The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke #21: How You See People Outside Of Work Effects How You Work With Them At Work.

Mind your persona outside of work. 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 21 with Dave Berke and me, Jocko Willink. Dave Berke, let's debrief. What do you got?

• 0:11Dave Berke?

  How you look at people outside of your organization makes a huge difference in how you work with them inside of your organization. So here's the situation. We've got an L-DAP client we've been working with for a while. I was doing actually a full day workshop with them. So it's their leadership and management team. It's like me and 15 of their folks. And this company, they do post-production for a small aircraft builder. So this company builds aircraft, people buy the aircraft from the company, but they have six or seven companies around the country that do some aftermarket updates and some upgrades and make some modifications and stuff. So the work that these smaller companies do, this company that we are working with is one of these companies, has to do a really precise job meeting the specifications

• 0:54Dave Berke?

  of this larger aircraft company. So when the clients, the customers get their product, it's exactly how it's supposed to be. It's an airplane. So very tight tolerances.

• 1:01Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:02Dave Berke?

  So this parent company, to make sure that these other smaller companies doing this after-production work, to make sure it's done correctly, they sent out an inspector. So the inspector goes around to these smaller companies and makes sure that all the setups and all the works that are being done meets that specification. So they know the customers are going to be happy. So this company we're working with is having a problem with this inspector because as they describe him, he's super condescending and hard to get along with. So the question is, how do we deal with this guy? So the way they describe the situation, this guy shows up and he's kind of got like a checklist and a clipboard and all these things that he's looking for.

• 1:39Jocko Willink?

  He's a freaking inspector.

• 1:40Dave Berke?

  He's an inspector.

• 1:41Jocko Willink?

  If I was an inspector, I would have clipboards all over the place and checklists.

• 1:45Dave Berke?

  Totally, man.

• 1:46Jocko Willink?

  And I'd have a small steel ruler. You know what I'm saying? Like a small steel ruler because I'm going to be measuring some stuff.

• 1:54Dave Berke?

  That's what this guy does, man. So he goes around, he's looking at their shop and how their tools are set up. Is it marked correctly? How is all the safety procedures? And he's also got this publication, this manual that's really used as sort of the guidelines. And this manual is maybe, doesn't cover all the details. So they have this sense that he applies them subjectivity. Because if it's not in the manual, he's got to come up with how it should be. And he'll come in one month and say, hey, this is what I need. He'll come back the next month. And even though it's not in the manual, he'll make a change to it. They call it moving the goalposts. So they say every time he comes in, he moves the goalposts. And they describe it as if this guy goes out of his way to find things wrong. And at the end of his two day trip, he'll bring the whole leadership team in here into his office.

• 2:38Dave Berke?

  And then he'll lecture them on how they need to do a better job. And there's a single rep at this company that's sort of the liaison for this guy. And he's the one that asked a question. He said, this relationship is a nightmare. How can I get this guy to stop being a jerk? That's the direct quote. So that's the situation. This inspector, this guy, and how do we make this guy stop being such a jerk? And of course, the solution or the answer is you actually can't make this guy do anything. But what you can do is actually, we can change our viewpoint. We can change our perspective. We can take some ownership of what he has to say and actually try to make this guy part of the team. So when we started talking about the way to solve this,

• 3:21Dave Berke?

  the most important thing I wanted to start with was how does our team view this outside guy from this other company? What is their view of that? And so I even asked, I said, hey, what do you think this guy's number one? Deep down, what do you think this guy's number one real goal is when he comes? What is he really trying to do? And so they went around in the room. This is some of the things they said.

• 3:40Dave Berke?

  He's here to find problems. He's here to make us look bad. He wants to show us that he is in charge. He wants to talk down to us. And they could tell, and I think what you're doing is probably what I was doing. They could tell from the look on my face and my reaction that their answers probably weren't exactly right.

• 4:02Dave Berke?

  Until someone on the team finally said something that I thought was was pretty awesome. And I remember even where she was sitting, she's sitting in the back corner. So she had to stand up to be heard and she said, he's here to help us. And everybody stopped, turned around and I'm like, hey, say that again. She goes, he's here to help us.

• 4:21Dave Berke?

  And, and that was it. That was the line that sort of made everybody realize that we could change our view of him. And so, listen, if you've got outside inspectors, like in this case, if you've got subcontractors, people outside of your team that have to come in and work with you, you can't necessarily control how they are, how they act, how they talk, but you can 100% control how you look at them, how you view them, and how you perceive them. And so, that led us into doing some role play. And we kind of walked through some scenarios. And the first scenario was, hey, instead of pushing back against all the things that he said, what if we took ownership of his criticism and feedback for us? What if we took ownership of the things he said? And said, "Yeah, you're right. We can fix those things."

• 5:07Dave Berke?

  And instead of moving the goalposts, or accusing him of moving the goalposts, what if we thanked him for digging deeper than what the manual said? And exposing some places where we could actually get better, even if it's not written down? And then we talked about, hey, what if every single time he showed up here, we thanked him for the work that he did? And took his inputs onboard and tried to correct them? And what if we listened to his condescending rants? And instead of like sitting there with our chairs with our arms folded kicking back, what if we took notes and wrote them down?

• 5:39Dave Berke?

  And what would happen to the relationship if we did all those things? Would the relationship get better or would it get worse? And there was this argument about this publication, how that we want to make inputs of this publication, and we should be able to influence this publication and make it more clear. Would having a good relationship with him make it easier or harder to change that publication? And if we had a better relationship, would we do better or would we do worse on these inspections? And then I kind of asked this other question too. I said, "Hey, what do you think this guy's life, his day-to-day life for this guy is? This guy gets in a plane, flies to seven different locations, once a month, all around the country, and what do you think he's met with?" And I asked him that, and I said, His life is, this guy's life is a nightmare. This guy works for the parent company.

• 6:21Dave Berke?

  He's given a checklist and a list of things he'd drive, fly around the country to make sure these other companies do exactly what they're supposed to do. And more than likely, none of these companies are building relationships with him. They're pushing back, they're arguing, there's friction. And it's probably understandable why he is the way that he is. So why don't we check our ego? Why don't we take some ownership? Why don't we build a good relationship? And why don't we make it our goal that of those seven companies he works with? He actually likes ours the best. That we're his favorite place to be, we're the people he wanted to work with. What would happen to us and what would happen to that relationship? If that's the viewpoint that we took? Rather than try to get him to stop being the way that he was? What if we took ownership of how we were? And tried to improve the relationship there? And apply that solution to the problem?

• 7:07Dave Berke?

  Makes sense?

• 7:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. It makes perfect sense.

• 7:11Dave Berke?

  You've seen this before?

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  It makes perfect sense and it's just so funny.

• 7:18Jocko Willink?

  The, the, one thing that I've done before that you didn't mention it is you got close. But sometimes I would gamify things. So, so that's like the next level. And maybe, maybe it's because you're dealing with professionals. When I would gamify things, I was probably dealing with like my platoon. Not that my platoon wasn't professional, but they're younger and they're just more, more abrasive. So you could have some fun with it. The other interesting thing is when you, was that you rattled off a list of, you know, when someone is quote showing us, showing, trying to show us he's in charge or quote talking down to us or quote make us look bad. Those, those, when, when you feel those feelings about someone else?

• 8:02Jocko Willink?

  That is such an obvious indicator that your ego is being offended. And you just need, look, is there a point 04% chance that this guy is legitimately just a jerk? There is, there, that possibility does exist in the world. And it's, I don't even like to say that because. Well, the chances are they aren't. And here's the thing, even if they were that person, what's the best way to handle that? It's by being cool. It's by doing what you said, like, hey, imagine when somebody is going to tell you something, and you take out a notebook and write down what they said. That is such a powerful tool on 19 different levels.

• 8:48Jocko Willink?

  The number one and two levels, number one, you actually are taking the information and you're going to be able to hold on to it and take action on it. Number two, you're telling them, I really care about what you're saying enough to put it in eternal documentation. Cause I'm going to write this down, which is awesome. And then, thank you. What a incredible jujitsu tool that is to take someone to maneuver and make someone, make someone's attitude, someone who's coming at you and someone who's hostile to say, thank you, I appreciate that feedback, I'm writing it down.

• 9:31Jocko Willink?

  Such an incredible tool. People don't use it.

• 9:34Dave Berke?

  Yeah. And to your point, those tools work everywhere. And I think part of this problem initially is they had this sense of, oh, this guy doesn't work for us. So we don't have the normal tools available. But to your point is, that actually doesn't matter. You don't have to use that technique because it's not really a technique. It's how you should be, whether it's an outside guy, an inside guy, your boss, your subordinate, your peers, whatever it might be. So the cool thing about that was it also sort of dispelled the idea that, well, we have to interact differently when they're outside the company because we don't have these traditional mechanisms to get people to stop being the way that they are. Listen to people, treat them with respect, rego and check, all those same things apply.

• 10:18Dave Berke?

  And the other cool thing about that is that I'm sitting there sort of facilitating this discussion. The feedback actually came from inside. It's that girl saying, hey, he's here to help us. He's here to help us find mistakes so we don't deliver something to a customer who's paying us a ton of money. And that they end up unhappy because we didn't do these things. And that perspective alone. And so the other part of that was cool is there's about a month in between my onsite visits with them. And inside those two visits, they had this guy come out and I'm not to say like, oh, there's a full 180, but I enjoyed listening to them talk about, he was kind of startled at how nice they were and even this liaison sort of apologized and just how easy it was to get moving in the right direction with God, just by doing exactly

• 11:00Dave Berke?

  what you said, you, hey, man, thanks for being here, appreciate these inputs, this is what we wrote down, this is what we're going to fix, when you come back, we're going to get this thing taken care of. And he's like, oh, that's okay, great, see you in a month. So we're, we're on the path to solving this one.

• 11:14Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Good stuff. All right. What's the next one?

• 11:16Dave Berke?

  Right on.

• 11:19Dave Berke?

  Kind of similar in the vein of relationships. Just because you're in charge, it doesn't mean that everybody's going to be on board with your plan. You, you still need to build relationships up and down the chain and you still need to pay attention to what's going on around you. So I'm going to set this one up and talk a little bit about it, but I also want to talk to you about some things that I've heard you discuss in the past. And I think it was when you were working for the Admiral, I'll get to in just a minute, but this is a situation here where we're working directly for a small company and the president of this company brought us in. So there's this big international company that owns, I don't know, probably seven or eight smaller companies. He's the president of one of those smaller companies here in the United States. We work with him. We haven't been with him for too long. He's relatively new to the company, but he's kind of put in charge and, and has what he feels

• 12:03Dave Berke?

  like is a lot of free rein to run this, this smaller company that he's, he's in charge of. And as soon as he gets into the seat as the president, he starts making some fairly big changes. He's making a lot of personnel changes and they were mostly well received, but they were expensive. He was offboarding a bunch of people, bringing in new people, making a lot of internal changes inside of the organization. And he wasn't quite aware of it. It was starting to create some friction. And in a few months, basically because of, of the cost of what was happening is the board of directors, so this parent company kind of came in and shut him down, shut down his plans. And the hardest part for him about this was that they did it publicly. And so what happened was as he's making these changes,

• 12:45Dave Berke?

  a letter comes down from the parent company board of directors that says, hiring freeze and all lateral movements are frozen. And so, and he's on this email. So it's the email to the whole company. It's like 120 people. All of them get this email. So rather than him get a letter from his boss saying, hey, man, we need you to stop doing this.

• 13:03Jocko Willink?

  When you say the whole company, you just mean his whole company?

• 13:05Dave Berke?

  His, yeah, yeah. This one small company of 120 people. So it's a pretty public thing. Comes straight from the board of directors and. It's a hit. It's a big hit for this guy. It kind of shuts down his agenda, caused some real friction up and down the chain, and he had the sense of he had a lot less influence and a lot less power to do what he wanted than he thought. And he was blindsided by this. He didn't see this thing coming.

• 13:27Dave Berke?

  Couple of things to think about here. One is, hey, listen, and I saw this in the military, I saw this in my time in the military a lot is, you can be in charge, but you always have a boss. And maybe that boss isn't there with you, maybe that boss is in another country, maybe that boss is at another company, maybe that boss is at a different location, but you're the president of this company, you aren't completely autonomous. You've got some leadership that you have to maintain a good relationship with, and it's not a license to operate on your own. And I saw this especially when I was in the F-35, as I was running this F-35 squadron, and nobody knew what was going on. Nobody knew about the airplane, nobody knew what I was doing, nobody had any perspective or insight, because

• 14:08Dave Berke?

  they didn't know about the airplane. But that didn't mean I just ignored my leadership. And my boss was on a whole nother, whole different base. And you've talked a little bit about this, even when you're in Task Unit Bruiser, is your boss wasn't there with you at Shark Base, or Camp Mark Lee, your boss was, I think, in Fallujah. Fallujah. And my boss was in Al Asad, 60, 70 miles away. And obviously, there's some, some things about that that are important, is of course, you got to keep your leadership in the loop, you got to keep them aware, you got to keep them on board with your plan, and you got to work up as much as you have to work down. But there's something I wanted to talk to you about a little bit, too, is even sometimes when you're doing the right thing, when you're making the right moves, doing the right thing, and you have an agenda that is actually what's in the best interest of the company, that doesn't always mean

• 14:51Dave Berke?

  that everybody else is on board. Other people have their own agendas. Other people have their own plans. And

• 15:02Dave Berke?

  I think you called it, the little brother of alignment was agenda. Something along those lines. And an agenda by itself isn't a bad thing. Having an agenda isn't a, isn't a bad thing. But sometimes agendas can actually be a problem if they are moving in different directions, if they are somewhat self-serving, or not aligned with your particular agenda. And you have to be aware of the people around you have an agenda. And my intent here isn't to reveal that somehow his boss had a negative agenda, it's to recognize that what makes sense to you, what seems right, what seemed to the best interest of the team. Other people don't always have that same perspective. You have to be aware that even when you are in charge, even say that even you could be the CEO, you still have to recognize that the people around you may not be on board with your plan.

• 15:47Dave Berke?

  You have to be aware of that. And, and I, I think I'm right, but I remember you talking about having to think strategically for your admiral on what other leadership had it was in the best interest of their teams. Because yeah, the military is all one big thing, but the services kind of want things for themselves. The Navy wants the Navy to be in charge. The Marine Corps wants the Marine Corps to be in charge. And these relationships at high levels, you had to be aware of other people's agendas and how they were maneuvering.

• 16:13Jocko Willink?

  Here's a, here's a cool thing to do, and it's a smart thing to do. In you got your little agenda, whatever it may be, and then your boss has his agenda, whatever that may be. Guess what the best thing to do is? Support your boss's agenda. That, that's, now, is there a chance that your boss's agenda is so far removed in the direction where you believe you should be going with your team? That it makes no sense whatsoever? There is a chance. But generally speaking, in any organization, the subordinate organizations are trying to move in the same direction as the, as the elevated parts of the organization.

• 16:54Jocko Willink?

  You know, there's no, there's no division in a company that's like, oh, we're over here trying to lose money. There's no division in a company saying, hey, we're trying to

• 17:04Jocko Willink?

  treat our people badly. That's, that's not happening. So if my boss has agenda that's a little bit different, I might, I might make adjustments to my agenda so that we come in a little bit cleaner. So here's an example. When we got to Ramadi, we weren't working for my commanding officer at first. We were working for another commanding officer for like two weeks. So that's the way they do big, what do they call it, relief in place? The subordinate units replace the other subordinate leader, the other subordinate units before the senior leaders get replaced. So I roll in there and I'm working for the CEO, the commanding officer of SEAL Team One.

• 17:48Jocko Willink?

  And I know him, but I don't know him well. And one of, one of my guys who I was friends with, who's a SEAL, who had been there with SEAL Team One and working for that commanding officer, he gives me this piece of intel. He says, hey, this commanding officer at SEAL Team One, he loves the, he loves interpreters. He loves Arabic culture. He thinks our interpreters are so important. And so you might want to talk about the interpreters a little bit. So I said, cool. My commanding officer from SEAL Team Three and the commanding officer from SEAL Team One came out for a brief from me when I turned over. I gave probably a 10 slide brief.

• 18:27Jocko Willink?

  I think six of the slides were individually profiling each one of the interpreters that we had and talking about the importance of interpreters and talking about how they bring this dynamic capability to the battlefield and all this stuff. And it was all true. It was all true. It was really smart. It was also the most full support for the commanding officer from SEAL Team One's agenda. Yeah. And so he literally was like, you get it, what's going on here? And I was like, well, thank you, sir. And when we submitted that night to do operations, to go out and do a direct action mission, what do you think he said? Approved, yeah. Approved. He didn't need to see anything else from me. I aligned with what he was doing. It made sense.

• 19:10Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't like he was saying, hey, what we should do is, uh, uh, you know, go out and wear freaking orange strobe lights on our heads. He wasn't saying that and he wouldn't say that. He noticed a particular capability that we had. He realized the power of it. And I said, oh, that's a great capability. I agree. Boom. Here's what I'm going to brief you on. Sure, I'm going to tell you our capabilities. I'm going to tell you how many snipers we have, but you know what else we have? We've got the interpreters. We did a great turnover from your guys. They gave us a great turnover and that meant we were aligned. And that meant we did a bunch of operations for that commanding officer. So by the time my commanding officer took over, we had already done a bunch of ops. And he felt comfortable with what we were doing and boom, we continued. There was no, there was no lag, there was no gap.

• 19:54Jocko Willink?

  So I think that's a important thing. Like you said, you want to understand other people's agendas.

• 20:02Jocko Willink?

  The common example I give with this is, you know, you got Leif and you got Seth in in Charlie Platoon and Delta Platoon. And if we only had 10 sets of night vision, both Leif and Seth are gonna want all that night vision. They're gonna want them all. And they're gonna be pulling for all of them. Each of them would come to me separately and be like, hey, Jock, you know, I think my platoon would really be better with the night vision. And, you know, Seth comes in, hey, bro, I did really think we'd be better. And that's what they're gonna say. And so you're gonna have a natural, positive tension in your organization of people that are fighting for their own departments, divisions, platoons, whatever, teams.

• 20:40Jocko Willink?

  And that's okay. As long as they don't undermine, backstab, lie in order to improve their own position. Yeah. If Leif comes and makes a case and says, hey, Jocko, you know what? The types of operations we're doing here in Charlie Platoon, we're doing mostly night operations. We're going out on these direct action missions at night. Seth's doing overwatches during the day. It just doesn't make sense. Okay, that's a legitimate case. If Seth comes to me and says, hey, you know what? When we maneuver into our overwatch positions, if we can be blacked out, we're gonna be way more clandestine.

• 21:21Jocko Willink?

  Once you're doing a direct, Leif's doing direct actions, but guess what? Direct action's loud and they're making noise anyway, so they might as well use a white. Let's see, these are, by the way, false arguments. This didn't happen. But if it happened, they're just presenting cases. Yeah. And that's okay. Now, if Leif comes to me and says, you know, Seth's guys didn't even sight in their lasers. They don't deserve, and that was a lie, then we got a problem. He's undermining. It's a lie. So what I have to do is sort through the natural tension that is going to exist. And then I have to get, I have to present alignment to the team and say, hey, here's the decision I made. What we're gonna do is we're gonna do a month of night ops, a month of day ops, and you guys are gonna flip flop. And that's what we're doing, whatever. So, but I've got to align those agendas, because those agendas are going to exist.

• 22:04Jocko Willink?

  And agendas are okay. You, you, you mentioned this, that agendas can start going off course. They can only go so far off course if you're ultimately aligned. If we're not ultimately aligned, cool. Now they will go off course. They won't, they will never touch again. Yeah.

• 22:24Jocko Willink?

  What else? I think I'm missing whatever you were talking about when I was working for the Admiral and the teams.

• 22:28Dave Berke?

  My recollection was, is, is

• 22:34Dave Berke?

  there's like, there's almost a sense sometimes of competition amongst teams that, that and probably the best example I can come up with, and, and maybe I'm misplacing that it was something you saw when you were in the Admiral, but you would go into these meetings, at least I thought you did, or I've seen them where each of the services there is represented. You know, the Navy is there to advocate for the Navy. And, and the Army is there to advocate for the Army, and the Marines there to advocate for the Marines. And, and yeah, in the big picture, yes, we're all on the same team, but you would see sometimes that, and sabotage is too strong of a word, but that they would manipulate the discussion to make sure their agenda, which was to support their own team, ended up being supported. And coming in with this altruistic idea of like, hey, here's the assets I have, here's the experience I have, here's the training I have,

• 23:18Dave Berke?

  I am in the best interest to do this, and it is actually the right thing, doesn't mean everybody else is going to go, oh yeah, hey Jocko, you're right. You'll see people maneuvering to go, ah, yeah, Jocko's a little bit better suited than I am for this, but. But, exactly. And more than anything, it's just the awareness of that, is you don't want to walk in blind to the idea that other people are going to push for their agenda. Doesn't mean they're trying to sabotage you, doesn't mean they're trying to submarine you, but you gotta be aware of that. You can't go in there thinking, oh, that guy would never do that. And in fact, like, actually, you should be prepared for him to do that. And so just that awareness of people maneuvering for their agendas, you can rub up against the, you can get close to like, ah, we're getting close to, this actually isn't what's the best interest for the team,

• 24:03Dave Berke?

  but just because your plan is the best plan, doesn't mean everybody else can go, oh, yeah, hey, hey boss, we should do it the Navy way. The Army is just going to kind of roll over and give you what you want. It's not gonna happen.

• 24:12Jocko Willink?

  I didn't know you were talking about that big picture. Yes, because there was times where I was in the Pentagon and I was sitting in meetings and listening. It's, it's the ultimate fly on the wall job is being, uh, is being an aide. So, yeah, I would be in meetings and you could see those things happening where clearly the Army would be the best for this, or the Marine Corps would be the best for that, or the Navy would be the best for this. And you could see that.

• 24:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay, sometimes, I don't know if I'm saying occasionally, sometimes there would be, you know what? That makes the most sense. Sometimes that would happen.

• 24:45Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 24:45Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes it was, well, but.

• 24:48Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 24:49Jocko Willink?

  So that is a good warning. It's a good thing to think about. Being right has its limits.

• 24:58Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 25:00Dave Berke?

  I like that.

• 25:01Jocko Willink?

  Being right has its limits.

• 25:02Dave Berke?

  So this was a lesson for him to kind of close out was, this one hurt. You know, this, this set him back a little bit, but the lesson of, hey, you gotta pay attention to that. We described and when you elevate to that ultimate position that you want where you're in charge, it doesn't change the dynamic of relationships and alignment still are critical for you.

• 25:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it'd be interesting. And I don't know if you got to this level of detail with him, but why did the, why did the bod stop this? And what it could have been was here's this president comes on board. It starts going, okay, I'm going to make some investments here. I'm going to spend some money. There might've been someone of these other guys at one of these peer companies, these sister companies. That was like, what are you giving him all this money for? That's, and it might've been totally legitimate that, well, you know, he's just taken over. They gotta go into this market area, but this other guy's going negative. I should get that money. You shouldn't let him hire more people. You're not letting me hire more people.

• 25:51Dave Berke?

  I need those NVGs. He doesn't need those NVGs.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  Exactly. And so, and then what does the board do instead of, they just shut it down. It might've been the easiest move for them. Freaking doesn't make sense. Doesn't make sense. Unfortunately, is not a, is, is not a closing argument where you, a case closed on that one.

• 26:11Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 26:12Jocko Willink?

  How many times like it doesn't make sense, Roger, we're going for it.

• 26:14Dave Berke?

  We're still doing it, yeah.

• 26:17Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so I got a tagline for you. You want a tagline? My tagline is, don't believe everything you believe.

• 26:28Jocko Willink?

  Don't believe everything you believe. I was, I've been reading a bunch of NOM. I guess that's nothing new. I've been reading a bunch of NOM, been reading a bunch of McNamara, and about McNamara, and JFK, and LBJ, and one thing I was focused on a little bit lately was just the events. I was, I was reading some stuff and listening to some interviews with McNamara about some of the events that led to the Vietnam War, or at least events that led to this escalation in the Vietnam War. One of those events that led greatly to the escalation of the war in Vietnam

• 27:09Jocko Willink?

  was the Gulf of Tonkin events. These attacks, air quotes around attacks, that happened by the North Vietnamese Navy against American ships. And look, I'm not going to do a Jocko podcast right now and give like the full rendition of what happened. There was attacks on August 2nd, there was attacks on August 4th, this was 1964. The first attack that took place,

• 27:36Jocko Willink?

  in hindsight, was an actual legitimate attack. These Navy, or these of North Vietnamese Navy boats, they attacked. They shot torpedoes. They were actually torpedo boats, little torpedo boats. I actually read about them. They could, they could travel 50 knots. And the, the American ships they could attack were bigger ships that could only travel like 20, 22, 25 knots, or something like this. Anyways, they fired torpedoes, they fired machine guns at these, at this American ship, the USS Maddox, and then kind of broke contact. And James Stockdale was overhead and attacked the vessels as they were going away. So it was, and it was, the whole engagement was about 22 minutes.

• 28:20Jocko Willink?

  So a 22-minute naval battle between a small US Navy ship and three North Vietnamese ships. So that happens. But it was sort of unexpected.

• 28:35Jocko Willink?

  And because it was unexpected, it was like, wait, wait a second, what just happened? It's like when somebody slaps you in the face for no reason, you're, you don't immediately, you might not immediately punch them back because you're like, wait, what just happened? Or somebody that you do not expect comes up and you know, verbally starts going off about something and you're not prepared for that. You, so you sort of don't even believe that happened and you can hear people say that. People's like, I can't believe he just said that. Like Dave comes in here, yells at me, walks out. I look at Leif, I'm like, I can't believe he just did that. Right? I mean, if you came in and you said, this sucks. I can't believe you're going to do this. I got, and you went berserk, totally out of character for you. You'd walk out and I go, dude, I can't believe he just did that.

• 29:19Jocko Willink?

  I can't believe he just did that. And guess what? Basically, we didn't really believe it happened. It happened, but we didn't really believe it happened. And then we start wrapping our minds again around this, what had happened on August 2nd and on August 4th. This, there, there's another air quotes, attack. And this attack, it has Navy, US Navy vessels firing at targets on radar for a, for a couple hours, for two hours. There, the US Navy is engaging targets at sea.

• 30:03Jocko Willink?

  Well, there was no targets out there. There was weather, there was bad weather, there were storms, the way radar works, it can pick up things. Strangely, these guys were hyped up about what had gone down a couple of days before. Admiral Herrick, who's a guy that was over there on scene, reported back that the, eventually reported back that the, all this firing was due to quote freak weather and quote over eager sonar men. So you're a sonar guy and you're a NOM and two days ago, you get like, hey, there was an, we think there was an attack or there was an attack, there was an attack. So now you're, you're watching that radar a lot closer and you start to believe like

• 30:48Jocko Willink?

  there's going to be someone attacking us. And you believe that, wait a second, there's a movement over there on my radar. Hey, we need to send, launch freaking bombs at that thing. So. So that's what they did. They had a two hour seat battle. And by the way, also Stockdale was up in the air again. And was like, hmm, there's nothing out there.

• 31:12Jocko Willink?

  I'm laughing, but it's not funny because guess what? Within 30 minutes of this gun, this fake battle, LBJ, President Johnson, orders retaliatory attacks against Vietnam, against North Vietnam. And they were big attacks. And that was the sort of the beginning because now we were going to bomb. Next thing you know, the Marines were landing. And

• 31:37Jocko Willink?

  why? So why did this happen? Why did this happen? Why did these two cases? Why were these cases different? One, they didn't believe that this was gonna happen, that this could be happening. And they therefore they didn't react. And the next one, they believed that this could happen. And so they just imposed their belief on it and started a freaking war.

• 32:00Jocko Willink?

  Started a war that, you know, was billions of dollars and 150,000 wounded Americans and over 58,000 Americans killed. So it's sort of like your first topic today, the way you perceive the people that you're working with. Well, what you believe about a situation, it, it literally impacts what you see and how you react. So just because you believe something, doesn't mean you should believe it. Keep yourself in check. Anything?

• 32:38Dave Berke?

  I have the, the benefit, I think, two, twofold. One is having spent a lot of time in the military and, you know, some school, I got to unpack a little bit of

• 32:50Dave Berke?

  McNamara and just.

• 32:54Dave Berke?

  The frustration in retrospect, you know, you and obviously you've seen the stuff in hindsight and then you just did a podcast not too long ago about it and um as you're drawing the connection between this like you could probably make the argument this totally innocuous borderline meaningless event this fake attack or hey I misread the radar or I didn't interpret this correctly I was a little amped up because of what happened two days ago so I reacted a particular way and and I'm not a big slippery slope guy I'm not a big you know overreaction guy but but you're drawing a straight line from those things to that that escalation to what happened over the next you know eight years and how powerful and how influential ego is going back to McNamara

• 33:39Dave Berke?

  going back to LBJ when you care so much about how you are perceived and how you were looked at and what your image to the world looks like the what you'll be willing to do to preserve that image and the power that that has yes we don't need to be talking about full scale war scale war every time but it affects all of us how easy it is to fall into that trap and even the phrase don't believe everything you believe I mean think about how hard that is to go wait a second I believe this and I have to recognize that I sometimes shouldn't and that's a hard thing and there's catastrophe hidden inside that if you can't do that or there's potential catastrophe hidden inside that if you can't do that

• 34:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because belief exists on unto itself

• 34:24Dave Berke?

  Yes, yes

• 34:25Jocko Willink?

  It's not like you choose to believe you just believe

• 34:28Dave Berke?

  Yes

• 34:28Jocko Willink?

  You can't matter of fact you can't choose to believe you can't will yourself to believe you believe

• 34:34Dave Berke?

  Yeah

• 34:34Jocko Willink?

  That's what's going on so to question that belief is a very important tool

• 34:39Dave Berke?

  Yeah

• 34:40Jocko Willink?

  It's a very important tool and the other thing I think I talked about this I've talked about this a couple of times on the underground podcast which is just the the idea of first reports and how the first reports are wrong and why the first reports are wrong first reports are wrong because they're one person's perspective there's a bunch of emotion tied up and when when Dave when you get when there's a shooting and you see it from your you know brick wall that you're hiding behind and there's a machine gun fire You get, you have one perspective and it's your perspective. And when those rounds hit close to you, believe me, that's the freaking, that's a, that's D day. Yeah, man. I said that on the podcast when it's like, that feels like one round headed towards you, it's World War III and you're mine. That's what's going on.

• 35:26Jocko Willink?

  And so when you get a report, that's what you're receiving. You're receiving a first report filled with emotions and it's one perspective and you have to watch out for it. And part of the report, part of the report, part of the calculus of the report that's in your head is what you believe. So don't always believe what you believe.

• 35:47Jocko Willink?

  All right. Good place to stop. If you want to dig deeper into all aspects of leadership, check out Extreme Ownership Academy, where we solve problems through leadership. It's at extremeownership.com. We also have a leadership consultancy called Echelon Front. You can check that at echelonfront.com. The clients that we talked about today, they're, they're, we changed the names, we changed the organizations, we changed the industries. They are unrecognizable,

• 36:15Jocko Willink?

  but they exist. So if you work with us, don't worry, we won't air your dirty laundry. That's not what we do. And we've written a bunch of books on leadership. Check them out. Also have some other podcasts, Jocko Podcast, Jocko Unraveling, Grounded, and The Warrior Kid Podcast.

• 36:35Jocko Willink?

  You can check out jacostore.com. Origin Maine. Actually, check out Origin USA. Check out originusa.com. Check out jacofuel.com. That's where we're at. All right. Thanks for listening to the debrief. Now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko. Out.