The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke #14: How to Consistently Control Your Ego

One of the biggest challenges in Leadership is checking one's ego. Up and down the chain of command. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Debrief Podcast, episode 14 with Dave Berke and me, Jocko Willink. And this is a little bit of behind the scenes of what we do at Echelon Front. At Echelon Front, our leadership consultancy, we work with a wide range of companies and we solve their problems through leadership. And as a team, we often debrief the things that are unfolding inside these companies as we uncover problems and we get them solved. And sometimes I think it'd be great to share these debriefs with everyone, so everyone gets to learn. So, here we go. Dave's with me today.

• 0:44Jocko Willink?

  Dave, let's debrief. What do you got?

• 0:48Dave Berke?

  This is actually, I kind of cherry picked this one because I wanted to, actually wanted you to be talking about a little bit. This is an unanswered question from EF Online, or a question that didn't get answered initially during one of the online sessions that we had. And the reason I wanted to talk about this is that a version of this question gets answered, or gets asked, all the time. And the question was simply, "How do you consistently check your ego?" And not only is this, not only is there a version of this that gets asked regularly, the connection to ego, I would say, sits in almost every question we get, or every problem

• 1:31Dave Berke?

  we get, there is a connection to ego inside there. Because oftentimes, when we're working with clients and we are working then individually with someone inside a company, the questions will be, "Hey, I have a problem with this person," or "I have an issue with this team," or "my boss," or "my subordinates." And there's components of friction inside the organization that they're trying to solve. And listen, they come wanting to solve these problems. These are people that believe in their principles and they want to get better leaders. But as you peel back, most of these questions, ego is almost always sitting inside there. Sometimes it's right on top and it's this big, giant thing, and sometimes it's more subtle, it's more underneath the question. But the question that's being asked is representative of one of the most common things we get is...

• 2:18Dave Berke?

  The ego is part of this. So how do you consistently check your ego? And I was thinking about not just how to answer this in a sort of a Q and A scenario, but how to connect the idea of ego to any problem that we're solving. And we say it all the time. We all at Echelon Front will give you the same answer. The most important attribute in a leader is humility. That is verbatim how we answer that question because humility is what allows you to listen, what allows you to change, what allows you to evolve and adapt and let other people do the things they need to do. And all the things we talk about are almost always connected.

• 2:56Dave Berke?

  The reason I wanted to bring this up is that a lot of times when we hear people ask the explicit ego question, what often comes to mind is ego gets connected to this kind of like overt arrogance, where almost like your demeanor is arrogant. And people think about sort of this external arrogance that's associated with ego, whether it's a swagger, or it's a look, or it's the way you interact with the people around you. Like the word I wrote down was people that are cocky. We say, oh, those people have an ego. But the ego that's really the problem sometimes sits underneath. It's not visible. And it's certainly not visible in the way that you look, or the way you walk, or the way that you act.

• 3:38Dave Berke?

  But it's your ego that gets offended by what other people are doing. People get, when you get offended by your behavior. And I talked to you about this a while ago when I was talking, when we were just talking about this idea of humility. And one of the things you described, and I think it was on a podcast, I think we talked about this on one of the Jocko podcasts, was this mechanism, this idea that humility is a physical mechanism inside your brain and the way you think about that. And what I wanted to talk about was how I described this to someone who was talking to me about how do you keep your ego in check? Is the way I said, I said, your ego, your ego has a voice. Your own ego has a voice and you have to learn how to...

• 4:23Dave Berke?

  Decipher the voice that's in your head, which one is your ego? And which one is the other part of your brain that isn't the ego part? And where I took that from is when you were describing me a situation and you, and I can't remember what the situation was, it doesn't matter. And you said, and then I go, oh, this is you talking. Oh, that's my ego. And your recognition of what you were hearing in your head, which was, hey, the problem is this person, the problem is this. And you, and you said, oh, that's my ego. And that got me thinking about the idea that ego, this, this thing that takes over is actually a voice that you can learn to identify. And you don't want to mute the ego. You actually want to, you want to hear it, not shut it up.

• 5:07Dave Berke?

  You want to be able to recognize when it's talking. So you can then go, oh, that thing that's talking is my ego. I hear what it's saying and now I can actually hear it, listen to it. And then more than likely do something different with that. And you said, the reason that's important is that your ego, we all have it. Your ego loves you. It's the way it's talking to you, it loves you and you want to hear what it has to say. The problem with your ego is that it will love you, the way you said this, it will love you to death, which means it's going to drive you to making bad decisions. It's going to drive you to do things that you shouldn't be doing. When you talk about, for me, when I think about consistently keeping your ego in check, it's that recognition that there, you have to develop the mechanism in your own mind that you are constantly looking and listening and hearing for your own ego's voice.

• 5:52Dave Berke?

  It never just goes away. It never just stops. You are not going to keep it from talking, but it's the recognition of when that's the thing that you're hearing and how to, to do that. And there are so many examples of people that are in the game, people that believe in, in, in the power of humility and people that believe in the power of, of extreme ownership and the principles they teach, still run into trouble and almost always, almost always, it's the ego that is the instigator of those problems.

• 6:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the um, that, that quote that your ego will love you to death is a permutation of a quote that I heard from a guy named Jay Adams, who was a skateboarder in the 70s. And he was, he was the, he was the guy that gave skateboarding, you know, skateboarding has a, like a rebellious, a rebellious attitude to it, at least a large portion of skateboarding has a rebellious attitude to it. He's kind of the guy, I guess maybe him and Tony Alba, that crew, that crew of guys are the guys that gave skateboarding sort of this rebellious attitude. He ended up, he ended up having, you know, a pretty rough run.

• 7:09Jocko Willink?

  Um, ended up, you know, drugs, alcohol, drugs, prison, out of prison, back into prison. And he eventually became sober and, and went off drugs and but you know, he was able to talk about this addiction and that's what he said, that's what he said about drugs. He said, everybody, he said, everybody love drugs, you, he, what he said, he said something like, hey, it doesn't matter if you love drugs or not, drugs love everyone and they'll love you to death. He eventually did, he died of a heart attack while he was, you know, sober at a pretty young age, I think he was maybe 50 something, 53, 54, something like that.

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  But I, I just thought to myself, is that the fact that, the fact that something can love you to death? And I immediately, I immediately thought of, that's your ego. Cause your ego loves you, your ego absolutely loves you. And you know, you, you said this statement, which is the right statement, but I need to, I need to think about how, how you said it. You said, you said, you want to hear what your ego, your ego has to say, which is true. You want to hear what your ego has to say, but it's, but that doesn't, that doesn't do it justice. That doesn't do it justice, your ego.

• 8:28Jocko Willink?

  Is this demon that has intimate knowledge of your desires and wants and needs? And it knows exactly what it is that you want. And so you want to listen to that thing. So you want to hear that voice is an archangel to your brain. But it's really a demon. And that's why you have to watch out for it. And it's going to tell you all these things that it's not just that you want to hear them. It's beyond that. It's beyond that. It's a deeper want. And so that's why it's so tempting. And I'll tell you another thing.

• 9:13Jocko Willink?

  There's an attitude of, hey, if I say, you know what? That's my ego. You know what? If I admit it, then it's okay. Okay, so there's some things where in life, you know, if you admit it, then it's almost like it's okay. Right? And it's a horrible thing. Like I think Echo is the first person I heard this when someone says, you know, I'm just direct with people. And therefore, if I treat you like horribly, it's okay because I already told you that I'm direct. And that's just the way it is. Yeah, or I'm just be, look, I'm just a straight shooter. So you just need to deal with it. And as if that makes it okay. Sometimes people do that with their ego. They say, you know, I know this is just my ego, but this is what.

• 9:55Jocko Willink?

  And I'm here to tell you that does not make it okay. Just admitting that it's your ego that's driving your decision making process doesn't make it okay. It doesn't make it okay. It still is a negative. And by the way, it's the same amount of negative. Whether you hide it and I see that you're doing something for your ego or you are blatantly tell me about it. Either way, I know what you're doing and it's bad. So it's a.

• 10:22Jocko Willink?

  That ego will, it will love you to death.

• 10:27Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and again, I'm paraphrasing, I won't get any of these quotes exactly right, but you once said,

• 10:35Dave Berke?

  "Every problem you have, if you dig deep enough, if you peel it back enough, eventually you'll find out how you are causing that problem, how you are contributing. Every problem you have, if you dig deep enough, you will eventually find out how you are causing it, which is a good thing because that means then you can fix that. And it's your ego that will keep you from doing that. And in every question we have, or if you even think of it in larger terms, every problem you've got,

• 11:08Dave Berke?

  and you think about how you want to solve that problem, and I think the reason why I said you don't want your ego to not talk, you want to hear it, is the point is,

• 11:17Dave Berke?

  you've got to recognize where your ego is contributing to whatever problem you've got. As you splay it out, it's someone else, or it's the market, whatever you've rationalized is the real problem. If you dig deep enough, you're going to find the problem is you, and the only thing that keeps it from doing that is your own ego. That's how much power your ego has. It will stop you from solving the problems in your life.

• 11:37Jocko Willink?

  I'm not trying to take this just like level 27.

• 11:40Dave Berke?

  I'm kind of hoping you will.

• 11:42Jocko Willink?

  So, there's this whole concept of telling the truth, right? Tell them the truth, tell the truth.

• 11:52Jocko Willink?

  And you can take that to extreme, right? Of, "Hey, listen, I am going to tell the truth," and that is the best solution. And Sam Harris, a friend of mine, he's like 100%, like you need to tell the truth about what's happening. So, you run into the sort of, what is the expression that Sam Harris and other people use to? It's a thought experiment, right? This is the term, thought experiment, we'll do a thought experiment on this. So, like, you know, a thought experiment is, okay, if your wife asks you, you know, "How does dinner taste that your wife cooked for you?" Right? And the dinner didn't taste good.

• 12:34Jocko Willink?

  Well, should you tell the truth?

• 12:37Jocko Willink?

  Because the truth is the dinner doesn't taste good.

• 12:41Jocko Willink?

  And so, and I know I've always said, "Well, you know, here we are, we gotta think strategically, right? We gotta think strategically. Tactically, you might be telling the truth. Strategically, it's gonna cost you. You need to think through that more." And I always felt kind of uncomfortable with that answer because I am a truth speaker and I believe in telling the truth.

• 13:00Jocko Willink?

  So here's the deal. Guess what? You should tell the truth. You should tell the truth. And you know what? The truth is, you made 47 mistakes to get to a point where that dinner that your wife made doesn't taste good. You didn't give her feedback six years ago. You didn't, there's a million things that you did wrong that put you in this position. So that's why we don't tell the truth. The reason we don't tell the truth is because if you tell the truth, what you're gonna be telling is that it is your fault. You know, this is the Charlie Plum thing. When Charlie Plum's like, "Hey, if my cellmate annoys me, it's my fault." So that's the truth.

• 13:44Jocko Willink?

  The truth is, when Dave says to me, "Hey Jocko, is it annoying you that I keep

• 13:51Jocko Willink?

  picking my nails while you're talking?" The truth is,

• 13:58Jocko Willink?

  you're not annoying me. The truth is, I am being annoyed because I'm allowing myself to be annoyed. And the truth is, if I was a good leader, I'd actually be able to get you to stop doing that with your nails during that time. That's the truth. The truth is, I should be a better friend and be able to communicate better and have a better relationship with you where I could get you to cease doing things that annoy me. That's the truth. So when you really tell the truth, the truth is, it's your fault.

• 14:24Jocko Willink?

  So when somebody says, "Well, Dave's, if Dave is doing a bad job at his job, if he's doing a bad job, should I tell him the truth?" Yes, you should. And the truth is, "Dave, I haven't given you good direction. Dave, I haven't given you good guidance. Dave, I haven't given you the resources that you need." That's the truth. And if we ultimately get to the truth where Dave actually is incapable of doing this job, yes, I should tell him the truth. But we skip all the ones that were our fault along the way. We skip them. And we go straight to it's Dave's fault. And that is your ego.

• 15:01Jocko Willink?

  All right. What's your next, what's your next example?

• 15:02Dave Berke?

  Yeah. So this one's a little more traditional situation. Um, working with a company, there's a supervisor, it's one of like, I don't know, I think there's like seven or eight supervisors that all working for this one manager. So the scenario is he got this manager, he's got seven teams all working for him. And I know them all. The supervisor calls me and he's like, hey, man, I'm kind of losing my patience with my boss. We have these monthly, uh, I think they call them like a hot washer, a wrap up. Where basically the manager goes around all the teams and kind of does the highs and lows or what's been going on. It just kind of catches everybody else up on what's happening with all the teams. And so lately, like the last several months, uh, his teams is getting skipped.

• 15:47Dave Berke?

  Like he's not even being acknowledged. So let's say you're that supervisor working for me. I'll be like, you know, Mary's this, Bill's team's this, John's team's this, Joe, and I'm going to go right past you and not even acknowledge you.

• 15:56Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 15:56Dave Berke?

  And, and this supervisor and his team is kind of getting overlooked and it's creating some frustration, which is totally understandable. So I wanted to kind of, kind of dig a little bit of like, hey, what, what, what, A, what's going on? Why do you think that is? And then like, what do you think the intent is behind it? So it turns out that his team is actually unique. The other six or seven teams that are supervisors, they all work with a client or an outside agency or a contractor. They all work with somebody else. This one team is actually responsible, um, they call the continuous improvement team. So which is, it's strictly internal. So they kind of just work for themselves to help the rest of the teams, but they don't actually generate revenue. They don't actually do anything that has sort of an external focus for the team.

• 16:41Dave Berke?

  So there is a little bit of a kind of a difference in what this team does in terms of how the supervisor and his team operate. And then the question I had is, hey, what do you think, what's going on with your manager? Like, why is this happening? Because it kind of came in pretty hot, like, hey, this is, this is bad. This is a real problem. And the focus of the problem, which I think is very similar to what you said was we skipped a whole bunch of steps and got to what is wrong with the manager? And as we just asked a couple of questions like, hey, is he trying to prove a point? Is he kind of calling you out? Is he maybe trying to make you look bad? And he's like, well, no, no, no, it's not that at all. Like, well, well, what is it?

• 17:21Dave Berke?

  And it was more than anything, he's like, I honestly just don't think he knows exactly what we're doing in this in turn, this, this continues improvement thing, this internal thing. So the last conversation actually helps me kind of summarize this more succinctly was, is he doing this on purpose? No. Is he doing it to make you look bad? No. Is he trying to marginalize your team? No. So what's the real issue here?

• 17:45Jocko Willink?

  Just to follow up on each one of those questions.

• 17:49Jocko Willink?

  What leader would proactively marginalize a team? What leader would proactively try to make someone look bad, right? There's all these things now. Now, I'm not saying that couldn't happen, but the chances are me as a leader, my goal is not to proactively make Dave's team look bad.

• 18:06Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 18:07Jocko Willink?

  That's not, that's not what we're doing.

• 18:09Dave Berke?

  That's right. And yeah, is the chicken dry? Yes, the chicken's dry, but here's why this is what's happening. And, and we started to dig a little bit and, and you know, the details probably aren't that important. One of the things that I started digging on is that what the boss, this manager was doing, he would share his agenda on the, on the shared drive for each meeting and have his, um, subordinates kind of take a look at it. And when the team that was being overlooked wasn't on the agenda, what he first thought was like, oh, okay. Well, I'm not going to say anything because I, I, maybe he's got a plan and he kind of created this scenario by which why this is happening until that kind of scenario spun out of control. What turns out?

• 18:51Dave Berke?

  The boss didn't have any, none of those things were true. None of those intentions were true. And really what this conversation came back to, and it's crazy, huh? You just pulled from that last thing about the, the ego connected to this was, hey, how does your boss get to know what's going on with your team? How's your boss become aware how the internal piece of what you, and all these questions about how does your boss get to understand all the positive things you're doing, all the ways you're contributing, all the impact that you're making on this uniquely designed team? Who is really in the idea, the ideal position to set your boss up to understand all these things so he can explain and articulate that to the rest of the big team, you know, that's seven supervisors, 15, 20 people, it's like a hundred and something people team. Who's in the best position to do that?

• 19:35Dave Berke?

  And of course, the answer is, he is. He's, I am. I'm, I'm, I'm in, in the ideal position. So the takeaway from that was, hey, one thing is, obviously, your boss is not out there to do it by design. And the other part was, so the second piece, and that part was, I think, relatively easy to resolve. The second piece is that what he had also done was kind of perpetuated the narrative he created with his team. So these meetings would come and go. Um, the way it kind of was set up is like, the seven leaders are all there, the rest of the team are sort of remoting themselves in, so they're watching this, just sort of as observers. And when those meetings was over, he was kind of saying somewhat succinctly, like,

• 20:15Jocko Willink?

  Guess we don't matter.

• 20:16Dave Berke?

  Yes, we don't, yeah, exactly right. And so the, the, the, both the up and down solution was, hey, listen, if your boss isn't aware, or all those things, you're in the ideal position. And what you have to actually go do now is you gotta go solve that problem with your subordinate leaders as well, or your subordinates as well, of what, you know, what you've kind of created. This one was not a hard problem to solve, but it was really cool to make the connection between what you just said of, hey, how did we get to this point? Well, there's 47 things that you've done to get to that, that, that meal that didn't taste, or that situation is what it is.

• 20:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's 47 mistakes that you made as a leader to get to a point where my boss, my subordinate, whoever, is doing something that I don't agree with.

• 21:04Dave Berke?

  Yeah. I don't want them doing that. Yeah.

• 21:07Jocko Willink?

  I don't want them doing that. There's 47 mistakes. What kind of influence do you have over your boss if that's happening? What kind of relationship have you built? This is a similar, and we wrote about this in the books, you know, when, when, you know, Leif came to me and didn't understand why our commanding officer in Ramadi was asking these questions. Why is he, why is he asking these questions? And it's like, hey, bro.

• 21:31Jocko Willink?

  Who's the one that's supposed to, who, who is it that should inform the boss so he doesn't ask these questions? Oh yeah, that's us. That's us. So let's do a better job of keeping the boss informed because then the boss won't ask questions. And what's beautiful about that, and you put, you already said this is like, if it's just the boss's fault, what can we do about it? Nothing. It's the boss. We can't do anything about it. If it's my fault, I can fix it. I can fix it all day long. Little something called extreme ownership. And I guess it is now,

• 22:04Jocko Willink?

  my turn. So

• 22:11Jocko Willink?

  you ever seen the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest?

• 22:14Dave Berke?

  Yeah, a while ago. Jack Nicholson, is that right?

• 22:16Jocko Willink?

  Jack Nicholson, yeah. You know, I saw it for the first time when I was a kid.

• 22:22Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I saw it for the first time when I was a little kid. It must have been, you know, when they used to put movies on TV and they would edit out the profanity and maybe they edit out some of the nudity. So you get to see the movie, but I saw it when I was very young. And I, young to a point where I didn't really even remember it, but I remember, there's one thing that I remembered about this. So there's, so the movie takes place in, in kind of a mental hospital, a mental ward. There's two main characters. One of them is, like you said, it's, it's, it's RP McMurphy, who's played by Jack Nicholson. And the other main character is this name, is this main character named Nurse Ratchet, Mildred Ratchet. And, and she's played

• 23:07Jocko Willink?

  by a, an actress named Louise Fletcher. So I saw this movie when I was a little kid, like, and I'm saying, I saw it when I was a little kid. It came out in 1976. So I guess little kid was maybe 1980. I don't know how long it took to get movies. So I didn't see it in a theater or anything, but I remembered seeing it. And my first memory of it was there was this nurse character. Do you remember this nurse character?

• 23:35Dave Berke?

  Not, not really. Just she, she wasn't, she wasn't good, though.

• 23:41Jocko Willink?

  Even as a, as a young child, there was this person that I, that I just remember thinking, not good.

• 23:46Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 23:47Jocko Willink?

  Like this, this, we don't like this person. So, so I, that's my, that's like the only thing I remembered from being a little, little kid. Was there was a bad person, a person that I didn't like in this movie. And then I saw it when I was older, you know, probably a bunch of times. And, and that just kind of

• 24:06Jocko Willink?

  reiterated the fact that there was this character that I absolutely hated and was kind of universally hated.

• 24:15Jocko Willink?

  Everybody hates her. So the other night, I was, my, my daughters, my two, it's just, my wife is gone with my couple of my kids. So it's just me and my college daughters that are right now home, finishing up school, finishing up their college. I'm at home. So it's COVID lockdown in San Diego. And my kids are trying to figure out what to watch and something, something clicked in my, in my head. And I said, oh, have you ever seen one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest? No, you haven't seen it. Okay, let's watch it. So we started watching it.

• 24:50Jocko Willink?

  And

• 24:53Jocko Willink?

  almost within, within the shortest amount of time you could imagine that she comes on the screen.

• 25:02Jocko Willink?

  Both my daughters are like, what's up with her?

• 25:06Jocko Willink?

  You know, as she starts going through this first scene, it's like, I hate her. My daughters are saying like, oh, I hate her.

• 25:13Jocko Willink?

  And of course, this is the feeling that I had when I was a kid too.

• 25:17Jocko Willink?

  And you think it doesn't make any sense whatsoever, right? Cause because the two characters that you've got, right? One is a nurse, a nurse. Right? And, and I will tell you, quite frankly, I think that nurses are near sainthood. Right? The job that they have, it's an incredibly hard job. It's a, it's a thankless job in many respects. It's crazy hours. The pay isn't great. I mean, it's a, you, if you do that job, you have to be a caring, loving, sacrificial person to do that job.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  And so here's this nurse in this, and she's in a mental institution, by the way. So she's got people that are, got all kinds of issues. And on top of that, you've got this, this Jack Nicholson character, who's the other side of the spectrum. He's only taking care of himself. He's completely looking out for himself. He's a miscreant, he's a criminal. But you, you, you get this affection for R.P. McMurphy. Randall McMurphy. You like him, but you hate this nurse. You hate this nurse. Why is it?

• 26:36Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's very obvious. She's cold and she lacks emotions. She doesn't have any emotions. The way she plays this role is absolutely brilliant. Every response that she gives is in this measured kind of monotone voice. No emotions, no real emotions behind it. And the other side of the spectrum. And they, and they, look, we've got the one that's a nurse, so we're setting her, I mean, she's set up to be near sainthood, right? A nurse. She sacrifices for other people. Meanwhile, and I didn't remember this, but I went and watched the other night.

• 27:17Jocko Willink?

  The, the reason that McMurphy's in this mental institution is because he's being evaluated because he's in prison. And he's in prison, and this is clearly stated, he's in prison for statutory rape of a 15-year-old. So you have no reason to connect with this guy in any way. He's, he says, "I'm in there for fighting. I fight all the time." You can clearly see that this guy is the opposite. He is a pure emotionally driven person. So on the one side, you've got this emotionally driven person that fights and, and, you know, goes wild with women and he's drinking. Like, that's his thing. He's a bad guy. He's a traditional bad guy. We should not like him, but we do.

• 27:57Jocko Willink?

  And the other side, we've got this person that has good, how many thousands, millions of times have you heard me talk about keeping your emotions in check? Right? I talk about it all the time. So here I've got the, the, the paragon of emotional control in Nurse Ratched, and I hate her.

• 28:18Jocko Willink?

  And as you watch the movie, you see his emotions start to come out and you want to bring him back. You're like, no, hey, hey, don't do that. Don't let your emotions run this situation right now. You're gonna make bad decisions. You're making a bad decision. You're making an emotional decision and stop it right now. You're also looking at her going, what kind of cold, evil person is this that has no emotions whatsoever? And that's how she rules. She rules as a tyrant. She leads as a tyrant. She leads through imposition of her will on this group of people. He is a leader as well, and he leads with his emotions and connects with people.

• 28:57Jocko Willink?

  And it's an incredibly good example

• 29:02Jocko Willink?

  of why we, as leaders and as human beings, we need to maintain balance between emotion and logic.

• 29:16Jocko Willink?

  Because if you're too detached, you cannot connect with people. And if you don't connect with people, look, at a minimum, you don't connect. At a maximum, you are hated for not having emotions.

• 29:31Jocko Willink?

  The other end of the spectrum is if you only act on your emotions, you will make bad decisions.

• 29:40Jocko Willink?

  And if you do that through everything, through your business, through your coworkers, through your relationships, through your life, you will end up in a bad spot. I'm not saying you're gonna end up with a lobotomy in a mental institution, but you will end up in a bad spot. So, think about that. And you know, another thing that I was actually very stoked on is the other day on EF Online.

• 30:09Jocko Willink?

  I had been talking about, "Look, the worst thing you can do is impose your will on people." Like, and we said it, it was in this podcast or another one, but if I'm imposing my will, I'm making a mistake as a leader. And then one guy on EF Online said, "Hey, you mentioned the other day on the Unraveling podcast, that there was an experiment where the reaction that got the worst, the lowest level of compliance, the lowest level of compliance, came from the imposition of an authoritarian leader over the subordinate. That's the worst, that's the worst level of compliance.

• 30:52Jocko Willink?

  The best level was when the connection was made."

• 30:57Jocko Willink?

  So, if you're brushing up against imposition, be careful.

• 31:04Jocko Willink?

  And if you are leaving your emotions out of the equation, because you've heard me say, "Detach from your emotions," rethink it. We don't, I don't say detach and be void of emotions. Detach, take a step back from them.

• 31:21Jocko Willink?

  Because emotions are part of being a human being. We can't let them run the roost, but we have to employ them properly, so that we can form relationships and we can actually lead.

• 31:40Jocko Willink?

  And with that, I guess that's a good place to stop.

• 31:45Jocko Willink?

  And if you want to go deeper, and we go deep into all aspects of leadership, in case you can't tell, this is what we do, this is what we love to do. Join Dave, join me, the rest of the Echelon Front team at efonline.com, where we solve problems through leadership. We're having these conversations all the time, and we have them live. We are having them live. You want to ask a question, come ask it. Ask Dave, ask me, ask anyone on the Echelon Front team, if you want leadership guidance inside your organization.

• 32:18Jocko Willink?

  We can do that too. Come and check out our leadership consultancy, echelonfront.com. The examples that we talk about here are coming from the business that we work with all the time that the examples are changed. Your secret is safe with us. We modify the examples to a point where there's no possible way you could trace it back to you or nor could anyone else. I've also written a bunch of books on the subject of leadership, Extreme Ownership, The Dichotomy of Leadership, Leadership Strategy and Tactics. I have some other podcasts. One is called Jocko Podcast. One is called Jocko Unraveling. One is called Grounded. And one is called The Warrior Kid Podcast. And if you want to support any of these podcasts, including this one,

• 32:59Jocko Willink?

  you can get some gear from Jocko Store, or from Origin Maine, or from JacoFuel.com. Thanks for listening to us debrief. Now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko. Out.