Jocko Willink- NAVY SEAL Leadership Strategies

When it comes to building leaders, are you more thinking? I find leaders and lead them. Do you come more from the top? I build leaders for both, that's one of those questions that comes up all the time, is it nature or nurture that makes someone a leader and our leaders are born or our leaders are made and the answers when you see people in these Difficult situations are when human nature reveals itself and the more you can understand human nature, the better leader you will be. If you know anything about me, I like reading books and every month in our company we choose a book to read in December 2017.

I chose Jakka Willing's Extremely Owned Book, so I read an article obviously before that and told it to all leaders. In the company to read, we ran, we bought a thousand copies and everyone was reviewing it and informing each other. Could you take from here what was this what was that what do you think about the part that talks about standards and after that I was like, "I just met this guy because when you look at his face, he looks like he's ready to kill someone at any moment." moment and the enemy, he just has one of those looks of what you would call a tough guy, that's a look he has to do. 20-Year-Old Navy SEAL Enters at Age 18 Serves 20 Years as Part of Ramadi SEAL Team 3 Task Unit Goon Battle During 2006.

I think it was April to November, a timeline like that that It's going against Iraq, which to me is obviously a big deal. because living in Iran for 10 years we were bombed 167 times one day from Iraq and for me I experienced all those emotions that remained, so when I saw the statue of Saddam Hussein fall it was a relief, you know, when I saw them take place, oh brother, Thank you for your service and I'm coming with a team with us, chuckles, when did you know you wanted to be a Navy SEAL? Well, specifically, the SEAL team part wasn't until I realized that, but When I was a little kid, you know, five and six, the only thing I could remember was that it was some kind of commando, you knew from that moment, since I was born, basically that was because dad, an uncle or a grandfather was in the army or My grandfather was in the army and he was retired from the army, but that wasn't all.

He would instinctively put camouflage on my face and carry sticks and carve them to look like machine guns when I was a little kid for no reason. that's something like now are you from a big family? Do you have brothers? two sisters two sisters one older younger also went to the army or not at all so only you only me so from the age of five you knew when you won in in high school everyone asks you what are you going to do after high school, you knew you were going to go into the army, yeah, no ifs and buts, nothing about it, there wasn't actually a movie that you saw that said this is my favorite movie, hundreds of hundreds.

Which of them is your favorite? My favorite movie now. I would say it's not really a movie but the Pacific, which is a miniseries that was on HBO about the Marine Corps campaign and the Army campaign in the Navy campaign in the Peaceful. Now it's a great series. When you got into the Navy SEAL, was it you and a couple of friends or just you by yourself, just me, by yourself, what was the whole experience like when you got in? It was amazing, yeah, what I wanted to do and it's a lot of fun, right? It was more difficult than you expected it was easier for you it was what I expected it is difficult it is fun there is no doubt it is a challenge it finds you weak this is the initial training that you go through the selection process if I thought about what your weaknesses are and many Really squared people don't make it and therefore really study what people don't make it, oh yeah, what do you mean this quarter?

Wouldn't people make it? I mean, you know, I mention two examples. At the time, I had a guy who was an NCAA water polo player, captain of a team, and I had another guy who was an Olympic alternate gymnast and they were both in my training class and they both quit, so those guys were infinitely athletes. top. and I was, but apparently they didn't want to be there as much as I did. Did you say common sense in renting to people who actually came in and made it? Was there a certain trend you saw among those guys?

I made it if I could solve that riddle of who will make it. I'd be in a totally different world because they tried to solve that puzzle, they tried and they realized that they would make it and you just don't know because you know that I talked about these really good athletes and really smart dyes that quit, but there are also guys that don't. They were good athletes at all, worse athletes than me and they made it and it's very hard to predict who you were in high school but you were great. obviously, you look at yourself, you have six versus the average of $1,234.

I was like an average athlete, maybe a little below average. I wasn't that interested in school. I didn't get good grades. He was kind of a rebel, you know? I was quite a rebellious child. I was into hardcore and heavy metal music and that's what I liked, so when you came in, you came in as a Navy SEAL. What was the first time you were deployed? You had your first project. Coming out, what was the first time you had something to come out, the first time I fired my weapon at the enemy was 13 years later in 2003, so that's 13 years of, you know, I trained hard.

Wow, I deployed, we seized boats. in the Persian Gulf, so you know it's a real mission and I guess something bad could happen, but nothing bad ever happened and other than that, it wasn't until I went to Iraq in 2003 for my first combat deployment, how Was that incredible? You know, I had a friend of mine from the army. His name is Jeff Bradford. He is 18 years old. He called me Pat. I'm going straight to the top of the army. What do you mean by that? I said you're I'm going to go Green Beret says no, no, whatever the highest is, I'm going to that, I said, come on, Bradford Jaco, I was determined to get it, so his answers were similar to yours, 20 years later , somewhat similar in his level of determination in what he wants to do and how to determine what it was.

I think he ended up being sergeant major when it was kind of like say when and he became sergeant major. So based on all your experience, you had one of the issues I want to address. you are

leadership

and you obviously know your book on extreme ownership. I think in chapter one the first thing he talks about is extreme ownership. Number two I think is standards to maintain standards and talks about the mission, then there are four other elements that you have out there. the seven you cover when it comes to

leadership

, I run a business and by the way, I see down below, if you don't know, when you get to this place, he runs a gym and he's right across the street from the 24 hour gym.

By the time I walk in first, the parking lot is full, cars are being towed in the back, he says you can park in a Windham parking lot, right? I'd hate to be Windham. I enter the place, it's hot with 200 people inside. At the gym I asked this employee I said, are you guys always so busy? She says sir, we are not busy tonight I told her what did you say, she says we are not busy, there are bodies on top of bodies, so obviously you are not. just a Navy SEAL guy where you know the military was all about it, you couldn't get it out there and put it into the business.

You were also able to put that on the business side of things, which is a big part of the audience as far as value. Entertainment When it comes to building leaders are you more from the mindset of finding leaders and leading them? you come more from the place do I build leaders or both both that's one of those questions that comes up all the time is it nature or nurture that makes someone a leader and our leaders are born or our leaders are made and the answer is because you and I know there are some people who just have a lot of really good natural leadership characteristics and find it easier to step up.

In a leadership position there are some people who don't have those characteristics and to me it's like if you've ever seen a video game where they have your strength for a different character in a video game. They have this level, a strength level 9 and an intelligence. At level 7 they get all these classifications, so it's the same with leadership, so there are different skills that you have to have to become a good leader, whether it's the ability to lead people, the ability to articulate well , the ability to analyze complex problems and solve them. They worked them out, these are skills and some people have higher levels in some of those skills than other people and some people, when you start training them, they can get better at some of those skills and so, yes, you can get better, you start from a base, whatever. that you are as a human being you start there and you can definitely improve there is only one type of human being that cannot improve as a leader and that is the one you lack in the military because when someone lacks humility you cannot teach them, so you are guiding me , the only person who can't improve this.

I like humility and you like humility. Not in me, if you lack humility, you really can't, I don't like it. I can't help, so let me ask you what else you can do. you look outside of that, let's say for example you have a group of 20 guys, it's okay for them to be part of your unit. I mean, obviously, you were a unit commander, you weren't British over the battalion, you were a commander, yet you had people who We are constantly reporting How can you differentiate between someone who could be a leader of your universe? Someone who needs a lot of help?

Were there trends you saw? Were there certain things you were looking at again? This is one of those things. where I mean, you know you can look at a person, you can do an evaluation and I do pretty well with my evaluation, you've been in the business for a long time, you do it per year in the military, you know, you do pretty well with your evaluation, but you're only baton 60, you said how many times you hired someone who you thought was going to knock it out of the park and two months later you end up firing them a long list, it's a long list, how many times Do you know what I'll give a boy a chance and then he will end up being a great person?

You know you get it right sometimes, you know, probably 60, 70 percent of the time, maybe even more, but you definitely can't. I don't guarantee anything and that's why I look at everyone with an open mind. I look at people with an open mind, so not only do you know that I want you to be humble if you want to learn, but I'm looking at you with an open mind. I'm not looking at you putting yourself in a box and thinking, oh, he doesn't really have this ability. I look good, let's hope he has the ability and if he has the ability we will take advantage of it and convert them. interest in becoming a strong leader.

Did you see the movie Moneyball with Billy Beane? The whole story, you know? Did you ever see that or not? In this movie Moneyball is a story of Billy Beane and he discovered through data what is the most important statistic in baseball to attract players this guy said it is not the most important it is not home run hitters the most important fact is the on-base percentage what percentage of the time this guy gets to the first base segment that's what We're looking for okay, so is there any more important data that you look at outside of humility?

Well, humility is definitely number one, but now to start talking about data, I'm going to look at what your background is. I'm going to see what kind of person they were, where they come from, what they've done before, did they play sports, were they successful, how were their grades now, obviously this to me is like a bad example because, like I told you, it wasn't good at In sports, my grades were not good now, when I went to college, my grades were amazing, but that was later. If you had looked at me coming out of high school, you said, "Hey, I don't know anything about this guy, you probably wouldn't do it." He hired me out of high school, you said I don't have good grades, he doesn't seem that disciplined, you know what we'll overlook with this guy though, and that's why you should be careful, this is the right thing to do.

Leadership is so hard to be sure that you can get 70% right, you can get 80% right, there's 20% that you don't know what they're going to do and that goes up and down the chain of command. What I do is keep an open mind when I deal. with people and little by little I start to hold them responsible and see where they take it, there is a part of that. I think I saw you talked about the fact that in leadership, building relationships is very, very important, sometimes you're just looking at all the text messages. What you already know and everything and I remembered why we were doing the interview, he says, I'm going to put my phone on airplane mode, he said it, he didn't just do it, these are little things that I pay attention to, so you said.

Sometimes too much ink in text is no way to guide people. Sometimes we need to sit down and talk to them face to face, so one of the things I talk about is that first you have to go through a friendship phase that the person has. trust you because if you don't have trust we have low speed so you go through the mentoring phase I am directing you thenyou become a leader you have a challenge we have to push them you have to test them well so for you, as far as the relationship goes, what was your process for building a relationship with your teammates?

Relationships and trust are almost the same. Work, right. A relationship is something we have built on. Trust. Now you have a bad relationship. And what does that mean? I don't trust there I don't trust you We have a bad relationship How can I build trust with someone the same way I build trust with people is that I give them trust, so if you're working for me, I say, hey, you know, I want you to do this mission, Patrick, come up with a plan, I'm showing you that I trust what your plan will be now. I'll make sure your plan is good.

I will review it but I will give you a lot of autonomy. I will give you confidence and when I give you confidence, what is your reaction? Do you think this guy trusts? Me, yeah, and then the way I build confidence is reversed when you make a mistake instead of jumping down your throat and hanging you out to dry. Instead I say, okay, you know what my fault is. I should have given you better direction. This is what we do: Next time, so now you look at me and say, hey, I screwed this up and Jock would still trust me.

I trust him and that's how I build trust. I give it to you, you give it to me. I give confidence to build trust if I am really trying hard, but my plan may not be the best. You will still give me second chances to work and improve. I will administer more to you. I can't trust you that much. We make a business deal. or we're in business, I don't send you with the biggest client I have when I just met you and say, hey, I trust you, you know, I'll give you a little client and say, hey, go, go, go. make this happen and you come back and say hey look I did it, I say great and you trust me a little more or maybe you screw it up and I say, okay, let me review what you do, the mistakes that were made and you say Oh well. , I did this and it's fine, we correct it, but I don't.

I'm not hard on you because I'm trying to build a relationship with you. If I'm hard on you, do you even want to work for me? If under this is pathetic? You screwed up, this is your fault. You're looking for another job tomorrow, whereas if I say okay, let's see what we can do better, then I'm building trust, but aren't you? I know you can be very trustworthy for many years and then all of a sudden you go out and do something underhanded with a client, try to scam them or scam me, yeah, I mean, we're not going to have trust in me anymore, so I like when you talk about that, but you know the second point and this is something I'm curious about why you present this or how you maintain it because you know sometimes you're working. and or you get too close to a team member and they get a little careless with you, then you don't have the same level of certainty with them when you lead them. but you will like them and you will want to approach them because they are friendly, you feel almost alone as a leader, so I tell you, wait a minute, but this guy is also my guy, but I have to lead them too. a military man, I mean a lot of times my best friend was my sergeant, we would go out and then at the same time, on Monday morning in training, he's trying to discipline me and I'm thinking, wait a minute, I'm kind of like I don't know If I'm looking at you the same way, dude, you're my guy, so how did you manage to balance that?

The last chapter of the book on extreme ownership is called the dichotomy of leadership and talks about balancing these opposites. forces that exist everywhere there are so many things that you can go too far in one direction in the other an example you just gave well you and I are friends if we start going out to dinner every night and then we are hanging around We are drinking beers and suddenly we're brothers, but we come to work on Monday and I'm like, hey, you know what I want you to start on this project, come on, man, I don't want to do that project. and suddenly I feel uncomfortable so I got too close to the other side it's just that I don't know you at all I don't know what drives you you don't know what your motivations are I don't know that you have a sick child or a wife that is giving you problems or whatever let that be the case and I don't know, so now when I come in and say, okay, finish this project and you go, man, and I don't realize that.

They are states in your life, so I have to balance this dichotomy and it's not just about relationships, it's about everything, because I just talked about micromanagement, right? If I micromanage you and don't let you make any decisions yourself, well, you. You're never going to step up and learn to lead because you won't be able to make any decisions for yourself if I don't manage you at all and you don't know which direction to go in, well, now you don't know what. you're doing it and you're lost with no direction, so that's problematic, so I have a balance, let's do it, it has to be in the middle, that's a constant theme all the time.

I just literally finished today with the final edits for my next book that I wrote with Laith and the name of that book is the leadership dichotomy because as we continue to work with leaders in our consulting company, these are the problems that they have, They don't balance them well and many times they don't. They don't even recognize that they need to keep the balance right and it's one of the things I make a joke about in the new book. The title of extreme ownership is very powerful and definitely exemplifies and clarifies that you must take ownership of what is happening in your life.

In the world they start to apply that extreme idea to other things, like I'm going to be extreme in my discipline or I'm going to be extreme in the way I talk to people, that doesn't work as a leader, it just doesn't work as a leader. It has to be balanced, one of the best pieces of advice I received early on on a microphone. I think I was 24 and a tough military guy who ran my agency and a guy pulled me aside one day and told me listen sometimes to lead a big army you have to be a little more like a willow instead of a oak he says you're being too firm and not everyone will be able to develop around you you have to relax a little so people can Chuck, oh you've been in a lot of different situations and as a leader I think one thing I struggled with at the emerged was how many contradictions there are in leadership.

You can say one thing on one side and it could be an absolute decision. contradiction at another point you're trying to get close to them, don't get too close and you're talking right now, the balance is mental while you're going through it yourself, how are you processing the contradictions? It's one of those things you can't read about, you just have to go through it to understand the balance of contradictions you have to deal with as a leader. For me, it's about awareness and once a lot of people aren't even. aware, they're aware of the fact that they can get too close, they're not aware of the fact that they can be too far away and they're not aware of the indicators, and by the way, this goes through everything like it's a Business Leader, right, you have to take risks if you take too much risk, what happens, you fail if you don't take risks, you don't grow and you fail too mm-hmm, there are so many examples, here is another good one, communicating directly can you be too direct with your people everyone says no, you have to tell them what's going on no, actually you can be too direct you can be too direct with your people and you can put them on the defensive you can make them shy, right, so you have to know now you may not be direct enough absolutely you can't be direct enough if all I'm saying is I'd like to start raising your numbers a little bit that would be helpful that's not direct enough I really need to say it but if I'm going to look, if you don't get it, you're fired, well, that it's too direct, there are personalities that are Barack Obama personalities, just very calm personalities and then they are the Gregg Popovich type of personality.

I know you don't follow sports. a lot, but Gregg Popovich is a little more intense guy. A better example is Phil Jackson Popovich. You know both personalities. You're a pretty intense guy. First of all, you look intense. You have piercing eyes that you try to look through someone's. soul and spirit you are already intimidating how you know that you have to go back a little and a person who does not need to come a little more to be more assertive how you became aware that at what time a certain situation was there for you when you grew up in the army and you see the way other people react to leadership and you see someone who is super tough and comes across as strong to everyone and you see what that produces because it doesn't produce good results, you know when I first started doing this when I started my leadership consulting company, one of the first clients I had.

I'm talking to the CEO on the phone and he says: I can't wait for you to come here and get my people in shape. and I said, you know, if you're looking for someone to whip your people into shape, you should really look for someone else because I'm not going to whip anyone into shape, and by the way, whipping people into shape doesn't work. Doesn't it make them what you want them to do? It doesn't turn them into dogs. If you hit a dog, he will surely get off the couch right now and you can beat him whenever you want.

I know when he barks and you can beat him when he does something wrong, but eventually you just have a broken dog that will no longer protect your house. You have to balance it and you know, you talk about military leadership and you know that on my podcast. I talk about military leadership all the time and I go into a lot of depth on all kinds of famous historical military leaders, but most of the leaders who were considered the toughest and most disciplinarians always have a side that is very soft and really knows how to connect with people.

I mean, I just did a couple of podcasts about Chesty Puller, the famous Marine. Hmmm, you know the most famous Marine of all time and he's known as a completely tough disciplinarian, but when you read about the way he treated his troops, he loved those guys and they knew it and he could be tough on him and even though I was being hard on him, he had a way of making that connection and he knew how to balance that dichotomy of being too hard and being too harsh. too soft, so what I think is important is to start recognizing the signs of when you go too far in one direction or the other, so if you're working for me, I look at you and tell you what to do.

You do it and you don't show any initiative, right, you just come to work and you're waiting for me to come in and you're waiting with your pencil and paper, you want to do a good job, yeah, and when I tell you what to do, you go out and do it, but I don't see any initiative from you, that's an indicator to me of how I'm micromanaging you and giving you too much direction and not letting you grow. I want to do good but I'm not taking the initiative, so it's not that I don't show up.

I'm not working but I'm not taking the initiative because you're telling me everything I have to do for my muscle to take the initiative. It's not there anymore. I had a guy who worked for me as a radio operator and you know he was a little lost. That's great, by the way, what you just said is correct, so I borrow. I don't know if you understood that part. I don't even know if you read much into what he just said now, so this idea of ​​the dichotomy of leadership is in everything and no one has talked about it before, I mean, they haven't talked about this guy.

These kinds of details, I've never seen anyone talk about it except the one we just mentioned, so I had a guy who worked for me and this was when he was a young radio man. He was a radio man. secondary radio guy and he was a little bit, he wasn't quite sure what was going on, he didn't really know quite what to do, so I told him to give him some guidance and he wouldn't make that happen. I really wouldn't know how to figure it out, so every day I started giving up the yellow sticker that said checkboxes and what I wanted to do with that name and I'd give it to him and he'd nail it and get it out of control. the park but the next day I walked in and instead of him thinking, well, I had to do it yesterday, maybe I should do it today, he didn't think that he had gotten used to waiting for me to give him a yellow sticker. that said what I had to do, so I hadn't developed any initiative from that, so I realized I had to stop doing that, so I started saying: hey, tell me what you're going to do tomorrow, he is taking her back, well what do you mean?

Tell me what you know what operation awaits us, tell me what you are going to do tomorrow and then he started to grow and take that initiative and again this happens, you know, another good one you have. in your company you go to a meeting you arrive 10 minutes late to a meeting for whatever reason there are eight people in the meeting and they are sitting like this with their notebooks waiting for you to come in you arrive 10 minutes late I have just been sitting there waiting for you, they are being micromanaged and not They have no initiative.

On the other end of the spectrum, you are 10 yo, 10 minutes late to your meeting, there are supposed to be eight people there, four are left and the other four are gone. two of them are talking about something and two of them are starting to plan a project that you know nothing about and that you don't even want them to do, that means you're not managing them enough because whatYou should see, you arrive ten minutes to meet, the second person in the chain of command is there and says: Hello Patrick, we're starting. I'll let you know later if you want to sit down and listen and okay, Mike, why don't you go over that again?

So someone took the initiative, took control, stepped up and led, and you should say, "Hey, great, you know what you tell me later? I'm going to go, you need to be there more." created situations like that is what you're saying create situations like situations like that see where you've gone as your people and then you see them their spirit gets bigger they feel more confident that I'm taking responsibility so the problem is that how are you? giving birth to a person who creates initiative is what is that you are talking about the same if necessary because some people are born with initiative some people you have to hold them back some people you I have to take the reins which is great and I prefer having those people that I have to take the reins, so let's talk about standards.

I think it's the second. Are you talking about your book? Are there times when you are not so strict? or you're like Ray Dalio. I don't know if you read the book Principles by Ray Dalio. It is a fascinating book and for it, here are the principles. We are not compromising these principles. Where are you? With what standards? The immediate impression that everyone would consider from me and I hear this all the time is that Jakka wouldn't allow any kind of merciless slack with anything true, you're out of, you're out of the regulations, I'm going to drop the hammer on you, well, The fact is, the thing is, that doesn't work as a leader in the military, you know, people wear patches on their uniforms.

Well, SEAL teams have a reputation for being very unprofessional, we don't really know how to wear our uniforms well, we don't wear our uniforms. we have a lot of mix and match equipment, we buy civilian equipment that we use, that we just have a bad reputation and one of the things that once the war started and we started having these high speed camouflage uniforms with velcro everywhere, well, the guys started making their own patches and the patches where you know, some of them just got cold, you know whatever, a skull, a knife or a dirham, I bet the guys make their own patches here's a typical one, there's one that guys would do, it's a fun meter and it would be a meter that is set as well, we're at maximum fun here, that's the typical kind of thing that people would do well.

I knew that working with the conventional force is that the way you appear in the uniform is very important, you know that you are in the military, especially in an airborne division, I mean, you wear the same PT uniform, you wear the same uniform, you you fix all the time, that's right, yes, and I knew that also the soldiers and officers in the army, the marines and the marine corps. when you look at someone, that's the uniform, you look at that person, the system, this guy can't even put on a uniform. How will I trust him on the battlefield?

It's just not the mentality they have, it's a good mentality, right? don't pay attention to the details on that stuff, that's a problem, well the SEAL teams were very lazy about it. I told my guys, look, we're not wearing patches, there are no patches, and my two platoon commanders said, well, you can't find no. patches we won't use patches, but they really wanted to use patches, so behind my back they went and got patches made in the task unit thug patches what they would do is if they went to an operation that I wasn't on when they unwound the cable , they would make a radio call and say patches on and they would take off the patches and put them on, basically disobeying a direct order from me would have been fine except there was a certain operation that They continued, there was a photographer on board and the photos came back and I had all the pictures and I see all my boys with patches that I told them not to wear, you know what I did.

I didn't do anything you didn't bring. I mentioned it. I didn't mention it. I realized that we were fighting in a very difficult environment where troops were being wounded and killed every day. Where will you do it at this time? We were in Ramadi. It's okay for me to focus my leadership capital on something. That little guy was a complete waste of my number two leadership capital. I realized that these guys, that was a boost in their morale that made them feel like a more united unit, they gave these patches to the army guys, that was a big deal for them and it meant a lot to him, so that going in and ripping those morals out of him would have been a step down in his view of me and his respect for me and would have antagonized our relationship.

I didn't come out and say hello. Guys, I saw the patches, they're okay to use and Lafe was talking about this, you know, he thought I was just going to drop the hammer on him and I didn't say anything and the guys keep doing it and it wasn't a Big Deal, now they weren't wearing any patches. inappropriate, the patches they wore were all the same, so it was uniform, but the answer to your question, which is probably the opposite of what a lot of people think I'm going to say, is like what, are you going to waste your leadership capital?

Now on the other side of the spectrum if you get someone who is doing something that is illegal, immoral gambling, that is strategic, will that impact you strategically? Yeah, I'm not bailing on John for something that's that important to me or that's that important to them how urgent are you to address in that immediate immediate I'm not, I'm not talking about urgency to address it guess what there's no urgency guys. They already know the priorities that they already know that they are not going to do this, they already know that they are not going to make this movement, so it's not me who says, hey, wait a second, we don't do that here, no, they already knew that yes.

They are doing something that is outside of what I do. I'm fine, yes, they are out of the ordinary. To what extent did the way you build a team have a code of honor that everyone followed? Was it a code of honor where I can report him? He can't report it without you. Being there was that kind of environment because it wasn't all about you having to be there, was it an open call environment? Well, there's no, you know what I'm talking about right, the answer that everyone wants to hear is like Look, we're totally transparent and we'll come back from the operation and we'll say, hey, you screwed this up and it was your fault, Patrick, and if you do something that It's really atrocious, right? and we have a report, absolutely yes we have to learn.

We had a report, we had to have difficult conversations with each other, so yes, absolutely the caveat is that it doesn't give you permission to be disrespectful, right, idiotic, right, and that's just the way it is. The CEO of GE wrote an article for Harvard Business Review. beautiful article, this was about eight months ago, you had a conference call for all your C type executives, CEO CSO, so you know the CEOs gave the go ahead to all the bosses and every time you had an issue related to your business they you and I are having. I'm the CEO, you're the CFO, we're having a conversation, maybe I don't necessarily know public information that can't leak to other different departments, but just general things that you and I can talk about.

It was done in a conference call. number that all type C employees had access to, which means that if I have to call you and tell you, hey jackal, what happened this last quarter. I'm looking at some of the numbers here, there are some mistakes we made. What happened there? He is the CMO and he can take the call to listen to our dialogue. So what happened? He says when I first introduced that to the culture in the community. People were not initially receptive to it. Suddenly because it was like, oh my God, did you see what happened there?

They listen? He resolves three six twelve months, but no one responded to these calls. I can only give one. It's like listening. I have it. We are all. everyone had problems, but it became so open and transparent where everyone realized what the culture was, so the level of responsibility started to go together because they were on the same page, what do you think of an approach like then? Obviously I'm not saying what you think. Think with this CEO. I'm just asking you in a general setting. Something strange about an approach like this comes back to balance because what you're trying to do is build relationships among your team, so the moment you call someone. in a really negative way and you're making someone look bad and you're offending their ego.

Look, there is no one in the world who likes receiving criticism or let's say there are zero one percent of people who actually enjoy receiving criticism. I don't enjoy it, it's hard, you can move up, you can make it easier for people and you definitely make the SEAL teams. We've definitely gotten to a point where you know you need to have frank conversations with people, for sure, collective or individual, collective and individual. I know if the platoon screws up an operation we will be reporting and it will come out and everyone will know it will come out who screwed it up it will come out who screwed it up oh this isn't all the time if it was minor mistakes and things that could be fixed it will be a nicer report and because my goal is for people to like each other, we don't like each other when we criticize each other and make ourselves look bad, we don't like each other either. each other when we are failing because we are not taking corrective action because we are not bringing up what is most annoying slacking off or not being liked well a mission doesn't count for example let me give you an example of what I mean by this someone calls me and they say hey Pat, I can't believe how Mari was doing this, this is I said okay so what do you want to do about it?

You just call me because you need someone to talk because I listen. for you, but do you expect me to do something about it? You want to call Mario. He says no, but I don't think he's okay. When Mario did it, he's fine. Why don't you go and deal directly? Have you already done it? I haven't done it yet. You have one of two options: let it go or call them and deal directly, but if it's such a big deal when you call me and complain, then call them and have a private conversation with them. and sit down with them, yeah, well, it's affecting my business, if you came to complain about Mario, you'd have a really hard time getting me to talk to Mario without me looking at you and saying, "Okay, fix things." yeah, that's right, that's what I'm saying, okay, you know, we're at the same time and you said you want me to go - not at all, no, no, I want you to go, Mario, so we're saying the same thing.

I like that atmosphere because you know, this guy was telling me all this stuff for like ten minutes and four guys left two guys are on another project these are the two guys or you know, playing games or whatever and finally I said one of the guys you take charge will inform everyone in the sense that you are allowing me to take the initiative for me I want I want you to take the initiative not to be afraid to have a real conversation - to be disrespectful - to criticize the character - to express a dislike towards the be human because everyone is going to have some flaws, but if there is behavior that affected team responsibility and goals, we have to make sure we fulfill our mission here, so you can't just let it go and say, I don't want everyone to dislike the question you raised.

For me, would you rather win or please? Well, I will tell you that in my mind they are not opposites and I will tell you from everything I have seen, the team that likes each other, the team that they are wins. fighting each other that's all they lose I don't know if it's all the time there you know we like each other all the time by the way oh do we have disagreements? absolutely true, but if we find what it is, I'm saying we get along, we have a relationship, of course, what's most important in team building is trust or I like trust, obviously, but I don't like them. people I don't trust, so those two things aren't opposites either. you're not hanging with me I'll tell you a story here my parents got divorced okay but my mother's family when they had money they wanted to give someone to take care of them they always called my dad they didn't like my dad but they trusted my dad more than in his own family, it makes sense that they would say, listen, give him the million dollars, it's Gabriel, everyone knew the money isn't going anywhere, he'll take care of it now he'll scold you, he'll tell you.

Fuck you, he'll tell you all these other things about how you made the money, what you did, but you knew the money would stay there. The challenge was for my dad to say yes. I'll go ahead and deal with the money, that's the part where sometimes when it comes to doing business, at certain times on the trust side, the example comes up, but obviously in a perfect environment, I'll give you an example. of what we're going through now with our business in the last four. months in a row we broke our record consecutively, this is not small numbers, we are not talking about four hundred policies a month, we are talking about 3500 to 4000 insurance policies in a month, so this requires a lot of skill, we probably like each other more at the moment and we probably trust each other more now than ever.

Everything you do is a battle against allothers within the peloton and you have no idea how much I missed and loved that course, so it's okay. Going to the next part was there every time there was a guy who was a great soldier but maybe he wasn't the best most competitive guy you had but you still wanted to keep him it's a bell curve and you'll get people on the top end of the spectrum who are total studs and you'll get people on the lower end of the spectrum. spectrum which is not if I get someone who is not so competitive ok well what will make them do better? what will make them drive harder there is a difference when I am in the military and many times when the military leaves and leaves In business, there is a struggle during the first few years.

This is not the army. It's not the Marines. This is not the Navy SEAL. Been in that environment where you're being a little too intense You're too nervous This is too crazy There was an adjustment you had to make in the way you led Seal in the way you lead your businesses today No, really, really, no fit no, let me just ask you: is there a different way you direct the stamps? Is it a different way you run your business? I'll tell you why, because one of the most important things you have to be able to do as a leader is you have to be able to detach, you have to be able to step back and not get emotional.

God and that's how you make good decisions and if you're working for me and I see that you're getting sidetracked and I care about you, you know I definitely care about you and I want you to do well and you're not listening well, I'm going to tell you to listen Patrick. , you really got it, this is work, that's what we have to do. I want you to win and you still don't listen to me, but you're still doing the work. You're not reaching your best level, but you're still there. functioning well, your children, Loosli, you want them to have the best life possible, so it is very difficult to control your emotions.

How do you manage your family once you realize that the more emotions you put into it, the more pressure you put on your children to act one way or another, the less effective it is. This doesn't mean you never show emotions. You work for me well. and your operations to partner with a seller the operations department drops the ball on something and you come to me and you lost the client and you lost the deal and you lost money and you come to me and you are furious mm-hmm you have been working on this for months you're angry and you come this is this shit these guys are horrible they didn't support Me now, if I look at you and I'm going to calm down, Patrick, your reaction will be to get even angrier.

I'm on the other team because I'm telling you to calm down, don't get angry, you come in screaming. Are you serious about what happened? Oh, that's ridiculous. I have to give you enough to make you realize that I'm on your side. Did you have to work on that? I was paying attention to him and I got lucky. I don't even know why. I don't even know why, but I was paying attention to leadership all the time. Now I didn't really start thinking about it until I was in a leadership position, so at first I was an enlisted guy and then I became an officer.

The first time you were in a leadership position was a decade later, a decade after I came in, so Jack oh, let me ask you what's the difference between 28-year-old Jocko, 38-year-old Jack oh, and now the 47 year old. Jack Oh, what's the difference between those three leaders? The older I get, the less I know. One of the things I realized in a leadership position is that the words you say matter mm-hmm, the actions you take matter, people listen, people listen. Observing that people respect or disrespect you based on how you behave before. You use the word that I think we can talk about for three hours.

Obviously we won't do it. The only thing you said, you said detached, right? You said detached, what did you use to do? Mentally prepare your guys to say guys, we love Sergeant Jones or we love him, but we still have to move on, how did you mentally and emotionally get your soldiers and your troops to say we have to get on with the mission and finish this right? There was no preparation. To that end, when we deployed to Iraq in 2006, we had been fighting since 2003 and had had very few SEAL team casualties. The number of guys who had experienced the death of their comrades in action was minuscule, so there was no preparation other than What I learned from reading about combat all my life, what I did was what I knew how to do, which was work and that's literally what I told my guys: we've crossed a line and there is no, no possible way to replace, describe or overcome the amount of gut-wrenching sadness you feel when you lose a teammate.

I didn't know what to do and I didn't know what to say the first time, the first time, the second time, the third time. Irrelevant Startup At that point what I did was and I told my guys I don't know what to do and I don't know what to tell you, the only thing I know how to do is get back to work and I would know that if Mark was here. he would want us to get back to work, so we'll lock up and load our guns and do what we do. Would you say those are some of the things that the only way to learn is?

To learn about it and even discover how you handle it is to experience it. I think understanding the history and reading and knowing how people have gone through this before just the fact that you know when we had a small number of casualties, you know I lost three guys from the Bruiser task unit, each one of them is a epic loss for us and for humanity and at the same time, in World War II, in World War I, there were days when thousands and thousands died and that offered me a little bit of perspective to think that beings Humans can feel special and we can feel that no one has gone through what I went through and that the world is difficult for me and easier for everyone else, well, the reality is That is not true and we are not special and the things for which What other people go through is probably much worse and much more significant, so for me it was something that gave me at least some level of perspective to realize that other warriors had gone through this before this was my turn and that's how I'll try to handle it.

Did you take it as a responsibility? I mean, the men who came before me handled this. I'll give the same example too. Me too. I wouldn't say I consciously thought about it, but I definitely knew we were

seal

s, we were military. I mean, in Ramadi there were soldiers and marines killed almost every day, wounded and killed for sure every day. I mean, there was bad, it was a reality for me, I mean, I knew that no matter how bad it was, the chances of surviving an entire deployment without losing someone would have been very, very small and I knew that and that's the reality of combat is a reality of combat, you say it like that but at the same time, seeing that you have four children and it's not that you didn't have children while you go through this and, sometimes, as a leader with someone in your position people forget that Not only are you leading troops, you have kids at home, maybe you haven't seen him in a while, your troops are going through the exact same thing, you have your own emotional stuff that you're trying to deal with.

Take care of yourself and people still expect you to lead because sometimes you know how people ask you a question. I'm sure I've been asked this before. Laugh, how do you keep everything under control? How do you keep it together? What did you do to keep up? -led as much as possible so that you can make the best decisions as a leader, well the number one is to prioritize and execute correctly, look at what is most important and how you are going to handle that and the other important one is to be able to separate yourself so that you don't have emotionally bad things and I will tell you that I was significantly separated from my family when I was in Ramadi significantly I couldn't call my family I didn't talk to him much yes I had the opportunity to call once a week, send an email here and there.

I didn't have any pictures of him hanging on the wall. The priority was to take care of my boys. That was the priority. My family is here in California. Okay, I don't need to worry about them, I need to worry about the guys that are in my charge and that's what I did and that's what I focused on and you know that's probably an answer that some people don't want. listen to it because it seems heartless, but yeah, it's actually the opposite and you know you have guys that also have families to come home to, so being focused on anything other than taking care of those guys is wrong, and that's What I'm focusing on is, how did your wife feel about that support?

Well I was very lucky, I laughed, who was the best leader you saw that you worked with? They said he's a guy that I would model some of his habits after there was a guy that was. It was a very interesting situation. I was very lucky. He was in my second

seal

platoon, so he was 21 or 22 years old. We had a mutiny in the platoon. A mutiny to fuel the mutiny. We turned against our leader. He was a bad leader. He was arrogant, he was selfish, he tried to make everything fit his ideas, we went to our commanding officer and told him we don't want to work for this guy.

Why, yes, the commanding officer fired a commanding officer, he bowed to the new commanding officer. he supported us and did it very tactfully, he was a great commanding officer, he actually told us to get out of my office and go do our job and then a week later the guy disappeared and the new commander came in and the new platoon commander He was the complete opposite of this guy, the complete opposite, he had a lot of experience and instead of trying to handle everything, he let us handle everything, so an enlisted guy is a guy who rose through the ranks, you would think that the previous enlisted guy who has been on the ground. that has done the heavy lifting that has been moving up the ranks they will always be better officers hmm not true there are multiple ways you can get your commission multiple ways to become an officer you can go to a service academy like West Point or the Naval Academy , you can go to ROTC while you're in college or you can finish college, you can go to OCS or you can pre-enlist, so those are the four basic ways to become an officer.

I have worked on each of them. I've worked with the best officers I've worked with the worst officers it doesn't matter who that person is it's what kind of character he was the odds of a guy who was enlisted had slightly higher odds than the others, even if he's a little taller , this is what happens with some previous enlistees. I already know everything. I know how to do this better than you, so you get former enlistees who are a little arrogant and then they don't know how to develop other leaders because they think they know everything, so no one can.

There is a shadow. They can't coexist with a drill sergeant. Green. I'll never forget the guy. We had an MS-13 guy in our unit and a sergeant at the time. They do not know that. Sir. It was so the guy walks, he has a big ms-13, he says, so what is ms-13? It's my mother's initial in us, the street she lived on, so, you know, I keep it in all my thoughts, no problem at the time and then it was me, him and a couple of other guys from Los Angeles and Sergeant Green says he had five eight maybe 145 150 and he says, look, you guys are tough guys, you guys are the toughest guy in the unit, yeah, yeah, Sergeant, I want to take you guys and show you something, there's no warning, like this that we get into the Humvee, he takes us to the back forty and he gets out and you know what his gestures were like, he spoke very slowly, Chako, what were the instructions that were given, that was his approach, so it was.

He's not like the other drill sergeant with his hat in your face, you know, constantly hitting him, takes off his jacket, hangs it on the side mirrors, says who wants to go first, this is what you mean now that we're all La big jean sister wants to go first one by one by one and he knocked us all down, okay, he says, look when we come back, this stays here. I'm not going to embarrass you, but I just want you to know that you're not that No matter how tough you think you are, let's go back and make our unit the best unit we ever come back to, Jackel, we were, you know when this guy said something?

We all agreed with them, so here's a question for T for leadership, to see what you would say about this. In part, what was a mistake you made in leadership? Once you messed up, you learned from it, you got out and you grew to the fullest, so I was just an analyst, a guy in a seal platoon, we were doing some exercises in the desert. There was a time when the officer didn't make a call quickly enough. At that moment he was quite confident, quite arrogant. At that moment we were doing the drill and I didn't give it any time.

I just made a call, boom and everyone did it. because that's what you know, if someone makes a call, we make it and when we were done with that iteration and he took me aside and said, hey, I'm the officer, you should let me make the calls and that was it. He wasn't even that harsh about it, but the most important thing is that I realized at that moment: there is a line that you can cross and you can step on people's feet and they don't like it if you become too aggressive as a subordinate and start stepping on yourself. the feet of your leaders, they will reject youability to say "okay", I can go so far, but if I go too far I am problematic.

I worked for idiots and I worked for some of the best. Tactical, strategic and human leaders that I could never have imagined and my relationship with these boys and with these boys and with everyone in between was the same, my relationship was the same with everyone and that is that they trusted me, they gave me what I needed to do. my job and they let me go do my job did you ever read the book 40 loss of power I have seen the book and many people have told me about the book, but I have not read it.

Did you read his other book? 33 war

strategies

. Every book I've read is a true account of war from someone who fought like that God, I don't really read books God from people who didn't decide 40 laws of power, you know what law number one is, you will never outshine your master Jack, the most influential book for you, I know you You owe everyone everything your bread has to do with someone in the war. What is the most influential book you know called Turn-face written by Colonel David Hackworth? It's about a guy who is just an incredible military leader and it's not a book about leadership and he and he doesn't really talk specifically about leadership in the book and it's an 850 page book and every page is about leadership. his podcast.

I think 2016 ranked 12th among podcasts. I think it was podcast number 12 or some number like that to talk about traffic a little bit about your podcast and how people can find it. The podcast is called the jaakko podcast, it's everywhere, and it's about human nature through the lens of war, leadership, and human struggle. I cover a lot of topics, some of them are very hard, some of them are very difficult to listen to. I've had amazing guests on the podcast. Mike Thornton, who is a stamp of Vietnam, received the Medal of Honor. It's an absolutely incredible story when you see people in these difficult situations, that's when human nature reveals itself and more. you can understand human nature, the better leader you will be.

I love that if you're a veteran, if you're serving today or your veteran, you're thinking about starting a business and you're wondering who to follow, you have to do it. Follow this guy and secondly, it doesn't matter if you're a veteran or not, you need a lot of mentality here because a lot of times you look at a team and say, Pat, you know you hit it hard and you hit it straight. you don't hold back and all these other things about what things we should do with business. This mentality is very necessary to be able to succeed in business.

Many people who do not succeed in business are due to emotional problems. mental toughness so his book it doesn't matter if you were ever in the military before or you are not extreme owner read it carefully it is fascinating you will learn a lot from it and last but not least I chuckle which is your name on Twitter? in Chaco willing, I want you to tweet Jocko and tell them what you learned from today's interview. We cover so many different spectrums of leadership, today just tells you how deep he can go into that topic from the experience that Brother Jocko has.

Thank you very much for your service and your time, truly thank you, thank you for your service, well, thank you, thank you for inviting me.