Leader of The Week | 08/05/20
I want to start a series, for our readers where I share current leaders that I have been learning from, and it will hopefully give you direction as well. For me, it is often difficult to navigate the thousands of so-called experts and know who is truly going to give me practical insights. I trust these posts are helpful for you and give you ways to learn from professionals who can improve your life.
This week’s leader we’re learning from is Jocko Willink.
(From echelonfront.com)1 Jocko Willink is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer, co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win, Dichotomy of Leadership, host of the top-rated Jocko Podcast, and co-founder of Echelon Front, where he serves as Chief Executive Officer, leadership instructor, speaker and strategic advisor. Jocko spent 20 years in the SEAL Teams, starting as an enlisted SEAL and rising through the ranks to become a SEAL officer. As commander of SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser during the battle of Ramadi, he orchestrated SEAL operations that helped the “Ready First” Brigade of the U.S. Army’s First Armored Division bring stability to the violent, war-torn city. Task Unit Bruiser became the most highly decorated Special Operations Unit of the Iraq War.
Jocko returned from Iraq to serve as Officer-in-Charge of training for all West Coast SEAL Teams. There, he spearheaded the development of leadership training and personally instructed and mentored the next generation of SEAL leaders who have continued to perform with great success on the battlefield. Jocko is the recipient of the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and numerous other personal and unit awards.
Upon retiring from the Navy, Jocko co-founded Echelon Front, a premier leadership consulting company, where he teaches the leadership principles, he learned on the battlefield to help others lead and win. Jocko also authored the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, a New York Times Bestseller, and the best-selling Way of the Warrior Kid children’s book series.
3 Practical Takeaways from Jocko:
1. In the book he co-authored with Leif Babin, Extreme Ownership2, he writes that as leaders it is critical to admit every fault or shortcoming to your team in order to learn how to improve the next time they do the task. After reading about this mindset shift and how important it is for team building, I have been trying it in my own life. I have noticed a difference when I take responsibility for the things I mess up on rather than giving all the reasons why I’m not the person to blame. I have also been learning one of the most freeing things I can say in certain situations is “I don’t know”. Rather than trying to make numerous things that might not actually be true, I just say, “I don’t know but let me get back to you with what I find”. This has given me freedom to research things rather than have a burden of being an expert at everything. Give that a shot next time you are in a similar situation and see how it works out.
2. Another great concept Willink discusses in his book, Extreme Ownership2, is that in order for a leader to inspire other people to get a mission completed, the leaders themselves must be a true believer in the mission. Let me give two opposing examples that may give you better context of this lesson. When I was in youth football, we were losing a game and making plenty of mistakes and when we reached the final minutes our coach gave up and told our quarterback to call all the plays instead. This was discouraging for us as a team because our coach is supposed to be the one person who can be there for us whether we win or lose. Our coach didn’t believe so it resulted in us not believing, and therefore losing the game.
A positive example of someone who believed is a professor I had in college. I had failed the first two exams of the semester and the professor could see I was struggling with the material. So, one day he told me to stay after the lecture and he told me something I’ll never forget. He said you can do better than this you just need to apply yourself. He said for every hour of lecture I needed to study 3 hours a week. So, I studied like a madman after his talk and ended up scoring significantly higher on the next exams. This would have never happened had I not had someone who truly believed I could succeed.
How can you be a positive example for someone and show them you believe in them?
3. The last of many takeaways from Jocko is about detaching from situations to understand them better. In his interview with Tim Ferriss3 he says, “I’m not reading you correctly if I’m seeing you through my own emotion or ego. If I can step out of that, now I can see the real you and assess if you are getting angry, or if your ego is getting hurt, or if you’re about to cave because you’re just fed up with me. Whereas, if I’m raging in my own head, I might miss all of that. So being able to detach as a leader is crucial” (Ferris, T., 2017).
This has been very helpful to me when people might get angry at work or school and I can “step out” of the situation and see it from a neutral perspective. For example, if someone is angry at me, I will think, “oh maybe they didn’t eat breakfast yet” or “maybe they had a fight with their spouse last night”. This helps to not take things personally and internalize them but rather let their words just be words. If they are truly offending you and making it personal, then that needs to be discussed with them that this isn’t how you want to be treated and let them know that it’s crossing a boundary. However, in general, this tool from Willink can be useful to not internalize what people are saying and rather use what they’re saying as information you can choose to process as you need to. Try this lesson of “detaching from situations” and see how it can help you.
I hope this article was helpful for you and gave you a snapshot of who Jocko Willink is and some lessons that can help you this week.
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For more information on Jocko Willink, check out https://echelonfront.com.
Twitter: @JockoWillink
Facebook: jkowillink
Instagram: @jockowillink
Resources
1. echelonfront.com
2. Willink, J., & Babin, L. (2018). Extreme ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs lead and win. Sydney, N.S.W.: Macmillan.
3. Ferriss, T. (2017). Jocko Willink. In T. Ferriss, A. Schwarzenegger, & R. Geoffroi (Authors), Tools of titans: The tactics, routines, and habits of billionaires, icons, and world-class performers (p. 417). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
