Humble Leaders Lead Better Teams with Retired Navy SEAL Jocko Willink

Most people believe the only way to lead is to become the best at something. But what if great leadership means admitting you’re not the best at anything? Jocko Willink believes the secret to his greatest achievements come down to one thing – humility. A retired Navy SEAL commander, Jocko served 20 years in the U. S. military, leading one of the most decorated special operations units through combat in the Iraq War. A New York Times bestselling author, podcast host, and entrepreneur, he now teaches those in the civilian world the skills he learned from his time in the SEAL Teams. This was my first time meeting Jocko Willink, and we discussed why new leaders should never try to prove their own competence and the difference between tyrannical and open-minded leaders. This…is A Bit of Optimism. For more on Jocko and his work, check out: jocko.com

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  There's no one that's an Uber mensch in the SEAL teams. And so I think that knowing that there's always someone better than you, and you're constantly trying to do your best. And if you're not trying to do your best, you're gonna have problems. So I think that's I love this. pretty normal. I don't think it's pretty normal.

• 0:22Simon Sinek?

  If you've ever seen or heard Jocko Willink, you will know one thing about him. He is big and he is imposing. And if you know anything about me, I'm neither big nor imposing, which is exactly why I invited him onto the podcast. It's because I like to learn from people who are nothing like me. Jocko is also a number one New York Times bestselling author. He's served 20 years in the military as a Navy SEAL, where he was the commander of task unit Bruiser, the most decorated special operations unit in the Iraq war. And so we sat down together to talk about leadership. And here is what I learned. What's made him such an effective and successful leader is actually his remarkable humility. This is a bit of optimism.

• 1:10Simon Sinek?

  You've made a career sharing some of the lessons you've learned in the teams out to the outside world and helping people better lead. I'm curious what you've learned since you left the Navy that you wish the SEALs had that you've only learned in the outside world. I'm curious if anything tracks back.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I literally completely institutionalized. You know, I enlisted in the Navy at 18 years old and went straight in. So when I got out, I had no concept of what the outside world was like. When people ask me that question, it really is the fact that when I got out and I started working with civilian companies, the fact that every facet of leadership inside the SEAL teams translated directly to a sales organization or a construction site or wherever, that was the biggest lesson that I learned was, oh, human beings are human beings. And leading human beings, regardless of the outcome that you're looking for, regardless of the mission that you're on, the human beings are going to be human beings.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  And that was, I guess, the biggest epiphany for me. But I haven't Experience anything where I where I've said, oh, wow, that's radically different from leading people in the SEAL teams. And I'll give you one quick example is when you're in the SEAL teams, people think, oh, well, if someone doesn't meet the standard or someone's not performing well, you just get rid of them. And when I was in the SEAL teams, I knew that that wasn't true. Guess what you have to do? If someone's not performing, you've got to do paperwork on them. You've got to write them up. You've got to counsel them. You've got to set them before a board. And even then, they might get recycled. And so it's actually very difficult to fire people. Well, when I was in the Navy, I thought in the civilian sector, if someone's not doing what you tell them to do, oh, you just fire them. And as soon as I got out, I realized, oh, no, you've got to do paperwork, you've

• 2:57Speaker 00

  got to go to HR. And so

• 2:59Simon Sinek?

  It also depends on the company.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  It does. But for the most part, and it does, it depends, you know, if somebody makes a grievous error in the SEAL teams,

• 3:08Simon Sinek?

  Of course.

• 3:09Speaker 00

  You can get rid of that person immediately. And I've done that before. But for the most part, they're a lot more similar

• 3:15Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  than they are unsimilar. Again, if I had some, you know, huge lesson that, oh, well, in the civilian sector, you've got to treat people this way.

• 3:24Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  No. Or in the civilian sector, they make better progress when they do X. No.

• 3:30Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 00

  It's, it's crazy how much it all truly lines up.

• 3:36Simon Sinek?

  I've learned a little bit hanging out with folks in uniform that I've been able to translate and bring to the civilian world as well. Your knowledge is obviously vastly deeper. You entered an entirely new culture where you had to learn business. How old were you when you left the Navy?

• 3:51Speaker 00

  Just turned 39.

• 3:52Simon Sinek?

  Okay, so hitting 40, right? Hitting baby middle age.

• 3:58Simon Sinek?

  You know, coming out at 40, you're now, I'm going to learn business, right? There are people with 20 years head start, right?

• 4:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:06Simon Sinek?

  And so you're learning on the fly, and you're still learning. I'm curious who your worthy rivals are. Who are you looking at in the space that you're at? And you're like, they're so good. And I need to learn that. You know, I always love high performers and how they view the others in their arena to push them to be better. Who the pacing force is for you?

• 4:27Speaker 00

  When you talk about, you know, looking at other people and seeing them either as competitors or worthy rivals, right?

• 4:35Speaker 00

  Honestly, I don't, I don't, I don't know if I just uh.

• 4:38Simon Sinek?

  It doesn't fa- it doesn't even make sense.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  It doesn't, it's hard for me to relate to that.

• 4:42Simon Sinek?

  Well, then how do you know where you're falling short?

• 4:43Speaker 00

  Well, part of the reason is because I think when I see someone that's doing something really well.

• 4:48Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 4:48Speaker 00

  I don't think, oh, how can I take their job?

• 4:52Simon Sinek?

  No, of course.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  I, I think that's cool what they're doing. Are there any gaps that I could fill? You know, it's a, it's a story that I was, I was on my last deployment and this army group came in. And they had really good capabilities. And one of my platoon commanders said, you know, hey, these guys, they've got these capabilities. They might take our job. And I said, well, do you think they might be better than you? And he goes, well, they might be better at that job.

• 5:16Simon Sinek?

  They should have the job.

• 5:16Speaker 00

  And I said, let them have the job and we'll fund you something else to do.

• 5:19Simon Sinek?

  I guess I'm, I'm curious, like, how do you know where you need to do work on yourself? And maybe it's not worthy rival, you know, take the question a completely different direction. How do you know what areas of your own work, personality, leadership capability? Need a little tweak or a little?

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, that's, that's, it's a real easy to answer.

• 5:40Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 5:40Speaker 00

  Like everywhere, you know, I mean, I, and I think that's another thing is I don't. When I wake up in the morning and look around the world, I'm not thinking, oh, I'm here. Oh, there's someone that's better than me at that. I think everyone's doing stuff that's better than me. I mean, look, I, I, I wish I was a better writer. I wish I was a better speaker. I wish I was better at social media. I wish I was better at, you know, like everything that I look at. I wish I could do a better job at that.

• 6:09Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  And, you know, everything from doing jujitsu, I trained jujitsu all the time.

• 6:15Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  And I get beat all the time and I want to get better at it. Running joke in my family is with my wife, you know, for the past 20 years. She said to me, what's your new year's resolution this year? And I say, oh, I want to get better at jujitsu and surf more. And I've been saying that for 20 years and it's still true. I want to get better at jujitsu. I don't want to surf more. But that's kind of the way I feel about everything. I don't feel, I don't feel like I'm really that good at anything. I feel like I constantly have to try and get better. I think that the, the attitude of, hey, I'm not that good at anything.

• 6:45Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  Which is the way I grew up. Has stayed with me. I'm not that good at anything. And so I gotta wake up every day and, and work hard to be able to do what I do.

• 6:55Simon Sinek?

  There's a humility in the military that is looked well upon, which doesn't really do very well in business. I know a lot of guys who are fricking amazing, like phenomenal warriors, phenomenal leaders, phenomenal human beings, and they enter the private sector. I've seen it happen so many times. And I make some introductions for them and I call the folks. I'm like, so what'd you think? Bad ass, right? Phenomenal, right? And they're like, I, I don't know. It seems like he's a little lost. I don't know. I'm like, lost? He's one of the most focused guys I know. And it's not because they're lost. It's because they're so like, you know, it's not me. It's my team and, you know, I can't really take credit for anything. And the business world's like, what? And it's sort of that, that slight modulation that they have to amp up the ego a little bit just for the business world.

• 7:39Simon Sinek?

  And I think this is a really important thing that you're touching on, which is you don't think you're great at everything. You don't think you're great at anything. And it's that belief that actually makes you such a high performer. And I think when people lose sight of that, that they think they're great at something, that ego, you know? I mean, you, you come in, I mean, like I said, you're a force of nature. And I think what people miss is that how you actually view your day to day is actually more human. If they copied the, the picture of Jocko, it won't work. It's this that I find beautiful about you, which is, where does that come from? Like, was your dad hard on you like growing up? Or like, were you like a skinny kid? Like, where did it come from?

• 8:22Simon Sinek?

  You said it's been since I was a little kid and it's never gone away.

• 8:25Speaker 00

  Nothing was ever easy for me. You know, I wasn't the best athlete. I wasn't the strongest. I wasn't the fastest. I wasn't the smartest. I got in the SEAL teams. I wasn't the strongest. I wasn't the fastest. I wasn't the smartest. But what you have to do to overcome that is you've got to work hard. So you get humbled all the time. And, and by the way, if you're good at one thing in, in the SEAL teams, there's someone that's better at that thing than you. And by the way, No one cares. If you're a really good swimmer, people are like, oh yeah, but you can't do many pull-ups. Or if you're a good runner, they'll say, oh yeah, but you're not good with a rucksack on. Or if you're good with a rucksack on, they'll say, yeah, but you're a bad shot. So there's no mercy. There's no mercy. There's no one that's an Uber mensch in the SEAL teams. And so I think that always knowing that there's always someone better than you.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  And you're constantly trying to do your best. And if you're not trying to do your best, you're gonna have problems. So I think that's

• 9:12Simon Sinek?

  I love this.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  Pretty normal.

• 9:14Simon Sinek?

  I don't think it's pretty normal. I think, yes, fact, there's always someone better than you at everything. In fact, yes. If that's what we mean by normal, then as a data point, yes. But as a perception point, so often the opposite happens in business, which is like, you're great at that. You're the best at that. In fact, we're gonna make you the hero at that. And somebody, they sort of start straightening up their shirt. And I've made the mistake myself. I've accidentally heroized folks who are really good at what they do, and they start to inhale their own fumes. And like, a year later, I'm like, what the hell have I created here? Right? I just was giving you a couple compliments so you'd boost your confidence there, and it goes out of check.

• 9:52Simon Sinek?

  And this idea of being okay, knowing, not pretending, deep knowing, there's always somebody better at everything I do. And so the only option I have is to keep at it.

• 10:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, and it really allows you to keep an open mind, too. Because if you're in a leadership position and you go into a room and you're trying to come up with a plan for something. And if in your mind, you deeply know, in your own mind, that you're the smartest person with the best perspective, and your plan's gonna be the best plan, it's gonna be bad. Your mind is closed. You're not gonna listen to what anyone else says. You're gonna impose your plan on them. They're gonna execute the plan only because they have no other choice, because you're the boss. And it's not gonna go as well as it should. And when they run into an obstacle, they're gonna stutter step because they know that they're just doing what you told them to do. They don't have any ownership of it, so it's problematic. But if you truly think, well, when I go in this room with my

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Ten subordinate leaders, I know that they're gonna have better ideas than me. I deeply know that their ideas are gonna be better.

• 10:56Simon Sinek?

  Or at least they'll have a point of view that I don't have.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  And then my. And then my mind is open. And when someone makes a point and I go, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Why don't we go in that direction?

• 11:04Simon Sinek?

  At the risk of belaboring the point, I think this is really, really important for, for junior leaders and senior leaders. Right. So for a junior leader, I think junior leaders feel like they have to prove that they're worthy of the title, worthy of the risk. You know, like you picked the right person, you know, and like, and that shows up in a little bit of a little too much, a little too much.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  I used to tell the young junior officers, you have nothing to prove, but you have everything to prove.

• 11:26Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  You have nothing to prove. So you don't, when you're in charge of a platoon, you don't need to prove to the platoon that you're in charge.

• 11:34Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 11:34Speaker 00

  You don't need to say, well, hey, we're doing it my way or hey, this is my plan. You don't need to do that. In fact, it's offensive.

• 11:39Simon Sinek?

  Your credibility doesn't come from that.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  No.

• 11:42Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  What you have to prove to them is that you'll listen to them. When a decision has to get made, you'll take all the pertinent points in and you'll make a good decision. And you'll be able to back them up and you'll, you care about the team. That's what you have to prove to them, but you don't have to prove that you're in charge. So that's the guy that you're talking about that walks into the room and is like, all right, I better prove to everyone that this is my idea.

• 12:01Simon Sinek?

  Prove to my, or prove to those above me that they hired the right guy.

• 12:03Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 12:04Simon Sinek?

  You know?

• 12:04Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 12:05Simon Sinek?

  I love that. And I think as you, so I think for a junior leader, what you're, you're learning the fundamentals of leadership, which is you've got to take care of your team, rely on your team. I think as you become more senior, this attitude that you're talking about, it does something slightly different, which is now, and you said it, which is it teaches you open mindedness. Even if you're good at caring and good at offering that top cover, now what you're learning, and it's in other words, once you've learned it once, it's not learned. It's a practice.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:30Simon Sinek?

  Not a lesson.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  It's counterintuitive to have an open mind.

• 12:33Simon Sinek?

  It's counterintuitive to, to say on a daily basis, I'm not the best. In fact, there's someone everywhere who's better than me.

• 12:42Speaker 00

  That's the way it is.

• 12:43Simon Sinek?

  Again, like I think the humility is often missed when we teach people like SEAL training, because people are high performing. It's larger than life, even the movies help. I think people miss that there's a very human. And you know this even better than I do. I've cried with more people in uniform than I ever did with anybody in a suit. I've hugged more people in uniform than I ever did with anybody in a suit. There's a humanity, and I guess because the stakes are life and death, but there's a deep, deep humanity and love and caring. And those words, you know, the Marines call them the intangibles. This is the only way to put it, which is love. Like SEALs are high performing, not because they're gorillas, that's just a component to get through selection.

• 13:26Simon Sinek?

  The SEALs are high performing because they love each other even deeper than you can imagine. And I would see it happen when I, when I had the opportunity to visit Coronado and I'd see guys who I don't even think they knew each other. They would hug like brothers.

• 13:43Simon Sinek?

  And I think that's often missed.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a lot of things that get missed and there's a lot of stereotypical viewpoints that people have. And this is one of the, you, you talked about like,

• 13:52Simon Sinek?

  It's from the movies.

• 13:53Speaker 00

  Some of the things that I learned when, when I got out. Well, one of the things that I learned that I got, when I got out was that, just like I had this impression of the civilian sector that, you know, oh, if you've got someone that's not doing what they're supposed to be doing, you can just fire them. Well, they all had the impression that in the military, when the commander gives the order, everyone just gets in line and follows the order.

• 14:12Simon Sinek?

  Exactly.

• 14:12Speaker 00

  And that couldn't be further from the truth. And so you get this idea that there's this tyrannical authoritarian leadership is the best form of leadership, or that's the form of leadership that they use in the military. And that's terrible. Now, it doesn't exist in the military? Yes, it does exist in the military. Does it exist in the civilian sector? Oh, it definitely exists in the civilian sector. Now, there's a great book that I covered on my podcast. It's called The Psychology of Military Incompetence.

• 14:39Simon Sinek?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  It's a fantastic book.

• 14:41Simon Sinek?

  Wonderful.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  You know, the guy that wrote it was in World War II, he was wounded and then he became a psychologist. But, you know, he points out that the military attracts people who see that authoritarianism from the outside. And they think, oh, that's exactly what I want to be a part of. And that mentality works.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  I hate to say it, but it actually works well in garrison environments, meaning where there's no combat going on. If we're on the parade field, if you've got your platoon and I'm gonna come and inspect your rooms, and you're an authoritarian dictator, guess what? The rooms look great. Yeah. And everyone's in a perfect uniform and everyone's cleanly shaved, and I think you're doing a great job, because you're a tyrannical leader. And you barked orders and you yelled and screamed and you went and did the white glove on them before I showed up to inspect. So I think, man, Simon's such a great leader. That mindset, though, that closed mindset, which is, I don't give me any input, clean the way I told you to clean. It works in a non-combat environment. But when you get in a combat environment, now all of a sudden you've got variables. And this is why combat leaders, good combat leaders,

• 15:46Speaker 00

  hopefully they have very open minds. Yeah. They have to. They have to have an open mind. They have to be very creative. They have to actually be the other end of the spectrum from the authoritarian dictator. And so what happens is in peacetime, things start to lean towards these authoritarian dictators being put in senior positions. They get promoted, because why? What happens to the creative, open-minded leader? Well, he was out with the boys, he got in trouble for this. They were on an exercise and he did this radical thing that was outside the rule set, and he got in trouble and he got written up, and so now he's not getting promoted. Yeah. It's the guy you want in combat. It's David Schumer's character in Band of Brothers. It's 100%. He was great in Garrison. He's great in Garrison. Put him in the chaos and just fell apart.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  And he fell apart. And, you know, what did his team think of him? Yeah. They didn't respect him, they didn't like him, they didn't want to follow him. Yeah. And you know what happened to that guy in real life? It was, I looked him up, it wasn't good. He lived a lonely life, didn't he? He attempted suicide. He failed. Yeah. He was blind. And what was really interesting about that is that he... To his death. Yeah. Blamed his whole life on Easy Company. Yeah. All the failings in his life was because of Easy Company. And it just made me think you romanticize your experience in the military. And the things that were good, you just hold on to them. That was the best of times. But when someone has a bad experience or something bad happens, they hang on to that.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  And that becomes what that guy carried to the grave with. So yeah, but that's a great example. And then the other side, you had Dick Winters, who was the heroic leader in Band of Brothers, who listened to his troops, who never yelled and screamed. You asked about my experience and how I ended up like this, where that humility came from. But I, I was in a SEAL platoon and we had a tyrannical leader. And the tyrannical leader, he didn't have a lot of experience. He'd come from a different part of the Navy and then joined the SEAL teams at a relatively senior grade. And in order to make up for his inexperience, he kind of over indexed and, you know, imposed plans on people and didn't listen to anyone. It was my way or the highway. And it was just terrible. And we had a mutiny against this guy.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  And so we all, the enlisted guys in the platoon, went before the commanding officer. We went before his boss. And we told the commanding officer, hey, this guy doesn't listen to us. He's arrogant. He's got a big ego. He's imposing his plans on us. We don't want to work for him. Which is a mutiny. And just so you know, the, the punishment for mutiny in the military is death, actually. Well, you know, this was peacetime and, and the commanding officer was a really a great guy. And he said, listen, this sounds like a mutiny. We don't have mutinies in the Navy. I'm not going to have a mutiny at my SEAL team. Go figure it out. And luckily, he was a good commanding officer. And so he kind of pulled the thread and started asking more questions of the training cadre to find out what the guy was like. And he fired him three days later.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  And so we were celebrating, you know, oh, great, you know, look what we did. We won, right? Yeah. And then we found out who was going to take his place. The new platoon commander was this legendary SEAL who everybody knew he'd come up through the ranks from the junior position, almost to the top of the enlisted ranks, and then became an officer and then started going up the ranks, the officer. He had combat experience. He was at every different SEAL team. He just was a legendary SEAL. I didn't know him, but we all knew his name. I wrote about him in this book, Leadership Strategy and Tactics, and I called him DC. So I'll call him DC. So DC, we find out that this legendary guy's gonna take over. And one day, we're supposed to meet him. He's coming after lunch. And

• 19:26Speaker 00

  we've got our little platoon hut out there, and we're sitting in the platoon hut. And I'm kind of the guy on watch, looking for this guy to show up. And there's guys coming out of the locker rooms. Oh, that's not him. Another guy comes out, it's not him. And then finally, this guy comes out, and I go, maybe this is him. He starts walking towards our platoon hut. And as he starts getting closer, I look at him, I go, this can't be the guy, because this guy's, looks like he's about 150 pounds. Can't be him. But he keeps coming towards us. And then I'm like, oh, wait, this guy's like, short. Like, how old is this guy? 5'8"? What is this guy doing? He can't be a legendary SEAL. Keeps coming towards us. And as he gets closer, I see he's got, like, he's old, you know? He's an old guy. He had to have been at least like, 37, right? So I'm thinking, there's

• 20:09Speaker 00

  no way that this old, skinny, short guy is this legendary SEAL. And sure enough, he walks in our platoon space. And it was him. And we very quickly figured out why this guy was a legendary SEAL, because he walked in, he said, hey, sorry to hear about what happened with your last commander. I'm not worried about it. I'm just looking forward to working with you guys. Right then, not, I'm the new commander, not, this is my platoon, not, there's a new sheriff in town. It was, I'm looking forward to working with you guys. And that set the tone. Guy was the most humble leader. And so I got to see this as a young guy. I was probably 22 or something. It was my second platoon.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  What made it very clear to me was because I got to see this stark contrast between a guy that was arrogant and egotistical and how much we disliked him. And that we literally had a mutiny because we didn't want to follow him. And when this other guy took over, that was humble, that listened to us, that treated us with respect, we would follow that guy anywhere. And that's the guy that I've tried to emulate throughout my career.

• 21:19Simon Sinek?

  Follow up question. How did you learn when to turn on command and control in the chaos? Because I think a lot of people are listening to this. They're hearing the lessons about humility, asking questions. But there are times when that guy, he had earned the trust so that when he could flip the switch in the chaos and it was barking orders and there wasn't, I'd like to hear your opinions. When did you see that happen? Because we've sort of been dancing around it, which is people choose to be either this lovely, beautiful, kind, humble leader. They choose that path or they choose the path of command and control. But the answer is you do need both. You can't be command and control all of the time, but there are episodes where this guy,

• 22:04Simon Sinek?

  this legendary SEAL, did turn it on. When did he turn it on? And when did he turn it off?

• 22:09Speaker 00

  So when people would ask me that very question, right? How do you know when to do that? And here's the way that I did it. This is what I saw him do. First of all, what you're talking about is there's a leadership vacuum. There's a moment in time, whether it's in a meeting, whether it's on the battlefield, whether it's making a decision, where there's a leadership vacuum. No one is stepping up and taking charge.

• 22:31Simon Sinek?

  It's obviously quiet.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  And it's obviously quiet.

• 22:34Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  Now, when that happens, here's what I do. If there's a leadership vacuum, oh, no one's making a decision, I'm going to pause. I actually want everyone in the room to know and feel that there's a leadership vacuum. I want everyone in the room to go. Because if I jump in too early, there's a couple people, maybe you were about to, you know, Simon had an idea. He was about to say something and I just cut him off and now he's going to be begrudgingly executing what I told him to do and he's going to think he didn't get a chance to step up. So I'm going to pause long enough. And in combat, it might be three seconds. In a business meeting, it might be 30 seconds. It might be a minute. If it's a long email exchange, it might be three days. Right? I'm on the CC line and people are going back and forth and all of a sudden, you know.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  I'm gonna chime in. So when that leadership vacuum occurs, I'm gonna give it at least enough time that everybody feels it. And once they feel it, I'm gonna make a small iterative decision to move in a direction that I think is best at that moment in time. And then we're gonna move in that direction. I'm gonna keep an open mind. And we're gonna get feedback on the decision that I make, just made. I'm gonna make the smallest decision I can, by the way. Again, this is something that I use to cheat in the SEAL teams because I was known in the SEAL teams for being very decisive if a decision needed to get made. I would make a decision. But I would make a little tiny decision. But no one's really thinking about that at the time. But if you and I are getting shot at, or our platoon is getting shot at

• 24:07Speaker 00

  from, you know, somewhere up to the north. Well, what's my decision gonna be? Is it gonna be attack? That's one decision. Is it gonna be retreat? That's another decision. Those are big decisions to make. But what if I just say, Simon, go to the rooftop. Tell me what you see up to the north. Okay, I just made that decision. And everyone goes, oh, Jocko's got this. We're good. Now you go up and you tell me what you see. And maybe you see a lot of enemy. Maybe you don't see very many enemy. Maybe we can move forward. But I'm gonna make the smallest decision that I can. And by the way, if someone else makes the next decision, I'm fine with it. I don't ever feel like I need to talk. And in fact, when I do have to step in and make a decision, I normally will decipher that later and try and figure out, okay, what did I do wrong where Simon didn't make a call?

• 24:52Simon Sinek?

  I like this idea of making the little decision. I mean, it does multiple things, right? It establishes that somebody's gonna take accountability. It also builds trust because you're not taking unnecessary risks too soon, even if it's the right choice. It doesn't make people skittish. It's a very clever thing. And as we're talking about, I'm thinking about, there's also, as we practice good leadership, you're simultaneously learning good followership. Because I assume that in chaos of combat, that when the leader starts actually barking orders, that the good followers, those in the care of that leader, they also know when is the right time to say, I'd like to contribute. I think I have an idea. And they know, you know what? I'm gonna follow. I'm gonna follow.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 25:35Simon Sinek?

  It goes hand in hand, knowing when to ask, but also knowing when to not volunteer.

• 25:39Speaker 00

  It does boil down to trust as well, but this is something that's built up over time because. If we're, if you and I are in the street and we're in a gunfight and I look at you and I'm the guy in charge and I look at you and say, Simon, get in that building right there, get to the roof and put down cover fire. That's not the time where you're gonna say, well, actually, you know, if you could explain to me the why behind that, I'd really like to know. Now, because you're gonna go, oh, we're in a gunfight, Jocko's got a plan and I'm gonna go execute it. And you're gonna go execute it. Most of the time. Because there's a chance that when I say, peek at you from behind this wall I'm hiding behind with shots firing over my head, I say, Simon, go get in that building

• 26:22Speaker 00

  there, take the roof, put down cover fire. There's a chance that you look back at me and you say, negative. Now, why are you saying that to me?

• 26:32Simon Sinek?

  You might have information.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  You see something that I don't see. Maybe there's IEDs in the driveway. There's a reason why you can't do that.

• 26:40Simon Sinek?

  And when they say negative, you don't say, damn it, you listen to me, they say, ah. When you hear negative, they know something I don't know. Quick exchange and then either adapt or not.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  And really, what it boils down to then is now we're gonna go a little bit deeper and I'm gonna tell you why. I'm gonna give you the why and I'm gonna let you go execute. I'm gonna say, well, I need cover fire. Help me. And you go, okay, got it. I'm going to that building and I'm gonna be able to put down cover fire. So, that trust that you build up and knowing when to step in and make a call, again, you wanna do it as seldom as possible because the more you talk, the less people listen. You know, that's another thing, like we, I would not talk on my radio. In fact, when I was a platoon commander, when I was a troop commander, our radios were almost always silent. And when I did say something on the radio, when I came up on the radio and said,

• 27:32Speaker 00

  everyone get to building 34 now, like, people knew that they were gonna get there no matter what. And that's because I wasn't saying, hey, can you push two guys over to this building here? Hey, somebody give me some reports on where that hallway's getting, no, no, no one did that. No one did that. And it was like radio silence all the time.

• 27:52Simon Sinek?

  You know, what a leader's doing is fostering relationships, fostering trust, all the words that we use in good leadership, you know, you find in families and personal relationships, it's very human. And what we're talking about is like, when we get along, that doesn't mean we have to like each other. It's preferable, but not 100% necessary. And this is one of the things I find wonderful about military, which is the trust is so deep that, you know, I'll risk my life for somebody I don't necessarily even like, which I find fascinating. But when the team dynamics work and you get the relationships working, then it works. And I think a lot of leaders, they're so focused on the goal, they're so focused on the quarterly result, they're focused on even the strategy, that they sometimes forget that there's a whole group of people that have to come along

• 28:36Simon Sinek?

  to execute it, be engaged, enjoy it. And unlike the military, you know, they go home at the end of the day, or they have got a side hustle. They have options, they can quit. And they're not forced to do anything. In the military, there's still a, there's still a military structure and, you know, they can disengage, of course.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  And they can literally just say, we're not doing this.

• 28:58Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  You know, there's SEALs in Vietnam that would get told, this is a classic story that I would hear as a young SEAL. You know, when I came in, there's still SEALs, Vietnam SEALs in. And if they got told to do something they didn't want to do, this is a classic story, oh, they'd get told, hey, go do an ambush on this, on this river that's, you know, over here, tonight. And the guys would say, hey, there's a lot of enemy activity, we don't think it's going to be a good, and shut up and do it. They'd go, okay, cool. They'd get their gear on, they'd patrol 100 meters outside the gate. They'd sit down, hang out for five hours, walk back when the sun came up and say, yeah, we didn't run into anything. They complied, but they didn't actually execute. So even though in the military, there's the thought that they're just going to do what you tell them to do, but they're actually not, they're not going to do that.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  Another great, you know, you brought up-

• 29:45Simon Sinek?

  It's quiet quitting.

• 29:46Speaker 00

  You brought up Band of Brothers, that's another great scene that I bring up quite often is, there's the scene in the end of Band of Brothers where he gets told, hey, go do a reconnaissance across the river. And Dick Winter says, hey, I don't really think we should do that. Hey, shut up and go do it. He says, okay. They go do it, they take a casualty, I think a guy even gets killed. They come back, hey, we didn't see anything. And by the way, the war's all but over at this point.

• 30:07Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, it's a stupid-

• 30:08Speaker 00

  And the Colonel's next night says, go do it again. And he says, I don't think we should do this, just go do it again. And he says, okay, Roger that. And they go into a basement, they drink wine, they play cards, and they don't do the mission. So that happens in the military. That absolutely happens in the military. And so that's why, again, it's not so clear and people don't think that it works that way. But it works that way. If the team isn't on board.

• 30:31Simon Sinek?

  It's still human beings.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  If the team isn't on board with the, what we're doing, then we have a problem. And you know, you're talking about relationships and for years, I was telling people, here, you know, you asked, what have I discovered in the past few years? For years, I was telling people, hey, you gotta have relationships, you gotta build relationships, you gotta have relationships, you gotta build relationships. And I was working with a company and I was looking at this woman, I said, hey, you gotta build a relationship. And I could see the look on her face was a combination of like, yeah, I know, dummy. But what does that even mean? You know, that was the look on her face.

• 31:01Simon Sinek?

  Not actionable.

• 31:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, she was like.

• 31:03Simon Sinek?

  Go make a friend.

• 31:04Speaker 00

  Yes, go make a friend.

• 31:05Simon Sinek?

  Thank you.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  And so I ended up thinking to myself, you know, I keep telling people to have relationships, build relationships. What's a relationship?

• 31:14Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  And I ended up figuring out in my mind what the components of a relationship are. Trust, listen, respect, influence and care. Trust, listen, respect, influence and care. So if you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them. And it goes right on down the line. If you want people to trust you, you've got to give them trust. If you want people to respect you, you've got to treat them with respect. If you want to have influence over people, you've got to actually allow them to influence you. And if you want people to care about you, then you need to care about them. And that's the way it works. And the biggest obstacle to all those things is my ego. Because why should I listen to Simon? I've been here for longer than him. Why should I respect him? I outrank him. He should show me respect.

• 31:57Speaker 00

  Why should I be influenced by him? I know this way better than he does. And those, my ego comes in and now I end up with a bad relationship with people. So if we can get our ego under control and we can be humble, then we can build good relationships with people. And then just going back to your original point there is, you know, when people talk about, oh, we gotta make this, we gotta make this number or whatever. What team wins?

• 32:21Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  The team with 10 people on it where they hate each other and don't get along? Or the team that everyone's friends and they get along and they get after it? Who's gonna win? No one gets that question wrong. The team that gets along, the team that has good relationships wins all day long. And by the way, going back, what makes the SEAL teams good? It's not because we're can do pull-ups. It's not because we can shoot straight. Like, yeah, those things come in, but the reason we're good is because we care about each other because we have good relationships.

• 32:45Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 32:45Speaker 00

  And by the way, not all SEAL platoons are good. There are SEAL platoons that are disasters. There are SEAL platoons that get disbanded. Where they take an entire group of these, you know, high-performing, top-tier guys and they disband them.

• 33:00Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Why? It's not because the people on the team aren't in good physical condition. It's not because the people on the team don't know how to shoot their weapons. It's not because they don't understand tactics. The reason that they get disbanded is because they have bad relationships.

• 33:14Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 33:15Speaker 00

  It's a disaster. And you see that in any organization.

• 33:18Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. So good. I love that construction. I think that is bang on.

• 33:24Simon Sinek?

  Do you miss the Brotherhood? Have you been able to find it back out in the civilian world?

• 33:28Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I have a company called Ashlam Front and we work with a bunch of our guys. Literally, it's the guys. Now, we have other people as well. You know, we brought in a bunch of other people, but those people understand too. And we're all in the same mindset of trying to share these lessons with as many people as we can. But, listen, I'm not gonna lie to you. Do I miss being in a SEAL platoon? 100%. There's nothing better. It's the best job in the world.

• 33:53Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 33:53Speaker 00

  There's nothing better. I will miss that forever. I knew it at the time. I'm lucky enough that, you know, when I was in charge of a SEAL task unit, when I was a platoon commander, I was older because I had been enlisted. So I knew that this was as good as it's gonna get. And I relished every single day as much as I possibly could. And it broke my heart every day that got ticked off the calendar that it was that much further away from being my life.

• 34:19Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 34:20Speaker 00

  But it's the best job in the world and I miss it every single day.

• 34:22Simon Sinek?

  That's the one thing, every vet I've ever met. Whether they loved the military or hated the military, they all missed the brotherhood and the sisterhood and they've never found it in the outside world.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  I was in a call with the army unit that I worked for in Ramadi, this is my last deployment, the Ready First Brigade, the First Armored Division, and we're having a big reunion in Texas. And we were on a call the other day. So it was basically like the battalion commanders and the brigade commander and all these, these guys are now retired generals and colonels. I noticed it three minutes into the call, these were the guys that we would have brigade meetings, right?

• 34:57Simon Sinek?

  How big is a brigade?

• 34:58Speaker 00

  Brigades, there was 5,600 people. But these, these brigade meetings that we had, which we, we had probably twice a week, you know, where people are going through who was wounded, who was killed, what problems we were having. I mean, they were the most, the heaviest gravity in these meetings. And for a moment, you know, I thought about all those meetings where we'd be talking about when the memorial service was for a soldier or a marine that was killed. It was heartbreaking. And then the determination to make a difference in that city. And then you fast forward, it's coming up on 20 years, it'll be the 20 year reunion. And here was this group of, of men that I was in this Zoom call with.

• 35:40Speaker 00

  And instantly, I just felt this camaraderie that was, was just awesome. It was awesome to be sitting on a Zoom call with these guys who, who I'd sat in a room with and been on the battlefield with, you know, Colonel McFarlane, just each one of these guys, I'd been out there on the battlefield with them while we're doing things. And yes, I, do I miss that? I miss it every single day. It was a terrible time. There was heartbreaking sacrifices that were made. And yet, I miss it.

• 36:15Simon Sinek?

  Is there a mission that you did in the teams or something that you've done outside the teams that you wish all the things you do from this point on will be more like that? And it doesn't have to have been successful commercially or militarily, but when you look back at it, you're like, That one is the one that stands out. I want that feeling.

• 36:33Speaker 00

  There was a moment in time. I was in Task Unit Commander. This is 2006. We did a six month deployment. We're probably five months into deployment and, you know, we had taken casualties. We lost guys. It was a very difficult deployment and towards the end of that deployment, I forget even what the mission was. We were patrolling through the street and we were leaving somewhere. I was out there as a ground force commander, so I'm the senior guy in charge, but it's not, nothing big is happening. And I remember, you know, running back and I'm holding a corner and as I'm holding a corner, I'm, I'm kind of watching the guys. And they were so good and so squared away and it just looked like, it just looked beautiful.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  And just to see this group of guys that were so honed and so good and it's so focused. And I remember watching, just thinking to myself, this is it. This is the high point of my life right here, being a part of this crew.

• 37:33Simon Sinek?

  But you, you've had good teams. You've had good missions. You've sat back and watched the thing work. As you're describing, what was it about this patrol that stands out from all the other patrols where it worked as well?

• 37:46Speaker 00

  It was a combination of the fact that because in that particular moment, everything was going fine. So I didn't really, I wasn't looking for that leadership vacuum. I was, I was detached. I was able to just be, be almost an observer. You know, whatever the, the actual tactical terrain was, set me up in a spot where I could see and I could watch and I could say, dang. I, you know, I wasn't worried about anything and I just was watching going, yeah, this is as good as it gets.

• 38:13Simon Sinek?

  That's great. Give me an early, specific, happy childhood memory, specific that I can relive with you.

• 38:19Speaker 00

  I got one for you. I was playing soccer.

• 38:22Simon Sinek?

  This is specific?

• 38:23Speaker 00

  Yep, this is specific. I was playing soccer and my dad was coaching the game. Somebody kicked a ball and it hit me in the face and my nose started bleeding. And so there's blood going everywhere. And my dad just left me in the game like no factor. Keep playing. I just remember thinking, all right, that's how we roll.

• 38:43Simon Sinek?

  And what was it about that? That of all the memories you had in your normal childhood? What was it about that memory that makes you smile and want to tell me now?

• 38:52Speaker 00

  I think it was a little foreshadowing of just, you know, hey, I'm gonna keep going.

• 38:57Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 38:58Speaker 00

  That's what we're gonna do. We're gonna keep going regardless of what happens.

• 39:01Simon Sinek?

  So you do realize those two stories you told me are exactly the same story, right? Except in the combat story, you were your dad. Which is, you just trusted if they were aching or if they weren't, whatever was going on.

• 39:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're gonna keep going.

• 39:16Simon Sinek?

  That they had the wherewithal to just keep going for the team. Your dad sat on the sideline and just said, all right, whatever, look at this beautiful teamwork.

• 39:26Speaker 00

  Keep going.

• 39:27Simon Sinek?

  Keep going. And for that brief second in that mission, you were your dad.

• 39:33Speaker 00

  Interesting. Yeah.

• 39:34Simon Sinek?

  You had built your team, in this case, your dad had built up you and the rest of the team, because it was also the team, not just you, that he didn't need to pull you out. He could just sit back and trust that the work that he had done was working. It's the exact same story.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 39:51Simon Sinek?

  I think what it captures is the joy of leadership, the joy of parenting, the joy of all of these things that, oh, good leader works tirelessly on the individuals and the relationships and making it all work. But at some point, you know it works, not because the numbers show that it works, because the numbers can lie, but you get that weird, sit back moment and just smile to yourself. You know, those moments of all the sacrifices, all the stress was worth it. And that's why we do it, for those unexpected glimmers. You don't know when they're gonna... You'd had no idea that in the middle of a frickin' war zone, that that would be the moment that you'd find out. Your dad had no idea that it was when his kid got hit in the face with a ball,

• 40:34Simon Sinek?

  that that was the moment. He'd be like, it's all working. You know, people work so hard for the dopamine hit to know that they found something or achieved something. And good leaders work for the serotonin and the oxytocin hit. That's what that is. That's pride. And much harder to get than a dopamine hit. A lot more work than a dopamine hit. Dopamine hits are frickin' easy.

• 40:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:57Simon Sinek?

  You know, write a goal.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  You got one in your pocket.

• 40:59Simon Sinek?

  Figure out a plan, you know, there you go, dopamine. And we've built all these incentive structures around dopamine hits, which is the problem. But the reality is, we need more incentive structures around serotonin hits. Which are really hard.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:13Simon Sinek?

  And requires so much damn work. But when you get it, ain't no better feeling.

• 41:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's no doubt about that.

• 41:19Simon Sinek?

  And that's what I love about these things. Jocko, it's such a pleasure to meet you, finally.

• 41:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, great to meet you as well.

• 41:25Simon Sinek?

  Too long in the making.

• 41:26Speaker 00

  Indeed.

• 41:27Simon Sinek?

  Too long in the making.

• 41:34Simon Sinek?

  If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simoncinek.com, for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company. It's produced and edited by Lindsay Garbenius, David Ja, and Devin Johnson. Our executive producers are Henrietta Conrad and Greg Ruderchen.