Jocko Willink

Leaders who pushed their people to excel, to continuously learn and grow, enabled their teams to become comfortable in situations where they were previously uncomfortable. By challenging frontline leaders and junior or less experienced personnel to take on greater roles and responsibilities, the team implements proper Decentralized Command so that leaders at every level of the team step up to lead.

Humility is the most important quality in a leader. When we had to fire SEAL leaders from leadership positions in a platoon or task unit, it was almost never because they were tactically unsound, physically unfit, or incompetent. It was most often because they were not humble: they couldn’t check their ego, they refused to accept constructive criticism or take ownership for their mistakes.

The best leaders are not driven by ego or personal agendas. They are simply focused on the mission and how best to accomplish it.

Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame.

In order to convince and inspire others to follow and accomplish a mission, a leader must be a true believer in the mission.

Leadership requires belief in the mission and unyielding perseverance to achieve victory, particularly when doubters question whether victory is even possible.

The only meaningful measure for a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails.

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.

Total responsibility for failure is a difficult thing to accept, and taking ownership when things go wrong requires extraordinary humility and courage.

Leadership is the single greatest factor in any team’s performance. Whether a team succeeds or fails is all up to the leader.

Ultimately, they must fully accept that there truly are no bad teams, only bad leaders.

Leaders should never be satisfied. They must always strive to improve, and they must build that mindset into the team.

The recognition that there are no bad teams, only bad leaders facilitates Extreme Ownership and enables leaders to build high-performance teams that dominate on any battlefield, literal or figurative.

Leaders must always operate with the understanding that they are part of something greater than themselves and their own personal interests.

Far more important than training or equipment, a resolute belief in the mission is critical for any team or organization to win and achieve big results.

Every leader must be able to detach from the immediate tactical mission and understand how it fits into strategic goals.

In any organization, goals must always be in alignment. If goals aren’t aligned at some level, this issue must be addressed and rectified.

Leaders must accept total responsibility, own problems that inhibit performance, and develop solutions to those problems.

When personal agendas become more important than the team and the overarching mission’s success, performance suffers and failure ensues.

It’s not about you. It’s not about the drilling superintendent. It’s about the mission and how best to accomplish it.

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.

If the overall team fails, everyone fails, even if a specific member or an element within the team did their job successfully.

Every individual and every team within the larger team gets to share in the success. Accomplishing the strategic mission is the highest priority.

Combat, like anything in life, has inherent layers of complexities. Simplifying as much as possible is crucial to success.

In the business world, and in life, there are inherent complexities. It is critical to keep plans and communication simple.

All animals, including humans, need to see the connection between action and consequence in order to learn or react appropriately.

The most impressive thing about this improvement in performance was that it did not come from a major process change or an advance in technology. Instead, it came through a leadership principle that has been around for ages: Simple.

When priorities shift within the team, pass situational awareness both up and down the chain. Don’t let the focus on one priority cause target fixation. Maintain the ability to see other problems developing and rapidly shift as needed.

A particularly effective means to help Prioritize and Execute under pressure is to stay at least a step or two ahead of real-time problems. Through careful contingency planning, a leader can anticipate likely challenges that could arise during execution and map out an effective response to those challenges before they happen.

Prioritize and Execute. Prioritize your problems and take care of them one at a time, the highest priority first. Don’t try to do everything at once or you won’t be successful.

Ego clouds and disrupts everything: the planning process, the ability to take good advice, and the ability to accept constructive criticism.

Implementing Extreme Ownership requires checking your ego and operating with a high degree of humility.

If your team doesn’t get it, you have not kept things simple and you have failed.

The foremost requirement for potent leadership is humility, so that leaders can fully understand and appreciate their own shortfalls. We learned much on the battlefield and have tried to pass those lessons on, but we are still humbled every day by our mistakes and all that we continue to learn.

My ego took no offense to my subordinate leaders on the frontlines calling the shots. In fact, I was proud to follow their lead and support them.

Human beings are generally not capable of managing more than six to ten people, particularly when things go sideways and inevitable contingencies arise.

Junior leaders must be proactive rather than reactive. To be effectively empowered to make decisions, it is imperative that frontline leaders execute with confidence.

Understanding proper positioning as a leader is a key component of effective Decentralized Command, not just on the battlefield.

In chaotic, dynamic, and rapidly changing environments, leaders at all levels must be empowered to make decisions. Decentralized Command is a key component to victory.

Without a clear chain of command—people knowing who is in charge of what—you cannot have empowered leadership. And that is critical to the success of any team, including the SEAL Teams or your company here.

That is why simplicity is so important. Proper Decentralized Command requires simple, clear, concise orders that can be understood easily by everyone in the chain of command.

Junior leaders must be empowered to make decisions and take initiative to accomplish the mission. That was critical to our success on the battlefield.

Trust is not blindly given. It must be built over time. Situations will sometimes require that the boss walk away from a problem and let junior leaders solve it, even if the boss knows he might solve it more efficiently.

That complete faith in what others will do, how they will react, and what decisions they will make is the key ingredient in the success of Decentralized Command.

We had addressed and mitigated every risk that we could through planning. But every risk could not be controlled. This mission was inherently dangerous.

The mission must be carefully refined and simplified so that it is explicitly clear and specifically focused to achieve the greater strategic vision for which that mission is a part.

The best teams employ constant analysis of their tactics and measure their effectiveness so that they can adapt their methods and implement lessons learned for future missions.

The best-laid plans were worthless. Without successful execution, the best-laid plans were worthless.

The true test for a good brief is not whether the senior officers are impressed. It’s whether or not the troops that are going to execute the operation actually understand it.

We need to look at ourselves and see what we can do better. We have to write more-detailed reports that help them understand what we are doing and why we are making the decisions we are making.

One of the most important jobs of any leader is to support your own boss—your immediate leadership. In any chain of command, the leadership must always present a united front to the troops.

If your boss isn't making a decision in a timely manner or providing necessary support for you and your team, don't blame the boss. First, blame yourself.

Take responsibility for leading everyone in your world, subordinates and superiors alike.

No matter how big or bureaucratic your company seems, it pales in comparison to the gargantuan U.S. military bureaucracy.

If my chain of command had questions about my plans or needed additional information or more detailed paperwork, it was not their fault, it was my fault.

That’s ‘leading up the chain of command,' I explained. The field manager came around to this realization. He accepted that he needed to do better in pushing situational awareness, information, and communication up the chain.

Leaders must be comfortable under pressure, and act on logic, not emotion. This is a critical component to victory.

In order to succeed, leaders must be comfortable under pressure, and act decisively amid uncertainty.

There is no 100 percent right solution. The picture is never complete. Leaders must be comfortable with this and be able to make decisions promptly, then be ready to adjust those decisions quickly based on evolving situations and new information.

Leaders must be prepared to make an educated guess based on previous experience, knowledge of how the enemy operates, likely outcomes, and whatever intelligence is available in the immediate moment.

As a leader, my default setting should be aggressive—proactive rather than reactive. This was critical to the success of any team.

A leader must lead but also be ready to follow.

A leader must be calm but not robotic. It is normal—and necessary—to show emotion.

A leader must be confident but never cocky.

A leader must be strong but likewise have endurance, not only physically but mentally.

A good leader has nothing to prove, but everything to prove.

With a mindset of Extreme Ownership, any person can develop into a highly effective leader.

Leading people is the most challenging and, therefore, the most gratifying undertaking of all human endeavors.

We learned that leadership requires belief in the mission and unyielding perseverance to achieve victory, particularly when doubters question whether victory is even possible.

You can’t make people listen to you. You can’t make them execute. You have to lead them.

Only when leaders at all levels understand and believe in the mission can they pass that understanding and belief to their teams.

When leaders receive an order that they themselves question and do not understand, they must ask the question: why?

If a leader does not believe, he or she will not take the risks required to overcome the inevitable challenges necessary to win.

The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame.

The Laws of Combat

The book introduces four fundamental principles known as the Laws of Combat: Cover and Move, Simple, Prioritize and Execute, and Decentralized Command. These laws help leaders navigate complex and chaotic situations effectively. For example, 'Cover and Move' emphasizes teamwork and mutual support, which is crucial in both combat and business environments. Willink recounts a high-stakes mission in Ramadi where he had to prioritize tasks under extreme pressure, encapsulated by the advice: 'Relax. Look around. Make a call.'

Belief in the Mission

A leader's belief in the mission is crucial for team success. Willink explains that for a team to succeed, the leader must fully understand and believe in the mission. This belief enables the leader to communicate the mission's importance to their team, ensuring commitment and motivation. He illustrates this with his experience in Ramadi, where he had to continuously reinforce the importance of combat-advising Iraqi soldiers to his SEAL team. 'If a leader does not believe, he or she will not take the risks required to overcome the inevitable challenges necessary to win.'

The Importance of Simplicity

Simplicity in planning and communication is critical, especially in high-stakes environments. Willink emphasizes that overly complex plans can lead to confusion and failure. He recounts a scenario where simplifying a complex bonus system at a manufacturing plant led to better understanding and increased productivity. 'When plans and orders are too complicated, people may not understand them. And when things go wrong, complexity compounds issues that can spiral out of control into total disaster.'

Decentralized Command

Effective leadership involves empowering subordinate leaders to make decisions. This approach is crucial in complex and chaotic environments. Willink explains that no single leader can manage more than six to ten people effectively under pressure. Teams must be broken down into smaller, manageable units with clearly designated leaders who understand the overall mission. 'Junior leaders must be empowered to make decisions and take initiative to accomplish the mission.'

Discipline Equals Freedom

Discipline in daily routines and operations leads to greater freedom and effectiveness. Willink illustrates this through the rigorous routines of SEAL training, where discipline in waking up early, maintaining gear, and preparing for inspections directly correlates with success. 'Discipline—strict order, regimen, and control—might appear to be the opposite of total freedom... But, in fact, discipline is the pathway to freedom.'

Humility and Respect in Leadership

Effective leadership begins with humility and respect. Willink underscores that leaders should approach their roles with humility, listen to their team members, and treat everyone with respect regardless of rank or position. This approach fosters strong relationships, which are crucial for effective leadership. 'You treat everybody with respect. You treat them with respect and they’re going to respect you.'

Take Full Responsibility

Adopt the mindset of Extreme Ownership in all aspects of your life. When faced with challenges, avoid blaming others and instead focus on what you can do to solve the problem.

Implement the Laws of Combat

Apply the four Laws of Combat in your professional and personal life. Use 'Cover and Move' to ensure teamwork, 'Simple' to keep plans clear, 'Prioritize and Execute' to tackle tasks in order of importance, and 'Decentralized Command' to empower team members.

Communicate the 'Why'

Always ensure that your team understands the reasons behind your decisions and actions. This fosters belief and commitment, which are crucial for successful execution.

Simplify Plans and Communication

Ensure that plans and instructions are straightforward and easy to understand. This reduces the risk of confusion and enhances the team's ability to execute effectively.

Practice Humility and Respect

Approach leadership roles with humility. Listen actively to your team members, take notes, and show genuine respect for their input and perspectives. This builds trust and fosters a collaborative environment.

Discipline equals freedom.

Leadership doesn’t just flow down the chain of command, but up as well. We have to own everything in our world. That’s what Extreme Ownership is all about.

These leaders cast no blame. They made no excuses. Instead of complaining about challenges or setbacks, they developed solutions and solved problems.

Relax. Look around. Make a call.

The principles are simple, but not easy. Taking ownership for mistakes and failures is hard. But doing so is key to learning, to developing solutions, and, ultimately, to victory.

Leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield and the principles of good leadership do not change regardless of the mission, the environment, or the personalities of those involved.

We wrote this book for leaders everywhere to utilize the principles we learned to lead and win.

There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.

The leader’s attitude sets the tone for the entire team.

When setting expectations, no matter what has been said or written, if substandard performance is accepted and no one is held accountable—if there are no consequences—that poor performance becomes the new standard.

A team could only deliver exceptional performance if a leader ensured the team worked together toward a focused goal and enforced high standards of performance.

If frontline leaders and troops understand why, they can move forward, fully believing in what they are doing.

Leadership isn’t one person leading a team. It is a group of leaders working together, up and down the chain of command, to lead.

When you are in a leadership position, that is a recipe for failure, and it is unacceptable. As a leader, you must believe.

We learned lessons in war, written in blood, about sorrow, loss, and pain. We also learned about the fragility of human life and the power of the human spirit. Of course, we learned about strategy and tactics. We learned how to most effectively take the fight to our enemies. We learned how to analyze targets, gather and exploit information, find our enemy’s weaknesses, and capitalize on them.

We saw how successful leaders could create victory where victory seemed impossible. We also witnessed how poor leadership could bring defeat upon teams that seemed invincible. We discovered firsthand that the principles of leadership are “simple, but not easy.” There are strategies, techniques, and skills that take time and practice to utilize effectively.

The burden of such loss settled heavily on my soul. When Leif got back to base, I could see his heart was heavy with grief. His eyes were filled not only with tears but with doubt and questions and the solemn weight of responsibility.

Then they will answer the questions themselves. They will find solutions for themselves. They will work together to solve problems at the source, instead of running them up to you.

Every behavior or characteristic carried out by a leader can be taken too far. Leaders can become too extreme and upset the balance required to effectively lead a team. When balance is lost, leadership suffers and the team’s performance rapidly declines.

It was difficult to grasp, the hardest and most painful of all the dichotomies of leadership: to care about your men more than anything in the world—so much so that you’d even willingly trade your life for theirs—and yet, at the same time, to lead those men on missions that could result in their deaths.

That is the burden. That is the challenge. That is the dichotomy. That is leadership.

That’s another dichotomy: in order to help your team, sometimes you have to hurt them. Just like a doctor performing a surgery. Surgery is a brutal thing: cutting open a body and removing parts of it, then sewing it back together. But in order to save a life, a surgeon has to do just that.

The regional manager now understood this most difficult dichotomy of leadership: a leader must care about the troops, but at the same time the leader must complete the mission, and in doing so there will be risks and sometimes unavoidable consequences to the troops.

When a leader tries to own everything—to run every single move their team makes, it doesn’t work. Maybe it is the desire to make sure everything goes right. Maybe it is a lack of trust that subordinate leaders know what to do. Maybe it is ego—leaders want to feel they are the person who is critical for every little decision. But when a leader takes too much ownership, there is no ownership left for the team or subordinate leaders to take.

Micromanagement fails because no one person can control multiple people executing a vast number of actions in a dynamic environment, where changes in the situation occur rapidly and with unpredictability. It also inhibits the growth of subordinates: when people become accustomed to being told what to do, they begin to await direction. Initiative fades and eventually dies. Creativity and bold thought and action soon die as well.

The hands-off leader with a laissez-faire attitude is on the opposite end of the spectrum. Such a leader fails to provide specific direction—in some cases almost no clear direction whatsoever. Instead of a lack of thought like a team that is micromanaged, a team with a hands-off leader thinks too much.

You don’t need to row the boat— or even steer it. You just have to make sure it is heading in the right direction.

The first Law of Combat: Cover and Move. This is teamwork—every individual and team within the team, mutually supporting one another to accomplish the mission. Departments and groups within the team, and even those outside the immediate team that are nevertheless crucial to success, must break down silos and work together to win.

There is a time to stand firm and enforce rules and there is a time to give ground and allow the rules to bend. Finding that balance is critical for leaders to get maximum effectiveness from their team.

With Decentralized Command, it was crucial that leaders at every level be fully self-reliant, ready to step up and execute to accomplish the mission.

In any organization, and especially in the military, the harder a unit trained, the more its members were pushed, the tighter they became.

Knowing how to manage, and even thrive, in such chaos would save lives on the real battlefield and ensure a far higher probability of mission success.

Having learned that leadership—at every level of the team—is the most important thing on the battlefield, Jocko orchestrated particular focus on leadership development.

Combat is by nature confusing. It is impossible to know and understand the dynamics of everything that happens on the battlefield. This is classically known as “the fog of war.” The fog is real. Differing reports, differing opinions, differing perceptions, time lags to receive and process information, weather conditions, darkness, terrain, enemy feints and maneuvers, friendly forces moving and reacting—the chaos and uncertainty add up and paint a picture that is foggy at best.

When the brigade commander asked for support, Task Unit Bruiser delivered. We were proud to send in our SEALs and Iraqi soldiers as the lead element of troops on the ground for almost every major combat operation of the Seize, Clear, Hold, Build strategy to emplace U.S. combat outposts in the most dangerous, volatile neighborhoods of the city.

With such variation in individuals on the team, the challenge for any leader was to raise the level of every member of the team so that they could perform at their absolute best.

Most underperformers don’t need to be fired, they need to be led.

Most underperformers don’t need to be fired, they need to be led. But once every effort has been made to help an underperformer improve and all efforts have failed, a leader has to make the tough call to let that person go. This is the duty and responsibility of every leader.

Leaders are responsible for the output of the individuals on their team. The goal of any leader is to get the most out of every individual—to push each individual to reach his or her maximum potential so that the team itself can reach its maximum potential.

The dichotomy in this situation is balancing between taking care of individuals by keeping them around even if they lack the skill set to do the job properly and protecting the team by removing people from positions where they negatively impact the team and the mission.

Leadership—at every level—is the critical factor in whether a team succeeds or fails.

The strategic goal of training must always be to build capable leaders at every level of the team. For this, hard training is essential. But if training is too hard, it will break the team and minimize learning and growth. So there must be balance: train hard, but train smart.

We expected our SEALs to operate with an aggressive mind-set. We expected them to lean forward, maneuver quickly, see opportunities, and capitalize upon them—to aggressively execute to solve problems, overcome obstacles, accomplish the mission, and win. But of course there is a dichotomy with being aggressive that must be balanced: aggression is not always the answer. Aggression must be balanced with logic and detailed analysis of risk versus reward.

We knew that having a task unit patch was important for unit cohesion. We knew there was a line between patches that were offensive and a unit patch with a logo that would represent the task unit.

Problems aren’t going to solve themselves—a leader must get aggressive and take action to solve them and implement a solution.

As a leader, you must make it part of your job to see what is coming next, to observe. By observing, leaders can understand the surroundings and the terrain, they can identify enemy positions and observe the locations of their own troops.

Balance between discipline and freedom had been achieved —for now—and things were back on track.

The solution to this problem wasn’t accountability. The solution was the same answer to every problem in every team: leadership. I had to lead.

Once my troops understood why a piece of lifesaving equipment was needed and how it impacted not only them but the mission as well, they made sure not only to have the proper gear with them but also that the gear was ready for use.

Instead of using accountability as the primary tool of leadership, leaders should implement it as just one of many leadership tools. Instead of holding people accountable, the leader has to lead.

Leading didn’t mean pushing my agenda or proving I had all the answers. It was about collaborating with the rest of the team and determining how we could most effectively accomplish our mission.

It was the weakest form of leadership to win an argument through rank or position. In the Navy, we called it playing a game of “Rock, Scissors, Rank,” like the game of “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” except rank wins every time.

While I was the leader in charge, I recognized that for my team to succeed, in order to be a good leader, I also had to be willing to follow.

Confident leaders encourage junior members of the team to step up and lead when they put forth ideas that will contribute to mission success. When the team wins, much of the credit goes to the leader, whether or not that leader was the person driving the operation, tactics, or strategy, and a good leader pushes the praise and accolades down to their team.

Misery can be a remarkably effective teacher. And this was a lesson I would never forget: don’t try to plan for every contingency. Doing so will only overburden you and weigh you down so that you cannot quickly maneuver.

The lesson learned was that flexibility trumped minute details when it came to planning. The most effective teams build flexible plans.

Contingency planning helped us take the steps necessary to prepare for the uncertainty of outcomes during combat operations. And that’s no different for you or your team here.

It is a leader’s duty to mitigate the risk you can control.

The aggression that wins on the battlefield, in business, or in life is directed not toward people but toward solving problems, achieving goals, and accomplishing the mission.

Seth now understood that standard operating procedures were not fixed, inflexible laws with no room for variation. They were guidelines that needed to be balanced with adaptability and common sense. Balancing that dichotomy was required for everyone, especially leaders.

Disciplined procedures must be balanced with the ability to apply common sense to an issue, with the power to break with SOPs when necessary, with the freedom to think about alternative solutions, apply new ideas, and make adjustments to processes based on the reality of what is actually happening.

Every leader must be ready and willing to take charge, to make hard, crucial calls for the good of the team and the mission. That is inherent in the very term “leader.” But leaders must also have the ability to follow. This was a difficult dichotomy: in order to be a good leader, you must also be a good follower. Finding that balance is key.

A leader must be willing to lean on the expertise and ideas of others for the good of the team. Leaders must be willing to listen and follow others, regardless of whether they are junior or less experienced.

I had learned something very important: the power of disciplined standard operating procedures. I had always been told of their importance, especially by the Vietnam-era SEALs. Now, I had experienced it firsthand.

It was a profound lesson: leaders must be detached, must pull back to a position above the fray where they can see the bigger picture. That was the only way to effectively lead. Otherwise, the results could be disastrous.

Thorough planning, understanding and creating action plans for likely contingencies, will help you mitigate that risk. While you can’t plan for everything—and you shouldn’t get bogged down with too much planning—you must still use solid planning to mitigate the risks you can control.

The true measure of success in the large-scale counterinsurgency operations we supported lay in the stabilization and security of the city over the long term.

Leaders must be humble enough to listen to new ideas, willing to learn strategic insights, and open to implementing new and better tactics and strategies. But a leader must also be ready to stand firm when there are clearly unintended consequences that negatively impact the mission and risk harm to the team.

No more patches in Task Unit Bruiser. The patches many of you have been wearing are unprofessional. I get that they are funny. But funny patches won’t help us build strong relationships with the conventional forces we will be serving alongside.

Hard training is the solemn duty of trainers and leaders every day. It was the mantra that Jocko and his TRADET instructors lived by. And it was incumbent upon them to ensure that training was difficult, that standards were held high so that SEAL platoons and task units were ready to survive and thrive in the toughest environments they might be thrust into on distant battlefields.

Any counter-mortar and counter-IED operations in the area of C-Lake will have a very low probability of success. But the threat to our SEALs and Iraqi soldiers conducting the operation and the U.S. Army troops supporting us will be extremely high.

In trying to boost sales, the leadership team had done what they thought was right. They went Default: Aggressive to implement highly disciplined standard operating procedures. And in doing so, they went too far and took away the freedom of their salespeople to adapt on the front lines.

Is there a reason that you all are purposely not utilizing the new software?” I asked the room. There was an uncomfortable silence. “You guys haven’t given it a chance,” the CEO interjected. “You’re all complaining about it, but no one has implemented it. I think it’s just a matter of resistance to change, any change—even if the change is for the better.

We were simply fortunate enough to experience an array of leadership challenges that taught us valuable lessons.

With Extreme Ownership, you must remove individual ego and personal agenda. It’s all about the mission.

The best leaders checked their egos, accepted blame, sought out constructive criticism, and took detailed notes for improvement.

Good leaders don’t make excuses. Instead, they figure out a way to get it done and win.

If you aren’t winning, then you aren’t making the right decisions.

It’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.

If you don’t understand or believe in the decisions coming down from your leadership, it is up to you to ask questions until you understand how and why those decisions are being made.

If you don’t ask questions so you can understand and believe in the mission, you are failing as a leader and you are failing your team.

It takes courage to go to the CEO’s office, knock on her door, and explain that you don’t understand the strategy behind her decisions.

Everyone has an ego. Ego drives the most successful people in life—in the SEAL Teams, in the military, in the business world. They want to win, to be the best.

Listen: the senior leadership at corporate headquarters wants you to succeed. That’s a given. It’s up to you to inform them and help them understand some of the challenges you are dealing with here on the ground.

Extreme Ownership

The central theme of 'Extreme Ownership' is that leaders must take full responsibility for their team's actions and outcomes. Jocko Willink and Leif Babin illustrate this through various combat scenarios where SEAL leaders had to make quick, decisive actions under pressure. They emphasize that True leaders cast no blame and make no excuses. Instead, they develop solutions and solve problems. For instance, Willink states, 'There was only one person to blame for everything that had gone wrong on the operation: me.' This principle is applicable beyond the battlefield, extending to business and everyday life.

Leaders who pushed their people to excel, to continuously learn and grow, enabled their teams to become comfortable in situations where they were previously uncomfortable. By challenging frontline leaders and junior or less experienced personnel to take on greater roles and responsibilities, the team implements proper Decentralized Command so that leaders at every level of the team step up to lead.

Humility is the most important quality in a leader. When we had to fire SEAL leaders from leadership positions in a platoon or task unit, it was almost never because they were tactically unsound, physically unfit, or incompetent. It was most often because they were not humble: they couldn’t check their ego, they refused to accept constructive criticism or take ownership for their mistakes.

When SEAL leaders had to be fired from “leadership positions in a platoon or task unit, it was almost never because they were tactically unsound, physically unfit, or incompetent. It was most often because they were not humble: they couldn’t check their ego, they refused to accept constructive criticism or take ownership of their mistakes.”

A leader should have a close relationship with her team members, but never to the point of compromising her authority or the overall team’s success.

Leaders must be humble but assertive

A leader has to be detail-oriented without losing sight of the big picture .

Leaders need to be competitive but also able to lose graciously .

Leaders must be brave but not reckless .

A leader needs to be confident but not cocky .

A leader has to balance remaining calm and showing emotion

Leaders must be aggressive but not overbearing

Dichotomy #1: Care About Each Individual, but Make Sacrifices for the Group

Leaders must be attentive to details and in touch with the front lines, but must also keep the bigger picture in mind.

The best leaders and teams acknowledge mistakes, take ownership, and make corrections to improve. Over time this adds up.

Leaders need the confidence and competence to lead, but also the humility to follow.

To become engrossed in and overwhelmed by the details risks mission failure, but to be so far detached from the details that the leader loses control is to fail the team and fail the mission.

When a leader is willing to follow, the team functions effectively and the probability of mission success radically increases.

As a leader it is critical to balance the strict discipline of standard procedures with the freedom to adapt, adjust, and maneuver to do what is best to support the overarching commander’s intent and achieve victory.

In war, this is the ultimate dichotomy: a leader may have to send his most treasured asset—his people—into a situation that gets them wounded or killed.

The foremost requirement for potent leadership is humility, so that leaders can fully understand and appreciate their own shortfalls.

The first Law of Combat: Cover and Move. This is teamwork—every individual and team within the team, mutually supporting one another to accomplish the mission.

The second Law of Combat: Simple. Complexity breeds chaos and disaster, especially when things go wrong.

We learned lessons in war, written in blood, about sorrow, loss, and pain. We also learned about the fragility of human life and the power of the human spirit. Of course, we learned about strategy and tactics. We learned how to most effectively take the fight to our enemies. We learned how to analyze targets, gather and exploit information, find our enemy’s weaknesses, and capitalize on them.

We saw how successful leaders could create victory where victory seemed impossible. We also witnessed how poor leadership could bring defeat upon teams that seemed invincible. We discovered firsthand that the principles of leadership are “simple, but not easy.” There are strategies, techniques, and skills that take time and practice to utilize effectively.

Every behavior or characteristic carried out by a leader can be taken too far. Leaders can become too extreme and upset the balance required to effectively lead a team. When balance is lost, leadership suffers and the team’s performance rapidly declines.

It was difficult to grasp, the hardest and most painful of all the dichotomies of leadership: to care about your men more than anything in the world—so much so that you’d even willingly trade your life for theirs—and yet, at the same time, to lead those men on missions that could result in their deaths.

That is the burden. That is the challenge. That is the dichotomy. That is leadership.

That’s another dichotomy: in order to help your team, sometimes you have to hurt them. Just like a doctor performing a surgery. Surgery is a brutal thing: cutting open a body and removing parts of it, then sewing it back together. But in order to save a life, a surgeon has to do just that.

The regional manager now understood this most difficult dichotomy of leadership: a leader must care about the troops, but at the same time the leader must complete the mission, and in doing so there will be risks and sometimes unavoidable consequences to the troops.

When a leader tries to own everything—to run every single move their team makes, it doesn’t work. Maybe it is the desire to make sure everything goes right. Maybe it is a lack of trust that subordinate leaders know what to do. Maybe it is ego—leaders want to feel they are the person who is critical for every little decision. But when a leader takes too much ownership, there is no ownership left for the team or subordinate leaders to take.

Micromanagement fails because no one person can control multiple people executing a vast number of actions in a dynamic environment, where changes in the situation occur rapidly and with unpredictability. It also inhibits the growth of subordinates: when people become accustomed to being told what to do, they begin to await direction. Initiative fades and eventually dies. Creativity and bold thought and action soon die as well.

The hands-off leader with a laissez-faire attitude is on the opposite end of the spectrum. Such a leader fails to provide specific direction—in some cases almost no clear direction whatsoever. Instead of a lack of thought like a team that is micromanaged, a team with a hands-off leader thinks too much.

You don’t need to row the boat— or even steer it. You just have to make sure it is heading in the right direction.

There is a time to stand firm and enforce rules and there is a time to give ground and allow the rules to bend. Finding that balance is critical for leaders to get maximum effectiveness from their team.

With Decentralized Command, it was crucial that leaders at every level be fully self-reliant, ready to step up and execute to accomplish the mission.

With such variation in individuals on the team, the challenge for any leader was to raise the level of every member of the team so that they could perform at their absolute best.

Most underperformers don’t need to be fired, they need to be led.

Most underperformers don’t need to be fired, they need to be led. But once every effort has been made to help an underperformer improve and all efforts have failed, a leader has to make the tough call to let that person go. This is the duty and responsibility of every leader.

Leaders are responsible for the output of the individuals on their team. The goal of any leader is to get the most out of every individual—to push each individual to reach his or her maximum potential so that the team itself can reach its maximum potential.

The dichotomy in this situation is balancing between taking care of individuals by keeping them around even if they lack the skill set to do the job properly and protecting the team by removing people from positions where they negatively impact the team and the mission.

Leadership—at every level—is the critical factor in whether a team succeeds or fails.

The strategic goal of training must always be to build capable leaders at every level of the team. For this, hard training is essential. But if training is too hard, it will break the team and minimize learning and growth. So there must be balance: train hard, but train smart.

We expected our SEALs to operate with an aggressive mind-set. We expected them to lean forward, maneuver quickly, see opportunities, and capitalize upon them—to aggressively execute to solve problems, overcome obstacles, accomplish the mission, and win. But of course there is a dichotomy with being aggressive that must be balanced: aggression is not always the answer. Aggression must be balanced with logic and detailed analysis of risk versus reward.

Problems aren’t going to solve themselves—a leader must get aggressive and take action to solve them and implement a solution.

The aggression that wins on the battlefield, in business, or in life is directed not toward people but toward solving problems, achieving goals, and accomplishing the mission.

Seth now understood that standard operating procedures were not fixed, inflexible laws with no room for variation. They were guidelines that needed to be balanced with adaptability and common sense. Balancing that dichotomy was required for everyone, especially leaders.

Disciplined procedures must be balanced with the ability to apply common sense to an issue, with the power to break with SOPs when necessary, with the freedom to think about alternative solutions, apply new ideas, and make adjustments to processes based on the reality of what is actually happening.

Every leader must be ready and willing to take charge, to make hard, crucial calls for the good of the team and the mission. That is inherent in the very term “leader.” But leaders must also have the ability to follow. This was a difficult dichotomy: in order to be a good leader, you must also be a good follower. Finding that balance is key.

A leader must be willing to lean on the expertise and ideas of others for the good of the team. Leaders must be willing to listen and follow others, regardless of whether they are junior or less experienced.

It was a profound lesson: leaders must be detached, must pull back to a position above the fray where they can see the bigger picture. That was the only way to effectively lead. Otherwise, the results could be disastrous.

Getting angry at others is ineffective, losing temper is a sign of weakness. The aggression that wins in the battlefield, in business or in life is not directed towards people, but towards solving problems, achieving goals and accomplishing the mission.