307: Don't Love Your Chains, Even if They're Made of Gold. On The Psychology of Military Incompetence Pt.5

0:00:00 - Opening 0:06:51 - On the Psychology of Military Incompetence. 2:12:06 - Final thoughts. 2:18:47 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:37:51 - Closing Gratitude. 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 307 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:06Jocko Willink?

  Also joining us again tonight is Dave Berke. Good evening, Dave.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  I gave everyone fair warning that this book was going to take a while. We are going to continue the review of On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, which we started on podcast 303, 304, 305, 306. Now we're on 307, so if you haven't listened to those, go back and do so. If you listen to those, you probably realized that, which I realized I haven't pointed out yet. I hope it's obvious, even though the context of these books is military. It doesn't just apply to the military. It applies to everyone in every leadership situation, which is why we can learn so much from these insights with that. Let's get, well, let's get back to the book.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:54Jocko Willink?

  As they like to say, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence by Dr. Norman F. Dixon, also. World War II vet, wounded in action, legit guy. Little bit too crazy on the psychology stuff sometimes, especially nowadays. The psychology, some of the psychology of Freud's been debunked. Freud was a cocaine addict. Freud was, Freud was, was, uh, what's it prescribing cocaine for like every problem that you had? You know, you say, oh, I'm not feeling very well, cocaine. Oh, you know, I have, I'm sick to my stomach, cocaine. I'm not getting along with my wife, cocaine. This guy was doing cocaine and prescribing cocaine. And apparently he lied about a bunch of stuff too.

• 1:38Jocko Willink?

  He would say that he cured people that never got cured or, or he, he would say that they were cured, but they were really just cocaine addicts.

• 1:46Jocko Willink?

  So there is some stuff and, and I don't know. The, I never was a big psychology guy until we had Jordan Peterson on this podcast. That was kind of the first time I said, oh, I get it. That's where I realized these guys are brain mechanics that understand there's a problem. They look at it, they go, yep, we've seen this before. Yep, I know this pattern. Oh, you're scared of this thing, or you don't get along with these types of people or whatever. They say, yep, we've seen that before. Here's how we can actually fix it. I, prior to that, thought psychology was, what's the right word? Kinda. You know, uh, gobbledegook. Is that the right word?

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29Jocko Willink?

  What did you just say?

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Woo woo.

• 2:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, a little bit of woo woo stuff, a little bit like, hey, how could these guys, what are they gonna do? Whisper in your ear. You know, I thought it was that kind of thing. I didn't realize that they had methodologies and that they made sense.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  What about hypnosis or whatever?

• 2:43Jocko Willink?

  I don't really understand hypnosis too much. I've never been hypnotized. I've never even been to one of those shows where people get hypnotized and they act like a monkey or whatever.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:52Jocko Willink?

  Have you been to one of those?

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:53Jocko Willink?

  You believe it?

• 2:54Speaker 02

  I believe that hypnosis can work on some people. In fact, I think that that's

• 2:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the case.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, but the show that I went to, the, I went to two of them that I remember, and I remember thinking

• 3:07Speaker 02

  this hypnotist isn't that good, either not that good, or the person, the subject, or whatever was just sort of going along.

• 3:14Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Not because they're in on some scam, but more that-

• 3:17Jocko Willink?

  They're just down for the cause.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Down for the cause, exactly right. They didn't want to make everything look dumb and stuff, so they just did it.

• 3:22Jocko Willink?

  Have you ever seen anyone get hypnotized, Dave?

• 3:24Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:24Jocko Willink?

  Have you ever been hypnotized?

• 3:26Speaker 02

  No. Well, there's little tests they can do that-

• 3:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  That's like-

• 3:30Jocko Willink?

  I saw that on Rogan.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:31Jocko Willink?

  They give them a test about rolling your eyes back or something.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  Something like that.

• 3:34Jocko Willink?

  Who was that guy?

• 3:35Speaker 02

  I don't know, I forget.

• 3:36Jocko Willink?

  So that's kind, I sort of, you know how you kind of looked at it, mm, not really sure, a hundred percent sure? That's kind of how I looked at psychology before, before, uh, Jordan came on and I was, I, I understood. And what was weird was how he was explaining exposure therapy, which is exactly what's in Way the Warrior Kid. And I said, oh, this stuff can make sense. Got it. But of course, there's some weird stuff. There's still weird stuff in psychology. And they're doing weird stuff right now in the psychological wor- world. The way they're coming out with all kinds of weird things, so.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Did you study psychology or did you take any psychology?

• 4:11Jocko Willink?

  I'm sure I took something. Actually, I'm not sure I did, but I don't remember. If I did, I don't remember it. Other than maybe what whatever you learn in high school.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:20Jocko Willink?

  Maybe that's what made me think it was a woo woo.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:22Jocko Willink?

  That's the term you used.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Woo woo.

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  And what did I say?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Gobble de.

• 4:26Jocko Willink?

  Gobble de gook.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Some advanced.

• 4:29Jocko Willink?

  The psychologist out there, I apologize. It's not gobble de gook and it's not woo woo. It's legit. It's mind.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:36Jocko Willink?

  Mechanics.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Well, okay, you ever heard of Pavlov's dog?

• 4:40Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Okay, so just that alone?

• 4:42Jocko Willink?

  So that's legit.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, like just that, don't think about it like freaking. You just associate a bell with food and it's like your body responds like your be hit like stuff that you typically don't control just responds in that way. It's like, oh, okay, so you just think about how deep that goes.

• 4:57Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  And then people who understand that and can navigate and guide and kind of influence in that way.

• 5:02Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it makes sense.

• 5:04Jocko Willink?

  And so here's the deal on the in this book, I didn't want to just start trying to play. Psychological historian and going back and but there's definitely some things I read, I was like, okay, bro.

• 5:19Jocko Willink?

  Hey, Dr. Nixon, I respect you, but I'm not gonna, um. It's too much, right? It's too much. A lot of that Freudian stuff is too much. It's weird. Not not just weird. It's not, it's not that it's just weird. If it's weird, but it makes, but it's, but it's backed up, then cool. There's some weird stuff going on in your head. But when you read something, you go, that seems kind of weird. And then you find out that it's all debunked anyways. And that was the deal with Freud. Freud, like I said on the last podcast. A broken clock is right, is right twice a day. Well, that's the same thing with Freud. He was right about some stuff. The biggest thing being that you do have underlying. Psychological thoughts.

• 5:59Jocko Willink?

  Subliminal thoughts or subconscious thoughts, not subliminal, subconscious thoughts that would drive your decision making, make you act a certain way. So if you got whatever your parents treated you a certain way, you're gonna tend to wave, you know, if your parents. Built distrust in you, you might not trust people as much. If they wanted you to win all the time, you might, and that could go two ways, right? You could be like, oh, I'm gonna win, or I don't give a shit.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:25Jocko Willink?

  Right? So it's weird how you're gonna turn out. But the what is, you can't predict how the person's gonna turn out, but you can say it has to do with the fact that every time little Johnny didn't win first place, his dad was beating him. He either grows up and is winning, or he just doesn't care anymore.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Not competing.

• 6:44Jocko Willink?

  Right. He's not even competing. But those are underlying, there's an underlying cause. Now, what Freud did was he brought it all down to like, how you were potty trained. And just, no, bro, it's not just that.

• 6:59Jocko Willink?

  So, that being said, there are underlying things, and this guy ends up profiling all these different people. So, here we go. We're gonna get into this. Uh, this section is called Character and Honor. It opens up with a great quote. "Why should a man be in love with his fetters, though of gold?" So you, you are chained. And you're in love with those chains, but you shouldn't be. Even if they're made of gold, you shouldn't be in love with them. And another one, moderation in war is imbecility.

• 7:33Jocko Willink?

  Interesting. Uh, going to the book here. "In the context of militarism, the forces of conscience and of character manifest themselves in various guises, in medieval notions of chivalry, in codes of honor such as the duel, and in the belief that officers must of necessity be gentlemen. As Karl Demeter showed, has shown in his History of the German Officer Corps, these notions of honor and chivalry brought about and were themselves reinforced by a care to select officer material from the aristocracy and rural landowners. A state of affairs reflected in the contrast of snobbiness,

• 8:13Jocko Willink?

  exclusiveness, sense of honor, and lack of intellectual ability which obtained between the officer corps, corps drawn from the aristocratic junker families of the great Prussia, estates of Prussia, and those more bourgeois elements from the industrialized southwest of Germany." So, these old military officers came from rich folk.

• 8:39Jocko Willink?

  And he said, there's a difference between some of the rich folk that were in the city and some of the rich folk that were big landowners and they had a little bit different behavior. Not going to spend too much time on that, but I'm going to fast forward a little bit. A code of be, a code of honor is a set of rules for behavior. The rules are observed because to break them provokes the distressing emotions of guilt or shame. Whereas guilt is a product of knowing that one has transgressed and therefore might be found out. Shame results from actually being found out. In military circles, traditionally the greater crime. It is usually assumed that military codes of honor serve to reduce fear. This may well be so.

• 9:18Jocko Willink?

  Their primary object, however, is to combat not so much fear as the sort of behavior to which fear might otherwise give rise. In other words, they are designed to ensure that threatening situations are met by fight rather than flight. They do this by making the social consequences of fight, the social consequences of flight rather more unpleasant than the physical consequences of fight. That's freaking radical, right? Like I would ra, and you hear team guys say this all the time, but I'd rather just freaking die than be a sissy. Hundred percent. I've heard a fact, as a matter of fact, uh, BTF Tony said that on this podcast.

• 10:01Jocko Willink?

  He was scared shitless of heights and he's on some 80 story building in Hong Kong or Singapore or something. He's got a rappel off of it and he's totally thinking he's going to die. And he's like, well, I would rather die than be a sissy up here. So their, their, their, their rules work. Whereas the latter might lead to physical pain, mutilation and death, the former eventuates with far greater certainty in, in personal guilt and public shame.

• 10:34Jocko Willink?

  What I'm thinking about this is I'm sitting here thinking like who fought who said it well you know what we need to do is we need to create a code of honors that we can make sure that people don't run away. That would be some really meticulous.

• 10:49Jocko Willink?

  Like preemptive ideas. I'm thinking that there is a tribal nature to this stuff like we are instinctively. Programmed that if you run, you're not looking out for your clan and you suck and we don't like you. I think that's I think there's an instinct to that, not just a code that's written by modern man. But I think there's like a code that's instilled in us by being an animal.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, that seems like the case for sure. Maybe the code is just to like, take that in an extreme situation.

• 11:29Jocko Willink?

  And animals have it too, like a pack of hyenas go after a lion or whatever. They go after animals that can definitely kill a couple of them. But they'd rather be the one that gets killed. Then be the one that runs away and they know that if they can't run if they run away, they're not going to survive as a species. So they got to get it on.

• 11:49Jocko Willink?

  Man, I watched some hyenas the other day.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Discovery Channel.

• 11:53Jocko Willink?

  More like YouTube freaking red zone like nine videos deep or whatever. But dude, this zebra was getting eaten by hyenas. And first of all, the hyenas were savage. Hyenas are my favorite land animal, by the way.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  That's interesting.

• 12:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but the zebra was stoic. He was having his legs eaten and he looked the look on his face was he was watching an afternoon movie.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've seen that too. I wonder if there's like a thing that triggers on a on a prey animal that like, because you see that a lot. It's not like you don't see. Well, I don't know if I've ever seen any zebra sitting or prey animal like screaming and stuff.

• 12:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, I have.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  You have?

• 12:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  I always see like the deer just sort of stoic like.

• 12:37Jocko Willink?

  There's there's there's ones where those things are just screaming and not handling it. Yeah. I think there's stoic zebras and there's unstoic zebras. That's what I think.

• 12:47Jocko Willink?

  He's got a little indent here, little section. "When a soldier in action sees his life in immediate danger, even the bravest will be seized by a moment of fear. Biologically speaking, fear is a natural reflex sensation of the instinct of self-preservation, which dwells within every man, heroes included." Again, what's a little bit interesting about that is like Dean Ladd being on this podcast, going into Tarawa. And, "Hey Dean, were you scared?" He's like, "No, that was gonna happen to someone else." So maybe even the hyenas think it's gonna happen to someone else. That paw ain't gonna hit me. I'm not gonna catch a freaking canine tooth to the jugular on this one.

• 13:27Jocko Willink?

  "If victory is to be won, the elementary physical sensation must somehow be artificially suppressed, overcompensated by a contrary reflex of the psychic and moral kind converted into action." Bro, I'm a little bit in disagreement here, cuz I've seen guys that you're just like, "No, this guy doesn't care. He doesn't think he can die." Whatever, walking across the street, running across the street, totally going against. I don't think there's enough time to think, "Hmm, I wanna go drag that guy out of the street, but it looks really dangerous, but I want to prove myself." No, they're like, "Hey, I'm gonna go get that guy cuz he's hurt." What do you think, Dave?

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about all this, like even the need to write this stuff down. All this stuff pragmatically makes sense, but I've observed people do things in environments that sort of defy some of the things that are being said. So at a bare minimum, there's definitely exceptions to this idea that all men have this thing. And if they don't all have it, some of them go through whatever that process is in light speed. You know, if it's still happening and I can't see it, it's happening so quickly that they're just on doing things. I have seen, I have seen people do things that are dumb. And be like, "Hey, bro, you need to get, put your head down." I mean, I, from a basic self-preservation, like...

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Sniper fire is a good example. We would take sniper fire pretty regularly. And I've seen guys get so frustrated and so fed up and I saw a platoon commander once behave just like incorrectly. Walking around on the rooftop like, no, this isn't moving past the fear. This is uh some other disconnect there. I know that's not exactly what you're talking about, but I've seen people behave like that.

• 15:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh no, I was, I was on a rooftop one time and we started taking fire and there were some army dudes. I was up there with like a couple of army dudes. And we started taking a little bit of fire and it was, you know, ching, ching, whatever. And I'm just standing there and the guys kind of got down and I, I was just being, you know, Mr. Bad, Mr. Badass, right? Hey, whatever. No factor. I'm Colonel Kilgore. And then all of a sudden like another like three rounds ripped really close overhead. I hit the deck, son. I hit the deck. I wasn't so cool anymore. So my self-preservation was uh kind of kicked in.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:48Jocko Willink?

  Those ones are, those ones are close. Yes. Your threshold is kind of more further down the line, maybe.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  That's different. You gotta, there's a threshold and you see people have different thresholds and some, maybe the threshold either doesn't exist or it's so narrow, there's no real gap there that you can observe.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  But to say, the way he said it, I agree with you. Like there's, I've seen people do things like, that's not what I've seen. Now, it's not, doesn't happen all the time, but you see it for sure.

• 16:13Jocko Willink?

  Next, the negative content of this counter reflex is the feeling of shame. If it says, you don't stand fast now, but run away, the others will laugh at you and despise you. Again, that's a lot of thought to be having in the moment of truth.

• 16:31Jocko Willink?

  That's a lot of, I mean, I've done some stuff that was dumb or whatever. I've done some stuff where it's like, mm, hey, should I be doing this right now? Maybe not, but I ain't, I wasn't even thinking about that. I wasn't thinking like, oh, I don't want to look bad. I was like, hey, I'm gonna go, whatever, across this street, gonna go up this, whatever.

• 16:48Jocko Willink?

  A soldier must therefore be provided unless nature has done. You know what's another good example is Mike Thornton. You know, Mike Thornton's just hucking in grenade fights with people. He's shot, people are shot, there's people all around him. And I asked him when he was on the podcast, like, oh, you know, were you thinking you might get shot? And he's like, no, no, he's like, no, I didn't have time to think about that. I was going to go to save my friend. Next question. He was almost embarrassed that I asked that question. He was like, dude, what is wrong with you?

• 17:17Jocko Willink?

  A soldier must therefore be provided unless nature has done the job already. Oh, so he's got a little caveat. So there's a possibility that nature just made you brave with a set of automatic inhibitions that will save him in the moment of danger from a collapse of his own morale. Discipline, of course.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 17:33Jocko Willink?

  Discipline, of course, can hold him steady from without. But his one moral defense against internal weakness is the sense of honor. To arouse this sense in the ordinary soldier, cultivate it and above all, inspire it by his own example is the officer's highest duty. And to fulfill that duty, he must himself have a sense of honor that is well-developed, active and finely tuned. Yeah. That's a lot of, that's a lot of preconceived thought. Like the Marine Corps, it back in what, what are we coming up on the what anniversary of the Marine Corps?

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Seventeen seventy-five minus twenty twenty-two.

• 18:11Jocko Willink?

  A long time, a couple hundred and a half, whatever, two, two hundred and fifty something years of, and in the Marine Corps said, you know, we need to do, we need to create a code of honor so that Marines, they won't run away. Like, I can't see that happening.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  No, and I'm just thinking of the basic fundamental training I've been through as an officer in the Marine Corps. I don't remember any of that. I remember being given the code of conduct and there is unquestionably from day one,

• 18:38Speaker 01

  you don't want to look bad in front of your peers. I know that feeling of getting to like officer candidate school and the basic school and flight school and like, oh, I don't want to look bad. I understand that feeling, but there was a lot of words there to describe the situation that almost implies that you're going to have some sort of cognitive process to go, hmm, let me do a quick cost benefit here of running away to save my life or, you know, what my peers will think of me down the road if I do that. I can't connect with that.

• 19:03Jocko Willink?

  Right, like three months into the basic school, you're like, you know what? If anything happens, I'm not going to run.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:11Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, to the extent that a code of honor is reflexive, in the sense used by Demeter, "is so inflexible thereby leading on occasions to behavior that is so irrational as to burger on the absurd." That makes sense. There are some times where people have done stuff that is, doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense what they're doing. Like, it's heroic, but it doesn't make sense, and it's not even good.

• 19:37Jocko Willink?

  "The following example illustrates the juxtaposition of bull and honor. The year was 1755. General Braddock set out with his two regiments, the 44th and the 48th, and 600 irregulars on a march to Fort..."

• 19:52Jocko Willink?

  "Du Cisne.

• 19:55Jocko Willink?

  About nine miles from it, he was ambushed by Indians led by French officers. The result was disastrous. The men in their scarlet uniforms and white spatter dashes marching in columns were the sort of target ambush forces dream of. You can imagine this. Here comes the literal British redcoats. Here they come, marching in columns, and they get ambushed by the French and the Indians. Helpless because they could not see their enemies, some of the British troops broke for cover and fired from behind trees." Okay, cool. "This appalled Braddock and his officers. They considered skulking behind trees, both undisciplined and unsoldierly, so they drove

• 20:39Jocko Willink?

  the Tommies back into columns, where, of course, they were butchered. The whole episode was glaring proof that neither leaders nor the system under which they operated were worthy of the troops they used." But that's like crazy, right? That's crazy.

• 20:59Jocko Willink?

  "So unthinkable was it that..." There's another example. "So unthinkable was it that Japanese soldiers would ever surrender to the enemy, that they were not instructed as to how they should comport themselves as they did. As a consequence, Japanese POWs were a relatively fruitful source of information for Allied interrogators." I never thought about that, because I've always heard that when the Japanese got captured, they would like spill their guts, but I never thought about why. It's because they never got any training. They're just like, "Oh, you will, you will just die. No one's gonna surrender." "Oh, actually, we're gonna surrender. We're gonna spill our guts."

• 21:29Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, talking about this snob situation, snobs.

• 21:36Jocko Willink?

  Such a good word. A snob is one who is impressed by and therefore tries to identify with those who are higher up in the socioeconomic scale while straining to disassociate himself from those lower down. By these lights, such everyday affections as name dropping and paying society magazines to publish photographs of oneself or one's nearest family are obvious examples of snobbishness. Name dropping, we know Echo's big on that one.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Well.

• 22:09Jocko Willink?

  I get these, uh, what are they called? Chain emails? No, not a chain email, like an automatic email.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:15Jocko Willink?

  Spam emails, right? It'll say, "Congratulations, Jocko Willink, you have been named as CEO of the year, or as entrepreneur of the year, or of entrepreneur of the decade, and we, you know, congratulations, this is an incredible thing. And we would want to send you the full magazine that you will be published in, along with a plaque recognizing your incredible achievements as a business leader."

• 22:44Jocko Willink?

  And the cost is only $1,399. So it's kind of funny, right?

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:50Jocko Willink?

  But then you gotta remember, man, I've been to some people's offices where they got some plaques on the walls, and now I know where they come from. Now I know where they come from.

• 23:01Jocko Willink?

  As a general rule, snobbish behavior betokens some underlying feeling of inferiority. It is a common characteristic of the social climber, of the individual with low self-esteem, of the person who feels threatened or persecuted because of some real or imagined inadequacy. So when you deal with someone that's a snob, they actually are feeling inferior. That there is an underlying pathology to the condition seems fairly obvious for two reasons. Firstly, those who are emotionally secure are rarely snobbish.

• 23:31Jocko Willink?

  Isn't that a nice thing to know and understand? If you're emotionally secure, you're not going to be a snob. Secondly, the behavior is itself irrational, compulsive and self-defeating. After all, even the most hardened snob must know that other people are adept at seeing through his affections. So you're going to act that way, you know. You know people, because I explain this all the time to clients. And at the muster, I usually have to spend some time on this. Everyone can see what you're thinking. Your intent has a smell, it's so obvious.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  And you know it. And you, and deep down, you know it.

• 24:08Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes it's shocking though, because I don't think people do know it.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  I think, I agree with that.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  No, I mean to hit what he's, I think that's what he's saying, right? Isn't he saying that?

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Unless I'm hearing you incorrectly, he's saying that deep down, you, you know that behavior is observed by other people. And to me, that, that's sort of like, that's what makes the behavior crazy is the willingness to, to have that thought and go, no, no, I can get away with this. I can, I can do this differently. I can see it in him, super obvious. But when I do this, it's not going to come across as snobbish.

• 24:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  That's the part for me who's like, that's crazy to think that you can pull it off.

• 24:45Jocko Willink?

  That is, that is crazy and I see that all the time.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 24:49Jocko Willink?

  People think they're so smart, think no one's noticing these little maneuvers they're making, it's so obvious.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Yes, so I remember when we, we went in on a little,

• 25:01Speaker 02

  we were talking about it a lot for some reason. And so I thought about it and I don't think it's the kind where they think, oh, I'm getting away with it. I don't think that's the thought. I think the thought is like,

• 25:13Speaker 02

  they're, they're paying attention to what they're saying and all this stuff. But in their mind, instead of, oh, I look snobby and dumb or whatever, that I'm doing this name dropping and all that. They don't think that, they think, oh, when I name drop, these people are going to think that I'm as cool as I'm trying to be. Like it's going to work, you know?

• 25:28Jocko Willink?

  But to Dave's point, they see someone else name drop and they go, freaking echoes over there trying to name drop.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, it's like, but there's, there's little hints of that, like way of backwards thinking where it applies everyone else and not me, right?

• 25:42Jocko Willink?

  I'm super paranoid about that shit.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Bro, and that's a good quality because then it, you know, the kind, it's an old joke where. People like give great relationship advice, right? They think they give such good relationship advice, but everyone's like, you don't have any good relationships, you know, that kind, you know, right? So it's kind of everywhere where we think that it applies to everyone else and doesn't apply to me. Or it applies to me and no one else or whatever.

• 26:08Jocko Willink?

  And that's what Dave's saying. Same thing. It's like, oh, this, I can, I can name drop. And it's pretty cool.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Effective, exactly.

• 26:16Jocko Willink?

  So cool. But they see someone else do it and they're like.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, or even the snobby people. I know some snobs, unfortunately. And I get the same impression, kind of like, right, because snobs, especially when they're behaving in a snobby way, it looks dumb. Like, it's kind of embarrassing, especially if you know the person and like them even a little bit. It's kind of embarrassing. Like, you wish they wouldn't, for their sake, act like that. But you can tell they think like, oh, my gosh, these people must be so impressed with my, with my standards, you know, my high standards.

• 26:44Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of just random emails, I get these, I get invites to podcasts.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, hell yeah.

• 26:51Jocko Willink?

  And the podcast invite will say, you know, recently had this person. It's just, it's literally just a list of name dropping stuff.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:01Jocko Willink?

  And I think to myself, bro, what are you doing? Tell me about, you know, what your podcast is about. It's, they don't even play around. They're just like, have this person, this person, this person, this person, this person. You think, man.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, they think it works.

• 27:14Jocko Willink?

  There's a little game too. There's a little, uh, uh, status, you know? They're one of that, they can get you on, then they can get this person on, then they're listing you at every freaking chance they got that they, yeah, man.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:26Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking savagery in the freaking podcast zone.

• 27:33Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, there is nothing, for example, quite so transparent as name dropping or displaying invitations. He must know at some level that this behavior provokes at best amusement, at worst ridicule, contempt, or even dislike. But he is nonetheless powerless to curb his snobbishness. Something drives him on. I like that. I like, I like the way it takes, like, you have to drive through it. But why should the military be snobbish? Firstly, because traditionally, top levels of the military hierarchy were occupied by the rich and highly born. The notions of socioeconomic military status came, uh, it just became completely related.

• 28:17Jocko Willink?

  And then it goes on to say, "Officers are also stressed from within, to know that they have wedded their lives to essentially destructive ends, that they should, that they should shoulder great responsibilities, that they may be called upon to carry out tasks far beyond their capabilities, and that the price of failure is enormous, is quite sufficient to initiate feelings of uneasiness."

• 28:42Jocko Willink?

  "Even notions of retirement are fraught with stress, the knowledge that most ex-officers have little value on the civilian labor market, that their lot is of total obscurity, of genteel poverty, that they only, that only the very best and very worst of full generals and above are likely to achieve immortality, and that none of them will ever again command the absolute obedience to which they have grown accustomed, that can hardly be described as reassuring."

• 29:14Jocko Willink?

  That's kinda crazy, right? You're in the military, you're an officer, you get out, people are like, you think you're still the man! Ain't happening. "To the factors underlying the self-protective and compensating aspects of snobbishness must be added what is perhaps the most important one of all: pre-existing doubts of the self. Since, as we noted earlier, there is much in militarism to attract those with doubts about their masculinity and intellectual capacity, it would not be surprising to find that a number of men with problems over self-esteem will be discovered at all levels of the military hierarchy." So, why do we have a bunch of snobs? Well, because they're insecure about who they are.

• 30:00Jocko Willink?

  "One piece of corroborative evidence for these views comes from yet another characteristic of many military organizations: their notorious sensitivity to criticism." People don't like to be criticized!

• 30:16Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward about a little bit, and talking of criticism, it might seem that we are making a great deal of fuss about nothing. After all, nobody likes criticism. And as far, and as for complaints against military historians, it is only natural, indeed laudable, that some show loyalty to one's group, because he had gone on to a little thing about how some military historians don't say anything bad about leaders from the military. But he said, and he said, that's understandable, because they kind of have a little bit of hero worship going on. But he goes on to say, there are some special features of the phenomenon in some military men which deserve attention. In the first place, their sensitivity seems out of all proportion to that of other public figures.

• 31:01Jocko Willink?

  In terms of fame or notoriety, well-known generals or admirals are on the level with film stars, politicians, and even newsworthy academics. Hence, one would expect that they might come to accept the possibility of negative publicity as part of the game, a small price to pay for the perks which they otherwise enjoy. This they seem unable to do. In fact, there is a distinctly paranoid element in the way some senior commanders have reacted to even the faintest breath of criticism, to the vaguest and most tactful suspicion of a raised eyebrow or cleared throat, almost as if they were being held personally responsible for everything that might go wrong.

• 31:46Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, you should be held for accountable for everything that goes on. There's a lot of irony in that one. So you get these people that are insecure, and they, you know, they end up being snobs. He closes out this section saying, in touching upon this delicate matter, we must not lose sight of this, of its significance and relevance in the present context. Whatever else it may be, sensitivity to criticism is a measure of insecurity.

• 32:16Jocko Willink?

  That's so important to remember. You look like so insecure when you get offended by criticism. It implies a weak ego, which in turn, by way of compensation, manifests itself in particular character traits, one of which is snobbishness. Whether this ego weakness is due to some early shock to self-esteem, or fear of the breakthrough of unacceptable impulses, or some combination of the two influences, the individual so afflicted develops certain defenses which help to minimize his painful feelings. This finds support in yet another feature of military organizations, their cult of anti-effeminacy. Going into our next chapter, anti-effeminacy.

• 33:04Jocko Willink?

  We don't want to be feminine. We want to be masculine. It says, there's a quote in here from General Chaffee. "Let war cease altogether and the nation will become effeminate." We just need war.

• 33:20Jocko Willink?

  He goes here saying, "When discussing the various anxieties which militarism serves to reduce, brief mention was made of the fears which some men entertain about their masculinity." "Thus, it was pointed out that though primarily concerned with combating the dread of disorder and dissolution, certain sartorial aspects of bullshit might also help to reassure those with problems in this area."

• 33:49Jocko Willink?

  So, what he's saying there is, look, they... You impose discipline because you're anti-feminist. Anti-feminin. Yeah, not anti-feminist, anti-feminus-feminin. Or feminacy, effeminacy.

• 34:07Jocko Willink?

  And that some of these, you know, wearing, imposing your will on people means you're you know, you're not like feminine.

• 34:19Jocko Willink?

  Are we getting into kind of the weird zone of this book? A little bit.

• 34:25Jocko Willink?

  He says, "In putting together the jigsaw of military incompetence, therefore, we now, we can now take up a piece, one piece which clearly has great relevance to the topic. The striking aversion towards effeminacy which characterizes some military organizations, and this despite the fact that the female is usually regarded as quote, 'more deadly than the male.'" Okay, so I had to, I don't know, this was written in 1976, obviously, this is a topic that might be addressed differently today, but what I did want to do, what I did look up is, I said, "Okay, what is it, what is a feminine characteristic and what is a masculine characteristic, generally speaking?"

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:07Jocko Willink?

  Now, okay, I'm just gonna read them first. "Masculine," this is coming from some website about psychology, right? "Masculine, strong, controlled, focused, powerful, centered, purpose-driven, loves the challenge and competition, single-task-oriented, problem solver, wants freedom and release, makes big things small, forgets, needs admiration and appreciation, wants to be needed and respected." There, the masculine intimacy killer is being criticized, controlled, or shut out. So those are the masculine characteristics. Here's the feminine characteristics. Free, flowing, open, radiant.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Radiant.

• 35:50Jocko Willink?

  Wild, destructive, emotion-driven, seeks and gives love, nurturer, multitasker, diffused awareness, wants to gather, talk, vent, makes small things big, remembers, needs reassurance and attention, wants trust, connection, and praise. The intimacy killer is feeling unseen, unsafe, or misunderstood." Now, clearly, these things, every human has both these things in a spectrum, and...

• 36:29Jocko Willink?

  You could call, you didn't, I think what makes them challenging to talk about in this day and age is they put man and woman on them. What they should have done is said, you know, uh, just black and white, right? To, to

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Yin and yang.

• 36:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, yin and yang would have been perfect, right? So you got the yin personality, you got the yang personality. Here's how they are not necessarily men and women, because let's face it, we know a lot of women that are strong, controlled and focused. We know a lot of men that are free flowing, open radio, right? So these, but I think they're generally speaking psychologically, here's some characteristics. So that's where we're at. Dave, are you concerned yet?

• 37:07Jocko Willink?

  Is this the freaking podcast that gets us banned finally? I don't know.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  No, I'm concerned at the depth that this guy is going into to explain what I think is going to be a series of behaviors that we're going to discuss that are really deep.

• 37:20Jocko Willink?

  Yes. It's, it's interesting because what he's saying is, and what he says is that the military can shut out these feminine characteristics and that's not good.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Good. Yeah.

• 37:33Jocko Willink?

  That, that's what he's about to say.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:35Jocko Willink?

  That one of the negative characteristics of a militaristic organization is it doesn't have enough of the feminine characteristics. For instance, free and open mind, right? Those are bad. If you don't have those, those, you're, you're in a bad, bad situation.

• 37:52Jocko Willink?

  So he goes on to say, uh, evidence of this aversion is of necessity circumstantial. It embraces such phenomena. So here's some things that kind of show maybe this, this anti effeminate role that you have in the military. One, the importance attached to such outward signs of sexual identification as hair length. Since the insistence on short back and sides seems correlated with those periods in history when sexual differentiation was linked to hair length, we can dismiss excuses of neatness and hygiene as rationalizations.

• 38:32Jocko Willink?

  Field Marshal Lord Woolsey stated the true case when he said, "It is very difficult to make an Englishman at any time look like a soldier. He is fond of his longish hair. Hair is the glory of a woman, but the shame of a man."

• 38:52Jocko Willink?

  So what he's saying is, listen, it's not about hygiene, it's not about convenience, which by the way, I totally disagree with this. I think having short hair is totally convenient, low maintenance, hygienic, neat, right? That's why I have the hair that I have. When, when my hair gets longer than three quarters of an inch, which it hasn't been for a long time, I can't stand it. I don't think dang, I'm looking like a, like a woman. I need to shave my head right now. Not even in the ballpark. So dude, I think he's stretching here. I think he's doing a stretch. In fact, the other thing is,

• 39:31Jocko Willink?

  how do you make, how do you bring uniformity to a person's hair? You cut it off. Otherwise, you know, you have some dude with long red hair. You got some other dude with curly hair. You got another dude with, with no hair. You know, you got all these different hairstyles and all of a sudden we look different. We're not trying to look different.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  And you know how like when people, girls and guys, by the way, they have like longer hair and it starts to go in front of their face and they like whip it back, right with their head. Well, that's a, that's a functionality thing. I get it, but it looks pretty feminine.

• 40:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay. What about when you see a fighter, a professional fighter in the ultimate fighting championship? And he has to adjust his hair while he's fighting, by the way.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Same gig, right? Same gig. It doesn't make him any less of a fighter. I guess technically, right? You gotta do one more step for efficiency or whatever, I guess, but you know, isn't that a sexual thing when girls do that? Like flip their hair? That's like, that's like a mating thing, right?

• 40:28Speaker 01

  I was just thinking of Clay Guida, watching that dude fight and just like, bro, how do you see? And he's constantly messing with his hair and it didn't seem to affect him all that much.

• 40:35Jocko Willink?

  That's true. And his hair was so freaking wild. It was almost like a target disruptor. Like you see his hair would be moving around. Same thing with big ass beards. Like, how does that not throw off your punch to someone's chin when they've got a beard? A big beard. That's a problem.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  I, I don't know if this is true, but I distinctly remember being told, and I, I don't even know who told me, but. Your hair, the one of the reasons they talked about your hair being short is they didn't want someone to be able to use your hair as a, as a way to manipulate your head during hand to hand combat. Freaking want to grab your head and you know, so I don't remember that being like in a regulation as the explanation, but being told, hey, if the guy can grab your hair and pull your head because your hair's too long.

• 41:16Jocko Willink?

  You're wrong.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  That's to put you at a disadvantage. You can't do that. So.

• 41:19Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent. My, I've always, my rule was just my rule of me, but I, I will say, I kind of talked to my son about this. However, maybe I'm wrong. Didn't, didn't really tell my daughters this. I said, hey, if your hair is long enough for someone to grab, then that's a problem. You don't want to have hair that's long enough for someone to grab. I told that to my son. I didn't, I might've told to my daughters, but I didn't enforce it.

• 41:44Jocko Willink?

  Right? So I guess I'm whatever. Uh, uh, what is that?

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Sexist?

• 41:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  No, you're not sexist, but you know. Yeah. What is it when you treat someone different, right? You discriminate a little bit. Yeah. Well, whatever.

• 41:58Jocko Willink?

  Although I've told, I told all my daughters like, hey, I can take care of this problem. We can shave that head. I always offer my daughters haircuts. They've never said yes.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. I say, I say it as a joke. Like, I don't know if I'd want to shave my daughter's head, but I told my son the same thing. I was like, yeah, you do want it short. So when you get in a fight or whatever, they can't grab your head or your hair like that.

• 42:20Jocko Willink?

  That's what is double standard.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Double standard.

• 42:22Jocko Willink?

  I had the double standard.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 42:24Jocko Willink?

  The doubles, although I didn't, I gave them the option.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you didn't enforce it though. Wait, did you enforce it with your son though?

• 42:30Jocko Willink?

  No, but I mean, it kind of makes sense.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Amen. Hey, so as far as your role and your level of enforcement, it was the same. Oh, hey, how they behave, that's different. They got different lives. I get it, you know, but hey man, no discrimination.

• 42:40Jocko Willink?

  I kind of thought I might get my middle, when my middle daughter was wrestling. You know, and going into some freaking savagery.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, they don't go to wrestling, no, yeah? Or they do?

• 42:49Jocko Willink?

  No, they don't. But still, let's face it.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Principle.

• 42:52Jocko Willink?

  Let's face it. You roll in, you're, you're a female wrestler and you roll in with the shit. It's kind of like Thug Rose, right? Are we not looking at Thug Rose thinking, hell yeah?

• 43:00Speaker 02

  We are, we are looking at Thug Rose thinking, hell yeah.

• 43:03Jocko Willink?

  Even her opponent.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:05Jocko Willink?

  She shaved her head.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:07Jocko Willink?

  She didn't have her head shaved the first time. But you know, my daughter would get the cornrow braids, like the real tight braids. That's kind of a war mode.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  It is, yeah.

• 43:16Jocko Willink?

  You can't grab those, by the way.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, in the back.

• 43:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, if you have some kind of a ponytail sticking out the back, but for some reason, my daughter didn't really have that. They were just tight.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Interesting. Well done. Well, isn't it the same for beard, though, like a big beard?

• 43:29Jocko Willink?

  Totally.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  Like you can grab the beard.

• 43:31Jocko Willink?

  Big beard and I'm like, brah.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:32Jocko Willink?

  Like if you're, it's the exact same thing.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:34Jocko Willink?

  I look at someone with a big beard, I think, hmm.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  Handle.

• 43:36Jocko Willink?

  You must be super, super double extra confident to think that someone's not gonna freaking get a wrist wrap on that bad boy and slam your head in the pavement.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Well, I feel, I feel like the beard is in a less opportune position, I guess, technically, still very useful.

• 43:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  Very useful, but you know, on the top of the head, that's like, I'd say there's like a good level or two more control.

• 44:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's very shocking when I see guys with long hair. Again, you must have a lot of confidence that someone's not gonna grab you and that's one of my favorite takedowns on the battlefield. Just grab a handful of hair and slam people down. It works good.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Bro, watch the girl fights on YouTube. Well, if you have the time, bro, that's, that's gonna be the default at some point. They're just gonna grab hair and it's like they kind of nullify both attacks when they're both grabbing hair. So it's man, it's like proof, you know, in the field.

• 44:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, field proven combat scenario, drunk chicks scrapping it out on YouTube.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  It's totally true. It's totally true.

• 44:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay, this is a rough topic. Traditional taboos on certain topics and pastimes. Thus, we find Captain Foley, Commander of Britannia Naval Training Establishment for Officer Cadets at Dartmouth, forbidding piano playing because he considered it effeminate. So these are the kind of dudes that are weird, right? This dude's got issues, you know, and he's going hard against piano playing because he's got some weird stuff going on in his head, right?

• 45:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:08Jocko Willink?

  Another one, a deeply rooted prejudice toward women who try to adopt traditional male roles.

• 45:14Jocko Willink?

  See that? Finally, an equation between defensive behavior and effeminacy. So if you're on defense, that means you're being effeminate. The feeling that it is sissy to wear, to wear ear protectors or build head covers has undoubtedly caused much unnecessary, unnecessary destruction of the human body. It is not an unreasonable hypothesis to suggest that its most glaring and costly illustration occurred in connection with the issue of convoys. In the First World War, hundreds of thousands of tons of merchant shipping was lost through the Navy's refusal to adopt the convoy system.

• 45:56Jocko Willink?

  When Lloyd George eventually forced convoys upon an unwilling Admiralty, losses fell significantly. So their idea was, hey, I'm in charge of my ship. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go with a pack. I'm not weak. I'm not going in a convoy. That's weak. I'm a man and I'm gonna take this thing solo. And they were losing ships all the time. Finally, someone say, hey, bro, you guys gotta stick together. Uh, the lesson was plain for all to see. But in the years between the wars, the same irrational dislike of mothering a flock of ships prevented the development of an efficient escort system. So the Brits, the Brits started taking losses in World War One, uh, World War Two, same

• 46:41Jocko Willink?

  freaking bad move. Then the Ameri-, then America entered the war and unbelievably, in the face of overwhelming evidence, insisted on trying to defeat U-boats without the use of convoys. Same thing. This is World War Two. We already know that you should stick together. Between December 1941 and the following March, American losses of merchant shipping grew to the staggering monthly total of 500,000 tons. Eventually, the price of aggressive masculinity embodied in the so-called patrol and hunting operations of isolated warships proved too costly and convoys were instituted between Boston and Halifax. Losses on this route promptly dropped to zero.

• 47:25Jocko Willink?

  But south of Boston's, but Boston's ships still sailed independently until June. The number of ships sunk reached an all time record of 700,000 tons in a single month. They still didn't do it. It's considered weak. It's considered feminine.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that, okay, hindsight 2020, I get it. But when you kind of think of the big picture, it makes more sense than it might appear at, at first. Cause remember back in the day when seat belts weren't, uh, what do you call legal like, or it was legal still to not wear your seatbelt, right? And then there's like, and then there was a little transition period where it's like, yeah, if you don't wear your seatbelt, it's kind of like, ah, like you're being, what are you scared? Like kind of weak or whatever. Same thing with the kids and the helmets. Like, oh yeah, you're just riding in the cul-de-sac right now, Brad. The helmet, is that even necessary? Or you see the kids with the elbow pads, you know, it's kind of like, okay, cool. You're safe, but come on, let's say that's kind of weak, you know?

• 48:22Speaker 02

  And but let's, the truth is, bro, if, if you care about like the safety or whether it be efficiency, safety, not dying, like all these things, brother, helmet's gonna make a lot of sense.

• 48:34Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  After a while, you're gonna kind of realize that then it's like, okay, what's more cool now? Living or not wearing that helmet?

• 48:42Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yeah, that's, uh, that's a good one. That's, so I see, I see what you're saying.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  State of mind is what I'm saying.

• 48:49Jocko Willink?

  So it took these guys a little while to get over the state of mind. Like, hey, we kind of look like a sissy.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 48:54Jocko Willink?

  Because of we're going in a convoy.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't need nobody holding my hand.

• 48:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  You know?

• 48:59Jocko Willink?

  I got this.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Did any of your dudes not want to wear iPro? Remember iPro, those clear?

• 49:07Jocko Willink?

  In what situations?

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Bin Ramadi, going out and in, in, on, literally going out on a mission.

• 49:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, me.

• 49:16Jocko Willink?

  I don't tell you why. It had nothing to do with. If depending on how much movement was taking place.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Sweaty that fog up.

• 49:22Jocko Willink?

  Just sweaty and fog. I sweat a lot and they would be not, they wouldn't be functional for me.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  That's, that is a, that's a legitimate reason to do, to.

• 49:31Jocko Willink?

  Plus, do I look like a sissy?

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:33Jocko Willink?

  No, that, that if you could wear Ipro, you should, if you can, you should.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I only ask that because I remember that being a like long conversation with, with folks, not just on my team, but all the people we're with about not wearing Ipro out on missions. Not the fogging and the sweating notwithstanding, which I fully understandable and there was different ways, different ones to do it and dudes didn't want to do it because they didn't like the way it looked.

• 49:59Jocko Willink?

  Really? Well, all you had to do is authorize them to wear freaking sunglasses and then all of a sudden you can't get them to take them off. It's weird though, because I always wear sunglasses, always, always wear sunglasses, but I'd never wore sunglasses in the field.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:12Jocko Willink?

  Ever. And I don't know. They'd seem like just in the way, plus they would fog up, they would get sweaty. Yeah.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Is there anything in, um, I guess in the battlefield, it might be more black and white, but like in training or something like that where it's like, maybe something optional or something that people don't want to wear or do that's for safety reasons, but it's like, it's like, it's not cool or it's like.

• 50:36Jocko Willink?

  All kinds of things. There's a ton of things.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  In aviation, gloves are always a big one.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  Gloves? Yeah, yeah.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Dudes didn't want to wear gloves. And then they'd always show like these videos of like post ejection trauma to your hands or fingers getting literally, they'd call it getting degloved when your, um, skin would come off your hand and leave, and leave the, um, the bone behind that. Pictures of guys exiting the cockpit on ejections and stuff or getting burned and things like that.

• 51:02Jocko Willink?

  But flight gloves would stop you from getting degloved?

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Yes. So, um, if you have like a, a ring or, or, or you're climbing up or something like that and, and, um, you didn't have something covering that, that could get caught. There's a famous picture, all the, any aviator listening to this will know exactly what I'm talking about. There's a famous picture like the Gazette or whatever, a magazine of a dude's hand on the table like this, who's wearing his wedding ring and his hand's there. This whole thing has gone all this errors is the, the remaining piece of bone left on his hand. You know, trying to get people to wear gloves. People didn't want to wear gloves.

• 51:36Jocko Willink?

  Did you wear a wedding ring?

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:39Jocko Willink?

  Under your gloves?

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:41Jocko Willink?

  Did you always wear gloves?

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Yes, I was a glove wearer.

• 51:45Jocko Willink?

  And then, why would you not want to wear gloves?

• 51:47Speaker 01

  The complaint was like, oh, it's the tactile, like I want to press the buttons and turn the knobs and it's harder to feel and like.

• 51:53Jocko Willink?

  Can you cut the fingertips off?

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:55Jocko Willink?

  Did you do that?

• 51:55Speaker 01

  No.

• 51:56Jocko Willink?

  Just full on?

• 51:57Speaker 01

  I just wore gloves. Now, what would eventually happen is like you'd wear through them and sometimes the fingers would, actually, you probably even seen in the videos, I'm like moving my things up and down and the gloves are kind of frayed and whatnot. But, um, it was just to your point, it was a conversation that I always found odd. To be quite honest, the reason I wore gloves is like the first day of light school, the guy was like, you will wear your gloves. I'm like, okay. I'm not here to like, I'm not here to like tell you, I don't like the way it feels. I didn't even think about it. I put my gloves on and strapped them on and that was the end of that.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  I never found my own style. Like, I feel like, you know, I don't like this. Wasn't in my, I didn't, I wasn't, didn't care or think about those things.

• 52:34Jocko Willink?

  And you got used to it.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 52:35Jocko Willink?

  And once you get used to it, then it doesn't really matter.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  It was no factor.

• 52:37Jocko Willink?

  And yeah, it's no factor at all.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  But there are people that, these are conversations, and I think to the point is like, those conversations about, I'm not wearing this for the functionality versus I don't like the way it looks. Those are two totally different things. You tell me, hey, it gets fogged up, I can't see, sweat, I remember sweat beads running down the glass and like, these are gone. Immediately. Versus, as I look in the mirror, I'm all, I'm all kitted up about to go, I don't like the way I look. I'm not, I'm not having those conversations in my mind about how I look when I'm doing this.

• 53:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, the, the fact of knowing you can get your freaking shrapnel in your eyes, you know, little chunks of brass in your eyes, little chunks of crap in your eyes, like that sucks.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Especially Dave Berke, who has a hundred percent plan of going back to flying an airplane with his whole ground situation is over. I'm preserving my eyes, dude. Eyes are number one protected.

• 53:28Jocko Willink?

  So, he goes on to this section here where he starts to using this term butch.

• 53:35Jocko Willink?

  And it's not, it's just basically saying like, I guess we'd say like, hyper manly, like a manly man. He uses this term butch. He says, "By selecting and promoting on the basis of such butch criteria, as size, strength, physical courage, and prowess at games, the armed forces tend to ignore other attributes which really may be of even greater importance to a senior commander: intelligence, high educational level, resistance to breakdown under stress, and substantial reserves of moral courage." Well, clearly, this goes down where we're just picking the kind of the toughest dude to be in charge, instead of the smartest dude. Not that the smartest dude is necessarily the right one either,

• 54:19Jocko Willink?

  because we see smart people that are really dumb.

• 54:23Jocko Willink?

  There is, of course, a counterargument, namely that generals should be heroic leaders, which would necessitate them having at least some of the aforementioned butch traits. Sheer physical size, the possession of decorations for bravery, and a fine rugger record would, according to this argument, confer invaluable leadership qualities upon top military commanders. Unhappily, this theory does not stand up, and by rugger, he means a rugby player.

• 54:49Jocko Willink?

  "Being good at rugger in no way ensures the best qualities of military leadership. So-called masculine attributes count for very little in comparison with personality and knowing one's job."

• 55:04Jocko Willink?

  "The most cursory glance at military history suggests that many of the really great military and naval commanders, Napoleon, Nelson, Wolfe, for instance, were men of brain and character, not of huge bodies with dazzling records in the field of sport." "Of generalship, Montgomery says, the science and art of command involves an intimate knowledge of human nature. A commander must think two stages ahead." He speaks glowingly of the physically frail Wolfe and Nelson, describing the latter as "a brilliant seaman and most original, intelligent, and courageous fighter." In the same vein, he comments on the flexibility and brilliant intellect of Napoleon. But nowhere does the Field Marshal

• 55:47Jocko Willink?

  talk about the advantages of fine physique, hairy masculinity, and a reputation for long-distance running polo or boxing.

• 55:56Jocko Willink?

  So these manly traits, butch traits, according to this book, might not be the most important thing. In fact, he's indicating that they are not the most important thing.

• 56:08Jocko Willink?

  We are concerned to relate and explain two indisputable phenomenon. So-called peaceful generals who in times of stress reveal themselves as passive, dependent and indecisive. And the anti effeminacy ethos of some military organizations. To handle these facts, the following points were made.

• 56:30Jocko Willink?

  Some men, for reasons rooted in early family situation, have serious doubts about their sexual adequacy and/or physical strength and size. Such men may deal with their feelings of inferiority by adopting a compensatory style of life in which they strive for reassurance in some suitably symbolic role. The prevailing ethos of many military organizations provides this reassurance. Hence, a percentage of men will seek acceptance by the armed forces simply because such acceptance is a warranty of their masculinity. Once in, their continuing and underlying feat of a fear of effeminacy

• 57:12Jocko Willink?

  produces that well-known pattern of behavior which we have termed butch. But this behavior is itself highly valued in the armed forces. Hence, the individual not only profits by, but also contributes to the anti effeminacy of his parent organization. It is in his interest to do so.

• 57:34Jocko Willink?

  And last, the significance of all this for military incompetence is that butch characteristics are not perhaps the most important criteria for top-level leadership. So he's talking about, and when I was thinking about this, you definitely see some people like this where you can see that they're in the military

• 57:54Jocko Willink?

  to try and maybe compensate for some fears in their own head. And I think it's real obvious, just like we talked, the obviousness of someone that's a snob, someone that's a name dropper. Because let's face it, there's some guys in the military that are 100% badass military dudes and like, that's just how they are. This idea that you get some people that are countering their innate.

• 58:21Jocko Willink?

  Feminine traits by just trying to act super tough. You see some of those guys, I don't think it's very widespread. You certainly see some of them. But it's not.

• 58:32Jocko Willink?

  It's not that common. When you see it, it's very obvious that that's what you're dealing with. They're usually over the top with their behavior. Uh, but then I think the most important thing that he's saying is that. In the military, sometimes that you, you, you start to focus on that and we don't want someone that's gonna raise their hand and, and have an open mind to stuff or gonna, gonna, I mean, think about some of these feminine, feminist traits that are good. Multitasker, right? Wants to talk, communicate. Remembers things.

• 59:08Jocko Willink?

  Free, flowing and open. Right? Emotion driven. We talk all the time about the fact that we don't want people to make emotional decisions, but you don't want someone that doesn't have any emotion. Cause that's how you end up with a commander that's just sending people to their death. So to, well, that's why we wrote the dichotomy of leadership. All these masculine and feminine traits. You need them both and you need to have balance. You need to have balance in the individuals. And then you need to have balance in a unit. You might have, you're gonna need some people in your platoon that just are killers. But if you have a whole platoon filled with killers, that's going to be a problem. And you need to have some people in your, uh, platoon that are very empathetic. But if you have a whole platoon of empathetic people, you're not gonna be able to get any missions done.

• 59:53Jocko Willink?

  So you need a balance of these feminine, feminine and masculine traits. You need to have the proper balance of ying and yang.

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  So where does toxic masculinity fit into all that? Or is this just talking about toxic masculinity, but, but since it was written back in, you know, before the term was.

• 1:00:12Jocko Willink?

  Before the term, the toxic masculinity, I wrote an article about this one time. Toxic masculinity is when you take any of the mass considered traditional masculine traits and you take them to an extreme. And then you end up with someone that's quote toxic masculine.

• 1:00:27Jocko Willink?

  So. Here's the thing, when I wrote that article, I wrote about, cause they were saying, you know, being competitive is a toxic masculine trait. No, it's not. It's a good trait to have.

• 1:00:39Jocko Willink?

  Uh, being strong. That's a masculine trait. Is it toxic? No. Do, uh, what's another one?

• 1:00:49Jocko Willink?

  Being purpose driven. That's a masculine trait, according to this list. Is that a bad thing? If you take it to an extreme where you've got someone that's they just want to win and then smash people. Yeah, that's bad. If you want someone that's wants to be just so strong and powerful that they'll just step on other people. That's bad. So if you take any of these things to an extreme, they're a problem. And what I ended up saying in that article, there's these, these are good characteristics for, for a person to have, including my three daughters. I want my daughters to be assertive. I want them to be strong. I want them to be competitive. What you want your, don't want your daughters to be like that? No, of course. You want your sons to be like that, too. Do you want your, any of your kids to go too far in those directions? No, absolutely not.

• 1:01:34Jocko Willink?

  So the toxic masculinity, I think, is when you start taking any of these characteristics to the extreme. It becomes a problem. Does that answer your question?

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm wondering just if this is essentially like what he's talking about before it was actually like a phrase.

• 1:01:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I think if you get an organization where they've gone too far in one direction, it's a problem.

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:57Jocko Willink?

  Now, listen, we got just people that are just following orders, just ultra obedient. Cause that's what the masculine thing is, we just wanna, we, we wanna obey and be part of the team. Okay, cool. Not good.

• 1:02:13Jocko Willink?

  Chapter 20, leaders of men. How can the ability to lead depend on the ability to follow? You might as well say that the ability to float depends on the ability to sink. That's an interesting quote, which I don't agree with. The ability to lead, you don't necessarily, no, sorry. In order to follow, you don't necessarily, it doesn't know, doesn't mean necessarily you're going to be a good leader. But if you're going to be a good leader, you better know how to follow as well. So that quote right there, which is from the Peter Principle, don't agree with it. Whatever its other causes, military incompetence implies a failure in leadership. This is hardly surprising of psychological problems which beset military officers few exceed

• 1:02:57Jocko Willink?

  in severity those associated with leadership. In this respect, they are required to fulfill incompatible roles. They are expected to show initiative, yet remain hemmed in by regulations. They must be aggressive, yet never insubordinate. They must be assiduous in caring for their men, yet maintain an enormous social distance. They must know everything about everything, yet never appear intellectual. Finally, as we saw in the last chapter, they may well have been selected for attributes almost totally unrelated to the task they are expected to perform. So that's an entire list of dichotomies of leadership, right?

• 1:03:34Jocko Willink?

  Discussings of leadership is so often overloaded with vague but emotive ideas that one is hard to put the nail, to nail the concept down. So now he's trying to come up with a, with a definition for leadership.

• 1:03:48Jocko Willink?

  To cut through the panoply of such quasi-moral and unexceptionable associations as patriotism. Play up and play the game. Never asking your men to do something you wouldn't do for yourself. Not giving up. The square jaw frank eyes of steadfast gaze. These are all like these sort of leadership things. If you'll, if you'll be a man recipe. So he's given all these kind of traditional quotes about leadership. And then he gives his, the simple truth that leadership is no more than exercising such an influence upon others that they tend to act in concert towards achieving a goal which they might not have achieved so readily had they been left to their own devices.

• 1:04:31Jocko Willink?

  Fair enough. Is that an epic definition of leadership? Not really.

• 1:04:37Jocko Willink?

  But it's a decent one. The ingredients which bring about this favorable state of affairs are many and varied. The most superficial level. At the most superficial level, they are believed to include such factors as voice, stature and appearance, impression of omniscience, trustworthiness, sincerity and bravery. At a deeper and rather more important level, leadership depends on a proper understanding of the needs and opinions of those one hopes to lead and the context in which leadership occurs. So that's a great definition. Well, not so much a definition, but it's a great point. Hey, your voice, your stature, your trustworthiness, your sincerity, your bravery,

• 1:05:21Jocko Willink?

  those things are all important, but guess what's even more important? Understanding the needs and opinions of the people you're leading. That's what he's saying right there. So he nails that part, straight up. In short, there's nothing mysterious, romantic, or necessarily laudable about leadership in military organizations. Leaders are appointed rather than emergent. That is to say, the needs of the individual soldier play almost no role in deciding the sort of leader he gets. Secondly, the military leader possesses constitutional power of a magnitude which surpasses that of leaders in most other human groups. If he cannot pull his followers by force of character, he can at least push

• 1:06:02Jocko Willink?

  them by force of law. Yeah, I don't really buy into that too much. That's like, you know, because in the civilian world, oh, you don't want to do what I'm telling you? Cool, I'm gonna fire you. Which you can do. Just like in the military, you can say, shut up and do what I told you to do, because I, you know, I have the backing of the constitution behind me. Neither one of those are good leadership, and they won't pan out for very long. The third and related feature of military leadership is that it essentially, is essentially autocratic and operates in what modern theorists call a wheel net, rather than an all-channel communication net. In other words, the flow of essential information is to and fro between

• 1:06:44Jocko Willink?

  the leader and his subordinates, rather than between all members of the group. Not very surprisingly, the wheel net, though no doubt gratifying to autocratic leaders, produces more errors, slower solutions to problems, and reduced gratification to the group than does the more democratic all-channel net. That's interesting. You want to participate with your whole group. I think that's how I operate. It doesn't really matter who comes with an idea. We're good with it. Let's share it.

• 1:07:16Jocko Willink?

  In light of these considerations, it is perhaps strange that leadership in the British Armed Forces should have been as effective as it has. So he's like saying it's amazing that the British military was so effective because they freaking operate on these principles that suck.

• 1:07:30Jocko Willink?

  Since a salient feature of, and by the way, you want to know why? The soldiers, the soldiers get the job done. Since a salient feature of all the campaigns so far considered has been a remarkable absence of the mutinous tendencies and a quite astonishing degree of tolerance, fortitude, and bravery shown by the common soldier. We have to ask, was this despite or because of their leaders? I'm going to go ahead and say despite in many cases. Yeah, I saw this with many, many platoons over the years. You could have bad leadership, but if you have a few pipe hitters in there, they will make things happen and that platoon will be successful even with bad leadership.

• 1:08:16Jocko Willink?

  Despite the leadership, they'll be successful. The first point of note is the distinction that has to be drawn between two roles of a leader. Task specialist and social specialist. A task specialist's, a leader's prime concern, as, sorry, as a task specialist, a leader's prime concern is to achieve the group's goal. In the case of the military, defeating the enemy. For such a role, being likable is rather less important trait than that of being more active, more intelligent, and better informed than his followers. In his capacity as a social specialist, however, a leader's main function is to preserve good personal relations with the group

• 1:08:57Jocko Willink?

  and within the group, thereby maintaining morale as to keep the group in being. In the military, melee, the function of a successful social specialist would prevent mutiny and reduce such symptoms as low morale, absenteeism, desertion, sickness, and crime. Not very surprisingly, the most important attribute of such a leader is that he should be liked. Efficiency and task ability are of rather secondary importance. So this is something, I think I wrote leadership strategy and tactics. What is a leader trying to do? Build relationships in that team, not just between yourself, but between the whole team. That's what we're trying to do. That's what we're here for.

• 1:09:41Jocko Willink?

  And that task thing kinda works itself out. If you're doing a good job building those relationships, that task thing's gonna kinda handle itself.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  I'm just having such a hard time. He's using so many words and, and what I'm actually trying to do is, is get my head wrapped around like 1970s England. That's what I'm trying to do. Because it's like, hey, how about I take those 12 pages and just write balance? You know what I mean?

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  And, and yeah, even inside that, just like you, and I think the order in which you said it is the right thing is if, he called it like democratic, we all feel part of it. Everybody thinks I care about you. If my people think I care about them, they're gonna get on board with the plan. And if I'm an autocrat and I tell people what to do and they have to do what I say no matter what, they're gonna struggle with the plan. And if you go with that second, that first one, they'll do even harder things that are more challenging, more life-threatening and less likely to be successful on paper, or at least to their own risk, than if they don't think that I care about them. They'll be less likely to do hard things, like combat. And then inside that, the little subtle point, and I'm glad you said it because I had the exact same thought is, even when that leadership doesn't reveal itself, which it clearly has not,

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  there's another layer of leadership inside there. You know, you could call it your NCOs, whatever the term that you wanna use, those, those pipe hitters inside the organization, they're still gonna make it happen.

• 1:11:03Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yeah. And just to make sure everyone understands, when you want your team to think you care about them, how do you make that happen?

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  You have to care about them.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  And I shouldn't say, I should use a different word. When they believe that. Not when they think that, like I'm trying to convince them of that. When they come to believe that and go, oh.

• 1:11:23Jocko Willink?

  Yep. This guy cares.

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  He really does. That's, that is, that's a better way to describe, and that's really what you're saying. Not that I, I manipulate them to thinking that. It's when they recognize it for themselves and they, and they see that, and they believe that.

• 1:11:38Jocko Willink?

  Says here, "It has been shown that whereas low-stressed groups operating in situations that are devoid of painful uncertainties do best under democratic leadership, organizations like the military in times of war that are subject to stressing ambiguities actually prefer autocratic leadership." In other words, the feelings of dependency induced by stress successfully neutralize a person's normal adversity toward the autocratic leader. While a man like Townsend would not be likely to survive for very long in a modern civilian

• 1:12:15Jocko Willink?

  firm, his autocratic mean was lovingly accepted by men whose lives were hanging by a thread." So, the reason that he points all this out is that these guys, some of these guys like Townsend, they still listened to him. They obeyed him. And what's interesting about this is, he's making a huge generalization of organizations like the military in times of war are subject to stressing ambiguities prefer autocratic leadership. Let me tell you where the subtlety here is. Ninety-seven percent, ninety-eight percent, ninety-nine percent of the time, even in a

• 1:12:57Jocko Willink?

  war, we want democratic leadership. And there is a moment in time where there's confusion, where there's chaos, where there's mayhem, where everyone is looking at the leader to make a call. That happens in the military, it happens in business too. I mean, when Echelon Front hit COVID, right? Hey, we heard a bunch of ideas and then I became a little bit autocratic, it's like, "Hey, here's what we're doing." Boom. And everyone was stoked, going, "Hell yeah, that's what we're doing."

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  They were. And the thread that's inside both of those, and I think why autocratic behavior, when you're the recipient of that, why you're willing to be treated like that or directed? If I have already made the connection in my mind that the thing that you're making me do, that you're directing me to do, is designed to help me, keep me alive, when that thread hangs in the, or the life hangs in the balance, whatever the word he just used there, if I make that connection and go... He's telling me to do this and when I know what he, I know why he's telling me this, dude, I'll follow orders all day long. It doesn't even bother me. It doesn't bother me told what to do, to be mandated anything from my boss if I go, oh, I see what's happening here.

• 1:14:03Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go execute. Now, if you spend your whole career being an autocrat and just telling me what to do, dude, I got news for you. Even when you actually need, in those rare two, three percent occasions, you need to do that, you're gonna have a very, very hard time getting your people to follow you.

• 1:14:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is a point that I made deeply in leadership strategy and tactics when I talk about leadership in a vac, in the leadership vacuum. And I mean, I went into some specifics in there, like letting that vacuum exist for just a second longer, just to make sure everyone feels it. I would make sure, I'd wait an extra half a second or one second before I said anything to make sure everyone knew, oh damn, we don't know what we're doing right now. And they are waiting to be led. They are waiting for that, that autocratic leader to step in and say, everyone lock it up, we're moving to that building. And they are so on board for that. If you make that call a little too early, you get resistance. Some people, how do you know what? No, you gotta let it, you gotta let it just,

• 1:15:02Jocko Willink?

  let it be there for a moment. Let everyone see, oh, it's a vacuum. I don't know what to do. And then boom. And if you wait too long, well then other people are chirping in with their ideas, you can get some confusion. So you gotta time that very well. But, but it's unfortunate that he says, he kind of blankets the whole thing because it's not true. It's not a blanket statement. Even in war, people want to have more say as what's happening.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  He's also doing one thing that, that I don't agree with either, is he's drawing some contrast between this military leader and that military leader's inability to be successful in the private sector because the military responds to these type of behaviors and the private sector doesn't.

• 1:15:43Jocko Willink?

  Well, when he's talking about that, he's talking about the fact that if you have an authoritarian leader in the civilian, it's gonna be less successful. Here's a point that I made the other day, which you actually, no, I agree with you. You're right. That doesn't make sense. Here's why, and he doesn't point this out in this book, I pointed this out the other day. In the military, bad leaders can get promoted easier than bad leaders can get promoted in the civilian sector. Why is that? Because in the military, you're gonna be in charge. How long were you in charge of your squadron for?

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Two years.

• 1:16:18Jocko Willink?

  And that's what, that's what a military leader gets.

• 1:16:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:16:21Jocko Willink?

  So, you get two years. And by the time that enlisted guys figure out this guy's a jackass, it takes them sick months to confirm that, and then it's like, okay, well now we're starting our workup, we're not actually doing anything, oh hey, he'll be gone, forget about it. And that guy, Dave Berke, gets promoted. Cause he did his job, he did it correctly, no one said anything, boom. Whereas civilian world, like you're in charge of that whatever division for years.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:45Jocko Willink?

  And everybody knows it. That's another thing. Military, oh, you, oh, you did one, you know, one command deployment here in Virginia, then you're going to San Diego, then you're going to Bahrain, then you're, you're just traveling around, and you can get away with it. So, that's one of the reasons, I think, why the, why the military can produce some bad leaders.

• 1:17:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:17:07Jocko Willink?

  And they can get promoted.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. As long as that comment you made is understood, that this success in the private sector, comparison of the success in the military sector, your point is, the bad leaders might stick around. They're not good leaders by virtue of the military environment. They're bad leaders that are being, that are sticking around because the military has a mechanism that sort of allows for it. But just, I just, I don't like the thought that there's a distinction that military leader, good military leadership is different from other types of leadership.

• 1:17:38Jocko Willink?

  That's 100% accurate.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:40Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. But even, given the right circumstances, an autocratic mean is no bar to being liked. We still need some more positive reasons for this extraordinary popularity of otherwise incompetent commanders.

• 1:17:59Jocko Willink?

  So he talks about the fact that like, why do you still like, why did these guys like Townsend, who got a bunch of his men killed? Why did they still like him? Why'd they still follow him? Um, one of the reasons he talks about is successful leadership attended to occur if followers had been indulged by their leaders. That makes sense, right? Oh, if you'd actually taken care of your guys, they would be more likely to follow you. Well, that makes sense. That actually makes sense. That's a good reason.

• 1:18:31Jocko Willink?

  A situation in which the motivational, as opposed to the intellectual aspects of leadership, may lead to military disasters where obedience evoked by hero worship blunts reason and moral sensitivity to such an extent that the group may embark on a behavior which is little short of suicidal. Again, he's trying to figure out why in some situations do people that are idiots still get followed? Uh, there is however, one further aspect of these more nebulous qualities of leadership, which has played a not inconsiderable part in the story of military incompetence. It, it concerns the position which an individual occupies on two related continua, those of boldness

• 1:19:14Jocko Willink?

  to caution and impulsiveness to indecision. Over the years of military incompetence has resulted more from a dearth of boldness than from a lack of caution and more from a pall of indecision than an excess of impulsivity. So he's saying that most of the problems that occur, don't, they don't occur because action is taken to impulsive action. They actually call it happen for the other reason. Don't want to do anything. That's why the term default aggressive exists. Because if you don't do anything, chances are it's going to be bad. Your default mode should be to make something happen.

• 1:19:52Speaker 02

  Real quick, not to interrupt, it's so autocratic. What exactly is that?

• 1:19:58Jocko Willink?

  It's close to authoritarian, but it's weird. He, he uses the term autocratic. It's like, hey, I'm in charge. I'm in control. It's one person in control, charging in control. But he differentiates between autocratic, meaning like, listen, hey, I'm the guy in charge. I'm going to tell us where to go and authoritarian, which is very strong-handed form of autocratic rule.

• 1:20:24Jocko Willink?

  He doesn't necessarily, he, he gives autocratic a little bit of negativity, but he's also like, hey, you're in a platoon, that's the platoon commander. It's, it's autocratic, what he says, we're gonna do. That is the reality of the situation. The, the better reality is a democratic. Ninety-seven percent of the time, three percent of the time, autocratic. Three percent of the time, hey, I'm, I'm in charge, this is what we're gonna make happen right now, we gotta make this happen now. Boom.

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's in like, cause it kinda, kinda you think, I remember, okay, you know how you have entrepreneurs and then you have like employee types, right? And then you, like, certain personalities go along with each one, like, way better, right? For sure. Cause some people with face like the, just tell me where to be, what time? And tell me what to do, man, oh, and they'll go hard and they'll go and they'll do it and they'll get it ju- get the job done super good, you know? Within their little, within their job description, scope, you know? And then some people, they go crazy with that kind of stuff. And then they just rather like think and go out, color outside the lines and all this stuff, you know? So it's like, so the autocratic is kinda maybe for people who are like that, right?

• 1:21:29Jocko Willink?

  But here's the thing. There's, everyone has a spectrum, right? And there's gonna be times where if you're working for me, Echo, there's gonna be times where you're like, dude, why is this guy bossing me around? And there'd be other times you'd be waiting for me to tell you what to do, even you. As a one human can have, you can, you can transit across that spectrum. And what I'm saying is when there's a lot of pressure on and there's mayhem going on, most people are gonna want somebody to tell them to what to do. I shouldn't say most, many, many people are gonna say, dude, you need to tell me what to do right now. Cause there's bad stuff going on.

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  Remember that scene in Saving Private Ryan, right at the beginning, right, that crazy part?

• 1:22:09Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  And then he kinda loses his hearing or something like that, there's only, he just kind of like snaps to and this guy's in front of the stage and what do we do now, sir?

• 1:22:18Jocko Willink?

  That's a classic example.

• 1:22:19Speaker 02

  Kinda like that.

• 1:22:20Jocko Willink?

  That's a classic example of, hey, those guys are looking to be led.

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:25Jocko Willink?

  At that moment. And it took a lot to get them to that point, but there they are. So that's a good one.

• 1:22:34Jocko Willink?

  One of the obvious explanations for the failure of motivational aspects of leadership is in all these instances related to the advanced age of the individuals concerned. Old men are more cautious than young men and less able to make quick decisions than those whose arteries have not begun to harden. I've cut out a lot of the joke. This guy is a funny guy, I will say. There are other more fundamental and pervasive reasons for these failures in leadership, which can be ascribed to the general psychopathology of military organizations. Their common denominator is anxiety. It is a feature of armed services that the penalty for error is very much more substantial than the reward for success.

• 1:23:16Jocko Willink?

  That is so important to remember for your organization. The penalty for error is way harder than the reward you get when you do something good. That's absolutely true in the military. So what kind of people do you end up with? Right? Whereas the naval officer who through an error of judgment on the part of his subordinates puts his ship aground will almost certainly be court martialed and stands a fair chance of being heavily punished. The reward for taking a bold action which pays off may be no more than a mention in a dispatch or some decoration with little or no effect upon promotional aspects. The net result of this bias towards negative reinforcement will be that fear of failure rather than hope of success tends to be the dominant motive force in decision making

• 1:24:00Jocko Willink?

  and the higher rank, the stronger this motive, there is farther to fall. This is a good thing to remember with your kids, right? With your kids, you don't want your kids operating out of fear of making a mistake. You want your kids operating all in the hope of being successful. Finally, mention must be made of a thesis put forward by Simon Raven, which may bode ill for the future. It concerns the role of false premises in the training of officers, false premises that have their origin in a simple and obvious fact that an expectation of superiority in a leader by those who led will increase the tendency to follow him. This is, this was kinda strange.

• 1:24:41Jocko Willink?

  Uh, for years, it was the case that since they were drawn from a socio-economic class that was vastly inferior to that of the officers, their rank and file took for granted that their officers knew more than they did and were in a very real sense born to lead, i.e. were born into that class which traditionally the core of officers was drawn. That's the way it used to be. You kinda were a whatever, a peasant, and you had this lord that was your officer and you're like, "Hey dude, this dude's supposed to be in charge, so I'm kinda gonna listen to him." Um, since the last war, this has changed. Officers are no longer recruited exclusively from the upper classes. Comparatively few are landed from gentry or aristocratic families and many have not even attended a public school, which a public school in England is a private school. By the same token,

• 1:25:24Jocko Willink?

  the rank and file are better educated and more sophisticated than their forbearers, so the troops are more educated. At first blush, this would seem all to the good, giving promise of a democratization in the profession of arms, a trend which would one day place it on par with most other vocations in civilized society. Unfortunately, according to Raven Smith, Simon Raven's thesis, something quite other is happening. Confronted with the necessity of recruiting its officers from a section of society that would have been unthinkable in years gone by, the military has made it, made what it regards as the best of a bad job by insisting that, since officers must still be gentlemen,

• 1:26:04Jocko Willink?

  where no natural gulf exists between those who lead and those who follow, this must be artificially inculcated by training. So, this is a little bit hard to follow, but I'm gonna just give a little detail here. So, you used to have these people that were lords or whatever. And so, the troops were freaking peasants and they're like, "Cool, this guy's a lord, I should probably be listening to him. He's a gentleman, he purports himself as a leader. Cool, I'm gonna tend to follow." Then all of a sudden, they started recruiting officers from wherever. And now they had to say, "Wait a second, they still need to be gentlemen, so we're gonna inculcate this difference into them. We're gonna make them into a higher class."

• 1:26:48Speaker 02

  What is inculcate?

• 1:26:50Jocko Willink?

  Like, uh...

• 1:26:53Jocko Willink?

  Sort of put that seed into them. We're gonna, we're gonna turn them into that. We're gonna plant this in them.

• 1:26:58Speaker 02

  As far as just an idea, or like, really, like, okay, we're gonna inculcate these people, we're gonna train them to be that, or are we just gonna plant that seed in everyone's head, so it seems like that?

• 1:27:08Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, so what he says is artificially inculcated. So he's like, we're gonna fake this. We're gonna try and make these people seem as if they're of a higher class. Which is like that right there, we should already be thinking, uh-oh, right, uh-oh.

• 1:27:24Jocko Willink?

  The following excerpts from Raven's article should make the matter plain. We start with a glimpse of life at the Royal Military Academy, and later at the School of Infantry at Warmenster in the 1950s. According to Raven, "The products of this training regimen may be as bizarre as those depicted in the four character studies which conclude this section." Here we go. "Saluting at Sandhurst is tremendous. If you walk around Sandhurst, looking remotely as if you might be an officer, you will receive an incessant barrage of compliments. The muddy boy in P T-shirts will stop running square shoulders and snap his eyes in your direction like knives. The elegant young gentleman in the brown trilby will lift it from his head with a controlled jerk to replace it an exact number of seconds later at precisely the same

• 1:28:08Jocko Willink?

  angle. Boys in uniform with sticks, swords, rifles, or submachine guns will perform a volume of intricate movements, alone or as a body, especially for your benefit."

• 1:28:18Jocko Willink?

  So they're trying to make people think they're, you know, elevated.

• 1:28:23Jocko Willink?

  "To the detached observer, these quaint antics may seem ludicrous, boring, or even faintly embarrassing. However, there will be others so emotionally incapable of distinguishing between compliments paid to the abstractions of rank and commission, and those paid to themselves as people, that they will actually enjoy these gesticulations." Ooh, this is where the trouble starts, homie. This is when you are going to, you know, you're going to OCS, or wherever, you're getting trained, and you start thinking, you're damn right, you're saluting me. You, you are saluting me.

• 1:29:02Jocko Willink?

  But such enjoyment of these mandatory conventions based upon a highly motivated, if understandable, misinterpretation of their meaning may, like the effects of even the most transparent flattery, provoke wholly unrealistic feelings of self-importance. Oh, and you know what's kinda weird? It is kinda weird. In the military, one of the big distinctions is you get called, officers get called sir. Right? So, think about that. You're an officer, you get called sir. It doesn't matter if you're 21 years old and you just graduated from OCS, or you just graduated from the academy, you're getting called sir. So, there's some people that go, "Man, you know what? It's really awkward to be called sir when I'm actually 22 years old and this guy's

• 1:29:46Jocko Willink?

  38 years old. That's kinda weird, but I get it, it's the military convention." That's a great attitude to have.

• 1:29:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:53Jocko Willink?

  And you know what? There is a level of respect, even when a seasoned, non-commissioned officer, a platoon chief, calls a, calls a young officer sir, and he does it in a respectful way, and there's a known, it doesn't need to be said, "Hey, I'm giving you your props."

• 1:30:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:30:09Jocko Willink?

  It's good. That's the way the rank structure works, and it is like this just beautiful relationship.

• 1:30:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:15Jocko Willink?

  But then, there's some people that go, "Yeah, you're damn right, you called me sir."

• 1:30:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, it's like the, like, okay, like the seasoned guy calling the new guy sir, whatever, if he's a officer, that's almost like, it's respect for the whole institution.

• 1:30:30Jocko Willink?

  Yes, 100%.

• 1:30:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:32Jocko Willink?

  It's respect for the whole thing. And, and a good, young officer goes, "Man, man, that's a little bit uncomfortable, but that's the kind of the deal here. I get it." And, and so, there's also, there's also enlisted guys that go through that phase of like, "Who the hell, I'm not calling this guy sir. That's freaking ridiculous. They'll call, I'll call you lieutenant, I'm not calling you sir. Sir's for my grandfather." So, again, they go through that phase. Young enlisted guys will go through that phase of like, "Hey, I'm not calling this guy sir."

• 1:31:04Jocko Willink?

  Other significant features of the Sandhurst Mailoo, according to Raven R., "The perfect system wherein cadets of higher rank are required to discipline and report upon those of lower status. The mind-blunting drill square upon which three apparent essentials for a career of violence, unthinking obedience, and exquisite capacity for keeping in step, and a proper concern for the minutia of dress, are instilled for hour upon hour until fatigue and sweat hang over the masked cadets like brimstone over sodom. And finally, the total loss of privacy and lack of leisure for the following of idiosyncratic interest and pastimes." Taken together, the features of the Royal Military Academy are designed to "build character"

• 1:31:49Jocko Willink?

  and imbue future officers with values proper to their calling. "Any gaps which Sandhurst might leave in a total program for the inculcation of an officer-like quality are admirably filled up," says Raven, "by the quasi-morale imperatives of Warminster." These cluster around the concepts of guts, enthusiasm, humor, sociability, and responsibility traits which every officer should show. So, they got done with Sandhurst, which is like their military college, now they're their advanced school, this place, Warminster, and whatever they didn't get it, whatever gaps there are, they're gonna go even harder at Warminster. While much of the training was inevitably designed to promote physical fitness,

• 1:32:32Jocko Willink?

  there was nevertheless a strong-held belief that an officer, whether fit or not, should always have so much in the way of pride or guts that he would never admit to physical inadequacy until he dropped dead or unconscious. This belief, a very significant one, was both mythical, was mystical, both in nature and intensity. Now, we're kinda chuckling about that, that's kind of a badass thing, though, right? It's kind of a badass thing, hey, you are not gonna give up. You're not gonna stand down. Doesn't matter you ready or not. You put on that rucksack, you're gonna finish this day of March, that's what's happening.

• 1:33:04Jocko Willink?

  This was interesting. Another Warminster virtue was a peculiar brand of humor. This was not the ability to see oneself and see one's activities in a detached and ironical spirit. That would have been fatal. Humor meant being cheerful in the face of unpleasant circumstances, rallying the men's spirits by laughing with them over some slapstick incident, submitting, like a good sport, to an unjust punishment given to oneself by the adjutant, and laughing about it afterwards in the mess. This conception of humor, an obvious branch of guts, was in fact discreetly designed to counteract or totally extinguish any tendencies towards an objective or intellectual humor that might contain tinges of satire or cynicism,

• 1:33:45Jocko Willink?

  for such a thing would have been detrimental to another highly prized virtue, that of enthusiasm. So, this little brand of humor comes out where there's nothing directed with negativity up the chain of command. It's all just funny. And I don't... I think that's actually, again, maybe I'm just the brainwashed dude here, but I think that the guts part is cool. I think that the dark humor, twisted humor thing is kind of cool too, because there's nothing better than getting in shitty situations and being able to laugh about it. I think that's cool.

• 1:34:21Jocko Willink?

  I guess maybe if you take it, both these things to this far extreme, where we're not protesting anything because we're just gonna laugh at it, or we're not gonna ever stop because we're just gonna keep going, even if it's gonna be harmful to us or our troops, then it turns bad, I guess.

• 1:34:38Jocko Willink?

  And he's got this word enthusiasm. Enthusiasm, I can hardly trust myself to speak. It seemed to mean a sort of blind, uncritical application to any task, however silly or futile, that the neurosis or panic of superior might have suddenly thrust upon us. Since one of the points of enthusiasm was that you started doing whatever it was straight away and without wasting time on question, enthusiasm could involve a frantic expense of time and energy on some trifling project wastefully, because uncritically undertaken, abandoned halfway, as irrationally was it was as it was commenced. This, of course, was just what great soldiers of the past wished to avoid when they deplored the indiscriminate use of zeal.

• 1:35:19Jocko Willink?

  Why zeal, condemned alike by Clausewitz and Wellington, should now once again be thought desirable? It is interesting to speculate. So this idea of enthusiasm, also known as zeal, is like, hey, I'm just on board for whatever you tell me to do.

• 1:35:35Jocko Willink?

  And I guess that that's another thing. Is it a beautiful thing? In many cases, yes, it is. But if you're getting told to charge the machine gun nest and you go Roger that with enthusiasm and zeal, and you get all your guys killed, that's not what we want. That shouldn't be what we want. Maybe in World War One, that's what we quote wanted. But we shouldn't want that. You should want pushback.

• 1:35:57Jocko Willink?

  Loyalty meant, there's another term loyalty. Loyalty meant that you were required in the name of the Queen and honor of the regiment to conceal any impatience or amusement you might feel when the demands of your enthusiasm became operatic, farcical, or just plain impossible of fulfillment. Loyalty, in fact, was the conception often blatantly used to blackmail you into silence when you were faced with incompetence and justice or sheer folly of a superior officer. That was kind of funny. This is just loyalty. Dude, where's your loyalty? Bro, he wants me to do this and doesn't make any sense. Bro, you need to be more loyal, right?

• 1:36:33Jocko Willink?

  Sociability was also highly esteemed at warminster. This, like loyalty, could mean many good things, such as hospitality and the desire to please in social intercourse, but it also implied an unquestioning deference to the convenience and opinions of one's military superiors. So you're just gonna get on board with what everyone else is saying? And you can see what we're doing. We're creating robots. We're not creating thinking people, and this is bad. Courage under fire, a sort of distilled essence of guts, could not exactly be taught, so it had to be taken for granted in all of us who are tacitly and grimly assumed to possess it. Hence, we can pass to a very much boosted commodity initiative. So we would now we finally go, okay, cool. We want to see initiative.

• 1:37:14Jocko Willink?

  Unfortunately, in the peacetime conditions, even for the most part in wartime ones, communications are now so good that and the opportunities for genuinely individual action so rare that initiative tends to become a highly contrived thing artificially fostered to impress superiors.

• 1:37:32Jocko Willink?

  The sort of person who is praised at Warminster for initiative generally turned out to be a meddlesome bully of the type who reports to his best friend or to his housemaster for immoral behavior, thereby himself becoming head prefect in his friend's place. There you go. So, this section, he gives a bunch of examples of various types of these officers and how they turned out. It seems, fast forward a little bit, it seems that all remained of his training in the mind of each recipient was the faulty syllogism, "Officers should be gentlemen, I am an officer, therefore I am a gentleman." After this, he seemed to behave neither as an officer nor as a gentleman in generally

• 1:38:16Jocko Willink?

  any accepted sense of these terms. And Raven says this, "Once an officer is established in his own view as a member of a superior and order-giving classes, class, he never loses this sense." This is where things turn into a nightmare, right? So, an officer is established in his own view as a member of a superior and order-giving class, he never loses this sense, but he can and often does lose all awareness of the moral basis of this superiority and all the qualities which constitute this basis. So, he forgets why he's in this position. He forgets that he was just like placed here. He starts to believe his own bullshit and the bullshit that's been fed to him, that

• 1:39:00Jocko Willink?

  people run around calling him sir and saluting him. He just becomes superior, as it were, invacuo, which means in a vacuum. He's in a vacuum, he's just superior. He becomes a gentleman. When this happens, one gets that product so typical of the British, "The amateur English officer, highly trained professional and professionally and morally, he has forgotten his professional techniques and slopped off on his sense of moral obligation, but he retained an unassailable sense of his own superiority."

• 1:39:37Jocko Willink?

  And absolute right to give orders. And my note next to that was nightmare.

• 1:39:44Jocko Willink?

  That's a nightmare. To forget how you ended up in this position. To forget. That you don't know everything. To just get told that you're an officer and you're superior. And you start to believe that this is a nightmare of leadership.

• 1:40:08Jocko Willink?

  Nowadays, things are different. The social distance between officers and men more often than not contrived rather than rooted in their ancestry. For officers of humble origins, this might well be expected to produce sizable problems of adjustment. The first jolt to their social reinforcement standard will be of one of descriptive discrepancy. What's interesting about this is. There's no guarantee. Like I knew officers that came silver spoon all day long and they were just down to earth. Good people. And I also knew silver spoon officers that thought that they deserved. They thought that they were superior. I also knew some guys from lower class that scrambled through and scraped through and became officers. And they were awesome. And they never forgot where they came from.

• 1:40:53Jocko Willink?

  And I also knew officers that had come up through the ranks and they were turds. Leif points out that the best officer. That went through his junior officer training. Was a prior enlisted officer. And the worst officer that went through his junior officer training was a prior enlisted officer, which is crazy to think.

• 1:41:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:16Jocko Willink?

  That's crazy to think.

• 1:41:17Speaker 01

  I think that I agree with that. Your, your description, those four categories, whatever you want to call them. Same thing. Seeing the exact same thing. And I'm trying to remember the way you were describing it is I remember. I guess I don't remember like the first time it happened, but. There's like a ceremony. Do you, do you have a first salute ceremony?

• 1:41:36Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:41:38Speaker 01

  And I remember that being an incredibly uncomfortable experience for me. Like. Man, this is weird. The guy who I did it was a good friend of mine who's enlisted marine. He had fought in Desert Storm. He was a, a, a known, well, well-known guy and just by virtue of, of.

• 1:41:55Speaker 01

  Accomplishing the criteria to make me an officer like from one moment to the next, he saluted me.

• 1:42:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:01Speaker 01

  And I think I was just lucky to have that sense of like, man, this is weird. You know, but also I think you described it well, like the reverence for the institution. Like this is how the institution is designed. And if you have that reverence for it, he didn't feel demeaned and I didn't feel superior. And yet.

• 1:42:16Jocko Willink?

  That's the way it's supposed to be.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And yet, how easily like, oh,

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  I could get used to this. You know how quickly people fall into that trap of.

• 1:42:25Jocko Willink?

  Fall into that trap all day long.

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  And it's not the, and it's not the institution that bestowed this on me.

• 1:42:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I deserve, I deserve.

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:42:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, and this, again, we're talking about the military specifically, but you can apply this anywhere. You can apply this anywhere. Oh, well, I, you know, I went to this college. I went through this program. I got my MBA from here or there. And all of a sudden it's like, oh,

• 1:42:50Jocko Willink?

  did I tell you that? Did I, did I mention where I went to college? You know? It's like, yeah, that's cool, man. Appreciate it. That's awesome.

• 1:42:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, but when you say it, nobody notices it.

• 1:43:06Jocko Willink?

  There's a, there's a note about this Ravens assessment. So somebody kind of read that big assessment of Sandhurst. And this guy says, I read Simon Raven's paper with great interest. When you, when you ask for my comments, you must bear in mind that in 1898, when I was gazetted, I joined a totally different type of army from that of today. It was an aristocratic army futile in the sense that it was grounded on leadership and fellowship in which, with few exceptions, the leaders were the sons of gentlemen. And more frequently than not, the eldest sons, the most privileged sons. When I went to Sandhurst, we were not taught to behave like gentlemen

• 1:43:49Jocko Willink?

  because it never occurred to anyone that we should behave otherwise. We were taught a lot of obsolete tactics and every army of that day did a tremendous lot of useless drill, but never heard a word about responsibility, loyalty, guts, et cetera. Because, so I suppose, these were held to be the natural prerequisites of gentlemen. So this is back in the day when it's like, hey, man, you better act like this. You're upholding the family name.

• 1:44:16Jocko Willink?

  The men, the followers of that period were a rough lot, simple, tough, illiterate, largely recruited from down and outs, men who had a lot, men who had gotten in a lot of trouble, vagabonds, and a sprinkling of the sons and grandsons of NCOs and private soldiers, military families who generally became NCOs. There were therefore two distinct classes, really castes by birth. On the whole, the men looked up to their officers, whether they were efficient or insufficient or inefficient, and the officers did not look down on their men. Why should they? So he was saying like this was just kind of the way it was back then. The idea of an officer imposing on his, imposing his will on his men never entered his head

• 1:45:01Jocko Willink?

  because one class was so superior and the other so inferior that it was unnecessary to do this. There wasn't even any opposing ideas to what you were saying. The superior could not lose caste should he play or mix with his men. I remember, this is a good story. I remember on my first tour as an orderly officer on the QMS, was late for, the QMS meaning the quartermaster, so one of the sailors was late for meat issue. And I thought he had risked it because I was a novice, so I put him under arrest. When this was reported to the adjutant, he took me aside and said, strictly speaking, you were right, but actually speaking, you were an ass, so don't do it again. And I didn't.

• 1:45:46Jocko Willink?

  So he like punished this guy trying to prove that he was superior and said, hey, bro, what are you doing? You, technically you could do that, but that's not the way you treat your people. Of the present day democratic army, I know next to nothing. Like the old aristocratic one, it must have its good points and is probably more efficient, but to me, it is a folly to try and mix the two. A gentleman is born and not made. It is probably true that it takes three generations to fashion one, and so it would appear from Mr. Raven's experiences, if you try and make them synthetically, you get neither an aristocrat or a democracy. One sees this everywhere today, among the rich, the poor, on the roads, and in the factories. I repeat it again, gentlemen are not turned out like sausages.

• 1:46:31Jocko Willink?

  They are turned, they are men of ingrained honor, of principle, and of decent behavior, and some of the finest I have met in my long life have belonged to the humblest classes. Because this caste rather than class is becoming extinct in my humble opinion. One of the great factors at the bottom of the present world turmoil. And that's from JFC Fuller and he's another guy that was sort of in league with um. Liddell Hart, lots of great ideas, uh fought in North Africa, fought in World War, or sorry, in South Africa, fought in World War One. The Nazis took a bunch of his ideas and ran with them, by the way, even though he's a Brit.

• 1:47:12Jocko Willink?

  So it's just a different, I, I wanted to read that part because it's just a different world. It's just a different situation and they sort of had this pre-existing system that was in place. Now, what kind of makes me disturbed about this is, you know, he's, he's basically talking about how great the gentlemen were of the day. But these were the gentlemen that freaking acted like idiots, leading their troops to be killed. So there wasn't so much uh honor and principle as he's talking about. Uh, closing out this section, it says, from a general study of leadership, it seems there is much in military organizations to invite incompetence.

• 1:47:53Jocko Willink?

  Officers are selected for the wrong reasons, required to fulfill incompatible roles and expected to function adequately in a communication system of dubious efficiency. At higher levels of command, they are protected from adverse criticism by their invisibility. And by the plain fact that in times of stress, even the poorest leaders like drunken fathers and rabbit's feet are clung to with pathetic if misplaced dependency. Yeah, the invisibility part, he mentioned that and was talking about the fact that a lot of these senior leaders, they just, no one would see them. You wouldn't see them on the front lines, so they weren't getting any criticism because they weren't around to be criticized.

• 1:48:38Jocko Willink?

  Military achievement besides providing legitimate outlets for aggression. The gratification of obsessive tendencies and reassurances about virility. Armies and navies also cater for another basic human motive, the need to achieve. They do this in several ways. They embody related hierarchies of rank, money and class. So there's another thing that you can get by joining the military. If you're a person that's driven to succeed, you can go in the military and you can get like a formatted way to move up the chain of command. Second, they accentuate the challenge of promotional ladder by making certain upward movements very difficult indeed. Third, the ethos of the armed forces is such that such as to make advancement laudable

• 1:49:23Jocko Willink?

  and highly rewarding. Generals have every advantage bar that of age over those lower down on the ladder. They are richer, safer and more comfortable. Their chances of collecting honors, orders and knighthoods are imminently greater than those of more junior ranks. Finally, even the most modest thirst for achievement is encouraged by training and convention. The taboo on junior speaking to senior seniors in officer training establishments, saluting and being saluted, orders of march, rules as to say, as who says sir to whom all serve to emphasize the horizontal stratifications of military organizations besides adding luster to each new level gained.

• 1:50:06Jocko Willink?

  So that's what the military sets up this really nice place where you can kind of, you see what the game is. And if you know how to play the game, you're going to get, you're going to get satisfaction. Unfortunately, there are aspects of military career which are unlikely to attract people with high achievement motivation. And he says this, at first sight, these arguments would seem to suggest that the possibility of promotion in a military organization would attract those with a potential for achievement. Go-getters, entrepreneurs, innovators and men with energy and drive. In short, people who would make first class military commanders, right? So you think, oh, cool. This is like a hierarchy set up that makes sense. I'm down. I want to go in there because I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a go-getter. Sometimes it does. In the case of Wellington, Montgomery, Rommel and Zhukov, men with inordinately strong needs for achievement. All those guys wanted to do well.

• 1:50:53Jocko Willink?

  Unfortunately, however, there are aspects of a military career which are unlikely to attract people with high achievement motivation. The fact that traditionally promotion depends upon seniority, class, wealth, conformity, and obedience may well leave them rather cold. Neither means nor the ends are sufficiently attractive. So when you get a guy like Wellington, like Rommel, they look and say, okay, how do I need to get promoted? Oh, I've got to conform. I've got to be a yes man. So all their entrepreneurial spirit is thrown out the window.

• 1:51:23Jocko Willink?

  They don't, they, they're being forced to comply in order to get promoted. So it doesn't really seem as attractive as they thought it originally was going to be.

• 1:51:33Jocko Willink?

  Moreover, military types, military has never smiled upon entrepreneurs and innovators. The cut and thrust of private enterprise cleverness and even working too hard

• 1:51:44Jocko Willink?

  have not been deemed good form. There is however, another class of person for whom the military might well be an attractive proposition. These are people who achievement motivation is pathological in origin. The crucial difference between the two sorts of achievement, the healthy and the pathological, may be summarized by saying that whereas the first is buoyed up by hopes of success, the second is driven by fear of failure. You've got one person that wants to do a good job, and one person that's just scared to fail. Whereas the former achieves out of a quest of excellence in his job, the latter achieves by any means available, not necessarily because of any sincere

• 1:52:25Jocko Willink?

  devotion to the work, but because of the status, social promotion, or social approval, and reduction of doubts about the self that such achievement brings. Applying these distinctions to the military would seem that senior commanders fall into two groups. And I think this is actually pretty accurate. Those primarily concerned with improving their professional ability, and those primarily concerned with self betterment.

• 1:52:54Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, research suggests that these two sorts of achievement motivation go along with certain other personality traits. Thus need achievement motivation towards professional excellence is accompanied by greater occupational and intellectual competence. So this is a person that's wanting to get promoted for the right reasons. Greater occupational and intellectual competence, that's what he wants. A better memory for uncompleted tasks and therefore a predisposition to finish something once it's begun. A preference when choosing working partners for successful strangers rather than unsuccessful friends. That's one just crappy leaders always surround themselves with their crappy unsuccessful friends. A grading, greater readiness to volunteer for psychological experiments, greater activity

• 1:53:37Jocko Willink?

  in the institution or community of which they are a member. So this is, I think it's just important to remember that there's some people that are out there for themselves. And there's some people that are out there to try and do a good job. He says, compare Lawrence, and this is Lawrence of Arabia, compare Lawrence, roughing it with his tiny Arab force on the 800 mile trek across the desert to west, to rest Akaba from the Turks. With Townsend comfortably ensconced in his villa on the Sea of Marmara, while his captured troops died in their thousands from exposure, malnutrition and brutality. The contrast in both cases is between the self-imposed asceticism of high achievement

• 1:54:19Jocko Willink?

  motivation and the self-indulgence of one concerned with professional excellence, less concerned with professional excellence than with personal advantage. Pretty good stark difference between those two. How is it that some of the criteria for promotion to military organizations are evidently such as to favor people with a pathological degree of achievement motivation? This is scary. The person that might have a tendency to get promoted is the one that's looking out for themselves in some cases in the military. Again, it's important to say, this isn't like the entire military, but certainly, I certainly saw people in the military that were 100% looking out for themselves and they got promoted. Yeah. That does happen. Yep.

• 1:55:04Jocko Willink?

  There's no doubt about it. It, it happens less than you would think. A lot of times that transparency that these idiots would have looking out for themselves and trying to make those maneuvers, everyone would see it and they'd be like, no, you're not getting promoted. But it did happen.

• 1:55:19Jocko Willink?

  There are grounds for thinking that incompetent commanders tend to be those whom the need to avoid failure exceeds the urge to succeed.

• 1:55:29Jocko Willink?

  According to J.W. Atkinson and N.T. Feather, such people tend to eschew activities which they may show up in a poor light and unless forced to do so refrain from taking on any skilled task where there are any doubts about the outcome. So people that are just concerned about themselves, they'll only go into jobs where they know they're gonna win.

• 1:55:50Jocko Willink?

  That's what they're trying to do. They're just, they're, they're only doing jobs of things that they know they're gonna do, know that they're gonna win at. Herein lies a special dilemma, though they need to achieve.

• 1:56:00Jocko Willink?

  It is the very nature of trying which exposes them to that which they fear most, failure. They are like people who try to climb mountains out of an underlying fear of heights. It would not be surprising to find that such people are attracted to and prosper in the armed services. For if one plays it carefully in the military, in contrast to the world of commerce, offers achievement without tears. Stick to the rulebook, do nothing without explicit approval from the next higher up, always conform, never offend your superiors, and you will float serenely if a trifle slowly upward, a blimp in both senses of the word.

• 1:56:42Jocko Willink?

  That's the reality. You can't, you, there, you can do that. You can join the military and you can just kinda keep your nose clean, stay low profile, don't take any additional risks. Conform and you will get promoted over time, in many cases. Marine Corps tighter though, I think.

• 1:57:00Speaker 01

  I'd like to think that, I mean, you're describing, what you're describing, I can, I'm, he's right.

• 1:57:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  And I've seen it. And

• 1:57:07Jocko Willink?

  Not, not right on a blanket statement.

• 1:57:09Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:57:10Jocko Willink?

  But it certainly happens.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  Yes, he, yeah, no, correct. And, and you're right in saying like, that's part of the system is, is you have, you might show up with this altruism of how it works and the wrong people get promoted sometimes. Now, it's not a lot of those people, it's actually a small number, like you said, but it happens enough that you will see it. You're not gonna go a career and go, oh, I never saw that. Every single time it was the right person or the right reasons. No, throughout my career, there was examples that I can reflect back on. It's a small number, but the system doesn't work perfectly. And I think the thing I was thinking about, and this is military, I think in general, there are enough jobs in the military. That have been done enough times that the template is there that you go, I can take those set of orders and like, man, it's really low risk.

• 1:57:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, cookie cutter.

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  Cookie cutter job that's been done and to take the template, Jaco's gonna hand off to me. Here's the, you know, here's the script, follow the script, low profile, um, low risk. You're gonna look good in the end and you're gonna get promoted. There, there are those jobs out there.

• 1:58:09Speaker 01

  I was lucky in my career to have jobs that either had never been done before, or really that it wasn't a lot of history behind them. So, you know, I'm remembering a couple of times, like when I was in command of an organization where, you know, I was being told, hey, um, if this fails, it's gonna destroy the whole thing. Like, oh, that's, uh, okay.

• 1:58:28Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 1:58:28Speaker 01

  I think I've told this story before. I'm, I'm far enough away from it now that I can, I can tell it if I haven't before. But when I took over the first F-35 squadron, uh, the Marine Corps F-35 program was on probation. Like they were contemplating cancelling the F-35 for the Marine Corps, the B variant, which was the Marine Corps variant. And the Marine Corps had already long since committed to that was the only platform. There was no plan B, there was no alternative to that. So if we were gonna lose the F-35B, the Marine Corps was gonna lose TAC Air. And, um, as soon as I took command and, you know, I stood up, I told you there's a guy there before, no airplanes, but when I took command, the airplane started to arrive right when I got there. The commander of the Marine Corps came down, um, spent like an hour with me. They met him at the squadron, it was he and his sergeant major and me and my sergeant major.

• 1:59:11Speaker 01

  And he goes, hey, I hate to tell you this, but you can't crash an airplane.

• 1:59:15Jocko Willink?

  Oof.

• 1:59:15Speaker 01

  Like, wow, that's.

• 1:59:19Jocko Willink?

  Roger that.

• 1:59:20Speaker 01

  Roger that, you know what I mean? Like if you crash an airplane, we're gonna lose the program, Marine Corps is gonna lose TAC Air. And so you're talking about the, the balance of, the risk of losing is a lot, you know, the balance that between the benefit of winning, like, oh, I'll just, you know, marginal benefit of winning, but like there's zero risk. Or, you know, the flip side is, hey, if I go two years as a squadron commander, everything goes great. I'm gonna get a firm handshake and a congratulations and life's gonna go on. But nobody's gonna credit me for doing anything remarkable because the system is, the, the program's just moving along where, where it needs to go. But if I screwed up. You know, that downside risk and, and I understand the, the aversion to that like, hey, what'd you rather have a guaranteed win with, you know, a guaranteed marginal win with no

• 2:00:00Speaker 01

  chance of losing or high risk of failure, but this is a once in a lifetime thing that we need the right person at the right time to go through that. A lot of people are averse to that.

• 2:00:11Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Well, and this is the other scary thing about that is so you're the squadron commander, you get told, don't crash any birds. Well, how about we fly a little less?

• 2:00:21Speaker 01

  Yes. It's interesting you said that because in the exact same weekend, the deputy commandant for aviation, the head aviator in the Marine Corps said, your number one job is to fly as much as humanly possible.

• 2:00:33Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 2:00:34Speaker 01

  Roger that. Okay. And listen, there's a part of it too, that you have to understand this, like there is nothing that I could do personally, short of shutting down the squadron to guarantee they would don't crash. There's nothing I can do that. So there's a part of that, like if you could just let that go, who's recognized my best chance of me being successful is to micromanage none of this as opposed to try to macro manage all of it.

• 2:00:57Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And, and that's such a good point because, okay, we can either fly as little as humanly possible, which means everyone's paranoid. No one really knows how to do their job. We're like, all right, we're going to fly these things. We'd be awesome at it. And that's the right call. Obviously not everyone would make that decision.

• 2:01:15Speaker 01

  And even then there's still, even the right call doesn't guarantee the outcome. You could do everything right. And you know what?

• 2:01:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You have a mishap on me, those aircraft, yeah. Things break. Things break in mid-flight.

• 2:01:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:01:26Jocko Willink?

  That happens.

• 2:01:27Speaker 01

  They do, especially brand new airplanes. They're still being designed while you're flying them. Those things happen.

• 2:01:32Jocko Willink?

  How many F-35s have crashed?

• 2:01:34Speaker 01

  Not a lot. So I believe, I'll have to go back and look. I think the first one crashed in my squadron, like six months after I left. Um, yeah.

• 2:01:45Jocko Willink?

  Got out of it.

• 2:01:47Speaker 01

  Um, we've, there's been a very small, it's been a very safe airplane.

• 2:01:53Jocko Willink?

  What does an F-35 cost?

• 2:01:55Speaker 01

  At the time it was 130 million, now it's probably 90.

• 2:01:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so they cut the price down a little bit.

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

  Well, those first ones are like, you know, they were literally the very first ones off the assembly line. So that, that, as you know, like that mass production benefit hadn't kicked in yet. So each one was kind of like a unique article. Now, like they're jamming them out, they're making a bunch of them and, and it's, it's more cost effective. I know these are crazy numbers, but at the time they were, they were expensive. 133 a copy, I had 14.

• 2:02:23Jocko Willink?

  If you, when you fly in an F-35 and you're doing a vertical, how, how often did you have a vertical takeoff?

• 2:02:30Speaker 01

  Uh, like a short takeoff, like the stovle, like the.

• 2:02:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like.

• 2:02:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:34Jocko Willink?

  Like a Harrier.

• 2:02:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, not that often, sometimes.

• 2:02:39Jocko Willink?

  How much gas do you go through taking one of those things off vertically?

• 2:02:42Speaker 01

  The, the vertical flying burns a ridiculous amount of gas.

• 2:02:45Jocko Willink?

  Do you just basically have to refuel as soon as you get up?

• 2:02:47Speaker 01

  It's not that bad, but it's, it's a lot of gas. Yeah. The, the landings are more of a critical because you're on the clock. Like you come in, you gotta be relatively light. You can't land like a fully loaded airplane vertically because it's too heavy. So you gotta be like a certain limited amount of gas so the plane is light enough to hover. But then again, like you can't just, you know, sit there all day long because you don't have that much gas. It's nothing like the Harrier was. Those guys, it was sketchy, like really, really sketchy. But, um, yeah, you're burning a lot of gas, a lot of gas.

• 2:03:16Jocko Willink?

  It was sketchy in a Harrier. What made it more sketchy?

• 2:03:20Speaker 01

  Um, less powerful airplane, harder to fly, less margin for error, less, you needed less gas to be able to land and didn't have as much time, you know, just.

• 2:03:29Jocko Willink?

  I flew, I flew the, uh, Harrier simulator out at Yuma.

• 2:03:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:33Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I crashed that thing literally 17 times in a row. I've, my total flight time was nine seconds or something.

• 2:03:39Speaker 01

  If you got into an F-35 right now in the simulator, I could over the shoulder, walk you through it and you landed almost perfectly in the first try.

• 2:03:47Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's like drones. Man, those first drones came out that were like little model airplanes. Guys were just crashing them everywhere and now a three-year-old can fly a drone and that's, that's no exaggeration.

• 2:03:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:58Jocko Willink?

  Technology. Uh, this thing says, on the same note.

• 2:04:03Jocko Willink?

  The net result would be a bimodal distribution of officers at every grade. So these two different types of officers, you end up with them at every grade. Those who take risks and get away with it, the Montgommerys and Lawrences of this, of this world, and those who have plotted up the hard but safe way, the good old boys who never speak out of turn, who make up intact and conformity what they lack in enterprise and initiative. Interesting.

• 2:04:30Jocko Willink?

  Contemplation of a nept commander suggests that they were of the latter genre. In the first place, they were renowned almost without exception for being hypersensitive to criticism. So those people that are the, the, the conformists, hypersensitive. As to the question of physical bravery, in no way detracts from the feats of courage, to note that the fear of being afraid, the fear of social disapproval for cowardice, and most important, the personal shame attendant upon flinching in the face of danger could drive a man to perform acts of valor far beyond the normal call of duty. This is not to deny that bravery occurs for other reasons out of pure altruism or patriotism, but merely that some individuals are so lacking in self-esteem

• 2:05:13Jocko Willink?

  that they will gladly exchange the fear of failure for their own physical destruction. That's kind of a weird thing to say. In a very real sense, military organizations recognize and trade upon this fact of human nature. Death rather than dishonor is no empty platitude, but formulates an essential and ancient feature of military. I'll tell you what's, oh.

• 2:05:35Jocko Willink?

  I think it's a weird thing to say, but I think what, if you would have expanded a little bit more, which he doesn't, what's scary about that is when people are being brave with other people's lives. That, that's what's jacked up. Look, if you're brave and you go and do something heroic, good on you. I don't care what your motivation was. I think Sam Harris always talks about the fact that you can't, you can't fake bravery. Right? You run out in the street, there's no faking it, you did it. And that's that. It doesn't matter if you thought you were, did it because you were going to be ashamed or you did it because you were just hyper motivated or whatever. It doesn't matter, you can't fake it, you were brave. No, no, no, no question about it. But when you start being brave with other people's lives, that's a freaking disaster.

• 2:06:19Jocko Willink?

  And that's what these horrible leaders end up doing. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that this suggested relationship between valor and the need to prove oneself in no way debases bravery. On the contrary, it takes the view that the best measure of courage is the fear that is overcome, then these were the bravest of them all, for it's only by conquering rational fear that they could nullify fear of being afraid. So, there you go. The tragedy of this issue is that if military organizations select their senior commanders for their physical, as opposed to moral bravery, they not only might ignore other equally important attributes, but are bound to select a proportion of individuals whose underlying psychopathology is quite unfitted to positions of high command.

• 2:07:04Jocko Willink?

  In this way, they invite incompetence. So, just because someone's brave doesn't mean you want to put them in a leadership position. Doesn't say you don't want them there. And there is certainly a huge benefit to someone that's been in combat and knows what's happening, knows the, understands the emotions and, and the, the human nature that takes place on the front lines, for sure. That's highly beneficial. Shouldn't be the only reason you select somebody, though. The last trait of those who harbor a fear of failure concerns the selection of subordinates. There are really two components to this process. The first concerns the way an individual sees himself in comparison with his competitors, and the second, the way he thinks others will see him in comparison with his contemporaries.

• 2:07:48Jocko Willink?

  In either case, he may way try, he may well try to elevate his own self estimation by choosing a low standard with which to make comparison. Hence, the phenomenon of people who tend to shun the company of individuals more gifted and even choose workmates as selected, or select as subordinates, people who may consider inferior to themselves. What a freaking disaster that is. So, that's the person that wants to look good, so hires a bunch of idiots.

• 2:08:20Jocko Willink?

  Talks a little bit about Hague. He talks about Hague being painfully aware of his limitations. Hague was the World War One commander of British troops. And then tried to enter the one profession open to the dunces of the family, the army, only to find that even there he failed to shine. He got put in his position. The reason he got promoted is because he got sort of a hook up from a family member. His elder sister Henrietta knew the Duke of Cambridge, hooked him up with his entry into staff college. Then he was the aide de camp to the king.

• 2:08:53Jocko Willink?

  Dude, this guy's just making moves, making moves. Became respected for his conventional opinions. That's crazy, right? You become respected because you agree with everybody. That's a great point, King. That's a hundred percent right, King.

• 2:09:11Jocko Willink?

  He said things like cavalry will have a larger sphere of action in future wars. Artillery only seems to be really effective against raw troops. These are just idiotic statements. Wonder what he thought of the tank.

• 2:09:26Jocko Willink?

  He also had a, he was also prone to a steady denigration of his competitors and the removal of his superior commanders. This guy was just a shit talker, Hague.

• 2:09:38Jocko Willink?

  Hague's talent for finding fault with everybody but himself was particularly keen. Whenever results had resulted in military setback and he gives all these just crazy examples.

• 2:09:52Jocko Willink?

  He blamed someone, "He's unfit to command a division at this critical period of the operations in France and should only be employed at home." By the way, there's people that are working for him, by the way.

• 2:10:02Jocko Willink?

  Ralston is unsatisfactory, loyalty to his subordinates, but he has many other valuable qualities. He's trying to get rid of somebody. He's like, he has valuable qualities, but he's overly loyalty to his troops.

• 2:10:16Jocko Willink?

  It seems impossible to discuss the military problems with and with an unreasoning brain of his kind. The fact is that Sir John seems incapable of realizing the nature of the fighting that has been going on and the difficulties of getting fresh troops and stores forward in adequate communication trenches. Doug, on Saturday, October 9th, he made an impromptu report to, oh, this is, on Saturday, October 4th, 9th, Hague, this guy makes this report up his chain of command about the, his commander, Sir John French. What happens eventually? French gets fired. Who gets put in charge? Hague. Hague, God's wish, reaching the pinnacle of the greatest army that the Empire had ever

• 2:11:01Jocko Willink?

  put in the field in the past or was ever to amass in the future. A body whose heroism and devotion was such that they could twice in two successive years be ravaged in hopeless offensive, who were in a single day to lose more men than any other army in the history of the world, whom after 27 months of slaughter and exhaustion, he was to leave so pereously exposed that they were nearly annihilated.

• 2:11:31Jocko Willink?

  Just horrible.

• 2:11:34Jocko Willink?

  And this section that we'll close out with for today says, "Freedom of expression and cognitive process unfettered by inhibitions were not looked upon with favor in military personnel." So, that's a horrible situation. It seems then that in the case of achievement motivation, as with obsessive tendency, military organizations attract and then reinforce those very characteristics which will prove antithetical to competent military performance.

• 2:12:17Jocko Willink?

  It's a, again, is that true in the military? Yes, it is. Is it true in the civilian? Or, let me rephrase that. I saw your look on your face, Dave. Can it be true in the military? Yes, it can. Can it attract people with these type of tendencies? Yes, it can. Can it then provide opportunities for people to sort of just get on board with the system? Yes, it can. Does the civilian sector do that as well? Hell, yes, it does. Happens in any leadership situation where we take these things that we should be striving for, like freedom of expression and unfettered cognitive processes, meaning you should just be able to think.

• 2:12:54Jocko Willink?

  And we crush them.

• 2:12:57Jocko Willink?

  And, and you know, I was thinking this, uh, we've been talking about the, the EO leadership loop. And included in that is the, is the OODA loop, right? These ideas of constantly running through your mind, all these different aspects of leadership. And the main lesson that you and I are putting out, this is what we've just put out at the muster. The main lesson when you're running these loops is not to get stuck.

• 2:13:22Jocko Willink?

  Is not to get stuck, is to free your mind. And that's how I closed out the last podcast. I said, free your mind. And I want to reiterate that you have to keep your mind open. If your mind's always stuck, even it can be stuck by so many different things. It can be stuck by your ego, your insecurities. It can be stuck by your fear. It can be stuck by tradition. It can be stuck by custom. It can be stuck by the restraints of the institution that you're in. If your mind is getting stuck like that, you have to be weary. You have to be afraid of that because if you let your mind get stuck in that fixed position, you're going to get flanked, you're going to get overrun, and you're going to get destroyed. And if you're in a leadership position, that is what's going to happen, not just to you,

• 2:14:07Jocko Willink?

  but to your troops.

• 2:14:11Jocko Willink?

  So keep an open mind.

• 2:14:15Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles.

• 2:14:16Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:14:16Jocko Willink?

  What do you got?

• 2:14:17Speaker 02

  That whole, that part about like not taking risks, fear of failure, like that kind of stuff, like for whatever reason,

• 2:14:26Speaker 02

  it was making me think of like the jujitsu journey, ascending with like getting belts and all this stuff. So in the beginning, yeah, sure, a little mind specific, but you can kind of see it where, you know, if you're focused on the belt, you, you tend to be more like fear of failure kind of approach to training and, but if you're just like, hey, I'm in here to get better and learn and be humble, take risks, see what happens, all this stuff, compete and, you know, and the higher you get, the better you'll become.

• 2:14:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:59Speaker 02

  But if you start, let's say you get like, I don't know, purple belt, I feel like is one of the, the benchmark belts, right? Where you kind of become, that's like jujitsu puberty right there, you know? So a lot of people, and it can vary from belt to belt for sure, but sometimes they'll be like, oh, well, I don't want to look bad as a purple belt. So I'm going to take less risks. I'm going to only train with guys who I know that I won't, you know, do poorly against or whatever, you know? And you can kind of fall into that trap. But then you get people who they don't, they don't think about that kind of stuff. It's like the belt, that's just a byproduct of, of my journey. And I don't even think about that. Those are the guys that, that just keep getting better and better.

• 2:15:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I thought you were actually going to bring up just like the entrepreneurial spirit. And, you know, we work with a lot of companies at Echelon Front and the leaders that have taken risk and have broken outside the norm, those are the leaders that they end up doing exceptionally well, right? If they manage it well, like, look, you can take big risks and you can fail, right? That happens. That's why they're called risks, but if you want to, look, can you play it safe? Yes, you can. And you can do that in the corporate world. Hey, you can, you can follow the rules and you can do, you can, and you can move up the chain and that's fine. That's fine. If you want to excel, you're going to have to take some chances. You're going to have to take some risks. That's what you're going to have to do.

• 2:16:21Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and then you do, if you do utilize sort of the, the standard sort of conformity to move up the chain, what I will, I, okay, I get it, but you know what? Don't suppress.

• 2:16:41Jocko Willink?

  Don't suppress risk from others. Don't, don't, don't suppress entrepreneurial thinking from other people inside your organization. That's where I think we run into a real problem. You know, I kind of followed the rules and conformed and I got my promotion and then Dave comes along and he's a little bit more of a risk taker, a little bit more entrepreneurial. And this could be in the military, this could be in the business sector. And what do I do? I outrank him. I shut him down. I partially shut him down because I don't want him, I don't want him to out, outmaneuver me. So I'm just going to shut down on all of his ideas. I'm, I'm also going to shut him down because I don't want to take any risk. So if you want to, if you want to play that game for yourself and you don't want to take a bunch of risks and you just want to have a safe, comfortable job, that's okay. That's not bad. Look, if

• 2:17:25Jocko Willink?

  you work hard and, and, and you do a good job inside your business organization, that's great. I, I actually like that. I appreciate it. But the minute you, you have that attitude and you start to impose it on people around you, you need to check yourself. You need to check yourself because you're shutting down minds, you're closing minds and you're really in the long term hurting your organization.

• 2:17:49Speaker 02

  You ever come across a situation, it feels like, it feels like it's real common where you get two people, they go into business together. One guy's risk averse, one guy's like freaking try anything and they sort of start to balance each other out.

• 2:18:02Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:18:03Speaker 02

  And not to mention there's some jobs that are kind of more conducive for certain attitude types, right?

• 2:18:08Jocko Willink?

  The risky guys like out doing the sales pitch and the other guys backing, balancing the books. Exactly.

• 2:18:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:18:14Jocko Willink?

  So it is good to have business partners like that, for sure.

• 2:18:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, kind of reel you in when you need it, as long as they're not overbearing, I guess, right?

• 2:18:21Jocko Willink?

  There you go. There you go. All right. Well, we're trying to keep our minds open.

• 2:18:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:27Jocko Willink?

  We're trying to improve ourselves mentally, physically, you know, the whole nine yards. Echo, you got any suggestions?

• 2:18:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, we do. I do. We do. We all do, actually. We know.

• 2:18:37Jocko Willink?

  You want to go? No, I just want to make sure we're recording.

• 2:18:43Speaker 02

  That's good. Thanks Dave, by the way.

• 2:18:45Jocko Willink?

  So what do you got Echo Charles? What do you got for us?

• 2:18:48Speaker 02

  Uh, well, you know, we're all working out, doing jiu-jitsu, I guess, you know, hopefully.

• 2:18:54Jocko Willink?

  We should be.

• 2:18:54Speaker 02

  I'm just saying, you know, it's one of those things. It does keep you on the path. Uh, we're reading, mental, physical, everything, right? We want to lead by example. I'll tell you that. Want to make good decisions. I'll tell you that. So, alright, we're on this path. We're on this path. Good decisions, physical capability, mental capability, we'll say. In a nutshell, that's what it is.

• 2:19:15Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:19:15Speaker 02

  And improvement.

• 2:19:17Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:19:17Speaker 02

  We want to take risks, but not too many risks.

• 2:19:19Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:19:20Speaker 02

  We want to take risks, but not too big of risks.

• 2:19:22Jocko Willink?

  Okay, concur.

• 2:19:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. So one thing you don't want to risk is your health. I'll tell you that right now. It's a bad thing to risk.

• 2:19:29Jocko Willink?

  When did you write that little setup right there?

• 2:19:31Speaker 02

  I just came up.

• 2:19:33Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of mental acuity, look at you. Look at that guy.

• 2:19:37Speaker 02

  I, well, anyway.

• 2:19:39Jocko Willink?

  You said all that stuff just to say we don't take too many risks with our health. There you go.

• 2:19:43Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 2:19:44Jocko Willink?

  Tying it in.

• 2:19:44Speaker 02

  It's true. If you don't have your health.

• 2:19:45Jocko Willink?

  Bringing it all together.

• 2:19:46Speaker 02

  Man, I'm just saying it's.

• 2:19:47Jocko Willink?

  Freaking impressive.

• 2:19:48Speaker 02

  It's not the thing to take risks with.

• 2:19:50Jocko Willink?

  Hell yeah. Hell yeah.

• 2:19:53Speaker 02

  Thanks for the support, Jaco. Um, okay, so we got energy drinks. That was mine. We got energy drinks, not old school energy drinks that do risk your health. We have energy drinks that don't risk your health.

• 2:20:05Jocko Willink?

  That actually improve your health.

• 2:20:06Speaker 02

  Improve your health, no risk.

• 2:20:07Jocko Willink?

  Upside across the board.

• 2:20:08Speaker 02

  Across the board. No gambling here.

• 2:20:10Jocko Willink?

  Upside across the board.

• 2:20:11Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:20:12Jocko Willink?

  If I was to say, hey, this thing over here can make you feel good. And you were like, okay, cool. And it, not only can it make you feel good, it can actually make you be more healthy.

• 2:20:22Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:20:23Jocko Willink?

  What would you say to that?

• 2:20:24Speaker 02

  I'd say cool.

• 2:20:25Jocko Willink?

  That's, you say cool. What if I had something else over here? And I was like, this will also make you feel good.

• 2:20:29Speaker 02

  For a little bit.

• 2:20:30Jocko Willink?

  And you said, okay, that sounds good. But then I said, after that, you're going to be addicted to it and you're going to end up becoming a crystal methamphetamine addict and dying.

• 2:20:40Speaker 02

  Yes, that would be bad.

• 2:20:41Jocko Willink?

  That's downside.

• 2:20:42Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. That's downside.

• 2:20:44Jocko Willink?

  So we like the little, we like that little hike that we got. From the crystal meth that you that I gave you.

• 2:20:49Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:20:50Jocko Willink?

  But then the downside is like a disaster. Your teeth are falling out. You lost your job. There's all kinds of problems in the future.

• 2:20:56Speaker 02

  That is true. Yes.

• 2:20:57Jocko Willink?

  So I'm not going to sell you that.

• 2:20:58Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:20:59Jocko Willink?

  I'm not going to want you to take that.

• 2:21:01Speaker 02

  You're not going to recommend that. You're correct.

• 2:21:02Jocko Willink?

  But we've got something else over here.

• 2:21:04Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:21:04Jocko Willink?

  It's going to give you the hype.

• 2:21:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:21:06Jocko Willink?

  With zero downside.

• 2:21:08Speaker 02

  All hype, zero downside. And this is.

• 2:21:10Jocko Willink?

  I will not find you at a, you know, a meth lab licking the floor.

• 2:21:15Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:21:15Jocko Willink?

  Which is what I'm afraid of. If I give you the other thing.

• 2:21:18Speaker 02

  That is an undesirable outcome. Yes, sir. So, yes, so when you're choosing an energy drink, you're looking for energy drink, even if not even into energy drinks necessarily. And I understand if you're not. Because really, how could you be when you consider those?

• 2:21:31Jocko Willink?

  Yes. Yes.

• 2:21:32Speaker 02

  Now we got a solution for that.

• 2:21:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:34Speaker 02

  Straight up. All healthy energy drink.

• 2:21:37Jocko Willink?

  Completely good for you.

• 2:21:38Speaker 02

  Jaco Discipline. Go.

• 2:21:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:41Speaker 02

  By Jaco. It's a good one. Uh, tastes good too. Different flavors. So far, the apparently on paper, the more popular one is orange.

• 2:21:51Jocko Willink?

  Afterburner orange.

• 2:21:52Speaker 02

  Afterburner orange, Dave Berke, Good Deal Dave's signature flavor. On paper, it's good. It makes sense, you know? Like, if you don't know, if you're not in the know, you go, you, you, you have a awesome selection. You know, you know that the orange is going to come through. Wouldn't you agree?

• 2:22:07Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:22:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel the same way. I feel the same way. But you want to take a little bit more risk, right? Maybe a higher upside, maybe.

• 2:22:18Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't know. I'm just a person. But hey, maybe, though, you take a little bit more risk on a more exotic flavor like mango. Mango passion fruit, to be specific. You might wind up with that bigger upside. I don't know. That's up to you, but. Nonetheless, there are many different flavors you choose whichever one. All of them are all upside, no downside. So it doesn't matter technically, at the end of the day, what flavor you choose. That's for your own personal choice.

• 2:22:44Jocko Willink?

  So get some of that discipline go. We also got joint warfare krill oil. We got the discipline powder. We got some new, um, what, what do you call hype?

• 2:22:53Speaker 02

  Well, they're not technically called hype. I think they're called pre-workout mixes, powders.

• 2:23:00Jocko Willink?

  So, so we've had the discipline powder for a while, just called discipline. And it didn't have much caffeine in it, to be real specific. And people were like, hey, that's cool. We appreciate it, but sometimes we want more of a kick. So we didn't go nuts. We didn't go 700 milligrams of caffeine.

• 2:23:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you know the, the numbers?

• 2:23:22Jocko Willink?

  Ninety-five, ninety-five per scoop.

• 2:23:24Speaker 02

  Okay, okay. Per scoop. Okay. So that's, that's more moderate, I would say.

• 2:23:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, it's moderate unless you have two scoops or three scoops.

• 2:23:31Speaker 02

  Right. Which is, which is good because okay, the, the classic pre-workout, um, if you go two scoops, that's too much, right? It's, it's too much.

• 2:23:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:39Speaker 02

  But at the same time, if you, if you don't want to get all nuts with it, you gotta start meticulously putting only a little bit of power. You can't really bet, you know, so I dig it. So yeah, that, that makes sense. If you need 300 milligrams of caffeine before one workout, if that's what you need, I'm not, I'm not, hey, dig it, man. I dig it. Like you just have three scoops.

• 2:23:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I would say back off a little bit. That's my personal.

• 2:24:01Speaker 02

  Generally speaking, but here's the thing.

• 2:24:03Jocko Willink?

  Also do some abstinence days, right?

• 2:24:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:24:06Jocko Willink?

  Like on the weekend, you know, whatever, on month, whatever. Some days be like, yeah, I'm not going to have any at all.

• 2:24:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:12Jocko Willink?

  Any caffeine at all.

• 2:24:13Speaker 02

  Generally speaking, I feel like that's a good move anyway, to not go every single day or whatever, like give yourself a break or whatever. And that way you'd maximize the effects anyway.

• 2:24:23Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 2:24:24Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. I think you're right about that. But you've never really been that hardcore, because let's face it, a pre-workout, it gives you like a bigger pump.

• 2:24:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, I've, pre-workout really isn't my thing. The only, unless you count jujitsu as a workout, which we've had this discussion lately, that's not really a workout. But like, I would have discipline powder before going to the jujitsu. And I still will do that. But as far as I'm concerned, rolling in with a freaking pumping heart, I'm not really down for that.

• 2:24:53Speaker 02

  Agreed. And that's tech, typically that's not why we take pre-workout too, for workouts like jujitsu. Jujitsu, I, I consider jujitsu workout. That's a hard workout. Actually, it's harder workout technically as far as output goes. Most of the time, more than your average or other workout, depending on the workout, obviously. But let's say if you're going in, you're gonna do.

• 2:25:14Speaker 02

  Eight sets of 12 with some bench and then maybe some tricep extensions curls this kind of thing. You take a pre-workout, bro. That's, that's the jam.

• 2:25:24Jocko Willink?

  You're saying that's it, huh? So we made one of these for people like Echo Charles that wants to get, it's a discipline go powder.

• 2:25:32Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:25:33Jocko Willink?

  Available now.

• 2:25:35Speaker 02

  In mango, by the way.

• 2:25:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you get some mango, other flavors. Molk, if you need some protein, tastes like dessert. One of the best things that have ever been invented. I'm expecting probably, do they have a Nobel Prize for dessert?

• 2:25:49Speaker 02

  No, bro.

• 2:25:49Jocko Willink?

  Do they have a Nobel Prize for protein shakes?

• 2:25:52Speaker 02

  Uh, well, now, you know, not that I'm aware of.

• 2:25:54Jocko Willink?

  There should be one. Let's face it, there should be one.

• 2:25:55Speaker 02

  Yes, and actually more than you know, really, because they like, okay, you know, you heard of people making like a milk pancakes and all this stuff. Okay, here's the jam. Keep this in mind. Do this.

• 2:26:06Speaker 02

  Milkshake, frozen banana, that whole jam, the whole creaminess, like Tulsy all day, right? So, so make, make that when the kids aren't looking. Then you buy those little popsicle, what do you call forms? You know, the forms, right?

• 2:26:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:20Speaker 02

  That you can make popsicles in? And you make popsicles. Then you tell the kids, hey, I have a surprise for you after dinner. You guys eat all your dinner, all good, right? I have a surprise. Cool. They're all excited. You bust out that pop. It looks like one of those pudding pops. You see what I'm saying?

• 2:26:34Jocko Willink?

  So that's what you've been doing?

• 2:26:36Speaker 02

  No, I'm gonna do it. I didn't do it yet. But if you're saying that's a good idea, see what I'm saying?

• 2:26:40Jocko Willink?

  All right. That's the milk Nobel Prize winning milk, uh, white, Jaco white tea, by the way. You can get the stuff, you can get the drinks at Wawa, you can get the stuff at Vitamin Shop, or you can get it from Jacofuel.com. If you subscribe to any of it, you get free shipping, which is a, which is a total bonus.

• 2:26:58Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. And you don't gotta remember to take all that stuff. So it's all good. Also, Origin USA, this is American-made stuff, products, goods, jeans, boots, American-made denim, man. Doesn't get much American-made than that.

• 2:27:13Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you could just say American.

• 2:27:15Speaker 02

  American.

• 2:27:16Jocko Willink?

  But it's sad that the American iconic jeans that you have aren't even made in America. Not you, but I mean us, we as a nation. A lot of people are out there wearing jeans they think are made in America.

• 2:27:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:26Jocko Willink?

  They're not made in America.

• 2:27:28Speaker 02

  They're, um, packaged.

• 2:27:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. They're, they might be packaged in America, but really, there's communists that are making your jeans.

• 2:27:37Jocko Willink?

  And it's nothing against the people, but the government has those people enslaved. So we're not for that. We're against that.

• 2:27:46Speaker 02

  Against that. You know, I saw you and Pete on the news the other day.

• 2:27:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:27:50Speaker 02

  You guys look good. Doing your thing.

• 2:27:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we're out there.

• 2:27:54Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:27:55Jocko Willink?

  News worthy story.

• 2:27:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so too.

• 2:27:57Jocko Willink?

  This is, this, we're bringing manufacturing back to America.

• 2:27:59Speaker 02

  You gotta tell some of those guys to stop jamming up your name, bro.

• 2:28:04Jocko Willink?

  I just, maybe I should, I don't know. They call me Jaco Willink.

• 2:28:07Speaker 02

  Will, yeah, Willink.

• 2:28:08Jocko Willink?

  Willink, Willink. I don't know.

• 2:28:11Speaker 02

  I don't like that. I feel like it.

• 2:28:12Jocko Willink?

  I don't like it either.

• 2:28:13Speaker 02

  I feel like I, do I take offense to it? Maybe, maybe not, but I feel like they're kind of pronouncing my name wrong.

• 2:28:20Jocko Willink?

  It's weird that you would do that. It says Will Inc. That's literally what it says.

• 2:28:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:28:25Jocko Willink?

  How you reverse those numbers and reverse those letters and stuff. I don't know, but that's what happens.

• 2:28:30Speaker 02

  And I don't know, you start to wonder, have you, have they not heard anyone else say your name ever?

• 2:28:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's strange.

• 2:28:36Speaker 02

  It is odd, right?

• 2:28:37Jocko Willink?

  Kind of strange, but there you go.

• 2:28:39Speaker 02

  Either way, either way, you look good. You were saying some great stuff. American, uh, back to Origin USA. Yeah, everything is made in, in, in America. The seeds that are grown into the cotton, it goes into the loom to make the material, the denim that makes the jeans. Oh man, oh here, made in America. Boom.

• 2:28:55Jocko Willink?

  And since we are doing jiu-jitsu, you can get an American made jiu-jitsu gi.

• 2:29:00Speaker 02

  It's true. Very true. Awesome. Yeah, a lot of cool stuff on there. OriginUSA.com. That's where you can get it. Also, Jaco has a store. It's called Jaco Store. It's a good spot. Good spot. You want to represent on this path that we're all on. Discipline equals freedom. That goes deep. If you want to represent, boom, that's where you can get your shirts and hats, t-shirts, um, hoodies, some rash guards on there, some other cool stuff on there.

• 2:29:26Jocko Willink?

  There's a jiu-jitsu section now, apparently?

• 2:29:28Speaker 02

  Yes, there is.

• 2:29:28Jocko Willink?

  I saw Nakko represent the other day.

• 2:29:30Speaker 02

  Nakko represents hard jiu-jitsu's life.

• 2:29:32Jocko Willink?

  Jiu-jitsu's life.

• 2:29:33Speaker 02

  You look good. You look good. It looked good on him. Jack Daniel Hill had one on too.

• 2:29:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, Jack Daniel.

• 2:29:38Speaker 02

  They know. Yes. Uh, there's a Dean Lister shirt coming out too at some point. Yeah.

• 2:29:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, the, the foot shirt?

• 2:29:44Speaker 02

  The foot shirt.

• 2:29:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's freaking legit.

• 2:29:46Speaker 02

  Also, uh, we have what's called the Shirt Locker. It's a subscription service. You get a, get a cool new shirt every month. Some good stuff coming out. The Christmas shirt coming out.

• 2:29:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh. Oh yeah, that's a legit shirt. You showed it to me.

• 2:30:01Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:30:01Jocko Willink?

  That's a freaking, that's a freaking legit shirt.

• 2:30:04Speaker 02

  Solid, yeah.

• 2:30:04Jocko Willink?

  That's a legit shirt. That's a legit shirt. It's a, do we say that? Or is it like that?

• 2:30:10Speaker 02

  What? If you say it, we reveal it? Oh, yeah, yeah. No, yeah, you can say it.

• 2:30:14Jocko Willink?

  It's just a, it's a Christmas shirt and it has the Christmas truth nineteen fourteen, Christmas truce nineteen fourteen.

• 2:30:21Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:30:21Jocko Willink?

  We got the flags of the nations involved. It's freaking legit. It's a respect.

• 2:30:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:25Jocko Willink?

  Respect.

• 2:30:26Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, big time. But yeah, so yeah, the Shirt Locker, it's a, like I said, subscription. You get a cool new shirt every month. A lot of, a lot of good feedback on that one. And we're, and we actually tightened it up a lot, too. Cause we're, you know how it's, anyway, it, it can be complicated to, to provide that. So I feel like all the issues, weren't huge issues, but it's real tightened up. It's a good streamlined process now, so keep that in mind.

• 2:30:53Speaker 02

  JacoStore.com if you can get this stuff.

• 2:30:55Jocko Willink?

  Uh, subscribe to this podcast, too. Don't forget about Jaco and Ravelling with Darryl Cooper, the Grounded Podcast, the Warrior Kid Podcast. Also, we have JacoUnderground.com. And what that is, is a little alternative world that we created. Just in case this world goes sideways. We don't, we don't control these platforms that you're listening on right now. So if something were to go sideways, we might get banned for talking about masculine and feminine characteristics. I don't know. Could be. Some people are sensitive to that kind of thing, even though we're reading a book from nineteen seventy-six. It just doesn't matter these days. So if that should happen, we are in our own place. Costs eight dollars and eighteen cents a month. If you can't afford that, email [email protected].

• 2:31:39Jocko Willink?

  And we make another sort of tangential podcast to talk about stuff on that one as well.

• 2:31:45Speaker 02

  Life advice.

• 2:31:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, a lot of Q and A.

• 2:31:48Speaker 02

  Life advice from Jaco, straight up.

• 2:31:50Jocko Willink?

  Yep. That's straight up. Uh, we have a YouTube channel. I'm the A.D., Assistant Director. And if you want to see quality assistant directing, you can just go subscribe to that, cause you can sense how I make the special calls, the little critical calls.

• 2:32:05Speaker 02

  Very influential.

• 2:32:06Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's that last- You know, like you're lifting and you get to, you get to deadlift 495. It takes a lot of work to get that last little bit, right?

• 2:32:18Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:32:19Jocko Willink?

  You're trying to cut your runtime down. It takes a lot. You get to, you know, a certain spot and then it takes a lot of work to get that. It's real easy for you because you get to a certain spot and then I just roll in as the assistant director and just kind of go next level for you.

• 2:32:32Speaker 02

  Right. So like, like, like Muhammad Ali, right? When he, they'd be like, oh, how many sit-ups do you do? He's like, I don't know how many sit-ups I do because I only count, I only start counting when it starts to hurt, right? So I get all the easy sit-ups and you roll in when it hurts and, and bring us past the finish line.

• 2:32:47Jocko Willink?

  There you go. If you want to check that out, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel.

• 2:32:52Speaker 02

  Hell yeah. Also, Psychological Warfare is like an album that we made back in the day for fundamental weaknesses, that mental weaknesses that, that we may stumble onto before we do workouts, before we freaking cheat on our diet, eat some stuff that we don't want to be eating. Nonetheless, these are moments of weakness that Jaco helps us through. Like, just listen to that. He'll tell you why. You should just stand the path, stand the path. It's going to be better for you. Jaco tells you why. It's a good one.

• 2:33:19Jocko Willink?

  Also, if you want to hang some cool stuff on your wall, flipsidecanvas.com, Dakota Meyer, that's his company. He's making cool graphic things to hang on your wall. Got a bunch of books. Final Spin, Dave Berke. What do you got?

• 2:33:32Speaker 02

  It's coming out.

• 2:33:33Jocko Willink?

  It's out. It's out. This is it. It's out. It's live.

• 2:33:37Jocko Willink?

  Finally. What do you think's gonna, what do you think the reviews are gonna say?

• 2:33:42Jocko Willink?

  What's your review?

• 2:33:43Speaker 02

  People know my review. I think I've talked about it. My review is good. I think the mass review is gonna be good. I, I have a personal interest in this one because this is one of the few times, you shared with me, I think, I think I might've been way up there and one of the first people to see this.

• 2:34:02Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:34:03Speaker 02

  And I.

• 2:34:04Speaker 01

  I don't like, I don't, I don't take positions all that often. And my position was immediately like, this is gonna be awesome. And my validation for that wasn't what I thought of it is I gave it to my wife and she read the whole thing straight through. And I'm like, bro, I think I said something like really flippant, like, trust me, or like, I know, or words that I don't like to use. And I was like, dug in immediately like, bro, trust me, something along those lines. So we're here at that moment of truth. I'm pretty sure now that's gonna play out.

• 2:34:30Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you, okay, so my, in my family, not only my immediate family, meaning my Willink, but also my mother, father, sisters, there's not a lot of cheerleading happening. You're not getting a bunch of compliments, ever. In fact, it's the opposite. Like, we're gonna look for the holes. We're gonna look for the freaking, the, the issues, the problems, whatever. And that's what we're gonna hone in on. So I, I gave this book to my oldest daughter. She was one of the first people to read it. And I gave her like a paper copy, like I printed it out. Here you go. I said, here, read this. I was actually just, I just said, hey, can you proofread this for me? You know, she's in college at the time. I said, hey, you know, proofread,

• 2:35:13Jocko Willink?

  you know, find any whatever errors. So she's got a red pen out. And she reads it. And she gets done. And she comes walking out of her room because she was home, at home, even though she was in college because of Miss Rona. She, you know, everyone was shut down. So she was there. And she comes walking out of her room and she's like, I go, oh, you know, oh, you finished? And she's like, yeah. Just so nonchalant, just so like, whatever, like, so you're an idiot. And I said, how was it? She goes, oh, this is fine. Like, literally just shining me on. And I go, oh, cool. Because I know what's happening. You know, I know there's no way she's gonna be like, this was awesome. I go, oh, well, what, you know, what parts of it

• 2:35:56Jocko Willink?

  did you like? Or whatever. And she starts describing one, one part of the book, which I'm not gonna mention, and she starts to cry. And I was like, oh, yeah, you can't hide this now, girl. I got you. I got you. So, yes. Tell me what you think. Final spin. It's available right now. Order it.

• 2:36:20Jocko Willink?

  Let me know what you think. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, The Code, The Evaluation Protocols, which I wrote with Dave Berke, Sarah Armstrong. Discipline vs. Freedom Field Manual, Way of the Warrior Kid, 1, 2, 3, and 4, Mike and the Dragons, About Face by Hackworth, which I wrote the foreword to Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership, which I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. We also have a leadership consultancy called Echelon Front. We solve problems through leadership. Leadership is the solution. Whatever problems you're having, leadership is the solution. Go to echelonfront.com for details on that. And also, we have an online training platform. We've got a bunch of people starting to join that right now, which is, look, we have courses set up on there, we have daily drills you can do, and we have live sessions where I'm answering questions.

• 2:37:05Jocko Willink?

  The rest of the team is Dave's there, Leif's there, we're answering questions. We're doing that three times a week. So, go to extremeownerships.com if you want to get on board with that. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom. Mark Lee's mom, incredible woman, and she's got a charity organization and it helps, it helps veterans and it helps service members and families of all sorts. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. And if you want more of my paraphrastic pronouncements, or if you need more of Echo's irrelevant inquiries, or you want any of Dave's ancillary additions, you can find us

• 2:37:50Jocko Willink?

  on the interwebs, on Twitter, on the Gram, and on Facebook. Dave is at David R Burke, Echo's at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And to all the troops out there around the world, and all those forgotten barricades, thank you for the, holding the line to protect those of us here at home and to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, Secret Service, and all first responders, thank you for holding the line to keep us safe here on the home front. And everyone else out there, let me just remind you of that quote from Francis Bacon.

• 2:38:35Jocko Willink?

  "Why should a man be in love with his fetters though of gold?"

• 2:38:43Jocko Willink?

  What's trapping you? What's controlling you? What's controlling your thoughts, your ideas, your beliefs? What's controlling your mind? And the things that are controlling you, they might seem good, they might be made of gold.

• 2:39:05Jocko Willink?

  But they are enslaving you nonetheless. Do not let that happen. Cast off those mental manacles and think for yourself.

• 2:39:18Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jaco. Out.