Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, two retired Navy SEALs, tell us how to be great leaders in their book Extreme Ownership.
In order to lead and win, you have to take total ownership of everything in your world. There is no room for excuses, blaming, or complaining. Everything rests on the leader!
Detailing the mindset and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult missions in combat, Extreme Ownership shows how to apply them to any team, family or organization.
Each chapter focuses on a specific topic such as Cover and Move, Decentralized Command, and Leading Up the Chain, explaining what they are, why they are important, and how to implement them in any leadership environment.
Animated Summary By Wisdom For Life
Key Takeaways
Jocko Willink and Leif Babin are both retired Navy SEAL officers and what separates them from most leaders is that they’ve led people in life-and-death situations.
When in the battlefield they have to make split-second decisions and the consequences of their actions can mean the difference between a SEAL making at home or being killed in action.
They understand that to lead you have to be clear about the objective, you have to trust each other, and you have to be accountable.
Part I
The Mindset Aspect of Leadership
1. Extreme Ownership
Lesson one is all about Extreme Ownership.
In order to lead and win, you have to have the right mindset.
"On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win."
So that’s what this book is all about. You have to own it. You can’t pass the buck. You can’t blame anyone else. You have to take responsibility for it.
"The best leaders don't just take responsibility for their job, they take extreme ownership of everything that impacts their mission."
So you are responsible for the success and failures in your job and in your life. The boss, product, economy, and competitors are not to blame.
When a subordinate isn’t doing what they should, you need to look at yourself first. It’s up to the leader to ensure that subordinates are properly trained, have the resources, and have a clear understanding of the mission.
Now if the subordinate continuously fails to meet the standards, then the leader must be loyal to the team, and the mission, above the individual.
As you can see it’s all on the leader, Extreme Ownership style.
"Such a leader however does not take credit for his or her team successes, but bestows that honor upon his subordinate leaders and team members."
2. There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.
"Leadership is the single greatest factor in any team performance. Whether a team succeeds or fails is all up to the leader. The leaders attitude sets the tone for the entire team. The leader drives performance or doesn't."
When a leader takes on the attitude of blaming someone else for their shortcomings, guess what the peers and subordinates and all those people around you pick up the same attitude.
Additionally, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate. If you accept subpar performance and no one is held accountable, then that will become the new standard.
Standards and the consequences for not meeting them must be enforced.
This doesn’t mean ruling without an iron fist, but leaders have to drive standards in a way that enables and encourages the team.
3. Honest assessments, identify weaknesses, develop an plan.
As a leader you must strive for improvement, give honest assessment of themselves and their teams, identify weaknesses, and come up with a plan to overcome those obstacles.
In short, the mindset starts with the leader and spreads to each of the team members. Eventually it becomes the new standard.
Lastly, don’t tolerate infighting within your team. Pull the team together and focus their efforts on a single specific goal.
Believe in the Mission
Next, a leader must believe in the mission. It’s vital if you want to inspire others to accomplish that same mission.
If you ever get a task or a mission that you don’t believe in or don’t understand, don’t just sit back and accept it, ask questions until you understand why it’s important.
At that point you can believe in what you’re doing and you can pass that information down the chain to your team with confidence.
Check the Ego
Next you need to check the ego.
"For leaders, the humility to admit and own mistakes, and develop a plan to overcome them is essential to success. The best leaders are not driven by ego or personal agendas, they're simply focused on the mission and how best to accomplish it."
How many times have you seen a boss or a peer pass the buck, make excuses, blame others, and be unwilling to take advice? Probably a lot.
It takes a lot of courage to admit shortcomings, that your way isn’t the best way and to take advice.
Set the example and be the person who’s willing to say, “I was wrong.”
Personally I admire people who take this stand instead of blaming because blaming is easy.
Lastly be humble.
Part II
The Laws of Combat
4. Teamwork makes the dreamwork.
The first one is all about teamwork. We all have to work together and support each other toward a single purpose.
I’m sure you’ve witnessed someone blaming or talking about another section or department. That needs to go.
We need to work with the people in other departments, instead of using them as scapegoats.
You can’t operate independently or against each other.
"It falls on leaders to continually keep perspective on the strategic mission and remind the team that they are part of the greater team and the strategic mission is paramount."
5. Keep things simple.
If your team isn’t doing what they need to do, look at yourself first.
Did you communicate the mission, the plan, the objective, as clearly and simply as possible?
It has to be clear enough so that the lowest member in the organization understands it.
Not only does this make you more flexible and reacting to change, but it also provides more job satisfaction because members will now know why they are doing what they’re doing. They’ll understand their role in the big picture.
Keep communications simple, and allow for environment that allows subordinates to ask questions that clarify duties and tasks.
6. Prioritize and Execute
Even the most competent of leaders can be overwhelmed if they try to tackle multiple problems or a number of tasks simultaneously. The team will likely fail at each of those tasks.
Instead, leaders must determine the highest priority tasks and execute.
Problems and challenges can compound in a snowball effect, and as a leader you must remain calm and make the best decision possible.
The SEALs have a saying – relax, look around, make a call.
As leader, don’t get lost in the details.
In order to prioritize effectively you must focus on the strategic picture. Ensure that you pass situational awareness both up and down the chain. (This ties into the next lesson which is decentralized command)
It’s impossible for a leader to really manage hundreds of people, so the team must be broken down into manageable groups. Teams within teams with a clear leader in each group.
The junior leaders at this level must be empowered to make decisions at their level and as I said, they have to understand the plan to be able to make sound decisions.
There needs to be trust and confidence in both junior and senior leaders for this to work. These centralized communication only works effectively if everyone is passing information up and down the chain.
Leaders and junior leaders shouldn’t have the mindset of asking what should I do.
They should have the mindset of this is what I’m gonna do because I understand what the overall intent of the mission is and that allows every leader to work separately, but at the same time toward a centralized goal.
Part III
Sustaining Victory
7. Develop A Plan
A mission must be clear and concise.
The overarching mission guides every small action, so it’s important that leaders at all levels understand the missions purpose and desired end result.
When developing a plan, lean on the the subject matter experts and get input from down the chain.
This not only creates innovative ideas, it also creates a sense of ownership, buy-in and understanding of the plan for those on the front lines.
Leaders must do their best not to micromanage. Instead they should focus on the big picture and look for holes and weaknesses in the plan.
Encourage your troops to ask for clarification if needed if they don’t understand the plan.
AYou have to create that kind of environment where they feel comfortable bringing that stuff up and not just acting blindly on what you’re saying or what you’re telling them to do.
8. Leading up and down the chain.
Ask yourself: are you informing your leadership on what you really need in clear and simple terms?
Did you effectively communicate the impact, including second and third order effects of the shortfall?
The person with the best justification, explanation, and impact usually gets to resources.
7. Decisiveness amid uncertainty.
You want to be proactive, and anticipate as best as you can.
Leaders must make the best decision they can based on information that they have. You’ll never have all the information, so just do the best you can.
As situations evolved and new information becomes available, be flexible enough to adjust as needed and don’t become fixated on a particular plan. Use your experience and knowledge to make the best educated guess.
People respect leaders who can be decisive enough to make tough calls with limited information.
9. Discipline equals freedom.
Click this link to Learn About Self-Discipline.
"The best SEALs I worked with were invariably the most disciplined. They woke up early, they worked out every day, they studied, they practiced. Just as individual excels when he or she exercises self-discipline, a unit that has tighter and more disciplined procedures and processes will excel and win."
"Discipline starts every day when the first alarm clock goes off in the morning. The moment the alarm goes off is the first test, it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not complex. When the alarm goes off, do you get out of bed or do you lie in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win, you pass the test. If you're mentally weak for that moment and you let that weakness keep you in bed, you fail. Though it seems small, that weakness translates to more significant decisions, but if you exercise discipline that too translates to more substantial elements of your life."
Dichotomy of Leadership
As a good leader you have to balance many contradictory qualities.
It’s very complex. You have to strike a balance of these qualities that works for you and your team.
You have to be confident, but not cocky.
You have to be courageous, but not foolhardy.
You want to be competitive, but a gracious loser.
Be attentive to details, but not obsessed with them.
You want to be strong, but have endurance.
You want to be a leader, and a follower.
You want to be humble, but not passive.
You want to be aggressive, but not overbearing.
You want to be quiet, but not silent.
You want to be calm, but not robotic.
You want to be close with the troops, but not so close that one becomes more important than another, ie favoritism.
You want to be able to execute extreme ownership while exercising decentralized command.
Extreme Ownership Animated Summary By Productivity Game
Key Takeaways
"There are only two types of leaders: effective and ineffective. Effective leaders that lead successful, high-performance teams exhibit Extreme Ownership. Anything else is simply ineffective. Anything else is bad leadership."
As leaders of a special forces operation in Iraq, authors and Navy Seals, Leif Bain and Jocko Willink were given the ultimate leadership test – lead special forces in one of the most complex, high stakes, and chaotic environments imaginable – urban warfare in Ramadi Iraq.
In 2008, Ramadi was a hot spot of the Iraq war. The U.S. was seeing heavy casualties and the enemy was learning advanced military tactics.
As the fighting raged on, Leif and Jocko discovered time and time again there success, and the success of the special forces relied on one core philosophy – Extreme Ownership.
Extreme Ownership accept responsibility for everything gone wrong or could go wrong.
This philosophy was put to these on one particular incident for Jocko in Eastern Ramadi.
As the sun rose, Navy SEAL sniper teams were instructed to go and clear out buildings, and set up positions. A group of U.S. army ground troops, and friendly Iraq soldiers were to arrive in the area to engage the enemy.
As Jocko stood by in Central Command, he could hear intense chatter erupted over the radio. One of the friendly Iraq soldiers had been shot and both the Navy SEAL sniper team and the troops in the ground were engaged in heavy fighting.
The sniper team called in heavy armored support. The troops on the ground called in an airstrike on one particular building.
Jocko knew something wasn’t quite right. He delayed the airstrike and he went to the battlefield.
When he arrived he went to the point where the sniper team was supposed to be and discovered that the troops in the ground weren’t firing on the enemy, they were firing on the Navy SEAL team inside that building.
After the incident Jocko went back to Central Command and opened up an email from his commanding officer. It read shut down, conduct no more operations, investigating officer command master chief and I are on route.
The senior leaders were determined to find who was responsible for such a horrible event. As Jocko board over the details and tried to piece together who was ultimately responsible, it dawned on him he was.
If his team was to move forward and bounce back from this, he had to take full ownership of everything that went wrong.
Even though it was a dynamic situation with many people at fault and circumstances he could not control, as the leader he had to take the blame to start the process of ensuring that it never happened again.
As he stood in front of his team and in front of high-ranking military officials, he told them as the senior man I am responsible for every action that takes place on the battlefield. There was no one to blame but me and I will tell you this right now, I will make sure that nothing like this ever happens to us again.
Jocko put his reputation and his career on the line, but then something strange happened, his team didn’t simply let him take the blame. They stood up for him, they vowed to help him.
It turns out that when one person takes ownership, it allows everyone to take ownership, and the team can work together towards a common goal.
But until that time, each team member is simply trying to save face and those high-ranking military officials, his superiors, they trusted him more, not less because when you take a 100% ownership, even when it’s easy to cast blame, you allow progress to happen.
You stop wasting energy on casting blame and looking for excuses or complaining about circumstance and you take corrective action.
If you care about making progress in any area of your life you need to have the courage to take responsibility for everything that’s gone wrong.
It won’t seem fair. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s something you must do because when the blaming starts, progress stops.
So if you’re not getting the resources you need at work, stop blaming your boss, and instead own the problem.
Take it upon yourself to learn the skills necessary to influence and persuade him or her or make it your job to find alternate ways of getting the job done.
If you don’t have enough time throughout the day to focus on your health, stop wasting energy blaming your current circumstance. Instead learn time management skills, set priorities, and say no to everything else or get up early and make sure you take care of your health first thing.
Only when you own the problem can you discover the solution.
Going forward he put plans in place to make sure that friendly fire incidents would never escalate to that level again. He went back to the West Coast after his tours in Iraq, and trained Navy SEALs to notice friendly fire situations.
"The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win."
