head against the wall to get a mission done. It was like every, every mission to make a mission happen, there was like so much stuff that you had to do to get it to go. And that's what it feels like when you talk about, oh, these little things, like this little document that you gotta get put out, this, you gotta go run to this brief, you gotta go talk to this person, there's all these things that have to take place.

• 34:07Jocko Willink?

  And not to mention, the weapons have to be prepped, the vehicles need to be ready, the plan has to, like, all those things are going on. And, and, and if you fall back behind that power curve, you're just not gonna do it.

• 34:17Dave Berke?

  You're not gonna recover.

• 34:18Jocko Willink?

  It's not gonna happen.

• 34:18Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 34:18Jocko Willink?

  You have to be just, just full thrust, you have to just keep it there. And sure, after the op, you can be like, okay, I'm gonna back off a little bit and, and save a little bit of gas right now, but it's not gonna take more than a couple hours before you better put that, you better put that throttle fully down again. You better start making things happen because they're not gonna happen on their own. Um, so, that's good. Be a doer, be a self-starter, be aggressive, take initiative, but just straight up, put your feet up and think about what you're doing. So there you go, that's number two. Number three, strive for self-improvement through constant self-evaluation.

• 35:02Jocko Willink?

  Strive for self-improvement through constant self-evaluation.

• 35:07Jocko Willink?

  This is a good rule for leadership and life. And it's, it's weird to think that, number one, if you're not humble, you're not doing this, right? If you're not, if you think you're doing everything right, you're not doing this, it just isn't happening. You have to be looking, you have to be humble enough to say, what, what can I do better? And you have to start off by knowing where you are. And then, and then trying to assess what you can get, what you can get better at. And this is a difficult thing to do, you know, this is, this is, you know, to me, this is the eminently qualified human, you know, the, the, the actual evaluation of yourself, which you and I wrote that book, the, the code,

• 35:48Jocko Willink?

  the evaluation, the protocol, and then made the, the app, there's an app for it, but that's the kind of thing where you go, okay, I know where I'm at right now. I know what I need to do today. I know where I slacked off a little bit. I know where I can improve tomorrow. And if you're not doing that, that's why, that's how Rome fell apart, right? Rome wasn't built in a day and it didn't fall apart in a day either. It fell apart a little bit at a time, just a little bit at a time.

• 36:14Jocko Willink?

  That's what happens.

• 36:17Dave Berke?

  That self, the self evaluation comment, and obviously immediately tether that to the idea of humility is such an important piece of that because, and I would see this all the time is, I would work with guys that were good at certain things and not good at other things. And where they would spend their focus would be doing the things that they did well, which is important. And this is not to say that if you don't have a particular strength, that you shouldn't focus on that strength. But because they were comfortable doing the things they were good at, they spent all their time doing the things they were good at. And as you got more experienced and more senior, the more of those other gaps became a big hindrance because you have to be good at a lot of things, especially in a leadership role, especially

• 36:58Dave Berke?

  if you plan on elevating in that leadership role, the awareness of, hey, if I'm not good at this, I have to spend time doing the things and getting better at things I'm not as good at as I should be. And how easy it is to go, well, I'm pretty good at this. I'm just going to stay over here because this is so much easier for me. And not being willing to acknowledge what you're not good at and actually spend some time working on that. And how easy it is to fall in the trap of, well, I'm good at this. I suck at this. Which one should I be working on today? I'll just keep doing this thing over here. And that self, the self evaluation of what do I know I'm not good at? And how easily we can just ignore what we know we need to be working on.

• 37:35Jocko Willink?

  I used to hate being on the bottom in jujitsu, like someone on top, they would just like smash and I would hate the feeling, right? And so for months, the only place I started was with people across the side or mounted on me. I was saying, all right, go ahead, take it. And then just got over it. Got over it completely where it literally didn't matter anymore. If you don't have that approach, you're gonna have problems, man. You're gonna have problems. Watch out for that. Um, and this, this is tied into the next one, number four, which is never be satisfied. Ask of any project, how can it be done better? Now, listen.

• 38:08Jocko Willink?

  You know, you could, just if, just to throw like a different perspective on this or a different angle, the never be satisfied thing where all of a sudden, you know, I'm never satisfied and I'm, you know, freaking out about and constantly, there's people that, that run into issues with that where they can't like chill out and back off and detach and look around and see what's happening. So never is kind of a strong word.

• 38:35Jocko Willink?

  But at the same time, this is completely tied to humility because if you are satisfied,

• 38:42Jocko Willink?

  that's an indicator that maybe you think you're there and you're not. You're not.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  This implies the, the debrief to me, you know, it's like not, not being satisfied with it by looking back at it and saying, hey, how could we do this better? Did we miss anything? Or is there something we should add to this? And then debriefing it and then trying to, you know, trying it again on the next evolution.

• 39:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, a hundred percent. If you're not debriefing what you're doing and, and, and look, if you want to take that to a really good personal level, if you look at your day, that's what's nice about the, the EQH app. It's like, if you look at your day and you're like, oh, I, I could have done this better. It's at the end of the day going, hmm, did I really, I didn't really do that. I, I, I got in on that donut or whatever, tapped it. My, my daughters right now, they say tapped into like, if they're talking about food, they're like, oh, can I tap into that? So you might've accidentally tapped into a donut or whatever, right? We gotta watch out. So, which by the way, I don't think I can ever eat a donut again because I've talked so much smack about donuts.

• 39:46Jocko Willink?

  And I think there's someone with like a 600 millimeter lens stalking me waiting to see that donut go down the hatch. Ain't happening. But doing a debrief with yourself at the end of the day, what did I and then and then also creating what you're going to do tomorrow to focus on the weaknesses a little bit. And again, like you said, Dave, Dave wasn't like, hey, you know, I'm going to focus on my piano skills because he's not that great at piano when he's supposed to be a jet fighter pilot, right? Right. I get it. But doesn't mean you shouldn't understand music or something. You know what I'm saying? Doesn't mean you shouldn't go out and get that git box.

• 40:25Jocko Willink?

  All right. Number five, don't over inspect or over supervise. Allow your leaders to make mistakes in training so they can profit from their errors and not make them in combat. So decentralized command clearly is what we're talking about here. And it's incredible how annoying over inspection and over supervision is to humans. That's psychological reactants, right? It's like a psychological reactants, which means we don't want to be told what to do because we're human beings and we have a psychological rejection of people that are trying to control us. That's normal. That's common. But over inspection and over supervision just triggers the psychological reactants all day long, all day long. Don't let it happen.

• 41:11Jocko Willink?

  Don't be that leader because that's not going to work out good for you. It's not your team's not going to like it. No one's going to like it. Now, here's where people get a little bit wary about this because they think, well, you know, I'm in the business world. And so I don't have the luxury of being able to train someone to in a training situation. No, they got to go in front of a client. I can't just let them fail in training because there's no such thing. We don't do that. We don't have time. I don't have six months getting ready to go on deployment and work with a client. No, I work on the client today. So there are multiple ways of doing this, right? If Dave has got a Dave's not experienced in a certain type of project and I go, okay, Dave, you're going to take lead on this project.

• 41:56Jocko Willink?

  Why don't you come up with, you know, your initial, your initial brief on the timeline you want to use? And he puts together the timeline. I don't send him to the client with it. I say, okay, now brief me on it. And he's like, I got thirty eight days to talk about cover and move. And I go, no, that doesn't make me sense. So, so you can, you can actually train and educate someone. Just by putting in a little, probably twenty percent extra effort. And if you think about it, it's actually probably a break even because I didn't have to do the bulk of the work myself. I just said, hey, Dave, came up, come up with a timeline for this training schedule for this client. And he goes, oh, cool. And he goes and does it. Now, if I would have had to do it, I would have had to make a couple of phone calls and I would have to do the, pull out the word processor and I would have to sit down and do it. And it would have been a pain. And plus, I would have been in the weeds on it. So I don't really see as much.

• 42:41Jocko Willink?

  I'm not detached from it. Instead, I go, hey, Dave, come up with a timeline for this client, what you want to do for a basic schedule. And he goes, cool, got it. He does it. He's never done it before, or maybe he just, I go, here's an old client, similar client, you can use this as a, as a, as a guide. Cool. He, he does it. It's pretty close, right? It doesn't, I'm not wasting a bunch of time. And if he was a total idiot and you produce something that sucked, I'd be like, okay, cool. This is, this is horrible. This is why. Didn't cost us anything, didn't put any risk, didn't show the client some bad take on us. No, it's all good. So just because we use the, just because the term is used here, make mistakes in training. Don't consider training to be this official thing where you've been pulled away and you don't have any interaction in the real world. No.

• 43:25Jocko Willink?

  Training can happen every single day with everything that you do. And that's what you should do. And you should let people brush up against the guardrails of failure. You should let people do that. And then when they do, you don't jump down their throat and now you don't become a micromanager. You let, you make adjustments and you set another thing for them. Say, all right, here's, hey, Dave, this doesn't make any sense. Adjust this, this will never take this much time. Go make some adjustments, bring it back to me. Dave does it. Hey, cool. Yep, good to go. My net investment of time is probably the same. If not, I'm probably saving time. And my product, my end product is actually better because I'm detached and I wasn't in the weeds on the initial assignment.

• 44:03Jocko Willink?

  So, don't over inspect, don't over supervise, hard to do that. Your ego wants you to over supervise, by the way. Your ego wants to over inspect. Your ego actually wants to find problems. You ever had those bosses? That you can't get through a, like in the SEAL teams? You give a brief, there's no way you're getting through the brief without getting dinged on seven different things. I'd like some of the guys I used to critique their briefs on come and talk to me. Cause I was freaking harsh on those briefs. But here's the thing, man. I'll have to review some of my notes. Cause I would be harsh, cause they would do dumb shit. And I'd be like, bro, what are you doing over here? What does this mean? I can't even understand. Look at your pictures here. Like this doesn't make any sense. What is this timeline?

• 44:48Jocko Willink?

  How do you think you're going to patrol from here to here in that amount of time? They were just legitimate things. Cause I actually didn't care. I actually didn't care what the font was. I didn't care about any of that. I cared about, and actually I did, here's a good case in point. I had a guy, good dude, tore his brief up. And you know, he gets done, they do another brief, next day, next op, tore it up, terrible. And he's like, after the first day, he added even more, like trying to satisfy me. And he says, dude, what this is like a moving target? What is that you're actually want from these briefs? And I said, well, it's not a moving target.

• 45:27Jocko Willink?

  I said, to me, a good brief is when you give a brief, your men understand the mission and the execution.

• 45:39Jocko Willink?

  And he was like, okay, fair enough. And then he took that to heart of, okay, well, my audience is not Jaco. My audience is not the commanding officer. My audience is my machine gunner. My audience is my point man. My audience is my breacher. That's my audience. That's who needs to understand this thing. And that's the way it's supposed to be. And that's the same, same thing Leif and I wrote about. That's happened with Leif and Seth. Leif and Seth were doing the freaking most insane 150 slide PowerPoint briefs for reconnaissance missions in training. And they were so bad. And I was like, hey, guys, no one knows what the hell you guys are talking about. I said, let's, let's do this. I said, I just want you to brief to the lowest common denominator in your platoon.

• 46:22Jocko Willink?

  Just do that. Pull out a map. Don't need to put a bunch of slides. They don't need to have animation in the slides. You know how much time it takes to do animation in a slide? I mean, it's a total waste of time. It's a total waste of time. You should pull up the map and be like, hey, we're going to move from here to here. That's the way it's going to work. Follow my finger, follow my pointer on this map. So you all know what's up. Instead, we spend an extra hour and 22 minutes making Humvees drive down a route in an animated way. It's a disaster, man. And the cool thing was, and props to my commanding officer, those guys, and, and you guys have heard the story, like Seth was like, we're going to get fired. And I said, hey,

• 47:06Jocko Willink?

  you will not get fired. If anyone gets fired, I will say this was a hundred percent on me. I told them to brief this way. Don't worry about it. Brief to your lowest common denominator, brief to your machine gunners. And they're like, okay. And sure enough, the commanding officer came up, he sat through the brief and to his credit, he was like, that was the, those are the best briefs we've had. I actually understand what's happening. I'm like, that's the goal. So

• 47:29Jocko Willink?

  that's what we need to do. Don't over supervise, don't over inspect. And, and when people make mistakes, just make some little adjustments. Tell them what the goal is and we're going to be all right.

• 47:41Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I'm just cracking up, listening to you tell these stories and just kind of putting my version of that in my experience. But I think also in a leadership role, doesn't matter if you're in the military, doesn't matter if you're in the private sector and whether you're training or real world.

• 47:55Dave Berke?

  You also have to know what matters. You gotta know what really matters and what really doesn't. And something we saw in the military that I know transfers over would drive people nuts is if you're in a key leadership role and you're getting this brief and you make a comment about the font, guess what? Those people all downstream of you, they're going to obsess over the font. So if it really doesn't matter, don't say anything about it because what your people are really trying to do is make you happy. They're trying to give you what they think you want. And if you're the guy that wants to think out loud, go, boy, you know, courier is way better than times, isn't it? Every single slide is now going to get reviewed, three layers downstream of someone trying to make sure, oh, Dave's real obsessive about the font.

• 48:39Dave Berke?

  Even if you're not, but if you, if you want to make a point of that, if you decide to bring that up, your people are going to try to satisfy you. That's what they're trying to do. So be real careful about what matters and don't talk about the things that don't matter because they're going to hear you and they're going to want to fix that when in your mind, it, it isn't even an important thing, but when you, once you say it, it's out there. That's what people are going to, we saw that in the military all the time. It's, oh, this, uh, we're briefing this general. He's real big on, uh, on, on spacing. And I bet you if you grab that general, go, hey, general, um, we have to spend three hours fixing this spacing on this brief. Do you want us to do that? He would say, no. Where did you even get that? But it, he made a comment or it came out and.

• 49:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the worst thing is you've got people that are focused on that instead of focusing on a, a mission.

• 49:18Dave Berke?

  Totally.

• 49:19Jocko Willink?

  And a good plan and contingency plans. So.

• 49:22Dave Berke?

  All the time.

• 49:24Jocko Willink?

  So be careful of that.

• 49:27Jocko Willink?

  Number six, keep the troops informed. Telling them what, how, and why builds their confidence. This was an interesting, an interesting little twist on that, right? Builds their confidence. First of all, lets us know the importance of people being confident, being confident in the plan. And, and look, when you, when you know what you're doing, but you don't know why, that's a problem for your confidence. You don't even know why you're doing it. So you're just, I don't know. Uh, if you know why you're doing something, but you don't know what you're doing it for, that's the same thing. So keeping people informed, a lack of info, and this was, this was one of the reasons why I was very happy. Look,

• 50:10Jocko Willink?

  and I was very lucky in my career. I was very lucky in my career that I did my career the way I did. And I'm not saying that there's a bunch of better ways to do it because there certainly are. But for me, what, what was very nice for me, one of the huge lessons that I learned was how horrible it feels not to know what's happening.

• 50:30Jocko Willink?

  And the team normally doesn't know what you think they know.

• 50:38Jocko Willink?

  They don't. You think they know stuff, they don't know it. You think that they understand things, they don't. It's not because they're not stupid, it's because they don't have the visibility on the things that you have the visibility on. So it's, it's very important to tell people what's going on. And by the way, and this is, it's so crystal clear in the SEAL teams, but it's crystal clear to anyone else, but the SEAL teams was just so, so epic at doing this. Anything that the troops didn't know, they were going to make up their own freaking rumor. And it was going to be like the worst possible case scenario every single time. Uh, you know, oh, the, we're heading back early. Oh, we're heading back from this trip early. You know, you're probably going because the aircraft got rescheduled and so you're going to head back early.

• 51:22Jocko Willink?

  People are like, oh no, see our platoon's getting disbanded, you know, we, whatever. They just go wild. So when you don't tell people what's going on, they're going to make it up. And that's going to be bad. And it, and one of the worst feelings in the world is to not know what's happening in, as part of a team. And it, look, this doesn't mean you have to submit a 19-page PowerPoint brief, especially if you can get people the context and the context, you know, if every day or every couple of days, you're giving the context of, or people have the context. Now my, my brief doesn't have to be that long. It's like, hey, Kerry, we're actually going to move to this position. You're like, okay, cool. Cause I know that here's where we were, here's where we're going. If I just, you don't know, have any context and I tell you, we're moving here.

• 52:08Jocko Willink?

  I have to actually take now 20 minutes to explain how we got to the point where we're going to go there.

• 52:15Jocko Willink?

  So keep that in mind.

• 52:19Jocko Willink?

  Number seven, the harder the training, the more the troops will brag.

• 52:26Jocko Willink?

  The harder the training, the more the troops will brag.

• 52:31Jocko Willink?

  Clearly, this is seen in the military and almost to a detriment, of course, because people you can put people through so much training and they can start to brag so much, they start to believe it. Leif always talks about the fact when we started tasking a bruiser and we're working together and we were going doing extra. We were coming in early in the morning. We were staying later at night. We were doing extra iterations of the training that we were being told to do. The training cadre would leave and we'd stay there and do more. And the initial take was like, we're doing this extra work. That was the kind of initial take. And sure enough, as we got better, as we got more squared away, as we started getting, you know, huge

• 53:17Jocko Willink?

  compliments from the training cadre, all of a sudden that that bitching turned to bragging, which was pretty, which was pretty cool. And

• 53:28Jocko Willink?

  it's, the thing is though, there's a speed bump that you have to get over. Right? There's a speed bump. There's a, there's a point in time. There's an intersection of time where you're working harder, but you're not seeing any benefits from it. You're working harder, but no one really else can see it. You're working hard. You're doing extra, but there's no real benefit. And you gotta, that's a speed bump. And so you're going to get people being negative. This, we're going to work extra. We're going to do, come in early. We're going to stay there. That is a thing that you're going to have to overcome and get to the point where all of a sudden, oh, we just crushed this block of training. We just got huge, you know, compliments to our commanding officer about our performance in land warfare or whatever. And so you've got to get over that speed bump.

• 54:13Jocko Willink?

  So that the bragging can start and the pride can start. And then what you got to be careful of is you got to be careful that that pride doesn't get so big that people think, oh, you know, we don't need to do anymore. We don't need to do this anymore. So. Keep that in mind and keep yourselves in check. You know, luckily, we had friends in other task units because it got, it got pretty bright, the, the kind of, the, the chest sticking out in tasking cruiser got a little bit much. And, you know, we'd get like some of our friends in other task units would be like, you know, oh, BTF, you know, we're like, okay, we need to back off a little. Hey, chill out everybody, you know, so just, just, just keep it in check a little bit. But there's

• 54:58Jocko Willink?

  a speed bump you got to get over. That's a real thing.

• 55:01Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and I think there's a connection too to the previous comment you made about the why is it that hard training, especially when they start to make the connection of why hard training is important. If they know why they're doing it, they're, your people will have so much more resilience and be able to tolerate so much more hard training. And if you're just out for just training hard because that's how you are, and they can't make any connection to all this extra time, all this extra work, that it doesn't lead to something, you will run into a problem. But if you can connect that why, and then go, oh, this real world thing was so much easier. Now, the willingness to work hard and practice or work hard in training or put in an extra time because they know why they're doing it, makes it so much easier down the road.

• 55:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no doubt. Like you said, going with the, the previous point, keep the troops informed. If you're not informing the troops and you're just kicking the crap out of them on a normal basis, it's not, there's not going to be any pride. There's just going to be negativity. So be careful of that. Number eight, enthusiasm, fairness, and moral and physical courage. Four of the most important aspects of leadership. Isn't it interesting? Enthusiasm. Out of the gate enthusiasm. Man, you know why that is, in my opinion? Because that is so infectious to everybody else. And when you're enthusiastic about something,

• 56:24Jocko Willink?

  when someone on the team is enthusiastic, that can just, that can change the, the attitude of everyone on the team. If you as the leader enthusiastic, it's definitely going to help. If you as the leader are not enthusiastic about something, it's a disaster and everyone's going to be.

• 56:42Jocko Willink?

  bummed out to be doing whatever, having a good time with stuff and being enthusiastic. That's something, and you know what's cool? You can fake that. You can fake that all day long. I did. I'd be like, this is some dumb shit. Hey, let's rock and roll. Like, you know what I mean? You gotta just sometimes call it, man. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be fired up for this. I'm gonna take it to the next level. Watch, let's go. And then you're just having fun. And pretty much you, you fool everyone else, then you fool yourself and you're having a good time. Let's do it. Let's rock and roll. Fairness, clearly, clearly gotta be fair about what you're doing. And then moral and physical courage. You know what's, what's interesting on these two, I was thinking about it.

• 57:23Jocko Willink?

  You would think that moral courage would be the easier thing to have. Because you're not under the threat of physical harm, right? Because normally I think physical courage, I think you're risking some sort of physical injury. But, but I think most of the time, we, we see, I think we more often see a failure of moral, moral courage than physical courage. Why is that? And I think it basically boils down to, most of the time with moral courage, you have time to think about it. And physical courage, you're like, oh, there's something going on. I need to get in there. I'm gonna go do this right now. And, and even talking to guys that have done like incredibly courageous thing.

• 58:08Jocko Willink?

  I remember Mike Thornton was on the podcast, Medal of Honor recipient, Vietnam SEAL. And I said, we know, were you scared when you were getting ready to, I forget what it was. When you were getting ready to run across this beach that's being, hey, you know, just darted with machine gun fire and grab your buddy that you thought was dead? Were you, were, were you scared? Did you hesitate? He's like, no, I didn't think about it all. I just had to go. So he didn't have time to think about it. You know, it's just like, that's what, this is what I'm doing. I'm doing it now. And there's no time to think about it. Moral courage is like you have time to weigh out what's gonna happen and what the consequences are gonna be. And what are people gonna think? And what are you gonna think? And how's it gonna feel?

• 58:49Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's why oftentimes the moral courage can be harder to muster up because you have time to think about it, which is generally not fun.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  In the team dynamic, you know, moral courage in a, in a team, especially if there's like social proof against you, right? The rest of the team thinks one thing and you think, you know, you're being morally courageous and that's not what the team thinks. And that can put some, some pressure on you as a individual now against the team and, and your views versus theirs. That's a little different dynamic as opposed to moral courage as an individual. I'm, I'm gonna do the right thing because that's the right thing to do. Um, but you throw that in the team dynamic, it gets a little, little more difficult.

• 59:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, you better have and build really good relationships with people. That way you don't get yourself into a predicament, right? The, the predicament that you get yourself into is, you know, Dave does something that's a little bit wrong, but I'm not, I don't really know him that well. And I'm like, well, you know, I don't really want to say anything. And then I basically now have said, hey, you're cool. That what, what you did is cool. And now he does something a little bit further outside the box of what he should be doing. And now I'm like, wait a second. Now this is, this is going outside the box, but I still don't, can't say anything to Dave about it. I haven't preempted anything. And now Dave goes further outside the box. So by the time I'm like, gonna say something, well, now I've known about the four things that he did that were outside the box. I'm culpable as well

• 1:00:17Jocko Willink?

  now. So now all of a sudden I gotta, it's gonna be, I totally screwed myself. Whereas if I see Dave leaning outside the box and go, hey, Dave, hey, bro, what are you doing? Well, what are you doing with this? He's like, well, you know, something we can get away with. And I go, ah, man, would you really like that to be on the cover of, you know, the newspaper? He's like, well, yeah, maybe not. I mean, and look, I trust you and you trust me, but what about this guy over here and that guy over there? And they're all gonna know what's happening. This doesn't seem like a smart move, man. So just having a, it just like, just like I always say about hard conversations, that earlier you have that conversation, the easier it's gonna be. You know, I, that's something that, uh, Leif talks about, you know, I said, there, there's no coverups in tasking a bruiser. There's no coverups. They're not covering anything up. If something happens, we're gonna tell

• 1:01:01Jocko Willink?

  everyone what happened. If, you know, if somebody gets shot, something, something goes down, there's no coverups. This is what we're doing. And right there, everyone kinda goes, okay. Like, I guess that's the way it's gonna be. And there's no, there's no, you start stepping outside the box and it's like, wait, wait a second. I already told you this.

• 1:01:20Jocko Willink?

  So it makes the easy, it makes the hard conversation easier out of the gate. Cause everybody kinda knows, oh, Jaco said there's no cover ups. Okay, well, that we know where he stands. Got it. And we won't try and, you know, push the envelope. And when we do push the envelope a little bit, we're getting, we're getting pushed back in there real quick. So I think that will help you with your moral courage. Number one, having relationships with people. Number two, have the hard conversations earlier. Cause that way you don't put yourself in that freaking terrible predicament. We're like, uh, Dave's embezzled freaking $380,000 from whatever. You know, you're like, bro, what are you doing? And it's too late because I knew about it, but now I'm culpable. So let's not get there.

• 1:02:06Jocko Willink?

  Moral courage is easier earlier. Let people know where you stand.

• 1:02:14Jocko Willink?

  Number nine. Showmanship, a vital technique of leadership.

• 1:02:21Jocko Willink?

  One of the things that isn't, isn't about face. I guess Colonel Glover Johns was like a crack shot. It's a super accurate shot. And he would walk down the range and like, let me see your rifle, son. And he'd say, you got a quarter on you and he'd have him throw a quarter up in the air and he'd shoot the quarter. And these were like prized possessions to have a quarter that was shot by Glover Johns. These are the kind of things that he did.

• 1:02:51Jocko Willink?

  So that's something that, you know, something that is good to be able to, to show people that you got something. I mean, the SEAL teams being able to shoot, move and communicate is a good thing, you know? You, you gotta be a good shot. You don't want to be a loser shot.

• 1:03:08Jocko Willink?

  You know, I was definitely never the best shot. I was usually fast. I was pretty fast out of the holster. So I could do well in a speed shooting, but then, you know, you get out some, uh, the, my accuracy wouldn't be as good as like our really good shooters and guys were freaking really good. But shoot, move and communicate, you know, are you in good shape? Can you, hey, if you're lagging, if you're in a leadership position, you're lagging on a patrol. Like you need your weight, you can't carry your weight. That's a problem, right? That's a problem. If you don't know how to work your radio, that's a problem. These are just like little things, right? And honestly, jujitsu is pretty good little showmanship thing, you know, you wanna roll?

• 1:03:49Jocko Willink?

  Hey, it's kind of a, kind of an issue to work with, you know?

• 1:03:54Jocko Willink?

  And I've, I've, man, when I talk about, I was on, I was on the academy the other day and, and I brought this up. I brought this up, this idea of showmanship and when to actually say, let me show my boss how good my team is. Like sometimes you gotta do things like that. And it very counter to what I say 99% of the time, which is, hey, you work hard. Don't worry about the, don't worry about who sees it. But sometimes all of a sudden you're thinking, well, if we don't, if the boss can't see what we're doing, we're not gonna get these extra funds. We're not gonna get this extra personnel. How do I set this up so my boss can actually see, so I can take care of the team better? So there are times when showmanship is gonna play a role in you being able to take care of your team better.

• 1:04:39Jocko Willink?

  That happens. How much of, how much showmanship did you do flying an F-18 at the Tom Gun School?

• 1:04:47Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that ability to, to be a little bit of a showman is, is, I mean, it's important a bunch of ways. Even you were just talking a minute ago, you're talking about enthusiasm and you're like, hey, what's cool about that is you can fake it. And that even there's a little bit of showmanship of you were gonna present yourself as if the situation that we're in, no matter what it is, it's totally awesome. This is gonna be a blast. We're gonna, we're gonna whatever. And it's really not that hard to even pretend to be interested in some, interested in something as opposed to walking in like,

• 1:05:20Dave Berke?

  okay, here we go. And how instantaneously you can set the tone. And if you in the back of your mind recognize that part of being a showman is the people are gonna follow, they're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna reflect that back to you. They're gonna guide off your behavior and whatever you, you show them, they're gonna show them back that showmanship of how your attitude is gonna be towards anything. And how quickly you can commandeer half your team's attitude just by showing that this is gonna be fun or a good time. And even if they know you're faking it, they get on board.

• 1:05:50Dave Berke?

  The idea that you have to kind of play the game a little bit and sort of act a little bit as in a leadership role and how easy it is to do that is such an overlooked thing.

• 1:06:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and as you were saying that I broke something down and I realized something about myself that is a tactic, technique and procedure that's probably very important and it's something that I've probably done my whole career.

• 1:06:14Jocko Willink?

  I'm not going to rely on being a good actor. I'm not going to be even rely on faking it. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna figure out in my own head how this makes sense. How how this is make sense for me to be able to do what I'm gonna do to the nth degree. Like, I can tell you, here's one. When I was going to college,

• 1:06:36Jocko Willink?

  I didn't want to work. I didn't want to do these, read this book and write this paper, do this, all this stupid stuff. I turned it into a competition in my head against the teacher. I was fighting against the teacher. I wanted to know more than teachers. I made that in my head where I was like, oh, I'm gonna crush this teacher. They're not, they're not gonna ask me one question that I don't know the answer to. That's not happening. And so I turned it into a competition in my head that was fun, but I do the same thing like if my platoon got tasked with doing something stupid, I'd be like, oh, guess what? I'd turn it into a game in my head that I really did want to win and I really wanted a platoon to win. So I'd be like, oh, guess what? We got tasked with doing this stupid hydrographic reconnaissance. We're gonna take it so seriously that the that the command is gonna be like, oh, my God. We're gonna leave an impression on them from doing a hydrographic reconnaissance that they're gonna think

• 1:07:21Jocko Willink?

  we're the most squared away guys ever. Watch this. And all of a sudden, instead of, I would truly believe that. I would, I'd be like, hell, yeah. So I, I think that was my tactic and my technique was to truly find what was good about some situation and completely focus on that 100%. Because then, then I'm not trying to, because, you know, I always say you can smell, you can smell. Intent has a smell, right? So if I'm like, well, this is a stupid hydrographic reconnaissance, but I'm going to pretend like it's good. Guys are going to smell that. But if I go, hey, they're making us do a hydro. We're gonna, we're gonna blow their minds when they get this chart that we give them and we're going to give it to them. And all of a sudden I was like, hey, well, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:06Jocko Willink?

  Like they're going to want to test everyone else. They're going to give all the other hydro to the other platoons because they're going to know, we know what's up. Where our goal is to make us never get tasked with a hydro again because they see that we know how to do it so well. Boom. And all of a sudden everyone's amped up. And that's what I did probably more than anything else. I remember I did that at Officer Candidate School. At Officer Candidate School, you have to follow all these rules. And one of them is speaking in a ballistic tone, which means you have to yell everything. And how would just, I, I told my whole class, I'm like, when you, because you had to do it to the senior, uh, the classes above you, the senior classes, you had to, you were supposed to talk in a ballistic tone to them. And I said, and it was kind of annoying. And I said, you should be so loud, we're going to be so loud that it's going to annoy

• 1:08:51Jocko Willink?

  them. And also just like you can see Carrie smiling, you're smiling like that all of a sudden became fun. We were trying to be so loud when we were talking to the senior classmen that it was annoying, it wasn't annoying to us, it was annoying to them. And that's exactly what we did. As a matter of fact, one time we were all lined up to buy, they would sell us candy bars, right? And so my class is lined up with the senior classes selling us cokes and candy bars to make money so they can make a T-shirt or something like this. And you, and they're selling from this little closet thing. And I had, I said, hey, when you guys go in there, you go ballistic. And so sure enough, there's 50 or 60 people in my class by the 25th person, the, the

• 1:09:32Jocko Willink?

  upper classman like steps out in the hallway, attention candidates, when you get in this office, you are not to sound off in a ballistic tone. And what did I do? I stepped out, I was like, you know, uh, Officer Candidate Willink requests permission to speak. Like what? I'm like, you know, uh, according to the freaking rulebook seven to nine, we are supposed to maintain ballistic tone at all times. And they, they cowered to it. They were like, fine. And so we just went in there and screamed our head off, gave them all headaches.

• 1:10:08Jocko Willink?

  So I'm gonna take something like that. I'm gonna find a way to make this fun and good. And I think that might be a more reliable tool than my acting ability, which I can't really count on.

• 1:10:21Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and it's not even that hard. You even said it inside there. You're like, watch this. That's showmanship. It's like, hey, you want to give me that thing? Watch this. And yeah, I think, you know, obviously the semantics of the words, you want to be careful with that. You don't want to fake anything in terms of, hey, I don't really believe this, but I'm gonna do it. You gotta find the truth that's inside there. But if there's something that's just like, hey, we gotta do this thing. Watch this. And how quickly people rally around and then get on board and it gets done, it's good to go and you move on. And it's not that big of a deal.

• 1:10:52Jocko Willink?

  Hell, when I was going through BUDs in third phase, I would, me and my swim buddy would voluntarily get wet and sandy. And eventually they, the instructors would be like, why are you getting wet and sandy? We'd be like, to get harder, to be harder. And they didn't want us to get wet and sandy on like the electric blasting range. So you're doing demolition on a range and they want you to be dry and stuff. And we, they ended up securing our class, saying, you guys are not allowed to get wet and sandy. And then we got wet and sandy and slept outside. And they were like, what are you doing? And like, just trying to get harder. So little psychological game. We're gonna have fun with this. That's what we're doing. Rock and roll. Uh, showmanship, keep it in mind.

• 1:11:37Jocko Willink?

  Number 10. The ability to speak and write well to essential tools of leadership. Here's the thing that I think people underestimate. You can get better at both these things. And as a matter of fact, you can get insanely better at both these things. Writing for sure. A one tip out of the gate, if you're not much of a writer right now, write and then read what you wrote aloud. See what it sounds like. And you're gonna see that you suck. You suck at writing. When you write something and you read it aloud and you know, this sounds awful. Yep, that's a great first indicator. And the more you practice and then find somebody to read it for you and critique it. And you will get better at writing. You will become more clear. You will become more concise.

• 1:12:22Jocko Willink?

  You'll become a better writer over time. And that will, that will reflect in the way that you speak as well. And also, the more you speak to groups, the more you speak aloud. That's one of the reasons why they had you do that at OCS. That's why you had to yell everything. Cause they wanted you to get confident in your voice and get confident in thinking and speaking quickly. And the, the way the drill instructor told us, he said, you know, you, you young officers are going to be on the bridge of a vessel, of a warship, and it's going to be going in the wrong direction. And you need to confidently say, hey, we need to shift course right now. You can't, you can't be shy about it when you speak. So those are things that you can definitely get better at. Your ability to speak and write well.

• 1:13:07Jocko Willink?

  And look, you're going to have some natural capability. Some people are more articulate and good at speaking and public speaking, just naturally. They're just naturally good at it, just like some people have good hand eye coordination. Some people have a good singing voice. Some people can write well. Some people can, are better at writing out of the gate than some other people. It's just the way it is. But you don't have to accept that that's where you need to be. And that's where you're going to stay. You don't have to. You can truly get better at both of these things. And these are essential tools of leadership, essential tools of leadership. And really, if you think about it, that's what leadership actually boils down to. Is you're trying to get other humans to understand what you're saying. That's, that's, that's what you're doing.

• 1:13:49Jocko Willink?

  So if you can't articulate things well in both spoken word and written word, you're going to have problems.

• 1:13:57Jocko Willink?

  Did they train you guys actually in the Marine Corps to speak? Or was it just, oh JT, because you're briefing this and you're briefing that?

• 1:14:04Dave Berke?

  Yeah, my recollection for up until like Top Gun level stuff, they weren't giving you explicit stuff on speaking, but there was a lot of work on, on writing. And you know, in the writing there was, I think they called it, was it like a standard naval letter format? There was like a technique of how to do that. And there was a, there was a book or a publication or like a, a guide on how to do that. And you know, that wasn't like the most, you know, creative or, or unique way to do it. But there was a technique to that, especially if you were trying to run some paperwork up to get an approval of something. There was a way to do it.

• 1:14:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Dave Berke?

  And there's a lot of, a lot of teaching on that. The natural tendency thing that you, you spoke to made me think of something is it was really obvious, especially early in the career. The people that had, the, the speaking part specifically, the ones that were just naturally good speakers. And how drawn you were to those guys. You'd look at them like, damn, that was a really good brief. I don't even remember exactly what he's saying, but he said it really well. And how powerful that capacity is. And to your point that if you weren't good at it, if you're not careful, you'll convince yourself that, oh, I'm just not good at this. But dude, you could get good at speaking by just practicing and role playing, rehearsing and listening to yourself. And how important, how important it is to sound good when you're talking. And look, if you've got that natural capacity, that's awesome. Congrats.

• 1:15:24Dave Berke?

  That's a good thing for you. It's going to help you. But if you don't have that, you could improve on that like quickly if you, if you spend some time on it.

• 1:15:32Jocko Willink?

  Somebody sent me a clip the other day. It was one of my old, uh, one of my old bosses. And he was getting interviewed and he was like, you know, the guy says, oh, you know, I, uh, did you ever work with Jaco? And he's like, yeah, he would, he worked for me for whatever, 18 months. And he goes, oh, do you have any good stories about Jaco? Like, what was he like? And he goes, he was the thing, he was the thing that I'm going to tell you and this is probably going to let you down. The thing that I'll tell you about Jaco is that he was a really, really excellent writer. And I was like, okay, that's cool. Uh, fair enough. There's something that you can go to in the Navy. It's called Master Training Specialist and it's where you learn to kind of become an instructor. And they used to send BUDS instructors to that school and the, and I had friends that went to it and they would have to brief, you know,

• 1:16:16Jocko Willink?

  they'd have to teach something to a class. I never went to that school. I think that's the closest that you could get to some kind of a formal training for speaking in the, in the Navy, or at least in the SEAL teams. Maybe there's more, I don't know.

• 1:16:31Jocko Willink?

  And speaking of, I don't know, if you're speaking, try and speak about things that you know about. And if you don't know about them, you say, I don't know. This is, this is one of the biggest, uh, ways to level up in your speaking ability is when someone says, "Hey Jaco, can you explain the flux capacitor on this engine?" I go, "Actually, I'm not familiar with flux capacitors. You'll have to check with Dave Berke on that one." Right? And, and just knowing that I can say that about any subject that I don't understand well enough is such a liberating feeling. And oftentimes people think, well, if I'm, I'm standing up in front, I better know the answer. You don't need to know the answer to anything.

• 1:17:15Jocko Willink?

  You're, you're a human being. You're not a computer. And by the way, whatever needs to be found out can be Googled and figured out really quickly. So you don't need to say, "Hey, well, you know, that's an interesting question. Why don't you Google it? And get back to me with the answer." Right? There's no reason to think you have to know the answer to everything. You don't. So let that be the first thing to level you up. And quite frankly, now that I think about it, I got taught this when I was, when I was getting ready to do my Trident review board to see if I was going to get my Trident. The Master Chief was like, "If you don't know something, say you don't know it. Don't try and bullshit us. We'll smash you." And you're like, "Okay, fair enough." And that's a great lesson to learn in life.

• 1:17:56Jocko Willink?

  Everyone can see through it. So, speaking, writing, practice them, you'll get better. Speaking of speaking and writing, this is an interesting one. Uh, number 11, "There is a salient difference between profanity and obscenity. While a leader employs profanity tempered with discretion, he never uses obscenities."

• 1:18:22Jocko Willink?

  We're talking about some semantics and splitting some hairs here. So from the dictionary, profanity is blasphemous or obscene language or a swear word. So it's the word. Whereas obscenity is the state or quality of being obscene, obscene behavior, language, images, and extremely offensive word or expression. So they're, they're definitely a bunch of crossover there. I, that was one, that's like the dictionary definition. The FCC, the Federal Communications, what is it? Federal Communications Commission, maybe? They had obscene content is not protected by the First Amendment. And it's by obscene content is never allowed on FCC programming. It's not allowed.

• 1:19:07Jocko Willink?

  Uh, there's a three-pronged test. So number one is it appeals to the per, an average person's sexual interest. So that alone can make it obscene. Depict or describe sexual contact in a patently offensive way. And the key point here is lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. So that's what obscene means, according to the FCC. Profane, and this is something that can make it onto the FCC sometimes. Grossly offensive language that is considered a public nuisance. So you could say a swear word as long as you weren't using the context of something

• 1:19:51Jocko Willink?

  offensive. And the way I, I guess the way I try to simplify this for myself is that using profane words sometimes is okay, but not using them like in the actual context that the word means.

• 1:20:12Jocko Willink?

  I think I got it. I'm not 100% sure. We did a whole freaking podcast, like one of the earliest podcasts we did was about swearing.

• 1:20:21Jocko Willink?

  And yeah, so my opinion on swearing is there is, look, if you're swearing all the time, hey, if you're swearing all the time and you're in the locker room, you're at the team area, you're with your buddies, whatever, not that big of a deal, of course. You start standing up in front of a group of a team that you're leading and you're swearing a bunch is not going to work. It's not going to help. It's not going to, it doesn't come across well. And if you develop your vocabulary, hopefully you won't need to swear. And if you're swearing all the time, when the time comes where you do need to swear, it's not powerful. So that's, that's what I'll stick with. I don't know. Dave, any opinion on that one?

• 1:21:01Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I mean, I think

• 1:21:05Dave Berke?

  I'm kind of contemplating what I remember people, how often people swore in the military.

• 1:21:13Dave Berke?

  And so when I got up to Top Gun, like there's no swearing up there and what they, what they really, really wanted to impress on you was they wanted you to be professional. And it's really kind of hard to make the connection between just, you know, swear words and professionalism. But I think as I'm thinking, I'm hearing you talking, I'm actually thinking about a little bit of, of the logic behind that. I think something you said was kind of really important was

• 1:21:41Dave Berke?

  there was this idea, and listen, I was up there like predated like social media, predated phones that had cameras like it. But there was this idea that you are always being watched. And what they were trying to impress upon you is that when you wear a Top Gun patch and you're in a squadron space, whether you're an instructor or a former instructor, that patch is going to draw attention to you. I bet it's very much like a trident. You see someone with a trident and look, you're going to immediately get some cred. I don't care who you're, you're going to get looked at. And they're going to kind of be like, all right, let's, what's this guy all about? And if you have a trident, I imagine in, in the Navy and the military service, that symbol has meaning. And what they wanted to impress upon us is that you are going to be judged at a higher standard, a higher level than

• 1:22:25Dave Berke?

  you have ever been because that patch that you had, and they wanted to impress upon you the need to be a professional as often as you can. And I think the point you made is When for whatever reason I chose to use a profanity, it had much more impact than my, my old methodology, whereas I was, you know, pre-professional was I just in the squadron of space just, I don't even know how often I swore.

• 1:22:52Jocko Willink?

  Going on.

• 1:22:53Dave Berke?

  So I think that idea that you were being judged to a particular standard, and that's true. Listen, what you want from your people in your organization, they want to feel the obligation to represent that organization well. Your team, your company, that image, whatever it might be. And you can't do that well if every other word is just some F-bomb because you don't know how to communicate in another way. So I think the way you described it is really good, the nuance of that. And also the idea that you are representing something that is important. And if you don't know how to communicate without using those words, you're not going to represent the community or that your team very well at all.

• 1:23:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I, when my kids were little, I never swore in front of my kids, never swore in front of my wife or very seldom. And then I brought my, I brought my son out to, to, you know, I would bring him out sometimes to training, you know, when he was little. And he was at that age where, you know, maybe he, maybe he, he knew, like he knew swears, right? You're hearing him at school and it's like, oh my gosh. So he knew swears, but he never heard me say any of the first time you heard me debrief like a full tune. You could see his eyes like just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. He was like amazed. It was like a totally different scenario.

• 1:24:08Jocko Willink?

  I got asked at the last muster. I, I forget the context of the question, but the question was basically what, what does professionalism mean to you? And I was talking to Jason and Steve about it. They were backstage and I got this question. They were kind of like looking at each other. Ooh, what is it? And they were like, oh, it's hair, uniforms being on time. And I'm like thinking about it and then I say professionalism to me is you put the mission above yourself.

• 1:24:32Jocko Willink?

  And they were like, oh, that's a good answer because look, why do you have a crappy uniform? Because you care more about your own time. Why, why do you show up late? Oh, it's because you care more about yourself than you do about the mission. Why do your, why is your haircut out of regs? Oh, it's because you don't care about the, it's like, it's a, it's a concise way of saying that. And that's the same thing here. Like if you're going to act professional and you're just dropping F-bombs the whole time.

• 1:25:02Jocko Willink?

  You know, who, who's recording you? Who's listening to you? How does that sound? And is it appropriate for all audience? Is it appropriate sometimes to swear? Hell, yes. Yes, it is. And you get into a platoon and you're trying to make them understand something. It's going to be cleared hot. But next thing you know, and this was interesting about the SEAL teams, next thing you know, you're briefing whatever, some civilians about something and you just have to be professional.

• 1:25:32Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Next one, number 12.

• 1:25:37Jocko Willink?

  Have consideration for others.

• 1:25:42Jocko Willink?

  Isn't this an amazing statement? It's such a big blanket statement. Subordinates, superiors, friends, foes, have consideration for others. And if you want to really, if you want to, if you want, if I can apply some Jaco stretch semantics to this. Consideration is also, let me understand what their perspective is. Let me understand how this is going to make them feel. Let me understand how this is going to impact someone else. And that's just, that's simple. Have consideration for others. Up and down the chain of command, across the chain of command. Competitors, allies, have consideration.

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  This is one of those things that I see right away. When there's a lack of it, you know? And it, I don't get bothered by a ton of stuff, but lack of consideration is one of those things that just it gets to me a little bit, you know, it's like, huh, how?

• 1:26:36Jocko Willink?

  Kaidal got that pet peeve going on over there.

• 1:26:39Speaker 01

  How do you not see it? You know, how are you not aware that, that there's just a total lack of consideration in the impact?

• 1:26:45Jocko Willink?

  Do you want to answer that question?

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  Please.

• 1:26:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the answer to that question is I'm more important than you. So I'll show up late and you'll wait on me and I won't bring the right gear and I can borrow yours. And I, whatever the case may be. That's all just me thinking I'm cooler and you don't really, you don't really matter as much as I do. I think that's where a true lack of consideration for others is. The only thing I consider is myself.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:11Jocko Willink?

  Bad move as a leader.

• 1:27:14Jocko Willink?

  Number 13, yelling detracts from your dignity. Take men aside to counsel them.

• 1:27:21Jocko Willink?

  Straightforward again, um, I think it's funny, you know, Leif said, has to say like, "Yo, Jaco looks like he yells. Do I look like I yell?"

• 1:27:34Jocko Willink?

  And then he always has to say, but he never yelled at me, right? And Leif will say, "I gave Jaco hundreds of opportunities or situations where I probably deserved to get yelled at," which is funny, but yeah, not yelling. I mean, think about where you're at. Think about how effective you are as a communicator if you get to a point where you're yelling at someone. Look, if I'm yelling at you to tell you to get away from the freaking edge of the building because you're about to slip, or what have, obviously, if I have to yell at you to get over the sound of machine gunfire, obviously, if I have to raise my voice so everyone in the room can hear me, that's not what we're talking about. But me yelling at you in front of the team is just stupid.

• 1:28:18Jocko Willink?

  And he's specific about like yelling at people in front of the group to berate them for a mistake that they've made. No, don't do it. And I'm going to say, "Don't do it. Just don't do it." What'd you write down over there, Dave?

• 1:28:32Dave Berke?

  Well, you've said something in the past, and I think there's an element to what he's saying that you can even take it a step further is, listen, yelling at somebody else in front of a whole bunch of other people, I can't, I cannot think of a time when that's okay. And I'm not talking about raising your voice to get a particular action because the sound is loud. I'm talking like, we're in the, we got the team, Jaco screwed something up, and I start yelling at Jaco. So I can't even imagine a scenario where that's okay. But you even talked about it too, like the times that you've had to yell at someone or raise your voice. I think the element that you've talked about that's so important is that you were aware of that. That was based on an escalation of a whole series

• 1:29:14Dave Berke?

  of other approaches that did not get the reaction, which is different than, yeah, Jaco, like, I just lost my temper. I just no longer had control of myself and I just started screaming at somebody. You know, even inside the idea of yelling, which...

• 1:29:30Dave Berke?

  On very rare occasions, there are some times that you're gonna have to do that, that you're still aware that you're doing that.

• 1:29:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:36Dave Berke?

  As opposed to just, well, you know, I just got a bad temper and that's just kinda how I am. So I can't control myself and I look back and go, wow, I shouldn't have done that. I didn't even realize I was doing, I totally lost control in a leadership role. And how important, I think, that story of even the few times in your career you've had to do that. You knew what you were doing.

• 1:29:54Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yep. I cannot think of any situation where I yelled without thinking about like, okay, I need to yell right now. And yeah, let's say you get a group, let's say your whole platoon's there and all of a sudden you get somebody that does something really stupid and it's an opportunity for everyone to see, hey, this can't happen. And obviously I haven't gotten that message across. Sure. I might dress someone down in front of everybody and I might yell. I really can't think of any times that I did that in my 20 year career that I off the top of my head, but.

• 1:30:25Dave Berke?

  And it's not gonna be on accident.

• 1:30:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:27Dave Berke?

  Cause you just lost control.

• 1:30:28Jocko Willink?

  No, no, that's not happening. So don't be yelling. Number 14. Understand and use judgment. No one to stop fighting for something you believe is right. Okay. This is where we might start to get derailed on some stuff. So first of all, it's interesting that he says, understand and use judgment. So there's a conjunction there. The first thing is just understand, which is an easy word to say, but it can be very difficult to do. So, so try and understand the situation. And the reason that he has to say this is because so often people do things without understanding what's happening. So he's telling you, understand, understand what's going on.

• 1:31:12Jocko Willink?

  That's what you have to do. And the same thing is use judgment. Do you think that someone would have to tell a leader to understand and to use judgment? No. Why does he have to say that in here? Cause people all the time neither understand nor use judgment.

• 1:31:27Jocko Willink?

  So be careful with those two. Now he says, no one to stop fighting for something you believe is right. And

• 1:31:39Jocko Willink?

  here's where I probably have the first maybe separation in understanding or separation in belief in what he's saying here. Maybe it's not, but.

• 1:31:56Jocko Willink?

  I think most of the time I'm not fighting for something I believe to be right because I don't really care if I'm right or not. And the reason I don't care if I'm right or not is because most things don't actually matter. That's why. So, so Dave believes we should do it one way. Dave's believes we should attack the target from the north. I believe we should attack it from the west and I'm going to fight about that. Most of the time it doesn't matter north or west. Doesn't, it just doesn't matter. Dave wants to invest $18,000 in this software system. I want to invest 12,000 in a different system. And guess what? It probably doesn't matter. There's some advantages to the 18,001. There's some advantage to 12,001. We don't

• 1:32:41Jocko Willink?

  really know how it's going to impact. We've never done this kind of interface before and I'm going to commit my relationship value, my, my leadership capital, like I'm going to commit all this stuff to, to me just thinking I'm going to be right. I'm going to argue. No, no, I'm not going to do that. It's just a stupid thing to do. So 99% of the time, these things that we're fighting for actually don't matter. Or you're fighting for something that's in the future that, that you don't know the actual outcome to. So that's most of the time for me. And that's a very powerful lesson, is you're sitting there thinking, but I want to do it my way and it doesn't matter. We should use this marketing company, not that marketing company. We should invest in this piece of equipment or that piece of equipment.

• 1:33:25Jocko Willink?

  I want to get this backhoe and not that backhoe. Guess what? It probably doesn't matter that much. And by the way, if it does matter that much, and there's a real reason, and I say, hey, Dave, the reason I like this backhoe better is it has the following capabilities that the backhoe you want to get done, done to have. It can do this, this, this, and this. It's this more efficient and boom. Does this make sense to you? If I can't articulate the reason why something is better, it's probably not worth arguing over. So there's your litmus test. Let's, let's put that one, write that one down. If you're having a hard time articulating why your plan is better than someone else's plan, your plan is probably not worth arguing

• 1:34:07Jocko Willink?

  over because it's too hard for you to clarify. The reason it's hard for you to clarify is because they're both basically the same thing. Or there's risk involved in both of those items.

• 1:34:19Jocko Willink?

  So this idea to know when you stop fighting for something you believe in, right? First thing, I'm gonna run this thing through a filter. That is so powerful that the filter is gonna filter out most of the arguments I'm gonna have with people. Because it doesn't really matter. Most things don't matter. Look, are there occasional things that matter? Yes, there are occasional things that matter. And when those things that matter, it's so easy to articulate why they matter. And it's so easy to sway people's opinions because the facts are there. So it doesn't turn into an argument. It turns into, hey, let me, let me ask you some earnest questions about what you think. And let me give you my perspective over here. And people see it.

• 1:35:02Jocko Willink?

  So I don't generally have to know when to stop fighting for something I believe in, right? Because I'm generally not fighting for it. And when I do, when I do need to approach somebody about something, all I need to do is ask them some earnest questions and they, the truth is revealed to them by them answering their own questions.

• 1:35:24Dave Berke?

  This is, I mean, there's a lot inside this and, and just trying to like imagine the affront to your ego. When someone says, stop fighting for what you think is right.

• 1:35:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:36Dave Berke?

  You're like, I will never stop fighting. And what this is probably from is someone who's observed hundreds of people sell all their leadership capital, all their credibility over something that literally does not matter. I was with a company, they were doing a workshop about picking a logo for their company. And they kind of narrowed it down to three different options. I looked at the three and they're like, they were all pretty good. One was like, eh, and the other two were like, mm, pretty good. And so sort of quickly it got to like, we're not gonna do B, but A and C are, they're good, they were both good. And you know what? You could make a case for A, you could make a case for C. Which tells me like,

• 1:36:20Jocko Willink?

  They're both good.

• 1:36:21Dave Berke?

  They're both good, which means it doesn't matter. But what we started to see was like, the A group and the C group are not gonna budge. And if you use this, the phrase like, hey, Jaco, I know you're supporting on A. I want you to stop fighting for what you think is right. If I say it like that, like, it's almost impossible for you to say, okay. But the part that you're emphasizing, which is so important is the idea that, It doesn't matter at how quickly you can get entrenched into something that you will sell every piece of credibility you have, which means your influence in the future can go to zero because you want the round logo and I want the square logo.

• 1:37:01Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And by the way, so you're taking all that, all that leadership capital and all that future influence and you're putting it all on the, you're pushing it all in, you're going all in on this thing that doesn't really even freaking matter. And, and, and a gamble because you look up in six months and like, hey, this logo, we're not getting the traction we want, but you put all in and now you look like an idiot. Instead of going, you know what, Dave? Yeah, we'll go with C. That looks, they're pretty close. Cool. Sounds good, man. I, I, I reserved all, I kept all my money to myself. I kept all my leadership capital. I kept all my future. In fact, I made, because I agreed with you, because I supported your plan, I got a little bit more. I took some more off the table. I actually grew my leadership capital in that moment.

• 1:37:45Jocko Willink?

  And now when we look up in six months and your logo that you picked isn't really getting the traction we wanted to, I get even more because I say, okay, well, you know, we tried it. Doesn't seem like we're getting the traction we want. Do you want to try this other logo now? Boom. And all of a sudden, and now my logo goes out and wins. I get even more leadership. It's like crazy. But we'll burn our bridges and throw away our leadership capital over, over, what's the word here? Fighting to build something we believe is right.

• 1:38:17Jocko Willink?

  It's, this is not the way to view the world. The way to view the world is that 99% of things don't matter. And then they're in the future. And look, if you come to me with a logo that's freaking stupid.

• 1:38:32Dave Berke?

  Totally.

• 1:38:33Jocko Willink?

  You know, I'm like, hey, Dave, that logo that you put together? He's like, oh, yeah. How do you like it? Dave, uh, just so you know, it, it's pretty much looks like a swastika, you know, but it's orange. And you're like, ooh. Or you, you know, like, okay, maybe we should not go with that, right? Okay. You're like, oh, I didn't even see that. Okay, great. You know, boom, we're done. Or, you know, you, you approach me, hey, Jocko, what do you think of this? Oh, Dave, it's a pentagram. Like, no, we're not going to use satanic ritual stuff or not. Okay, cool. You're like, got it. How did I not see that? Boom. So we're done. But you're like, it's a star, but you know, I want to show that we're, we're, we're, we're flipping over the star. Yeah, that's a pentagram, dude.

• 1:39:12Jocko Willink?

  So, so you see where we're going with this? The chances that you come to me with a logo that's unusable is almost, almost non-existent. And we want to fight about things that we quote, believe is right and it's not worth it. And you're throwing away leadership capital. And by the way, if there is something that's completely wrong and it is time to stand your ground because someone's doing something immoral, unethical, or illegal, then cool. That's where you hold the line, of course. If somebody wants to do something that is, you're morally against. Somebody wants to rip off a client and you're like, hey, we're not doing that. We're not doing that. It's like, okay. So we want to make, you know, put some product out there that's dangerous and it's, we've

• 1:39:56Jocko Willink?

  got some flaw in it, but you know what? Let's just sell it anyways. No, we're not doing that. That's all we're talking about. And if that happens, of course, then you, you, you take the right action and you don't back down.

• 1:40:07Dave Berke?

  And even in that case, what you need more than anything in those cases is leadership capital, is credibility, is a reputation of someone who only digs in on those. And if you're going to sell it all on round versus square or, or red versus blue on the logo, when those important times do come, nobody's going to listen to you. When it actually matters, they're not going to listen to you because they're so used to you saying, I am not giving up my position. It's logo A or death. Come on, man. So there's some human nature here. This guy's, you know, obviously he's seen of people willing to dig in on things that just don't matter. And then when it does matter, nobody's listening to you.

• 1:40:49Jocko Willink?

  At, at Echelon Front, you know, Jamie, our, our COO, she's told me like, if I push back against her like more than twice, she's like, she says to herself like, I'm wrong about this. I gotta go figure this something out. There's something, I, I'm wrong. She's like, if you're pushing back against me, if you ask me like three questions, I'm like, oh, there's something I don't see here. I'm wrong. I gotta go figure this out. And it's because 99% of the time, I'm like, yeah, it sounds good. Yep, go execute. Yep, sounds good. Yeah, that's a better plan than I had. Boom, boom, boom, boom. So when I say, pump the brakes, she's like, ooh, there's something wrong. As opposed to her thinking, oh God, he never likes anything. Oh, here we go. What do you know? How do you want to do it, John? It's like, no. Don't, don't back yourself into that corner.

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  That's that healthy sense of self doubt you've talked about before. I think that, you know, Jamie's a perfect example of where, you know, if you believe you're right, how often are you really believing that you're 100% right? If that's, if you're, if that's a pretty regular thing, you might want to check that, you know? I know I'm not right a lot of the time, you know? So, and if somebody else is giving you some feedback, maybe listen to that too, you know? And like Jamie, if, if she starts to get some feedback, she has that humility to say, what am I not seeing here? How can, you know, how can I solve this problem?

• 1:42:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Don't put yourself in that position. So there you go. That's I guess my first disagreement a little bit with, with Glover Johns here. Last couple of points here. Number 15, and this is another one that, okay, so number 15, discuss and argue your point of view until a decision is made and then support the decision wholeheartedly.

• 1:42:36Jocko Willink?

  So again, just using the term argue and saying argue your point of view, I'm not gonna need to argue my point of view because I'm not married to my point of view because the chances are you see something I don't see. The chances are I'm not 100% right. The chances are my idea is flawed. That's what the chances are. So I'm not going to quote argue my point of view until a decision is made. I don't need to. I might ask earnest questions. I might try and see your perspective. I might try and understand why. I might ask you why this is the best way, but I'm not quote arguing my point of view. Because what is my, is my subordinate's plan so freaking crazy?

• 1:43:18Jocko Willink?

  Is my boss's plan so totally insane that I need to completely argue against it? This is basically a run on of the last, the last statement. I don't need to argue because I'm not married to my plan because my plan could be wrong and it probably needs adjustments. And it, by the way, if it's so awesome and your plan sucks so bad, it's not, I don't have to argue it for very long because I go, hey Dave, your plan is to do this and if we do that, we're going to lose all this. And you go, oh, cool. What did you want to do? And I go, I want to do this. And you go, that sounds good.

• 1:43:54Jocko Willink?

  So we shouldn't have to quote argue now when a decision gets made. I am gonna do my damnedest to execute on that thing, but you know, I try and think of all my life and the times that I got told, you know what Jaco, what your points are taking, we don't care, go and execute this other thing that's the opposite of. I just can't think of situations where that happened.

• 1:44:21Jocko Willink?

  I just can't think of situations where people said, hey, shut up Jaco, do what I told you to do. That's it. And, and I'm thinking, oh, this is gonna have a terrible outcome. There's times where I've said, you know, this might be not, this isn't going to be quite as efficient, or this might take a little bit longer, or there might be a higher risk on this maneuver over here, but by doing that higher maneuver risk, we're going to save some, some speed and security over on this other side. So there's, I've never just like had an idiotic plan that I wasn't able to say, hey, boss, can I talk this through with you? Or hey, you know, subordinate, can you talk me through this so we can understand it better?

• 1:44:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:03Jocko Willink?

  I think that's pretty straightforward.

• 1:45:05Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I think there's again, some, some human nature inside there. I'm kind of picturing again, these scenarios that have played out in my life. As I'm hearing you talk about the explanation of this, this, this leadership attribute, this behavior you want to apply.

• 1:45:19Dave Berke?

  Top Gun, this happened a lot, this discussion, these debates on right or wrong, or how we should do something. And we would do these things called staff access, staff exercises. So class will be over, it's the 25 instructors, we'd lock the door and we would have debates over how we should do, we were very SOP heavy, we had standardization across the board. There was a way to do a lot of things, not everything, but a lot of things. And our job was to standardize it so we could teach it. And we would, at the end of each class, talk about what worked and what didn't, and what we needed to change. And there'd be different camps. There'd be one camp that said, we should do it like this, another camp that should do it like that. Now, what was interesting about that is it. They weren't like 90 10 where all this one camp is like this awesome plan this other camp has this awful stupid plan. They're actually both camps like damn those are

• 1:46:05Dave Berke?

  Two pretty good Those are pretty good plans. Yeah, those are pretty good ideas. I see the merits of that. I see the merits of this. And listen, we, we wanted, arguing is the wrong word because that has a kind of a negative tone, but like pretty healthy debate. Dudes go back and forth and they would, they would dig in to, to really make sure they was understood and, and it was managed by a guy who, who, who ran these meetings and he was called the standardization officer who, who facilitated like, all right, what, what are you thinking there Jaco? Why are we doing that? And I would capture those in notes and say, okay, what he's saying is this. Listen, in the end, there was a winning side and a losing side. In the end, we had to make a decision. So you have this group of people that believed in a certain approach. And in the end, we would pick a different approach.

• 1:46:44Dave Berke?

  Where the problem would come with sometimes is, is someone's ego would come into play. We'd then go implement this with a, a squadron or a class or something. And then I'd sit down and I'd go, hey, the way we're going to do this, uh, this problem, Jaco, we're going to do it like that. And you're like, why? And I'd say, well, listen, I actually didn't want to do it this way, but here's how we're going to do it. So that little need for me to still be right, for me to get my way and not accept the outcome, I would poison the reality of, and it's the part you said that's so important is so we don't really know if we knew there wouldn't be a debate. And so the only way to find out is actually go out there and do it. But rather than me say, hey, here's the reasons why A, B, C, and D. Let's go execute, get some good feedback. I'd say,

• 1:47:28Dave Berke?

  I didn't really want to do this. I actually think this is kind of dumb, but we're going to go do it anyway. Now, what are the chances if I take that approach that when we go execute, I'm really going to get the feedback to come back and go, hey, guys, we executed on this plan three times and look, it did not work. We need to make some changes. And go, okay, cool. Let's go back to the drawing board. I'm, I'll do that all day long. And we'd see it rarely, but we'd see guys go, well, I, I didn't get my way. So I'm not really, I'm not going to support this plan. I'm going to let you know that, yeah, we're going to go do this, but I think this is dumb. And there's no way that's going to work. So inside that of, hey, if you lose the debate, if you lose the argument, if you don't get your way. Unless you are convinced that the other side is there to destroy the company,

• 1:48:11Dave Berke?

  don't just agree with it. Get on board. Get on board and the best it'll work. And at worst, she'll come back and go, hey, man, hey, Jaco, we ran this a couple of times. There's some feedback here. We can make some tweaks and now I can take that plan like an influence and get a better outcome for the team.

• 1:48:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I think Jason Gardner at the muster was like, oh, what's the best plan? My plan, of course, that's where everyone thinks my plan's the best plan. And so then what we're talking about right now is we're talking about a situation where we got six in one and half dozen in the other, right? We got six in one and half dozen in the other. Okay, cool. Dave's got six. I'm saying half dozen. If we're having that hard of a time figuring out whether to go six or half dozen, guess what? They're both kind of equally valid. And guess what my default is? My default is, you know what, Dave? Sounds good. Let's go with your plan. Say, look, I'm thinking half dozen. You're thinking six. Let's go with your plan right now. And I'm going to execute, just like you just said, I'm going to execute it to the absolute

• 1:49:10Jocko Willink?

  best of my ability. That way we can see if it works or not. And by the way, as long as I didn't dig my heels in like a jackass. If I said, you know, you said your sign and I said, well, hey, what about this, Dave? And you said, yeah, I know, but most of the time and I go, well, okay, you know what? You know, it seems like yours covers the same thing for the most part. It's a little bit of a different direction, but let's, let's give it a shot. I'm down. And my leadership capital just went up and I don't look like an idiot. The person that looks like an idiot is like, no, my points are more important than your points. So my default mode, when we're in a 50, actually, my default mode is like, hey, we're going to go with Dave's plan, but certainly in a 50 50 situation, it's like, it doesn't matter. See, it still doesn't matter because as you first started talking through that, I was like,

• 1:49:54Jocko Willink?

  oh, so this is something that matters because you got this people saying this. But no, you can't satisfy both things. Well, I guess maybe you could find a compromise that you could, you could create, but in lieu of some kind of a compromise, you know, you either do this procedure or that procedure. Right? Well, when this happens, when you get this tail lock on your plane, you could do this or this, and there's some advantage to this and there's some advantage to that. Okay, they both have advantages. Guess what? Which one do you want to do, Dave? You want to do this one? Cool. We'll do that one for, we'll do, we'll do this one for now. Boom. So easy. So again, I don't have to argue my point of view because I'm not going to back myself into a corner. Cause I'm not going to give away my position. Cause I'm not going to be married to something that I don't know about.

• 1:50:37Jocko Willink?

  That, that we can't determine the impact of the future on. People want to bet so much on the future when we don't know what's going to happen in the future.

• 1:50:45Dave Berke?

  Yeah, it's crazy. And think about what I do to the relationship. If I do what you just said. And I go, hey, you know what? Honestly, dude, I came in coming with, with the plan of going, you know, six and I hear you want to go half dozen. Hey, let's go execute. And if I project in my mind, the next conversation we're going to have. I'm going to win on both because I'm going to come back and go, hey, dude. I did your plan, dude. It was awesome, man. We crushed it. That was awesome, man. Thank you for that feedback. The team did really well. And we're, it's awesome. Or I come back and go, dude, I ran with the half dozen plan, man. And we kind of got rolled a couple of times here. What are you seeing? Like, oh, I'm kind of seeing the same thing. But either way, we're good.

• 1:51:25Dave Berke?

  But if I don't take that approach, that next conversation about the future that we do not know. Is almost always going to have some sort of friction. There's going to be some argument. So if I can even just project in my mind, by going with your plan. I'm going to win no matter what, because I'm going to come back and go, dude, you're awesome. Great idea. Thanks, bro. Or I'm going to come back and go, dude, I'm still struggling. Can you walk me through this? We are not getting past these steps. And you're going to either go, hey, dude, we're having the exact same problem. So we might need to go back to the drawing board. Or, oh, hey, that's a great question. We did this, this and this. Either way, we're winning because the team, the team is winning and our relationship is stronger for it. And you see guys all the time just dig in.

• 1:52:04Jocko Willink?

  I very often see losing as a winning. And this is a classic situation. Oh, Dave, I was wrong. You were right. You're awesome. To me, I wrote about that in Leadership Strategy and Tactics. I'm like, hey, it gives me the opportunity to prove how humble I am. Because by the way, I'm running around trying to make calls, trying to make decisions and I'm, I'm the one that's having to put word out. And when all of a sudden Dave does something better, I go, hey, Dave, dude, awesome work, man. You were definitely right about it being a half dozen and not six. Sweet. That's an opportunity for me. And yet people see it as losing and they won't take it.

• 1:52:40Jocko Willink?

  So be careful of this one.

• 1:52:43Jocko Willink?

  Last one, pretty straightforward, stay ahead of your boss.

• 1:52:49Jocko Willink?

  Kind of brilliant, right? Stay ahead of your boss and, and stay ahead of the power curve. To me, stay ahead of your boss, another way of thinking about this is when it, when it comes to functioning as a human, think strategic and think long-term. That's how you stay ahead of your boss. You stay ahead of your boss by your boss says, there's a fire right now, put it out and you go, cool, got it, boss. And then you look to see where that next fire is going to be. It's as simple as that. It's as simple as that. Stay ahead of your boss.

• 1:53:17Jocko Willink?

  Make your boss look good. Again, leadership strategy and tactics, make, yeah, make your boss look good. What, what, what an incredible way to build a good relationship with your boss. What incredible way to build leadership capital with your boss. Make your boss look good. That's my goal. Do I want the credit? No, I want Dave Berke, my boss to get the credit. That's what I want. I want him to look awesome. You think Dave Berke's not going to take care of me? All day. So, once Dave Berke is taking care of me, guess what I can do? I can take care of my team and that's my mission. Well, now I can take care of my team. Now we can take care of the mission. And, and life is good. That's what we're doing.

• 1:53:56Dave Berke?

  And this is another thing that seems hard and it's not, it's just not hard. And if we spend less time lamenting everything wrong with our boss, you were talking about the OCD boss a couple, you know, minutes ago about, hey, I need to work for an OCD boss. Yeah, I remember and I immediately, this guy came to mind. And people hated working for him. They hated working for him. And look, I worked for him. It was not easy at first. I had to figure him out, but once I figured him out, it was super easy to work for him because I knew what he wanted. And I could stay ahead of him and I could anticipate the things that he needed. And if you just spend less time thinking about what's wrong with your boss and all the dumb things he's making you do and spend more time thinking like, all right, what is he trying to get accomplished? What's his personality like? What do I need to do to get ahead of him?

• 1:54:41Dave Berke?

  To help him so I can help the team, cracking that code is usually not that hard. And when you crack the code, not only does your boss's life get better, your life gets so much better. It's so much easier. And just like you described, to push that down to the team. That's where, that's where the win is. It's like you can take care of your team, you can help your team. You can make sure your team's successful. So if you're looking at this about how hard that is, that's just your ego telling you, well, your boss is the problem. There's nothing wrong with your boss. Just figure out what he wants and get ahead of him. And it's really, really not that hard.

• 1:55:14Jocko Willink?

  All right. Well, there you go. Those are some, uh, some simple rules for being a better leader and a better follower and a better human. And here's the thing you gotta pay attention to. You can only see these things if you detach. And by the way, when you detach and you take a step back, the, the thing that you really have to detach from is still part of you. It's your ego. It's driving so many of these mistakes that we make. So you can't just detach from the situation. You can't just detach from your boss. You can't just detach from the plan. You gotta detach and be able to see your own ego, which is probably the root of 97% of these problems. So take a step back, write these things down, write these rules down.

• 1:55:59Jocko Willink?

  Just go, go take about face, write these rules down, go read them before you go to a meeting. Read them before you make a decision. Read them before you meet with your subordinate. Read through them. At the end, check yourself. How'd you do on them? And eventually over time, this is how you become better because you won't rely on having to read through these things. You'll, you'll start to know them and they will become second nature. So there you go. All right. With that.

• 1:56:34Jocko Willink?

  We, we, Kerry, why are you here? Just so everyone knows, people that are freaking out right now, Echo Charles, he needed a break, bro. He was, I mean, the stress level was high. He hadn't been cruising in at least a few days. And so Echo Charles, don't worry, everybody, EC will be back. He, he's okay. He just had to reset, you know, had to recharge the batteries.

• 1:57:01Speaker 01

  Recharge the, the mana.

• 1:57:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:03Speaker 01

  Back on, back on the island.

• 1:57:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So he had to go get some island time in. That's where Echo's been. He'll be back hopefully. I don't know. You never know.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  We'll see.

• 1:57:12Jocko Willink?

  Maybe EC, you know, he'll make the call, whatever. It's no factor.

• 1:57:15Speaker 01

  Keep covering whatever, whatever Echo needs, man.

• 1:57:17Jocko Willink?

  We're just here. So, so don't worry. This is still the Echo podcast. He'll be back.

• 1:57:24Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of a lose, lose for you, isn't it Kerry, being here? I mean, it's, it's hard. Look, you know, Echo? He's kind of got that thing going where people just, he's just nice and kind of like if you, if you do something, anything different than him, even if you do the same thing as him, people are like, well, oh, look at you trying to.

• 1:57:42Speaker 01

  Trying to be like.

• 1:57:43Jocko Willink?

  Trying to jack Echo's style. You're in a lose, lose situation, bro.

• 1:57:47Speaker 01

  Hey, I'm just happy to be here, man. You know, just happy to be here.

• 1:57:50Jocko Willink?

  Sitting in the hot seat and everything, pressing record over there.

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  Nah, it's, it's awesome, man, to get the cover down and yeah, when, when he comes back, I'll be back in the shadows.

• 1:57:59Jocko Willink?

  Back in the shadows.

• 1:58:00Speaker 01

  Hanging out.

• 1:58:00Jocko Willink?

  Retreat to the shadows. Or maybe he'll get whacked. You'll just be like, well, it looks like I'm in here now.

• 1:58:08Speaker 01

  Won't give up the chair.

• 1:58:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, giving up the chair. Dude, he gets bummed out. I remember we, we were doing Jordan Peterson and he was, it got scheduled and he was going to be in Hawaii and he wasn't around. He was bummed about that one. Yeah.

• 1:58:22Speaker 01

  We were, we were talking about that, you know, the, the Tim Kennedy podcast, you know?

• 1:58:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he was kind of bummed about that one too.

• 1:58:28Speaker 01

  Be bummed about that.

• 1:58:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That was a good one, man.

• 1:58:32Speaker 01

  It was.

• 1:58:33Jocko Willink?

  That was, that one went by quick.

• 1:58:35Speaker 01

  For how long it was?

• 1:58:36Jocko Willink?

  For how long it was. Almost five hours and 50 minutes. And then I was like, oh, that's a long, but also Huberman was, Huberman was five hours and 20 minutes. And of course, Sean Parnell was five hours and 25 minutes or something like this. That's a long time to be talking. If we were better at milking, we would just break it up into four different podcasts. No, hey, don't worry, people. We got you. We got you. We're here. We're gonna put it out. One, one, one hit.

• 1:59:05Speaker 01

  Little bit of that immediate gratification for you.

• 1:59:08Jocko Willink?

  Dude, you know, there's some people that look at that thing. They see five hours and 50 minutes and they go, oh, damn, let me get that 2X on.

• 1:59:17Speaker 01

  Speed that up.

• 1:59:18Jocko Willink?

  And there's also some people that are like, hell, yeah.

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, for sure. I'm definitely in that camp. Anytime I see a five hour Jocko podcast, you just know, it's like, yes.

• 1:59:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, the thing is, there's no time limit in either direction.

• 1:59:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:31Jocko Willink?

  I'm not, there's no goal.

• 1:59:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:59:33Jocko Willink?

  We could go an hour, we could go five hours. I don't know. We go 12 hours, we go 30 minutes. If it's there, we'll roll with it.

• 1:59:40Speaker 01

  We're getting it. Yeah.

• 1:59:43Jocko Willink?

  See, Tim and I had a lot of, you know, with the fight background and he was doing all that stuff when I was like, we were in the game, right? At the same time. I was like older, I think I'm, I'm maybe eight years older than him or something like this. And so, but, you know,

• 2:00:01Jocko Willink?

  Chuck Liddell, I just saw Chuck Liddell at the UFC. He said, what's up?

• 2:00:04Speaker 01

  How was that UFC?

• 2:00:05Jocko Willink?

  It was cool. It was good, man. It was awesome. But we were, so we had a lot to talk about there, you know. But Echo Charles will be back with his powerful questions and opinions.

• 2:00:19Speaker 01

  Standing by until there.

• 2:00:20Jocko Willink?

  Uh, speaking of being strategic, make sure you stay in shape. Make sure you keep your health. That's strategic move. Keep, stay healthy. You know how you do that? Jaco Fuel, JacoFuel.com. How's the new flavors, Dave? So just FYI.

• 2:00:34Jocko Willink?

  We have an energy drink. It's called Go and it will give you energy. When we initially made it, the, the, the taste profile was based on my taste buds, which are not normal. My taste buds are hypersensitive to the sweetness. And so I tried these things. I was like, oh yeah, that's very sweet. That's, you know, this is good to go. This basically tastes like a Coca-Cola to me right now. It's like just, well, I was wrong. And a lot of people that normally eat a lot of sugar, they were like, what is this? This doesn't taste good. So we redid all the flavors, all of them. Dave, you got your new afterburn orange. How was that going down today?

• 2:01:14Dave Berke?

  It's good. I'm in a similar boat. I never drank an energy drink before Go, ever. I don't drink them. So I had no frame of reference. When we made the orange, I got to do all the flavor testing and all that stuff. At the end, I'm like, this thing is incredible. It tastes like an orange crush or whatever.

• 2:01:33Dave Berke?

  The, I've had almost, not all, I've had almost all the new flavors and they are ridiculously good tasting. So I'm over here thinking like, all right, I'm doing timing. I'm doing reasons. I gotta anticipate all these. Now it's like, I just wanna, I just want the way it tastes.

• 2:01:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, I'm drinking the Citrus Psycho, which was by far our worst seller. And the reason it's our worst seller is because the first one that came out before I had any semblance of trying to make things taste good for the world at large. And now this one is freaking delicious. So Leif Babbin's Haterade here, Citrus Psycho. It tastes like, there's a reason that this was the first flavor that we made, by the way. The reason this is the first flavor that we made was because I thought to myself, what's the like common flavor that everybody likes? You know, well, it's lemon lime. Look at, look at Gatorade, look at Sprite, um, all those flavors. And it's like, hey, lemon lime.

• 2:02:34Jocko Willink?

  This is a, this is a standard flavor. It's like chocolate vanilla, right? It's the same thing. It's like, oh, you're gonna make a protein shake? Cool, chocolate. Or vanilla or strawberry. That's what, that's what this was to me. So this was the first flavor. That's why. But man, I didn't sweeten it enough. And now this thing is, and it's still, it's still sugar free. It's still keto. It's still all natural. It's still pasteurized. It's still freaking this, all the same qualities of awesomeness, but it tastes delicious. So there you go. Jaco Fuel dot com. Uh, check all that stuff out. Check out some milk. Do you have some milk over the fourth of July?

• 2:03:13Speaker 01

  Of course. I'm up. I was, uh, talking about that on, on that last podcast. I'm, I'm up to two milk shakes a day now.

• 2:03:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Cause once you start tracking the macros.

• 2:03:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:23Jocko Willink?

  You need that extra hitter of protein.

• 2:03:24Speaker 01

  You gotta, yeah. If it can be, uh, measured, it can be managed or whatever.

• 2:03:28Jocko Willink?

  Two scoops in a, in a milk or do you go one?

• 2:03:29Speaker 01

  No, I go one.

• 2:03:31Jocko Willink?

  I double it up.

• 2:03:32Speaker 01

  You double it up.

• 2:03:34Jocko Willink?

  Double up that hitter. Uh, Jaco Fuel dot com. Go to Wawa if you want the drinks. Go to vitamin shop. Go to HEB down in Tejas. We got you. And try the new flavors. The new flavors are kind of hitting the stores right now. So what's it July? By August, I think we'll be in all new flavors, but go, go get them. Uh, OriginUSA.com. Get some cool American made apparel. Up at the UFC, a lot of people were pumped. A lot of people were pumped on the hunt line coming out on the, you know, I had guys, every gi I have is an Origin gi. I'm like, hell yeah. American made. So if you want to get on the American made train, then go to OriginUSA.com. Get yourself some Jiu Jitsu gi jeans.

• 2:04:18Jocko Willink?

  People representing jeans. That's freaking legit. You know, it's a sad day when your iconic American jeans are not made in America. But guess what? They are now. Cause now the only pair of iconic jeans you can get is good old OriginUSA.com. Get some of that Jaco store. That's where we have stuff that. Might help you on the path.

• 2:04:40Speaker 01

  Might help you on the path. Echo has been busy too on some, some new Discipline Equals Freedom shirts.

• 2:04:46Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 2:04:47Speaker 01

  Some new ones. Yeah, go check those out. Some new colors on there.

• 2:04:51Jocko Willink?

  And there's like a little bit of a jujitsu line that's forming as well. That Jujitsu is Life T-shirt is quite popular.

• 2:04:58Speaker 01

  It is. It is. It's super clean. And then we've got the, the Dean Lisch on there as well.

• 2:05:02Jocko Willink?

  The Dean Lisch. Do we have the Foot Soldier one yet? I want to make a foot. He's, he's got that little sticker that says Foot Soldier. And it's like a Dean Lister and like a NOM style helmet. And it just says Foot Soldier.

• 2:05:13Speaker 01

  We got a good one.

• 2:05:14Jocko Willink?

  Come on.

• 2:05:15Speaker 01

  We've got the foot.

• 2:05:16Jocko Willink?

  The foot. Yeah.

• 2:05:17Speaker 01

  Dean Lisch foot.

• 2:05:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, so there you go.

• 2:05:20Speaker 01

  But also Shirt Locker, new shirt every month with that. And we've been just going, going pretty hard on those. The, uh, the last month was, was pretty awesome if you, if you got.

• 2:05:32Jocko Willink?

  What was last month's shirt?

• 2:05:33Speaker 01

  Uh, or it might've been month before last. I think, uh, the, we did kind of a G.I. Joe style.

• 2:05:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. That was the discipline one, but it looks G.I. Joe-ish.

• 2:05:40Speaker 01

  Right, right. And then the Charlie Mike was, I believe, after that.

• 2:05:44Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. JacoStore.com. You can check some of that out. Subscribe to the podcast. Jaco Underground.

• 2:05:49Speaker 01

  Jaco Underground.

• 2:05:51Jocko Willink?

  JacoUnderground.com. If you want to, if you're, if you're nervous about the platform, look, we don't own the platform that you're listening to, unless you're listening to us right now on JacoUnderground.com, then we own it. No one can stop us. We got that. But if you listen on some of the other platforms that are out there, look, we don't own them. And they could shut us down. They could censor us. Maybe they don't want us talking about war. Maybe they don't want us talking about whatever we're talking about. And we got to be aware of that. We got to have a contingency plan. So JacoUnderground.com is a contingency there. And I've written a bunch of books. If you want to check out the books that I've written, go to Amazon and buy them all.

• 2:06:28Jocko Willink?

  We have Echelon Front. Dave and I work at Echelon Front. We solve problems through leadership. We take these principles of combat leadership. We teach people how to apply them inside their business. Get your business aligned around leadership. If you have leaders, if you have problems, they're leadership problems. So EchelonFront.com. Come to the muster, next muster is in Atlanta, Hotlanta, October 12th through the 14th. We're going to sell it out. We sell out everything. So come and check that out. We have the Extreme Ownership Academy. Online, ExtremeOwnership.com.

• 2:07:02Jocko Willink?

  We got courses. We're about to record a course today. We're doing a course on relationships, the value of relationships, how to build relationships, how to maintain relationships, why relationships are so powerful. So, these are the kind of conversations that we have on that platform that you can study, you can test, you can learn, and leadership is not an inoculation. You can't read Extreme Ownership one time and be like, "Cool, got it." It doesn't work. And for a while, I'd say, "Well, you know, you want some more of that stuff? Listen to the podcast." But then now there's 341 podcasts. There's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours. I can't say, "Well, just go listen to the podcast."

• 2:07:46Jocko Willink?

  Now, we had to streamline it and distill it down, the principles, so that people could learn them and actively train in them, just like you go to the gym, just like you train jiu-jitsu, just like you pick up your Gitbox and play guitar at night. If you're not practicing, you're not learning. So, go to extremewonership.com, check out the courses. Also, I'm on there live a bunch. At least once a week, I'm on there answering questions. So, extremewonership.com, come and check that out. Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an awesome charity organization. She helps with health issues, putting service members through

• 2:08:30Jocko Willink?

  health protocols that aren't paid for by the military, but that are extremely helpful. So, AmericasMightyWarriors.org, check that out if you want to donate or you want to get involved. Also, check out HeroesAndHorses.org. Micah, he's up there in the mountains right now, just getting it, teaching people what's up. And of course, on Twitter, on the Gram, on Facebook, Dave's at David R. Burke, Kerry's at Kerry underscore Hilton. He didn't get that. He didn't get the real one. Not fast. Had to throw that underscore in there. Too slow. Yep, just a, just a forever sign of being a little too slow.

• 2:09:11Jocko Willink?

  Everybody knows. And if you want to see me on there, I'm at Jocko Willink, no underscore in there, no period, no dot, nothing, just got in there deep early. Coming at you. While you're in there, just watch out because the algorithm might grab you by the, by the leg and start dragging you down.

• 2:09:29Jocko Willink?

  So be careful of that. And thanks to all our military personnel out there, the current and future Glover Johns. Thanks for doing what you are doing out there every day to lead and protect our country. And the same goes to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service. All you first responders, thank you for what you do every day to protect us here at home. And everyone else, just try and remember and implement these simple lessons from Glover Johns, things like do the small things well, things like be a doer and a self-starter.

• 2:10:11Jocko Willink?

  Never be satisfied, have consideration of others.

• 2:10:17Jocko Willink?

  Remember that the harder the training, the more the troops are going to brag. These are all things that are simple, but not easy. But if you do get them and you do implement them, you'll be a better leader and you'll be a better human being. So go out there and get after it. And until next time, this is Dave and Kerry and Jaco. Out.