430: Critical Nuances to Balancing The Dichotomies of Leadership.

Official workbook for The Dichotomy of Leadership, by Jocko and Leif Babin. 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 430 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. So last podcast, number 429, we covered the companion workbook for Extreme Ownership, written by Leif Babin and me, and it is used by, really used by leaders and trainers to educate their teams on the principles of Extreme Ownership. And when, when we put that out initially, we got incredible feedback on it. And we still get a ton of feedback about it today. We have all kinds of companies that use that book. And then we released, we did the same thing for the next book that Leif and I wrote, which is called The Dichotomy of Leadership.

• 0:42Jocko Willink?

  And so we have, once again, another workbook. Now, once again, there's some ripoff, um, substandard workbooks on Amazon. I guess Amazon will just sell whatever. Yeah. Like, they don't care. They're just gonna sell it. Yeah. And so there are some ripoffs on there. And we reached out to them and said, hey, this is not authorized. And they said, well, actually it is authorized. They're doing a, their, uh, what is it? Fair use of your material? Okay, cool. So it's not illegal, but it's, it's not right. Right. Cause people, they buy one of those other workbooks. Yeah.

• 1:27Jocko Willink?

  And they're junk, cause it's, they're putting no effort into them. Yeah. So basically like a fourth grader, no offense to fourth graders, but a fourth grader puts together their thoughts and copies some stuff and puts some pages in there and boom, they sell it for $28 or something. And, and someone that's, wants to get a workbook for dichotomy or get a workbook for Extreme Ownership, goes, oh, cool. And it actually says our names on it. That's the really scary thing. Yeah. It says our names, cause it says The Dichotomy of Leadership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, workbook. Hmm. So you could make, I mean, we could do that. And you know, people do do that. People do that with Shakespeare, like the Romeo and Juliet workbook.

• 2:08Jocko Willink?

  Now that's old enough that it is become, what is it, open source? Public domain. Public domain, there you go. So ours aren't old enough to be public domain, but it doesn't matter. If someone made a, wrote a book tomorrow, you could take excerpts from that book and comment on them and you have your own book. So that does happen, they're out there, read the reviews could be because luckily our people get the junk versions. Yeah. And they realize that these things are junk and so they put the one star reviews. So that's how you can tell, go to the one star reviews. But we ended up doing this, the official companion workbook for the dichotomy of leadership. It says official companion workbook. It's got the echelon front logo on it, says echelon front.

• 2:54Jocko Willink?

  And this is what we're doing.

• 2:58Jocko Willink?

  It is a awesome resource. We created it, like I said, the same way we created the last one, after thousands and thousands of hours of training people and coming up with discussion points and being asked questions, we put these things together so that everyone inside your organization, up and down the chain of command can learn and practice and become more skilled at leadership. And remember, that just like working out, you can't just do it once or twice and now you're healthy and now you're strong. Doesn't work that way. You gotta keep going to the gym. You gotta keep working and putting the work in. So let's do some work right now. The echelon front official companion workbook for the dichotomy of leadership.

• 3:41Jocko Willink?

  And it kicks off saying, the most successful leaders balance their approach. There are countless dichotomies that you will face as a leader. A dichotomy is a division or contrast between two things that are, are or represented as being opposed. In other words, two opposing forces that pull against each other. Achieving the proper balance in each of the many dichotomies of leadership is the most difficult aspect of leadership. The 12 dichotomies covered in this book only represent a fraction of the numerous, and I like to say infinite dichotomies you will face as a leader. But understanding how to recognize and address these 12 common dichotomies will enable you to better process, analyze and apply these leadership principles to your battlefield and whatever arena might be,

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  whether leading in combat, business or life. Remember that, and I'm fast forwarding, remember that effective leaders do not operate in extremes. This is very important. And it's such a nice little, it's such an easy move. If I was to ask you, hey, I want to teach you how to drive a car. And this pedal means go. It's real easy. Go press this button and you're gonna go and he presses pedal down to the ground. That's what that's when you tell a little kid like this one means go. What do they do? They slam it. They have to learn the balance. They have to learn the nuance. Same thing with brakes. Hey, this one stops the vehicle. But do you slam on the brakes? No, that causes problems. You ease on the brakes. And then you apply a little bit more to get to come to a full stop. But if you apply them too fast, you lose control.

• 5:10Jocko Willink?

  Same thing with the acceleration. So we're gonna go, we're gonna be more balanced. They are constantly working to balance their approach by utilizing this workbook to complement the book and online training manuals because we have a whole series on extremeownership.com, our online training platform. We've got modules on there that you can go and take those as well. You can begin to recognize the key indicators of out of balance operation and make necessary adjustments to lead efficiency. Now learn, lead and win. So here's a little history lesson for Echo Charles. The initial dichotomy that I recognized, the, the first one that I said, oh, this is a thing. I didn't think of them all at once. I just realized, oh, this is a thing. It was default aggressive.

• 5:56Jocko Willink?

  Because I would get these young SEAL leaders and they would be not aggressive. And then I'd go to him and I'd be like, dude, you're, you're not stepping up. You're not making calls. You're not getting aggressive. You're not solving problems. Like you gotta get aggressive. You gotta go full rage aggression out there. And they'd next iteration, they'd go for full Berserker level 12. Just rage. And run and everyone would die. And they would be in the front of the pack dying. And these are in training missions.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  And that's the one you called a classic SEAL.

• 6:30Jocko Willink?

  Classic Silver, classic SEAL over correction. Yeah, because SEALs would always do an over correction. So if you tell them to be more aggressive, they go level 12. You tell them, hey dude, you gotta chill out. They go to sleep.

• 6:44Jocko Willink?

  But this was the first one where I I saw I started to see a pattern after like two or three iterations with two or three different platoons where it's like, oh, you you have to, if you go over aggressive, it's a problem. If you're not aggressive enough, it's a problem. So what are we looking for? We're looking for balance. And that was and then I realized, oh, micromanagement. Oh, this person's a micromanager. They they're giving too many instructions. Hey, dude, you need to stop giving all the instructions. Then they give no instructions. Classic seal. So the classic seal over correction allowed me to see that there has to be a balance in all these things. And if you take anything to an extreme, it's a problem. So we're not taking things to extremes. And by the way, America, I'm talking to you. We have issues with this

• 7:25Jocko Willink?

  because we like to look at everything in the extreme way. And if you look at things with an extreme viewpoint, you end up isolated and alone in that extreme. So you got to be more balanced in the way you look at things. It's going to make your perception of the world a lot more relatable to you, to other people as well, but to you. You'll start to be like, oh, okay, I can kind of see why that person's doing that. Instead of be like, I don't see why anyone would ever do that. Like, no, well, maybe there's a possibility why someone would do that. Hey, are there some things that are totally out, like off off the limits, over the limits?

• 8:05Jocko Willink?

  We're not doing them? Yeah, of course. But when you start getting into things that are legal and ethical and moral, it's like, okay, well, there's there's a there's a room there, some gray area.

• 8:18Jocko Willink?

  So there we go. All right, let's get into this. There's an introduction in here. It says, leadership requires balance. Every leader must walk a fine line and find the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities between one extreme and the other. That's what I was just talking about. Every behavior or characteristic of a leader can be taken too far. And when balance is lost, leadership suffers and the team's performance rapidly declines. So I will go and talk to companies and I'll say, hey, any characteristic, any trait that you have can can get out of balance, even if it's a really positive trait, such as, and I say, what's the most like, what's the most positive trait there is?

• 9:01Jocko Willink?

  And someone will say, it's a real positive generosity.

• 9:07Jocko Willink?

  Can you be too generous? Well, can you? Oh, yes, you can. This is people that get taken advantage of. These are people that give all their money to Nigerian prince through some internet scam.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:20Jocko Willink?

  You see what I'm saying?

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:21Jocko Willink?

  They're very generous.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:23Jocko Willink?

  They're, what about trusting? Is it good to trust people? Yeah, absolutely. Well, guess what? You're a little too trusting. When you're, when you're wiring money to the Nigerian prince who just needs $700 to free up his diamond mine.

• 9:38Jocko Willink?

  Have you ever had an online scam get you before?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  No, get me?

• 9:41Jocko Willink?

  No, not get you, but you talked to him before?

• 9:43Speaker 01

  I've had, I've received those emails for sure.

• 9:45Jocko Willink?

  I had a, I had the IRS, well, I had a fake IRS person call me.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, actually called, it's funny, he called my wife.

• 9:56Jocko Willink?

  And my son, who was probably like 10 at the time. He was sitting there saying, it's a scam, it's a scam. Like, he knew it was a scam.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:04Jocko Willink?

  But my wife didn't tell me that part. She just calls me and said, because I was, I was on the road. And she calls me and says, the IRS called, you have to answer. Like, she sent me nine texts and seven phone calls. I'm like, what's going on? She's like, the IRS, they're going to arrest you.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that one.

• 10:20Jocko Willink?

  I'm like, are you crazy? But anyways, so.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Bro, that's real. The, I just got the same one, not IRS, the sheriff's department for, and same thing with my wife. She's calling me, this was like last week, literally. And, but she was falling for it.

• 10:34Jocko Willink?

  Where was your boy saying, it's a scam, it's a scam?

• 10:36Speaker 01

  So, I always say, they're always a scam when they call you.

• 10:39Jocko Willink?

  Everybody that calls me is a scam, by the way. That's my, that's my approach.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  I called just to make sure.

• 10:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  I don't know, maybe there's some new protocol, I don't know. Just to make sure, I called NACO.

• 10:48Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Called them up, what up, this is, no, no, no, no, scam.

• 10:51Jocko Willink?

  What scam were they running?

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Uh, you missed jury duty, we sent you a thing, we have your signature.

• 10:56Jocko Willink?

  Gonna get arrested.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  There was some, so.

• 10:58Jocko Willink?

  So, could you pay your way out of it or something? How are they trying to get your money?

• 11:02Speaker 01

  So yeah, exactly right. You can they're like, hey, come down to the sheriff's department, bring your IDs. He's like, and the thing is, he just kept on it and super nice, too. That's the thing. He wasn't pressuring. He was just like, yeah, yeah, that's up to you. He was like, but you but you are, there is a bench warrant out for your arrest. So when you go down there, they will take you into custody. And I'm like, and then later, she said, well, what can I do? He goes, well, you could pay it now. And you could avoid the detention by paying this now, but you will still have to do vapor work and all this stuff. It's weird how.

• 11:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  He was good. Yeah, he was good the way did. But then it, you know, like this one thing doesn't make sense, but everything else is sounding good. But the one thing is keeping everything from sounding like fully good, you know, that's the feeling I got.

• 11:44Jocko Willink?

  You call him? Did you call him too?

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Who? Not I called knock. This guy called my wife.

• 11:49Jocko Willink?

  Did you talk to the guy?

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Yep. So and that's what made it kind of like, brother, this guy's going hard because he called Sarah. Sarah's like, oh, I'm doing a conference call with with my husband to just verify. He's like, yeah, sure. Go ahead. Like, yeah, do it. And I was on the way from recording the other day. It was like last week. And she's like, oh, my gosh, I don't know what's going on, this and that. She's like, I don't remember signing for the for the thing, you know, the jury duty. I don't remember signing that, but they say they have my signature. And the guy's like all calm and doing it. I was like, what the? He's polite, too. He's giving his badge number. He's doing the whole deal. And I'm like, brother, this is a scam. So I got home and then the kids get involved. They're like, it's a scam. Like, it's this fun thing, little spy versus spy thing or whatever. But after a while, it was a scam. So then

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Sarah started like stringing them on and started like kind of cracking jokes at them just a little bit like, okay, I'm gonna do this. And then I was like, hey, don't mess with this guy because this guy literally has our address and whatever. So I was like, hey, just and she's like, okay, let it go. But yeah, those scams, they can go hard.

• 12:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, what was interesting for when this happened to me, I was actually getting audited by the IRS at the time.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Oh, that makes it even more.

• 12:57Jocko Willink?

  I was actually getting audited. So. My wife's was like just in total belief. She just believed it a hundred percent. Like we're getting audited and now they're calling and now they're gonna arrest Jocko.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Well, that makes more sense, bro. Cause you know, like the old, the old ones are like, hey, they leave a message and it's like kinda robotic and it's like real generic, like, hey, law enforcement agents are in your area and they're gonna come arrest you. Blah, blah, blah. And it's like, bro, you don't say law enforcement, like no one would ever say that. And no one's gonna call you. Like that doesn't make sense at all, you know, kind of a thing. So it's easy to look, but yeah, if you're in that situation. Oh, man.

• 13:32Jocko Willink?

  So anyways, I talked to the guy and I started asking him some questions, like real generic, but I was like, so where are you at? And I was be, I was being nice. See, I was instantly just everything's scam if you're calling me. So I was, I was being nice to him, like, oh, I really wanna resolve this problem, you know? I luckily I have money. And then I started asking him where he was and then I asked him, like, he said he was in Washington DC. I was like, oh, what neighborhood? He was like Washington. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah. But I go there a lot. What neighborhood? And he didn't know. And so, well, what's the weather like there today? Didn't know. And so then the funny thing is I dragged him on for about probably fifteen or twenty minutes and then he hung up on me.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, see.

• 14:12Jocko Willink?

  So that's when you know you annoy somebody.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, but we were trying to do that. We literally did that same thing and this guy was just going hard. The, the thing he messed up is when he transferred us over to the payment department. We were like, oh, let's get this person too, cause they're in on it or whatever. So I was like, all right, let's get this. So he transfers me over. And then I started asking her and this girl was not prepared. She just kept like acting like I didn't ask the question. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But what's the, you know, what's the address and what's the, you know, phone number and like, can you just, oh, what's your name too? By the way, I just, for my records, I gotta, I gotta make sure. And she's like, she just keeps on with her script. And I was like, no, no, no. And she's like, um, I don't feel very comfortable and transfers me right back to the guy. And I'm like, oh, this motherfucker. So that's, that's good. I'm gonna use that one.

• 14:58Jocko Willink?

  Wait, which one?

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Your, that, your thing, like being super nice to them.

• 15:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Where are you? Asking questions that they should know. I was, I was just trying to make them nervous, like, oh, he's getting my name. Oh, my gosh, what am I, you know, but if you ask like all these questions that they should know and they don't.

• 15:14Jocko Willink?

  They don't know.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  They don't know.

• 15:15Jocko Willink?

  So scam. Um, going back to the dichotomy of leadership here, a little tangent, Chris. Here's another thing. When we, when we start talking about these dichotomies that we have, we all have instincts. And the instincts that we have, generally speaking, most people have similar instincts. But also there's outliers and also there's different types of people. So for instance, some people are, they're just micromanagers, man. Like that's just the way they are. Some people are very laissez faire, very hands off. They don't wanna, they don't wanna impose, they don't want, so those are two extremes. Those are two ends of the dichotomy.

• 15:58Jocko Willink?

  And you, what you have to know is you have to know, do you lean towards micromanagement? Or do you lean towards hands off? And if you lean towards hands off, then you need to kind of lean back into the micromanagement. If you are a micromanager, you need to lean towards hands off. So when I say to myself like, alright, I'm a micromanager and I see that Echo is doing this thing a certain way right now. And I know a better way to do it. I need to think to myself, Jocko, you're a micromanager, lean in the other direction. Let Echo do what he's doing, everything's gonna be fine. There's no catastrophic incident's gonna happen. He's not gonna cost the company a bunch of money. No one's gonna get hurt. It's gonna take him probably 10 minutes longer to do it his way, but that's no big deal. I'm not gonna micromanage. So, and just about everything that we have, like trust, right?

• 16:43Jocko Willink?

  We just talked about trust. Are you a trusting person? Well, if you trust people out, that's how we started talking about scams. My, my wife believed her trust level is high. My son, who was 10, didn't trust this motherfucker. You know what I'm saying? He's going, it's a scam. And when my son thinks something like, he's going hard, especially when he was 10. Like when my wife called me, he was in the background saying, it's a scam, it's a scam, it's a scam. Just like just getting after it. But so if you're a very trusting person, you gotta lean towards, I'm not gonna trust this person.

• 17:25Jocko Willink?

  If you don't trust people and someone comes up to you and they're like, hey, I need some help. My car just ran off the road and my wife is stuck under it. You can't be like, dude, this is a scam. You gotta, you gotta lean towards like, okay, if this is real. At a minimum, I'll call night. Yes, give me the, give me the address. I'll call night one, one for you. I'm not going to get out of my vehicle and you know, it's midnight or whatever, and expose myself to whatever scam you might have going. But I will phone the police for you. I'm not just like, this is a scam and drive off. So you gotta figure out where your instincts are and you gotta lean one way or the other. That's one of the key components of the dichotomy of leadership is understanding what, are you a person with a bad temper? Are you a person that never gets emotional? And now someone comes in and they're freaking out and you're like, calm down, it's gonna be okay.

• 18:10Jocko Willink?

  No, if someone's freaking out, you could wait a second, they're probably freaking out for a reason. Or when someone's freaking out, do you freak out? And if you freak out, then you need to be like, all right, and you chill. So all these dichotomies, you gotta figure out kinda where you are. Kinda know your own personality. You gotta know your strengths and weaknesses. You gotta know where you lean so that you can purposely lean in the other direction. So that's what we gotta watch out for. Uh, one of the first implementation questions here, it says, have you experienced a leader who took extreme actions? How did this affect you and the team? Now think about that question. That's a very good question. You remember those times in your life when you had the leader that flew off the handle or made these huge adjustments?

• 18:55Jocko Willink?

  Or did these drastic changes to the plan late in the game, like all those things? Not one of those things sounds good.

• 19:02Jocko Willink?

  Not one of those, hey, can you occasionally do something extreme and it works out okay? Yeah, occasionally, occasionally. But the vast majority of the time, we're looking for our default mode to be center. Not overreaction. Again, these are default modes. The thing you gotta remember about default modes, default modes are the default setting, but you can always override the default setting. Like you've got the default setting, I know on your, on your Cadillac Escalade, which you have. You have the default setting on the roof thing. Uh, sorry, that the hood that opens up, the, what's it, the tail? The trunk.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 19:38Jocko Willink?

  What's that? What's that door called?

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Got to forgive. It's a random example, but yeah, the tail lift gate, whatever.

• 19:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the lift gate thing.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  That comes up in the back.

• 19:47Jocko Willink?

  If you live in a garage that's low.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:49Jocko Willink?

  You can set that thing.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:51Jocko Willink?

  But then you move out of that garage, you can go back to the default mode. It's high.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  High.

• 19:54Jocko Willink?

  Right? You can do that. So it's the same with all these default modes. We want our default mode to be not hit the roof.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:00Jocko Willink?

  But if we need to, we can override the default mode and we can make an adjustment. We can make an extreme call if we have to. But that's not our default mode. Our default mode is center. Our default mode is not overreacting.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 20:13Jocko Willink?

  And think about the bosses that you've had. And most of the time, you'll probably remember that when they made an extreme call or an extreme reaction, it wasn't good. All right. First section of the book and the first section of this book is called balancing people. It says here, chapter one, the ultimate dichotomy. There are limitless dichotomies in leadership and a leader must carefully balance between those opposing forces there. None are as difficult as caring deeply for each person on the team while at the same time, accepting the necessary risks to accomplish the mission and putting the long-term best interest of the overall team above any individual. A good leader builds strong relationships with their team members.

• 20:58Jocko Willink?

  While that leader would do anything for those team members, the leader must recognize that there is a job to do and that the job might put those very team members at risk. And the classic example of this is you're on a ship, a warship, and the ship has been hit by a torpedo. And a compartment is flooding and there's people in that compartment and you have to seal the door to that compartment, which means the people in that compartment are going to die. And if you don't seal that door, the whole ship is going down.

• 21:33Jocko Willink?

  In combat, this is the ultimate dichotomy. A leader may have to send their most treasured assets, their people, into a situation that gets them wounded or killed. If their relationships are too close and they can't detach from their emotions, they might not be able to make tough choices that involve risks to their people. With that attitude, the team will get nothing done. The team fails the mission. And it's important to remember, the team fails the mission, and then the greater strategic mission is a failure, which means national security is at risk. So you're gonna risk, then this is what the military is. The military is filled with human beings that are gonna risk, put themselves at risk and risk their own lives

• 22:13Jocko Willink?

  because they're trying to protect their friends and families and back in their country. At the other end of the spectrum, if a leader cares too much about accomplishing the mission, they may sacrifice the health and safety of their people without gaining anything. This impacts the team who recognize the leader as callous and no longer respects or follows the leader. The team will fall apart. So this is something that they depict, they depict this in war movies, right? Like, get out there, you're gonna go. Like, no, that doesn't work. Can there be a mission, and this is what you have to weigh, when you're doing, when you're executing missions, what is the strategic value of this mission that we're going to execute? If there's no strategic value, we're not gonna do it. And sometimes this strategic

• 22:57Jocko Willink?

  value is, oh, we're gonna put constant pressure on the enemy over the next six months. Okay, then that means we're gonna go. Now, if all of a sudden there's an extreme risk for some reason, and all we're trying to do is put pressure on them, well, maybe we can do something to put pressure on them without endangering people. Sometimes, you know, the World War II examples is like D-Day. You are gonna storm the beachhead. People are going to die. And if you don't get this beachhead secure, we're not gonna be able to get through France and get to Germany and end the war.

• 23:31Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're doing. I'm watching a, a, a mini series. They still call it a mini series? Sure. Anyways, it's called Masters of the Air and it's about the B-17 bombers in World War II. And it's outstanding, but you know, they're just taking massive casualties, just massive casualties. And they hint at some of the underlying themes that were going on during the war. Curtis LeMay sending the Americans on daytime bombing runs and the Brits would only do nighttime bombing runs. So daytime bombing runs, you're way more vulnerable, but you get to hit your target more accurate. Nighttime, you're less vulnerable, but you're not as accurate with your bombs.

• 24:13Jocko Willink?

  So there's this little debate going on there and I don't know how they're gonna, I don't know how they're gonna come to a resolution in the show, but it's, it's a great show so far.

• 24:25Jocko Willink?

  Um, implementation, do you practice having hard conversations with your team members? Provide one recent example of when you've done this. So this is what I like about this question. First of all, it says, do you practice having hard conversations? There's two ways to take that. One is do I practice? I'm like, I gotta talk to Echo, so I'm gonna practice this with Leif a couple of times. Like a practice run. Yeah. But the other way to take is like, do you practice? Like this is my practice is that I have hard conversations. It's, it's, the cool thing is both of those are good. Like, hey, I should be practicing and I should be practicing. Right, right. But here's the thing, and I've talked about hard conversations a lot.

• 25:02Jocko Willink?

  A hard conversation, if you have it earlier, is easier, number one. Number two, if I really care about Echo Charles and I'm having a hard conversation with you, it's not actually that hard of a conversation. If I, if my true intent is that I care about you and I'm like, hey Echo, I notice

• 25:20Jocko Willink?

  you're showing up, you showed up late two times last week and you had alcohol in your breath, bro. Like, is everything okay? Like, what's going on in your life right now? Is that, that's a little bit of a hard conversation, but really I care about you and I like, what's going on? You're late, you're drinking, like, is everything okay? That makes it a much easier conversation than, hey, you were late, you got alcohol in your breath, I'm gonna write you up. Yep.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  That is big time a thing. Uh, so consider this with your wife.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Where you know, it's easy to be like, hey, you did this wrong or you uh, hey, you talked to me that that way.

• 25:54Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  And if.

• 25:57Jocko Willink?

  I don't say that to my wife.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I know. That's why I'm kind of hesitant. I'm like, shoot, I gotta say something that you can relate to, but either way, either way. Like, uh, your, uh, a wife talking to a husband a certain way that's maybe could be seen as like disrespectful. Is not a rare thing we'll say. We'll say it happens from time to time. So if that happens and then, yeah, the instinct is be like, hey, don't talk to me like that. I wouldn't talk to you like that, you know, kind of a thing. That's different than if you just really like harness the whole like how you just said. Uh, really care about them. Kind of like, hey, wait, what would cause this person to talk to me this way? Obviously something bad and I don't want something bad to be going on. So let's get to the bottom of that. It's like, hey, are you okay? Like dang, was today like rough or I don't know, something stressing you out?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Cause you talk to me like that, which you normally don't do, kind of a thing. It's just a different, it's a different delivery, different approach. Yeah.

• 26:49Jocko Willink?

  Just FYI, just kind of FYI.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 26:51Jocko Willink?

  Like each one of those statements. What I, was the intent was okay? The delivery wasn't good. Cause the reason, the reason.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  My delivery was.

• 26:59Jocko Willink?

  Your delivery wasn't good. Cause the minute you say like, you talk to me like that, it's, it's, it's the wrong move. Because that move is still.

• 27:10Jocko Willink?

  Uh, it's, it's, it's an attack, you know, it's like, hey, is everything okay? Cause you don't normally talk to me like that.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 27:15Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:16Jocko Willink?

  So instead, what the best move in that situation would be is to absorb, right? I'm just gonna take that hit. Like, hey, no big, oh, look, whatever I did to my wife or whatever kind of day she's had or however she's frustrated. Okay, I'm gonna take a little hit. You know, boom. Okay, cool. Yeah, you, I can't believe you didn't do the dishes. I'm on it right now. Like boom, boom, take the hit. No big deal. It's no big deal, right? No big deal. Take the hit. All good. When you say, hey, is everything okay? Cause why are you talking to me like that? You're not, you're, it's not a de-escalation. In your mind, it's a de-escalation. But you're laughing right now because you know it's not.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Uh, well, I do. Well, I think there's, I mean, there has to be more to that than like, oh yeah, okay, okay. The dishes thing. We'll say, hey, you didn't do the, right? And she like talks me crazy. We'll say, just hypothetically, because this thing's not an issue.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Disclaimer there.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Anyway, so she says, hey, you didn't do the dishes, you scumbag. I don't know, whatever. I'm like, hey. Oh, yeah, no, no, no, I'll do it. Right? So to me, this is what it kind of feels like and and actually can play itself out this way where now in the future, she gets frustrated, has a bad day, whatever. She can continue to talk to me like that.

• 28:30Jocko Willink?

  So now we're getting into a pattern of life.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:32Jocko Willink?

  Which is a lot different than than an instant, an instance of hostility.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

• 28:39Jocko Willink?

  Cause the instance of hostility, look, if you've got, if you have a a repeat offender.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:43Jocko Willink?

  That's constantly like getting at you about stuff that they shouldn't be getting at you about, then you have more significant problems that you have to now work through.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:54Jocko Willink?

  But we're talking about the moment of contact here. The the fist, look, like if you're getting beat up all the time. You you need to learn more about like how to how to avoid these things and not put yourself in these situations and figure out what's going on, why this person's attacking you. In the moment, though, what you gotta do is like not get punched a bunch. You know, not make it worse.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Yep. And maybe this is the ego thing, because, okay, I'll I'll tell you for full disclaimer, this has nothing to do with me. Because I'm watching my friend get beat publicly, not public in the general public, but in front of like some of us by his wife.

• 29:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  In a way that I'm like, bro. I like, I kind of want to beat your wife for that kind of stuff. You know, metaphorically, obviously.

• 29:39Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  And I'm like, so I think about it, like, how would I handle that? You know, that kind of thing where you're like, oh, how would I handle it? Whatever. I'm not going to jump in. That's not my business, right? And especially at that time.

• 29:48Jocko Willink?

  But you may be able to influence your friend on how to help his scenario.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  I felt the exact same way, but at the same time, I'm still not there yet, obviously. You know, that's their thing and he didn't seem that broken up about it. He's like, almost like he was used to it, which to me was an additional problem. So I mean, that's what it felt like. I don't know behind closed doors. I don't know how it how it works, but. That, so I'm thinking like, what would be the move, you know? And to me, it felt like, oh, wait, there there has to be a little thing that's established that, hey, talking to me like that isn't nothing. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't go over smoothly. Like, you, you can just continue to do that, you know? So it made sense to me, especially at the time that you at least got to mention, hey, I noticed you talked to me that way. Like, you normally don't.

• 30:36Jocko Willink?

  There's so many things that we could go into on this. And one of the, I mean, just, just to start, right?

• 30:45Jocko Willink?

  There's a respect issue.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:46Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:47Jocko Willink?

  Now, normally, and I say this all the time, if I want you to respect me, I have to respect you, right? Right?

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:54Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna take that one step deeper right now. If I want you to respect me, I have to respect myself. I have to respect myself. Now, why don't I respect myself? Why don't people respect themselves? I can tell you why people don't respect themselves. They lack discipline. They're not doing the right things for the right reasons. They're not keeping their word. Their integrity is weak. They're, they're, they have problems themselves. And so what happens is, they don't respect themselves, so when someone else just respects them, it's just sort of the way it is.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:27Jocko Willink?

  So what that, what I would recommend in a situation like this, that individual, in this case, the husband, needs to build up his self-respect so that he can then recognize and treat her with respect, not submission, because there's a difference between respect and submission, right?

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, big time.

• 31:48Jocko Willink?

  So, that individual needs to, what, what's he doing? Like, where's his life? Where is his part of his life? And this is his wife?

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:58Jocko Willink?

  Yep, so, I'm sure we'll talk about this offline, but there's problems with him because he doesn't have the respect for himself, where he allows someone to treat him that way, and he doesn't have any recourse. Right? He's got no leverage. He doesn't have leverage in the relationship. And if you don't have leverage in the relationship, now all of a sudden, someone could do whatever they want, just walking all over me. And I can't even say anything, because if I say anything, I'm gonna get beat down even harder. Why? Cause I don't have discipline. I'm not making money. I'm not carrying my weight in the house. You know what I mean? There's all kinds of things. You know, if, if my wife and I, she's got her stuff that she does. That's 50% of the solution for

• 32:43Jocko Willink?

  the household. I've got my stuff that I do. That's 50% of the solution for the household. So we're both carrying our weight. I respect what she does. She respects what I do. We have a mutual positive respect. Now, if it wasn't like that,

• 32:58Jocko Willink?

  who knows what's gonna happen? Yeah. And it's the same in any team. If you and I are working on a project together, bro, if you and I are working on a project together and you're not, you're doing 10% of the work and I'm doing 90% of the work, what kind of respect am I giving you? Right. And I'm like, hey Echo, get in, hey Echo, clean up the bathroom. And you're kinda like, oh, got it. Cause you can't even, you're not, you're not, you're not up with me. So it's gonna happen. So we have to, we have to be behave in a way and carry ourselves in a way where we respect ourselves. Now, can you also get someone that's a sociopath? Does this happen? Yes, it absolutely does happen. Yeah. It happens less often, but can you have wives or husbands that are, that don't respect their spouse and they don't care? It doesn't matter

• 33:42Jocko Willink?

  what that spouse does. I've, you've seen spouses like this where the wife or the husband is like the complete breadwinner, the alpha in the, in the relationship, but the other person actually kinda crushes them. Oh, he gets walked all over. Gets walked all over. Yeah, I seen that. Yeah. So there's, there can be an imbalance in these things. And can that person be a sociopath? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. They can be like a psycho. They just don't care. And there's little things, there's little regrets and little resentment. That resentment will come out, bruh. Once the resentment comes out, like if she, she was going out with the, with the, with the high school quarterback, or no, the college quarterback, she was going out with him and like they were gonna get married, but then he got his NFL contract and he bounced, bro. And who did she end up with?

• 34:27Jocko Willink?

  She, she ends up with Fred. And Fred's like a hardworking dude, but she always resents the fact that she didn't get freaking quarterback guy. So now it's continual. Uh resentment and aggression and the same thing vice versa. You know, the guy who when he the guy that the guy that peaked in high school. Yeah. Right. You remember that guy huh? Uncle Rico. Uncle Rico. Yeah. Uncle Rico peaked in high school, right? So he might, he might be all regretful and and mad that he, you know, he ended up marrying this girl and he should have, he should have married old Mary Sue because Mary Sue ended up, you know, as a real estate agent and she missed, she's on a uh selling Las Vegas or whatever. You know what I mean? He's resentful. Yes, I do know. So there's all kinds of issues there.

• 35:12Jocko Willink?

  Right. So we have to have respect for ourselves. How do we get respect for ourselves? We get respect for ourselves by working hard, by being disciplined, by having integrity and by having integrity, I have a real simple way of saying have having integrity. It's not some big uh fancy thing. You do what you say and you say what you do. So when I say I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it. When I say this is what I'm gonna do, that's what I'm gonna do. And it's not some big like, I'm gonna uh build a rocket company to compete with SpaceX. That's not what I'm saying. Yeah. I'm saying when I say I'm gonna do something, I say nor I say reasonable things that I'm gonna do and then I'm gonna do them.

• 35:54Jocko Willink?

  So that's integrity. So if you have integrity, if you work hard, if you have discipline, you you will get self-respect. Once you have self-respect, then you can be respected by other people. If you don't have any respect for yourself, no one's gonna respect you. So.

• 36:10Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Gotta watch out for this stuff. Yes, sir. All right, go on. Fast forward to chapter two and these, there's much more detail in these sections and much more the the the way these books are set up. If you don't remember from last time, there's like a, there's an, there's a, it kind of explains them. There's then there's an implementation process and then there's an immediate action drill. But it tells you something to go do that's gonna help you. That's gonna, you can do this with everyone on your team. You're doing this together. That's what these books are for, to kind of enable people to train as a group. Chapter two, own it all, but empower others. The leadership styles of micromanagement and being hands off are obviously opposites. A micromanager tries to control every action of individuals on their team,

• 36:53Jocko Willink?

  which ultimately leads to failure because no one person can control multiple people executing a vast number of actions. Micromanagement also inhibits the growth of team members. When the people become accustomed to being told what to do, they begin to await direction. Initiative fades away. Creativity and bold thoughts soon die too. Damn. The team waits for orders and only moves forward when told to do so. So that's the micromanager. Well, that's what the micromanager creates. The hands off leader with a laissez faire attitude is on the opposite side of the spectrum. Do you know what laissez faire means?

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:30Jocko Willink?

  We, when we originally wrote the original book, The Dichotomy of Leadership, I always called it laissez faire.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:37Jocko Willink?

  And I think Leif was like, bro, we need to call it something else. He loved laissez faire. So we end up calling it, we end up using both.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Hmm. Both what? Laissez faire and?

• 37:46Jocko Willink?

  Hands off.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Hands off.

• 37:48Jocko Willink?

  Yep, hands off.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Is that cavalier, the same thing?

• 37:51Jocko Willink?

  Cavalier.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Whatever.

• 37:52Jocko Willink?

  I wouldn't say cavalier because cavalier is more like, I'm a little bit overly courageous. It's not like, hey, I'm not going to tell you exactly what to do.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:02Jocko Willink?

  So hands off, laissez faire attitude.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Laissez faire.

• 38:05Jocko Willink?

  Uh, this type of leader fails to provide specific direction. In some cases, almost no clear direction. Team members have grand ideas and plans. They even start to develop their own broad strategies beyond the boundaries of their responsibilities and competence. These ideas can become misaligned with the vision and goals of the company, causing this team to move in random directions. That's if you're too hands off, too laissez faire. A leader must correctly balance this dichotomy and pay attention to the team. And then we've got some, some symptoms, symptoms of micromanagement. I'll give you a couple of them. The team shows lack of initiative and will not take actions unless told to do so. That's a classic. Like you show up to work late and you're the boss and no one's doing anything. What the hell's wrong with you guys? You've been micromanaging them.

• 38:47Jocko Willink?

  Another one, the team does not seek solutions to issue, to issues, they wait to be told the solution. Same thing, like, hey, why don't you just figure out a solution? Tell me what to do, what's the solution? During an emergency, the team will not mobilize and take action. Lack of bold, aggressive action, creativity stops, and overall sense of passivity and failure to react. Those are some symptoms of micromanagement. We got some corrective measures for those. We also got some symptoms for hands-off leadership. Lack of vision of what the team is trying to do and how to do it. Lack of coordination between team members. That's a big one. When we got teams that are not working together, it's because they're working on different things. Team members carry out unauthorized actions, overstep the bounds of authority.

• 39:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, seen that. I am a, I lean towards laissez faire, hands-off. Like, I'm very decentralized to command, very decentralized. So I usually, when I get, when something gets tripped up, it's not because someone didn't take action, it's because someone did take action. If someone on the team was like, oh yeah, we just decided we were gonna buy this stuff. Like, okay, yup. And, and I, I've been telling people this a lot lately. There is risk with decentralized command. There is risk with decentralized command because you're not managing everything, you're not touching everything, you're not making every decision, and your team is gonna do some things that you didn't expect. And don't be mad at them, be mad at yourself. It's no factor.

• 40:17Jocko Willink?

  The implementation, do you struggle with micromanaging or being too hands-off? It's a good question to ask. Why is this difficult for you? Oh, that's a good question. Why is it difficult for you not to micromanage? Or why is it difficult for you to tell people what to do? Those are, those are things, you gotta pull the thread and see what's causing that. How does this affect your team? It asks in this book, two good, these are very good questions to ask yourself.

• 40:46Jocko Willink?

  Immediate action drill. Identify two projects or tasks on which you can empower other team members to take the lead. Talk to each team member about that opportunity before having that conversation. Role play it with a trusted agent to ensure you are communicating it effectively. It is an awesome thing to let someone on the team handle stuff. Like, yeah, go deal with it. It's all you. I got, you, you, you run with it. I trust you. Take two projects or two tasks and let someone else do them. I was just talking about that today. I was talking with a company today and I was talking about a, so building a pallet. Like a platoon chief who's been building, so a pallet is what you, they're, they're these pallets. Sure.

• 41:31Jocko Willink?

  And you put gear on them to be loaded onto an aircraft. Yeah. And there's a little bit of an art to it. You know what I'm saying? It's like, oh, you put the, the boxes on the bottom and you want a certain height and they have to start to kind of like, uh, uh, fold in towards the top so they can fit inside the, like, there's all these little things. And the platoon chief has been doing this for 15 years or 17 years. He can do that, kind of do it with his eyes closed. But the new guy, he's just gonna be like moving boxes for chief. But when the chief says, hey, new guy, you get this pallet built. Guess what? It's gonna take the new guy an extra 45 minutes. Cause he's gonna have to unload a couple of the boxes, cause the labels were facing the wrong way for the hazmat that way. See, there's all these little things that he didn't know about. Yeah.

• 42:15Jocko Willink?

  So it takes him an extra 45 minutes, but guess what? The next pallet takes him only an extra seven minutes. By the next pallet, he does it the same, basically the same time that the chief could get it done in. Next time, he's doing a little bit faster than chief and guess what the chief's doing? He's not even out there anymore. He's in there looking at the mission. Yeah. Going through the planning process. That's what we want the chief doing. We want the chief building pallets.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  So true. I was a mover back in the day.

• 42:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  So, you know, I know about the pallet scenario. Actually, we had these trucks with these big wooden like crates. They're like essentially small room, you know, like a U-Haul, right? You know, if you get a small U-Haul, it's a, but there's three of those, right?

• 42:51Jocko Willink?

  Three trucks?

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Three containers. Yeah. And instead of facing the back, the openings face the side.

• 42:56Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  And you gotta nail, nail in the, the, the cover, right? It's like wood.

• 43:01Jocko Willink?

  Did you do military moves?

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, mostly we're military moves.

• 43:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Oh, this whole thing just.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  That's how I know all about Schofield barracks, Kanye, like all this stuff. So, uh, so you do it and then you gotta tie it down because these crates have to be lifted off with a forklift, right? So they're not attached to the truck. So the, you, and so you gotta load the crate. So you gotta be able to fit all as much furniture, whatever boxes in there as possible. So there's couches, there's chairs, there's square boxes. So you gotta know the deal. It's like a little Tetris scenario.

• 43:31Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  So, so the older guys, they know boom, boom, boom. So the younger guys, they don't know as much, you know, you learn over time, just how you said. But especially when they let you do it. And that's not to mention the other part is tying it down, right? So you got, you have all these knots that tie it down. But there's a system to it. You can't just tie it down as hard as you possibly can because the guy who has to untie it has a job to do. And it's, you know, you gotta do it quick. So you have to tie it in the specific knot and you gotta learn that. Now it's not a regular knot. It's like a very specific knot that the more it gets tugged on like from pressure or whatever from the, um.

• 44:04Jocko Willink?

  Do you know what knot it is?

• 44:05Speaker 01

  I forget what it's called, but I don't think I could even do it.

• 44:08Jocko Willink?

  Trucker's hitch?

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Maybe. It was the kind where like the more you tug on the integrity of the knot, the tighter it gets. But all you have to do is pull one thing.

• 44:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  You know, uh.

• 44:18Jocko Willink?

  Do you know what a bowline is?

• 44:19Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 44:20Jocko Willink?

  That's a knot. You can use different sized ropes, but you can pull as hard as you want. But when it, when you want to untie it, it's super easy to untie.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Right. So, well, this one is like the, if you pull the one. Rope, it unties everything, but the more you pull like, let's say the crate, let's say you hit a turn or something in the crate like, you know, it moves with the momentum. The more the crate kind of pulls on the rope, it the tighter the knot gets. It's like one of those deals. So you gotta know and you gotta tie it correctly too. And it's like, oh, they let you do it as a new guy. They teach you how and it's fun and all this stuff or whatever. But of course they check it, you know? But they let you do it, which is cool, which is very good because after a while you get it down, they check it. All they do is go boom, boom, boom checking. It's way quicker because they can do other stuff or whatever. But yeah, if they don't do that.

• 45:03Jocko Willink?

  What was the name of the movie company?

• 45:05Speaker 01

  American movers.

• 45:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  All day.

• 45:09Jocko Willink?

  Lessons learned. Chapter three, resolute but not overbearing. Leapers, leaders cannot be too lenient, but they cannot become overbearing. So you can't be too lenient, you can't become overbearing. Leaders must set high standards and drive the team to achieve those standards, but they cannot be domineering or inflexible on matters of little strategic importance. To find some balance, leaders must evaluate when and where to hold the line and when to allow some slack. They must determine when to listen to the other team members and allow them ownership to make adjustments for their own concerns and needs. So there you go.

• 45:47Jocko Willink?

  You know what kind of leader you are. You know what kind of instincts you have. Implementation here. Evaluate yourself. Where do you fall within this dichotomy? Are you resolute when needed or are you overbearing? And inflexible with matters of little importance. This is very, very important thing to think about. You better just do it my way.

• 46:12Jocko Willink?

  This is also very interesting in the military. Because like, there's such a fine line. Like you gotta be, guys gotta look sharp, gotta have the right uniform on, gotta have a haircut.

• 46:27Jocko Willink?

  Gotta have a good clean shave, right? And but if you become like a uniform Nazi or a haircut Nazi,

• 46:38Jocko Willink?

  you're actually giving up leadership capital. Cause like dude, are you serious? You're you're mad at me about my haircut right now? I never thought that because I was at a good haircut. Actually, you ever seen pictures of me when I was younger, bro? I was pushing the envelope. I was pushing the envelope, long, long hair. Yeah, that was before I figured things out. Before I figured things out, but it if you have someone that's really focused on small things all the time. They become the, what is it? The, the, the person that cried wolf. Who cried wolf?

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Cry wolf, the boy you cried?

• 47:15Jocko Willink?

  Boy, yeah, become the boy who cried wolf. Whoa, what are you doing without the proper uniform on? Get a haircut, Echo. Get a haircut, get a haircut, get a haircut. And now all of a sudden, when I need you to show up with the right weapons. I'm like, hey, you need these weapons. You're like, Jocko's freaking out.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 47:28Jocko Willink?

  So don't let that happen.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that I found that's true with like yelling at your kids. So like, you know, you yell at your kids for like small stuff with like barely any consequences. And then, yeah, when it comes to the big stuff, like, bro, they're just used to that yelling. Brad, they're not taking no action.

• 47:43Jocko Willink?

  I guess my daughter was telling me someone was asking her like, it must be so scary when your dad gets mad.

• 47:51Jocko Willink?

  And she was like, oh no, my dad doesn't get mad. And they were like, what? Doesn't get mad.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And in fact, you're the most scary and I'll, I'll with 100% certainty say that your kids will agree with me. Where you're most scary when you take no action. All it has to be is like something anomalous out of your behavior. Be like, oh shit, what's up with Jocko? Shoot, you know, like. So yeah, it's way different. And the thing is, I actually modeled that with my like kids, totally did. And actually you, to me, you proved it to me. Like where I was like, hey, when my kids, if I need me. So you know how people, they'll be like, oh, that my kids should fear me, you know, or be able to, you know, some people will say that or whatever. And I'm like, ah, yeah, I mean, I get it. You know, I was scared of my dad.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  You know, when he'd come home, I'd be like, oh shit, his dad's gonna get mad or whatever. Like I, I had that fear for him, even though I really liked him, you know, like he was a super fun person. So I'm like, yeah, I guess there's some value to that or whatever. But I, I kinda, at the end of the day, kinda disagreed where like, I don't need my kids be nervous when I roll in, you know? But I'm like, wait a second, but I do need that authority if I need to fucking, you know, utilize it from time to time. So I'm like, frick. But so it only has to do with consistency, right? And like predictability essentially. So if it's like, hey, there's no reason for them to be scared of me until. There's a reason to be scared of me for some reason and all I would do is just be super nice, jokey the whole time. And instead of if they do something wrong, that's like a genuine

• 49:16Speaker 01

  mistake. No, no, it's freaking all good. Yep, all good. The only time is if they know better. And then all I'll do is be a little bit more quiet. That's it. And bro, they'll freaking snap right to. And I was like, bro, this freaking works. But you can't abuse it.

• 49:34Jocko Willink?

  Well, you know that conversation we had on the underground podcast where someone was asking about spanking? And I was like, I was asking my kids, like, because someone asked for the underground, hey, what do you think of spanking? And I was like, well, I was thinking, myself, well, I didn't spank my kids. But then I wanted to confirm it. Like, I couldn't remember it. You know, you don't have a perfect memory. My kids are 20. My oldest kid is 24 right now. So I went, I was like, went and talked to my kids. My wife was there. I said, I didn't spank the kids. I didn't spank you guys. And they were like, no, no, no. And then they're like, I wish you would spank me. I was like, what do you mean? Because they were like, the shun and the psychological warfare is way worse. Like, get a little bit quieter. It's like, way worse. So, yes, I agree.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  That's a Right. You gotta, you gotta know how to pull that off, though. That's the, that's a big kind of part of it. Where like you, I understand, because obviously you fucking do that shit, you know, and you pull it off super, super good. But if you're like, if you don't have that consistent, like, record of being a certain way, and then when you introduce the shunning, or the, or the, you know, whatever, the, yeah, the, the, the normal, or whatever, whatever you want to call it, you start introducing like that calm, that impending doom of calmness that that you can do. And the kids are, bro, they're gonna take it completely wrong. In fact, it'll completely, it'll backfire. That's what it'll do.

• 50:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you're saying you normally fly off the handle? No, it's, oh, yeah.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  You get calm, they're like, oh, shoot, a moment of peace, you know, that's kind of cool.

• 51:03Jocko Willink?

  This is kind of approved, maybe.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. As opposed to like, the world may end soon.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  The shunning thing I I wouldn't have the heart to do. I I can't do it, bro.

• 51:17Jocko Willink?

  Do it for a little while, maybe.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  No, bro, I can't. Even even when I scold, okay, so I'll scold the kid. I'll pull the the thing, right? The move. When they're like, it's my, this is totally my fault, too. This is part of the reason I feel bad because, okay, so I joke around too much, just admit it. So when it's time for things to get done or whatever, they're still joking around. And I'm like, shoot, this is I I created this, so I know. But I'll kind of pull that, you know, it's pretty rare, so it still totally works. And I'll be like, hey, like, right now, like, in a tone, you know, like, right now, you're not listening. And then, oh, you know, let's say my son or whatever, he'll like snap to and be like, okay, and he'll be like, sorry. They'll say sorry, and I'll feel terrible. I'm like, oh, my God. I made this little kid so sad by talking like that or whatever, even though I didn't, you know, but, bro, it's hard.

• 52:03Jocko Willink?

  Can't you just tell him like, hey, hey, we gotta stop joking right now. We gotta get this done. Can't you do that? Instead of going full, full disciplinary?

• 52:10Speaker 01

  I could, but like, it doesn't work sometimes. You know what I mean? Because let's face it, there's no consequence for me, like, saying that. We still have like a fun, you know, hey, I know, I know. And then he'll want to push it like, because that makes the joke even funnier. Because I do that shit, too. You know, where it's like everyone's being serious and then I'll be like, okay, okay, you're serious. And then I'll like trip him or something, you know, like that. So so he's just doing the stuff that I do. So I gotta push it sometimes, but I'll feel bad when it works, you know? So I couldn't do the shun. That's the point. The shun is like, bro, you gotta, you gotta, that's some some pain. You induce some psychological pain that you're putting, putting on the forehead.

• 52:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was, I was, well, especially when my kids were younger, I was pretty hard on, I was pretty hard on my, my son. He got, he definitely got more benefits of.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  You're the beneficiary.

• 53:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because I kind of treated him like he was, you know.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're preparing him for NOM. Like, I understand. That's your jam.

• 53:12Jocko Willink?

  Check. All right. When have you wasted your leadership capital on insignificant issues that have no impact on the strategic long-term objective, objectives? That's it. Just check yourself daily on that if you're in a leadership position, which includes being a parent. Like, you're wasting leadership capital on dumb stuff that doesn't matter. Don't do that.

• 53:34Jocko Willink?

  Immediate action, Joe. Perform a leadership capital analysis on your most recent interaction. Was it a deposit or a withdraw? Let me tell you what it probably was, a withdraw. If you opened your mouth, it's a withdraw. If you told somebody what to do, it's a withdraw. If you imposed your will, it's a withdraw.

• 53:51Jocko Willink?

  Think about that. Think about what you're doing. Chapter four, when to mentor, when to fire? Gosh, this is a common question. Most underperformers don't need to be fired. They need to be led. Notice it says most.

• 54:04Jocko Willink?

  But once every effort has been made to help an underperformer improve and all efforts have failed, a leader must make the tough call to let that person go. This is the duty and responsibility of every leader. This should be rare because they went through the hiring process. They got screened. Leaders are responsible for the output of the individuals on their team. The goal of any leader is to push each person to reach their maximum potential. Humans have limitations. Not every person is, will be suited for a particular job. Some people might need a less technical position, may not be able to handle stress, may not work well with others. Leaders must identify where to place people so their strengths are fully capitalized on.

• 54:43Jocko Willink?

  And then we talk about the leadership, or sorry, the escalation of counseling.

• 54:51Jocko Willink?

  Going to the implementation. Do you have any team members who are underperforming? What are you doing to help them out? What kind of training, feedback and/or support are you providing for their improvement? Here's another one. How do you change your approach when your attempt to counsel is unsuccessful? So if I talk to you, Echo, and I do it in a positive way and it doesn't work, what's my next escalation going to be? What does that look like? And what's the escalation going to be? And I might want to think through this entire escalation before I go do it. So I can actually plot out what my plan is of how I'm going to get Echo from failing to do his job to doing his job well. But if I, I gotta have that plotted out, that escalation of counseling. So it makes sense.

• 55:39Jocko Willink?

  We're getting into section two of this balancing the mission. So we balance the people. Now we're going to balance the mission. Chapter five, train hard, but train smart. Hard training is critical to the performance of any team, how you train, how you fight.

• 55:55Jocko Willink?

  You train how you fight and fight how you train is a common mantra that drives the successful US military training programs. The best training programs push teams hard far beyond their comfort zones. So the team can learn from their mistakes in training and avoid making those mistakes in real life.

• 56:11Jocko Willink?

  That being said, here's the dichotomy, training can't be so difficult that it demoralizes the participants to the point where they fail to learn.

• 56:20Jocko Willink?

  Or they lose confidence. It's another big one. It happens with fighters. Oh, you want to bring him in the cage, let him get some rounds in. Oh, he's, he's looking weak today. Let's pounce on him. Now his confidence breaks. When you're, when you got a fighter, get towards that fight, dude. You're taking some dives in the cage. I've, I've taken some dives in the cage. You know what I'm saying? In those sparring rounds, someone's like a little bit tired and you're like, dude, but he's fighting in, you know, in a week.

• 56:49Jocko Willink?

  He's got to have some, my, my beating his ass right now is not going to help his confidence. It's going to hurt his confidence, it's going to hurt the fight. Hurt the outcome. So what are you going to do? Maybe take a little bit, take a couple shots for the team.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  What's the mistake there? I mean, you always say this example where the mistake is. Cause you think, oh, let's put him through adversity. So now he's trained in adversity. You know, like, so that'll help him, right? But yeah, you're right. You do that too much or at the wrong time.

• 57:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, at the wrong time and too much. Those are both equally bad. Like the kid's got the big game coming up. You smash him so they're ready for it. No, it doesn't work that way. All you did is hurt your confidence. Now, three weeks before the big game, boom, smash him. Now they're like, I gotta get in there. I gotta work harder. Great. You inspired them. One of the questions here in the implementation. What kinds of role play scenarios or other training opportunities could be especially useful for your team? How and when can you run this training? And this is an important point that I, I have been emphasizing a lot lately. Life is training. Your job, whatever it is you do, your construction company, there's training opportunities every single day. You're a, a sales company, there's a training opportunities every single day.

• 58:04Jocko Willink?

  You're a police department, there's training opportunities every single day. You're a manufacturing company, there's training opportunities every single, no matter what your company does, no matter what your mission is, you have training opportunities every single day, even if you're building an aircraft pallet. You put a kid in a leadership position to make that thing happen, he is getting leadership training and he's learning how to build a pallet.

• 58:25Jocko Willink?

  So that informal tra- not everything is formal training. In fact, a minimal amount of knowledge comes from, from formal training. Like, uh, people that went to school to become a, a software engineer. Is that where they, do they learn in that classroom? No, they learn doing it, working on projects. They got that job and now they just have to build this thing and, you know, that's the way things work. So think about life and when I say life, think about everything that's happening in your business, everything that happens at your job, everything that happens at work. Think about it. Everything that happens is an opportunity to train. That's the way I look at everything now. Everything that I see is an opportunity to train.

• 59:08Jocko Willink?

  Immediate action drill, write down the next meeting you have where you have, where the majority of your team will be together physically or virtually and make a plan on how you incorporate one training opportunity during that meeting. That's all it is. It's a great immediate action drill. Oh, we got a, we got a safety brief. Oh, I'm gonna let little Michael do it. He just, he's been here for three weeks. He's gonna give the safety brief. Well, he's not qualified. Okay. Well, I'll stand there and make sure that what he's, that covers everything, but he's gonna get up there and do it and he's gonna write it down. That's training. Now, if he skips the major part, cool, I'll be like, hey, everybody, little Michael just forgot about this. So remember to blah, blah, blah.

• 59:50Jocko Willink?

  But that's training and that's what we're doing. Finding time to train informally.

• 59:58Jocko Willink?

  Chapter six, aggressive, not reckless. Problems should never be expected to solve themselves. Leaders must get aggressive, take action and implement a proper solution. Being passive and waiting for a solution to appear often causes a problem to escalate out of control. An aggressive mindset should be the default setting by any leader. Default aggressive. When leaders understand the commander's intent, which is the overarching purpose, strategic goal and desired end state is also why we're doing what we're doing and the parameters within which they can make decisions, they can execute. Fast forward a little bit by aggressive, we mean proactive. We do not mean getting angry, losing your temper, being aggressive towards other people.

• 1:00:40Jocko Willink?

  Leaders must always be professional when interacting with subordinates, peers and senior leadership and when representing the organization to external players. Of course, and I'll go one step further. It's not just be professional, it's build relationships. If I have a conversation with someone, I want my relationship to be being built, not being deteriorated, not being degraded. Aggression wins on the battlefield and business in life when it's directed towards solving problems, achieving goals and accomplishing the mission. Here's the implementation part. When do you tend to take action without calculating the associated risk? Oh, because by the way, it's aggressive, not reckless. Can you be over aggressive? Yes, you can. Why do we say default aggressive?

• 1:01:24Jocko Willink?

  The reason we say default aggressive because the majority tendency for a human is to lock up and not do anything. That's the majority reaction and instinct. So we normally have to teach be default aggressive. If everyone, generally speaking, was a freaking maniac that took action, what we would be teaching is like, we'd be teaching default patience. And there's some people that need that. There's some people.

• 1:01:59Jocko Willink?

  They don't think. Sure. So we would be teaching those, if that's the way most people were, we'd have default patience. Hey, listen, everyone flies off the handle and just goes and runs into the sound of the guns and gets everyone hurt, killed. They make bad decisions that we can't do that. We need to be default patient. But we don't have to say that because most people, their, their default mode is to sit there and allow things to happen to them. That's what we're trying to overcome. And listen, this is especially in pressure situations, right? This is especially in dynamic situations.

• 1:02:30Jocko Willink?

  There's a fire. Most people, they don't want to aggressively go handle that thing. Oh, there's an employee that's frustrated and starting to complain to people on the team. What do they want to do? They sit back and don't want to do anything about it. No, you gotta go talk to that person and find out what's going on. Does that mean you get aggressive towards the person? No, it means you get aggressive towards the problem. But when you go into that conversation, you have a good conversation, a positive conversation, a relationship building conversation.

• 1:02:59Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing.

• 1:03:02Jocko Willink?

  When you don't have a lot of information, how can you move forward while still mitigating risk? This is the iterative decision-making process.

• 1:03:13Jocko Willink?

  Make a little decision. Take that action, assess the outcome, and then make another little decision. That's what we're doing.

• 1:03:23Jocko Willink?

  Do you ever visibly lose your temper with your people? If so, what will you do to prevent this from happening going forward? Please explain. There's a bunch of other questions. I'm, I'm skimming this through this book. But when you get this book and you go through this with your team, there's all kinds of these powerful questions that will help the truth be revealed to people themselves. So you don't have to tell them, hey, Echo, you keep losing your temper, dude. This is ridiculous. Instead, Echo goes, I lost my temper three times in the past month. I know I looked bad. Here's some steps I'm going to take. We want the truth to be revealed to people from themselves.

• 1:04:04Jocko Willink?

  Chapter 7, Disciplined, Not Rigid. While discipline equals freedom is a powerful tool for both personal and team development, excessive discipline can stifle free thinking among team members. The more discipline a team exercises, the more freedom that team will have to maneuver by implementing small adjustments to existing plans. When facing a mission or task, instead of having to craft each plan from scratch, a team can follow standard operating procedures for the bulk of the plan. But there must be some balance. In some organizations, there are leaders who put too many standard operating procedures in place. They create strict processes that inhibit their subordinate leader's ability to think. This can adversely impact the team's performance and the mission.

• 1:04:49Jocko Willink?

  Discipline procedures must be balanced with the ability to apply common sense to an issue with the power to break from SOPs when necessary, with the freedom to think about the alternative solutions, apply new ideas, and make adjustments to processes based on the reality of what is actually happening. Yes, I am a huge proponent of discipline, but can it go too far? Can it become out of bounds? Yes, it absolutely can. Here's one of the implementation questions. Do your leaders and frontline workers have the ability to make adjustments within standard operating procedures while working on a project? Pretty straightforward. Here's another good question to fast forward a little bit. How often do you conduct training on standard operating procedures?

• 1:05:34Jocko Willink?

  Do frontline leaders and employees understand why these standard operating procedures are in place? That's a big one. If people are, if you don't, if you don't keep people informed as to why standard operating procedures exist, eventually, people don't know why they exist. And eventually, those standard operating procedures get shifted, or changed, or eliminated, and that's when we have problems. So especially when it comes to safety, especially when it comes to quality, people might not know why I'm rotating this bolt. Once it leaves the machine, well, oh, that's just what we're doing. Well, why you do all this just what? Oh, well, I don't really know why I'm doing that. Well, why are you doing? Um, I'm not going to do it anymore.

• 1:06:17Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward two weeks and oh, when the part got shipped and it rattled around inside the truck, the bolt came loose and it caused a problem. That's why we tighten them up. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. Now I know that now I'll do it. But if we don't explain the why behind the standard operating procedures, we have issues.

• 1:06:40Jocko Willink?

  Here's immediate action, Joe. Identify one standard operating procedure that needs to be updated. Work with others who also utilize the standard operating procedure to determine changes and why they are necessary. Then present the proposed update for the chain of commands approval. Boom.

• 1:06:58Jocko Willink?

  Chapter eight. Hold other people accountable, but don't hold their hands. That's a good chapter title. Hold people accountable, but don't hold their hands. Accountability is an important tool for leaders to utilize. However, it should not be the primary tool. It must be balanced with other leadership tools, such as making sure people understand the why empowering subordinates and trusting they will do the right thing without any direct oversight. Leaders often get the idea that accountability can solve anything. And in a sense, they're right. If a leader wants to ensure that subordinates follow through with a task, a leader can inspect repeatedly

• 1:07:40Jocko Willink?

  to confirm that the task gets done. With enough oversight, task completion can achieve 100% success.

• 1:07:48Jocko Willink?

  Therefore, leaders often want to use accountability to fix problems. It's the most obvious and simple method. A task is given to a subordinate, the head leader watches the subordinate do the task. The leader inspects the task once it's complete. There's almost no room for error. Unfortunately, there is almost no room for the leader to do anything besides monitor the progress of that specific subordinate.

• 1:08:09Jocko Willink?

  If there are multiple subordinates with multiple tasks, a leader very quickly becomes physically incapable of inspecting them all. While focused down the chain of command, the leader will have no ability to look up and out, up towards senior leadership to build relationships and influence strategic decisions and out toward the strategic mission and to anticipate future operations.

• 1:08:27Jocko Willink?

  Instead of using accountability as the primary tool of leadership, leaders should implement it as one of many leadership tools. Leaders must ensure the team understands the why and that members have ownership of their tasks and the ability to make adjustments as needed. Team members need to understand the importance of their specific task and the consequences of failure. Classic.

• 1:08:48Jocko Willink?

  Classic stuff. If the only way you get things done as a leader is just to run around holding everybody accountable, it just doesn't work. Because what about when you're not there?

• 1:09:00Jocko Willink?

  So we want to use something else. We want to use leadership. Oh, I understand that this is the task that needs to get done. I know why I need to do it. I know how it's going to impact the mission. I know how it's going to impact me. I know how it's going to benefit my team and I know it's going to benefit me. I'm going to do this thing.

• 1:09:15Jocko Willink?

  I know the consequences if it doesn't get it. I know all these things. Now I don't need anyone to inspect it. I'm doing it.

• 1:09:23Jocko Willink?

  Here's the implementation. One of the questions from the implementations. If you have subordinates, how can you ensure your team understands the importance of their tasks and how they fit into the larger mission?

• 1:09:34Jocko Willink?

  If you are a frontline employee, how can you get clarity when you don't understand the why behind your task? Yes, that's your responsibility. If you don't know why you're doing something, my boss didn't tell me. Freaking ask him.

• 1:09:49Jocko Willink?

  Does leadership in your organization allow frontline workers to make adjustments as needed? I hope so. Here's an immediate action drill. Identify one person you have been micromanaging, hold handholding recently. Make a plan for how you can begin to show more trust in their ability to get the job done. Execute that plan. Now, when is holding some accountable, holding someone accountable to be utilized as a tool? I can tell you when. When they're jacked up.

• 1:10:20Jocko Willink?

  When they're jacked up. Like Echo, you've got to do task A and you failed to do it yesterday and you failed to do it today. Guess what I'm going to do tomorrow? I'm going to inspect it. I'm going to come down. Hey, are you getting started on your task? Cool. How long is it going to take you? Forty-five minutes? I'll be back in thirty. See, check the progress. And I'm going to do that. I'm going to, I'm going to account for your actions until you learn to get them done. And people don't like to be micromanaged. Like after I come and check on you five times, you're like, hey, Jocko, you don't need to come back. You can see I've got this now, right? You don't want me coming down inspecting you? No one wants that.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  Is there a, you know how people will use accountability kind of and interchange it with like punishment? You know how they they'll say?

• 1:11:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they do the same thing with discipline, right?

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you gotta discipline.

• 1:11:05Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna discipline that person. Yeah. Hold them accountable for their actions.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  So when you say accountability as a tool, you're talking about like your accountability, like account for their actions, not necessarily punishment.

• 1:11:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, not necessarily. Yep. Yeah. There, when you talk about someone that has done something that is wrong, then you hold them accountable for their wrong actions, right? But if you have a task and I'm holding you accountable to get that task done, I'm not punishing you. It's not punishment, but I'm checking on you.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:11:36Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, it's a little bit of a different meaning of the word.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz you know how Sean Glass will talk about um, holding people accountable rather than like leading them kind of a thing? And he's like, yeah, and he says essentially the same thing, but his examples are more along lines of punishment. Where it's like, hey, this person isn't is underperforming. And instead of holding them accountable, they need to be led kind of a thing. And you know, cuz I I get admin in those situations where it's like, yeah, underperformer gets like punished rather than helped, you know, kind of a thing.

• 1:12:05Jocko Willink?

  And so, so, yes, those are both right, because if you were supposed to do task A, and you didn't do it, I'm like, hey, did you do task A? And you say, no, I didn't do the task. And I say, okay, well, I'm gonna dock your pay.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:18Jocko Willink?

  So I'm holding you accountable, but what Sean is saying, what I should be doing is saying, hey, hey, why, why couldn't you get it done? Do you need some more training? Do you need the resources? Has anybody showed you how to do it before? You've no, you've never done this task before? Do you want to do some repetitions with me? So I make sure, you see what I'm saying?

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:12:34Jocko Willink?

  So that's what Sean's saying.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:36Jocko Willink?

  And it's correct.

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, agree.

• 1:12:39Jocko Willink?

  All right. Part three of this book, Balance. So we balance the mission, we balance the people. Now we're gonna balance, balancing yourself. Chapter nine, A Leader and a Follower. Every leader must be willing and able to lead, but just as important is a leader's ability to follow.

• 1:12:58Jocko Willink?

  Leaders must be willing to lean on the experience and ideas of others and listen and follow others regardless of their rank or experience. If another team member has a great idea, a good leader recognizes it.

• 1:13:11Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't care who gets the credit, only that the mission is accomplished in the most effective manner possible. Confident leaders will encourage their team members to step up and lead when they put forth ideas that will contribute to mission success.

• 1:13:27Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're doing. You've got to know when to lead. You've got to know when to follow. We also have a line in here. A good leader must also be a good follower of their own leader. One of the most important jobs of any leader is to support their boss. Oh, people are like, ah.

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

  When the debate is over, at a particular course of action ends, and the boss makes a decision, even if you disagree with the decision, you must execute the plan as if it were your own. So, why do we have to talk about that?

• 1:14:00Jocko Willink?

  If you haven't been to Gettysburg, go to the battlefield of Gettysburg. We talk about this a lot.

• 1:14:06Jocko Willink?

  This did not happen to me in the military, like in any, in any regular or significant way, where it was like, oh, my boss is telling me to do something that I totally disagree with, and they say, Jocko, shut up and do what I told you. That never happened to me. Why? Because I had a good relationship with my boss. I had a good relationship with my boss. Now, in a less significant way, would occasionally like, hey, hey, Jocko, no, you've got to get this paperwork done. Hey, boss, it really doesn't make sense to do this paperwork because I'm just going to have to refile it tomorrow when we get back. Hey, no more discussion. Get it done. Hey, Roger that. Now, what do I tell the team? Hey, guys, listen, the boss is under a lot of pressure right now. This paperwork is going to make him look good. It's going to improve his relationship with his boss. It's going to

• 1:14:50Jocko Willink?

  improve my relationship with him. We're going to knock this out of the park. Boom, done. That's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. If you're being told to do something that's unethical, immoral, unsafe, do you go, yeah, okay, Jocko said to do it? Execute it as if? No, that's not what I'm saying at all. Someone's doing something that's illegal, immoral, unethical, unsafe, you actually have a responsibility to stand up and say, no, this, we're not doing that. It's not happening. It's not happening.

• 1:15:21Jocko Willink?

  But if the boss wants to do six and you want to do a half a dozen.

• 1:15:27Jocko Willink?

  And you want to say, no, it should be half dozen. No, it should be six. You want to argue about this. Doesn't matter. And it also doesn't matter, you know, if it's going to be your way is 4% more efficient than his way. It's like, bro, who cares? You wasted that 4% of efficiency by standing here and arguing like an idiot. And by the way, when you make a mistake, now your boss is all over you. Whereas if you'd be like, hey, boss, got it. We're going to execute. Make a little mistake, your boss is like, I, I trust you. Get it handled. No factor.

• 1:15:55Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're doing. That's why it's important to be able to follow. Implementation. Where inside your team or organization can you do a better job of being a leader and a follower? Pretty straightforward. How can you make this happen? Do you consider input from less senior team members? Oh, that's a good one. Because if you're asking them what they would do, guess what you're doing? You're training them to think. You're developing them as leaders.

• 1:16:21Jocko Willink?

  So it's a great move.

• 1:16:24Jocko Willink?

  How do you support your leaders when they make a decision with which you disagree? I already went through that earnest questioning. Hey, boss, can you just explain? I want to make sure I understand what it is you want to get accomplished here and why you want it done that way? Hey, boss, I don't know if I understand the strategy here because I, I want to make sure I'm supporting the strategy. Can you explain it to me? And by the way, each of these questions may reveal something to your boss that they didn't see.

• 1:16:50Jocko Willink?

  Do you execute at the best of your ability? Yes, you do, because that way you can gain more influence and that's what you tell your guys. Hey, I'm not sure why the boss wants it done this way. I pushed back and he just, he wants it done this way. So we're going to build a good, we're going to do an excellent job on this. So I increase my influence with the boss so we can do it a smoother way next time. Guys with me? Yeah, we're with you. No factor. Does your leadership trust you? Does your team trust you?

• 1:17:18Jocko Willink?

  Here's a question. Does your leadership seek your opinion?

• 1:17:23Jocko Willink?

  Because if they don't, we got a relationship issue. Pay attention to it. Next one. Plan, but don't overplan.

• 1:17:33Jocko Willink?

  Careful, planning is essential to the process and success of any mission. In Extreme Ownership, Chapter 9, Plan, we wrote that mission planning meant never taking anything for granted, preparing for likely contingencies and maximizing the chance of mission success while minimizing the risk to the troops executing the operation. There are significant risks in both combat and business alike. In the business world, livelihoods are at stakes, jobs, careers, capital, strategic initiatives and long-term success. Leaders must manage these risks carefully through contingency planning. Though not every risk can be controlled. Leaders must find a balance when planning. You cannot plan for every contingency.

• 1:18:15Jocko Willink?

  If you try to plan for every possible contingency, you will often overwhelm your team and the planning process and overcomplicate decisions for leaders. Therefore, it is imperative that leaders focus primarily on likely contingencies that could occur during each phase of a mission or project. Select at most three or four of the probable contingencies for each phase, along with the worst-case scenario. This will prepare the team to execute and increase the chances for mission success. So you gotta plan, but you can't overplan. And here's a question. Is your tendency to underplan or overplan? Look, we all know some freaking planners out there.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:18:54Jocko Willink?

  Right? We know some people that are gonna plan for the plan about the planning meeting to have a plan to come up with a plan.

• 1:19:03Jocko Willink?

  They never do anything, these people, by the way. We also know people that just kinda shrug their shoulders like, I got this. Hold my beer. You know? So we're not doing that either. So you gotta know who you are. And then you gotta lean the other direction a little bit. If you're a person that doesn't come up with a plan and just freaking rolls out there and gets after it, like, look, we, we respect it. But that's how you get sideswiped. That's how you get taken down. So let's make sure we have a plan.

• 1:19:33Jocko Willink?

  Another question, fast forward a little bit, are you, and this, like I said, there's a bunch of questions in this, in these handbooks and workbooks that you can, you can use with your team. Another question, are you and your team prepared for worst case scenarios? Explain how you will execute a contingency plan if one should occur, very important. We did this all the time in the SEAL teams. We were constantly, okay, worst case scenario, we have a casualty. Here's what we're gonna do, here's how we're gonna deal with it. Even at our training sites, if we have a casualty on our training sites, we're gonna not just brief it, but we're gonna, we're gonna rehearse it sometimes. Someone gets severely wounded, someone gets shot at a training site,

• 1:20:16Jocko Willink?

  someone gets run over by a vehicle at a training site, someone gets blown up at a training site, because we're conducting high-risk training, there is risk in our training.

• 1:20:25Jocko Willink?

  So we run full mission rehearsals, full-profile rehearsals to make sure we're ready for that. You should do that at your company. Do you have to do it once a week? No. But I'll tell you, should you do it maybe once every six months, maybe once a year, you go through the full casualty evacuation? Who knows how to call the life flight helicopter if you're a construction company? Who knows how to do that?

• 1:20:52Jocko Willink?

  Look, can you do that with every job site? No, but you do it with one job site and then that, you know, you film it, you get some lessons learned from it, so everyone knows, oh, guess what, we gotta clear out any obstacle from our landing zone. We had a helicopter landing zone, but guess what, we had two cranes parked in the middle of it. Took us 15 minutes to move those cranes. Okay, so guess what, we need a secondary, every construction site, we need a secondary landing zone. You see what I'm saying? You go through these rehearsals once a year, whatever, and you take the lessons learned and you pass them and distribute them.

• 1:21:25Jocko Willink?

  And maybe you do a rehearsal without the helicopter, like, okay, well, where are they gonna land? Well, yep, we can land them there. Oh, no, we got cranes parked there. So you can still run through the, kind of a, kind of a mock rehearsal as well.

• 1:21:40Jocko Willink?

  Next chapter, chapter 11, humble, not passive. Humility is the most important quality in a leader. When we had to fire SEAL leaders from leadership positions in a platoon or task unit, it was not because they weren't physically fit or were tactically unsound. It was most often because they lacked humility. They couldn't check their ego. They refused to accept constructive criticism and did not take ownership of their mistakes. In extreme ownership, we dedicated an entire chapter to check the ego because humility is essential to building strong relationships up, down, and across the chain of command.

• 1:22:16Jocko Willink?

  Some leaders take this too far.

• 1:22:19Jocko Willink?

  Strange, right?

• 1:22:21Jocko Willink?

  Some leaders take this too far and become humble to a fault. They become passive. When it truly matters, leaders must be willing to push back, voice their concerns, stand up for the good of their team and the mission, and provide feedback up the chain of command against the decision or strategy they know will endanger the team or harm the strategic mission.

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  Do you think so passive? And then lack of confidence? Do you think lack of confidence is from being kind of too humble? Or is that a different thing?

• 1:22:52Jocko Willink?

  For sure. Yeah. Yep. You, you want, confident is, is good.

• 1:22:59Jocko Willink?

  Arrogance is too far, right? And then lack of confidence is too far in the other direction. So we want someone that's confident, but we don't want them overconfident.

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:08Jocko Willink?

  But if someone's like, I'm not really sure if I can do this job. Like, can you imagine you're a SEAL platoon commander?

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:14Jocko Willink?

  Or you're a SEAL platoon chief?

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:16Jocko Willink?

  And someone says, hey, what do you think we should do here? And you're like, I'm not really sure.

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:21Jocko Willink?

  I, I, I've never, I'm not, I, I, I'm not sure if I can do this or not, or whatever.

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:27Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? Like, it could be bad.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully.

• 1:23:29Jocko Willink?

  So. You, you wanna be balanced. You know, we had to say this because occasionally you get someone that's like, well, you know, I don't really, I'm, I'm not experienced enough. And, and echoes come up with this plan. It doesn't make sense to me, but I guess I'll just execute it. Like, no, not a good call. Not a good call. So we wanna be humble, but we don't even passive. We don't just let the world happen to us.

• 1:23:57Jocko Willink?

  Do we wanna, what, what, what do we usually have to contend with? Usually we have to contend with our ego getting out of control. That's what we, that's why we talk about humility so much. We talk about humility so much because normally it's people's freaking ego gets out of control. Yeah.

• 1:24:11Jocko Willink?

  Occasionally.

• 1:24:14Jocko Willink?

  People don't have enough ego and now they lack confidence. And now they become passive. I went and talked to some inner city kids, this was years ago. But this group asked me to come up and talk to the, some inner city kids. And, but this inner city group of kids that I was talking to, they were all extremely intelligent. And so they went to special program. But just imagine being like in a group of thirty kids, low income, really bad neighborhood, all really super smart. And so they were all kinda shy and.

• 1:24:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just shy and they all lack confidence. And so when I normally go and talk to people about, you know, ego, stay humble and all this. Right. I didn't even bring that up. Oh dang. I didn't even bring up, this is one of the few times I didn't talk about humility. Because everyone in that room was, they're probably, they were, they were, they lack confidence, all of them. You know, they were all kinda slouched in their chairs, kinda looking at the ground. They're really smart kids, but they're in a freaking violent environment. You know, thirteen, twelve to thirteen years old. And they're in a terrible environment. Where if you open up your mouth, you're gonna get beat by some, someone that's bigger and stronger than you. Whether it's a neighborhood kid or whether it's a, a abusive parent. So what I talked about was, hey.

• 1:25:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you wanna ask me a question? Cool. Stand up. Yes, go ahead and stand up. Hey, put your shoulders back. Talk a little bit louder. No one's gonna bite you. This is confidence. So this does happen. We don't want people to be passive. We want them to be humble, but we don't want them to be passive. Very important.

• 1:25:57Jocko Willink?

  The implementation section, where do you fall on the scale of humility from arrogant to passive?

• 1:26:05Jocko Willink?

  How can you make sure you're balanced? Look, most people are going to be leaning towards arrogant, but occasionally you get people that aren't. Hey, new guy SEAL officer? Probably one out of seven. One out of seven is like, like lacks confidence. Six out of seven are like, oh, I'm born to do this. They got the ego issue.

• 1:26:28Speaker 01

  Do you find that, because for, for whatever reason, and I don't know, I have very little experience comparatively speaking. But the lack of confident or the arrogance, you know, you say like most people or you said one in seven. We'll say SEALs lack confidence, but do you find in the real world that it's kind of like reversed? Like more?

• 1:26:50Jocko Willink?

  It depends on, it depends on the group, right?

• 1:26:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:53Jocko Willink?

  So you get the, you get the

• 1:27:00Jocko Willink?

  construction site, right? Most of the foreman on a construction site, they've been doing this for 22 years, dude, they're freaking confident.

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's.

• 1:27:09Jocko Willink?

  But then you get the new guy. Okay, there's, then you get probably a similar. No, you're right. So now you take the project manager who's like a college kid that's never run a construction site before. And he shows up, dude, he's, he's lacking confidence.

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:23Jocko Willink?

  You know, he's lacking confidence because he's never done this before.

• 1:27:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:26Jocko Willink?

  And he's got a big budget and the foreman's freaking looking at him like, oh, just got out of freaking college, huh? How was, how was your dorm? Or whatever, you know what I mean? Oh, you think you're going to tell me what to do? What'd you build? Your lunch tray in the cafeteria? I've been doing this for 27 years. I'll tell you what's going on. So they're going to lack confidence. So what do they need to do? They need to gain confidence. How do they gain confidence? Same thing we talked about earlier with gain respect. Work hard, ask good questions, don't act like you know everything. You don't. Everybody knows you don't. If your response is, hey, I might just graduated college, but I had some really good classes on engineering and I'm ready to tell you what's up. Job foreman. Like, how's that gonna go over? Ain't gonna go over good.

• 1:28:10Jocko Willink?

  But if you say, hey, hey, yeah, I did just graduate, didn't learn much, but I mean, I know I can, looking at you, I can see I'm gonna learn a lot from you. How are we gonna do this stuff tomorrow? How do you recommend getting this done? All of a sudden it's like, oh, okay, this guy listens. So be confident. You have to have confidence in the fact that you don't know everything and be okay with that. No one hates you.

• 1:28:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:32Jocko Willink?

  You know, can this foreman or whoever be an asshole? Yeah, that can happen. And they really have a big ego and they wanna rub it in. You know what the hell you're doing?

• 1:28:42Speaker 01

  Do you see more, this seems like an obvious thing, but the thing is, I don't know, because I don't have the experience of this. Do you see like comparatively, like, do you see more arrogance that higher up you go in leadership?

• 1:28:56Jocko Willink?

  Yes, because they've been screened.

• 1:28:59Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:28:59Jocko Willink?

  Because they've won.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, like it's like that process selects for the.

• 1:29:04Jocko Willink?

  Selecting and look, you didn't even apply for that leadership job. Unless you had confidence that you could get it. So you had some confidence, but then you got it and confidence gets a little boost. And by the way, how did you, when you applied for that leadership job? You had to succeed on some tasks or some missions or some projects. So you were successful, leadership boost. So now you applied, you got the leadership boost. Now you applied, you get the promotion. Oh yeah, I deserve this. And that's where you have issues. That's what happens with young SEALs, right?

• 1:29:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:32Jocko Willink?

  There's a young SEAL officer, there's thousands and thousands of people that apply to be a SEAL officer. Thousands and thousands, they take 30. So think about that. You're already like, dude, I'm kind of awesome.

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:47Jocko Willink?

  Then you go to SEAL training, which by the way, now people wash out of SEAL training. A bunch of people, you have a class of a hundred guys, 20 of them make it. You're one of them. Oh, I'm even more awesome. Now you, so now you get put into a SEAL platoon and you're the number two person in charge by the line diagram.

• 1:30:07Speaker 01

  You're in charge, boy.

• 1:30:10Jocko Willink?

  Of course, I'm a badass because better listen to me.

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:13Jocko Willink?

  So you can see where this ego starts to grow.

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, and that, yeah, that sounds common or whatever. And, and I, you know, obviously we see that in pretty much everywhere. We'll see at least some of that. But I was wondering, is that, am I just biased towards when I see it versus like the whole, because let's say in jujitsu, right? Like it's like a meme, like a joke even. It's like, yeah. The, the day someone gets a blue belt, they're teaching everyone how to do stuff, you know, like that kind of stuff.

• 1:30:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  Where it's like, yeah, that's common. Like it's so common. There's jokes about it, right? But is that the majority of blue belts though? Is that the majority of people who get blue belts or whatever? Yeah, it's some, right? It's like less. So I'm like wondering, wait, is that just my bias? Cause let's face it, like I know some guys who are the boss or the manager, not even that high up. And they're like super arrogant, like more arrogant than their little position and capability, you know? And I freaking know a lot of them too.

• 1:31:06Jocko Willink?

  So these people have a tendency to be arrogant and some people have a tendency to lack confidence. And so, yes, you're going to run into all kinds. I, I'm sure we could sit here and like, talk about, people in the chess club, what kind of confidence they have, people that are knitting, what like, where's their? People that play video games, what's their ego like? You see what I'm saying? So, and, and sure, are there people that play video games that have huge egos? Yes, there certainly are. There are people that have bad egos, but there's probably some generalization that you could make for people that knit.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:39Jocko Willink?

  And people that are in the SEAL teams and people that are firefighters and people that are, well, you just, of course.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:44Jocko Willink?

  But generally speaking, I think that that particular attribute of, of ego, it, it varies a lot. And you, you know, in every organization, you're going to have some people that are on both ends of the spectrum. And of course, like, oh, you go to a,

• 1:32:04Jocko Willink?

  you know, investment bankers, it's the same thing, right? All these kids applied for this job. They worked for two years as an analyst. Most of the people quit, then they got promoted. So they're gonna, by the time they get up there, they're like, been doing this for 19 years. I know how to freaking run this, ru-run this. And it's gonna be hard to talk to them in some cases. There's also the fact that, and I don't know, I don't know how well they do this in any industry, but.

• 1:32:32Jocko Willink?

  There is like, oh, this person's arrogant and we get rid of them.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:32:37Jocko Willink?

  Like, there's a high level of arrogance. If they don't learn how to subdue that thing, bro, we'll see you later. Like I said in that little section I just read, when we'd fire a seal, leader, usually, the vast majority of the time, it's just because they're totally out of control with their arrogance.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:54Jocko Willink?

  Totally out of control.

• 1:32:58Jocko Willink?

  Other question, the implementation, how do you usually react? This is such a good one. How do you usually react when given constructive criticism from your boss or teammates? Isn't that a good one?

• 1:33:10Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:33:13Jocko Willink?

  Do you truly listen and make adjustments based on the feedback? List some examples of when you've done this. It's a good, good question.

• 1:33:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:25Jocko Willink?

  I wrote about that in Leadership Strategy and Tactics. Like when someone that you don't respect gives you criticism, what do you do? And it's like,

• 1:33:38Jocko Willink?

  listen to them.

• 1:33:40Jocko Willink?

  Listen to them, yep, how they write. It's so much better if you do that. If you can go, huh, yeah, mm hmm, yep, okay. Yep, I'm gonna listen to them, how they write. Your life will get so much easier if you can do that.

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  Hey, if you can pull that off, man.

• 1:33:54Jocko Willink?

  It's not easy.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it take, I will say this, though. Where I've successfully done that.

• 1:34:00Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  And it was in the middle of the heat of the moment where it was like, we were arguing. And, and I, and I hit it like years ago, like probably five, six, seven years ago. And, and it had to do with a video I made of us and it, it doesn't matter the details, but.

• 1:34:16Jocko Willink?

  Wait, did I critique you?

• 1:34:17Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 1:34:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, damn. That would have been funny.

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  No, that, nah, yeah.

• 1:34:23Jocko Willink?

  I think you have a statute of limitations here. I think you're good. I think you can talk about this.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  No, no, no, I can't.

• 1:34:27Jocko Willink?

  Come on, bro.

• 1:34:28Speaker 01

  I can't. I'll tell you after who it was and when it was. Actually, I already told this to you. I told this to you before, yeah.

• 1:34:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:34:35Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, heat of the moment.

• 1:34:38Speaker 01

  Full on like, and bro, I sucked it up so hardcore, like hardcore, cause there was other shit that was like, kind of leaking into it, you know, anyway, and I sucked it up and I did it.

• 1:34:49Jocko Willink?

  It was like your videos bad and it reflects your life, son. Well, things were leaking into it.

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it more had to do with the person and, and the delivery and like, you know, it was, it was all of the above, to be honest with you. And yeah, my video shit, like, oh, yeah, yeah. It was everything for, it was like.

• 1:35:08Jocko Willink?

  But you pulled it off.

• 1:35:08Speaker 01

  It was the final boss of subjugating my ego in that very specific situation. Pulled it off. And then, but I will, so I will say this, after you pull it off, you're like, oh, wait a sec, cause you get to the other side, almost like a, like a big river or wall or something. You get on the other side, you're like, oh, wait a second, like, we're kind of better. Like, yeah. But in the front of the, the other side of that first side of the wall, you're like, bro, I'd rather die. I'd literally rather die than admit that you're right or, okay, you know, accept this thing. But when you pull that off.

• 1:35:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  Bro, yeah, it's, it's way brighter on the other side. But, and you prove it to yourself. That's what I was trying to say. Like you, it kind of gets proved to you that it's gonna be okay. In fact, that it's better, cause it doesn't feel like that in the moment at all.

• 1:35:49Jocko Willink?

  And it's actually the win too.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Like if you, if you get defensive, they kind of win. Honestly, they're, cause they're like, oh, you, he, he's got such a big ego, can't take any criticism. Like, that's what they're thinking.

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:36:03Jocko Willink?

  They don't think like, oh, he took my criticism. He's weak. No, they actually go, oh damn. He's, he's pretty confident. He just said, oh yeah, Roger, that's a good point.

• 1:36:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:13Jocko Willink?

  That's like such a big win. In your mind, you think it's a loss. If you're, if you're not careful, you think, dude, I'm not, I'm not backing down to this guy. My video is awesome. What are you talking about? I'd like to see you make a better video. Like all those things, those defensive things that feel better, they actually, land a lot worse. Then, oh yeah, it's good feedback. Appreciate it. Oh, such a win.

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I can't wait to get the full debrief on that one. All right.

• 1:36:42Jocko Willink?

  Last chapter, focused but detached. Leaders must be attentive to details. However, leaders cannot be so immersed in the details that they lose track of the larger strategic picture and are unable to support or provide direction to the entire team. Leaders must be able to stand back and observe everything going on inside their team and organization, which will allow them to provide good direction all around. This allows the leader to keep the larger overarching goals of the mission in perspective. This dichotomy must be balanced. To be engrossed in and overwhelmed by the details risks mission failure, but to be so far detached from the details that the leader can't support the team and loses control is to fail the team and fail the mission.

• 1:37:30Jocko Willink?

  The implementation, here's a question. Can you stand back and observe everything happening within your team and organization? How can you improve your ability to detach? Do you ever lose track of the bigger strategic plan? How do you prevent this?

• 1:37:48Jocko Willink?

  So these things both happen, right? We can't stand back, we lose, or we get so involved that we lose the strategic goals that we're moving towards. Here's the immediate action drills.

• 1:38:02Jocko Willink?

  During your next team meeting, focus on what is happening with your team by talking less and keeping a detached perspective. I wouldn't even make that a one-time immediate action drill. I would make that a standard operating procedure to shut your mouth.

• 1:38:18Jocko Willink?

  And use the information to formulate a plan to better support your team.

• 1:38:23Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing. We're supporting the team. Exactly. And then I'll close it out with this little section here.

• 1:38:31Jocko Willink?

  Study.

• 1:38:33Jocko Willink?

  And this is an excerpt from Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual by me. Leaders are never good enough. A leader must be constantly improving and learning since in any leadership job, new and unexpected challenges arise all the time. And as one continues to lead, the number of people being led increases, projects multiply in number and scope, and the overall strategic impact of the missions being led also expands. Leadership in any chosen profession is just that, a profession. Being a leader is your life. Do everything humanly possible to know and understand everything there is about your profession and being a leader in that profession.

• 1:39:17Jocko Willink?

  Strive every day to learn and become a better leader. Think about the fundamental principles of leadership and overlay them onto everything you see to expand your thinking. Cover, move, simple, prioritize, execute decentralized command, extreme ownership, dichotomy of leadership. If you look for these principles, you will see them. If you see them, you will understand them better. The better you understand them, the better you can implement them. The better you can implement them, the more you can look for them, and this cycle continues forever. Do I remember reading like war books, like With the Old Breed when I was young? And it was just like a war book. But then when I got older, it was like a leadership book.

• 1:40:01Jocko Willink?

  About Face is obviously the, the, the key example of that. Like I read About Face, the first time I ever read About, About Face as a kid, and by kid, I probably mean 23 or 21 or 18 or something like that. It was just a war book. It's about war.

• 1:40:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:18Jocko Willink?

  By the time I was 30, I was like, oh, this book seems to be like more about leadership. And now it's just a leadership book.

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:27Jocko Willink?

  But overlaying your thoughts and your, your principles, overlaying the principles onto these books or onto a TV show, oh, how's that husband and wife interacting in this sitcom? Is it realistic? What kind of attitude was their ego like the you can actually do that? Sitcom is that still a thing?

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  Situational comedy?

• 1:40:47Jocko Willink?

  Is that a boomer thing?

• 1:40:49Speaker 01

  No, no, that's real, man. Still going on.

• 1:40:53Jocko Willink?

  None of this happens without humility. If a leader thinks they've achieved the pinnacle of leadership expertise, they are already going in the wrong direction, stagnant in their skill set and worst of all unconsciously giving off the stink of arrogance. Don't let this happen. Stay humble. And always learn. So. There you go. Always learn. And we should always be learning and getting better and improving and if you are getting better as a leader, your team will be getting better. Your mission will get accomplished. And in the end, you're going to be successful, which is good. Very good. Excellent. You might even say.

• 1:41:39Jocko Willink?

  Find the balance. Yeah, these workbooks so helpful to so many different organizations, companies and teams across the country, across the world. So if you want to, if you want to check those out again, go to Amazon and just be careful. Get the official companion workbook. Don't get the the suspect ripoff.

• 1:41:58Speaker 01

  Knock off. Cheap.

• 1:42:00Jocko Willink?

  I should have done this earlier. So people knew that more clearly, but I didn't.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, that's real. There's a

• 1:42:09Speaker 01

  clothing as well. That's knock off. Here's the shitty part two about it where like there's certain details that kind of help make it what it is, the real deal. And then the people who knock these off a lot of the time, they don't know those details. They don't recognize them because they don't, it's not their jam. They just see the surface and

• 1:42:26Jocko Willink?

  They're not in the game.

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  They're not in the game exactly right.

• 1:42:28Jocko Willink?

  There's fake clothes on Amazon. There's fake Jocko. Podcast clothing on Amazon.

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:35Jocko Willink?

  Do we have any?

• 1:42:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:42:36Jocko Willink?

  We have no. So if you buy anything from Amazon, I always feel bummed out like someone will come up to me like, bro. And they're, they'll be like, dude, I love, they'll be like, I love this shirt. And I'll be like, cool. I don't have the heart usually to say like, bro, you paid that to some thief.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Some, yeah.

• 1:42:51Jocko Willink?

  That put discipline equals freedom on a T-shirt. And he made whatever nine bucks off of your $28 T-shirt. And I feel bad about it because the T-shirts from wherever.

• 1:43:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and it doesn't even have like the anything, the layers, nothing.

• 1:43:07Jocko Willink?

  Let's face it, the layers are not there, bro.

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  But that's part of like what, you know, like especially like with this, this kind of book, like there's, there's stuff in here.

• 1:43:15Jocko Willink?

  All kinds of stuff in there. Yeah.

• 1:43:16Speaker 01

  That, yeah, if you're not in the game, you just see it and maybe even like copy it or, I mean, I don't know if they buy it, copy it and whatever.

• 1:43:22Jocko Willink?

  Jamie bought the like fake workbooks so we could see what's up.

• 1:43:28Jocko Willink?

  I would tell you, like, if I was like, hey, man, this, this other person that came from this industry, they applied the dichotomy of leadership to their industry and they did a really good job. I'll tell you that.

• 1:43:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:38Jocko Willink?

  But, but it's not true. They're junk. They're little junk. They're, they're not like someone said, oh, man, I got a lot of, out of this. And from my perspective, I think I could help. No one said that. Someone said like, dude, I think this is a popular selling book. We can make a workbook and make some money.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:53Jocko Willink?

  Get my fourth grade kid over here to write, to write a synopsis of the chapter.

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:58Jocko Willink?

  And the kid's like, eh.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:01Jocko Willink?

  So again, nothing against fourth grade kids, but is your son in fourth grade? What grade is he in?

• 1:44:07Speaker 01

  No, uh, first grade. So he'll be.

• 1:44:10Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang.

• 1:44:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's in.

• 1:44:11Jocko Willink?

  He's in first grade?

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:13Jocko Willink?

  Damn, I thought he was older than that.

• 1:44:15Speaker 01

  Well, my daughter's in fifth grade.

• 1:44:17Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Yeah. There you go. Check.

• 1:44:20Speaker 01

  Boom. Nonetheless, yeah, watch out for the knockoffs. You kind of know, the more you're in the, where especially the clothing thing. And I was going to say this on the clothing part, but, but they'll, okay. So he, I do have the heart to tell them just so they don't think they're going around supporting.

• 1:44:36Jocko Willink?

  I'm like, hell yeah, I'm gonna get that. I'm like 50 50 where I'm like, hey, bro, that's like, Echo did not design that shirt. Cause I've had people tell me like, oh, you know, I never thought Echo would design a shirt like this. And I'm like, Echo didn't design that shirt.

• 1:44:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:49Jocko Willink?

  Echo shirts are cool.

• 1:44:53Speaker 01

  There's a certain like random effortlessness that goes into those knockoffs.

• 1:44:57Jocko Willink?

  Honestly, you know what it is? It's like chat G P T.

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:00Jocko Willink?

  Designed them.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:01Jocko Willink?

  Like no creative or no actual, not even creative, no actual understanding.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, the.

• 1:45:08Jocko Willink?

  Of the game.

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:45:10Jocko Willink?

  None.

• 1:45:10Speaker 01

  Absolutely correct. Yeah. And there's like certain placements of certain things are there for a reason to to really. And it said those certain like little nuances and whatever that that says something like it's literally there for a reason. There's messaging behind it or whatever. And then of course it's not there because it's not on the surface, you know? Like, for example, the one that says good, it'll say good inspirational jital, they'll use your name. This is I'm talking about the knockoffs that are offered on Amazon. One of them says good Jocko Willink Navy SEAL inspired T shirt. It says good period, right?

• 1:45:42Jocko Willink?

  Let's face it, everything is wrong about that.

• 1:45:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right. And so the good is the the original good one, the one with your head on it is backwards. And it's backwards for a reason.

• 1:45:57Jocko Willink?

  So you can see it in the mirror.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  Exactly right, because that message is for you. But when they knocked off that one, it was forward. And I'm like, oh, there, that's.

• 1:46:05Jocko Willink?

  They knocked off that one like they put, they put my head on it.

• 1:46:08Speaker 01

  Your head.

• 1:46:09Jocko Willink?

  Yep. They said good, they spelled it forward.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:46:12Jocko Willink?

  Wrong word.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  Freaking one of these T spring, T spring. That's another, that's a website that people just knock off, knock off, knock off. T spring, Amazon or whatever. Anyway, this is how you know for the the Jocko store stuff, if it's on Amazon, it's knockoff. Hundred percent. We don't offer anything on.

• 1:46:26Jocko Willink?

  Now Jocko Fuel is on Amazon, just F Y I.

• 1:46:29Speaker 01

  Yep, it's different.

• 1:46:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So if you go to Jocko, if you want Jocko Fuel and you see it on Amazon, that's for real. So you can get it there. You can get it at Jacofuel.com. You can get these beverages right here. You can get protein, which I see you over there. Were you going catabolic? What did you? Did you lift today?

• 1:46:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:46:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 1:46:50Jocko Willink?

  Well, I did. And I already had milk prior to coming here.

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  Easy money.

• 1:46:55Jocko Willink?

  So what a good way to get thirty grams of.

• 1:46:59Jocko Willink?

  Just in a tasty way. Yep. And now you just drank a banana. Now you're going chocolate. Yes, sir. Just mixing it up over here. Yes, sir. Okay, cool. Jocko Fuel dot com. We got everything that you need for supplementation for fuel for your body. That's what you got. Joint Warfare, Super Krill, Vitamin D3, Cold War.

• 1:47:22Jocko Willink?

  We just got it going on. Time War. We got all kinds of wars. Oh, yeah. A bunch of wars going on. Time War, Cold War. Anyways, Wawa Vitamin Shop, GNC, Military Commissaries, AFE's, Hanford, Dash Stores in Maryland, Wake Fern, ShopRite, HEB down in Tejas. I think I'm gonna be visiting, uh, Tejas soon. I'll see y'all at HEB.

• 1:47:42Jocko Willink?

  Um, I might even see you down there at 7-Eleven. With Jocko Fuel. Okay. So hey, if you're in Texas, keep your eyes peeled. You may be getting what you need. Uh, small gyms everywhere. Oh, don't forget about Harris Teeter. Don't forget about Meyer. Don't forget about Lifetime Fitness. Don't forget about Shields. And then small gyms. We just, we got CrossFit Open going on right now. And we got a bunch of CrossFit gyms that are, are getting Jocko Fuel in there because they want the good, clean goods.

• 1:48:12Jocko Willink?

  And also Jiu-Jitsu schools. We got all kinds of Jiu- you know, Jackson? Jackson. Action Jackson. Yeah, Action Jackson. He's out there with Jared. Yeah. They're out there just on the front lines going into Jiu-Jitsu academies. Just, hey, you want Jocko Fuel? You know what people say? Hell yeah, we do. Yeah. So let's get this set up. Hmm. So the boys are out there getting after it, um, on the front lines. And if you, if those guys don't visit you, it's all good. You can email them. [email protected]. Get the, get the goods in your store, the good stuff. Also, OriginUSA.com is where you can get blue jeans,

• 1:48:48Jocko Willink?

  hoodies, t-shirts, Jiu-Jitsu gi's, rash guard, boots.

• 1:48:56Jocko Willink?

  Wallets, belts, you can pretty much get what you need to wear on your body. Training gear and hunt gear. That is everything you need, by the way. Once you got training gear, hunting gear, jeans, gi, rash guard, we're good. You don't need anything else.

• 1:49:13Jocko Willink?

  Go to originusa.com and get stuff that's made in America. Made in America, not just made in America. Let me go a little further. The materials are from America.

• 1:49:26Jocko Willink?

  This is the way clothing is supposed to be, not supposed to be made in some sweatshop in China where they're taking the leftover chemicals and dumping them into the ocean and ruining their earth. No, we don't support that. This is America. OriginUSA.com. Get yourself some goods.

• 1:49:45Speaker 01

  That's true. Also, if you want the authentic, discipline equals freedom.

• 1:49:51Jocko Willink?

  With layers.

• 1:49:51Speaker 01

  With layers, all the layers, all the layers.

• 1:49:56Jocko Willink?

  You need to go back in time and figure out like the first time layers got said on this podcast. I think my daughter asked me if we started layers.

• 1:50:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 1:50:06Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if we did or not.

• 1:50:07Speaker 01

  The word, the term layers or whatever. Okay.

• 1:50:09Jocko Willink?

  I know that there's the term layers and I know that it does mean like layers.

• 1:50:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does.

• 1:50:15Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. It seemed like.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, the first, it had to be, yeah, the first from the first Dunko store, freaking whatever, when it first came about. You know where I got, where I got the, the term layers was from my brother. Cause he was like, and kind of from her brother and a T. So he was like, oh yeah, he had this thing called vapor tickets back in the day. It was like, it was an app where you could buy tickets. But there was a social media layer to it, right? This is what he would say. And uh, so he'd be like, yeah, there's a layer. And then Tim, Tim Ford, formerly known as Tim Comas. He would be like, oh, layers.

• 1:50:50Jocko Willink?

  Timbo Mania.

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  Timbo Mania, hell yeah. So he would tease them because that sounds stupid. There's a social media layer to this vapor tickets and layers. He always tease them. He just he hit us with a group text layers like just teed, you know, like full on. And it was really funny. So that's where I got it from. So I'll be like layers, kind of just teasing Jade more, you know, really. But then I was like, it sounds correct, I guess, in a way. And that's what it is. So boom, there you go. Layers all day.

• 1:51:17Jocko Willink?

  Well, if you want the correct layers.

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  You want the correct layers. You want discipline equals freedom. You don't represent all this stuff. You go to jocko store.com. That's where you get this stuff. And there's a lot of other stuff on there.

• 1:51:27Jocko Willink?

  But the high content layers, really, once you get into the shirt locker, there's the layers are deep.

• 1:51:33Speaker 01

  That's the layers.

• 1:51:35Jocko Willink?

  Layers like a onion.

• 1:51:37Speaker 01

  Like when you call it when you're in a you're mining for gold and you hit the, you know, where it's like a pocket of a bunch of gold.

• 1:51:46Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I know.

• 1:51:47Speaker 01

  I forget what it's called, like a vein or I don't know.

• 1:51:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think it's a vein.

• 1:51:50Speaker 01

  Posit.

• 1:51:50Jocko Willink?

  It's a vein.

• 1:51:51Speaker 01

  Okay, boom. So the short locker, if you don't know what the short locker is, the subscriptions and arrow new design every month, whatever. That is the vein of layers, right?

• 1:52:01Jocko Willink?

  Just happen.

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  And we're having fun with it. But yeah, it's a good program. I think a lot of people seem to be liking it so far. But yeah, so check that out. It's all on jocko store.com. If you like something, get something. It's a real one. The authentic one. Again, reminder, nothing is on Amazon from Jocko Store, the Jocko Store, discipline equals freedom stuff. None of it is on Amazon. Yep. So if it's on, if you got it from Amazon or you see it on Amazon.

• 1:52:24Jocko Willink?

  Spiritually, do we appreciate the support? I mean, spiritually, yes, kind of.

• 1:52:29Speaker 01

  That's not support.

• 1:52:30Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's right.

• 1:52:31Speaker 01

  Oh, wait, when people buy it, you mean? Oh, yeah.

• 1:52:33Jocko Willink?

  No, from Amazon.

• 1:52:34Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no.

• 1:52:35Jocko Willink?

  Like, we appreciate the effort.

• 1:52:36Speaker 01

  No, we don't, because that's come. Here's the thing, if you know.

• 1:52:40Jocko Willink?

  Good initiative, bad judgment.

• 1:52:41Speaker 01

  If you know the back end of that, that's like, basically, they scoured and it's all on purpose, too. So if you go, if I go, okay, if I go on Amazon, I see Jocko, uh, Willink Navy SEAL inspirational quote shirt. It says, get after it.

• 1:52:54Jocko Willink?

  Nothing you just said is anything that would ever come out of my mouth.

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  Ever. Exactly right. This point, yeah, and that's part of the point. And then you look at the shirts or whatever. You're like, oh, wait, okay, let me see, like, what, what, what did this take? And maybe it's from a legitimate outfit. So you all you gotta do is click like two thing, one thing. You know how like on Amazon, it says like kind of the supplier, right? Or this, what is it, a store or whatever it's called? You can click on it and be see other stuff that they sell. It'll say the name of the store is Jocko Willink Inspirational Quote Shirts. Like they make it just for that, you know, just to sort of like get away. They're not an official outfit. They went and they look you, they take whoever else, Joe Rogan, or whoever these guys who make cool stuff. And they'll be like, oh, let's just knock it off like on purpose.

• 1:53:41Speaker 01

  Knock it off and cash in on their like whatever intellectual pride, whatever it is, you know, whatever they're cashing in on, they do it on purpose. So no, we don't appreciate that.

• 1:53:51Jocko Willink?

  We don't like that. Um, but we do appreciate the support from the people. JacoStore.com. So there you go. Also, speaking of if you, if you, if you like something, get something. Go to ColoradoCraftBeef.com or PrimalBeef.com. Cause there's gonna be something you like there. It's called steak. And if you like some steak, get some steak and get it from a good source. A clean source. The best source. ColoradoCraftBeef.com or PrimalBeef.com. Check those out. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also subscribe to Jocko Underground. Also YouTube channels, also Psychological Warfare, also Flipside Canvas.

• 1:54:34Jocko Willink?

  Also I've written a bunch of books, these workbooks, we already talked about them. The Dichotomy of Leadership and Extreme Ownership Official Companion Workbook by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Check those out. And then a bunch of other books that I've written. Especially some kids books. We kind of went ham writing kids books. People are always, some people are surprised. Bro, how'd you start writing kids? I got four freaking kids. What's happening? You know what I mean? I'm gonna write some damn books about it. That's what we're doing. Got a novel I wrote called Final Spin. You might want to check that out. You might not have heard of that one. Then you read it and you're like, damn, why am I crying and why am I feeling like this? Cause that's what's happening there.

• 1:55:18Jocko Willink?

  Also Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. All the problems that you have are leadership problems. So go to EchelonFront.com. And we will help you solve the problems that you have through leadership. And we also have an online training platform. Go to ExtremeOwnership.com for that.

• 1:55:39Jocko Willink?

  Learn how to lead. And then if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. And if you want to donate, or you want to get involved, go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org so she can keep helping our veterans get better. Same with Heroes and Horses.org. Help Micah Fink take our veterans up into the hinterland of a mountain so they can find their soul. And Jimmy May's organization, Beyond the Brotherhood. Let's help guys transition into the civilian sector. And if you want to connect with us, go to Jaco.com. You can check out all the stuff that I'm talking about.

• 1:56:24Jocko Willink?

  You can also find us on social media. I'm at Jocko Willink, Echo's at Echo Charles. Just be careful because the algorithm's about to stab you in the neck and watch you bleed out, which ain't cool. Speaking of balance, thanks to all our uniformed personnel out there in the world, from the military, who are risking their lives to keep balance in this crazy world. Thank you for your service and sacrifice. And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. You risk your lives to keep us safe here at home, and we are thankful for that. And everyone else out there, extremes are tempting.

• 1:57:09Jocko Willink?

  They're easier to see, they're easier to understand, they're easier to act on. It's easier to throw something away than to sort through it. It's easier to tear something completely down than to rebuild it. It's easier to hate everything about someone than to try and find their redeeming qualities. It's easier to completely renounce an idea than to try and understand that idea. But those extremes, fall short. So don't fall short. Do the extra work, open your mind, and balance the dichotomies of leadership and life.

• 1:57:52Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.