The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke: Subordinate's Disrespectful Resistance To Your Plan

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko debrief podcast, episode 30 with Dave Berke and me, Jocko Willink. We have a leadership consulting company. It's called Echelon Front and at Echelon Front, we debrief with each other. When we work with clients, when we run into a problem or we find a solution, we debrief so that we can all learn and so everyone else on the team can learn. And we thought about maybe sharing that with everyone. So we've been doing these debrief podcasts and just FYI, the names, the industries and the situations that we're talking about, we modify them so that we protect our clients. But leadership issues are the same. So Dave, let's do a little debrief. What do we got going on?

• 0:46Dave Berke?

  Your subordinate's resistance to your plan isn't, is not disrespectful. Actually, it may be the exact opposite of that.

• 0:54Jocko Willink?

  Wait a second. You're saying if I tell my subordinate a plan and they, they, they show me resistance to the plan that I came up with, that's not just disrespect that they shouldn't get smashed for their, for their behavior?

• 1:09Dave Berke?

  Yeah, compliance is not our goal here.

• 1:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:13Dave Berke?

  But yeah, that's the scenario. So this is literally the situation that you just described. So we've got a manager, charge of a team. He said, they do a morning meeting, which is pretty standard. And in that meeting, it's a chance to run through all the different statuses of each project in work and put out word, this is what's going on. This was a situation, this is what we're doing. And this guy comes to me and says, hey, I want to talk about this meeting. This meeting has become, over time, it's become, uh, things are getting disruptive in the meeting. And so the way he's describing it is he gets frustrated because he puts out word and a few of his team members appear to be questioning his plan, meaning they're

• 1:49Jocko Willink?

  questioning his plan.

• 1:51Dave Berke?

  And his view on that is, hey, this is disrespectful, especially when it's in public. And so I'm talking like, hey, what does it look like? What, what does that sound like?

• 1:59Dave Berke?

  And they're showing disrespect because they're suggesting different ways to do the project or different ways to get things done on that day. And lately it's gotten pretty bad. It's actually gotten into, they're bordering into like yelling matches, people talking over each other. Which, there's obviously way more productive ways to have that, have those conversations.

• 2:18Jocko Willink?

  Just FYI to everyone, if you're having a meeting and people are yelling at each other, we're not being, we're not doing a good job.

• 2:24Dave Berke?

  No. But it's got, it's evolved into that. So it didn't just start with just a full, you know, thrown a, a, a, argument. And it's not too much different. We did a podcast a while ago about a foreman who's like, I just want my people to listen. That concept of as I'm, as I'm the leader, I just want my people to listen. And of course, when we disagree, I actually want it to be respectful. I don't want to get in a shouting match. I don't want to be talking over everybody. I do want it to be productive. But the disruption part of it is really a symptom of something else, or a way to look at it. So we don't get to a place, if you're running a team and you're getting some pushback, the first time you're getting pushback is very unlikely. They're yelling at you, or you're getting into a big argument, or people are taking sides. It might be the first time you say

• 3:05Dave Berke?

  something, and you get that pushback. How you react to that initial resistance, is going to decide what ends up happening with the team over time.

• 3:13Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta make an example out of someone.

• 3:16Dave Berke?

  You could do that. And really, the biggest thing here is if you think about it in a leadership role.

• 3:22Jocko Willink?

  Just FYI, I was kidding. If you're listening and you're like, oh, cool. Jock said make an example out of someone that puts up any resistance. Don't do that.

• 3:27Dave Berke?

  Don't do that.

• 3:28Jocko Willink?

  Don't do that.

• 3:29Dave Berke?

  In fact, you, in that position, that leadership position, you have, you get to decide in your own mind, what, what's really happening there. You, you have all the control over how you want to react to this person's resistance. Meaning if I say something and you're like, hey, I disagree with you, I get to decide how I react to that. I don't have to just not appreciate your resistance and, and, and start smashing at you. I can listen. And so we talked about some reasons. All right. Why would somebody push back? Why, why would someone disagree with what you're saying we should do? What are some reasons why they would do that? And the most obvious one, that may be the most overlooked one is that they care.

• 4:07Dave Berke?

  They they care because if if you're telling me to do something and I just, I don't care about this job. I don't care about you. I don't care about the project. How much resistance am I going to give you if you tell me to do something and I don't care. I'm not going to care at all. I'm just like, whatever. I might not even acknowledge it. I'll just stare at you and when the meeting's over, I'll just go out and do whatever I want. So just the fact that I'm going to get a little pushback is like, oh, this person cares. He has an he has he has an idea. There's a thought in this guy's mind. He's been thinking about it. He's he knows what's coming to this meeting. He knows what's going on with the project. He's been on site. He's got thoughts in his mind that he wants to get out. They might know something that you don't know, especially if you're the manager and and what you're really doing is talking about the status of a project in six different

• 4:51Dave Berke?

  locations and you're not actually on site. And so as I give you guidance on how I want this done, you may actually know something about that project that I don't know.

• 5:01Dave Berke?

  Another one is that their plan actually might be better than yours. You might actually have a better plan than me because you care. You've been thinking about it. You've got these details. And then the one that I think is really central to this is when somebody is talking back, resisting, disagreeing, or or really just has anything to say. Sometimes what they want more than anything is they just want you to listen to them. They want to just be heard. They got thoughts. They got ideas. And all of those are ways to look at this rather than it's disrespectful. It's, oh, this guy's got something on his mind. This guy wants to be heard. This guy has some thoughts. And just seeing it is a huge difference maker in how these conversations go.

• 5:44Jocko Willink?

  There's also some less positive reasons why people chime chime in in a meeting, right? Number number one is they have an ego. So you're in a meeting, you're putting out the word and Fred in the back over there, he's been doing this for longer than you. He should have been promoted instead of you. He has more experience than you. He went to the school that you didn't go to. So he's got a bunch of reasons, right? And so he's going to chime in.

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  Cause he wants everyone to know that he has a different view than you and there's like you said, there's a decent chance that his view is better than yours, maybe worse than yours, it doesn't really even matter. Yeah. Again, so now if it's his ego that's, that's driving this behavior, does your react, should your reaction change? You know, if, if I've got you, Dave, and I'm putting out the plan, hey, for project alpha, we want to take care of these things in this sequence and you go, no, we shouldn't do that. And I can tell it's just your ego. So what should I do? Should I, since I know it's your ego, should I try and smash your ego? Like it's, it's, it's the same solution. It's the same solution. If someone wants to talk, listen. If someone wants to argue, listen.

• 7:03Jocko Willink?

  If someone wants to present a counter idea, listen. If you can listen to what they're saying, and by the way, if you can go one step further than listen and actually proactively say to yourself, you know what? Dave is speaking, I want to take his input and make it the central part of this plan. That's my goal. That's my goal. Look, are there people that just chime in all the time and they say dumb stuff? Yep, there's, there, there are. There are. Also, if you're a person that's in a meeting, try and keep your mouth shut. Like you don't need to be heard. You really, there's, there's a good chance you don't need to say anything in a meeting. My default in a meeting is to try not to open my mouth. That's what I'm going to try and do. Yeah. So just remember that when someone does chime in, look, they've got an ego, they

• 7:48Jocko Willink?

  want to be heard. And the response to that is the same thing as the response to someone that you think actually genuinely cares. It doesn't really matter whether they really truly deeply care or that it's just their ego, I still need to handle it the same way, which is say, hey, Dave, go ahead, hold on, I see you kind of got a look on your face like this isn't going to work too well. How do you think we should do this? Does that make me look weak? Nope, doesn't make me look weak at all. It actually makes me look strong because I'm not intimidated by the fact that someone on my team might have a little better idea of how to do this since they're actually on the ground doing the job. And I've been sitting in the office for the past three weeks in air conditioning, looking at future budgets for 2029.

• 8:30Jocko Willink?

  It's no big deal that I don't fully comprehend what they're doing on the front lines. So that's okay. So for me, actually, not only is someone resisting my plan, it's not a disrespect to me, it's actually respect. It actually means we have a good relationships. It actually means that they recognize that I'm a good leader and that I listen to what they have to say. There's a million ways that I view resistance to my plan as a positive thing. By the way, I want someone to try and punch holes in my plan because I don't want the competitor to do that. I don't want the enemy to do that. I don't want the weather to do that. I don't want the market to do that. The market will punch holes in your plan. The market will find those holes. The enemy will find the holes in your plan.

• 9:15Jocko Willink?

  Your competitor will find your holes in your plan. So I don't want the market, the competition, the enemy. I don't want them to find the holes in my plan. I want the people in the meeting with me that are on my team to tell me where there's holes in my plan or to tell me a better way to get something done.

• 9:32Jocko Willink?

  So here's another point to this. When you're presenting things, instead of presenting them with your ego as if they are the infallible plan, don't present things like that. Present them as what they truly are, which they are your ideas and your guesses about the best way to get something done.

• 9:52Jocko Willink?

  And that means when, look, if I roll into a meeting and I say, alright, I came up with a plan. I did the research. Here's how this, here's a little word. Here's how this needs to be executed. Right there, I already boxed myself in a little bit. Because you know what? It doesn't need to be executed that way. There's 87 different ways that this could be executed. Some more efficient than others depending on the variables that come into play. Because you and I can, you and I can try and figure out the best way to approach a client, but we don't even know what the client's budget is. So if you're saying we should set up a brief for them or set up a program for them that's going to cost them $4 million.

• 10:34Jocko Willink?

  And I say, no way, we should do a program that's only going to cost $500,000. So we can definitely get them in. We don't even know what their budget is. So we can have an argument about something in the future that we know nothing about. So why do that? Why would I go and say, we need to do a $500,000 program so that they, so that they get involved with us? Why would I say that? Instead of saying, hey, here's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking it would be good for us to do at least a few engagements with this client. And I'm thinking a lower price point would be good. Maybe something like around, you know, half a million, just to get, get them involved. And then Dave says, well, you know, Jocko was thinking about that. But we pulled some research. These guys, their stock's gone up 7%. They're doing really well.

• 11:19Jocko Willink?

  They're, they're very, very profitable and they want to expand even more. So they got cash. Why don't we present them with a bigger program? That is going to be more expensive for them, but if they're going to get more out of it. So then all of a sudden, what are we doing? We're actually having a conversation like two human beings that are trying to figure out the best solution to the problem.

• 11:38Jocko Willink?

  So put, set yourself up correctly. By not mandating things, by not imposing things, and by not using words that imply a mandate. Cause those are going to hurt you. Don't speak that way. Learn not to speak that way. Get rid of those habits. Oh, by the way, also, if you, if Dave, if you work for me, and you're used to me saying, hey, I think we should do this. And you, and you push back and, and we come up with a better solution. I say, hey, this is what I'm thinking and you listen to me. And then all of a sudden, you know, in nine months down the road, we've got a critical emergency situation. And I look at you and say, Dave, we need to do this right now. What are your thoughts?

• 12:19Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I'm probably going to get on board because I can't remember the last time you said that to me.

• 12:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you're developing, you, you want to be the, uh, the, the kid that cried wolf, right? The sheep herder that cried wolf.

• 12:30Dave Berke?

  And every time, this is what we need to do. This is what we need to do. This is what we need to do.

• 12:33Jocko Willink?

  I'd probably say we need to do something in any of my companies, like maybe two, three times a year, combined, combined.

• 12:42Jocko Willink?

  Most of the times, just, hey, I've got an idea. I've got ideas. You've got ideas? You're close to a problem. Hey, sometimes, you know, we talk about you having the solution, Dave. So you might have the solution, and oftentimes, we give the person in the field the nod for having the solution. Why? Because they're closer to the problem. Guess what? What happens sometimes? Sometimes you're so close to the problem that you can't.

• 13:03Dave Berke?

  Yeah, you don't see the big picture.

• 13:04Jocko Willink?

  You don't see the big picture. So that's why neither one of us should be posing our thoughts as if they are the 100% solution. The 100% solution doesn't exist. So why are we trying to speak that way? We're trying not to speak that way. So people are resisting you. Don't burn any leadership capital. Fighting them. Instead, earn leadership capital by listening to what they have to say and trying to incorporate their ideas into your world. That's what I'm thinking.

• 13:36Dave Berke?

  Which is, which is really the point of a meeting, right? Like, if I need to sit down with my team, get caught up in what's going on, talk about what things need to get done, and what timelines, or whatever is the next steps in the project. The objective that I have shouldn't be to tell you what I need you to get done. It's, hey, what's going on, what's happening? And in fact, like, the ultimate component of having an interaction with another person, the goal would be to listen as much as possible to figure out what you don't know. So you can actually, in your role, give them what they need or help them. And all of that is the mindset. And it really, I think you brought it back to the very beginning, which is exactly right, is it really boils down to, when you talk about your ego, is when you push back, how do I react to that?

• 14:20Dave Berke?

  I have two choices. I can go, you're my subordinate. Don't be disrespectful. You're here to listen to me. I don't like what you have to say. Or I can go, oh, Jocko might know something I don't know. He's got something on his mind. And if I take it in the best possible way and do what you said, which seems so easy, and yet we know it's so hard to go, oh, hang on. I can tell. Your body language is showing me. Are you going to come? What am I missing? And you go, well, actually, Dave, you're missing A, B, and C. And I go, oh, thanks. That's awesome. What are the chances that over time, your team meetings are going to devolve into shouting matches and arguing matches? It's not going to happen. And so when I look at this, like, it's become disrespectful. It's this environment that's been created is, well, let's think about why that is.

• 15:03Dave Berke?

  And if your only conclusion is, well, they're talking over me, they're disrespectful, they don't listen to what I have to say. It's not too hard to come back to the conclusion of how do we get to that point? And the way you get to that point is I don't listen to you. I don't respect what you have to say. I don't want to hear what's on your mind. And if I happen to be dealing with someone else who has an ego, which is basically guaranteed, what's going to end up happening is we will go to war in some variety. Now, sometimes that ends up being you just fully shut down. Oh, cool. You don't want to hear what I say? Great. Now I've got someone on my team that has no interest in offering his ideas, telling me what's going on. In any way you play that out, I'm losing. Or I could say, hey, you know what? The whole point of this is to figure out what's going on. What do you need? How I can help you? That means I'm going to spend most of my time listening.

• 15:48Dave Berke?

  And if I am going to spend most of my time listening, how much arguing is there going to be? Not that much.

• 15:54Jocko Willink?

  So for the past couple of years, we've been talking about building relationships. We've been talking about how you build a relationship, trust, listen, respect, influence and care. And if you want someone to respect you, you need to give them respect. If you want someone to trust them, you need to give them trust. If you want someone to listen to them, to you, you need to listen to them. So if you want to build a relationship, you've got to give those things. So in the other direction, this is exactly what is occurring. You take that in the other direction and you get an escalation.

• 16:27Jocko Willink?

  There's a negative escalation or an escalation of negativity. Meaning if you treat me with a little bit of disrespect, what do I do? I get a little bit more disrespectful of you. If you won't listen to me, what does that mean? I'm not going to listen to you even more. If you clearly don't trust me, I'm not going to trust you. And what we end up with is screaming matches. That's how this gets there. And all one person has to do is put their ego in check. And when Dave says, you know, why are you even in charge? He, so he disrespects me in front of, in front of everybody. And if my response is, well, obviously because they picked someone that could do the job not like you.

• 17:12Jocko Willink?

  So I just escalated his disrespect with my own. But if Dave says to me disrespectfully, why do you even have that position? And I say, you know, sometimes I ask myself the same question. Cause talking to people like you and the team, I know I'm, I definitely have a lot to learn. And that's why we're here. And that's why I'm here. And that's why I'm listening to what you have to say. What does that do? What does that do? There's very few people. Look, if you have somebody that's a sort of a sociopathic bully, they're going to go harder. And do you have to put them in check? Yeah, that's very rare. I, I would probably say I worked with, do this off the top of my head. I haven't done any deep thought about it.

• 17:54Jocko Willink?

  I bet I worked with between five and, no, between four and seven legitimate like bullies. Where if somebody disrespected them, they were going to lose their minds and, and annihilate that person verbally. Until it's over, right? Most of the people, most people, if they're disrespected or if they get disrespected and they, and they de-escalate. Most people will recognize that they're the bully if they escalate more and they're going to be in a bad spot.

• 18:35Jocko Willink?

  So de-escalation is so critical and you can only de-escalate if you can put your ego in check. Yep. And by the way, when you put your ego in check, you don't look, you don't look weaker, you look stronger. When we're in a meeting, Dave and I are in a meeting and I'm the boss and Dave says, you shouldn't even have this job. And I say, you know what? Sometimes I completely agree, Dave. I wonder why they promoted me. When I say, what does the room think? Does the room think, ooh, he got Jocko? No, the room thinks, man, Dave's insecure. Man, Dave, Dave's jealous. Dave really thinks he belongs there. His ego's big. Yep. Whereas if I go, what are you talking about? And if I go back at you, everybody goes, oh, it looks like Jocko's, you know, he's, he's trying to protect his. It struck a nerve. Oh, yeah. He didn't like that.

• 19:19Jocko Willink?

  And then they actually think he, he knows he doesn't belong here. And that, so this is all things, there's, they're very easy to sit here and talk about.

• 19:31Jocko Willink?

  But boy, does it sting when someone comes at you. And boy, is it hard to take that ego and put it in check and be like, hmm, okay. Let me listen to what they have to say. And then we'll go forward. Very, very, very seldom do you have to check a person. And they're normally like psychos. You know, they've lost their minds.

• 19:49Dave Berke?

  Totally. And most people, they'll see that.

• 19:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. You, you, when you, when you put a, if you can put your ego in check, subordinate your ego and listen to what someone has to say while someone else is talking and running your mouth. People will be listening to that going, oh yeah, let's see what's going on here. This person's lost their mind.

• 20:03Dave Berke?

  Yeah. I mean, it's as simple as that, man. You just described it extremely well. When we talk about this with the clients all the time, it is, it is what we call the reciprocal nature of a relationship. If I treat you with respect, I'm going to get that in return. If I listen to you, I'm going to get that in return. And just like you described, if I do the opposite, I'm going to get the exact same thing in return. What I give you is what I'm going to get over time. So if you've got a bunch of people that are screaming and shouting and yelling at each other, take a little step back and think about how do we get to that point? And next time, be open to that criticism, be open to that feedback, invite it, welcome it. You don't look weak, you don't look a bad boss or like you don't know what's going on. You look like you care and are interested in trying to help them. And if you do that enough, and if the nature of the environment becomes, I am here to listen to what you have to say,

• 20:48Dave Berke?

  then the few times that I do decide I need to talk, what I'm going to gain in return is exactly what you described is people are going to listen to me too.

• 20:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, one of the things I wanted to talk about today, it's something that you and I have been

• 21:00Jocko Willink?

  discussing a little bit. Well, part of it. Um, so it's the idea of, of, of reframing a situation, reframing your perspective. Look, when you're doing jujitsu,

• 21:15Jocko Willink?

  if you're doing something that's not working, don't keep doing it, right? Try something new. And if you're doing something in life and it's not working, don't keep doing it.

• 21:26Jocko Willink?

  Do something new. Hey, this is real obvious sitting here. To tell people to look at things a different way, to find a new perspective. I, I think, and I use this term reframing.

• 21:39Jocko Willink?

  I know you and I talked about it in air to air combat. You guys call it redefining the fight.

• 21:43Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 21:44Jocko Willink?

  So here's a conclusion that I came to.

• 21:50Jocko Willink?

  Is that you should, we should, as people,

• 21:57Jocko Willink?

  reframe everything.

• 21:59Jocko Willink?

  Reframe everything, and I'll tell you why. Whether things are working or not,

• 22:06Jocko Willink?

  I recommend you still try and look at it through a different lens. You still try and reframe it and see it from a different perspective. And it's real obvious, you know, if you're looking at a, at a target, if you're in, in the military and you're looking at a target and you can't quite figure out a good way to hit the target, or to assault the target. Okay, reframe it, that's real obvious. If, if things aren't working, you know, between your boss, or your, you and your boss, or you and your peers, or you and one of your subordinates, if things aren't working, it's real obvious, like, reframe it, reframe it. Here's the thing. If things are working

• 22:49Jocko Willink?

  with you and your boss, and you and your employee, still reframe it, still reframe it. If, if you're looking at a target, and you're, and there's a real obvious way to hit it,

• 23:04Jocko Willink?

  still reframe it. Still, think about it, still figure out a new way to do things, or a different approach to things, whether they're working or not. And here's why. Don't wait to learn how to reframe things until something's not working. Don't wait for that to happen. Wait, don't wait until there's a bunch of pressure. Don't wait until Dave is mad at me that I gotta reframe it. Don't wait until I'm looking at a target and I can't figure out how to hit it. Don't look until the, the market is starting to tank and I need to try and now reframe it. No, just reframe things, just start reframing things. Everything that you do, try and reframe, try and pragmatically

• 23:46Jocko Willink?

  take a different look at things. Try and think about what the other person sees. Right? So, so when you go and tell your employees about something, and they're super happy and excited, don't just go, "Cool, I did a great job" and walk away. Nope, reframe it and say, "I wonder why they were so excited about that? What did they see? What did I miss?"

• 24:05Jocko Willink?

  Um, when you have a positive outcome with a target that you assaulted, and you get done, be like, "Okay, that worked well. How else could we have done it?"

• 24:18Jocko Willink?

  That way you're ready when you need to reframe something and you're in the habit of it. So like, um, I mean, these, these are real basic examples, but at Origin USA, we were selling Jiu Jitsu Gis.

• 24:36Jocko Willink?

  We're doing everything to make the best Jiu Jitsu Gis, make in America, all these things. Well, how big is that market? How big is it? And there's only, there's a very limited number of people that train Jiu Jitsu with the gi. So the reframing was, wait a second. I mean, I was sitting in an airport and I called Pete because I was sitting in an airport. I'm walking, I'm watching people walk by and everyone, you know, or whatever, 94% of the people are wearing jeans and I called Pete and I said, hey, how many people do you know that do Jiu Jitsu? And he says, I don't know, like 40? And I said, cool. How many people do you know that wear jeans? He said, everyone. I was like, why don't we make jeans? It's that very simple reframing. And the same thing happened when, when COVID hit, right? When COVID hit, we were making, we make Jiu Jitsu rash guards.

• 25:21Jocko Willink?

  Well, every Jiu Jitsu academy in the country shut down. Well, what are we going to make now? Well, this whole thing with face cloth coverings. We didn't know what the deal was, but we knew that people, there was a high demand signal. We had companies that we knew could not reopen until everyone had a cloth face covering. Okay, guess what we did? Pivoted and started making those things. Echelon Front, same thing. We, when COVID hit, we were doing, before COVID hit, we did 99% of our engagements face to face. When Echelon Front, when, when COVID hit, it was like, oh, what are we going to do? Put, uh, uh, Plexiglas boxes around our speakers? No, we're going to start doing virtual stuff. But it was just, okay, reframe. What can we do different? How can we look at this in a different way?

• 26:05Jocko Willink?

  But here's the thing, so those are like real obvious examples. What about when you get asked a question? And here's a basic question that we get asked at Echelon Front a lot. The question is, how do I get the team to buy into the plan? And the, and the direct answer to that is, and it's a very good answer. There's a, there's a whole like conversation to have around this is how do you get the team to buy into the plan? Oh, make sure they understand the why. Make sure they understand how it benefits the company strategically. Make sure that they then understand how the company benefiting strategically will benefit them. And you have this whole thread of why. So that's how you can get the team to buy into the plan. And that's great. It's a great answer.

• 26:43Jocko Willink?

  If you reframe that and you look at it from a different angle, how do you get the team to buy into a plan? You let them come up with a plan. Boom, you just, you just assaulted this question and this problem from a completely different angle.

• 26:59Jocko Willink?

  So I, you know, if, if someone is talking to me about a protocol, like we need, we should change the protocol. Instead of saying, yes, we should change the protocol or no, we shouldn't change the protocol. You can reframe that question by saying, well, what, what are we trying to accomplish? It, it's so, once those words come out of your mouth, everyone goes, oh yeah, well, of course, well, you know, it seems like a real obvious question, but no one was asking it. They were asking a yes or no question to something that's, there's very few things that are yes or no questions.

• 27:35Jocko Willink?

  We were at Battlefield, yeah, Battlefield up in Gettysburg. There's this whole scenario that unfolds where

• 27:43Jocko Willink?

  General Lee has a plan to move to the South and basically have Longstreet do a big flanking maneuver on the Union forces. And Longstreet doesn't really agree with the plan. And so he just kind of slow rolls the whole thing and is like, well, and it's going to take a while. And I'm not sure I agree. And they go back and forth and it takes hours and hours and hours. And so we, we, we started asking this question.

• 28:13Jocko Willink?

  What should he have done? Should, should Longstreet have just gone? Or should Longstreet, or should General Lee have just fired him? Or should he have just ordered him to go? Like which one is it? Should he have just fired him? And then there's a whole debate you can have. Well, if you fired him, or should he just ordered him to go and he can say no? And then he's basically firing, so there's, they, they turned this thing into a yes or no question.

• 28:35Jocko Willink?

  And I was actually there with JD, JD's awesome. And I said, well, I'll tell you what I would have done. So I'm Longstreet. I don't really like the plan. What am I gonna do? Well, hey, boss, cool, got it. I'm gonna take an iterative step and I'm gonna say, we'll move down. We'll move down south and start getting in position. What's gonna happen when we start to move down south and get position? We're gonna gather more information. And maybe the information is, oh, General Lee came up with a pretty good plan. And I think we build a sweep up the Union flank over here. Cool. Or maybe we see that the Union flank is very strong. Or maybe we see that there's very defendable position. So we can move, take iterative steps to figure out what we should do.

• 29:18Jocko Willink?

  So you take something that is a yes or no answer. And you reframe it to say, okay, what are we trying to accomplish? What other information can we, can we gather? And, and really iterative decision making is a great way of reframing things. It's a great way of reframing, reframing things. You know, should we go into that market area? Yes or no? Well, I'm not really sure. How about we just make a small investment into that market area? We don't have to go in there 100%. We don't have to go in there 0%. We can go in there 10%. But people will frame questions and thoughts in a way that they're binary. And very few things are.

• 30:02Jocko Willink?

  So they make that mistake. And it's because people have, they develop that habit. They develop the habit of seeing things binary. Yes or no? On or off? Go or no go? We teach that in the military. Go or no go? That's something we teach. Go or no go? That's it. There's no go or possibly move to a little closer staging area. Possibly see what other intel you think there's all these iterative steps.

• 30:34Jocko Willink?

  And one of the things that made me think about this is another thing that we teach at Echelon Front is, don't wait until you have an emergency to develop relationships, right? I don't want to call Dave, you know, Dave is my neighbor, he moves in next to me. And the first time I go visit him is when, you know, I've got a freaking, a fire. I don't want that, that's not cool. I want to build a relationship beforehand. Same thing at work. You know, you don't want the first time you call the, the, the supply division to be like, our stuff showed up late, we need it now. You don't want that to be the first call. You want to have a bunch of calls already where you have a good relationship with them.

• 31:18Jocko Willink?

  So that's kind of what we need to do. We teach to build a relationship. We also teach to train, to be prepared for contingencies, to rehearse contingencies before they happen. We train to fight before a fight. You don't, you train jujitsu. So if someone attacks you, you can handle yourself. You don't try and learn while it's happening. We, we practice things daily so that they become a habit. And if we have good habits, then we will execute properly. Well, the saying, we fall to the love.

• 31:58Jocko Willink?

  We don't rise to the, we don't rise to the occasion. We, we fall to the level of our training. And when we have habits and we have routines, we have patterns that we follow. It's very difficult to break them under stress. So if you've programmed yourself to think in a binary mode, yes or no. And even worse than a binary mode is a unilateral mode, which is what most people do. Most people, it's a unilateral thought process, which the perspective that I'm thinking of is mine. That's it. This one thing that, that's the only consideration that I'm taking is my perspective, what I

• 32:40Jocko Willink?

  see, what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, that's what my decisions are based on.

• 32:48Jocko Willink?

  And, and so if you think that in a moment of stress, when the market has turned, when an employee is mad, when there's an emergency situation, if you think at that moment, you're then going to be able to take a step back, detach,

• 33:04Jocko Willink?

  and reframe a scenario, it's going to be very difficult for you.

• 33:10Jocko Willink?

  So that's my point in saying all this. You have to practice detaching, you have to practice reframing and redefining, and you need to practice it with everything that you do and everything that you say. Now, this doesn't mean that you have to do it. It doesn't mean that every time something happens, you reframe it and approach it from a different way, because sometimes the, the, the forward assault is fine, the frontal assault is okay. Sometimes that's fine.

• 33:38Jocko Willink?

  I'm not saying that you need to, every argument that you have, or every disagreement that you have, you try and reframe it in such a way that it, it approaches it from a totally different direction. I'm not saying that you have to proceed with this every time, but you should think through it. You should do the mental exercise. You should do the mental exercise all the time with everything. And by the way, there's also, this isn't just being contrarian. Because contrarian is, this is not, what I'm talking about is not a contrarian viewpoint. That's not what I'm talking about. A contrarian viewpoint is actually very simple to have. It's just the opposite of what, you know, Dave says we should attack from the north. I say, no, we should attack from the south. There's no reasoning behind it, it's just a contrarian view.

• 34:23Jocko Willink?

  And, and I get it, can you use it? Is it an attempt to reframe? It might be, but it's really not a reframing complete. It's more just, oh, this is the opposite of what you're saying as to what I'm going to say. That's not, it doesn't, it doesn't offer us anything new. It doesn't offer us anything unknown. We already know what the opposite is. We know that.

• 34:48Jocko Willink?

  We want to know a totally different perspective. We want to look at something in a completely new way. An unseen, that's what it is. It's an unseen angle, something that you don't see.

• 35:02Jocko Willink?

  And in order to get good at seeing it,

• 35:06Jocko Willink?

  you have to practice.

• 35:11Jocko Willink?

  You have to practice and if you practice and you come up with that mindset,

• 35:17Jocko Willink?

  it'll be a lot more prevalent when you need it.

• 35:21Dave Berke?

  I, I wrote down open mind as you're doing this and yeah, we've, we've said that a lot and, and connecting to all the things you're saying, but I think there's a point for me, I would emphasize in my own head too. We, I think sometimes you associate keeping an open mind. Oh, I ran into a problem. Yeah. The thing I had in my mind didn't work that well, or, or my plan ran into some friction. I need to keep an open mind.

• 35:47Dave Berke?

  That actually makes sense, but what if my plan was just like masterful? Worked exactly the way that I wanted. Got the exact outcome that I needed. And really what you're saying is still keep an open mind. And if you can build the habit of when things are going well, when you're succeeding, when you're dominating to still have an open mind, that is a great way of thinking about how to create that habit by which you always have an open mind. Yeah, I, it makes sense. If I'm not doing well, I should have an open mind. Yeah, that makes sense. But it doesn't seem to be as intuitive like, oh, when things are going perfectly, keep an open mind. When that assault worked exactly the way you want, still keep an open mind. When your plan was executed exactly how you visioned it,

• 36:27Dave Berke?

  keep an open mind. So that phrase, keep an open mind to redefine and be willing to reframe things. That applies all the time, not just when you're struggling, when things aren't going well, even when it's like, that was exactly how I thought it was going to go. We still need to look for a better way, a different way, a more effective way. Cause the world around us is going to change. It's not always going to work the way that it did. So keep an open mind.

• 36:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. If you don't have that habit, you'll be even more locked in when things are going wrong. You'll be even more target fixated on the, on the one solution that you came up with. And it's, you can be beating your head into a wall.

• 37:02Dave Berke?

  Totally.

• 37:03Jocko Willink?

  So don't let that happen, everybody. With that, good place to stop if you want to hear more about leadership in any arena, you can join Dave, me, the rest of the Echelon Front team. Extreme Ownership Academy is where we solve problems through leadership. Go to extremeownership.com. We also have a whole consulting company, which is where these are the problems that we're referencing. We help organizations of every size solve their problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com if you want some of that. Also, a bunch of books about leadership that I've written, have some other podcasts. And if you want to support any of these things, you can go to jocko store.com,

• 37:43Jocko Willink?

  echelonfront.com, originusa.com, or jockofuel.com and get some good stuff for your life. And with that, thanks for listening to Us Debrief. Now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko out.