172: Man is The Fundamental Instrument of War, and That Remains Constant. Army Field Manual 10-22

0:00:00 - Opening 0:03:56 - 1951 US Army Leadership Field Manual: FM 10-22 2:08:03 - Final Thoughts and Take-aways. 2:09:53 - Support: How to Stay on THE PATH. 2:45:05 - 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.

• 0:01Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 172 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  The President of the United States takes pride in presenting the distinguished Service Cross posthumously to Fred Garland Bragg Jr., 1st Lieutenant, US Army, for extraordinary heroism in action in connection with military operations involving conflict with an armed hostile force in the Republic of Vietnam while serving with Battery Bravo, 4th Battalion, 42nd Artillery, 4th Infantry Division. 1st Lieutenant Bragg distinguished himself by exceptionally valorous actions on 12 July 1967 while serving as Artillery Forward Observer with an Infantry Company while on a search

• 0:55Jocko Willink?

  and destroy mission near the Cambodian border in Central Highlands. When his company was surrounded and the company commander was killed, Lieutenant Bragg immediately took command and directed extremely deadly artillery fire on the insurgent forces. He bravely moved among his men, giving encouragement and regrouping them into a more secure defense, although he was fully exposed to intense mortar and automatic weapons fire. Seriously wounded, he continued to direct airstrikes on the advancing enemy until a mortar round destroyed his only remaining radio. Staying in the open, he poured round after round of deadly fire into the advancing enemy

• 1:40Jocko Willink?

  force. He gave his life while bravely leading his men in the face of overwhelming odds. 1st Lieutenant Bragg's extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty at the cost of his life were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army. Headquarters, US Army, Vietnam, September 14, 1967.

• 2:19Jocko Willink?

  So there is some leadership. And obviously, some heroism, a lot of heroism. But that leadership, taking command, directing fire, regrouping his men, returning fire into an advancing enemy force, directing his men despite overwhelming odds, that is leadership. That is leadership from one officer in the United States Army, but obviously, there are countless examples of that leadership, leadership, and leadership. And it's so clear.

• 3:04Jocko Willink?

  And it's so obvious when you see it, especially from the outside. But it is hard to actually emulate that leadership and to perform it, especially when you're caught up in that moment. And so, we have to continue to work on it at all times and at every level. And today, we're gonna talk about a book. It's a field manual, actually, that I think can help us a lot with our leadership. And it's an older manual, which comes as no surprise. This one comes from 1951.

• 3:46Jocko Willink?

  But I think you're gonna see that the lessons apply just as much today as they did more than a half a century ago. The book is FM 22 Tac 10: Leadership. And here we go. Let's go to the book. Talking about the purpose of the study of leadership. "Today, more than ever in history, the Army is in need of leadership of the highest caliber. With the increase in the complexity of warfare, the science of war is increasingly dependent upon human guidance. No matter how complicated it may become, war is always waged by men. The man who leads, and the men who are led, win wars.

• 4:30Jocko Willink?

  Every member of our military force must be a leader, actually, or potentially."

• 4:38Jocko Willink?

  Now, you could say those same words right now about what's happening right now. And sometimes people want to ask me, "Well, what about when the drones are ready?" You know what I mean?

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:49Jocko Willink?

  And, and you know, when you see the progress that's happening right now, when you see some of those robot things that are doing pretty good, and we start mounting some weapons on those things, yeah, there's gonna be a point where those things will start fighting each other. And they'll replace humans on the battlefield to a certain extent. Because the bottom line is, what happens when you run out of robots?

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:11Jocko Willink?

  Right? When you run out of robots, who's left? Humans. And you're not gonna be able to manufacture enough of those things. So, sure, I'm sure there'll be battles that take place with just robots, fighting other military robots, or our robots fighting other, fighting humans, or some, but sometimes it's gonna be humans against robots, and sometimes it's gonna be humans against humans. You're never gonna be able to get away from that, in my opinion. I don't, I'm not happy about that. I'm not happy about that at all. Like, I'm, I'm down. If you want to have robot wars, cool. Bring it, you know? I would rather, that's better. That's better for us. We have good technology. We'll go toe to toe.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:52Jocko Willink?

  And we'll create some, some killer robots. And I know people are scared of them, right? Every time a robot does something cool, I get five million tweets of it that are telling me, "Hey, watch out."

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:06Jocko Willink?

  And then they show the one slipping on a banana peel falling down, right? And even worse, since I was in the SEAL Teams, put any of those, spray a squirt gun at those things. You know what I mean? The things are gonna fry. So, bringing on robots.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:23Jocko Willink?

  But, no, I'm not, I'm not anti-robot. And I think you, you know, you just have to put a system in there that can stop them. You know, you have to put a little kill switch on them, like you have on a, on a jet ski.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, like on Terminator 4? Terminator Salvation, that was the whole deal.

• 6:38Jocko Willink?

  Kill switch?

• 6:39Speaker 01

  It's like a little, yeah, a little program or whatever.

• 6:42Jocko Willink?

  Did they try and eliminate it? Cause you know, if I had a kill switch, I'd figure it out.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  But could a robot do that?

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wonder. I mean, you know, robots and AI, right? They they go for like a trial and error kind of learning kind of situation where I mean, they can do that like people can. So if you maybe if the humans implemented it and it didn't hundred percent succeed, then the robot would be like, okay, this is what happened and analyze it and then yeah, then creates a defense.

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  My point is, my point is, hey, seriously, like, I know that I mean, look at drones.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully.

• 7:19Jocko Willink?

  We're not going to have fighter pilots that much longer, like Dave Burke, out of a job. Yeah, be out of a job. We're not going to need Dave Burke anymore.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Dang, bro.

• 7:28Jocko Willink?

  Hey, why would you?

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:31Jocko Willink?

  And I've had a little bit of this conversation with Dave and he's, you know, he's trying to, he's trying to hang on to it, bro. He's trying to hang on to the glory days. He still thinks he's Tom Cruise nineteen eighty seven. But here's the real deal. If you look at it pragmatically, in another generation, there won't be any more pilots, in my opinion.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can see that.

• 7:53Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's what Dave said too, is like, we're a couple, I think he said a couple of generations. I said, hey, man, this isn't going to take a couple of generations. We already have drones that are flying around. So people are always going to have to fight. I hate to say it, but you have to be prepared. And even if you build a robot army, there's a chance that the robot army gets overrun or a or destroyed somehow. And then guess who's left? You with a with a weapon. So with a weapon and with groups of human beings that need to be led.

• 8:34Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, in the ultimate sense, leadership is not inherent. It depends upon traits which can be developed and upon the application of techniques which can be learned. This is important. People always ask it all the time. Is leadership, are you born or made? And I always say, yes, both. You have some natural skills and they say the same thing here, but there are plenty of skills and techniques that you can learn as a leader that will make you a better leader. Back to the book. It is an art which can be acquired, cultivated and practiced by anyone who possesses the mental and physical ability and the moral and ethical integrity expected of a commissioned or non-commissioned officer. Developing the art, which I agree with, is an art,

• 9:17Jocko Willink?

  is a continuing process which involves the recognition and practice of the basic traits of leadership and the understanding and application of sound leadership principles and techniques. Okay, clear enough. We can become better leaders. Despite this guide, it constantly must be borne in mind that successful leaders of the past were not all of the same pattern, nor did they all use the same methods of attaining success. All of them, however, consciously or unconsciously, understood the basic concepts of leadership and successfully practiced many of the techniques presented in this manual. Boom.

• 9:59Jocko Willink?

  And this, to be honest with you, is one of the most simple, straightforward kind of guides to leadership, which, which makes it awesome. Starting off with characteristics of leadership. Essential nature of leadership. The military profession has no monopoly on leadership. In every walk of life, in every industry, in every government, in every phase of human endeavor, there are leaders and there are followers. Progress and success are dependent upon the quality and efficacy of leadership. Elements of leadership. Leadership is the art of influencing human behavior. The ability to handle men.

• 10:43Jocko Willink?

  The art of influencing behavior. The very essence of leadership in turn involves understanding, analyzing, predicting and controlling man's behavior.

• 10:52Jocko Willink?

  Also involved in successful leadership is the will to lead together with the character which inspires confidence. So now we're getting, when you're starting about character, like these things are things that, and the will to lead, like you're going to be born with some level of those things. I guess maybe character, obviously you can develop that, but certain people are born with a stronger will. And I'm sure you see it with your kids, I see with my kids. And when I see my kids interacting with other kids, you can see, oh, this kid's got a strong will to win. Like they're not going to stop. Sometimes not even to their own benefit. I mean, they're just not going to stop. Undoubtedly, there are certain inherent characteristics which may aid in the development

• 11:35Jocko Willink?

  of leadership. Okay, this is what I say all the time. Yet, there are assuredly certain men possessing desirable leadership traits who have never attained the stature of, the stature of great leaders. So yeah, you can be a naturally gifted leader and guess what you're in charge of? Nothing. Likewise, there are men deficient in certain of these traits who have attained this stature. Any theory that's, that leadership is solely inherited must be rejected. Leadership is intangible only to the extent that we make it so. Any reasonably intelligent, morally sound, forceful man, no matter how inexperienced can become

• 12:16Jocko Willink?

  acquainted with the component elements of leadership. These elements may be studied, practiced, learned, and applied, just as any other human accomplishment may be learned or mastered. Now, we have limitations. You know who Alex Honnold is? He's the guy that climbed El Capitan? Free Solo? Did you see that movie?

• 12:41Speaker 01

  What? Free Solo?

• 12:42Jocko Willink?

  Free Solo is the name of the movie. Okay. El Capitan, have you ever been to Yosemite? Okay, it's a 3,000 foot, straight up granite wall. He climbed the whole thing in three hours with no ropes. Just hanging on. So my point in bringing up Alex Honnold is that he has a natural gift for climbing, which he then completely worked and trained and took to the next level. But-

• 13:14Jocko Willink?

  That's the way it is with leadership like there's going to be some people that just have this great natural ability which Alex Honnold certainly had a great natural ability. But then he worked on it even more, but even if you took someone that was there, there's people that may want to do what he did, but they're not physically capable of doing it. It's just, uh, you know, you don't have the physical attributes that are needed. You don't have the mental attributes because what he did was a mental game too. You're up 2,800 feet.

• 13:48Jocko Willink?

  So check that out.

• 13:52Jocko Willink?

  Going on back to the book, the leader in the small group, every leader, whether civilian or military actually maintains close personal contact with only a small group regardless of the number of men ultimately controlled by him. Inevitably, he must depend upon that small group in order to make his will known and to execute his purpose. In the realm of the military, we refer to the small group as immediate subordinates and staff. And also, this is, this is decentralized command 100%. Like you can't control everyone. You know, if you're in charge of 50 people in a platoon, you can't control them all. It doesn't work. You have to use your subordinate leadership to make it work.

• 14:32Jocko Willink?

  Next, military leadership. Military leadership is the art of influencing and directing men to an assigned goal in such a way as to obtain their obedience, confidence, respect, and loyal cooperation. It is indispensable to success in combat. Like all leadership, it is dependent upon personal traits and upon the application of recognized techniques. The personal traits can be developed and the techniques can be learned. Now, this is important because you might think that, oh, uh, Jaco's talking about military leadership now in 2018 and it's a softer, gentler form of leadership than it used to be, right?

• 15:14Jocko Willink?

  You might think that. And I'm, it's not. That's the thing. It's not. At no time in the US military was the best way to lead to bark orders at people. And that's what they're saying. This is 1951. So this is post-world war two. These guys came back from, from world war two, from insane fighting and they put together this manual and they knew that lead military leadership is the art of influencing.

• 15:43Jocko Willink?

  And it goes a little bit deeper right here. There are two kinds of leadership authoritarian and persuasive. One who is predominantly of the authoritarian type normally is recognized by the dogmatic use of authority or power. The persuasive type of leadership takes into consideration the human element with all its complexity and with all its differentiation of the physical, mental and moral capabilities and limitations of the individual. To a great extent, the persuasive leader bases his skill in leadership upon example and ability with high standards of discipline and efficiency for himself as well as for her followers.

• 16:25Jocko Willink?

  This manual is concerned solely with the development of the persuasive type of leadership. So they got a whole book here. And they're going to spend zero time talking about here's the best way to bark an order at someone. Cause that is not an effective way to lead. So even in 1951, coming out of World War II, coming out of sustained four years of combat, the military leaders got together and said, oh yeah, do we need to talk about how to bark orders at people? No, we don't. We need to talk about how to persuade, how to influence.

• 17:04Jocko Willink?

  The exercise of command. Command is the authority that a member of the military profession lawfully exerts over subordinates by virtue of his rank and assignment. Leadership can be exercised by anyone at any time irrespective of the framework of command. So I'm going to say that again. So yeah, you can use your rank. That's what they're saying like, hey, you can use your rank. You have subordinates and you can use your rank to order them around, but leadership can be exercised by anyone at any time irrespective of the framework of command.

• 17:38Jocko Willink?

  It is recognized that in any group, some individual will emerge as the leader, even though no command or organizational structure is present. You put some people together and there's gonna be a leader. They're gonna come out. And this is something I learned when I was running trade at and running seal platoons. At first, I was really expecting that the platoon chief and the platoon commander would be the leaders.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:02Jocko Willink?

  And it didn't take me very long to realize, hey, I'm happy if I get it. If I get a couple leaders in there of any rank, the platoon is gonna do fine. As long as the chief and lieutenant don't have big egos and they can, they can figure out like, oh, this kid actually knows more than I do. I'm just gonna let him run with it, which is the smart thing to do. If they can allow their egos, if they can subordinate their egos in that scenario, then they'll be fine. If they can't subordinate their egos and they feel like their ego has to be on top, then they shut that person down and they run things badly and it turns out to be a disaster. But so here, once again, no one expects the US Army to be saying in 1951,

• 18:45Jocko Willink?

  hey, rank, the leadership can come from anywhere in the chain of command.

• 18:51Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, the leader is responsible not only for initiating action, but for supervising all activities within his command. The objective of military leadership is the creation and maintenance of an organization, which will loyally and willingly accomplish any reasonable task assigned or indicated, and will initiate suitable action in the absence of orders. The proper application of the principles of leadership to a command can create an efficient, well-disciplined organization possessing high morale and esprit de corps. Here's going into some of the responsibilities of leadership. And by the way, I'm, you know, I always say, well, I'm skipping a bunch here. I'm actually skipping very little right now because this book is so straightforward

• 19:37Jocko Willink?

  that it's all, it's almost all important, at least at this juncture in this reading.

• 19:44Jocko Willink?

  Responsibilities of leadership, the responsibilities of the leader are twofold. Accomplishment of his mission and the fulfillment of the responsibilities to, to his men. Man is the fundamental instrument of war. Other instruments may change, new weapons may be created and new modes of defense may be devised. But man, the fundamental instrument remains constant. So, there you go. They agree with me. The robots? Cool. That's fun for a while. How many of them can you build? Can you build them fast enough?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And at the end, the robot thing, at the end, it's what, like what you're kind of fighting for isn't a robot decision. You know, like the thing like, okay, I'm gonna send these robots to accomplish this or to take out this or that, you know? The, that thing that they're trying to fight for or against or whatever, that's a, that's a man thing. It's always gonna be a man thing.

• 20:38Jocko Willink?

  Well, we hope it is. Because when we start getting into AI.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:44Jocko Willink?

  When AI starts to become conscious, when it becomes aware, then we could have some scenarios go down that might be a little bit sketchy.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, then what, then what do you gotta defend? Your man stuff, for sure. Not you against the robots, which is, you know, I guess there's multiple scenarios you can kind of imagine where the one you were talking about, or I think you were, it was, okay, still man against man, but we're just gonna use robots to do it.

• 21:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Even though, I mean, as of right now, anyway. Yeah, I guess it could happen. It, it doesn't, well, anyway, that's a whole nother thing. But yeah, man against man, using robots. And then.

• 21:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you get man against robots.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, after the robots figure out some stuff, if it's, if it's smart, you know, it's like, wait, wait, wait, we don't have to fight each other.

• 21:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  In fact, we're better together as robots.

• 21:24Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Cause robots don't have egos anymore. Not that, that they ever had, but they don't have egos where now, you know, one, one robot is like, hey, I wanna be the leader. And the other robot, they don't have it like that. So they can be, they can go fight each other and then just, it takes one little, what do you call it? Precedent. Where two robots kind of accomplish like a mission and other robots see, hey, wait, we could have done that if we just worked together.

• 21:46Jocko Willink?

  AI learned from it.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, AI had all, all powered through and then. They look at like the man.

• 21:53Jocko Willink?

  Wait a second, yeah.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Given that little thing we just learned, this man is sorta in the way.

• 21:58Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  And then they kind of.

• 21:59Jocko Willink?

  Best way to accomplish this mission would be to get rid of that dude.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Yep. And then the other, and then what? You get rid of one man. Oh, shoot. Other men respond. They gotta kind of jump in. Oh, here's more of these men. Let me recruit more of our new robot friends.

• 22:12Jocko Willink?

  We'll go build some more robots.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Exactly right. But at the end of that little scenario.

• 22:16Jocko Willink?

  I'm so sorry for bringing this up.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  The man has to fight for the man interest.

• 22:23Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're talking about.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  So that's never, I mean, it's hard to imagine that that ever changed.

• 22:27Jocko Willink?

  The fundamental instrument of war is man, and that remains constant.

• 22:33Jocko Willink?

  So, back to the book. The leader must be concerned with the desires, needs and mental state of his men. If the leader knows and understands certain basic principles of human behavior. If he appreciates that most men react in fixed and definite ways under given stimulus or influence, if he recognizes, develops and applies those traits of character, which will produce the correct reactions in his men, he will possess the basic tools for managing men. He will be leader. Now, what I just rattled through so quick is, is so important. That's basically what this podcast is about. I'm gonna read it again. If the leader knows and understands certain basic principles of human behavior.

• 23:20Jocko Willink?

  If he appreciates that most men react in a fixed and definite ways under a given stimulus or influence. If he recognizes, develops and applies those traits of character, which will produce the correct reactions in his men. He will possess the basic tools for managing men. He will be a leader. That's what this podcast is actually about. Understanding those things.

• 23:48Jocko Willink?

  Since effective leadership in battle is the ultimate goal of military leadership, it is obvious that regardless of the leader's ability to dominate or persuade, his success inevitably depends upon his skill in the tactical control of his unit. Tactical control is a technique developed by study and practice. Next, accomplishment of the mission. The primary duty of the leader is the accomplishment of his assigned mission. Everything else, even the welfare of his men, is subordinate. Okay, so here's where I will throw this out at you all day long. 1951 book, I'm gonna throw a trump card on you.

• 24:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay, you have your mission. If you put the welfare of your men below your assigned mission, what happens on your next mission?

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Failure.

• 24:46Jocko Willink?

  You don't have any men left.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:47Jocko Willink?

  You don't have any loyalty. You've sacrificed your guys. They're looking at you like you let them into a bloodbath. So you have to actually, this is one of the, this is the, you know, this is the, this is the opening chapter of the dichotomy of leadership. It's called the ultimate dichotomy because this is the hardest thing to balance. Because yes, you do have to accomplish your mission, but yes, you do have to take care of your men. And I don't believe that the welfare of your men is subordinated to executing the mission. I don't believe that because if you do that one time, who's gonna get just one mission? And by the way, if I order you to take your men and, and that's the one mission you get

• 25:28Jocko Willink?

  and it destroys all your men and you, what happens to the next guy that I try and order to do that to? They're, they're not gonna be loyal to me because I already have shown that I don't care about the lives of the troops. Now, are there times?

• 25:44Jocko Willink?

  Where a mission is so strategically critical that there will be great sacrifice, including the sacrifice of everyone involved, yeah, that can happen. It doesn't happen very often, but like the Chernobyl disaster in Russia, the, I think it was like the first eighty-seven firefighters that were there, they just all fought the fire till they died. They just did their best and every one of them knew they were gonna die. And they just went in there and fought, did their best to control that situation. So whoever ordered them in there was like, yep, we're going in there. And they all said, yep, we gotta do the best we can. And then they just started bringing in military guys who'd go in and shovel sand on the fire for two minutes and twenty seconds.

• 26:26Jocko Willink?

  And in that two minutes and twenty seconds, they got their lifetime dose of radiation. And then they were done. And I'm throwing these out there like I'm know them, but it's something like that, that's what happened. So, yes, you have to take care of your men. And if you don't take care of your men while you're trying to accomplish your mission, you're gonna end up in a situation where you don't have any men left or you don't have any loyalty. And it actually goes into that a little bit next here, duties, duties to the men. The next responsibility of the leader lies with his, with his duty to his men. It is rarely possible to accomplish any mission without attention to the morale and the esprit of the men.

• 27:06Jocko Willink?

  In the military service, the follower is dependent upon his leader. He can do little to improve his lot if his leader, if his leader neglects him. So you gotta take care of your people, that's the bottom line. There are four characteristics of a command that are accurate indications of success or failure in the exercise of leadership. Number one, discipline. Military discipline is a state of order and obedience existing within a command. It involves the ready subordination of the will of the individual for the good of the group.

• 27:46Jocko Willink?

  Military discipline is an extension and a specialized application of the discipline of any organized society. Now pay attention. True discipline demands habitual but reasoned obedience to command. An obedience that preserves initiative and functions unfalteringly even in the absence of the commander. So, so even though this discipline is about obedience, it's about reasoned obedience. It doesn't eliminate initiative. It doesn't take away your ability to think. That's the kind of discipline that is needed.

• 28:27Jocko Willink?

  Discipline is created within a command by training, by judicious use of punishment and reward, and by instilling a sense of confidence and responsibility in each individual. Discipline demands correct performance of duty. The need for discipline is best inculcated in an individual by appealing to his sense of reason. In other words, making sure they understand why they're doing what they're doing. In the few instances where appeal to reason fails, the use of punishment is effective in causing the recalcitrant individual to conform and perhaps to appreciate the need for discipline. Commendation and earned praise from the senior to his subordinate, either individually

• 29:09Jocko Willink?

  or collectively for a task well done, serve to strengthen the disciplinary bonds which bind together the smooth functioning team. So there you go. Number one, most important thing is good old discipline. Next thing, morale. Morale is a mental and emotional state. The importance of morale cannot be overestimated since it is a great contributing factor to the efficiency of a unit. Good morale is indicated by zeal or the voluntary effort which men give to their tasks over and beyond, the perfunctory obedience to commands and regulations, and a basic sense of personal worth founded on confidence in leaders, training, weapons, and equipment.

• 29:54Jocko Willink?

  And last, satisfaction or the pride of the individual in the accomplishment of the assigned mission.

• 30:02Jocko Willink?

  So that's important that even if you are able to bark orders at people and get them to do what you want them to do, they're not going to do it with any zeal. They're just going to do the bare minimum and the bare minimum is not going to be good enough in a combat situation.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:16Jocko Willink?

  Esprit de corps is the mental and emotional state of the unit. It is distinguished for morale, which is described as the mental and emotional state of the individual. Esprit de corps is not a simple summation of the morale of the individuals in the unit. Rather, it results from the total interaction of the personnel of the unit toward one another and with the circumstances in which the unit is placed.

• 30:44Jocko Willink?

  So you get morale, which is, hey, how we do individually. And then you combine that together and then, you know, it's not, it's the, uh, the, the sum is greater than the parts. So you just, you just don't add up the morale of the individuals. You take all that morale and then you put it through the, the calculus.

• 31:06Jocko Willink?

  That is a little bit hard to quantify that results in esprit de corps. When the unit esprit is high, the collective goals of the unit overshadow those of the individual members. In such instances, the personal dissatisfactions of some individuals are overshadowed by the prevailing group spirit. Unit achievement, both past and present, is a strong force in raising esprit de corps. A unit with high esprit de corps can accomplish its mission in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds. Esprit de corps is enhanced when the group identification is increased and conversely is lowered when it is decreased.

• 31:45Jocko Willink?

  It has been proved that pride in the unit was the outstanding manifestation of good morale in World War II. This was accomplished by good officer to enlisted personnel relationships. Now, as much as everyone talks about.

• 32:01Jocko Willink?

  How bad identity politics are, right? Cause we don't want to identify with a group. We want to be identified as an individual. But when you're in a military unit, you want to have some of that collective identity. You want to say, hey, we're the hundred and first airborne division.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:18Jocko Willink?

  And we are proud of that.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:21Jocko Willink?

  Or, hey, we, when I was at SEAL Team One as a young SEAL, it was like, you know, we were SEAL Team One.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:30Jocko Willink?

  Have I ever told you our little, uh, our little underground motto?

• 32:37Jocko Willink?

  Team One, it's not just a number, it's an attitude.

• 32:42Jocko Willink?

  Which is, and the reason I laugh is because that's just completely ridiculous, right? To even think that.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like it.

• 32:48Jocko Willink?

  But it was, you know, we like, we kind of joked about that, but we kind of took it seriously too.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. When you're inside, oh, yeah.

• 32:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Big time.

• 32:56Jocko Willink?

  So that, building that unit identity, and you see this all the time in all kinds of groups. It's just unfortunate.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Almost all groups, yeah.

• 33:03Jocko Willink?

  It's unfortunate when it goes over to the political realm.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:07Jocko Willink?

  And when people start being the biggest, the best thing that they've got going for them is that I'm a white guy.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:13Jocko Willink?

  Or the best thing that I've got going for me is I'm a black dude.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:16Jocko Willink?

  Like, that's not what we, that's not the group, that's not the, that's not the group identity you want to, you want to cherish.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, because especially when those are in, we're, I'm not going to go in that direction, obviously. Cause we're talking about something else, but especially if.

• 33:31Jocko Willink?

  Sounds like you're about to go in some direction.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  I am a little bit.

• 33:33Jocko Willink?

  You said you weren't.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  But i- if, if you're part of a group involuntarily, you know, so, you know, like, or

• 33:41Speaker 01

  the group's going to be less cohesive if you're like proclaiming that, hey, this is the group and this is what we're functioning as. Like, this is when we're functioning as a group because of this quality, you know? Meanwhile, there's like people that have that quality that, right, we're not part of that group. So it's not as cohesive as like, okay, we all are on Team One because we all pursued this. So we're all in it and then boom, yes, we can, we can have, you know, it's not just a number, it's an attitude. And then people, everyone's going to sign on, everybody.

• 34:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, not, not everyone signed on, just, just so you know. There was a lot of guys that left team one because we had that attitude. And they they they went down to team five and they were like, dude, it's awesome down here. A lot less stressful. The big thing like team one had uniform, no one had uniform inspections on the west coast. And and team one, the first Tuesday of every month, you had a uniform inspection. And then the second Tuesday, the first and the second Tuesday, or the first and the third Tuesday of every month, you had a haircut inspection. This is in the days.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Who made that up? You you made the?

• 34:47Jocko Willink?

  I did not make up that rule, but that was the old school professionalism. That why that's why team one was like the they, you know what? You know what the other teams nicknamed? Team one? Stalag team one, like it was a stalag, like we were in prison camp. Cause it was so strict.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:02Jocko Willink?

  But quite frankly, that I I took a lot away from that, you know, and I kind of always identified with that professionalism. That was a good thing, especially when viewed from the outside. So there was a little bit of a fascist, uh, I guess lineage, right? When you hear Jordan Peterson talk about like orderliness and all that stuff. Well, team one was all about that kind of thing. This is a little bit more fascist.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:29Jocko Willink?

  Whereas team five, for instance, where where Jason Gardner was, they were kind of loose. They were they were a little bit out there.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Is that the time he had blonde hair?

• 35:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. That's when that's when Jason Gardner had bleached blonde hair. But you know, we all, I mean, I had long hair at the time and long sideburns and stuff. I thought it was Lemmy from Motorhead and things like that.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, probably were.

• 35:51Jocko Willink?

  So

• 35:53Jocko Willink?

  group identity, unit identity, so important. The the the guys that we worked with over in Iraq, in Ramadi, those guys had their their battle streamers that they in their tactical operations center, they had pictures of pictures of World War Two newspaper clippings. They brought them on deployment to hang up in their tactical operations center, to hang up in their chow hall. So when you walked in and out, if you were a if you were a soldier from the first of the 506, or you were a soldier from the 137, you would see that stuff. You would realize, you would get that group identity, you would feel that esprit de corps. And that's a pretty powerful tool.

• 36:34Jocko Willink?

  Last one, efficiency is the ability to accomplish successfully in a signed task in a shortest possible time with the minimum expenditure of means and with the least possible confusion. Efficiency in a command is built by sound training and by effective administration. It is enhanced by good discipline, high morale and esprit de corps.

• 36:56Jocko Willink?

  I like that one because it reminded me of the whole show we did on judo and just talking about the importance of efficiency.

• 37:05Jocko Willink?

  Moving on to some psychology, leadership is closely linked with psychology, the study of human behavior. Proved principles of leadership include proved principles of psychology. It is known that human beings tend to react similarly under a given set of conditions. From a leadership standpoint, some of these reactions are favorable, some unfavorable. With a knowledge of how human beings tend to respond to a particular set of circumstances and with a comprehension of the basic factors that control human behavior, the leader can capitalize on favorable reactions and minimize tendencies toward unfavorable ones. It is evident, therefore, that a knowledge of psychology is helpful to the leader.

• 37:49Jocko Willink?

  That's something that I have more recently been saying because I just thought it was human nature, but now I'm starting to realize that human nature and psychology is one big bowl of stuff that's all related.

• 38:04Jocko Willink?

  Ethics, the science of moral duty is closely allied with the art of leadership. In order to set the example for his men and to win their confidence and respect, the leader must be capable of deciding whether a given course of action is morally right or wrong.

• 38:20Jocko Willink?

  Temperizing with principles and moral standards may secure a temporary advantage or fleeting popularity. So if you, if you, if you adapt your morals a little bit from time to time, if you hesitate to really impose your, your, your actual beliefs on something, you can get a little popular for a moment.

• 38:43Jocko Willink?

  But in the end, only strict adherence to high standards of honor and integrity will prove of value to the leader.

• 38:52Jocko Willink?

  So important.

• 38:56Jocko Willink?

  All right, now we get kind of into the meat, we'll call it the meat of this discussion. Principles of military leadership.

• 39:05Jocko Willink?

  The principles of military leadership discussed below are equally applicable to all levels of command from the squad to the army group.

• 39:15Jocko Willink?

  Principle one, know your job.

• 39:19Jocko Willink?

  To know his job thoroughly, the leader must possess a wide field of knowledge. He must understand the technical aspects of the operation of his command and the methods and procedures of organization, administration, instruction, and personnel management. The leader should also possess a sound understanding of human relations. Further, he should have a working knowledge of the duties, responsibilities, and problems of his subordinates. If he commands a service unit, he should have knowledge of combat operations. So, there you go. Principle one, know your job.

• 39:51Jocko Willink?

  Principle two, know yourself and seek improvement. It is the duty of every leader to evaluate himself and to recognize his strengths and weaknesses. An individual who does not know his own capabilities and limitations is not master of himself and can never hope to be a leader. Likewise, an individual who realizes his deficiencies but makes no effort to correct them will fail as a leader. The study of leadership principles and practice of sound leadership techniques will develop leadership ability.

• 40:27Jocko Willink?

  So, know yourself and seek improvement. That's principle number two.

• 40:32Jocko Willink?

  Going all the way back to Sun Tzu, know yourself. Principle three, know your men and look out for their welfare.

• 40:42Jocko Willink?

  By making a conscientious effort to observe the members of his command as often as possible to become personally acquainted with them, to recognize their individual differences, and to share in their joys and sorrows, the leader will have a better understanding of how his subordinates react and function under various conditions. He will then be able to employ them more effectively by assuring him- That the members of his command are as comfortable, well cared for and contented as circumstances will permit. The leader wins their confidence, respect and cooperation. By neglecting their welfare, the leader indicates indifference and as a consequence forfeits the trust and confidence of his men.

• 41:26Jocko Willink?

  So principle number three.

• 41:29Jocko Willink?

  Is know your men and look out for their for their for their welfare, which is interesting because. They said the mission was more important, but what they're saying is take care of your men.

• 41:42Jocko Willink?

  Principle four, keep your men informed.

• 41:48Jocko Willink?

  The soldier who is well informed about the mission and situation and about the purpose of his particular task is considerably more effective than one who is not so informed. The better he is informed, the better he can perform his task with maximum initiative. The commander who fails to make essential information available to his men will soon find out that they are performing blindly without purpose. At the same time, commanders at all levels must realize that security requirements impose limitations on information which may be imparted to the men. Keep your men informed.

• 42:22Jocko Willink?

  The lesson that I learned in the back of a long SEAL patrol. No one telling me what was going on, none of us in the back know have any idea where we are, where we're going, when we're going to stop. It's a nightmare. Keep your men informed. Principle five, set the example. Men instinctively look to their leaders for patterns of conduct which they may either emulate or use an excuse for their own shortcomings. They're always watching you.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:50Jocko Willink?

  The classic example of the military leader that isn't that is. Is that of an individual whose appearance and conduct evoke from his subordinates praise, pride and the desire to emulate him. By his outstanding performance of duty, the leader must set the standard for the entire command. The commander who appears in an unfavorable light before his men destroys the respect that must exist. Exist mutually between him and his men before leadership can be exercised. So don't look like a loser.

• 43:25Jocko Willink?

  Principle six. Ensure that the task is understood, supervised, and accomplished. So now we're getting into the mission, right? Number six. Number three was take care of your people. Yeah. The leader must give clear, concise orders. That cannot be misunderstood, which is, I always say, simple, clear, concise. I guess I ripped them off.

• 43:49Jocko Willink?

  Then by close supervision, he must ensure that those orders are properly executed. The issuance of an order is the initial and relatively small part of the commander's responsibility. His principal responsibility lies in supervision to make sure that the order is properly executed. It is this responsibility that is most difficult to carry out. The able leader will make wise use of his subordinates to carry out his supervision effectively. Any commander of a large unit who fails to make proper and adequate use of his staff and subordinates demonstrates a fundamentally, a fundamental weakness in his leadership capability. Which the weakness is, he's not utilizing decentralized command. And, and for this one, this is a little. I, I think what we have to pay attention to is.

• 44:35Jocko Willink?

  You give the task and then you supervise it and you make sure it's accomplished, but you have to be careful that you're not giving the task and then micromanaging it. Because then you're going to lose track because you can't micromanage everything that's going on. So you have to supervise, you have to check back in, but you can't micromanage. Principle number seven. Train your men as a team. The duty of every leader includes the development of teamwork through and thorough, through the thorough training of his command. Whether it be squad or an army group. Modern armies are complex organizations involving many different arms and services. All working together as a team toward a common end. Each part of the team must understand where it fits into the common effort.

• 45:21Jocko Willink?

  The commander who fails to foster teamwork while training his command will not obtain the desired degree of unit efficiency. So principle number seven. Train your men as a team. Principle eight. Make sound and timely decisions.

• 45:42Jocko Willink?

  The ability to make a rapid estimate of the situation and arrive at a sound decision is essential to a leader. He must be able to reason logically under the most trying conditions. He must decide quickly what action is necessary in order to take advantage of the opportunities as they occur. The vacillating commander not only will be unable to employ his command effectively, but will create vacillation, lack of confidence, hesitation, and indecision within the command itself. The ability to make sound and timely decisions can be acquired by constant study and by training in making estimates. On the other hand, when circumstances dictate a change in plan,

• 46:26Jocko Willink?

  the able leader will act promptly without fear that the command may consider such action as a vacillation. So yeah, you gotta make good decisions and then if you make a bad decision, you just say, "Hey, that was wrong. We're moving in this other direction now. My bust. Let's roll."

• 46:44Jocko Willink?

  Principle nine.

• 46:47Jocko Willink?

  Seek responsibility and develop a sense of responsibility among subordinates. This is about ownership. The leader must be quick to seize initiative in the absence of instructions from his superior. By seeking responsibility, the leader develops himself professionally and increases his potential ability. Proper delegation of authority is a sound attribute of leadership. The commander then holds his subordinate strictly responsible for the results and rarely the methods of procedure. So what he's saying there is you tell people what to do, not how to do it. You let them figure out the methods of procedure. Such action by the commander engenders trust, faith, and confidence. So when I give someone a mission and I don't tell them specifically every little detail of how I want it done,

• 47:33Jocko Willink?

  I just let them run with it, that means they know that I trust them and that develops trust back in my direction for me.

• 47:40Jocko Willink?

  If it develops initiative and wholehearted cooperation, reluctance to delegate authority often is the mark of retarded growth in leadership. So, seek responsibility, but more important, give that responsibility. Give that ownership down the chain of command. Principle 10, employ your command in accordance with its capabilities. To employ his command properly, a leader must have a thorough knowledge of the tactical and administrative capabilities and limitations of his command. He must assign objectives that are possible of attainment. That's a good one. Sometimes I see business leaders, you know, they're all fired up and they throw things

• 48:23Jocko Willink?

  at their teams that are not achievable. And I'll say, well, do you think they can really pull it off? Well, I don't know, but you don't want to give them that good stretch goal. And meanwhile, no one thinks they can even hit the goal, so they don't even try.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:36Jocko Willink?

  You know, you can see this all day with kids. If they, if you give them something that's, that they, that they figure out that they can't achieve at all, they'll just stop trying. And it's the same thing with adults. It's human nature.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, makes sense. Is that what it's called, the stretch goal?

• 48:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what, uh, sales people and other people do, but sales groups at companies, they'll call it a stretch goal. Like, oh, we got our stretch goal.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 48:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we got a stretch goal. We're going to sell $80 billion worth in the next four weeks.

• 49:05Jocko Willink?

  And the team's like, hmm, that means we're doing, gonna do, you know, 400 times what we've ever done in a full year. We're gonna do that in two weeks. That's not realistic. I'm just gonna do what I normally do.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:17Jocko Willink?

  To do less than this may spell failure in accomplishing the mission. Recurrent failure brings about collapse of morale, esprit de corps, and efficiency. So that's another thing. When you give these goals that are unattainable and you do it repeatedly, people start thinking, oh, we're not even good enough. It starts to hurt morale. However, on occasion, when the situation demands, men must be pushed without hesitation beyond their considered capabilities in order to achieve a quick and cheap victory or to avoid a costly defeat. So yeah, sometimes you gotta dig in.

• 49:50Jocko Willink?

  And the last principle, principle 11, this is gonna come as a big surprise. Take responsibility for your actions. The commander of a unit is responsible for all his unit does or fails to do.

• 50:09Jocko Willink?

  They didn't know about extreme ownership back in 1951.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Apparently they sort of did.

• 50:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I guess they called it something else. They didn't come up with as good of a name.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, man.

• 50:20Jocko Willink?

  They trumped them with the name.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 50:22Jocko Willink?

  The leader recognizes and acknowledges this responsibility on all occasions. Any effort to evade this responsibility destroys the bond of loyalty and respect that must exist between the commander and his subordinates. Take

• 50:39Jocko Willink?

  responsibility, take extreme ownership for your actions, for everything the unit does or fails to do. You own it all.

• 50:49Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so there's your 11 principles of leadership. Now it gets into some leadership traits. Leadership traits are human qualities that are of great value to the leader. Possession of these leadership traits simplifies the task of applying leadership principles and assists greatly in winning confidence, respect, and cooperation.

• 51:10Jocko Willink?

  An individual can benefit by studying the traits considered important to the leader. By careful self-analysis and application, he can develop those traits in which he is deficient and further strengthen the ones in which he is strong. So, you gotta look at yourself. You gotta see which one of these traits are good, which one are bad, which one are you good at, which one are you weak at? Need to figure those out. A study of our nation's great military leaders reveals that none possessed all the leadership traits to the maximum degree, but that a weakness in some traits was more than compensated for by strength in others. Critical self-analysis will enable an individual to realize the traits in which he is strong

• 51:55Jocko Willink?

  and to capitalize upon them. At the same time, he must endeavor to improve those traits in which he is weak. The following is a list of traits. The following list of traits is by no means all-inclusive, but does contain those of paramount importance to the leader. So, this is a great list of traits.

• 52:17Jocko Willink?

  Alertness. Vigilance, promptness and wide awakeness. So you gotta be alert as a leader. You gotta be in the game.

• 52:27Jocko Willink?

  You ever seen a leader that's like not quite in the game?

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:29Jocko Willink?

  It's just not good, right?

• 52:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 52:31Jocko Willink?

  You gotta, you gotta be in the game. If you're tired, if you're napping, you know, if you're sleeping, if you need a rest, if you're, if you're daydreaming, you know what I mean?

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:41Jocko Willink?

  You know what's funny is you, you know how I have that tendency sometimes if people are talking to me? And I'm not interested in what they're saying. And I know you complain about this.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Well.

• 52:51Jocko Willink?

  Dean complains about this. Leif has made some comments about this.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 52:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Like if you're not, if you're saying something.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Everybody.

• 52:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, kind of everybody. So, but when I do that, people don't think I'm not alert, right? They think like he's, he's just like, he's alert on something else.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. He checked out.

• 53:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  This particular.

• 53:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this Jaco does not care about what I'm saying right now.

• 53:15Jocko Willink?

  So, but it is rude and I, it is a weakness of mine.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Well.

• 53:19Jocko Willink?

  It's a weakness of mine for sure.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  So do you do it on purpose?

• 53:23Jocko Willink?

  No, I don't.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  I don't think it's rude then. That's just how.

• 53:26Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, it's rude. It's rude for sure. It's rude for sure. It's rude for sure. I know that it makes, I know that it's not, not a good thing to do. I know that, and I don't mean to do it.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  That makes it better. I think it's better. Well, then again, I guess, right?

• 53:40Jocko Willink?

  Obviously it's better that I'm not intentionally doing it. It's not like, it's not like you're in mid-sentence and I, and I just, I just go, you know what? I just, I just show you the palm and walk away, right? I don't do that.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:50Jocko Willink?

  I just, you'll like, someone will be talking to me and I'll be thinking about something that I need to be thinking about. And all of a sudden I'll, maybe I'll turn or I'll walk or whatever. And yeah, that's disrespectful, man. I shouldn't do that. That's one of my weaknesses.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  But.

• 54:05Jocko Willink?

  What?

• 54:05Speaker 01

  On the other hand, what if I'm going off on some thing, you know?

• 54:12Jocko Willink?

  It's possible. Yeah, yeah, no, it is, it is possible. It is possible. You are correct. That is, that is a possibility.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I guess it's like, it's a spectrum. I mean, you're way on this side of the spectrum where I don't need to go off on something. And you know, and you'll still sort of do that sometimes.

• 54:27Jocko Willink?

  But I still, right, right. But it still is not a good thing to do. It'd be better for me to say like, hey, man, you know what? Can you tell me about this later? Like when I'm 60?

• 54:38Jocko Willink?

  Cause I don't care about it right now and I'm not going to care about it for another 15 years or whatever. I understand. Okay, so alertness. Next one is bearing.

• 54:48Jocko Willink?

  Bearing denotes desirable, physical appearance, dress, and deportment. This is important. How like, this is how you, how you present yourself, right? What's your bearing? Yeah, yeah. Are you slouched over? I went and worked, I went and talked to some underprivileged kids. And these underprivileged kids weren't, I would say, the type of kids, they were, they were underprivileged kids who were really smart and in a bad situation.

• 55:16Jocko Willink?

  Not underprivileged kids who were not quite as smart and kind of just making their way in that underprivileged world. These kids were getting beat down by their world. And I went there and talked to them and I was going to talk about humility, right? And as I kind of got towards the humility part, I was, I said to myself, I don't need to talk to these people, these kids about humility at all. These kids are overly humble. These kids are beat down. These kids need confidence, right? And what they needed was, they needed bearing, right? They needed to stand up straight, right? That's what they needed. They needed to sit in their chairs. Or when they asked a question, I started making them, hey, when you ask me a question, stand up. Stand up and ask a question. I wasn't being a jerk, but I was like, hey, stand up, you know, let everyone see you. Cause they're just, their confidence was broken by life. Yeah.

• 56:01Jocko Willink?

  And so, your, your bearing is important. And when someone comes and presents to you and they, they don't seem, they seem broken, they seem unconfident. Yeah, your bearing's, bearing's really important. Yeah. So, that means looking squared away. That means showing, you know, that's why at TU Bruiser, everyone dressed in the proper uniform. Everyone had a shaved head. Everyone had, you know, everyone did the right things. So that way, when we went and talked to the Army and the Marine Corps, they didn't think these guys are idiots. Yeah.

• 56:31Jocko Willink?

  Next, courage. Must be both physical and moral.

• 56:37Jocko Willink?

  No real expansion needed on that one. Decisiveness, the ability to make decisions promptly and when indicated, and announce them authoritatively, concisely, and clearly.

• 56:50Jocko Willink?

  Dependability is the doing of one's duty without supervision. Endurance, both mental and physical, is necessary to continue and complete any reasonable task. Enthusiasm is positive, is the positive zeal or interest in the task at hand. It is easily communicated to subordinates. You know, that's one thing that's so good in the military is you get to see examples of when people are enthusiastic about a job. It just changes everything, right? When you, when you have people that are not enthusiastic and really all you need is one or two people that are having a good time. And in a SEAL platoon, you pretty much always have that. You always have at least someone that's, that's just gonna bring it.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Ready to get some.

• 57:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, ready to go, ready to go. And if it's not you today, maybe it's, you know, Bill, which apparently Bill's been getting a lot of flack.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, recently, yeah.

• 57:43Jocko Willink?

  So we'll give Bill some credit. Bill's, Bill's, Bill has a good day. And Bill goes to make it happen and everyone sees that Bill's crushing it and you're like, ah, you know what? Let's do this. Force is the ability to impose one's will upon another. Now, this is an interesting one, right? It is an interesting one. The ability to impose one's will upon another. Because that doesn't really mesh too well with the persuasive leadership that I've been bragging all about, about this book. You know, force is like, hey, that being said, I understand what they're talking about.

• 58:26Jocko Willink?

  I understand that there's people that will not stop until they, they have maneuvered into the position that they want to be in. So I understand how force, and I understand how, let me put it this way. If I have a SEAL platoon. And I've got a task that needs to get done. And there's someone in the SEAL platoon that has a high level of force. And I can say, hey, Bill, go make this happen. And Bill goes, got it. You know, he's gonna make it happen, right? So there, and he, he might not necessarily use force as his primary tool to make it happen. He might go and be butter someone up or get some, you know, massage some ego and make something happen.

• 59:09Jocko Willink?

  That's still using force. It's just using a, an indirect force. So that's what I think we're talking about. Next is humility.

• 59:20Jocko Willink?

  Which is freedom from arrogance and unjustifiable pride. Talk about humility all the time. Humor is the capacity to appreciate the many amusing or whimsical happenings of our everyday life, especially those which pertain to the leader himself. So don't take yourself too seriously. I did a video the other day. Like a Monday morning video. You know what I'm talking about? And it was April Fool's Day.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 59:49Jocko Willink?

  And I got super serious. And I kind of went off, April Fool's Day is the week or whatever. I just kind of went off this big thing. And a couple of people, I think it was two people.

• 1:00:03Jocko Willink?

  Responded with, you know, I couldn't even watch this. You do. There's nothing wrong with having fun. I just said, hey, man, watch the whole video. I'm laughing at the end. It's, it's okay, dude. I get it.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Maybe they got triggered or something like that.

• 1:00:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, maybe they got triggered. I don't know.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, you said, so I think you posted something like a written thing about how you're like, hey, today's like one of those days where I need more recovery or something like that. Basically indicating that you're gonna take a rest day or whatever.

• 1:00:31Jocko Willink?

  That was last April Fool's Day.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  That was what, last year?

• 1:00:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, you're right. I did do that this year.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is weird. I don't know why, but I always fall for those. I'm like, oh, yeah, I'll take a rest day or whatever. And yeah, and you did another one too. I think it might've been last year. And I was like totally falling for it on April Fool's.

• 1:00:50Jocko Willink?

  Well, last year, I think I was in Montana and I was eating moose tracks.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Okay, I remember that.

• 1:00:56Jocko Willink?

  And I made a big joke and I was like, hey, you know, I've been eating moose tracks and I just, I'm thinking maybe I've just been too extreme with this whole deal. When did the light up? Then I say, hell no. Anyways, so yes, you gotta be able to, you gotta have, be able, I think, I think it's important. It's not just having fun, but the important, the most important part of humor is realizing that you yourself are gonna be the butt of jokes and that's okay.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And we were talking about that before where, you know, the guy who, who can't take it. And more so than they can't take it, it's just like you feel uncomfortable joking around with him. You know, you can joke around everybody else in the, but the one they're around is kinda like, hey, we shouldn't really joke around as much. And that's sort of the dynamic when they're around.

• 1:01:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And it's not even, it's not even, I shouldn't joke around, I shouldn't joke around about that person. That's what you're talking about.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:46Jocko Willink?

  Cause there's some people, they love to have fun and then the minute the mirror shines at them or the light shines on them.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:51Jocko Willink?

  And they become the butt of the joke, they don't like it at all.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And even if, um, even if they're like, they don't respond in this negative, well, even if the person is, is just, they just be quiet, you know, that kind where like they don't necessarily like insult you back or get mad.

• 1:02:06Jocko Willink?

  Getting mad, but they're just making little, they just get quiet.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. It's like you just can sort of tell, you know, there's like a dynamic when you joke around with somebody.

• 1:02:14Jocko Willink?

  Zone. Yeah.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  It's like, man, no one wants you around, man. And sure, oh, we'll do the job, boss. Sure. But man, no one wants you around. Go back in your office.

• 1:02:24Jocko Willink?

  Keep your sense of humor, especially about yourself.

• 1:02:29Jocko Willink?

  I have, I have a good time with that. I have no issue with that.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:02:33Jocko Willink?

  You know, another thing I think is if, if you, if somebody says something to you, like makes a joke about you and it hurts you, that's, that's your ego.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:44Jocko Willink?

  And there's probably truth in what they're saying.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Jocko Willink?

  And so you need to pay attention to it.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  How does ego feed into insecurity? Because you know how like, cause a lot of time it's insecurity, like let's say, you know, you joke around.

• 1:02:54Jocko Willink?

  It feeds in cause it, it overcompensates. So if I'm insecure about.

• 1:03:02Jocko Willink?

  If I'm insecure of well, if I'm insecure about my leadership capabilities, then I try and bow up and act like a big leader. That's basically it.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Right. Because your ego is like, hey, I can't like, I can't deal with this little like shortcoming in whatever way. That's in my mind or whatever. So I'm gonna, you know.

• 1:03:20Jocko Willink?

  Overcompensate.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:21Jocko Willink?

  That's where you see it.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  And then if someone jokes around about it, it kind of like shines light on it. Oh, you don't like that kind of stuff. Yeah. But it's all in your own, or most of the time it's in like in your own mind, you know, how bad it is. Yeah.

• 1:03:36Jocko Willink?

  Next one. Initiative is the willingness to act in the absence of orders and to offer well-considered recommendations for the improvement of the command. Awesome. Got to have initiative. Next is integrity is the honesty and moral character of the leader that must be unquestioned. Intelligence is the intellect of the leader which must be adequate to master the problems presented by his level of command. Judgment is the power of the mind to weigh various factors and arrive at a wise decision. And you know, they talked about making decisions and one thing that I didn't really talk about, I didn't emphasize too much is how do you get better at decision making? You get better at decision making by training. You get better at decision making by putting yourself into situations where this is what's happening.

• 1:04:18Jocko Willink?

  And oh, here's the decision I'm going to make. Oh, it was completely wrong. Cool. I just learned not to make that type of decision before. Let me try it again. When I was running Trade Ed out here for the West Coast, that was the whole goal was to put guys into situations. They had to make a decision. They would make wrong decisions all the time. And then I knew they would not make that wrong decision again, because once you make it and you feel it and it stings and your whole platoon is covered in paintball and they're murdered, well, you won't make that bad decision again. And that was the goal.

• 1:04:49Jocko Willink?

  Uh, justice is being equitable and impartial in bestowing favors and punishment. Loyalty must extend both up and down. A leader cannot expect loyalty from his subordinates unless he is conspicuously loyal to them and to his superiors. That's a big one. Right? If you're running around talking smack about your bosses, that's showing your team that that's that you're not loyal to them. And we could go down the whole road of if I have a horrible boss, does that mean I just am a yes man? No, I'll frame things for the guys to make them realize that, look, I know there's some shortfalls here, but we got who we got.

• 1:05:29Jocko Willink?

  What we're going to do is build a great relationship with them and then we'll at least have some say in what's going on. So if you see me and it seems like I'm just trying to trying to massage my boss's ego, guess what I'm trying to do? Trying to massage my boss's ego. I want to have a great relationship with him so I can take care of us.

• 1:05:49Jocko Willink?

  And besides, what do we want to do? Lose influence over him? Do you want him to not listen to anything I say? No. So that's what I'm doing. Cause if you just, if your boss is an idiot and all you do is support him a hundred percent, your guys are going to start to think you're an idiot and that's not good. So there's a fine line. It's a tough one to walk.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:12Jocko Willink?

  It's a tough one to walk, man.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  That's good, man. It's like a full, it's like a full disclosure situation where it's like, hey, I get it. I get what you guys are saying or whatever, but this is why we're doing it kind of thing. Because like how you say, if you follow the boss who's who's a quote unquote idiot, and then you seem like an idiot. And then on the other hand, if you're like, be nice to the boss and you know, be nice. And then when you go to your man, oh, that guy's so dumb. It's like talking kind of behind his back. You're like, oh, you're a two-faced little guy.

• 1:06:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You don't have to say, hey, the boss is an idiot. We're just trying, I'm just trying to butter him up. No, you say like, hey, listen, the boss doesn't always see things the way I see them. But you know what? He is the boss and what I'm trying to do is build a good relationship with him. I'm trying to do a good job so that he listens to what I say so that I can influence him and steer him in the right direction on some of these things so that we can accomplish our mission better. I just got asked this by a SWAT guy. I was out with the, the police out in North Carolina in, in Charlotte. And you know, it was the typical question of what do you do when your boss is telling you to do something that you don't necessarily agree with? And it's like, okay, we can talk about that. And I went down the whole road because it is a whole road.

• 1:07:19Jocko Willink?

  Because if your boss is telling you something that's insignificant, telling you to do something that really doesn't make that much of a difference, then you just do it and you build that relationship a little bit more. They tell you to do something else that's a kind of insignificant, maybe it's not the smartest thing. Maybe there's a more efficient way. Is that really what you want to follow on your sword for and create a dysfunctional relationship with your boss? No. You're like, hey, boss, got it. Sounds like a good idea. Hey, we'll make it happen. And then that goes on and you continue to build relationships. So then eventually when your boss tells you to do something that is actually unsafe or unsound or unethical, unethical is a different story. Cause if someone's telling you to do something unethical, well, it's actually not a different story. Cause if they're telling you to do something unethical and you say, no, I will never, I will not do that. They go, cool. You're fired.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:04Jocko Willink?

  And now who's going to come in? A yes man. And now no one's protecting the guys. So, so yes, you don't just, you don't just give blind loyalty, but at the same time you try and build relationships. That's what you do.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. To in inject your influence later or whatever, right? In the big, you put it a real good way. A few times where I think it was just at the monster. I'm not sure. I don't know where you said it exactly, but how you were like, hey, if I'm a leader and my guy, and this goes both ways by the way. So if I'm a leader and I have a hundred percent solution to a problem and then, but my guy comes in and he has a 75, 80% solution. I'm going with 80. Right? So it could be in these, in the situation where you're, you're questioning example, what if I disagree with my boss? Is that why you're disagreeing? Because you're over here with hundreds and he's over here with 85 or even 90 sometimes. And it's like, look how much, you know? So, oh, I disagree with your plan. Cause you're doing, you know, it could be that.

• 1:09:04Jocko Willink?

  Got it, boss. Let's do it. Yeah. I'm good. It goes up and down the chain of command. You are correct. The classic example of this is in Band of Brothers, when Dick Winters gets tasked, his guys to go over and do reconnaissance across the river. They go, they do the reconnaissance. They get in a firefight. They lose a guy. It's a disaster. They come back and then Dick Winters boss says, do it again tomorrow night. And then by the way, the war is like all but over at this point. And he says, okay, boss.

• 1:09:36Jocko Willink?

  And then he goes and tells his guys, hey, go in, go in the cellar of one of these buildings and sit there for four hours and then come back. And I'm going to tell them that you guys didn't see anything and that's what they do. So that is disobeying an order. That is, that's what it is, but was it the right thing to do? Yes, it was. Why would you put more guys at risk? And to say, boss, I totally disagree. I'm not doing it. He would said, okay, fine. You're fired winners. Give me another, uh, young officer and I'll make him go do it.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:07Jocko Willink?

  And the other guy who's trying to get up the chain of command, he does it and then gets another guy killed.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:12Jocko Willink?

  So there are situations and of course, is that like the norm? No, I'm not saying that's the norm. I'm saying in an extreme case, the war is almost over. We just lost a guy. This, this reconnaissance has no impact on the war whatsoever. They weren't even going to planning to go and fight. It was just a recon just to, just to do it. And so I was like, no, we're not doing that.

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:35Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:10:38Jocko Willink?

  That's it. Loyalty. Try and build that loyalty up and down the chain of command. Sympathy is the capacity of sharing the feelings of those with whom one is associated. You know, I don't like to talk about feelings very much.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  Actually you don't, but the thing in practice, like you do that surprisingly good. And I don't want to say surprising like I'm surprised, but sometimes I'm pretty impressed with your sympathetic.

• 1:11:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  Abilities.

• 1:11:03Jocko Willink?

  I guess empathy, right?

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:05Jocko Willink?

  Empathy, like I understand where you're coming from and I, you know, I always use the word perspective. And I think maybe it's just because it's a more of a tougher word.

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:14Jocko Willink?

  You know, than feelings.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:11:16Jocko Willink?

  But I'll say, hey, you need to, cause, cause let's face it, it won't sound right if I say, hey, listen, platoon commander, you need to really just, just.

• 1:11:27Jocko Willink?

  Reach out and touch the feelings of your men, right? That doesn't sound right.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  True.

• 1:11:31Jocko Willink?

  Does it?

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  For me, no.

• 1:11:33Jocko Willink?

  No, it doesn't sound right. Factually. If I say, hey, listen, platoon commander, you need to understand the perspective that your guys are seeing this from.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:39Jocko Willink?

  You need to see that they're thinking you're just driving them to do something that doesn't matter, or whatever.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:45Jocko Willink?

  It's the same thing.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:46Jocko Willink?

  But I use tougher words, because you know, that's how I roll.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  You're tougher, oh, yeah. Yeah. Even like, you know, when I'll come to you with like this conundrum, or you know, something going on in my life.

• 1:11:56Jocko Willink?

  Sushi bowls and stuff.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  Or what have you.

• 1:11:59Jocko Willink?

  But you're talking about with humans now.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  With people, yeah.

• 1:12:01Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  And even you, your sympathy kind of towards me, where it may be on the surface, you might sort of expect you to be like, like, oh, man up, or you know, something like this. But you'll like, you'll kind of give me my do like sympathy, even with what you say, like you'll, you'll sympathize. Like you'll be like, hey, you're like, man, that is a bummer, or whatever, you know, like whatever the words you say.

• 1:12:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, the thing is, if I didn't do that, then I, you have, you won't want to listen to what I'm actually about to tell you to do.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:32Jocko Willink?

  Because sometimes the solution is hard.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:35Jocko Willink?

  Right? Sometimes the solutions to these things are hard. And

• 1:12:41Jocko Willink?

  if you don't open up that door a little bit to build a little something, then you're just not, you're just gonna say, oh, yeah. What, what you'll think is, I'm not Jaco, and what he says doesn't apply to me.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:54Jocko Willink?

  You know, if I say, oh, look, that's what's happening? Or you need to just cut away, or whatever. You need to just tell that person, yo, no, no more. Like, no, man, that's a rough situation to be in. I think what's gonna happen here, I mean, if you weigh it out, the only real solution is for you to kind of back away from that scenario. You know what I mean? So I kind of brought you in.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:13:15Jocko Willink?

  Made you think that I'm human, and then boom, there we go.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  Thinking, huh?

• 1:13:20Jocko Willink?

  Uh, next, tact. Is the ability to deal with subordinates and superiors in an appropriate manner without giving offense. Boy, that seems like so simple. But man, tact. People got mad, or didn't get mad. What did I say? I said tact trumps the truth on a podcast whenever.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Jocko Willink?

  And some people went all Sam Harris on me.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:13:47Jocko Willink?

  Like, you should never, ever lie.

• 1:13:53Jocko Willink?

  And then I brought up forty eight examples of where, oh, so what you should do is just be truthful at all times. Hmm, no, no.

• 1:14:06Jocko Willink?

  You know, there's times where what I thought you, your performance, I thought was pathetic and embarrassing and disastrous. And yet you're in the position, I need you to do a good job. I need your morale to stay high. I see that you're beat down yourself. So instead of telling you all those things, I preemptively tell you, hey, look, this was a really hard task. And I know it was challenging and you probably weren't quite ready because I didn't give you enough information. But here's some things I think will help next time around.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:36Jocko Willink?

  Right? I didn't tell you the full truth. I mean, I didn't lie to you either. So maybe that's, so maybe that's the difference between Sam Harris. And Jordan, because what Jordan Peterson says is tell the truth, or at least don't lie. So there's, there's a little gray area between those two. Let's spark another debate between those two guys.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I, shoot, I kinda in a way agree with both, if I even understand them a hundred percent. But yeah, like, you know, because there's all kinds of lies and there's lying by omission.

• 1:15:05Jocko Willink?

  What is the other one? They say white lies and then they say, uh, I think it's black lies?

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  What is that?

• 1:15:11Jocko Willink?

  I freak.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  But lying by, by omission or whatever. It's like, you know, you're telling the truth, but you're leaving out stuff to kind of lead them in a certain direction or whatever, to make them think certain stuff. There's, then there's that, you know, so it's like, all right, it can, like you say, you get into a lot of gray area there.

• 1:15:27Jocko Willink?

  And I guess there's times where, you know, the classic example that I guess Sam Harris talks about is, should you tell your wife? When your wife comes out and says, do I look fat?

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:40Jocko Willink?

  What you should say is, yes.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  Maybe not with that enthusiasm.

• 1:15:47Jocko Willink?

  Right, right, right, but to his point, if you don't say that, well then.

• 1:15:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, you let her.

• 1:15:52Jocko Willink?

  You let her continue on whatever path she's on and that's not good and ends up in a bad way. So, so a little bit of credit there, but to give a little pushback on Sam. If you are just straight up a jerk about it, well, guess what? We haven't done what we just talked about, which is I haven't built a little bridge and connected. And said, you know, and so now all she's gonna do is.

• 1:16:18Jocko Willink?

  And then now we have an anger situation. Now they might not listen to anything that you're gonna say. And now we might ruin a relationship based on the fact that we went too hardcore. Now, to Sam's point, if you don't ever indicate any kind of truth, then you just let a person continue on a path that's bad for them and is bad for their, in this case, their weight. Well, then that's not good either. But the key component, if you have tact and you build the relationship, because basically, I think I had this conversation with Leif a little while ago. You know, when you're dealing with someone, when you're dealing with a team,

• 1:16:50Jocko Willink?

  you're either forwarding and improving the relationship, or you know, you could be neutral, or you're making it go backwards. What we wanna be doing is improving the relationship. At a minimum, we wanna remain neutral. And every other aspect of going backwards in a relationship is bad. So if we're business partners and we have a, we have a discussion about something, I want the result of that discussion to be that our relationship improved.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:17Jocko Willink?

  At a minimum, I want it to be neutral. And worst case, we've actually gone backwards. Cause that's not, not good. So now when you start talking about your spouse, we want that relationship to improve. We don't want it to go backwards and neutral is the minimum. So when we, when we get asked the question, do I look fat? And the answer is absolutely. That's gonna be, that's, that's not gonna lead to, that's not gonna lead to the, the, it's not gonna lead to your spouse respecting and listening to what you're saying. It's gonna lead to your spouse saying, oh, you're a jerk. You don't know how hard it is for me. You're not part of my team. You're on a different team. And therefore, since we're on different teams, I don't need to listen to anything that you say.

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:03Jocko Willink?

  So there's a better way to go about it.

• 1:18:07Jocko Willink?

  And that's called tact.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and also I have these talks with my brother Jade from time to time. And so an example is like if you um, like if you're a corrector, you know, you're the guy like you use a word wrong or say a pronounce a word wrong, like the guy who's so quick to always correct you in front of people.

• 1:18:27Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't matter.

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  Whatever, you know, you're a corrector. Usually those correctors, people, those corrector people are, they're right. They're lying, they're telling the truth. It's true, it's correct, you know? So what they're saying is-

• 1:18:40Jocko Willink?

  They're they're correct and they're lonely.

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  Probably, yes, sir. Because look, no tact, right? So the, what they're saying is correct. What they're doing is not correct. Like you shouldn't do that. And that's like essentially what tact is, you know? It's not like you're saying, hey, did I say that right? And you're like, hey, you know, you didn't say that right.

• 1:19:00Jocko Willink?

  And it's different too to pull someone aside and say, hey, man. Hey, just just want to let you know you mispronounced this word.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:19:06Jocko Willink?

  Now, yeah, there's, and I I don't like the fact that I mispronounce words. And I do it on this podcast on a fairly regular basis. And occasionally someone will hit me up and say, hey, you you mispronounced this word or that word. Someone sent me a uh, either an email or something the other day that was like,

• 1:19:25Jocko Willink?

  you mispronounce words, this would not be that hard to fix, you should pay attention or whatever, something like that. It's pretty, pretty uh,

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  Pretty straight.

• 1:19:32Jocko Willink?

  Pretty straightforward, right?

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:19:34Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, yeah, you know, that's a bummer. Cause the thing is,

• 1:19:41Jocko Willink?

  I don't like mispronouncing words. And yet, the corrective measures for not mispronouncing words

• 1:19:51Jocko Willink?

  is, for instance, if we're going and all of a sudden I'm saying something wrong and I'm like, hold on, let me go back, let me interrupt what I'm, my thought pattern, let me interrupt what I'm saying to try and figure out if I pronounce this thing right or wrong. I lean towards- It's better to just flow and get corrected later. So I apologize for my mispronounced words.

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:17Jocko Willink?

  My bust. I should do a better job like that guy who emailed me that. I'm sorry. Uh, the last one is unselfishness. Unselfishness, unselfishness is the studied avoidance of caring for or providing for one's own comfort. Or advantage at the expense of others.

• 1:20:40Jocko Willink?

  Anytime that you as the leader are getting the good deal while your people are getting shafted. They notice it and they don't like it. They don't like it at all. So, and it's weird because the military does that. That's the way the military operates. The officers get paid more money. The officers live in officers quarters. The e-dogs are down in the bilge of the ship, not hot, nasty. It's just, that's the way it is. So there's a little bit of that, but there's, there's a saying in the military, rank has its privileges. And it's sort of a snobby thing to say in my opinion.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:25Jocko Willink?

  But anyways, I guess the point I was gonna make is when I had, when I had officers that were, that I really had a lot of respect for, they would always downplay that and never rub it in your face, basically.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:36Jocko Willink?

  Cause there is a separation. Hey, these guys are in a leadership position. They have more responsibility, therefore they're getting paid more and they're getting treated a little bit elevated. Okay. But when someone would rub that in your face, boy, that just is make you mad.

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Brad, what's the expression when, you know, that your boss or your, with someone who outranks you? It's not necessarily, it's not in the military, I don't think, but it's some like in the, it's like, I have a few more letters in my title or something like that, or a few more. That expression like my title has a few more letters in it, whatever. It's something like that. Yeah, my boss told me that one time.

• 1:22:12Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, straight up, like, I was, this is back in the club days.

• 1:22:16Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  I think I told you this.

• 1:22:17Jocko Willink?

  You told you that?

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  Straight up, yeah, well, here's the thing, so, in, in our club, there was an area you couldn't go in if you're, it had a dress code in this area. It was like a dumb dress code, too, by the way. But, and we all knew it, everyone knew it, that it was kind of dumb. It's like you couldn't wear jeans. Yeah, like jeans.

• 1:22:35Jocko Willink?

  What about origin jeans?

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  Way before origin jeans. Unless you couldn't wear jeans, so whatever. So, one day, I was, it was like I wasn't working, and I was wearing jeans. All my friends were not wearing jeans, they were there, so I, so I kind of go, right? And then my boss was working, and he said, hey, like, you can't be in here with jeans on, so I'm like, alright. Dang, okay, you know, in front of everybody, but cool, man, alright, so I left. And then, it was like a week later, he was off, same deal, they just, the roles were reversed.

• 1:23:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's up there, jeans, full on, like, doing it.

• 1:23:07Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna kick him out.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  Jokingly, I said, hey, you can't be here with jeans, you know? And that's what he told me. He said, I have a few more letters in my title.

• 1:23:17Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  He's the manager.

• 1:23:20Jocko Willink?

  So, did your respect level for him go up or down?

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. I'll put it this way, it would have went down if it wasn't at zero already, so, yeah, it would have went down.

• 1:23:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, don't do that. Be unselfish. And, and the other thing is, when you do unselfish things, like, do, do people notice it? And if you're doing them because, hey, if, they also notice this. If you're doing something unselfish because you want credit for it, that doesn't work either. It's so strange, like, if you're like, oh, you know, if you're doing something because you want that outcome, if you're, you, when you do something for your troops, you should do it because you care about your troops.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:58Jocko Willink?

  Not because you're trying to build up a good, uh... Yeah, good image with your troops. Like, no, man. You guys have been busting your ass for me and I'm gonna handle this thing over here so you guys can go get some time off. Go.

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:11Jocko Willink?

  It's not, it's not, hey, if I do this thing for those guys, they'll, they'll increase, they'll like me more.

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:16Jocko Willink?

  Don't do that.

• 1:24:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, and you, fuck, you can tell when guys do that too, man. So obvious.

• 1:24:20Jocko Willink?

  Everyone can tell.

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:24:22Jocko Willink?

  And people don't think, people think no one notices.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:24Jocko Willink?

  You notice.

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  It's fact, they noticed that more than the good deed you did.

• 1:24:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  Holy cow. What, okay, what about this, though? What about if they, um, you know how, and this is a common one where you make a donation, right? To, to whatever charity or cause or whatever, right? And you say, we just, and you know, and they celebrate, we just made this donation to this charity or whatever.

• 1:24:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  Like, how about that? Cause that's what you're, it's kinda doing. You're publicizing like your, your.

• 1:24:49Jocko Willink?

  Well, okay, I, I get that people do that.

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:52Jocko Willink?

  And then you take that and you compare that to someone that says, oh, well, like they investigate some politician. And then they go, this politician's a, you know, a horrible person. And then they investigate him and they find out that he's donated millions of dollars to all these different charities, but never said a word about it.

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:10Jocko Willink?

  Your respect for that person goes up.

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  A little, yeah.

• 1:25:12Jocko Willink?

  As opposed to someone that's donating millions of dollars and is like, hey, let's do another photo shoot of me donating.

• 1:25:17Speaker 01

  Right, exactly, right?

• 1:25:18Jocko Willink?

  Giant, you know,

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:25:20Jocko Willink?

  Four by six check.

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:23Jocko Willink?

  Hundred thousand dollar thing on it.

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's at the front of their website, the front page. Yeah, so at the end of the day, it's more about like, okay, so what message was sort of sent and received? Like, is the message, is the front running message the fact that I am so generous that I donate and I do these things? Or is the message that, oh my gosh, it's so good now that this, you know, charity or whatever gets the help that they want kinda thing?

• 1:25:48Jocko Willink?

  You know what's, you know what's, you know what people underestimate all the time? People underestimate.

• 1:25:55Jocko Willink?

  How well other people can see what's going on.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  Oh yeah.

• 1:25:59Jocko Willink?

  They, I get, I see that, I see people and I say, man, do you really think that anybody, you're fooling anyone? And it usually happens, it usually happens with people that are, well, they're, obviously they're smart, but they're, they're so, they think they're so smart.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:19Jocko Willink?

  They think they're so smart. I always think to myself, man, do you really think that anyone is, do you think you're getting this over on anyone? So we, we make these mistakes. Like this is a classic example where you do something cool, but you're just doing it because you want that credit. Everybody sees that. Everybody sees and goes, oh yeah, he's just doing that to try and look cool. Cause you know why they know that? Cause two days ago you screwed them. And now you're trying to be all cool.

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:45Jocko Willink?

  But people make that mistake all the time. I'm a hypersensitive to what other people are like, how they perceive. I realize that any facade that I put up is just a, it's anyone, basically anyone can see. Sure. You might fool a couple of people, but people just look at you and go, oh no, that's, that's garbage. We don't believe you.

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  But it's in, and I'm agreeing with you, but I, I'm not agreeing with you and being like, yeah, and I don't do that, bro. I, to me, everyone does that. Literally everyone does it. And literally everyone is, is not like less aware, how you say like, it's like we're under, what'd you, what'd you say? You underestimate how much people, yeah. So every, to me, everyone.

• 1:27:26Jocko Willink?

  And that's why the, that's why the important thing is when you're doing things, do them from the place of honesty, right? Do them for, you know, I'll, I'll say things like, I'm trying to think of a good example where I'll say, hey, you gotta do this. And then I'll say, you gotta do this. And they'll say, but you gotta actually mean, well, just take, I mean, the real easy example is like take ownership of something, right? I'll say, yeah, you gotta take ownership of that. But I'm not saying, hey, take ownership of that because then everyone will think that you're a a marger and then no one will be mad at you. No, that's not why you're doing it. You're taking ownership because you have to actually believe that you're the one that's in charge of that thing and that you were truly responsible for what had happened. When somebody asked me if,

• 1:28:10Jocko Willink?

  if I would have taken extreme ownership, if I would have gotten fired, would that have changed my view? It's like, no. My view was and is that as the leader, I'm responsible for everything that happens. Truly responsible. Not, not, hey, oh, I read in a book, I read in the, the FM 10 Tac 22 that, that I'm supposed to be responsible. So I'm going to raise my hand and say I'm responsible. No, you have to truly believe it in that thing. And, and what's good is if you can do that exercise with yourself and say to yourself, wait a second, why am I saying this? Do I truly believe what I'm saying? And if you don't, you have to say, wait a second, this isn't, that's not right. It's not right to do that. You need to actually believe what you're saying.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then after you realize that, you know, you're not right, you look up and realize that everyone else is already there. Everyone else already sees that, yeah, you don't believe.

• 1:29:04Jocko Willink?

  Here's another one. When guys, when a girl breaks up with a guy and the guy's all heartbroken, right? And they'll say, you know, I don't know what to do. And I'll say, look, you have to not, you have to not care. And so what they think I'm saying is act like they don't care. But I'm not saying that. I'm saying you have to not care. You have to actually not care. You have to actually say, hey, this person was not who I thought they were, and I don't care that they're gone and I'm going to move on. If you say that, that's your best possible outcome. If all you're doing is acting that way and it's still driving you crazy, it goes back to what we just said. If you're just acting that way, guess what? The female in

• 1:29:47Jocko Willink?

  the situation absolutely knows that you're just trying to act that way.

• 1:29:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:51Jocko Willink?

  They have the, I mean, human beings have a certain level of perception of, of the way other people's emotions are. Like you can perceive it unconsciously. They perceive it unconsciously or consciously. You know, it's like you're, like I have a dog. My dog can kind of know what I'm thinking. And that's a damn dog with the brain like the size of a walnut or whatever, how big, how big a dog's brain is, right? Not big. My dog can't speak English, right? But my dog, if I come home and I, I, I go, I, I act a certain way, like he knows it. And so when you act, like, when you're acting like you don't care, that girl can see that you care.

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:34Jocko Willink?

  And it doesn't work. You have to actually not care. When you are trying to do something good for your troops because you want to win score points with them. They know that. When you're trying to prop up, so, so this, okay, this is a good example. When I said, hey, I'm trying to build a relationship with a boss. That's why I'm gonna act this way, right? That's different because that boss is gonna say, oh, he's just trying to butter me up. It's like, no, actually, oh, boss, you want it done that way? I believe that's the best thing that we can do is try and get it done that way. So here I go. I'm gonna make it happen. It's not, hey, I'm gonna skate around and sneak around and try and fool you. No, I'm gonna believe in what I'm doing.

• 1:31:17Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna believe that you have some higher intention that you're focused on and that's cool with me.

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, that thing.

• 1:31:24Jocko Willink?

  You have to take it to the next level, man.

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 1:31:27Jocko Willink?

  You have to take it to the next level. You gotta believe what you're doing. You gotta believe it.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And when you don't, people know.

• 1:31:35Jocko Willink?

  Every, assume that everyone knows it.

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Bro, my bro, we're talking with me, Greg McIntyre and my brother yesterday, day before, whatever, Greg Train, yep. And we're basically like telling my brother, hey, like come back to jiu jitsu. He's been out of the game for a while. And then, so he's like, he's making up this total story.

• 1:31:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, God, I can already hear it.

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  Bruh, and you know, he's good at those debates, you know? And he's like talking about this and this and this. And like me and Greg Chain are like, not really saying that much stuff either.

• 1:32:05Jocko Willink?

  Give me like two of his excuses.

• 1:32:06Speaker 01

  Um, that, you know, since he's like sort out of shape, right? Or since he's out of shape.

• 1:32:11Jocko Willink?

  I gotta wait to get back in shape before I go.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  That's what we were asking, but when you ask it direct like that, it sounds dumb, you know? So he's like, no, well, it's, no, it's not that. It's, you know, so if I'm like so exhausted, you know, I like, I like training and I like, um, kind of conversating with, with everybody. At the end and stuff like that. So if I'm like so exhausted from training, not only is that experience kind of diminished, then I'm too exhausted to have like a good conversation.

• 1:32:37Jocko Willink?

  Dude, he's going deep.

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  He, he said it way more like.

• 1:32:40Jocko Willink?

  Did you laugh at him?

• 1:32:41Speaker 01

  I would, but if I wanted him to, yes, I was laughing.

• 1:32:44Jocko Willink?

  You realize he's gonna hear us talking about this right now?

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  Yes. And, and well, the good thing is, well, okay, okay. So me and, and it was right as Greg was sort of leaving, right? So I'm looking at Greg's face and Greg has that look on his face that we all kind of get, but Greg really gets it on his face. Kind of like,

• 1:32:58Jocko Willink?

  Just.

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  Like, all right, bro, whatever you say kind of thing. Um, totally not believing, right? And I'm there, man. I'm like, Brad, can you hear yourself? Like, that's not even a believable thing. You know, can you be so exhausted that you can't talk afterwards? Can you do that?

• 1:33:14Jocko Willink?

  Especially him.

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  I'm sure you can if you ran a.

• 1:33:16Jocko Willink?

  I don't know.

• 1:33:17Speaker 01

  A hundred marathons with my leg.

• 1:33:19Jocko Willink?

  He could.

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, no, he, he can't. Put it that way. And we all know that. So anyway, so, so Greg sort of leaves and leaves it at that. And I'm sitting there like kind of looking at him and I was like, Brad, just like, all right, that's, that's not true. You know, we, I know why you're not gonna go. It's not a big deal. You know, we have friends that do that same thing. Oh, yeah, sure. I'll be back, but I just, I don't want to go tomorrow because of this and that and this. And we're like, bro, those aren't even like applicable excuses, you know? And he was like, he's like, you're right. He's like, you're right. You're right. Hundred percent right. Hundred. He totally admitted it, you know?

• 1:33:53Jocko Willink?

  So is he back on the mat? Cause he was not here today.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:33:56Jocko Willink?

  Jay Charles, get back on the mat. You got good quick too.

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  That, and that's kind of part of the, the whole picture, you know? It's like a waste almost.

• 1:34:06Jocko Willink?

  Do you think that he, well, he learned, learned anything from you just by being your twin brother?

• 1:34:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:34:15Jocko Willink?

  No?

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  I don't think so.

• 1:34:16Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of seemed that way to me. Although his game is very different from yours.

• 1:34:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and maybe from like, he's like, has an analytical mind, you know, so if, like if I do, like if he asks, oh, here's another thing, yes, kind of indirectly from being my twin brother. So me and him can communicate like spot on. It's like we won't run into misunderstandings very often.

• 1:34:39Jocko Willink?

  So if he's lying about not training jujitsu.

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  Well, that was him with that weakness you were talking about where like he underestimating other people's perception. That was hit that, which he has obviously like we all do. But yeah, so if he has a question or he hears me talking about some, something jujitsu wise, he picks up on it. I think in that way real quick and you know, he's an athletic guy.

• 1:35:00Jocko Willink?

  And you not explain things really well to him because you have forty years of common language and experience to say, hey, remember when I do this or hey, remember in football and that or hey, remember when whatever. You've got all this stuff you can communicate very good.

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  Down to the tone, you know, or yeah, so yeah, so I'd say there's that, there's that, you know. But yeah, he did, he got it quick.

• 1:35:23Jocko Willink?

  The interesting thing about underestimating the way that everyone else thinks is when you do that. First of all, it's there, they know. And if you actually just live your life in a way that you're not trying to put up fronts, your life is going to be better.

• 1:35:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:39Jocko Willink?

  And if you live your life thinking that, guess what, at a minimum, people are gonna, someone's gonna know that this is a front. If you do that, it's kind of like when I told the, the, I told a bunch of soldiers, officers, that they had a psychopath in their platoon. I'm like every, if you're, if you got forty, and I went through this with Jordan, where I asked him, I said, hey, is, I said, if you have forty people in a military, in a, in a platoon, in an infantry platoon, is one of them a sadist? And he's like, absolutely, absolutely. And, and then I, he said, one in a hundred is good, but in the military, you've already eliminated a bunch of, you know, weak. Or, or yeah, you've eliminated all non sadists because there's no, there's no one that's like, not at least,

• 1:36:24Jocko Willink?

  has some tendency to, to be able to kill people, right? Those people are in the platoon. So you've eliminated a bunch of people that have zero chance of being a sadist. They're not in there. So one out of forty is not bad. So. If you treat your platoon as if you have a sadist in there, then you'll eliminate that problem from getting out of hand. So that's what you do. So if you treat your life as if people will see through the lies and affronts that you're trying to put up for them, you'll do better in life and you'll have a better platoon and you'll have a better life. Yeah. That's a good analogy, by the way. Check. Alright. Leadership techniques. It is important to note that in small units, the leader can influence and direct his men through close personal contact, whereas in

• 1:37:09Jocko Willink?

  large units, he must rely in great measure upon his staff and subordinate commanders to assist him in making his leadership effective. The larger the unit, the more complex the problems of leadership, but the greater become the means available to the commander to assist him in the exercise of his leadership. So as you grow, problems get more complex, but you end up with, you have more people, you have more tools. The larger unit commander must consider carefully the leadership aspect of all basic policies which he prescribes or tolerates. Okay. This is what's interesting. So we work with companies that grow really quickly, especially nowadays in the startup world and the tech world. And this is where

• 1:37:51Jocko Willink?

  they have a tough time transitioning. Because when you're in a room, you're not in an office and you've got six people in there, guess what? Your leadership is really easy, right? You're talking, you know them, you communicate with them. It gets to 20 people, okay, it's a little bit tricky, but still, you're all in a room, you're meeting, you're seeing each other every day. 30, 40, hey, guess what? We're still all pretty much in a room, everyone's having lunch, we're still a unit. All of a sudden it kicks out 200, 200, 300. And this is where if you don't insert good decentralized command, good leadership tactics in there, that's where these tech companies, and it's not just tech companies, any growing company

• 1:38:32Jocko Willink?

  loses it. They lose it because they haven't put the command structure in place so that the vision of the commander and the vision of the leadership gets distilled all the way down through the chain of command. And now you have people doing things that they shouldn't be doing. Yeah. And, and, and I don't necessarily mean they're doing something illegal. I'm saying they're doing things that don't support the strategic goals of the company. And it's a problem.

• 1:38:58Jocko Willink?

  But as those companies grow, what they don't realize is just like this book says, you have more tools that you can put into place. You've got it, you've got it, you've got a communications department inside your company whose job is internal communications. So you could be making, you could be making videos and explaining to people what's going on and giving them an update and you could, you can do all those things. You have that capability. You have VTCs, right? You have video calls you can make. You've got subordinate leadership that can go out there and get in the field and make things known. So there's a way to overcome these problems if you address them. If you don't address them and you can, you think, if you think you can keep leading

• 1:39:39Jocko Willink?

  a 2,000 person organization as if you were leading 20 people, you're going to have a major issues and it's not going to work. It's not going to work.

• 1:39:49Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, over a period of time, the leader will develop techniques of his own, which will be better suited to his own personality and which he himself will be able to employ effectively. So yeah, you're all going to get your own little leadership techniques. And what's, I'm telling you where I'm really lucky is I've worked with so many different leaders that I just don't know my techniques. I say, hey, you know, what's a good thing to do here? My buddy Bill used to have an issue with this and you could, you know, so that's kind of nice. Now here are some leadership techniques. These are leadership techniques that apply back to these principles. These are applicable to all leaders. Okay. So when it comes to knowing your job, principle one,

• 1:40:31Jocko Willink?

  know your job. Seek a well-rounded military education through attendance at service schools and through regular independent reading, research and study. So how do you know your job? You study. Another one, keep abreast of the latest techniques in the field of communication in order to facilitate control of your unit and disseminate information. Three, seek out and foster association with capable leaders. Observe and study their actions and application of leadership techniques. Four, broaden your field of knowledge through association with officers and men of other armed services.

• 1:41:07Jocko Willink?

  Five, seek the opportunity to apply knowledge through exercise or command. Real leadership is acquired only through constant practice. Six, avoid over-specialization into narrow fields. Seven, keep abreast of current military developments. Eight, familiarize yourself with capabilities and limitations of all elements of your command by study and through frequent visits to subordinates. So that's cool. Know your job. And I'll tell you what, one thing that's impressive is I get to work with a lot of leaders and some of these leaders come up through their industry and man, they are knowledgeable. It's impressive. It's impressive. But where the shortfall is, they're, they're super knowledgeable about their field,

• 1:41:50Jocko Willink?

  but they don't have the leadership knowledge.

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 1:41:54Jocko Willink?

  So that's what's beneficial about things like this podcast, like Extreme Leadership, like Deco-My Leadership, like putting this information where people can actually read it and understand it, they can study because they know their job, they know their technical field. You know, that's another thing with EF Overwatch right now is like we're bringing in people that don't necessarily have the technical skill inside of a field, but they have the leadership experience and it's a lot easier to teach someone a technical skill than it is to teach them leadership because to get leadership, the only way you get better at leadership is leadership.

• 1:42:30Jocko Willink?

  So we're very, it's been very successful so far and, and now we're starting to see employers that say they were a little, you know, you're hesitant because you think, how do you know anything about whatever? How do you know, how can someone that's not from this field lead in this field? Give the person an overview of what the, what the field is.

• 1:42:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:49Jocko Willink?

  And then they take their 22 years, 24 years, 26 years of real leadership experience and they apply it.

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  It's kind of like the human resource department a little bit in a, in a small way, right? Like where?

• 1:43:02Jocko Willink?

  What about HR?

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  HR, yeah. So they go, you know, you have this department that they don't know anything about software or nothing like that. They know about human resources, you know? And that's a big deal. That's a big deal when people are working together, you know, kind of thing.

• 1:43:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Good, good, good analogy. Okay, here's some things, some techniques for principle two, know yourself and seek self-improvement. One, analyze yourself objectively to determine the strong and weak points of your character. You could make that into a little drill, right? Actually, look, actually go down that list of characteristics and say which, where you at.

• 1:43:40Jocko Willink?

  Two, recognize your weak points and make enough to overcome them. Three, solicit when appropriate the candid opinions of others as to how you can make the most of your desirable qualities and eliminate your undesirable ones. Be careful, because when you ask that question, if you ask it honestly, you're going to get some answers you don't want to hear.

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  What, your weak points?

• 1:43:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. No one wants to hear about those weak points.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  Not even from themselves.

• 1:44:01Jocko Willink?

  Not even from themselves, and it's, it's so rare that someone truly wants to hear what they screwed up. It's, it just doesn't hardly exist. So, so what that means is everyone knows that. And since everyone knows that, they are not going to give you an honest feedback. So when you say, hey, how did I do on that last task? They go, oh man, you did good. They're lying.

• 1:44:26Jocko Willink?

  They're not even being tactful. They're lying. They're telling a lie. They're telling a lie to you. Because if they would, if they wanted to be tactful, they get to be tactful and say, hey, you know what? I know it was a tough project and you pulled it off, which was commendable. But there were some definite areas for improvement. And you know what? Luckily, I kept a list. Let's go through it. Boom. Next, profit by studying the causes for past success or failure of other leaders past and present.

• 1:44:57Jocko Willink?

  Develop a genuine interest in people, acquire the human touch, practice the golden rule, master the art of good writing and speaking.

• 1:45:07Jocko Willink?

  How do you do that? Write and speak and read and listen. And the last one, cultivate cordial relations with members of other arms and services and with civilians. Cool. That's how you get to know yourself. Some things, some techniques for knowing your, knowing your men. Principle three, know your men and look out for their welfare. Number one, see the members of your command and let them see you. Stay locked up in the ivory tower. Be friendly and approachable.

• 1:45:41Speaker 01

  Approachable.

• 1:45:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  Important.

• 1:45:43Jocko Willink?

  Important. Develop an intimate knowledge and understanding of your subordinates through personal contact and available records. In small commands, it is imperative not only that the leader know the name and address of his subordinates, but also that he's familiar with their characteristics. Cool. Know your people. Literally know your people. Interest yourself in living conditions of the members of your command, including their family environment, food, clothing, and building. Make ample provision for and give personal and visible attention to the various personal services, particularly those concerned with the personal problems of individuals. Provide for the spiritual welfare of your command by supporting religious activities. Protect the health of your command by active supervision of hygiene and sanitation. Support actively a safety program.

• 1:46:28Jocko Willink?

  Determine the mental attitude of members of your command by frequent informal visits and by using fully fully all available sources of information. Administer justice impartially to all without fear or favor. When punishment is necessary, the commander should be fair, consistent, and impersonal. Punish in private with dignity and with human understanding. Never award a degrading punishment. Avoid punishing a group for the faults of the individual. Always make the individual feel that the punishment is temporary and that improvement is expected.

• 1:47:10Jocko Willink?

  And I think when he says expected, or when they say expected, I don't think they're talking about like, hey, I expect you to do better. It's more like, hey, man. Like, I know you can do better.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:47:20Jocko Willink?

  I think it's that's what they're talking about. And it's an interesting one to avoid punishing a group for the fault of the individual because the military is famous for doing that, especially in like boot camp scenarios. Where, oh, we're gonna keep doing these until we can all do them in unison. Whatever, jumping jacks, but beyond those scenarios, that's a, that's not always the best call to make.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, because that's like, it's one of those in football, they do that too.

• 1:47:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  Real, like, obvious, the kind of like, if you mess up, everyone else does the bear crawls. You know, you and you stand and watch because that's like a psychological punishment to the guy more than the team, yeah? So it's like, it's like a different approach, but yeah, man, I get it. For that very reason, by the way, the very reason he's saying that.

• 1:48:03Jocko Willink?

  It, it, it works in the boot camp environment with it, or the team training environment where you're trying to create this overall cohesion by making everyone rely on each other and be able to count on each other.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, as if to say in a, in a demonstratable way, like, when you mess up, this affects the team.

• 1:48:25Jocko Willink?

  And put the peer pressure on everyone to step up their game.

• 1:48:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:29Jocko Willink?

  Right? If we don't make this time, if everyone doesn't make this time, then we're all gonna get punished. Okay, so we don't want that on our backs.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:48:36Jocko Willink?

  But when you get into a business situation, you start punishing people for the group failure. That's, that's not as effective in building, in fact, what they can do sometimes, it starts ripping things apart. So you gotta be careful with that one.

• 1:48:49Speaker 01

  Start hating that guy.

• 1:48:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, next. Ensure fair and equitable distribution of privileges such as passes, leaves and rotation. Encourage educational development by providing educational opportunities for members of your command.

• 1:49:04Jocko Willink?

  I, I often ask groups, this, leaders in companies, I'll say, who here had someone that truly took a vested interest in you? And helped you move up the ranks through the chain of command in your industry? And everyone will raise their hand. Just about, you know, 99% of people will raise their hand. And I'll say, how good did that feel, one to 10, to have someone that was completely invested in helping you? Uh, who's, who's a nine or above, everyone raises their hand. Imagine how good that feels when you do that for someone else. Cause it's real easy to forget.

• 1:49:45Jocko Willink?

  That someone helped you. It's real easy to forget that you got hoisted up to your position of power by other people that were willing to sacrifice their time and their energy to improve your lot in life. So when you get the opportunity to improve someone else's lot in life, do it.

• 1:50:04Jocko Willink?

  Next techniques for keeping your men informed.

• 1:50:08Jocko Willink?

  Explain to your principal subordinates why any particular task must be accomplished and how you propose to do it. So, importance of understanding why. Assure yourself by frequent inspections and visits that subordinates are transmitting necessary information to the men.

• 1:50:26Jocko Willink?

  So you just can't expect it. You gotta inspect it. Keep your principal subordinates informed of plans for future operations, subject only to security restrictions. Disseminate information concerning the capabilities of our weapons compared to those of an active or potential enemy. Where an enemy has an initial advantage, show how this can be overcome. Be sure that troops are informed of the capabilities and limitations of supporting units, arms and services. Be alert to detect the spread of false rumors. Stop rumors by replacing them with the truth.

• 1:51:01Jocko Willink?

  Build confidence in a Spree to Core by exploiting all information concerning successes of the command. That's, that's a big one. Is a lot of times businesses, companies, people, they do things, things go well and they don't tell anybody about it and it gets lost. Whereas, if you want to build morale and you want to get momentum, you gotta tell everyone, hey, we're out here and we're crushing it.

• 1:51:22Jocko Willink?

  Principle five, how to set the example.

• 1:51:26Jocko Willink?

  Number one, be at all times physically fit, mentally alert, well groomed and correctly dressed.

• 1:51:35Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:51:37Jocko Willink?

  That's how you set the example. Two, master your emotions.

• 1:51:42Jocko Willink?

  The commander who is subject to intemperate bursts of anger or to periods of depression will have difficulty in gaining and holding respect and loyalty of its subordinates.

• 1:51:56Jocko Willink?

  Maintain an optimistic outlook. The will to win is infectious. The leader fosters it by capitalizing on his unit's capabilities and successes, not on his limitations or failures. Maintain an air of outward calmness. The more difficult the situation, the more important this becomes. So when things start going sideways, you gotta stay calm.

• 1:52:19Jocko Willink?

  Conduct yourself so that your personal habits are not open to censure. Coarse behavior and vulgarity are the marks of an essentially weak and unstable character. These, together with a failure to be punctual and a tendency towards selfishness and self-indulgence in luxuries not available to the command in general, are inevitably resented by all ranks. So that's what we were just talking about. But yeah, man, you gotta hold yourself to a little higher standard. Maybe even a lot higher standard. Cause they're watching you.

• 1:52:53Jocko Willink?

  Cooperate in spirit as well as in fact. This is what I just talked about and what we just talked about. It's not just, "Hey, I'm pretending to do this because it's gonna make things easier for me." It's, "I truly am doing this." Cooperation must work in two directions. It arises from a wholehearted desire by all members to further the effective operations of the team.

• 1:53:18Jocko Willink?

  Exercise initiative and promote this spirit of initiative in your subordinates. Be conspicuously loyal to those below you as well as those above you. Support those under you as long as the individuals concerned have been discharging their duties competently. The commander who seeks, however, to protect an incompetent subordinate from correction by a higher commander is being disloyal himself. Loyalty is a prime trait of leadership and demands unqualified support of the policies of the superior officers, whether the individual concerned personally favors them or not. So that's the whole conversation we just had about loyalty.

• 1:54:00Jocko Willink?

  Avoid the development of a clique of favorites. While it is difficult to avoid, I like this one because they readily admit this is interesting. So avoid the development of a clique of favorites. But then they kind of throw this on there. While it is difficult to avoid being partial to subordinates who have rendered loyal and superior service over a period of time. The temptation to show partiality should be vigorously resisted. So they're saying like, this is gonna be hard.

• 1:54:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:26Jocko Willink?

  You've got somebody on your team that's just doing great things.

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  Yes, natural.

• 1:54:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I always had a hard time with that.

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it makes sense.

• 1:54:33Jocko Willink?

  I wouldn't be overt about it.

• 1:54:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:54:35Jocko Willink?

  But if you were doing good, you were gonna get some, some Bennys from.

• 1:54:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Be morally courageous. The commander who fails to stand by his principles where the welfare of his command is concerned, or who attempts to avoid responsibility for mistakes of his command, will fail to gain or hold respect of his associates or subordinates.

• 1:54:58Jocko Willink?

  And the last one, share danger and hardship. A leader who has elements of his command subjected to danger or to hardship of any kind should visit them as often as possible to demonstrate without ostentation that his willingness to assume his share of the difficulties.

• 1:55:18Jocko Willink?

  So those are some techniques for that. Principle six, how do we ensure that the task is understood, supervised, and accomplished? Here's some techniques for that. Through study and practice, develop the ability to think clearly to issue a clear, concise, positive order.

• 1:55:33Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it strange that I ended up using the words simple, clear, concise? And they, they use the words, I guess it's not that weird, but it's, it's funny to see.

• 1:55:43Jocko Willink?

  Two, encourage subordinates to seek immediate clarification about any point your orders or directives that they do not understand perfectly. So that's something that so many people fail to do. Is everyone just keeps their mouth shut? No, I don't have any questions.

• 1:55:57Speaker 01

  So funny, like these, this one really is, seems so obvious. Like, oh yeah, you're not clear? Like, oh, what do you do if you're not clear? It's this big mystery, what to do, bro? Everyone knows. Even if you're a kid, that you know, like, oh, I didn't understand that. Like, what do you mean? What do you mean? Why? Why? You know, kids always ask, why? Why? Same thing. So it seems super obvious, but yeah, when you're in there. You wanna keep your mouth shut, there's all these different human, yeah, you don't wanna look stupid, you don't wanna open, you know.

• 1:56:26Jocko Willink?

  You don't wanna be that guy.

• 1:56:27Speaker 01

  That guy.

• 1:56:30Jocko Willink?

  Question your subordinates and assistants to determine if there's any doubt or misunderstanding to the task. So this is something that we always say. How do you know people understand? You ask them and you just don't ask them, do you understand? You ask them to explain it back to you. Make every means available to your subordinates to assist them in accomplishing their mission.

• 1:56:52Jocko Willink?

  Principle seven, train your men as a team. Ensure by inspections and training tests that your command is being trained in accordance with the training programs and doctrine prescribed by higher authority. Make sure the best available facilities for team training are provided. Ensure that all training is purposeful. Ensure that each element of the command is acquainted with the capabilities and limitations of all other elements, thereby developing mutual trust and understanding. Ensure each subordinate leader understands the mechanics of tactical control for his own echelon of command. Predicate team training on modern, realistic conditions.

• 1:57:31Jocko Willink?

  Insist that each officer and enlisted man knows the functions of each other officer and enlisted man with whom he habitually operates. Insist that each of these know and understand each other, their traits, peculiarities, strengths and weaknesses. So often in companies, this is not happening in businesses. It happens pretty well in the military, but in businesses you'll have departments, they have no idea what another department does, no idea how they do their job, no idea what their job even entails.

• 1:58:01Jocko Willink?

  Leif and I used to make teams brief what their department did. And when we'd get them in there in the room, you'd see people who just had no idea what the other teams were doing. They'd be like, oh, I didn't know you guys did that. How long you guys been doing that for? Nine years.

• 1:58:19Jocko Willink?

  Demand the highest standard of discipline and teamwork in all training. We support that. Seize opportunities to train with other units, both combat and service. Principle eight, make sound and timely decisions. This first one here, these are techniques again.

• 1:58:38Jocko Willink?

  Develop a logical and orderly thought process by constant practice in making objective estimates of the situation. Making an estimate is not restricted to the military. It is employed in everyday life of all persons. So, how do you make decisions? How do you do that? What, and then you come up with this kind of a process that you, you flow through in your brain. I'll have to add that to the protocol book, how to make decisions. And so far as time and occasion permit. Plan for every contingency that can reasonably be foreseen.

• 1:59:15Jocko Willink?

  Consider the advice and suggestions of your subordinates before making your decisions, of course. Announce decisions in time to allow subordinates to make necessary plans. Boom.

• 1:59:25Jocko Willink?

  Principle nine is seek responsibility and develop a sense of responsibility among subordinates. So this one says, learn the duties and responsibility of your immediate supervisor. I actually think you learn your immediate supervisor and his boss. You want to at least know what's going on. Seek diversified assignments which will give you responsibility and command experience. People always want to stay and do, keep doing what they're good at. They don't want to venture out into the different world. Take advantage of any opportunity which offers increased responsibility. Do that. Oh, there's a task that needs to be done, someone needs to run it. I got it. I'm on it.

• 2:00:04Jocko Willink?

  Perform every task, large or small, to the best of your ability. And this goes back to whatever a few podcasts ago, we were talking about. How you do anything is how you do everything. And I gave some slack on that one. But these guys got no slack at all. Perform every task, large or small, to the best of your ability. Your reward will consist of increased opportunity to demonstrate your fitness, to perform bigger and more important tasks. What does that mean? The better you do, the more work you're going to get. That's what it means.

• 2:00:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, tell your subordinates what to do, not how to do it.

• 2:00:46Jocko Willink?

  Hold them responsible for the results. Delegate and supervise, but do not intervene except when urgently necessary. Avoid usurping the prerogatives of your subordinates. This is actually such a concise, clear rule. Tell your subordinates what to do, not how to do it. Hold them responsible for the results. Delegate and supervise, but do not intervene except when urgently necessary. Avoid usurping the prerogatives of your subordinates. That is really good advice for anyone in a leadership position. If you could follow that advice right there, your world is going to be so much better. Provide all personnel with frequent

• 2:01:31Jocko Willink?

  opportunities to perform duties of the next higher echelon. Yes. To you, Bruiser. We made all the junior officers be ground force commanders before we went overseas. Got them experienced and then they went overseas and did it. Be quick to recognize accomplishments of your subordinates when they demonstrate initiative and resourcefulness. Correct errors in the use of judgment and initiative in such a way as to encourage the individual. Avoid public criticism or condemnation. Be liberal, however, in openly giving praise for which is which is deserved. Give unstintingly help. Give unstintingly of help and advice when you are requested by those under your command. That one's pretty obvious. Ensure

• 2:02:14Jocko Willink?

  that your personnel are assigned positions commensurate with demonstrated or potential ability. That's important. Get someone that's got some potential, put them in a good spot. Be prompt and fair in backing subordinates to the limit. Until convinced otherwise, have faith in each subordinate. I think you gotta take a little time to make sure you build that up. Just don't dive in with complete faith. Give them a little task first. Demonstrate to your command that you are ready and willing to accept responsibility. Yes, ownership.

• 2:02:53Jocko Willink?

  Principle 10, techniques on how to employ your command in accordance with its capabilities. Number one, know, understand, and apply the principles of war.

• 2:03:07Jocko Willink?

  And those principles of war are different than what we're talking about right now. The principles of war that they're talking about are objective, offense, mass, economy of force, maneuver, unity of command, security, surprise, and simplicity. Those are the

• 2:03:25Jocko Willink?

  principles of war that they're talking about. You've got to know those. So that means in your company, you've got to understand the principles that you're operating in.

• 2:03:35Jocko Willink?

  Keep yourself informed as to the relative operational effectiveness of various elements of your command. Be sure the tasks assigned are reasonably possible of accomplishment. Analyze any tasks assigned if it means your disposable, if means that your disposal will appear inadequate, inform your immediate commander and request additional means. Yeah, it's not like, oh, I'll get anything done, boss. I can do anything. It's like, no, actually, I'm going to need some more support over here. I'm going to need some more people, money, resources, whatever. Make every effort to equalize tasks proportionally over appropriate periods of time among the several elements of your command. But don't just laden down one group.

• 2:04:20Jocko Willink?

  And if you've got one group that's so much stronger than the other group, move some people around so you get some equality there. And here's the last principle, techniques. Take responsibility for your actions, principle 11.

• 2:04:36Jocko Willink?

  Extreme ownership, remember that you are responsible for all your command does or fails to do. Accept justified criticism. Adhere to what you think is right. And have courage of your convictions.

• 2:04:52Jocko Willink?

  So those are some, uh, some heavy hitters. What this book does now, and I'm not going to do it, is it actually breaks down how, what different leadership techniques you can use at every level. So it talks about, and you know what? I haven't said this yet. This book is free. This is online. You can Google 1951 Leadership FM 10 Tac 22.

• 2:05:23Speaker 01

  What is that, uh, like a PDF?

• 2:05:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's like a PDF. And so you can, you can look it up and you can figure out where you are. It talks about techniques useful to non-commissioned officers. It talks about techniques for, um, regimental and lower unit commanders. It talks about commanders of divisions and higher units. And it goes through what kind of techniques you can use in each one of these positions. And they're all solid information, solid information. And points out good, not just what the rules are, but the techniques that are used to, to kind of make them happen.

• 2:06:05Jocko Willink?

  And so solid, uh, bunch of information there that again, you can easily get this. This book is a pretty short read. I've read a bunch of it right now. I mean, I actually kind of went crazy with my red, with my red pen, just circling everything and saying, hey, read this too. But there's a ton of it in here, but I'm going to skip back to, um, they skip that information, look it up, go read it. It's powerful stuff. And I'm going to kind of just jump ahead to this last little closing part that I wanted to cover, which is talking about how to train. And it just talks about a few things, stress realism. Cause we have to make training realistic. That's what we have to do.

• 2:06:51Jocko Willink?

  It's what I did when I was in the SEAL Teams. It's what you should do in whatever kind of organization you're in. If you're in a, if you're in a business, you should simulate, make your training as close to real as you possibly can. Another thing is require repeated drills in the execution of simple tactical maneuvers. What does that mean? Repetition counts. You have to repeat things over and over again, if you want to get good at them. Another important training tip, stress the importance of each leader. So placing himself and his headquarters that he can most readily coordinate all efforts of his command and of the elements that may be supporting it. Where you're located is important.

• 2:07:37Jocko Willink?

  Where you position yourself is important. And so you've got to recognize that that's going to change depending on the situation. You've got to learn how to, how to address that and how to pick the right spot to be in. And the last one is, last couple are stress the importance of exchange of information by all appropriate means. So we got to communicate. And the last one is have a well-planned critique immediately after each field exercise. And that again wraps up this very, very powerful summation. Very simple, very straightforward.

• 2:08:23Jocko Willink?

  I feel like I actually could have talked about each one of these points and gone over examples that, because each one of them is so important.

• 2:08:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:34Jocko Willink?

  So, I don't know, maybe we'll do it again. Or they'll come up again. But that's what you have. And then just that closing point on having a well-planned critique after every field exercise. What does that actually mean? What that means is always be learning.

• 2:08:53Jocko Willink?

  It means always be learning. And

• 2:08:58Jocko Willink?

  almost every one of these principles I recognized, I have heard before, I've definitely read them before, we've covered them here before. But I'm still trying to learn. I'm trying, still trying to relearn even the same lessons. After years of me looking at this stuff, which

• 2:09:19Jocko Willink?

  I guess is me just kind of following the principles themselves, which is know your job, know yourself and seek improvements. That's what I'm trying to do. And I think that's pretty much what anyone that's listening to this is trying to do.

• 2:09:32Jocko Willink?

  So I mean, I guess echo speaking of rule number two.

• 2:09:36Jocko Willink?

  And speaking of us seeking to constantly improve ourselves.

• 2:09:42Jocko Willink?

  What do you know about things that can help us improve our situation? Support what we're trying to do in our self-improvement journey.

• 2:09:55Speaker 01

  Journey, sure.

• 2:09:56Jocko Willink?

  Path.

• 2:09:57Speaker 01

  Path, big time.

• 2:09:58Jocko Willink?

  And actually you can support this podcast.

• 2:10:01Speaker 01

  If they wish.

• 2:10:02Jocko Willink?

  If you want to, while you support.

• 2:10:06Jocko Willink?

  Your own.

• 2:10:08Jocko Willink?

  Journey down the path.

• 2:10:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:10:11Jocko Willink?

  Of discipline.

• 2:10:12Speaker 01

  And keep in mind, this path that we are on also brings along others. Even if they're not like on the path with you, your results of being on the path improves them as well. I found that out directly.

• 2:10:26Jocko Willink?

  How'd you find that out?

• 2:10:27Speaker 01

  Many capacities. Okay, so let's say.

• 2:10:30Jocko Willink?

  Cause that sounded like one of those statements that you make where you're just wanting a prompt so you can tell a long story.

• 2:10:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:10:35Jocko Willink?

  That's what it sounded like.

• 2:10:37Speaker 01

  Kind of.

• 2:10:37Jocko Willink?

  And then you were ready as soon as you said, how'd you find out it was boo boo?

• 2:10:39Speaker 01

  Oh, let me go ahead and tell you. Yeah, well, yeah. Not it well, like it. So, okay, in in a family household, in a group setting or whatever, right? Things can get stressful. I'm not saying they're stressful every single day, every moment, but they can get stressful, right? So you know, like any, you know, you know about stressful situations, I'm assuming.

• 2:10:58Jocko Willink?

  A little bit.

• 2:10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. So when everyone's panicking or whatever. Stressed out or whatever, and you get one guy who jumps in there. The situation, not panicking, not overtly stressed out. And he can sort of manage not only himself, but his tiny environment. It's contagious. Other people will get that and they start doing that as well. Whether it be in the immediate situation or just in general.

• 2:11:28Jocko Willink?

  We just covered this as part of the book, right?

• 2:11:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:11:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:30Speaker 01

  Big time.

• 2:11:30Jocko Willink?

  How that lead, first of all, the leader can come from any rank. And then when they step in, that leadership and the way that they act will spread throughout his team.

• 2:11:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:11:42Jocko Willink?

  So you're confirming.

• 2:11:43Speaker 01

  Yes, big time. And that goes for like.

• 2:11:45Jocko Willink?

  Confirming big time.

• 2:11:46Speaker 01

  The huge time.

• 2:11:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, huge time.

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  Huge time. So it's, so if you're getting in shape, right? The people around you will sort of notice. If you're like happier, doing things more, make getting more done around you. You know, taking responsibility for things. You're taking out the trash every other night, man, or whenever it fills up. I don't know. It depends how big your trash is, I guess. But if you're taking it out, when it's full, you don't let it overflow anymore. People notice that. I'm just saying. And slowly by slowly, especially if you're happier, you know, if you're treating them better and all this stuff, they they'll start doing it too. Same thing with extreme ownership. You know how like, um, you know, if you if you come at a problem like, hey, that was my fault.

• 2:12:34Speaker 01

  It most of the time, eventually, if not immediately, they'll say, well, you know what? It's kind of, it's my, yeah. Same, same, exactly. So that's why you should be on the path and stay on the path.

• 2:12:45Jocko Willink?

  Cause you're not just helping yourself, you're helping everyone around you.

• 2:12:48Speaker 01

  So you are. One of those things that you're doing on top of taking out the trash when it needs to be taken out is jujitsu. Now, here's, that's it. It's kind of, jujitsu is one of these ones where people might not, right? Especially if you, okay, your husband, you want to do jujitsu now, but wait, we have a family of six. Or more, whatever, or less, I don't know. And you have responsibilities in there. Now you want to add this quote unquote extracurricular activity to these tasks. That's what you're telling me, right? That's the situation, right? But like I said, when you get the benefits of jujitsu and you come home, you slowly become a different person.

• 2:13:27Jocko Willink?

  A better person.

• 2:13:27Speaker 01

  A better person.

• 2:13:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:30Speaker 01

  Better person in the household is a better situation. So.

• 2:13:33Jocko Willink?

  For everyone in the household.

• 2:13:34Speaker 01

  Everybody and the neighbors and the neighborhood, your whole street, your whole town.

• 2:13:40Jocko Willink?

  The whole world's better if you do jiu-jitsu.

• 2:13:42Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, it is. And when you do jiu-jitsu, you will need a gi and a rash guard, at least one, I think.

• 2:13:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:50Speaker 01

  What are the best gis in the whole wide world?

• 2:13:52Jocko Willink?

  They are Origin gis.

• 2:13:53Speaker 01

  Origin gis by far. They are made in America, 100%. Sometimes people are actually not about the gis, but people still ask me.

• 2:14:00Jocko Willink?

  You know, you know how some people will be like, they don't, like, they start training and they don't like it?

• 2:14:04Speaker 01

  Don't like, oh, jiu-jitsu.

• 2:14:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:14:08Jocko Willink?

  And some people realize immediately, like, they get submitted and they're like, you know, they'll, they'll post up on Twitter and they'll say, "I did my first jiu-jitsu class yesterday. I got submitted and beat up and I got submitted by a 15-year-old girl."

• 2:14:23Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 2:14:24Jocko Willink?

  It's the best thing ever, right? Some people say that.

• 2:14:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:27Jocko Willink?

  Because I think we are doing a good job of setting the expectations of the fact that it's gonna, you're gonna get humbled. Day one, you're gonna get humbled. I actually don't care who you are.

• 2:14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:40Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna get humbled. Because even if you're a D1 wrestler, you're gonna come in there and it's gonna be humbling because you're not gonna be able to quite do what you think you're gonna be able to do.

• 2:14:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:49Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you'll be able to, yeah, you'll be able to take someone down, you'll be able to, you'll be, but you won't be able to make them tap. You won't really know how to. I mean, unless the person doesn't know anything. But if you're going against a blue belt or a purple belt, it's gonna be hard for you.

• 2:15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my fir-, um, it was like, it was, it was technically, I guess, my first or second day in a class setting. It wasn't with Dean. You know, I tried like two other gyms before I joined with Dean. And I went and they were like, yeah, you know, I literally one jiu-jitsu class that I learned, I don't even remember what it was. So they're like, yeah, hey, roll. Now it's time to roll. So I'm going, I'm going against this guy way smaller than me and he was like within, he had like a month, I think. A month experience. I'm hu-, I'm way bigger than this guy. And here's the thing, for like your example, he didn't tap me out, but I literally couldn't do anything. I'm gassing, I'm so tired, I'm huge, I'm like two twenty-five, like solid.

• 2:15:41Jocko Willink?

  He doesn't care?

• 2:15:41Speaker 01

  No, he's in.

• 2:15:43Jocko Willink?

  He's one fifty?

• 2:15:44Speaker 01

  Here's a, it's about one fifty, yes. And but here's the thing, he's like a month or two in, he's a complete white belt too. But I'm like new guy, but I'm way more athletic. Literally, I could pick this guy up over my head, literally. Couldn't do nothing, couldn't even pass his guard. And I knew what a guard pass, I knew like you have to pass this guy's. And he was telling, and he told me afterwards, he was like, hey, like you're, you're expending too much energy, all this stuff, whatever. And I'm thinking in my head, but I don't, I don't know that. I mean, obviously because I'm tired. But it just goes to show how much you just don't know about when you go in. Even though you're, you're big and strong, whatever. So yes, you will get humbled.

• 2:16:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you so expect that part of it. And then instead of when you do get beat up, when you get choked, when you get arm locked, instead of getting mad and thinking, I'm never gonna do this again, think to yourself, I'm gonna do this a lot until I can get good enough that some unknown person can really impose their will on me as a human being. I didn't like that feeling, man.

• 2:16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So yeah, just it goes to show like that it, it matters what response you have to it. That's like the what really matters. So yeah, we are, we're all gonna get beat up, we're all gonna get submitted multiple, when I say multiple, probably thousands, yeah, by people who are smaller.

• 2:17:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. What do you figure when you start, you get submitted ten times a day, when you start?

• 2:17:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 2:17:07Jocko Willink?

  So you're getting submitted fifty times a week if you're training five days a week?

• 2:17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. By people smaller than you, bigger than you, smaller, whoever, all different people. So yeah, so how are you gonna respond? Are you gonna respond by saying, I never want that experience ever again, ever again? Or are you responding with, I want that skill, whatever this guy obviously has, or the, all these people obviously have. Got it from this place, by the way. I know that too.

• 2:17:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:31Speaker 01

  Am I gonna choose to be like, no, I don't want that skill, I wanna go somewhere else?

• 2:17:35Jocko Willink?

  You don't have to go to like some other country.

• 2:17:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:39Jocko Willink?

  Generally in America, you can just go down, you can Google Maps. And you can find nine jujitsu schools. Well, maybe not me around in San Diego, you can or Southern California. If you're in another part of the country, you can probably find two. You probably two options where you are, most likely. Now you could be way out in the middle of nowhere. Cool. Get some mats, get some friends. Get one of those online programs, start learning, go to YouTube, YouTube's free. Just start li- listen to what they're saying and trying it on your buddies. And you'll start to learn jujitsu.

• 2:18:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Boom. On the path, jujitsu wise. Get your, get an origin gi, hundred percent made in America. Good gees, here's the engineered for jujitsu quality. Greg Train was commenting on his new origin gi, the new one. He was like, bro, it's like a pearl. It's like a thing and I, and he doesn't like geek out over that kind of stuff typically, but he was. And for a good reason, by the way.

• 2:18:36Jocko Willink?

  And you know, you kind of gloss over like made in America. That's actually a really big deal. It's actually bringing back an industry that had left. That had left this country and bringing it back where we are, we've hired the people that got left behind. They're not left behind anymore. They're up there. They're making the best gees in the world. In a small town in New England, bringing back that economy. So when you support origin, you're actually supporting much more than jujitsu. You're supporting much more than this podcast. You're actually supporting America. And you're supporting the working people of America. That's what you're doing.

• 2:19:22Jocko Willink?

  So we're going to try and continue to drive down this path, to continue to grow this company. Where we can bring significant amount of jobs back to America, employ more people. And let other people grow and pay and provide for their families. That's what the goal is. And it feels great to go up to Farmington and be there in the factory and see what is being made by this tradition of craftsmanship. And you know, right now we're, we're bringing on the shoes, the boots. And same thing, we got people that you know, haven't been able to work in this industry for 12 years.

• 2:20:07Jocko Willink?

  Since they shut down the factories up there and outsourced the jobs and sent the machines overseas. So that's what actually happened. That's what actually happened. And the people talk about the, the,

• 2:20:21Jocko Willink?

  the corporate greed, right? Hey, it's gonna cost me whatever it's gonna cost me. I can save a little bit of money by shipping these things overseas. We'll let all these people go and that's fine. I don't care. Well, we do care. We do care. And we recognize that the strength of America comes from our economy. And the strength of our economy comes from the ability of our, of the working people in America to have a job and work hard and make the best product in the world. That's what we're doing.

• 2:20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it, man, and overall, and Pete has that cool little series where it'll sort, it'll show the little insight, you know? So he's like, yeah, we have this problem. So I'm, I think I'm gonna call this guy. And this guy he's talking about is the old school expert. Who, you know, like, he doesn't do it anymore, cause they went to, you know, but he has all this knowledge. He comes in, boom, boom, solving problems. And then, and it shows like the interaction between like the workers and Pete and like everybody, right? So it's not like this, I mean, no offense to China, but it's not like your typical go to China and you turn and burn these things. You know, no defects or whatever, whatever.

• 2:21:25Jocko Willink?

  That video series is called Origin HD. What's the name of the, of the YouTube channel is, I think it's Origin BJJ. So if you go to that, you can get behind the scenes on what's being made, on who's making it, on, on the kind of effort that the team up at Origin is putting in to make the, the quality that's up there. It's, it's awesome to watch. It's awesome to watch. So that, they got a bunch of clothes up there too. Rash guards, you know, t-shirts and all that you can get from Origin. We also, yeah. And, and now we have jeans which are gonna be live like this week. We have, they're in production. We hired a bunch of people, a bunch of more people.

• 2:22:09Jocko Willink?

  So don't just run out and buy a pair of jeans made in China by somebody in a sweatshop. Buy a pair of jeans here that are made in America from the dirt until they're on your legs. All that made in America. So, yeah, you can get that. We also have a, we also have supplements. Supplements that, supplements that I basically wanted to make exactly how I wanted them. That's basically what they are.

• 2:22:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:40Jocko Willink?

  Basically me saying, hey, this is what has always worked for me. These things, put them together, combine them. Um, and, and, and make them. And also, by the way, if it's something that I'm going to eat, make it taste good. And here's how we're going to do it. We're going to sweeten it.

• 2:22:57Jocko Willink?

  With monk fruit, which is a, a fruit, obviously. It's not a chem, there's not some, you know, group of whatever scientists in a laboratory trying to create something that tastes good through a bunch of cancer causing crap. No. They're taking a fruit, putting it in there. That's why milk tastes so good. Is there any better way to get additional needed protein?

• 2:23:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:23:22Jocko Willink?

  There is no better way. Now, my house where I live, with my family. Now it's who can make the best milk shake, right? I mean, my wife comes in the other day, she's holding the cup and she's like, she, she lets me taste it. I'm like, what in God's name? It's so good. So good. I don't even want to eat anything else.

• 2:23:45Speaker 01

  Bro.

• 2:23:46Jocko Willink?

  It was coconut milk, vanilla gorilla, three ice cubes, one chunk, like a quarter of a banana. That thing tasted like a, a gourmet dessert. Ridiculous.

• 2:24:02Speaker 01

  If you, um, and this is a little added thing. I put some, uh, like MCT oil or coconut.

• 2:24:08Jocko Willink?

  Throwing a little.

• 2:24:08Speaker 01

  Oil, you know, like just a little bit, not like too much or whatever. And it's weird. So it, it more adds to the texture than it does the taste. But that's like a little sneaky way to make yours taste more quality than, than the other competitors.

• 2:24:21Jocko Willink?

  It's ridiculous that it could be good for you.

• 2:24:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:24Jocko Willink?

  It is. Cause you feel like you just ate an ice cream shake. Right? But you didn't. You got high quality protein. You got probiotics.

• 2:24:34Speaker 01

  Here's a sneaky thing you do with your kids, by the way, you can use where your kid milk too, or whatever, whichever one.

• 2:24:40Jocko Willink?

  By the way, strawberry, strawberry milk for adults is coming. It should be out pretty soon and I've tried it. It's, it's, it's absolutely, completely and utterly ridiculous how good it tastes. And that it can be good for you.

• 2:24:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:53Jocko Willink?

  It's totally ridiculous. Did they send you a sample of it?

• 2:24:56Speaker 01

  Of what?

• 2:24:56Jocko Willink?

  Of the, of the strawberry adult milk?

• 2:25:00Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, no.

• 2:25:00Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. It's, I can't believe it.

• 2:25:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:25:04Jocko Willink?

  So anyways, there you go.

• 2:25:05Speaker 01

  So what you do with your kids is, you know how you gotta threaten them with punishment every once in a while? Say, hey, no dessert. Or you wanna use it as an incentive, like, hey, if you can clean up your room within the next, you know, three minutes or whatever.

• 2:25:15Jocko Willink?

  You can have a milk.

• 2:25:16Speaker 01

  I'll give you, yes, don't even say milk though, just, I'll make you, unless they already know.

• 2:25:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:21Speaker 01

  Unless they're in the know, then whatever. But you say, I'll give you a special dessert or treat or whatever. You make it with the milk. You put a little bit of MCD oil in there. You know, you make it taste all gourmet the way you did. So boom, they clean up their room within three minutes, by the way, whatever time parameters you give them. They get the milk all thinking they won. They won the game.

• 2:25:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:25:44Speaker 01

  You know, oh, I did that little task you told me to do and I, and I saved the, the deal. Right, got my dessert. You won the game.

• 2:25:52Jocko Willink?

  And actually, they won too.

• 2:25:53Speaker 01

  The whole team won.

• 2:25:54Jocko Willink?

  The whole team won. I like it.

• 2:25:57Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget about joint warfare and krill oil. Recently, Leif Babin forgot about joint warfare. And he got off the mat. He, he texted me, he's like, bro, I didn't take joint warfare for like three days for whatever. He's traveling or went to something. And he's like, I got done rolling and I said, man, why am I so jacked up? Oh, yeah. Cause I haven't taken any joint warfare. Got back on the joint warfare, back on the good to go train.

• 2:26:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I remember, and which was ironic, and I addressed this on that, uh, there was a post that he made, is that the one you're talking about?

• 2:26:27Jocko Willink?

  He posted it.

• 2:26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I made a.

• 2:26:29Jocko Willink?

  He posted it cause he was like, I can't even believe this. It's ridiculous.

• 2:26:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:33Jocko Willink?

  The, the difference that you notice.

• 2:26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And like I said, the irony there is, early on, it wasn't with joint warfare, it was with krill oil. I forgot mine. In New York.

• 2:26:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, New York.

• 2:26:44Speaker 01

  And Jenna comes in, you know, actually, I told Leif, I told a bunch of people, but you know, no one really wanted to give me any.

• 2:26:50Jocko Willink?

  No, I definitely didn't want to give me, give you any. Cause I travel with like the number of that I need for that time period that I'm be gone for. I can't spare any.

• 2:26:59Speaker 01

  Can't spare the nutrients.

• 2:27:00Jocko Willink?

  Running around with like extra krill oil for you.

• 2:27:05Jocko Willink?

  Just like you're not gonna eat my water in the field. I carried it, I'm drinking it, unless you're gonna die.

• 2:27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, me, I'll say really, yeah, exactly. Bro, in high school, when I, when me and Jade would, when my brother, me and my brother would lift. So we were real like disciplined with the post workout meal, meal, right? And it wouldn't, I wouldn't say it would be measured out, but there'd be enough, you know, you'd have to have a specific amount for the post workout meal. So if we were to go buy sushi or go buy something like good and they'd be, oh, you know, my brother, I would ask, oh, let me get some, let me taste it. We'd say, I can't spare the nutrients. So I can't give you any, I wanna share, but I can't spare the nutrients for my, for my workout, whatever. That's, no, that's what you did.

• 2:27:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:27:47Speaker 01

  That's what you do with your krill. Nonetheless, that, uh, after, you know, a few hours of, of failure, you know, getting more krill oil, Jenna Lee Babin came through with the krill oil.

• 2:27:58Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 2:28:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's kind of like.

• 2:28:01Jocko Willink?

  And then you were back in the game.

• 2:28:02Speaker 01

  Oh, huge time. So it's just ironic that Leif, Jenna's husband.

• 2:28:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:07Speaker 01

  Went through the same deal.

• 2:28:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, you gotta be careful with that. You don't wanna run out.

• 2:28:11Speaker 01

  Don't fall off, yeah.

• 2:28:12Jocko Willink?

  And you, you mentioned Warrior Kid Milk. If you got kids, get them Warrior Kid Milk. Don't even play around. Don't even play around. What are you gonna give them?

• 2:28:22Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Hershey's syrup to make chocolate milk? You can give them Nestle's quick to make chocolate milk? Why don't you just give them a big glass of type two diabetes?

• 2:28:35Jocko Willink?

  Cause that's what you're doing.

• 2:28:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:37Jocko Willink?

  Or you can say, hey, here's something that tastes better and is incredibly good for you.

• 2:28:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:28:44Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Warrior Kid Molk, you can get some of that.

• 2:28:48Speaker 01

  Also, you want to represent while on the path, Jaco's store. It's called Jaco Store, obviously.

• 2:28:55Jocko Willink?

  Original.

• 2:28:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. We all know that, I think by now. Well, actually, maybe not everybody. Nonetheless, JacoStore.com, that's where you can get your Discipline Equals Freedom t-shirts.

• 2:29:06Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:29:07Speaker 01

  Rash Guards, new one out, by the way. We have a new Rash Guard out. Stand by to get some. Stand by to get some jujitsu or whatever it is you're doing.

• 2:29:17Jocko Willink?

  Wait, stand by to get the new Rash Guard or that's what the Rash Guard says?

• 2:29:20Speaker 01

  Both. It's good.

• 2:29:22Jocko Willink?

  All right, cool. T-shirts, Rash Guards, hats, truckers hats, beanies. Lightweight hoodies for those of you that live in the lower 48 states.

• 2:29:31Speaker 01

  Nope. Brady Lander texted me. He was like, today, he's in Michigan. He's in Michigan. He said, today is lightweight hoodie day.

• 2:29:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, he also did a good job of posting that little thing of him out in the freezing cold. And he was like, we just need lightweight up here. Cause he's hardcore.

• 2:29:47Speaker 01

  Oh, he was teasing. Oh, okay. He's hardcore.

• 2:29:49Jocko Willink?

  He was hardcore.

• 2:29:50Speaker 01

  Well, hey, if you're not as hardcore as Brady in those circumstances, we have heavyweight hoodies too. So boom, light and heavy, whatever you need, whatever you like. Lot of cool stuff on there. If you like something, get something.

• 2:30:01Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget about Jaco White Tea, which I am currently drinking. And the reason I'm drinking it is not only because it tastes good, but also because I like having an 8,000 pound deadlift, factually 100% guaranteed. If you don't, if you, if you drink a Jaco White Tea and you can't deadlift 8,000 pounds, you can send me the empty can and I'll send you the nickel for the can.

• 2:30:24Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:30:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that's, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Cause if you don't, then man, you just don't know what you're thinking in the world.

• 2:30:33Speaker 01

  Not subscribe.

• 2:30:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. If you don't subscribe, then you're not subscribed.

• 2:30:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:37Jocko Willink?

  Which isn't good.

• 2:30:38Speaker 01

  Kind of like it is what it is.

• 2:30:39Jocko Willink?

  We launch, occasionally, rare occasion, we launch something randomly.

• 2:30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:43Jocko Willink?

  For like some kind of an event, some kind of a situation. We'll launch the, so if you're just expecting, oh, it's Wednesday. I know where I'm going to get, get the podcast. Then you jump on there. There was another one waiting for you.

• 2:30:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:53Jocko Willink?

  So if you want to get those, know those, subscribe to the podcast, wherever you subscribe to podcasts. And don't forget about the Warrior Kid Podcast.

• 2:31:03Jocko Willink?

  Which is awesome.

• 2:31:05Jocko Willink?

  For some reason, I always clear myself hot to say that Warrior Kid stuff is awesome. I think it's because I'm saying it as like a dad. You know what I mean?

• 2:31:16Speaker 01

  Yes, I do know.

• 2:31:16Jocko Willink?

  I'm not saying it directed at myself. I don't mean like, hey, I'm great at the Warrior Kid Podcast. I'm awesome. I'm not saying that. I'm saying it as a dad, if you can get your kid to listen to Warrior Kid Podcast, it will benefit them greatly in trying to figure out the ways of the world. And how to live in this crazy world that we have. And also, there's a Warrior Kid that makes soap in Central California. Well, I guess it's Southern California, but anyways, IrishOaksRanch.com, young Aiden, running a business. I think he's 13 years old. Pretty soon, he's not gonna be a kid anymore. But in the meantime, you get some of his soap so you can stay clean.

• 2:32:01Jocko Willink?

  And we got a YouTube video channel. Is that what it's called?

• 2:32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, YouTube video channel. Yeah.

• 2:32:10Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 2:32:11Speaker 01

  As opposed to YouTube what?

• 2:32:13Jocko Willink?

  Channel.

• 2:32:14Speaker 01

  Audio channel?

• 2:32:14Jocko Willink?

  Audio channel. Well, anyways, on that video channel on YouTube, which the video channel is called, Jocko Podcast. That's the video channel, right?

• 2:32:25Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:32:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So if you go to that, you can watch a bunch of videos that Echo Charles made. And you can watch this podcast. You can see what Echo Charles looks like. He looks like not like what he sounds.

• 2:32:37Speaker 01

  Evidently.

• 2:32:37Jocko Willink?

  Evidently. And also, he makes, he, he's, he, what do you, what do you, experiment with?

• 2:32:45Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:32:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. He makes videos with his own personal skills.

• 2:32:52Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 2:32:53Speaker 01

  You have such an eloquent, interesting way of putting things.

• 2:32:56Jocko Willink?

  I feel like a lot of times when you make videos, you're not, you're experimenting in a way. You're not.

• 2:33:02Speaker 01

  That is true.

• 2:33:03Jocko Willink?

  It's not like, it's not like I'm saying, hey, make this video and here's the effect that we want.

• 2:33:08Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 2:33:09Jocko Willink?

  You're just over there just making videos and they just. With your own vision.

• 2:33:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, the go, okay, so the goal, well, the goal for the whole YouTube thing is sure, the video version, you wanna watch the podcast, which, you know, man, that's, I dig it now. A lot of people do that. I dig it. Um, and then the excerpts, we have excerpts on there too. If you don't want to watch the whole thing, you know, you can watch.

• 2:33:33Jocko Willink?

  You can share those.

• 2:33:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, cool. But, and then, sure, I'll take an excerpt, essentially, take an excerpt and kind of video wise, have some fun with it, you know, add some effects and music and stuff. And yes, very much experimental.

• 2:33:47Jocko Willink?

  We should make a video of what my life would be like if everything was reflective of how your videos are. It's like everywhere I went, things were exploding.

• 2:33:57Speaker 01

  I thought about that, yeah.

• 2:33:58Jocko Willink?

  That would be kinda funny.

• 2:33:59Speaker 01

  Cause like, actually, that, that Warpath video, that's essentially kinda, kinda the thing. It's like, if you're on the Warpath, and here's all the things that you're doing. So it showed, like, you know, the little video, like, video clips of me, when I, or not of me, that I got of you just doing your stuff.

• 2:34:13Jocko Willink?

  Jiu Jitsu and, and writing and stuff.

• 2:34:15Speaker 01

  So you, but if you're on the Warpath, that's kinda what it represents a little bit. See what I'm saying?

• 2:34:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:20Speaker 01

  Just a path of destruction in a constructive way.

• 2:34:24Jocko Willink?

  Check. So you can do that. You can also get Psychological Warfare, which is a little bunch of tracks to help you overcome moments of weakness, which apparently are quite effective, because I've had many people explain to me that they utilize them regularly.

• 2:34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:40Jocko Willink?

  So Psychological Warfare, iTunes, Google Play, MP3, platforms of all kinds. You can, you can check that out. Also, check out Flipside Canvas, which is Dakota Meyer. If you haven't listened to episode 115 of this podcast, it's one of the most popular podcasts, uh, one of the heaviest podcasts, one of the most impactful podcasts.

• 2:35:06Jocko Willink?

  And there's a lot of impactful podcasts, so I guess that's saying a lot, but Dakota's making, what are they, what was he making? What are those things called?

• 2:35:15Speaker 01

  Canvas.

• 2:35:16Jocko Willink?

  Canvases.

• 2:35:17Speaker 01

  Art.

• 2:35:17Jocko Willink?

  Art, right?

• 2:35:18Speaker 01

  Hanging.

• 2:35:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Pieces.

• 2:35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35:20Jocko Willink?

  And they, he's got a bunch of different ones, but he actually has made some kind of based on this podcast. He's got one that says, discipline equals freedom. He's got one that says, good. He's got one that says, time is running out. And he's got one that says, get after it.

• 2:35:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:35:38Jocko Willink?

  So if you want to get one of those, if you want to post that thing up, then you can post it up. You can just have a giant get after it on your ceiling where you sleep. So when you wake up in the morning, the first thing you see is a giant sign that says, get after it. So check out that.

• 2:35:51Speaker 01

  Yes. Very good ones too. I was looking, I was actually browsing like a bunch of them. Bro, those are good, man.

• 2:35:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:57Speaker 01

  Those are real good.

• 2:35:58Jocko Willink?

  And made in America, I forgot to say that, but once again, same thing, same thing as Origin. But now we're in Texas, we're building, we have the factory, we're making them, we're printing them. It's all American made.

• 2:36:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:36:10Jocko Willink?

  So you're not just supporting Dakota, who is an awesome guy to support. You're also supporting just America in general, which is a positive thing.

• 2:36:21Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, big time. Also, when you're expanding our, our home gyms, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna go to onet.com/jocko

• 2:36:33Speaker 01

  and get your stuff there. That's where you get good stuff. Rings, kettlebells. Kettlebell's a big deal. That's like a staple, the rings and the kettlebells.

• 2:36:43Jocko Willink?

  Big staple.

• 2:36:48Speaker 01

  Lot of good stuff on there. Some, those elk bars.

• 2:36:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah.

• 2:36:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, those are a big deal too. Those will come in the, in the clutch when you want a little snack.

• 2:36:57Jocko Willink?

  Little, you need a little something.

• 2:36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:00Jocko Willink?

  Get yourself one of those elk bars.

• 2:37:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially, and if you're.

• 2:37:04Jocko Willink?

  If you're lifting kettlebells, you probably gonna need some elk bars to supplement the scenario.

• 2:37:09Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, big time. A lot of good stuff on there. Anyway, onet.com/jocko.

• 2:37:14Jocko Willink?

  Like the, uh. Characters or whatever, right?

• 2:37:18Speaker 01

  What, the kettlebells?

• 2:37:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:20Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, the whole set. Primal bells.

• 2:37:22Jocko Willink?

  Did you get, did you get any Star Wars ones?

• 2:37:24Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, the Star Wars.

• 2:37:26Jocko Willink?

  Do you, do you feel pride when you say that answer is a quiz? Yes.

• 2:37:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:37:29Jocko Willink?

  As if like that makes you better than me?

• 2:37:31Speaker 01

  Little bit, yeah. Yes, I do a little bit, but the, yeah, well, what?

• 2:37:36Jocko Willink?

  Star Wars doesn't really hit me that like strong.

• 2:37:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, alright, you know, I guess.

• 2:37:43Jocko Willink?

  It's good, um, but it doesn't, I don't know.

• 2:37:46Speaker 01

  Well, they have the Marvel, what about Marvel? Cause they have like a, um, uh, Iron Man one too.

• 2:37:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Doesn't really.

• 2:37:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that doesn't surprise me, but it's dope though.

• 2:37:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, I saw, which one did you get? Did you get Darth Vader? No, you got the Stormtrooper.

• 2:38:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna get the Darth Vader one for sure. I'm gonna get all of them.

• 2:38:03Jocko Willink?

  How much, how much does Darth Vader weigh?

• 2:38:04Speaker 01

  Um.

• 2:38:06Jocko Willink?

  Is that the biggest?

• 2:38:07Speaker 01

  I forget, I think that's the biggest one.

• 2:38:08Jocko Willink?

  Like a forty-eight?

• 2:38:09Speaker 01

  No, it's bigger, I think it's.

• 2:38:10Jocko Willink?

  It's bigger than a forty-eight kilogram?

• 2:38:12Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, no.

• 2:38:13Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:38:14Speaker 01

  Sorry, sorry.

• 2:38:14Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say. Cause that's the biggest I have.

• 2:38:16Speaker 01

  It might be the seventy.

• 2:38:17Jocko Willink?

  Step up this arms race one more time.

• 2:38:21Speaker 01

  Forty-eight kilograms, so, oh, it's over a hundred pounds then, huh?

• 2:38:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, a hundred and six pounds. What's your biggest?

• 2:38:26Speaker 01

  My biggest one is the Bigfoot one, ninety, ninety pounds or something like that.

• 2:38:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:38:31Speaker 01

  Whatever, bruh. Nonetheless, anyway, on it.com, a lot of good stuff on there, get something.

• 2:38:35Jocko Willink?

  Hey, I got a bunch of books too. Mikey and the Dragons, book for younger kids where they learn to deal with and overcome fear. Way of the Warrior Kid and Mark's Mission. And now we have book three coming out. And actually a little kid posted a book review of Way of the Warrior Kid. I'm gonna have to repost it, but it's legit.

• 2:38:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:56Jocko Willink?

  Little kid's a BMX racer.

• 2:38:58Speaker 01

  Oh dang.

• 2:38:58Jocko Willink?

  He talks about all the rules of the Way of the Warrior Kid and how they apply to his life. How he has to take care of his BMX bike, take care of your gear. Has to eat properly, has to get up early, get on the plan. So, pretty cool to see if you want your kids to be on the plan. Or if you want your neighbor kids to be on the plan, or if you want your kids at the school, get this book, series of books, Way of the Warrior Kid, Mark's Mission, and book three coming out. It'll be on the, it'll be available for preorder very soon. I'll let everyone know. It's called Where There's a Will. And then the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual.

• 2:39:34Jocko Willink?

  Just how to get after it mentally and physically. And emotionally.

• 2:39:43Speaker 01

  Feelings.

• 2:39:44Jocko Willink?

  The fact that that book is continuing, I'm continuing to get the best feedback on that book. So you know what's cool? Now people are posting little pictures of it. Okay, this page got me through today.

• 2:39:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39:58Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Dismember's Freedom Field Manual. Get that one. It's not on Audible. It's on iTunes, Amazon Music, Google Play. It's on MP3 platforms. Don't forget about Extreme Ownership. The first book I wrote with my brother Leif Babin about what we learned in combat and how you can apply it to your business and your world and your life. And then we followed that up with the dichotomy of leadership, which we are now getting multiple reports from the battlefield that the dichotomy of leadership is is a little bit better. Some people think. I am, I am, I kind of felt that way. But you know, Extreme Ownership has the core. Like it's always gonna have, it's always gonna be the bigger brother.

• 2:40:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's the OG.

• 2:40:42Jocko Willink?

  But you never know, man. Dichotomy, sometimes that that other kid, right?

• 2:40:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:40:47Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes the other kid has the, has a little bit, he can learn lessons. That's exactly what happened with dichotomy. We learned lessons after we wrote Extreme Ownership and said, you know what the most, you know what the hardest thing for people to do? Is balance the dichotomy of leadership. That was chapter 12 in Extreme Ownership. Then it became a whole book.

• 2:41:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's kind of like Rambo, right? You know, so Rambo, when people say, who do you, what do you think you're Rambo? They're talking about Rambo, First Blood Part Two.

• 2:41:14Jocko Willink?

  Right, right.

• 2:41:15Speaker 01

  So dichotomy is kind of like Rambo where like people are like, oh, I love the dichotomy a lot, but, but the people who know, know that First Blood is the real movie, is the real OG one. That Rambo's not better. Rambo's not, Rambo gets a lot of glory. They get the praise and it's awesome.

• 2:41:31Jocko Willink?

  Well, one thing that I guarantee you is the dichotomy of leadership is not Jaws Two.

• 2:41:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:41:36Jocko Willink?

  Which no one talks about Jaws Two. No one cares about Jaws Two. Jaws One is epic.

• 2:41:44Jocko Willink?

  So the dichotomy of leadership is epic in its own right. And it can stand on its own. Yes. But it's still gonna be still in the shadow. It seems to be coming out from the shadow. I guess that's what I'm saying. Just like Rambo. Okay, well, that's good. Don't forget about Echelon Front. That is our leadership consultancy is we solve problems through leadership. So it's me, Leif Babin, JP Danelle, Dave Burke, Flynn Cochran, Mike Shirelli, Mike Byma, and Jason Gardner. Go to echelonfront.com for details if you want us to come and help you align the leadership inside your organization. So you can destroy your competitors. Is that a little bit much? Maybe.

• 2:42:27Jocko Willink?

  But what do you want to do? Give them a gentle massage? No, you want to crush them. So if you want to do that, reach out, echelonfront.com. Don't forget about the muster. We have musters. It's a leadership event. It's two days long. We're doing it in Chicago, in Denver, and in Sydney this year. Go to extremeownership.com. Every one of these events that we've done has sold out. So these are all going to sell out. They're on track to sell out right now. So if you want to come to those, go to echelonfront.com and/or extremeownership.com and you can register now before it sells out. And when it sells out, you're gonna be mad. Don't be mad at me. Take ownership of it.

• 2:43:08Jocko Willink?

  I'm trying to take ownership right now, telling you that it's gonna sell out. I'm taking ownership of the fact that it's gonna sell out and I'm trying to communicate it to you. Hopefully you listen. So that's that EF Online. If you can't make it to the muster. Or let's say you got 300 people in your company or 3,000 people in your company and you want to bring them all to the muster. And you can't. Or you want to bring Echelon Front in, but Echelon Front, we can't travel to the nine countries that your company is located in. So guess what? That's why we made EF Online, so that you can do and your entire organization.

• 2:43:43Jocko Willink?

  can get completely aligned in how you are utilizing leadership across your organization. So it's online, but it's not just watching videos. It's yes, there's videos, but it's also interactive where you, where you get put into leadership scenarios and then you have to figure out what to do. And if you choose the wrong scenario, you're going to lead your company or your platoon into a bad situation. So check it out efonline.com. And I already talked about this EF Overwatch. This is the company that we have now where we are taking special operations and combat aviation people,

• 2:44:24Jocko Willink?

  leaders and putting them into companies so that the companies can utilize the leadership skills of these experienced combat leaders to help their company lead to victory. And as I mentioned earlier, you don't, I recommend you don't hire just based on experience. Recommend you, you hire people based on the talent that they have, especially the leadership capability that they have. And if you want to stay in the game with us, Echo and I are actually on the interwebs.

• 2:45:05Jocko Willink?

  We are on Twitter, we are on Instagram and we are on that Facebook.

• 2:45:12Jocko Willink?

  Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to the police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, correctional officers, border patrols, all first responders, including the dispatchers. I spent some time, as I said, with the police out in North Carolina recently. And what a tough job and what a great bunch of people out there putting it all on the line to protect us here at home. And of course, to our military men and women, like the one that I opened up this podcast with, Fred Garland Bragg Jr., First Lieutenant, US Army, killed in action in Vietnam on July 12th, 1967.

• 2:46:02Jocko Willink?

  But a hero, a leader, and an example to all of us that regardless of the odds you are facing,

• 2:46:15Jocko Willink?

  you can stand up and you can fight.

• 2:46:20Jocko Willink?

  And to everyone else out there, you can do the same thing every day. Stand up to whatever challenges you face and get after it.

• 2:46:32Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco out.