Jocko Underground: The Way to Turn Your Rival Into Your Ally

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe How to turn your rival into an ally? Acceptance vs Desire – How do you move forward without giving up hope? Toxic Family – When is it time to cut someone off? Discipline vs Motivation – How do you stay consistent when life gets hard? Love and Timing – What do you do when feelings don’t align? 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 Underground Podcast, number 179, sitting here with Kerry Helton. We've got some questions from all of you and we are going to try and provide some options, some courses of actions, and perhaps some guidance for you to utilize. That's what we got. How are you doing? So, did we pre-read the questions this time?

• 0:22Speaker 01

  We did a little pre-reading, a scan.

• 0:24Jocko Willink?

  Early on in the game, in the early UG podcast, Echo Charles would have to pre-read. He'd be like, "Just give me like 15 minutes." But I harassed him so much about it, telling him that that was weak, you need to get in the game, you need to figure it out, so.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  In Echo and my defense now, these are literally taken from the people. These are written in the people's words, right? We're not in here freaking, you know, formatting and adding punctuation. This is straight up from the people, so we will try to do their voice justice here.

• 1:02Jocko Willink?

  Did you hear me in the break read the question, sight unseen?

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05Jocko Willink?

  Did it sound like I was having issues?

• 1:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:08Jocko Willink?

  I did that shit for a reason, so.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  I feel like you even like gave it a little character too, you know? I felt like I was hearing it from the person, so.

• 1:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, there's good times, but yeah, in the beginning Echo would... And Echo still can get jammed up, but he also will go heavy editing. Like, he is no stranger to just writing a note and re-reading a whole thing.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  He has the skills to make it happen.

• 1:33Jocko Willink?

  He has no shame. He will re-edit the whole question if he messes it up bad enough, so.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  I might have to do some editing here.

• 1:44Jocko Willink?

  Let's see, let's see how it goes.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  First question. Echo and Jocko, I'm taking on a new mission, coaching and volunteering for the local water polo program I once played for. But there's a problem. The local swim coach, who I used to swim for, has strong resentment toward water polo, accusing us of poaching her swimmers and harming their technique. We share the high school pool and she's made things difficult, canceling our approved times and blocking us from hosting games by leveraging her influence with the pool management. The water polo director has tried to stay patient, but this is becoming disruptive. Ego is clearly in play on both sides and even if I wanted to step in, I don't want to come off as hostile.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  How would you approach this kind of situation for the best chance of success? Thanks for all you do. Stay strong, brothers from the underground.

• 2:37Jocko Willink?

  Check. I'll give you, that's pretty good.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  We're improving.

• 2:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  In- incrementality.

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there you go. All right. Uh, situation here, you know,

• 2:49Jocko Willink?

  it's unfortunate that's happening. It's also unfortunate that it's very common for this type of thing to be happening. People looking out for themselves and looking out for their little rice bowl. I wonder where that term comes from, rice bowl. Like, oh, we got the protecting the rice bowl. You ever heard that before?

• 3:04Speaker 01

  I haven't. I would imagine the east, though.

• 3:06Jocko Willink?

  Well, maybe. I mean, that'd be a good guess. But you've never heard that term before?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, well, means that I've got my rice bowl and I'm gonna look out for my little rice bowl over here. You got yours and you're looking out for yours. Uh, and you, and the, the person that asks the question is correct that making things antagonistic is not gonna help the call, help the cause very much at all. In fact, it'll make it worse. So, what I would do in this situation is I would, as hard as it may seem, as difficult as it may be, I will do everything that I could to build a relationship with the women, uh, the woman swim coach.

• 3:50Jocko Willink?

  That's what I would do. Start to build a relationship, listen to what she has to say, allow her to influence me, put some trust in her, allow her to, uh, treat her with respect. So she treats me with respect. Like, that's what I'll do. Trust, listen, respect, influence and care. And equally, I would also build a very strong relationship with the pool management. Right? So we're gonna build a good relationship with the pool management. I would make sure that the pool is always clean when we're done and make sure that the, the kickboards were put away, that the stuff was swept up, that there's no garbage, that the schedule is, you know, good.

• 4:25Jocko Willink?

  My players were respectful. Like, I would make sure that we became the, the golden boys of the pool area.

• 4:34Jocko Willink?

  So build a relationship up the chain of command with the pool management. I would probably make compromises that favor the swim team. Right? Like, oh, you, oh, you need it on Thursday night? What time? Okay, we'll come in after you or we'll go in before, you know, so I'd make these little compromises to, to show that I'm here to, you know, support the overall mission. The pool's mission, right? Not just my mission, the, the pool. And the swim team's part of the pool and the polo team's part of the pool. So we want everybody to have a good, you know, good, winning, long-term success. So I'm here for everyone and that's why I gotta move my practice. You want to put it back in an hour? Cool. Yep.

• 5:19Jocko Willink?

  Can we get Tuesdays and Thursdays at the other time? You know, I, I would do my best to make compromises that favor the swim team. And look, does that mean I'm gonna be a pushover? No, I'm not gonna be a pushover, but I'd make it very clear that I'm here to help. And I'm not just taking care of my own little rice bowl over here.

• 5:37Jocko Willink?

  And that's what I would do. And I think long-term, this is gonna be a long-term strategy and you know, the, the, the actual

• 5:46Jocko Willink?

  woman coach, you know, she's gonna, oh, she might see that weakness and be like, oh, yes, actually I need you not, not to be in here at all on Thursdays. Right? So I, I hear it. And I'm not gonna let that happen, but

• 6:00Jocko Willink?

  the pool management won't that, let that happen either. So things aren't going to change overnight. Build these relationships and allow

• 6:13Jocko Willink?

  her to influence you, make decisions that are supporting of the team, the whole team, both teams. And in the long run, you're gonna have the best possible outcome that, and I'm glad that you asked the question, the way you asked it, which is the best chance of success. You didn't say like, how do I get this woman to back off? Because she's not gonna back off. She cares about her program, which we want her to. If you've got a kid in her program, you want her to be fighting for the pool for that extra half an hour when the water polo kids turn up. We need another half an hour. You do more laps. Like, that's what you want. She's engaged in her job. I'm, I'm happy about that. We're not mad about that. How do we get her to see your side? You build a relationship with her.

• 6:55Jocko Willink?

  How do you get the management to see you? Build a relationship with the management. That's what we're doing.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  If you're in this scenario, are you involving the water polo team in this, in this effort?

• 7:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. When I'd be like, hey, I mean, I might not say, hey, guys, here's what we're trying to do. But hey, when we're done, clean up the pool area. Hey, make sure there's no kickboards lying around. Hey, make sure we got the lanes, lines all put back out the way they're supposed to be like, I would do that for sure. They'd know that we are squared away. Yep.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Roger.

• 7:25Jocko Willink?

  Next question.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  I'm 42, never married.

• 7:32Jocko Willink?

  So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen,

• 7:42Jocko Willink?

  go to jacood underground.com and subscribe and we're doing this. We're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you

• 8:14Jocko Willink?

  more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us.

• 8:20Jocko Willink?

  And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's jacood underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us,

• 8:40Jocko Willink?

  we can still support you. Just email assistance at jacood underground.com and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.