252: When You Cast Judgement, Start with Yourself. Be Reliable, Show Initiative, and Anticipate Problems. "Guidelines for the Leader and Commander" pt.2.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:01:48 - "Guidelines For The Leader and Commander", by Gen. Bruce Clarke 1:45:49 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:01:35 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 252 with Dave Berke and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Dave.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles is taking care of some other business. On the last podcast, number 251 with Leif Babin, we started getting into the book, Guidelines for the Leader and Commander by General Bruce Clark, but we only made it 13 pages in two and a half hours and it's 117 page book. Just to recap a little bit, this is a book that I searched for for over a decade. I originally heard about this book in my favorite book, which is called About Face by Colonel David Hackworth. Finally found a copy a month and a half ago. And so here we are, just a little background once again on General Bruce Clark.

• 0:55Jocko Willink?

  World War I, World War II, Korea enlisted in 1917, ended up going to West Point, Colonel in World War II, then a general, commanded the 4th Armored Division in Patton's 3rd Army. Battle of the Bulge, distinguished service, crossed three silver stars, 45 years of service. And then spent a bunch of time, not only leading troops, but also training troops or overseeing training commands. So awesome career. Hackworth talked about him glowingly in the book About Face and that's where, that's where this started. Took me a long time to find this book. Who did, somebody texted me about it and said it was the white whale. Like, you know, this was, and it was definitely hard for me to find this book, but we have

• 1:39Jocko Willink?

  it and that's it. That's what we're going to do. We're going to go back into this book. So here we go back into Guidelines for the Leader and Commander by Bruce, General Bruce C. Clark. So this section starts off with Administration, some thoughts for the commander.

• 2:00Jocko Willink?

  And he says, in summation, I would like to point out the close interrelationship between training programs and sound overall management. So this is something, you know, when you're that young, gung ho leader? That just thinks, hey, we're here to operate, whatever that operation is, whether it's shooting machine guns, or whether that's outselling things, or making things, and you think, hey, I'm, I'm, I'm on the front lines, I'm going to make things happen. And you think all the administrative stuff, you shouldn't have to worry about. That's not me.

• 2:34Jocko Willink?

  And, and I know many individuals that are like that. I know one individual in particular that's like that, whose name is Jaco. Cause I was definitely like that. Many commanders, well, I should say, I was like that when I was younger. Because I absolutely, I realized this, and you can hear, you know, we'll talk about the paperwork drills that we had to do, and how Leif and Seth came to me, we shouldn't have to do this stuff. And I said, oh, we're going to do it, we're going to do it better than anybody else. So I figured this out, but it is, it is definitely a learning moment that people have. And so, why not learn it right now? Many commanders are defeated by poor administration. Imagine that, just that statement. Many commanders are defeated by poor administration.

• 3:18Jocko Willink?

  Not defeated because they were tactically unsound, not defeated because they made bad decisions, not defeated because they couldn't come up with a good plan. They just fail because they're administrative losers.

• 3:31Jocko Willink?

  Without sound administration, a commander cannot succeed in his training and maintenance programs. Good administration is nothing more than applied common sense. I'm including here a number of items that may well be considered a checklist of indicators of sound administration. Number one.

• 3:51Jocko Willink?

  Importance of time. The principal coordinating device in the army is time. Learn the proper time space factors, so you can be on time and make reasonable demands of your subordinates. So, so that's number one, by the way, which is probably why you hear a lot of talk about time management.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Just think about the idea that the first thing he's gonna say is time. This is someone who clearly understands that of all the resources in the world that we have, that's the one that matters the most because we just can't produce more of that.

• 4:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say it's the one that matters the most and it's the absolute one that we have the least control. You know how much control do we have time? You have zero. You cannot stop it. You cannot bring it back. You gotta say have the power curve. I hate that feeling. I hate that feeling and and let me tell you what. I realized this a while back. So when you go to the airport, if you show up to the airport late, and now look TSA doesn't care that you're late. The baggage handler doesn't care that you're late. The Uber driver does not care what time your plane is leaving. They're they're doing what they're doing. And so what that does is it takes, you have no control over that time. Once it started to commence, what do you have control over going to the airport a little bit earlier?

• 5:11Jocko Willink?

  That's all. That's all. Not that big of a deal. Go to the airport a little bit earlier and you won't have to worry about TSA. You won't have to worry about baggage. You won't have to worry about how long it takes for the Uber driver or the Lyft, let's give proper credit, or Lyft driver to show up and bring you to the airport. Not so. So how do you get control? You can't control time once it's unfolding. You can't bring it back. You have to. You have to plan for it appropriately. And there's a there's a sense of urgency and I don't I have a pretty good sense of urgency and you you may have may or may not. I know like at the muster, especially the earlier musters when we weren't when the backside wasn't quite the well oiled machine that it is now, and it certainly is a well oiled machine now.

• 5:56Jocko Willink?

  The early musters, there was not a well oiled machine. So on the on the front side, people wouldn't know that when Leif and I were walking out on stage at eight o'clock in the morning, we had two hours of sleep because we had to do whatever we had to do behind the scenes and that's just the way it was. I can feel, I can feel when the shortage of time. In fact, I think I feel the shortage of time every single day, every single waking minute.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  There's a, there's a thing that happened at some point in my life and I don't, I don't know what, what, when that was, but I still think about it now. When you were just talking about the feeling, what I thought you were going to talk about is the feeling of when you feel like you don't have enough time to do something. So being late or whatever, or have I got stuff I need to prepare for. It used to be that I used to feel that it wasn't enough time. And the feeling that makes me sick now is that anytime I'm behind, which happens, I look at it like, man, I'm behind. I didn't get enough done here. I didn't prep enough here. The feeling that bothers me the most is looking back on the time that I wasted the day before or the week before when I thought, hey, this is now I need to get ahead. I got a little window. I got some white space here, which is actually pretty rare. And I look back on the time that I wasted, which is very different than there isn't enough time. I honestly don't think I've ever felt like I didn't have enough

• 7:10Speaker 01

  time. I always feel like I have wasted time. And that feeling of when I'm behind or unprepared, man, that drives me nuts to look back on what did I do yesterday or the day before? How did I waste so much time knowing that I can't get that back? And that's the feeling that bothers me. I think more than any other feeling is I wasted my time.

• 7:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a, that is a doozy. And this is, by the way, item number one. Item number one, importance of time. Next, anticipate problems. Troublesome incidents or situations can be avoided if the probable consequences of existing conditions are previously anticipated. Incidents do not occur until the stage has been set for some time. The outstanding officer knows where things are likely to go wrong and plans preventive action. Spend a little bit of time thinking of through contingencies.

• 8:12Jocko Willink?

  And then come up with a plan. And you don't even have to come up with this elaborate plan. You just have to know what you're gonna do in a broad sense.

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  Next, personality of the commander. Personality of the commander has an enormous influence on his unit. In fact, the unit may be said to be nothing but an extension of the commander's personality. It is essential that he makes his presence felt by leaving his desk, to appear where work and training go on, and by talking to and knowing and influencing his men.

• 8:52Jocko Willink?

  How many times did you see that in the Marine Corps? How about going for like checking into a squadron? How much would the squadron reflect the commander of the squadron?

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Completely. I mean, that was the always the ultimate difference. Because the thing about squadrons, it's probably true in a SEAL team, is that if you look at the squadrons from the outside, I was based at Miramar, there were seven F-18 squadrons when I was there. On paper, they're all identical. Same equipment, same, every metric that you would measure it, it's all the same. There isn't one squadron like they get better stuff or better people. They just get the same thing that everybody else gets. And the only difference was obviously the commander or the leader and the squadrons would take on those personalities almost immediately when they knew commander takeover.

• 9:38Jocko Willink?

  It's not, it's, it's crazy. It's crazy. And that's an extension of, you know, the boat crew story in Extreme Ownership. Hey, we swap out, we put in a good leader into this boat crew that's failing and all of a sudden you've got this totally legit boat crew that's winning. And that happens. How many people in a squadron?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  200.

• 9:56Jocko Willink?

  200 people. How many aircraft?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  12.

• 9:59Jocko Willink?

  12 aircraft, 200 people and boom. You put a good leader in there. But I will say this though, well, you can correct me if I'm wrong. But the Marine Corps, from my experience, has a Tighter group, a tighter variance on their officers than, well, than, than certainly in the SEAL teams. So in other words, you might get, in the SEAL teams, you might get these outstanding officers, and then you'd get some really good officers, some solid officers that are kind of like the normal. You have some really kick ass guys, you have a bunch of normal guys, and then you have the bottom group, which would be pretty outside the range.

• 10:43Jocko Willink?

  So the range would be pretty big. It seemed to me like the Marine Corps always had just tight, you know, it's more controlled, it's a more controlled group, it's a tighter group. Maybe, maybe the high end is not as often that you're gonna get some just guy that's outside the box of stellar. Look, maybe, I don't know. But I do know this, the chances of having a Marine Corps platoon commander that doesn't meet the grade isn't, is very low. And, and in the SEAL teams, it would happen more often because there's more slack, there's more room, you're given more rope to hang yourself. And you give guys rope, and they can take that rope and they can turn it into something awesome, or they can, they can hang themselves.

• 11:28Jocko Willink?

  I always kind of noticed that.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's right. And, you know, when you're inside that, the disparity or that variance becomes more evident to you as you're inside that, and you can see that. So there still is a variance. And when we looked at good squadrons or bad squadrons, however you wanted to define that, a lot of times it was kind of just a feeling, almost like an intangible quality of that's a good squadron and that's a bad squadron. And the way we judged that was how their people acted. And you know how their people acted? A reflection of their, of their leadership, which is exactly what he just said. And the squadrons would take on the persona and the personality of their leaders, and the good leaders had good squadrons, and the bad leaders, or the leaders that weren't as good, their squadrons reflected that.

• 12:15Jocko Willink?

  So you got 12 aircraft?

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:17Jocko Willink?

  And then are those aircraft broken up into sections or platoons somehow? Or is it just every man for himself?

• 12:23Speaker 01

  No, I mean, they had 12 aircraft that in theory were all the same, you know, they weren't all flyable at a time, but no, we didn't, we wouldn't break them down. We would fly an element, sometimes a two or a four ship, but the aircraft were just rotated through, so you could be in any given aircraft on any day.

• 12:37Jocko Willink?

  So in a SEAL platoon? You could have a great officer and you could have a great platoon. You could also have a great platoon chief or a great leading petty officer or assistant platoon commander. Chances are you're not going to get a pipe hitting assistant. You can get some really solid guys, but they just don't have the experience.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  They're so young.

• 12:58Jocko Willink?

  So basically what you needed was a a singular, really good leader, didn't necessarily need to be the top guy, but somebody, you know, at a SEAL team, you might have a great SEAL team commanding officer. You also might have, and that could really make the whole SEAL team great. You could also have a great SEAL team command master chief who's a kick ass guy. You could have a great SEAL Ops Master Chief. So as long as you had one of these guys in the team that was legit badass, you could, you're going to pull it off unless you get somebody that's an idiot in there too. If you get somebody with a big ego, you know, the, the, the, the command master chief has a big ego

• 13:42Jocko Willink?

  or the commanding officer has a big ego and all of a sudden you got conflict, then you, you know, all bets are off and we got mayhem. But chances are, if you got one good leader, you're gonna, you're gonna, the, the group will take on the personality of the commander. So if you don't like the personality of your team, guess what?

• 14:00Jocko Willink?

  Go look in the mirror. Next, counseling of individuals at the company level. The commander and the chaplain are the ones to whom the men will come for guidance when they have to, when they have or think they have problems. Most commanders are usually surprised with the number of men who actually have real personal difficulties. These may take a variety of forms, money troubles, family difficulties, disciplinary problems, character weaknesses and spiritual conflicts. The commander's problem is twofold. First, he must train himself to recognize and to look for the early signs that identify a man with problems. Early recognition of a problem like timely diagnosis of a disease makes the treatment and cure easier.

• 14:45Jocko Willink?

  Second, having identified the problem, the commander must take the proper steps to correct it. Often, his own counseling will have to be sufficient, but in other cases, he'll have to call on others for help. Here, it is essential that the correct source be used, that the man whose pay record is in correction be sent to the chaplain, but to the finance clerk. Alright, so we're, we're, we're making sure that we identify problems. We have to look for that. This has always been a problem for me because no one ever tells me anything when something's going wrong. No one wants to tell me that they're overworked, or they're, they don't want to do another operation, or whatever. No one ever wants to tell me that. So I have to drag it out of people. I have to have intel

• 15:28Jocko Willink?

  sources that will tell me that the troops are getting tired, or the guys are worn out, or whatever.

• 15:34Jocko Willink?

  Recognition of outstanding work. This is the next section. A sure way to instill loyalty is to recognize outstanding work from your subordinates. Satisfaction in a job well done is a trait of all men. And recognition by others of the same good work will appeal to the vanity that lies in all of us.

• 15:55Jocko Willink?

  Another thing I'm bad at. I'm horrible at recognizing people for good work. I just think everyone's doing what they should be doing, and it's very seldom that I take the time to like, thank somebody. I usually have to think about it. I'm horrible at that.

• 16:14Jocko Willink?

  Leif has told me, though, that when I would say something that someone did good, they'd be super stoked. They'd be like, oh, would be fired up.

• 16:24Jocko Willink?

  Recognition can take many forms: declarations, letters of commendation, oral acknowledgement at a formation, or the issuance of a three-day pass. But whatever the form is essential, that the commander is, that the commander be alert to outstanding performance and give timely public recognition when it is due. Can I just, can I, what about just a simple head nod? Does that work?

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that can work, man. I mean, part of that is you gotta pay attention to what matters to your people. And, you know, the thing that I always craved the most, the recognition, I didn't, the recognition I wanted was to be left alone. And if my leadership didn't, when my leadership wasn't micromanaging me and giving me the flexibility, that, that was, okay, I must be doing something right. Cool. We're good. But there's nothing wrong with recognition. I'm not trying to pile on the idea of like, don't acknowledge your people's good work. But what it matters to somebody doesn't always matter to everybody. And you gotta actually pay attention to what matters. And over time, the, the head nod and keep doing what you're doing. Dude, that's good to go.

• 17:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, I, I had trouble with this because, and I still do, because,

• 17:30Jocko Willink?

  you know, when you're the boss, right? Well, in my mind, you know, if I say, hey, Dave, good job. I just, I think you don't care about that because I'm just some other guy that's trying to work hard and whatever. And I, I remember I've told the story before, I was, first got to Ramadi, needed a certain type of laptop computer for my office. And the radio guy, the IT guy, the radio man guy, who's a great dude, I told him, hey, I need to have, I need to have a sipper and a nipper laptop side by side. And he's like, hey, we don't really have enough nipper. These are, I needed a classified computer and an unclassified computer side by side so that when I was working, I could,

• 18:08Jocko Willink?

  if I needed some information that was from the unclassified side, I could look it up if, and, and then continue to work on whatever I was working on. So I remember I said, hey, I, I called him into the TAC operations center and I said, hey, I want a classified computer here and an unclassified computer here. And he goes, well, we don't really have enough unclassified computers. And I kind of went, oh, okay. And then a few minutes later, I walked through the, the chow hall. And we had set up this unclassified computer station with six computers for everyone to use. Now, everyone had computers in their tent too. This wasn't like, you know, everyone was lined up to use these six computers. No, it was just,

• 18:48Jocko Willink?

  somebody decided, hey, we'll put some internet computers out here. And so I walked out there and said, wait a second, we have all these unclassified computers right here. And I went back and said, hey, man, those computers that are out there, give one to me. And he was like, oh, Roger that. And I realized, oh, I need to make the call on that. And what I say has impact, you know? And so when you say something negative, it has a big impact because you know, sometimes that, that plan doesn't make any sense and everyone just be, will be quiet. Because they they think that you don't like the plan. When reality is, you're just thinking, ah, maybe I could come, maybe we could come up with a different plan. So you got the overall, and I wrote about this in Leadership Strategy and Tactics, your words have power and impact. So remembering that when you give someone some compliments, it may have some, it has more significance than you might think.

• 19:37Jocko Willink?

  Efficiency reports. I was, I was thinking to myself when I saw this, I was like, ah, you know, I'll kind of skip over this. Who cares? You know, no one wants to hear about efficiency reports. Then I read it and I said, oh, I will absolutely include this.

• 19:50Jocko Willink?

  With the advent of enlisted efficiency, efficiency reports, the commander, so efficiency reports, so for in the civilian sector, what this would boil down to is, you know, an evaluation, it's a performance evaluation for someone.

• 20:03Jocko Willink?

  The commander now has a new tool, which will assist him in gaining the desired motivation from his key enlisted personnel. Too often, the efficiency report becomes the padlock on the barn door after the horse has been stolen.

• 20:18Jocko Willink?

  What a great way to think about wasting some kind of evaluation format, performance evaluation. Hey, Dave, you went and did something for a year, you did your job, and then you show up after a year and I say, yeah, you didn't do, do that great of a job. What good is that? The barn or the, the horse already got stolen. I have found that unacceptable performance and the resultant bad efficiency reports can often be reduced to a minimum through early effective observation and counseling. Gee, what a novel idea. When Dave starts screwing up, don't wait six months to give him an efficiency report. Say, hey, Dave, it's been three weeks you've been on this project. I already see that you're heading in the wrong direction. Let's talk.

• 21:03Jocko Willink?

  If a commander makes it a practice to observe his men closely and call them in, in periodically for an evaluation of their performance in terms of strengths and weaknesses, he can often correct deficiencies without it becoming necessary to issue an unsatisfactory efficiency report.

• 21:23Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 21:25Jocko Willink?

  It's a tool that you've got that you can use.

• 21:30Jocko Willink?

  A three-part program of, and here's the three parts, observation and evaluation, counseling and guidance of the individual, and then further observation to determine the response to the counseling is your key to effective use of the efficiency report. Then it becomes a tool for improvement, rather than merely a reward or punishment for past performance. Wow. Wow. Imagine that. And it's unsappled because in the Navy, you get an evaluation or a fitness report once a year. And there's a lot of companies that we work with that do something similar. There's, that's just not often. It's not often enough.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  It's not even close. And those periodic evaluations, they actually don't even need to be that formal. It's really just the core of building relationships is getting to know your people by being out with them. The best thing you can do is know your people well enough to be able to recognize when they're going in the wrong direction. And if you talk to your people once a year, you're not going to know that because you don't even know what they're typically like. And so if I'm working with you and I know Jaco pretty well, and all of a sudden Jaco shows up one day and he's not Jaco, I can get involved right then. But the only way for me to tell that you're not yourself or not doing the things that I'm used to, is I gotta be around you just a little bit more. And you don't need to track all this stuff every single time. You don't need to know the formal piece

• 22:53Speaker 01

  of it. Formal counseling is important, but the best tool you've got is to actually know them well enough to go, something's not right. And if you can intercept that on day one, rather than day 30, or 60, or 90, not only do you actually help solve that problem, that other person recognizes that you know and care about them enough to get involved. And being able to do that is really a function of your time, more than anything else, of being around your people to know them well enough to identify that when they're off the path.

• 23:23Jocko Willink?

  So it comes down to time management. Uh, when I talk about planning and I say, okay, if I give Dave a mission tasking and say, okay, Dave, come up with a plan on how you want to do this. If I leave for 12 hours and you were three degrees off in your, what you thought you should do versus what I thought you should do, I come back 12 hours, there's 12 hours of wasted time because you've been going along the wrong direction and now you're way off course. If I go, hey, Dave, here's the, here's the mission you need to execute, here's the task, come up with, you know, some con ops, I'll be back in a half an hour. You're three degrees off, it, oh, it barely even takes a nudge to get you right back on track and we're, we're tracking. So the earlier you give people correction, corrective measures, the, the, the minimum,

• 24:07Jocko Willink?

  the, the, the limit of what you have to do to get them back on course is, is totally limited. It's the minimum force required. So if you and I, if I said, hey, Dave, here's a mission tasking, come up with how you want to do, I'll be back in a half an hour. When I came back in a half an hour and you're three degrees off course, I barely, I probably would be able to get you back on course by asking you a, not even telling you anything, just by saying, hey, what do you think about, what do you think about this area up to the north? Do you think that's a, you think there could be enemy up there? That's kind of what the intel says, right? And you'd say, yeah. And I'd say, oh, are you going to put a blocking force up there? You didn't have a blocking force in your plan. And you go, yes, absolutely. And cool. Now we're totally square.

• 24:51Jocko Willink?

  If I walked away for 12 hours and let you come up with a plan, you're wide open to the enemy attack from the north. You have, you used your blocking force and force in a totally different area. You don't even have enough people now because you, so it's just, it's totally wrong. And now we got to come in with blunt force trauma and now it's not your plan anymore. You've given up ownership. It's just, it's just a nightmare.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 25:10Jocko Willink?

  So the earlier I get involved, the less force I have to use. And my goal as a leader is to use the minimum force required. And the longer I wait to use force, the worse it's going to be.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  And if you're out there thinking about the time, the, the daunting task of spending all that time upfront, the ROI on your investment of time upfront is, is, it's, it's unlimited because if you make that investment upfront, which seems like a lot of time, what you save on the back end of that. So from the time manager standpoint, yeah, yes, it is an additional investment of a little bit of time upfront. It is, and you got to account for that time. That is not free time, but what you save from that.

• 25:52Jocko Willink?

  ROI all day.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  All day.

• 25:54Jocko Willink?

  It's not even close. And you know what's funny is you you're I disagree with you because you say it's this big investment up front. It's not it's almost no investment up front. It's me going, hey, Dave, how are you going to execute this? And you go, I'm gonna do it like this. And I go, oh, don't forget there's enemy up there. Yeah, I'm gonna put a blocking force. Okay, cool. There we go. That's how that was. That took 18 seconds.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  It's the story we tell ourselves like, hey, I can't come back in 30 minutes. You actually can. You're absolutely right. And it's the idea of whatever it seems like I don't have time. A, you do have time. And if you do need to do some mental calculation of that time, the ROI in that time is well worth whatever you might miss for that five minute check in that happens up front. And it also shows another person, oh, Jaco cares. Jaco's in the game. Jaco's paying attention. I wonder if that means I'm going to be more or less interested in giving you a really good plan if I know you care about it.

• 26:42Jocko Willink?

  You know what's interesting, too? ROI. The ROI on time is that it's it doesn't even make sense. And I'll tell you why. Because I don't get that time back. If you're supposed to execute a mission tonight, and I give you 12 hours to plan, and I go, hey, here's the mission you got to execute, and I don't come back and check in, by the time 12 hours go by, and I realize that your plan is a total disaster, it's not that the ROI, it's not I don't get return on my investment. It's that we it's bankruptcy. It's total failure. It's total and complete failure. I can't even get it back. The ROI is negative. It's it's horrible. Whereas a little investment up front, total game changer.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 27:28Jocko Willink?

  Now, here's another section I wasn't gonna read. And I remember I sent you a picture of this book, or sections of the book, and you you said, just read the whole just you're good. Just cover the whole thing. And I was kind of like, yeah, you know, that's cool. I'm sure I'll cover a lot of it. But I, you know, I'm always I don't want to waste people's time. So I'm looking for, okay, what can we streamline a little bit? So there was a section called promotion. And look, if you're in the civilian world, how much do you care about how they advance people in the army in 1952, right? Whatever. And then I read it a little bit. I go, okay, well, looks like we're covering this, too. And I'll tell you how in a second. So it says promotion. The promotion policy of a commanders of a command has a strong bearing on morale

• 28:08Jocko Willink?

  and overall efficiency. It must be fair. And by the way, this is one thing that you're gonna start to pick up in this section of the book and in some of the other sections.

• 28:19Jocko Willink?

  There is absolutely part of General Clark that is looking to get promoted. And he, you can feel it, and there's gonna be other places where you feel it. And what's cool is, you'll feel it, and he'll say it. And then a little later on, he'll, he'll hint that, you know what, that doesn't really even matter. So, we're gonna go back and forth, we're gonna come up against some of these things, where you say, "Okay, he, he's a, he's a guy that really cares, that's in the game just to get promoted." Right? Which, I am not a big proponent of, "Hey, your main reason to be in the game is get promoted." That being said, if I have got a team, and I wanna take care of my team, well, how do I, how do I do the best job taking care of my team?

• 29:04Jocko Willink?

  I get promoted, so I have more leverage and more power, and I can be positive influence on even more people. So, getting promoted, if you're getting promoted for yourself, we don't like that. And by the way, when I say "we," I'm talking about the people that work for you. If you're getting promoted for yourself, they don't like it. We don't like that. But if you're getting promoted so that you can help the team achieve their mission, protect the team, take care of the team, grow the team, influence the team in a positive way, if that's why you're getting promoted, cool, good on you, good, we, we like that. You're doing it for the right reasons. And if you think, if you think, if you think you can sneak around and get promoted for yourself,

• 29:48Jocko Willink?

  but you don't really mean it, I'm promising you, I promise you, everybody sees it.

• 29:56Jocko Willink?

  So, promotion, it must be fair. By it, the commander can encourage men to develop themselves for permissions, for positions of supervision and leadership. The commander should consider the following qualifications and attributes when considering a man for promotion. So he goes into a list, and what I did, and what I wrote down here, was,

• 30:17Jocko Willink?

  when I go through this list, aim the, aim this list at yourself. You aim this list at yourself, are you promotable? Number one, reliability, number one, reliability, number one, reliability.

• 30:39Jocko Willink?

  When

• 30:43Jocko Willink?

  when I talk about relationships and I use the word relationships, I'm really talking about trust. And trust, if you don't have trust inside of a team, all is lost.

• 30:56Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah. So the question is, how do you build trust? Well, let me give you a good hint. The number one clue right here, be reliable. Be reliable. Okay. So that's number one. Number two, his knowledge of his present job and his preparation for the next higher one. So be knowledgeable, proficiency text test scores, leadership, can he direct men? Ability to organize and manage a job.

• 31:23Jocko Willink?

  Again, these are all things, if you aim these things at yourself, it is a powerful thing to think about. Knowledge to detect and courage to correct errors in subordinates.

• 31:38Jocko Willink?

  Initiative, does he perform well without close supervision? Appearance, military courtesy and neatness.

• 31:47Jocko Willink?

  This makes me happy that I wrote the Warrior Kid books.

• 31:52Jocko Willink?

  Maintenance of equipment, individual and organizational attitude, loyalty, enthusiasm, ability as an instructor. Ability as an instructor. And I'll tell you where I've been thinking about that. There's a couple of other things that we'll clue in on this.

• 32:08Jocko Willink?

  We've been talking, we've been developing leadership certification program at Echelon Front. And one of the things that we've been dancing around is the fact that there's there's maybe, well, we were dancing around with like two different pipelines. Like you're either a trainer that's going to train people how to lead, or you're a leader and you're in a supervisory position and you're a management position and you're a leader. And then we've kind of gotten to a point where we say, listen, these are the same thing. And in order to become a good leader, you have to be able to teach. You have to be able to show people how to do things. So it's interesting that he's got ability as an instructor.

• 32:53Jocko Willink?

  Because listen, if I'm going to promote you, Dave, from, you know, from being in charge of a squad to being in charge of a platoon, I want you to be able to teach. I want you to be able to instruct. That is absolutely important. And, and in a, in a leadership environment, I want you to be able to teach the team about leadership. I want you to be able to teach, when I put you in charge of a platoon, I want you to be able to teach your squad leaders how to lead. I want you to be able to teach your fire team leaders how to lead. And I also want you to be able to teach them how to break down a 240 golf, right? I want you to be able to teach those things. So the ability to be an instructor is important and it's equally important because when we teach, we learn.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. That, that second point was what I was, was thinking in my head a lot is, you know, Top Gun for my community is kind of the apex of instruction. You know, the quality of instruction is, is kind of at its peak there because you get to focus just on that. You don't have all these other distractions going on, so you focus on that. I learned more there than I did anywhere else. And the ability to teach is really comes from how much you truly understand something. And for me, being able to fly an airplane or run the radar or manage the systems, a lot of people can do that. But if, when you try to teach something, it exposes your gaps in knowledge.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  And a good teacher, when they break down what they're going to teach, they recognize, oh, I don't actually understand this very well. So before I teach it to you, I gotta go learn about this more. So the learning connected to the teaching, I learned more because the, my obligation was to teach it. And as I'm learning to teach, exposed all the things I didn't know. So a good teacher actually has to understand it better than anybody else. And that connection between those two is so critical. And the idea of teaching is, I think, a reflection or anything of how well you truly know something. And you don't really test yourself on how well you know it until you have to explain it to somebody else.

• 34:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, right, as you started, I just wrote down, you know, I hope he's about to say that. As you teach, you learn. And that's exactly what you said. You identify the gaps in your own knowledge and you go, okay, I better figure this out. I better go run this drill. I better pull the thread on that until I understand it better. Next, participation in unit and community activities. Does he use his time off to improve himself?

• 35:18Jocko Willink?

  Aim that one at yourself. Is he a good soldier all the time? Is the job he is charged with being done better now than it was when he took over? Judgment and common sense, a good scale of values, ability to receive and carry out instructions. Has he been efficiently filling his grade position? Accident record, incident record, AWOL in Article 15, which means has the dude gotten in trouble before? Really powerful list. There may be other considerations. They should add up to confidence that the man will play his part well under any conditions, especially in unusual situations.

• 36:03Jocko Willink?

  What's interesting about that? Why, why does that make me like think awesome thoughts? Because what that says is that this military guy who believes in discipline and believes in being able to do your job and, and being able to receive and carry out instructions. That's what he said. But he wants you to be especially able to perform in unusual situations. Well, how, how do you get good at performing unusual situations? You get tested, you get tasked, you get things thrown at you and you have to use your mind. It's great that you can, you have the ability to receive and carry out instructions. This is my point.

• 36:46Jocko Willink?

  It's great that you have the ability to receive and carry out instructions. That's great. But if I throw something unusual at you and what you have to do is figure it out and you don't know how to do that, we got a problem.

• 37:01Jocko Willink?

  Unless you want him as a member of your team, do not promote him or recommend him for promotion. The promotion policy of a unit commander should be published and understood by all. And then it goes into this next section, elimination of ineffective personnel. Dichotomy leadership, when to hire, when to fire, when to mentor, when to fire. It is the commander's duty to contribute to raising the standards of the United States Army. What a beast statement that is. It is the commander's duty to contribute to raising the standards of the United States Army. One approach to this goal is a continuous evaluation of his personnel, officers, non-commissioned officers, and enlisted men alike.

• 37:45Jocko Willink?

  When ineptness is revealed or continuing ineffectiveness is detected in officers and non-commissioned officers, it is the commander's duty to see that corrective measures are taken, elimination or reduction in grade as appropriate. So, you've done your escalation of counseling, I've done everything I can to see if I can straighten Dave Berke out, he can't make it happen, Dave Berke needs to go bye-bye. The importance of a good but fair reduction policy is often overlooked.

• 38:23Jocko Willink?

  Few things disrupt a unit more than the presence of inefficient leaders. Gee, that comes as a big shock, right? Few things disrupt the unit more than the presence of inefficient leaders. So, let's think about this. If Dave's working for me, and Dave is inefficient, and Dave doesn't do a good job, and Dave drops the ball, and Dave's working for me, and I continue to allow Dave to be there, what does the team think of me?

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, what does it say about you as a leader?

• 38:52Jocko Willink?

  It says I suck as a leader, that's what it says.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Or it says that you don't actually care because this leader, this Dave that's underperforming, who is he actually affecting? He's affecting the whole team. And you know, a synonym for that reduction in rank is, that's, rank is essentially responsibility. So as your rank grows in the military, your responsibility grows. So you don't have to have a ranking structure in your organization. You've got responsibility for, you know, this guy's a team leader or supervisor or impacts a team. This guy's underperformance that you tolerate doesn't just affect this underperformer. It's all the people in his influence and they're looking at you saying, this is what Jaco's gonna put up with? This is the bar that he's gonna tolerate? And oh, by the way, this affects me personally?

• 39:36Speaker 01

  And just like on the other extreme of getting rid of people way too soon, way too prematurely that you haven't invested in, keeping the wrong people around in terms of what that does to your leadership capital?

• 39:54Jocko Willink?

  Regulations provide for the reduction of enlisted men and the separation of officers for inefficiency in actual performance of their job or as a result of misconduct. The latter is where we fall most often.

• 40:08Jocko Willink?

  We fail, or sorry, the latter is where we fail most often. We fail because we do not face up to the fact that key personnel, to be good leaders of young men, must also have good character. Poor character will inevitably manifest itself in poor conduct. Leaders influence the actions of their subordinates. Most leaders are considered by those of less rank as highly qualified and competent. Therefore, when poor conduct is manifested off duty by anyone in leadership capacity, it has a detrimental effect on the entire unit. Especially dangerous in this regard are those key personnel who are outstanding in their work.

• 40:52Jocko Willink?

  For their influence is even greater on troops who, observing them, will often emulate their actions even to the point of delinquency. If this condition persists, it can lead to a broken, breakdown of discipline throughout the unit in an incredibly short time. Leaders with character deficiencies, regardless of how good they might appear in field training, are a luxury we cannot afford.

• 41:22Jocko Willink?

  What'd you write down?

• 41:24Speaker 01

  I wrote down "character and conduct."

• 41:29Speaker 01

  What I was thinking as you're reading this, you cannot, and I learned this in the Marine Corps, you cannot separate your work-life from some other part of your life. If you were a leader, you are committed to being a leader all the time. And where you are scrutinized the most, where there's most risk, is how you act off the clock, if you want to call it that. So I could stand up in front of my Marines and tell them all the things I expect from them, whatever those might be. I could make a list that are all good, and I could behave like that at work. If I go out in town, or back in my personal life, or anywhere else outside of work, and I reveal that I don't live by the expectations I set for my people, and my character is revealed, that I don't actually apply those to myself,

• 42:14Speaker 01

  the degree to which that undermines me as a leader at work is actually much worse than if I just wasn't great at work, and I'm just working on it and trying to get better. And your character, your character, sooner or later, is gonna be revealed. Because you're gonna find yourself in a place where you think nobody's looking, or you're gonna find yourself in an environment where you think it's okay. And who you are is gonna come out. And he said, I wish I wrote exactly what it is, "Your character will be connected to your conduct." So who you really are eventually is gonna influence how you behave. And if your plan is to put on a good front at work,

• 42:52Speaker 01

  you're gonna get found out. And the damage to that, your credibility, and the damage to the team, if that's... You simply cannot separate who you are as a leader, and have a period of time or a place where you don't have to hold yourself to that same standard.

• 43:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what I wrote down when you were talking, was, "Hey, you can try and put up that front." Which, well, you already said it. "Well, you try and put up that front." If you, in your mind, in your little tiny brain, because it is tiny, if this is what you think, you have a small brain. If in your brain, your tiny little brain, you think, "It doesn't really matter, no one will notice", your brain is small, and you are stupid, because everybody sees that.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Everybody. And everybody's watching you all the time. They're watching you, they see you all the time.

• 43:41Jocko Willink?

  Crazy. Uh, reenlistment, while the commander should place heavy emphasis on reenlistment and do all in his power to retain effective personnel, he should bear in mind that the army wants quality, not quantity. Make your program selective. Social life, every army post should be close knit, happy family. Commanders can foster this by ensuring that families of their men have adequate social life. A particular importance is the inclusion of youth activities designed especially for youth and not for adults. Good programs in this field will not just happen, they will require your best people.

• 44:18Jocko Willink?

  You know, when you start looking at building what you just said, you know, what, how do you expect the people to act? If you haven't given them a good support structure with their family? Just doesn't work. It is essential that all recommendations, he talks about this non-commissioned officers advisory council, which is, hey, you've got a, you've got a, you can assemble groups of your workers, of your team, of your employees, the leaders, the frontline troops, you can assemble groups of them and get feedback from them.

• 44:51Jocko Willink?

  And he says, it's essential that all recommendations receive the attention of the major commander concerned for failure to act on justified recommendations will defeat the whole purpose of having these councils.

• 45:04Jocko Willink?

  And you know, it's interesting, we've been doing some work at Echelon Front with some of these councils, which is always cool because now you're getting people from different, different cross sections of a company that are sort of these councils. And that's been interesting. It's been very interesting and it's kind of what we do anyways. When we go into a company, we, you know, we get a cross section, but it's nice when the companies already have a cross section that we are talking to. So if you're running a company right now, or if you're in a company right now, it's a good idea to think about putting together some kind of a council where you say, hey, we need to take the best ideas, take the best practices, take the grievances that we have, assemble them together in a logical way to push them up the chain of command.

• 45:47Jocko Willink?

  Cause if the, if the boss, you know, has us working late every Friday and the boss doesn't know how much that negatively impacts us, how can we expect him to change it?

• 45:57Jocko Willink?

  Answer, we cannot. Get together.

• 46:02Jocko Willink?

  Put forth information in a consolidated effort so that the boss knows what's happening.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  And if you're the boss and you get that feedback, implement as best you can.

• 46:14Jocko Willink?

  Act on it.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:16Jocko Willink?

  Direction of staffs, a staff is no more than an extension of the commander's abilities and a good commander must be able to handle a staff property. Officers of a staff should carry out the commander's policies enthusiastically by the same token. Should bring to the attention of the commander those matters deserving his personal attention.

• 46:37Jocko Willink?

  Staff visits. To make sound decisions, the commander must receive timely and reliable reports from his staff, which means that his staff must visit unit activities.

• 46:53Jocko Willink?

  So, talk to us Dave about what they're talking about when they say staff.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  So, the commander, like when I was a commander of a unit, my staff, I had,

• 47:07Speaker 01

  I had subordinate leaders that were responsible for, for different elements. So I'd have like an operations staff that ran the operations. I have a maintenance staff that ran the, the maintenance and logistics and supply and all, all the different components and out underneath these leaders, which were really staff officers kind of building the plans, were a whole bunch of people implementing their processes or their, or their SOPs or whatever they had created. If you got a staff officer, someone working for you that has a plan and has their team implementing the plan out in the field or out on the flight line, and they don't go out there to see how effective it is, what the real barriers are, what the problems are, and they are sort of operating in that vacuum of their, their staff position or in their, their cubicle, their office, and they're not out there with those people.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  They have no sense of the real feedback of the problems and the challenges their people facing while they're implementing their plans. And so, it, it comes, I, I think it's as simple as what you described. I think he said it like in the first pages, leave your office and go out and spend time with your people to see what's really going on down there.

• 48:07Jocko Willink?

  But what if seven years ago I had that job and I kind of remember what it was like back then? Is that good? Does that, does that cover me?

• 48:15Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  The, um, it also is just the connection to having your people see that you're willing to go out there and just spend time with them. The benefit of spending time with your people, on one sense, it's actually really important and we can talk about all the different things that I would learn when I just spent time with my people. I learned about things. I learned how things worked. I learned the challenges they had. But there is amount, there is some level of effort that it takes for you to get away from your desk as a leader, to go spend time with your people. And I, and most of the time, your troops actually understand that. They know it's not as simple for the, for the CEO to just get away. So when you do, the power of, of, of you doing that on, is, is really significant. They recognize that you're making the effort to do it. Now, if your plan is to do,

• 49:00Speaker 01

  we call these touch and goes, had go out there and like, show your face to the team. If that's your kind of like, hey, I'm gonna show my face, and you don't actually get out, spend time with them, they're gonna see that coming a mile away. But if you just spend a little time, what you'll end up getting is a bunch of unfiltered feedback that didn't run through the chain and get chopped by all your staff all the way up to you. You get unfiltered feedback.

• 49:19Jocko Willink?

  Get sterilized.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Totally. You know what? What you want more than anything, you want a 19-year-old Lance Corporal, who's turning a wrench on a jet to explain to you why this is hard. Now, of course, you want to use the chain command. I want that to run through the chain. I want to see that in multiple ways. But if you want unfiltered feedback to what's really going on with your team, you have to get down to spend time with your team.

• 49:47Jocko Willink?

  That being said, back to the book, it is essential, however, that a staff officer making such visits understands the thin line that divides staff supervision from meddlesome interference. So there's the dichotomy of leadership.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Don't be jumping the chain.

• 50:03Jocko Willink?

  He must realize that he is not a commander, should avoid criticizing subordinate commanders and report instead their shortcomings to his commander, and should he see that, his reports reflect favorably as well as unfavorable conditions. So you've got to make sure that you're not just being a rat going out there.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:22Jocko Willink?

  And you've got to make sure that you don't interfere, right? It can cause interference, you know, some, if, if Dave, you're having a, a meeting at Echelon Front, and you've got all the instructors because you want to cover some LDAP information, and you're doing a Zoom meeting, and you're gonna talk shop about a bunch of different things, and all of a sudden, I just pop in there. Well, you know, what am I doing in there? And you had an agenda and all of a sudden I'm in there like there's times where I'm just causing interference.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:51Jocko Willink?

  And that's really not what we're looking to do.

• 50:56Jocko Willink?

  Now, all that being said, oh, go ahead.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  I was just gonna say, especially as I got more senior, when I was in charge of an entire squadron, my bias was actually towards trying to spend time and my bias was towards normalizing their view of me as a person. And let me just explain that for a minute. Every single person in the squadron knew who the squadron commander was. Everybody from the next, the next in command to me, my number two guy, all the way down to my most junior marine. And if I did nothing, the natural state with them would be for them to put up, almost put me in a pedestal

• 51:33Speaker 01

  that they couldn't even relate to me as a person. Along with that, I really didn't have a lot of time. I was busy doing a lot of things, especially dealing with higher headquarters and other components. So I didn't have all day, every day. So the times that I was out there was rare because I'd simply had a lot going on. So my bias, and I'm talking the needle a little bit off center. My bias was if I could spend a little more time instead of a little less time, if I could get a little more understanding what's going on than a little less, that's, that was my bias. Because the natural tendency for most people would almost put a commander on a pedestal that's not even a person. He's, he's, he's elevated to a status that is almost unrelatable.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  And if I could create just a little bit of thawing of, hey, I'm a normal person. I really want to know what's going on in here. I really want to have some connection to what you're doing. I would bias towards that. There were so many other forces at play. There was very little risk of me being the type of guy that I'm just hanging out. Hey, what's going on down here? Hey, how's your boss and what? So the risk of there was lower. Your point, I think that point is totally valid. And the reason I'm making mention of this is that at least in the military, the chain of command is, is understood. And the barrier for me was that being so rigid that people didn't see me as a person who really wanted to know what's going on. So I would bias in that, in that direction. As a, if I was splitting the difference in what I was gonna do, I would try to spend more time than less.

• 52:59Jocko Willink?

  If you're not seen as a human being, you don't have connections with the troops. If you don't have any connections with the troops, none of this, nothing that we're talking about even matters in any way, shape or form, basically. Basically, it just, you've gotta be a person.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:16Jocko Willink?

  The question of visitors, back to the book, a commander can expect many inspectors and visitors, and it should be his policy to encourage and welcome visits and import from important officials. This of course means that his house must be constantly kept in order. That is how it should be. For the unit that is uniformly excellent in all things at all times is one that will be outstanding in battle. Look upon visitors not as interruptions or harassment, but as the chance to show the public just how really good your unit is. That's, that's pretty epic.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Dude, that is so important. And I keep coming back to my time as a squadron commander, because when I commanded a unit, it was the very first operational F-35 B squadron in the world. It was the focal point of all things marine aviation. It was a, under a microscope. And we had visitors all the time. Everything from like US senators, four-star generals, local congressmen, everybody wanted, there's a massive investment in time and they wanted to know what was going on. And there's a, there's a propensity towards when we get a note, hey, you're getting a notification, you're getting this delegation's coming to visit, was what they would focus their time on is preparing for that visit.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  And I, I wanted no time spent on preparation for the visit. We're not going to clean the floors, we're not going to, we are going to operate as normal. I want them to come down and see, and if you actually are that squared away unit, you don't need to prepare for those visits. And if your plan is, oh, they're coming, hey, everybody start.

• 54:52Jocko Willink?

  Better clean up.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Shining your boots and emptying trash cans and cleaning the tops of, of doors that you, things you would not normally do.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  My view on visits was they can show up any place, anytime, anywhere with no notice. I don't care. And if I'm not there, no factor, somebody will cover down. Staff sergeant will cover down, lieutenant, I don't care. And the message that sent to the Marines was two-folders. One is, hey, the boss doesn't freak out when people come to visits. No big deal. And if we're actually as squared away as we think we are, who cares? Show up, come check it out. You're gonna see, what you're gonna see is the best squadron in the world. That's what you're gonna see. So, no factor. Visits are not a big deal.

• 55:31Jocko Willink?

  Check. Unit athletic programs. Athletic programs developed in conjunction with the physical fitness program will do much to enhance the physical stamina of unit. Why, why do I cover this? Why do I, why do I even cover this? Well, because it's true. Well, because if we're out there so focused on leadership that we don't, we, we let our physical bodies fall apart, we're wrong.

• 55:57Jocko Willink?

  And he knows that. An active, an active interest in athletics is provided by the commander through proper motivation and personal interest. A well-planned and integrated athletic program is an important part of any unit's training program. It will take the minds of the men off, off what some of them consider as the monotony of training. Help keep the command in better physical shape. Help build a unit esprit de corps. Help develop self-discipline and team spirit.

• 56:32Jocko Willink?

  Man, we get away from that. Emphasis in athletic programs should be on the small unit level, such as company battery troop, rather than at higher levels. So, look, I don't know what situation you're in in life or what your business is doing, but doing something physical together is very, very helpful.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Anybody that's ever done an FTX with Echelon Front knows exactly what you're talking about.

• 56:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, even come to the muster, you know, come to the muster and come do PT at the muster. And you're doing something that's hard, but it's fun and we're having a good time. Uh, we're doing them. Oh, by the way, we're doing the muster. December 4th and 5th. So, no, December 3rd and 4th in Texas. And we're still going to do PT. We're not quite figured out what we're going to do instead of jujitsu on, on the closing night, but we're going to figure something awesome out. But, why? Why do we do that? Because people feel better. It brings the, look, people have, will have a thousand people there. Well, for the muster in, in the next muster, we won't have a thousand people there. We'll probably have a third of that or maybe half that. But people from all over the country will get together.

• 57:44Jocko Willink?

  They've never met before and they will bond in 45 minutes of early morning PT.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  If you get up at five in the morning and PT, you'll be less tired than if you got up at seven in the morning and went straight to the conference room. You'll be less tired.

• 57:57Jocko Willink?

  Stopped at the Donut Factory.

• 58:01Jocko Willink?

  So he talks about attractive living areas, you know, providing people a good place to live. Well, that applies with applying,

• 58:09Jocko Willink?

  supplying people with a good place to work.

• 58:14Jocko Willink?

  Maintenance and supply economy. You'll recall that on the subject of training habits, I said that men will do in combat what they have been taught and, and practiced in training. This is equally true in the area of maintenance for in combat, high maintenance standards become a matter of life and death. Of equal significance is supply, supply economy that wasted bullet or gallon of gas may seem insignificant now, but what a difference it may make when the chips are down. Exclamation point. I think that's the only exclamation point he uses in this book.

• 58:49Jocko Willink?

  You train how you fight. And if you're allowed to be sloppy or cut corners and not do the maintenance, where are you going to end up? You're going to end up in a bad way.

• 59:02Jocko Willink?

  Good leadership on the company level can only thrive in a climate of good commandership on the battalion level and above. What company commanders have a right to expect from commanders above?

• 59:18Jocko Willink?

  So here, look, if you're working, if you're a boss, this is what you should be providing to the people below you. That their honest errors be pointed out, but be underwritten at least once in the interest of developing initiative and leadership. Boom. What does that mean? It means if someone makes a mistake one time, you don't drop the hammer on them. You, you show them support that they had initiative, that they showed good leadership. So that's what we're supposed to point them out. Hey, Dave, bad initiative or good initiative, bad judgment. You know, I like that you took action, but let's think through the action that you took.

• 59:59Jocko Willink?

  That's fine. To be responsible for and be allowed to develop their own units with only essential guidance from above. You are responsible for developing however you want to do it. Dave, you got your team. However, you want to develop that team. Here's, here's, here's the minimum requirements. And this is the mission. Only the essential guidance. What do we say? We say minimum force required. We want to lead with the minimum force required. A helpful attitude toward their problems, loyalty down as well as up. That they not be subjected to the needling

• 1:00:41Jocko Willink?

  of unproductive statistics competitions between like units. Just harassing people. The best in commandership that their, that the needs of their units be anticipated and provided for. That's not too much to ask. That I anticipate that Dave's going to need more bullets or more ammunition or more fuel. And I have it for him. To be kept oriented as to the mission and situation of the unit above. A well thought out program of training, work and recreation, good training and work management to receive timely, clear cut and positive orders and decisions which are not constantly changed.

• 1:01:26Jocko Willink?

  That the integrity of their tactical units be maintained in assigning essential tasks. Oh, that's so smart.

• 1:01:35Jocko Willink?

  That was a little trick that I did. I would keep my little fire teams together. I'd keep the squads together as much as I could. I'd keep the platoons together as much as I could. Look, we were interoperable. But if you can keep a fire team together, they are so good to go.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. You want them tight. You, I think a couple of, you said anticipate the needs.

• 1:01:55Jocko Willink?

  That the needs of their units be anticipated and provided for.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Think about that word, though. That the needs are anticipated. That, that is a real word in there. That is not, I'm here, hey, when you run out of stuff, come up and tell me, hey, and you run it through the chain of command and give me the, the triplicate paperwork to give you what you need. It's me knowing what's going on down there and going, hey, Jaco, you and the team have been getting after it, man. How's your stash of this supplier? How's this going on here? Are you running low? Cause I can start working this now to get this to you. And you're thinking, damn, he, he didn't just cut us loose. He's actually paying attention to what's going on down here. And I was about to send up the request, but I don't like asking my boss for stuff. So I was kind of worried about asking him and he's thinking, I've noticed you guys have been cranking. Do you need some of this? You're anticipating the needs, not just responding to their needs, but actually thinking about it.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  I mean, you want to talk about being a commander, being a leader, knowing what your people are going through and giving them what they need before they have to ask for it? That word is no small word.

• 1:02:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And then the, the parsing of that word that you just used could clarify that for everyone here. You said, you need to actually think about it.

• 1:03:06Jocko Willink?

  What does that mean? That means while you're daydreaming, while you're sitting around, uh, doing whatever you're doing, this anticipation isn't just going to come and smack you in the face. You need to set aside a little time. You need to look at what that unit's doing. You need to figure out, you need to actually think about what's going on. What a novel idea.

• 1:03:25Jocko Willink?

  That reminds me of Way the Warrior Kid where the first one, Mark thinks he should know his times tables and Uncle Jake says, "We'll have you studied." And he says, "What do you mean, study? No, I should just know them." No, and you're not going to be able to just randomly anticipate people's needs. You need to actually think about it. And the last one in this chapter,

• 1:03:49Jocko Willink?

  oh, sorry, not the last one yet, that their successes be measured by the overall ability of a unit to perform its whole mission and not by the performance of one or two factors. So, look at people holistically, look at units holistically. And then this is the last one, "That good works by their units be recognized and rewarded in such a way as to motivate the greatest number to do well and seek further improvement." Good. Now, we're going to roll into chapter two. This is called Leadership Versus Popularity. And this is, this is interesting. This is where, this is where I start to, uh, sometimes when I'm reading leadership things, I'm like, "Wait, wow, that's, that's really not my viewpoint. Hold on a second." Like this is a

• 1:04:34Jocko Willink?

  little, and then, and then I continue to read and I find, "Oh, he's saying it a little bit differently, but he, or he..." Sometimes people are actually saying something different, but they don't even mean it. They don't even mean it. And you're going to see what I'm talking about. So, leader versus, leadership versus popularity, the example of a strong leader.

• 1:04:55Jocko Willink?

  "During the World War II period, I served as a division commander, I served a division commander as his chief of staff and later as one of his combat commanders for a period of over two years. He was a strong character and a strong leader. He had firm ideas about things that he liked and disliked and placed requirements on his officers and men in the fields of wearing equipment and uniforms, tactical disposition during field training, the care and handling of vehicles and other things, many of which were unpopular. At one time in an evening discussion period, I pointed out that these requirements to him and asked him if he felt that the effort

• 1:05:36Jocko Willink?

  he put into them was not excessive for the practical results which he achieved. His answer gave me insight into the problems of training and preparations and preparing troops for emergencies or battle for which I have never forgotten."

• 1:05:54Jocko Willink?

  He stated that in case of an emergency or battle, a commander was required to place upon his officers and men many requirements that were unpopular and for which time was not available for hesitation. The thought of being popular or unpopular should never enter the mind of a commander. So that's the part where I start going, heesh, wait a second, what are we talking about? And I'm not totally there yet, but I'm a little bit nervous because he's, because what this translates to, and Leif has talked about this before, Leif had someone come and speak to the junior officers, a senior officer come and talk to the junior officers. And, and the message was, in no uncertain terms,

• 1:06:35Jocko Willink?

  hey, when you're in charge, you're, you're, you should not be liked. You should not be liked. When you're in charge, you're going to make all these hard decisions. People aren't going to like you. You need to be okay with that. And Leif had to kind of like, when this senior officer would leave, Leif kind of had to like back these guys down and say, listen, let me put that in perspective. Yeah. So this is, he pointed out that a commander who was unable to attain, obtain compliance with unpopular requirements from his officers or men during training and during preparation for combat, would not be able to obtain prompt compliance with his requirements to meet emergencies or to attack an enemy in battle. He said that the requirements he placed in

• 1:07:17Jocko Willink?

  the training period served three purposes. One, they conditioned his command to carry out promptly his instructions. Two, the way which his men carried out these requirements served as a constant measure to him of his hold on his officers and his men. And they, with other things, helped instill a fierce pride in the division. I might add that this officer was one of the most respected division commanders that I have known, even now, over 15 years after he left the division, he is the most popular man present when the division association has a convention. So all this talk about him not being concerned about, you know, this guy's the most popular guy.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Everybody loves him, yeah.

• 1:08:01Jocko Willink?

  Everybody loves this guy. Why do they love this guy? Do they love him because he was nice? Do they love him because he gave him extra brownies and ice cream? No. He loved them because he was dis, they loved him because he was disciplined. That's what they loved.

• 1:08:20Jocko Willink?

  Later on, when I was placed in command of a combat command of the division, I remembered the procedure off, and I was actually, when I first read this thing, I was, I thought he was talking about Patton, because he worked for Patton. But Patton wasn't alive 15 years later to be the most popular guy. So I don't know who it was. I'll have to do more research.

• 1:08:41Jocko Willink?

  And this says, "An unpopular requirement that paid off." Later on, when I was placed in command of a combat command of the division, "I remembered the procedure often used at Leavenworth of attacking at first light in the morning." "One of the reasons for doing this was in hopes of catching the enemy unprepared to resist attack." If we were taught this, if we were taught this, probably the enemy did likewise. Because of this, whenever I had combat command in the field for training, "I required every man to be up, dressed, and manning his battle station at first light." "Communications were checked all the way from squad level to me, and reports of readiness were laid from the squad level to me after daylight. And if it was decided that no attack was probable, the troops were permitted to eat breakfast and then proceed with the day's activities."

• 1:09:27Jocko Willink?

  I talked about this in one of the earliest of podcasts. "This early morning stand to," that's what it's called, "was never popular, and there would be many requests to relax the requirement of it, particularly for men who had been on guard or night duty." While these requests were never granted, because, these requests were never granted, because I felt that if, that if we were overrun while still asleep, the enemy would not spare the man who had been late getting into bed. Boom.

• 1:09:56Jocko Willink?

  "This procedure was followed in my command throughout the war." I can say that even in the face of the enemy, it was not particularly popular. So even, even in combat, guys were like, "Bro, let me sleep in." "Sir, let me sleep in," even in combat, even in combat, where the enemy might really attack and kill you and overrun you. People were like, "Hey, man, can we just get some sleep in the morning?"

• 1:10:20Jocko Willink?

  But he never, he never submitted to that. And he said, however, it did save elements of my command on several occasions from being overrun and destroyed in the early morning. At one time, a portion, a portion of the 37th Tank Battalion. How cool is that? The 137. 137. Shout out to the Bandits Battle of Ramadi. A portion of the 37th Tank Battalion was saved from destruction by an enemy tank brigade attack in the fog at first light because it was ready. This particular requirement was probably most unpopular in my combat command headquarters, and there was considerable griping about it on many occasions. However, one morning when my command was in the rear of the enemy lines east of Nancy,

• 1:11:05Jocko Willink?

  the headquarters personnel were alert at first light. Men were manning their defensive positions. Weapons had been checked and communications had been established. In particular, the three tank destroyers attached to my headquarters were in position, loaded, and manned.

• 1:11:20Jocko Willink?

  At first light, a platoon of enemy tanks came into the headquarters area, which in the case of a combat command headquarters was not very large. The tank destroyers immediately took them under fire and succeeded in knocking out three of the tanks. The other two withdrew. Our loss during this engagement was only one tank destroyer, which was destroyed by a direct hit from one of the enemy tanks. There was much discussion of this attack in the headquarters in the days that followed. One of the men stated that he never realized how crowded a combat command headquarters could be when an enemy attack came. I heard no more comments in my headquarters about the requirement for everybody being dressed alert in position in daylight.

• 1:12:03Jocko Willink?

  The purpose of this account is to point out that a commander and leader owes a responsibility to his men to require them to do things which are for their own benefit and for the benefit of the command as a whole, even though their requirements are not popular.

• 1:12:24Jocko Willink?

  So you wanna, you wanna follow a thread? You wanna follow a thread? Go read the book about face and read what, what Hackworth did when he took over the 439th. It's the, it's the exact same story. What he made these guys do was change their, you had to dig a hole to sleep. First of all, they, they actually started digging in. They started moving their positions every night. They started expanding the perimeter, retract their perimeter. And by the way, when you dig a hole in Vietnam, or really anywhere, when you dig a fighting hole, a fighting position, and then you're gonna move, guess what you gotta do with that one that you just left? You gotta fill it in. So if, if we put out the perimeter and then we move back that night 25 or 50 meters, because we don't wanna get mortared, because we know the enemy saw where we were,

• 1:13:08Jocko Willink?

  we gotta fill in that fighting position, because we don't want the enemy to be able to use it. So that's a lot of digging to be do, to be doing. Well, guess what? He did this, Hackworth did this, hey, they, they got rid of all the crap that they had in their, in their battalion CP, they got rid of all that junk, they started digging in, they started moving their perimeter, and the first time they got mortared, under his command, there were no casualties, because the elements had moved. And guess what? There was no more complaining. This is the exact same story. I wonder where Hackworth figured that out from?

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:13:44Jocko Willink?

  Next chapter.

• 1:13:47Jocko Willink?

  Ethics, conduct, and standards of officers. Subtitle, set an example.

• 1:13:58Jocko Willink?

  What, you know, I had such a good benefit, my benefit, the, the luck that I had in my career and my life is amazing. But one of the most amazing things is, when I was a young enlisted guy in the SEAL teams, I was watching my lieutenant.

• 1:14:14Jocko Willink?

  I was tracking, I was tracking those boys. When they forgot a piece of gear, I was like, oh. When they were late, oh, I was tracking them. And so I knew that, I knew, I knew better than anyone could have ever taught me or told me. Like, we're sitting here saying this, you've said it five times today, I've said it eight times today. Your people are watching you, your people are watching you, your people are watching you. I could have been told that a hundred times and it wouldn't have been as effective as me actually knowing what it was like to watch my, my bosses. And note the good and note the bad. Set an example. The ethics, conduct and standards of behavior of a few of our officers are matters of real concern to me.

• 1:14:56Jocko Willink?

  Except for a few junior officers, our officers are either regular officers or reserve officers serving because they chose to do so. It is up to the latter group to set the proper example in all things for those junior officers. It is up to all officers to conduct themselves in such a manner that the prestige of the army officer will be high in the eyes of the public and of our enlisted men.

• 1:15:23Jocko Willink?

  An officer who behaves in an unbecoming manner destroys his standing in a unit.

• 1:15:32Jocko Willink?

  Man, if we broke out and just started talking about what's unbecoming for a leader.

• 1:15:37Jocko Willink?

  Cause you know, when you hear the word conduct unbecoming in our officer, you think like, oh, this guy is outlacking like an idiot. What about when that guy shows up 12 minutes late?

• 1:15:47Jocko Willink?

  What about when that guy doesn't bring the right piece of gear? What about when that guy loses his temper? Well, you're like, whatever it is.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  All those little things. All those little things add up. And if you were a leader in an organization, you gotta understand that your people are watching you. And what that actually is, is an opportunity to pull them into your sphere of influence. Cause as a young Marine, I was looking for role models too. I was looking, when I was keeping track of those little things, that little slip here, that little slack over here, that little error here. And I was looking around when I saw the ones that were, that were holding the line, that's where I wanted to be. And if you're that leader, you will pull these people into your sphere of influence. And you can lead and mentor them and you can have, you can design the culture of the entire

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  unit by yourself, just by setting that right example, because you will pull people into your sphere and they will follow that lead and they will do the same thing. And then all of a sudden you've got folks down the organization that aren't holding the line. You don't have to be the one to go down there and fix it, because you've got this little army of people on your little team that are doing that across, across the organization.

• 1:16:57Jocko Willink?

  So I was in the teams back in the day and I was getting ready.

• 1:17:04Jocko Willink?

  I, I think I was actually, I had been picked up for the Seaman to Admiral program. So I was, I had been picked up. And I was super stoked and I was, but I was still at SEAL Team One. I had finished out my time there before I went to Officer Candidate School. And then I would go from Officer Candidate School. So I either had been picked up, I think I'd been picked up. But another guy, another officer, another prior enlisted officer who did the program that I wanted, that I was doing, right? And he'd been picked up and he had gone to Officer Candidate School and then he showed up at SEAL Team One.

• 1:17:46Jocko Willink?

  So he was, you know, he was almost, he was very similar to me in the fact that we were both prior enlisted guys. He got picked up, I think it was one year ahead of me. And he shows up at SEAL Team One. And I remember seeing this dude for the first time. And look, you, you know, I, I just looked at him and I was like, damn, this dude is squared away. And I couldn't even really, I couldn't even really understand. I said, well, why does this guy's whole uniform look squared away? This guy looks like he's on another level. And you know, we're in the locker room or whatever. Well, guess what? He was wearing shirt stays. Do you know what those are?

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:18:27Jocko Willink?

  You do. So he was wearing shirt stays, which is the way that you roll with at OCS. It's like you're wearing shirt stays. That's all there is to it. So for those of you that don't know what shirt stays are, they are a piece of elastic material that that you attach from the bottom of your shirt, which is tucked in and they run down your legs and then they attach to your socks. So no matter what happens, your shirt is freaking staying put and it looks like you look like it's, it looks like the uniform on a mannequin.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:02Jocko Willink?

  It looks like that. Somebody dressed this thing for a mannequin. And so I remember seeing it and going, damn, this and he just looked, everything looked squared away about him. You know, he was an awesome physical shape, you know, just a great guy and he is an incredible guy. But I remember looking at him going, damn, this dude is squared away. And I saw those shirt stays. I didn't know what those were as an enlisted SEAL. You had no, I had no idea. Showed up at OCS and you know what? Those shirt stays, because, because pretty much when you're done with OCS, you don't really need to wear them anymore.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:35Jocko Willink?

  Guess what?

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  He did.

• 1:19:36Jocko Willink?

  He did.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  And I did.

• 1:19:39Jocko Willink?

  I freaking wore those things religiously because that's the difference. That's the difference. That's setting the example. You better look squared away.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:19:48Jocko Willink?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 1:19:50Jocko Willink?

  All the time.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  Where do you not want to look squared away? And look, if you got, if you got long-term plans and you want to build a team and you got long-term plans of having a good team around you, start early. I remember joining my first squadron and, and, and there's the training officer bill. It's called the training officer. It's like the junior, it's the senior of the junior officers. So it's that kind of the guy that's elevated himself amongst all the junior pilots. That's kind of in a key leadership role. And I remember seeing a training and you see a squared away training officer, like I want to be like that guy. And then that training officer would go away and then a couple of years later, he'd come back to a squadron. He'd be the ops officer, which is like a senior of the middle guys. And he'd be squared away by the time, and I'm this guy that, that I worked with in my squadron.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  By the time that guy came back to be a squadron commander who had been squared away from day one. Dudes are running down to headquarters with cases of beer, be like, I want to get in this guy's squadron. People were fighting to get into his unit.

• 1:20:44Jocko Willink?

  Was that because he was nice?

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:46Jocko Willink?

  Was that because he gave people extra liberty?

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Cause he was squared away and he held the line and we all wanted to be like him. And it's, he didn't like wake up one day like, oh, I'm a commander now. I guess I gotta square myself away. He'd been like that forever. Dudes were fighting to get in his unit.

• 1:21:01Jocko Willink?

  You know, I was talking about leadership capital the other day on EF online because somebody asked a question about it. And one of the things is you, your reputation can contain a positive bank account of leadership capital.

• 1:21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:15Jocko Willink?

  It can also contain a negative bank account of leadership capital. And if you're not, if you just decide that you're going to get squared away when you're put in charge, if that's when you make that decision, you're rolling in there with all kinds of negative.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Jocko Willink?

  Bank account. It's a disaster.

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  And with people you don't even know, your reputation extends well beyond the people that you hang out with.

• 1:21:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  You know, in these communities, people know you, have heard of you. People are going to run towards you or avoid you. And you don't even know who they are and it's going to all be based on your, your account with them, how much leader, leadership capital you've built. And it goes well beyond the sphere that you think you're part of. Everybody knows you in those leadership roles and they're watching you.

• 1:21:55Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, the enlisted men have no further respect for him. Oh, this is for the guy that, that behaves in conduct unbecoming of an officer. The enlisted men have no further respect for him and he can no longer lead or command effectively. His value to his unit has largely been destroyed. When an officer accepts his commission, he is presumed to have had enough experience to have acquired the ethical and moral precepts expected of an officer and a gentleman. A record of long service is not an excuse for laxity in this matter. Damn, he's coming off the top rope. It's right there. I just put myself in mental check for my whole life.

• 1:22:35Jocko Willink?

  Too often incidents are brought to my attention involving the intemperate use of alcohol. Drunkenness at any time and place is disgraceful. When combined with the operation of a motor vehicle, it becomes a potential killer.

• 1:22:54Jocko Willink?

  Drunk driving didn't used to be a thing. Do you know that?

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 1:22:58Jocko Willink?

  Drunk driving didn't used to be a thing.

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  It was a badge of honor back in the day on some units.

• 1:23:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, uh, when my dad, my dad crashed a car drunk in like 1955 or something. And the cop like pulled his car out and gave him a ride home. I mean, he, my dad was like whatever 19 or something. And, and I got hit by a drunk driver when I was a kid on a bicycle. And I got hit by a drunk driver. I got thrown off my bike. I had to get stitches in my head. And my dad was like, oh yeah, it was almost like, it was almost like, well, you know, you had a little too much to drink. You know, no, no factor. The kid will be all right. Can we get some money for a new bike? Cause the bike was trashed.

• 1:23:46Jocko Willink?

  Nowadays, that would be game over for that guy's whole life, right? That'd be going to prison. But would you go to jail for that? If you hit a kid on a bike while you're drunk?

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  I would say like, no question. You'd be going to jail, right?

• 1:23:59Jocko Willink?

  So it's pretty interesting that way back then, he's saying, when combined with the operation of a motor vehicle, it becomes a potential killer.

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's way out in front of the curve here. This is someone who's probably spent way more time thinking about that type of character than others. Cause back then, that wasn't a thing.

• 1:24:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You want to know why? He's probably gone to visit all of a bunch of guys in the hospital that had drunk driving accidents and repaired, you know, had Jeeps. Had to ride off Jeeps and trucks and whatever else. These results are not only detrimental to the individual, but also to the service, particularly in overseas commands. Commanders at all levels must continually take aggressive action to reduce excessive drinking and prevent drunken driving.

• 1:24:40Jocko Willink?

  A long time ago, again, officers are expected to set the example.

• 1:24:47Jocko Willink?

  The Officer's Code. Army regulations provide that an officer's signature is in itself a certification. His signature is his bond. A requirement is that an officer is so to conduct himself that he is deserving of such trust. Appropriate administrative and disciplinary action must be taken against officers who are guilty of misconduct and unwilling to live within proper code. The officer, an officer cannot expect to retain his standing and prestige as an officer where he is inefficient or guilty of unbecoming conduct. Each officer must clothe himself with such a scale of values that he knows instinctively the things that an officer does not do.

• 1:25:31Jocko Willink?

  The Officer's Code does not get less binding as he goes up in rank. The opposite is true. It becomes more binding.

• 1:25:41Jocko Willink?

  Dude, this dude is holding the line big time. I'm feeling like nervous.

• 1:25:48Jocko Willink?

  As I always have to point out, I was a young wild frog man.

• 1:25:56Jocko Willink?

  I did not come close to achieving these standards.

• 1:26:06Jocko Willink?

  I would have loved to have read this book when I was 18, 19, 20. I would have loved to have people that were telling me, hey, bro, this is the path. This is it. This is what you want to do. And you know what it takes to be able to do that? Here's the reality.

• 1:26:26Jocko Willink?

  For me to say, hey, you know what? I made mistakes and I do not want you to make them. I want you to be better than me. I want you to be better than I am. I want your, the, the end state of your life, I want to be superior to mine.

• 1:26:45Jocko Willink?

  That's what, that's what drives giving this kind of advice. Hey, listen, I want the end state of your life to be superior to mine.

• 1:26:56Jocko Willink?

  That's what we should be thinking when we interact with other people. We shouldn't have that little thing in the back of our minds that's saying, you know what? I had to do this. I had to learn the hard way. I wish I would have done that, but no one told me to do that. Why should I tell him?

• 1:27:14Jocko Willink?

  What do you got?

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  Just wrote it down, because that's a good one. That's, that's leadership.

• 1:27:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:23Jocko Willink?

  Crazy.

• 1:27:27Jocko Willink?

  I was recently invited to the US Army Command and General Staff College to address the faculty and students on the subject of commandership and generalship. Following my talk, I was asked to comment on the problem of integrity versus professional loyalty when an officer is confronted with orders with which he has a strong disagreement. I answered by citing two examples in my experience. Once, while a cadet, I asked a tactical officer a similar question. His answer was to carry out the order loyally, and then when you are in a tenable position to recommend changes if warranted. I followed this with good results. So there's your first answer. Hey, you know, I asked Dave to do something that you don't agree with. What should you do? Well, you should carry it out, and then you should pull me aside when you, as soon

• 1:28:12Jocko Willink?

  as you get a chance, go, hey, John, this doesn't seem like it's a good idea to me. Here's why. Good, got that.

• 1:28:20Jocko Willink?

  This is a longer example. In another instance, when I was a commanding general of the US Continental Army Command, we were charged with the service testing of an expensive and important piece of army equipment. This was important enough to assign my deputy, a lieutenant general, to monitor closely. The test went on for several weeks. One day, my deputy reported to me that the piece of equipment was not proving out satisfactorily. He was fully convinced of his position. I told him how serious and how sensitive such a finding would be. I directed that he call in several officers closely concerned with the test for a conference with me. This was done, and all were unanimous, supporting the position of my deputy. They had data and results supporting them.

• 1:29:04Jocko Willink?

  So they're supposed to test this piece of gear. There's a, it sounds like there's an expected outcome. It wasn't turning out that way. I directed that they prepare a personal letter for my signature. The Chief of Staff of the Army, or for my signature for the Chief of Staff of the Army, setting forth their findings and conclusions with supporting data and information. After approving and signing it, I had my aide deliver it by hand to the Chief of Staff. Within forty-eight hours, I had a phone call from the Chief of Staff. He was disturbed. He told me how serious this was, how important the equipment was, and how not only the United States, but an allied power was interested in it. He wanted us to take a positive approach and proceed with the program.

• 1:29:49Jocko Willink?

  My reply, so there you go. He wrote out, hey, there's the problems, these are the shortfalls, this is what we all agree on, I'm letting you know. And his boss says, hey, this is an interesting terminology. I want you, I want you to take a positive, a positive approach and proceed. Take a positive approach and proceed. So, so, to me, I translate that as, hey, lean towards making this work. My reply was that I felt I owed him the loyalty to bring the facts as I believed them to his attention, and having done that, I was prepared to carry out fully his further instructions. The morals of this true story are, the Chief of Staff was in a position to, now this is

• 1:30:33Jocko Willink?

  important, the Chief of Staff was in a position to know of considerations and factors of the higher, highest importance, which I could not know. Now, where I think this is, if Dave comes to me and says, hey, I object to this, or I got this issue, my response would be like, hey, Dave, here's what's going on, man, here's why this is important, here's what's happening, I would tell you why. Here's some things you see that I don't see. Here's some things you know I need to know. Yep, yep. I had satisfied both my integrity and professional loyalty, as well as my duty to my superior. I was now free to proceed without compromise on my part. To take a negative or I told you so attitude would not have been becoming to a member

• 1:31:17Jocko Willink?

  of the team, all members of which were dedicated to doing their best for the Army and their country. So.

• 1:31:24Jocko Willink?

  I wrote about this in Leadership Strategy and Tactics, almost ad nauseam, but there's so many different ways to talk about it. And I even, one that I cite all the time is the Band of Brothers dick winners.

• 1:31:39Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:31:40Jocko Willink?

  Yep. You do the recon, someone gets killed, the war is literally within days of ending. You do a recon, someone gets killed, you come back, you get told to do another recon the next night, and you say, got it, boss. And then you go have the guys drink wine in a cellar, and you don't do the recon. Is that a good call? Yep. Is it supporting the chain of command? Nope. Did it protect the guys? Yes. Did it accomplish the mission? Yes. Could he have argued it a little bit? And I forget from the movie, how they showed it. I think he pushed back. He definitely pushed back. But at a certain point, pushing back would have just gotten him fired. And then guess what?

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  Then they're going on the patrol.

• 1:32:15Jocko Willink?

  Then they're going on the patrol.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  With a yes man.

• 1:32:17Jocko Willink?

  With a yes man.

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  Yep, for sure. And as you're building, as this story is building up, there's a little part of me too, but I think of people listening like, so he's already done that. He's going to now hold the line. No, sir. I cannot in good conscience, put this in a positive light. Cool. I'll find somebody that can. And there's a part in there, the humility that it takes, he's a four star general in this case to go, you know what? The chief of staff knows something I don't know. He sees something I don't see. Can I consider that and try to go out and go, hey, I'll tell you what, there's some places over here, this piece of equipment actually does work pretty well. Maybe not here and here, but here's some positive. Can I do that? Yeah, it takes a ton of humility. But if you don't do that, the influence you

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  lose to actually provide the outcome that you want, which is exactly what you're saying. Think about the humility it takes to go, maybe I don't have the whole picture. And this, I'm going to dig my heels and hold the line because it's the right thing to do. Maybe I actually don't even know the whole story.

• 1:33:14Jocko Willink?

  Cool. You're fired.

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:33:15Jocko Willink?

  Yep. See you later. And I'll get a yes man in there. And he's going to give me whatever I want for report. And that's that.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:23Jocko Willink?

  So good.

• 1:33:26Jocko Willink?

  Next section, and this, so this, this is chapter four, prestige of the non-commissioned officer. And again, once again, I sort of said, well, maybe we don't need to cover this. And then as I read through it, I realized what this is talking about. And this is talking about something that I've referred to quite a bit on EF online lately. So if you think about it from this perspective, it starts to make a lot of sense way beyond the military, and that is respect, respect. So prestige of the non-commissioned officer. So if you think about this from the perspective of how do you respect people? How important that is? Because that's what he's talking about. Continuing on, advances in weapon systems

• 1:34:07Jocko Willink?

  over the past few years have forced many changes in our tactical organization and operational concepts. The keynotes of our modern army are mobility, dispersion, and small, small unit operations. This concept, coupled with the many new tools of war, requires greater reliance than ever before on our non-commissioned officers. What are we talking about? We're talking about frontline leaders. So if you're in the civilian world, we're talking about frontline leaders. And guess what? This guy was in World War I, and in World War I, there was not a bunch of reliance. There was not dispersion, meaning everyone was together. You're in a big trench, you're all together when it, when it, when the, when the trumpet blows, or the whistle sounds, or the, the signal comes, we're all going at once, we're going to go over the top, we're going to charge. In, with hundreds and hundreds of

• 1:34:50Jocko Willink?

  men at the same time. There's no dispersion, we're all close together. It's not small unit operations. And we're not moving. So he saw that. And look, he says, mobility, dispersion, and small unit operations. What was World War I? It was not mobile, it was not dispersed, and it was not small unit operations. By the time he gets to Korea, and then he gets to World War II, or sorry, World War II, and then Korea, it's totally different. And now he realizes the importance of the frontline leaders. So how do we rely on these frontline leaders? So if you're thinking about your frontline leaders, here's what you need to do. Fully develop the non-commissioned officer to fulfill his role, a commander must place responsibility on him, and permit him to assume his place in command. You have

• 1:35:33Jocko Willink?

  to give them ownership. In doing this, standards of performance need not be lowered. Honest errors must be expected and tolerated, but corrected.

• 1:35:45Jocko Willink?

  Senior personnel must not usurp responsibilities which provide the experience needed in developing our junior leaders. Don't be the yes man. Don't be the easy button. Sorry, don't be the easy button.

• 1:35:59Jocko Willink?

  Emphasis should be placed on the non-commissioned officer's role. Leader, trainer, supervisor.

• 1:36:07Jocko Willink?

  Leader, trainer, supervisor. This goes back to the developing the the Echelon Front Certification Program. Think about this. Leader, trainer, supervisor. He's got them all mixed in like we eventually got to. I didn't have this book when we were starting to develop that program. Now that I have it, I'm super stoked that we came to the same conclusion. And that is that a leader, a trainer, a supervisor, a manager, an instructor, they're all qualities that are needed as you come up the chain of command, if you're going to be in charge of people.

• 1:36:38Jocko Willink?

  There follows a list of suggested actions that may be taken each by each commissioned officer at all levels of command to further the efficiency and enhance the stature of the non-commissioned officer corps. Again, how do we respect our frontline leaders? Because the more respect we give them, the more respect they're going to give us, the more ownership we give them, the more ownership they're going to take.

• 1:37:05Jocko Willink?

  Authority. Prevent the use of non-commissioned officers for menial and degrading tasks.

• 1:37:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:37:16Jocko Willink?

  Ensure that non-commissioned officers are consistently addressed by their rank. So you're giving them that respect.

• 1:37:24Jocko Willink?

  Adhere to the chain of command through non-commissioned officer ranks, right? So you don't jump down to the frontline and start talking to them without talking to that frontline leader.

• 1:37:34Jocko Willink?

  Reduce requirements for officer supervision or mandatory presence at troop formations. Let the non-commissioned officer take charge. Give them ownership.

• 1:37:46Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes for those of you that aren't watching this on YouTube, when Dave just fully agrees with something, he doesn't nod his head yes, he shakes his head no, as if to say, this is just no disputing this at all. Yeah.

• 1:37:59Jocko Willink?

  Avoid mass withdrawal of non-commissioned officer privileges, but take positive action against individual concerns. So don't do collective punitive actions. When appropriate, permit key non-commissioned officers to attend staff conferences and commanders briefings. Hello. Take that frontline leader, bring him into your higher level meetings. Let them see what's going on.

• 1:38:23Jocko Willink?

  Ensure that deserving, high-quality, non-commissioned officers are commended for outstanding performance of duty by awarding them commendation ribbons, letters of appreciation, or commendation, or certificates of achievement, or, and this is Jaco's addition, give them more responsibility, give them more ownership.

• 1:38:43Jocko Willink?

  Refrain from over-supervising the non-commissioned officer after a task has been assigned.

• 1:38:51Jocko Willink?

  Don't micromanage. Issue mission-type instructions rather than detailed orders.

• 1:38:58Jocko Willink?

  Once again, I feel like I owe this guy money. I haven't said, I haven't said that yet on this podcast, but when I read these things, I feel like I owe this guy money.

• 1:39:06Jocko Willink?

  Whenever possible, place senior non-commissioned officers under the supervision of commissioned warrant officers. Inform non-commissioned officers in advance of significant matters pertaining to the unit such as maneuvers, field problems, training requirements, disciplinary matters, standards, to avoid unfounded rumors and allow for necessary advance planning at all echelons.

• 1:39:26Jocko Willink?

  Does it make sense that you keep your unit informed? You keep your frontline leaders informed?

• 1:39:33Jocko Willink?

  What do you think they do when you don't tell them what's happening? Do you think they sit there and silently await your word? No, they make shit up. They make it up, yep.

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  Is there more? This is ridiculous how good this is.

• 1:39:48Jocko Willink?

  Grant non-commissioned officers, again, if you're listening to this and you're not in the military, just replace this with your frontline leaders.

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:55Jocko Willink?

  Grant frontline leaders a greater voice in allowing privileges or awards, awarding punishment.

• 1:40:02Jocko Willink?

  Consult with them on matters involving the reclassification and promotion of their subordinates.

• 1:40:10Jocko Willink?

  Let it be known that they greatly influence these matters. This is all, this whole thing is about giving away responsibility and giving away ownership.

• 1:40:18Jocko Willink?

  Use senior non-commissioned officers to assist in conducting inspections.

• 1:40:24Jocko Willink?

  Ensure distribution of directives to non-commissioned officers so that they may have current information on military matters. Keep your frontline leaders informed.

• 1:40:39Jocko Willink?

  Use senior non-commissioned officers as instructors.

• 1:40:45Jocko Willink?

  Back the actions of non-commissioned officers publicly. Refer to them as non-commissioned officers, not as NCOs or non-comms, which are two slang terms, which I do all the time. NCOs, non-comms. He's saying, give them that, and look, it's a little slang term. Give them that respect.

• 1:41:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the title is, is it the prestige of the non-commissioned officer? I mean, that's what he's talking about. I mean, that was just, that was just a recipe for leadership right there. And like I said, these are your supervisors. These are your frontline supervisors, whose management is of the people right at the point of friction. The ones doing the work. So these are your first-line supervisors and second-line supervisors, closest to your people out there making it happen. And if you want them to respect you, you gotta give them respect. If you want them to trust you, you have to trust them. And if you want them to lead, like, you gotta let them lead. And every single time you take responsibility away from them. He said in the beginning, you gotta expect them to make mistakes and make errors.

• 1:41:50Speaker 01

  You don't ignore it, you correct it, but you don't take responsibility away from them. If I take, if you do something that's not what I want. You work for me, you're one of my supervisors, you go out there and do something, it's not how I wanted it. And if I take that responsibility away from you, that's me telling you, I don't trust you. And you know what the return on me again to that is? You don't trust me as much. That means I still gotta correct that. I gotta show, hey Jaco, that's not what we're looking for. Let me talk to you about what, why we did this and why. Let me explain these things. But I get you right back out there to go do it. The reciprocal nature of the relationship, everything you want from them, you have to give them. That it was literally a list. It is a checklist of leadership to get the behavior that you want.

• 1:42:29Jocko Willink?

  You and I were on a call with one of our clients the other day. And it was, it was one of those questions came up and there's these four things. It's a call, Chrissy was on the call and she was quite fired up.

• 1:42:43Speaker 01

  She's awesome.

• 1:42:44Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely. But if you want people to listen to you, listen to them. If you want people to respect them, respect them. If you want people to respect you, you have to respect them. If you want to influence people, you have to allow them to influence you. And if you want people to trust you, you have to give them trust.

• 1:43:06Jocko Willink?

  Couple more things on this section. Responsibilities. Insist on a thorough appreciation of the non-commissioned officer's full-time responsibility to his men and to his commander.

• 1:43:17Jocko Willink?

  Thorough appreciation.

• 1:43:21Jocko Willink?

  What does that mean? That means respect. Appoint senior non-commissioned officer councils at each level of command, starting with the battalion separate. So again, this idea of creating these councils, these groups within your organization, so you can get good feedback is brilliant. Encourage non-commissioned officers, officer participation in civic affairs. Great. The last section here is education and training. This is the last thing we're going to cover.

• 1:43:46Jocko Willink?

  Nothing can clothe with prestige a non-commissioned officer who does not know his job and does not play the part expected of him as a non-commissioned officer. Because of that, we should,

• 1:44:01Jocko Willink?

  one, hold classes to ensure that non-commissioned officers are thoroughly trained for their jobs and prepared to handle instructions or duties when they appear before their subordinates. What is that right there? Look, I am responsible for making sure the people blowing me in the chain of command are ready to do their job.

• 1:44:18Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:44:21Jocko Willink?

  Number two, encourage attendance at non-commissioned officers academy and other courses designed to enhance the prestige and set the standards expected of non-commissioned officers.

• 1:44:33Jocko Willink?

  And three, encourage non-commissioned officers to take advantage of the many opportunities to increase their general level of education. And what's just amazing about this, that's just another 13 pages of this document, which is 117 pages long, we made it through another, I think we made it, might have made it through 14 pages. But the section that closes it out is to treat people with respect and give them responsibility and train them and educate them. To take care of your people. Now, let's point this out. I don't care how good of a leader you are, if you don't invest in these subordinate leaders,

• 1:45:17Jocko Willink?

  it doesn't matter what you do, because those, those, those frontline leaders are the ones that win. Dude. They're also the ones that lose. Yep. So invest in them. Treat them with respect. Listen to them. Allow them to influence you. Give them trust. And I don't care what your job is or what your vocation is in life, you have to work with people. And if you work with people, take care of those people and those people are going to take care of you.

• 1:45:55Jocko Willink?

  And speaking of taking care of people, Dave, I know that you know that when the aircraft cabin loses pressure, the oxygen masks drop down and you have to take care of others, of course, but before you can take care of others, you've got to take care of yourself to make sure that you have enough oxygen to live so that you can then put the oxygen masks on your children.

• 1:46:23Jocko Willink?

  So even though we need to take care of others, we need to take care of ourselves. First, we got some ways of doing that. One of the ways is Jaco Fuel. Which is supplements. We got a bunch of them. We got joint warfare, krill oil. We got discipline, discipline go. We got discipline with the cans. Are you on number two right now?

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  Number two.

• 1:46:42Jocko Willink?

  What flavors have you torn to today?

• 1:46:44Speaker 01

  Dax Savage, Jaco Palmer.

• 1:46:47Jocko Willink?

  What's the preference?

• 1:46:48Speaker 01

  That doesn't actually count the one I had earlier today.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  For my gig.

• 1:46:52Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  So I guess I'm on number three.

• 1:46:55Jocko Willink?

  We got. Vitamin D. D3 Cold War. Look, there's all kinds of diseases out there. I'm not making any claims, but some of us haven't caught those diseases.

• 1:47:09Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, check that out. Mulk Warrior Kid Mulk. Adult Mulk, which is just dessert. We got. Oh, wait. Hey, um. We got a new flavor coming. And it's so good. It says like allegedly we're doing it seasonal, but this thing ain't going to be seasonal. This thing is going to be all the time. It's smashing pumpkin. And I don't even know, look, I don't even know what, um. I don't even know what. Pumpkin things are supposed to taste like or whatever.

• 1:47:44Jocko Willink?

  But damn, this thing is good. It's so good. It's like a pumpkin. The original Be Little sent me, it was, he called, you know, the generic name, the flavor name. Was pumpkin spice, you know? And so I'm, I don't even know. I mean. You don't really eat pumpkin a lot, right? I mean, there's a pumpkin pie, I get it. But you're not sitting around, you know, going to the store, grabbing a piece of pumpkin and eating it. That's not happening. Is that happening?

• 1:48:10Speaker 01

  Not, not in my house.

• 1:48:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  Negative.

• 1:48:12Jocko Willink?

  So you're not even really a hundred percent sure what. Pumpkin flavor is. Are you? Is anyone?

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  The, the only thing I can think of is pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, maybe, but to be honest with you.

• 1:48:26Jocko Willink?

  So I don't even know what we're doing, but all I know is we created something that's freaking tasty. It's got, it's got like a. I guess, have you ever had eggnog before?

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:37Jocko Willink?

  It's sort of an eggnog cinnamon scenario. Sweet, just monk fruit, but it's so good. Anyways, we got that, we got that going on. All this stuff, we got Jaco White Tea.

• 1:48:49Jocko Willink?

  Vitamin shop, you can get all the stuff at the vitamin shop. Also, if you're in Florida right now, you can get this stuff at Wawa.

• 1:48:58Jocko Willink?

  Coming soon, hopefully to all Wawas. If you're in Florida, and you want to just kind of just full on support the cause, great. Here's a good way to support the cause. Go in there and just clean them out.

• 1:49:13Jocko Willink?

  Go get your Wawa on. Also, you can get this stuff at originmaine.com. What did I miss? Did I miss anything?

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  Nope. I'm on board with all that. And I'll be, I'm actually excited about that new Molk. Nobody has knocked strawberry off the top of the platform. That is still remains my go to.

• 1:49:31Jocko Willink?

  My go to. Hey, speaking of, speaking of disciplined go in the can of which you've had two.

• 1:49:37Speaker 01

  Three.

• 1:49:37Jocko Willink?

  Three. What flavors you have earlier today?

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  Uh, I had, uh, oh, I had a second Jaco Palmero this morning.

• 1:49:45Jocko Willink?

  Is that your kind of go to?

• 1:49:46Speaker 01

  No, I, I, look, I'll be honest with you. I drink all of them. I don't even look for flavors anymore. I reach in, dude, I'm just in the game. There is not one that I can't just be totally stoked to be drinking.

• 1:49:59Jocko Willink?

  Now, will there be one in the future that you'll be more stoked to be drinking?

• 1:50:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that there might be.

• 1:50:06Jocko Willink?

  So tell us, go, let's go talk to us.

• 1:50:08Speaker 01

  Afterburner Orange is coming out.

• 1:50:09Jocko Willink?

  Afterburner Orange.

• 1:50:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:11Jocko Willink?

  Dave Berke is getting his own signature flavor.

• 1:50:18Speaker 01

  It's so crazy to think that I'm getting my own signature flavor of a product that I actually already love anyway. But I'll be honest with you, when Pete and Brian at the team were like, hey, bro, we would love to have you be part of this. I immediately went to my all time favorite soft drink, which I don't drink anymore, which is orange crush or orange soda, whatever that was back when we were kids. I don't drink it. But I'll tell you, it's the best thing I've ever, I mean, as a kid.

• 1:50:49Jocko Willink?

  You're saying you don't drink it anymore because you're just not going to sit around and drink sugar?

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  Dude, I don't drink soda. Yeah, I don't sit around drinking orange crush. But I.

• 1:50:57Jocko Willink?

  You don't want to have conduct unbecoming of an officer sitting around sucking down sugar.

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  Negative. But I would be lying if I didn't tell you that I don't miss that flavor big time. So they were like, hey, what do you think? And he was immediate like, bro, I love orange. And then the connection after winner was so easy because.

• 1:51:14Jocko Willink?

  Who thought of afterburner orange?

• 1:51:17Speaker 01

  I think it was me. I really do.

• 1:51:19Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:20Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 1:51:20Speaker 01

  And of course they designed it.

• 1:51:22Jocko Willink?

  Wait, did you have it going into the conversation? Did you have it?

• 1:51:24Speaker 01

  Well, kind of like they had mentioned, hey, I think the thing was like, hey, think about it. It'd be cool to do something.

• 1:51:30Jocko Willink?

  Were there any other name options that got floated?

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:51:33Jocko Willink?

  Just that was it.

• 1:51:34Speaker 01

  It was, it was, hey, we, you should do one. I thought about it. I said, hey, what do you think of this? And Pete was like, done. We're executing. And then Brian executed and it happened and it was totally good to go.

• 1:51:46Jocko Willink?

  Would you know when the release date is?

• 1:51:47Speaker 01

  I think it's like in the next month. I think it's next month.

• 1:51:50Jocko Willink?

  I think it's even, wait, what month?

• 1:51:51Speaker 01

  November.

• 1:51:51Jocko Willink?

  So it's coming out in November?

• 1:51:52Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 1:51:53Jocko Willink?

  Afterburner Orange.

• 1:51:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:51:54Jocko Willink?

  The Dave Berke signature, signature drink.

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:00Jocko Willink?

  And it's got a plane on it. What kind of plane did they put on it?

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  Uh, an F-35 silhouette.

• 1:52:04Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang, did you influence that?

• 1:52:06Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 1:52:09Speaker 01

  And I might've made sure it was the Marine Corps variant.

• 1:52:11Jocko Willink?

  Oh damn, layers. In the, in the business, we call those layers.

• 1:52:15Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:52:16Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:17Jocko Willink?

  Even though, when you were, were you, were you a charge, when you were a squadron commander, was that a Marine Corps squadron?

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  Yes. That was a Marine Corps squadron with the Marine Corps variant of the plane.

• 1:52:27Jocko Willink?

  What did you do with the Air Force? Didn't you take over an Air Force squadron at some point?

• 1:52:31Speaker 01

  I flew an Air Force division. That was the F-22 Raptor. That was a straight up Air Force unit, Air Force aircraft.

• 1:52:36Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:52:36Speaker 01

  I was a Marine in an Air Force squadron. Inside that squadron had a division of all these different airplanes. One was the Raptor division. And that's where I operated.

• 1:52:45Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 1:52:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:46Jocko Willink?

  Check. Alright, so we got all these cool drinks and they're good for you. Which I know, which I know it doesn't make sense because people don't understand how it can happen. I'll tell you how it can happen. You don't cut corners. You maintain the, the scrutiny on your product to make sure that it's not junk.

• 1:53:07Jocko Willink?

  So like I said, Vitamin Shoppe, originmaine.com, you can get them. And Wawa, soon to be worldwide.

• 1:53:16Jocko Willink?

  Also, if you want Jiu Jitsu gear, so Jiu Jitsu gear, you're gonna need Jiu Jitsu gear because you want to train Jiu Jitsu because it's gonna free your mind. It is going to free your mind. Go to originmaine.com. You can get g's rash guards. You can also get shorts, t-shirts, joggers, and guess what just went back, back into production? Do you know, Dave? I don't. Oh, little something called Delta jeans. And I'll tell you what, they're freaking savage. I said one time and Pete like got a big, what is it? A chuckle out of this.

• 1:53:52Jocko Willink?

  Which you can picture Pete chuckling, right? He's kind of a chuckler. He was chuckling when I said that Delta jeans are the greatest thing that I've ever put on my legs.

• 1:54:05Jocko Willink?

  And yeah, so check out that. We got boots there. All that stuff's available. It's all made in America. And that is what we're doing. We're bringing manufacturing back to America. That is what we're doing. Go to originmaine.com for that. We also have another store which Echo named Jaco's store. Did Echo name it that? Yes, he did. Actually, he legitimately did. I guess, so I was gonna take the hit on the lack of creativity, but I'm gonna say Echo is definitely involved in making Jaco's store. Jaco's store.com. We got rash guards, t-shirts, hats, beanies, all that kind of stuff. We got Warrior Kid soap there. So you can stay clean. So check out Jaco's store.com. All this stuff will help support the podcast as well. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast.

• 1:54:50Jocko Willink?

  Leave a review.

• 1:54:53Jocko Willink?

  I also have some other podcasts. One's called Unraveling, Jaco Unraveling with Daryl Cooper. Another one's called the debrief podcast, which is still on this thread for now, but we talk about just pure leadership. It's a little shorter. We try and make it a little bit more concise because we know leaders are out there working. You don't always have time for a three hour podcast. Grounded Podcast, Warrior Kid Podcast. We have a YouTube channel where you can check out to see Echo's videos that he makes where he puts just, just a ridiculous amount of fire and explosions. He's not here to defend himself. This is boring.

• 1:55:34Jocko Willink?

  Youtube channel. Psychological Warfare. Album, tracks, MP3. Flipsidecanvas.com Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall. Got a bunch of books, About Face, the thread that leads to this book that we're talking about today. About Face, I wrote the foreword to the newest version. You can check that out. Also, The Code, The Evaluation, The Protocol, written by Dave Berke and me and Sarah Armstrong. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, the answer to all the questions.

• 1:56:04Jocko Willink?

  The answer to all the questions, yeah, Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, Way of the Warrior Kid 1, 2, and 3.

• 1:56:11Jocko Willink?

  Way of the Warrior Kid 4 Field Manual, available for preorder right now. Hey, guess what? I used to make fun of my publisher and say they're scared about ordering too many books. They don't know how many books to order. I'm telling them, if you preorder this, it lets me know how many books to order. Cause this is hard to sit on a bunch of books. I want to produce the amount that are needed. I don't want anyone to get Christmas to come and you got no Way of the Warrior Kid 4 Field Manual.

• 1:56:45Jocko Willink?

  So preorder that if you want. Mike and the Dragons, get some of that. Disciple's Freedom Field Manual, and brand new version's out. Got a bigger picture of my head on the cover. Like, oh, you want, oh, we want to make it, oh, we want to make a new version. We want it to be better. Oh, what should we do? Make the picture of my head bigger. Is that supposed to make it better? I don't know what they're thinking.

• 1:57:07Jocko Willink?

  Also, Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership, the OG books. Check those out. Echelon Front, it's our leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com. Hey, if you want me, or Leif, or Dave, or JP, or anyone on the Echelon Front team to come and talk to your company, don't Google Jaco Speaker. Go to echelonfront.com. If you Google Jaco Speaker, there's going to be people that are paying Google Words to get you to click on their thing and they're gonna be a middleman. You don't need them. Go to echelonfront.com.

• 1:57:46Jocko Willink?

  If you want to get some other training for leadership, go to efonline.com. This is what we do. We teach leadership. There's courses on there. We're doing live Q and A's all the time. There's a forum. There's other people to interact with. There's leadership primers. There's immediate action drills. There's questions. There's all kinds of stuff. And if you're in a leadership position, go there. And guess what? You're in a leadership position. If you interact with other human beings, you're in a leadership position.

• 1:58:15Jocko Willink?

  What else on EF Online, Dave?

• 1:58:17Speaker 01

  We're there live all the time. We're there yesterday. We're there tomorrow. And you don't even know what day it is that you're listening to this podcast, because it's either going to be today or tomorrow. You can talk to us directly live. So come join us. The questions are awesome.

• 1:58:29Jocko Willink?

  What if someone has a question for Dave Berke? What should they do?

• 1:58:32Speaker 01

  They should come to EF Online Live and ask me that question.

• 1:58:34Jocko Willink?

  What if they have a question for JP Denal? What should they do?

• 1:58:37Speaker 01

  The same thing.

• 1:58:37Jocko Willink?

  What if they have a question for me? What if they say, well, you know, I Twittered, I sent nine tweets to Jaco, but he didn't answer, because he has 80 million tweets. What should I do?

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  Same thing. Go to EF Online. It's awesome.

• 1:58:49Jocko Willink?

  Go to efonline.com. We have a live event. muster2020 is the only one we're doing in 2020. We have, we have, this is not the first live event we're doing. We've done other live events. I know you've done some live events. I know I've done live events. Look, there's social distance. You can maintain the social distance. We'll have the appropriate measures in place. So you can come to the muster. It will be fully engaged. Look, one thing that's kind of cool. At the muster, at the, at the previous musters before COVID, there's a thousand people there. There's 800 people there. There's 900 people there. So that means 900 people trying to talk to us during the breaks, whatever. There's no green room. If you've never heard, there's no green room. We're there. We're talking.

• 1:59:34Jocko Willink?

  So if you want to hang out with us, if you want to get some information directly from us, come to the muster. There's probably going to be a fraction. Well, I would say there's going to be less than half, probably going to be less than 500 people at the muster. And, and believe me, you spread that out over a couple of days, you're going to talk to us, ask the questions. We'll do whatever we need to do to make sure that you come away from that with the knowledge that you need. So go to extremeownership.com for details there.

• 2:00:02Jocko Willink?

  Of course, we have EF Overwatch. If you need leadership in your team, which you do, we have, we are selecting leaders from the military that understand the principles we talk about all the time, and we're placing them into civilian companies, into your business. Go to EFOverwatch.com if you need leaders in your company. If you want to help service members, active and retired, if you want to help their families, if you want to help Gold Star families around the world, then check out Mark Lee's mom. Mama Lee, she's got a charity organization. And if you want to donate, or you want to get involved, then go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

• 2:00:47Jocko Willink?

  And if you, look, if you just are constantly seeking that hard path, and you want to do things that are tough, do things that cause you a little bit of suffering, then maybe you want more of my guttural groans as I talk.

• 2:01:06Jocko Willink?

  Or maybe you want more of Dave's frothing phonetics. Well, either way, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Facebook. Dave is at David R. Burke, and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks once again to General Bruce Clark for your service to America, and for leaving these lessons of leadership behind for us. And thanks to all those people in uniform out there right now that are utilizing these lessons to protect freedom in the world, and to police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs,

• 2:01:49Jocko Willink?

  dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all other first responders, thank you for protecting us from chaos and mayhem here at home. And to everyone else, remember these lessons from General Clark.

• 2:02:06Jocko Willink?

  Remember the importance of time. That's where we started this whole thing today. Don't forget about that one. Remember the importance of time. The clock is ticking. Try and anticipate problems. Be reliable. Be knowledgeable. Show initiative.

• 2:02:22Jocko Willink?

  And when you cast judgment, which I do, I read these books and I think, oh, that person, I wish that person would do that. And I wish that person would do the other thing.

• 2:02:33Jocko Willink?

  And then I remember that when you cast judgment, start off by judging yourself.

• 2:02:41Jocko Willink?

  Because it all starts with you.

• 2:02:47Jocko Willink?

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