“You can’t make people listen to you. You can’t make them execute. That might be a temporary solution for a simple task. But to implement real change, to drive people to accomplish something truly complex or difficult or dangerous—you can’t make people do those things. You have to lead them.” ―
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“Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead And Win” is a thought-provoking book written by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, two Navy SEAL officers who have participated in the SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser in Iraq during the Battle of Ramadi. They have been exceptional leaders who have demonstrated their extreme ownership in making the most difficult choices in the most stressful situations imaginable.
Since you’re most likely not shooting people for a living, you might be thinking, “This is good stuff Omar, but I’m not really a Navy SEAL and I’m not even in the military, so how could this help me exactly?”
I’m glad you asked that question! Assuming you’re not in the military like myself, I was thinking the same thing before picking up this book.
Well after retiring from serving as Navy SEAL commander and officer, Willink and Babin returned and launched Echelon Front, a consulting firm that helps organizations and businesses in leadership and team management. They’ve focused on translating their leadership and team management expertise from combat to business, and according to the many business applications mentioned in the book, the translation was executed perfectly.
In fact, it didn’t seem to matter what the context of leadership is. Leadership in battle and in business or relationships are pretty much the same.
Maybe not exactly the same; you can mess up your teamwork in a business and the worst case scenario would be you getting fired or your business tanking, but a simple miscommunication within a team in the middle of urban combat can end you and who’s ever on your side.
Imagine the high stakes in having to deal with this kind of responsibility as a leader of men who trust you with their lives while carrying out your orders. How capable as a leader must you become to successfully lead a group of people towards the face of death and then come back safely?
A pretty damn good one if you ask me.
This is why I found it extremely beneficial learning how leadership is applied from those detail-oriented leaders who had to put and their team’s lives on the line. In extreme conditions where every single factor mattered in decision-making, there are a lot of tips and knowledge to be acquired reading this book and for your application in real life.
What I also appreciate about “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead And Win” is that it’s not a book that inspires you with military-pep talk to rule your business with an iron fist, but it’s a book that is full of human errors we tend to make, usually due to our imperfect, egotistical, and selfish nature as human beings.
This book will help you learn from mistakes that are being made in both contexts―combat and businesses so you can fully grasp the consequences and “symptoms” of these mistakes. Having a perspective on teamwork, ownership, and leadership from two extremely different contexts will actually cement the ideas and guides the authors discuss in “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead And Win” in your mind.
Now, let’s get into the main topics this book discusses.
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead And Win ― Book Review
Bad Leaders Vs. Bad Teams
It’s a common misconception to think that a bad team member can bring a whole team down, and it’s a misconception that makes sense because it can always happen. It’s easy to spot the person with the problem and it’s even easier to point your finger at them.
But according to the authors’ examples and their experience on both the battlefield and in the business world, that’s not entirely the case. Willink and Babin state that if there’s something wrong within an organization or a task, it’s always likely that it’s the leader’s fault.
In fact, you can have a bad team member and still find success, but if you underperform as a leader, you’re guaranteed failure.
This sounds pretty obvious and straightforward; however, that’s almost never the case when a leader is required to perform under the lights or pressure. When things don’t go our way, we often tend to find reasons or excuses for why things don’t work the way we want them to.
It’s more intuitive to look around us than to look at ourselves.
“Is my team underperforming? Are they doing what they’re supposed to do?”
“Why am I getting all these negative emails? Maybe someone doesn’t know what they’re supposed to do. I should conduct a meeting and see what everyone’s up to.”
“It must be Chad. Must be Fucking Chad. I knew it! I should have seen his red flags in the interview! Let’s see what he’s been up to.”
We’re susceptible these thoughts whenever things don’t go our way but rarely do we ask ourselves if we as leaders are doing something wrong.
The leader is responsible no matter what because if a subordinate is not performing well, then it’s likely because the leader has not:
– Formed a plan that’s easy to follow.
– Communicated clearly what is needed to complete the organization’s mission.
– Properly trained the team to be able to handle the tasks in hand.
– Demonstrated or guided the team towards successful execution.
So the next time something at work doesn’t go your way, the first thing you should do is ask, “How can I make this better?” even if it seems to be not your responsibility.
A team that takes responsibility in overcoming difficulties in completing missions together becomes more encouraged to take on challenges while knowing the members involved have each other’s back.
“The most fundamental and important truths at the heart of Extreme Ownership: there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.” ― Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead And Win
Mission Vs. Standards
One of the most important things I’ve learned reading this book is that what you tolerate is more important than what you aim for. The standards are more significant than the mission.
When it comes to running a business, leading a team in battle, or even maintaining a healthy relationship, it’s incredibly easy to be one-dimensional and just focus on achieving a goal towards success. But what’s more difficult is paying attention to substandard performance, especially when things are going well.
Achieving a goal is easier than maintaining stability.
Complacency and lack of enthusiast are subtle and will always test your standards; how you choose to react to them is up to you. It doesn’t take much for a team member to under-perform, and it takes less time for the new performance to be the new standards.
It doesn’t take much for your partner to shit test you, and it takes less time for the disrespect to become the norm in your relationship.
Poor standards are like cracks in the glass, the more you ignore them, the more they grow till the whole windshield breaks.
It’s your responsibility to make sure you maintain your standards to keep your team, business, and relationships safe from these cracks. Whenever your standards aren’t matched, which is always only a matter of time, it’s also your responsibility to continuously guide your team on the right path again and remind them of maintaining their performances.
“When leaders who epitomize Extreme Ownership drive their teams to achieve a higher standard of performance, they must recognize that when it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.” ― Leif Babin, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead And Win
Belief In The Mission
Obviously, you cannot find success in a mission if you don’t believe in the mission, especially if it’s a career-defining success or a long-term relationship. You must believe in what you do to get the desired results.
But life doesn’t work that way.
Doubt is never black and white and it’s very challenging to recognize it for what it is. It always makes sense to a certain extent.
And that’s not even the hardest part. The hardest part comes when others are involved.
What’s more challenging is having to deal with the doubts of others on top of your own, especially if they deal with it in silence. It’s hard to voice out your concerns as a team member or junior leader, you might not be executing your tasks the best you could or you might make serious mistakes that could have been avoided if only you knew better.
In “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead And Win”, Jocko tells a very interesting story about receiving an order to fight alongside a platoon of untrained, unprepared, and uncommitted Iraqi soldiers in one of their missions to bring peace in Ramadi on the long run.
Imagine that: fighting a resilient dangerous enemy with a team of people who just don’t know how to fight and might abandon their positions and run for their lives when the going gets tough.
It’s one thing to believe in this apparent suicide mission, but it only gets more difficult when you’re the one who has to inform your own team of that same task and somehow convince them that it’s the right thing to do.
Terrifying.
Moreover, Jocko discusses the importance of consistently communicating the reason behind the tasks. The “why” has to be reinforced over and over again to make sure the team is confident enough of their mission.
As a leader, you’re responsible to make sure your team gets it. If a team member doesn’t get why they’re doing what they’re told to do, then it’s your responsibility to get them onboard. It’s also your responsibility to make them comfortable enough to address their concerns to you to have them convinced.
Leadership And Ego
It can be hard to control your ego when you’re a leader of people. As a leader, partner, father, or even an older sibling, you will have someone who will look up to you. Someone out there will seek guidance from you. The dependency and reliance of people on you will make you, to a certain extent, feel entitled to being respected and listened, and with those comes more ego.
Ego alone can destroy your team and missions. It can interfere with your planning, seeking advice when needed, accept constructive criticism when necessary, and judging situations for what they really are.
Therefore, it’s important to keep your ego in check to avoid having personal agendas taking control of your team and distancing your focus from achieving your goals. This also includes having to sometimes count on your people and trust their judgment to act in your stead.
“Often, the most difficult ego to deal with is your own.” ―
Prioritizing And Keeping It Simple
Even though it’s intuitive, “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead And Win” emphasizes the significance of always keeping your missions simple and prioritizing the tasks you’re dealing with.
A leader should always be organized and mindful of the tasks at hand by having a good sense of what should be dealt with urgently. If a mission is too complex to understand and deal with, then the operators on the front line will have a problem fully executing their tasks.
Prioritizing helps the team execute at the best of their abilities with full attention. It also helps the leaders make the adjustments in case they were needed. Prioritizing is a precaution that helps reduce the chance of chaos happening and reduce chaos itself when it does happen.
The leader is also accountable for making sure the team is able to understand what they’re supposed to do, and if they don’t even after the leader does their best to make things clear, then it might be a good enough reason to change how the mission is approached.
If the front-liners don’t understand it, then they can’t be the face of your team.
“If the plan is simple enough, everyone understands it, which means each person can rapidly adjust and modify what he or she is doing. If the plan is too complex, the team can’t make rapid adjustments to it, because there is no baseline understanding of it.” ―
Decentralizing Command
As a leader, you must be humble enough to follow when it serves your team. Great leaders aren’t great just when they can deal with all the tasks at hand, but they’re even greater when they have good judgment in knowing who to count on for delegation and when to delegate.
You cannot be in more than one place at the same time and you can’t deal with too many problems at once, so it’s very important to learn how to be the central figure in any operation or mission without being too involved in all of the team’s tasks, or else you’d lose sight of how the operation is taking place overall.
“Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead And Win” also mentions the significance of not being too distant from the ongoing tasks being performed by junior leaders or operators—”battle aloofness” as the SEALs would call it. The right balance between taking action and just supervising or even letting junior leaders perform freely on their judgment can help senior leaders have a better understanding and control over the mission in general.
Discipline
Nobody likes discipline for its imposing and restricting limitations, but it always leads to success when it’s implemented into your life and work with purpose.
Discipline brings order and routine to your work. It helps you see clearly what comes in and what goes out. Discipline’s order and routine bring predictability that makes it easier for you to experiment during execution. Because when you fully understand the variables you’re working with, you also have a better understanding of when and to what extent you can be creative and experimental with your approach towards solving a problem.
On the other hand, the lack of discipline makes your mission more chaotic, to begin with. You won’t be able to risk any further during your execution knowing that would cause even more chaos. In that sense, chaos and disorganize are the ones that are actually restricting.
Without discipline, you’ll always be forced to deal with constant unclear variables that will hinder the growth of your business, personal development, and relationships.
“Discipline is freedom” ―
The Dichotomy of Leadership
“Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead And Win” goes through all the ideal traits all leaders should possess or aspire to have. I’ve found that chapter extremely useful as it sums up all qualities you should have without compromising your leadership.
It’s not only important to acquire these traits, but it’s equally important that they’re always moderated and kept in check to maintain respect and establish trust within the team. The traits should also be displayed to convince the team of the leader’s capabilities without being forced to do so.
“A good leader must be: confident but not cocky; courageous but not foolhardy; competitive but a gracious loser; attentive to details but not obsessed by them; strong but have endurance; a leader and follower; humble not passive; aggressive not overbearing; quiet not silent; calm but not robotic, logical but not devoid of emotions; close with the troops but not so close that one becomes more important than another or more important than the good of the team; not so close that they forget who is in charge. able to execute Extreme Ownership, while exercising Decentralized Command. A good leader has nothing to prove, but everything to prove.” ―
If you’ve liked this article, consider checking out “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead And Win” on Amazon. I highly recommend reading this book (or listening to it on Audible) as it will upgrade your sense of accountability which will in return improve you as a businessman, parent, partner, and friend.