93: Jocko Willink | Leading on the Line Between Extreme and Reckless

Transcript for Jocko Willink | Leading on the Line Between Extreme and Reckless (Episode 93)

Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFillippo. Today, we're talking again with my friend, Jocko Willink, his new book, The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win, extreme ownership, if you read that book, and if you haven't, by the way, that book just crushed it. Tons of people were impacted by this. One of my favorite books, my wife and I love that. It's really -- had a huge impact on my life as well, both in business and otherwise. This new book, The Dichotomy of Leadership has leadership tensions such as prepare but don't over-prepare, be aggressive but not reckless, things like that. We're going to explain all of these. We're going to go into depth on some of the examples here in the show. And today, we'll learn when to take responsibility or take extreme ownership and what the limits of that actually are.

[00:00:51] We'll also explore why we should stop being the easy button for those we manage and lead, and we'll discover the concept of leadership capital, how to build it, when to use it, and more importantly when not to use it. Of course, we've got worksheets for this episode, which we do for every show. So if you want to solidify your understanding of all the practicals and key takeaways here from Jocko Willink, that link is in the show notes, jordanharbinger.com/podcast, and if you want to know how I managed to book all these great people, manage my relationships using systems and tiny habits, check out our Six-Minute Networking course. It's free, it's over at jordanharbinger.com/course.

[00:01:33] Now here's Jocko Willink. I look at things I didn't want to do when I was a kid and even in my -- and I say even in my 20s and early 30s, and I just think, “What was I thinking?” I would never do that stuff now. Stuff hurts more now and I've lost a lot of my -- I guess probably like desire for adventure, you know, going to North Korea and stuff like that, four times. That was cool. Now I'm like, “What was I doing? I will never do that.” My parents must not have slept for like five years. Do you lose any of that, because I feel like you're still kind of doing a lot of the same stuff probably that you were doing before?

Jocko Willink: [00:02:08] I don't know. I don't think, I guess you said the quest for adventure, is that what you said?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:14] Or just like the idea that I could go and do something, and there'd be probably no consequences that I would actually have to pay for that.

Jocko Willink: [00:02:21] Hmm, sometimes I think I forget about consequences a little bit, but one thing about me is, I've traveled a lot and I don't really love to travel actually. I would rather just stay home and you know, I kind of have my own little world at home, with my house and the ocean and my gym and my garage gym and my jujitsu gym, and it's a nice little deal.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:48] Yeah.

Jocko Willink: [00:02:49] And I travel all the time--

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:51] You also have that.

Jocko Willink: [00:02:52] And so I would prefer to just stay at home. Does that mean I'm not adventurous? Possibly, but maybe I just like do stuff that I like to do now more.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:00] Yeah, that's possible. I always feel like, there's something that probably changes when you turn a certain age or maybe when you have kids, which I don't yet, where you go, “Yeah, maybe I don't want to live for three years in a South American country anymore. Maybe I just don't want to do that.” Whereas before, if someone's like, “Hey, we're going to move you to Russia, you're going to live in Moscow and you have to work at this random job.” It had been like, “Yes, I have to learn Russian. It’s going to be great.” Now, I'm like, “Hell no. I won't be able to have dinner with my wife all the time at her parents' house or whatever. I won't be able to hang out with my cat.” Like that stuff that I somehow for some reason, I'm looking back at my old self and that person's looking back at me and going, “Who the hell are you?”

Jocko Willink: [00:03:40] Well, I guess there's probably some genetic component of the fact that, you know, you just said you're looking at having kids now, and before, well now you're married and so now you have a possibility of having kids. And so part of your mind is thinking, “Okay, I've got to set myself up that I can take care of these kids.” Whereas before part of your adventure seeking was looking for a suitable person to have kids with.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:04] Of course.

Jocko Willink: [00:04:04] And maybe that could have been a Russian girl.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:06] That’s right.

Jocko Willink: [00:04:07] And maybe that's a good deal for you and you're thinking, “Hey, I'll go there and, and we'll see what happens. But once you find that person and now you're saying, “Oh, okay, well now I've got sort of,” even subliminally you've got this situation set up where you're looking at what the future is going to hold for you and your potential family. So I think that's probably has a pretty good subliminal drive on your brain.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:31] I think that's true. I think anybody right now who's honest with themselves, any guy I should say and is thinking, “Oh, I'd love to go travel.” Tell me that one of the top three reasons is not you're going to meet some women in that country, and just like try to honestly tell me that's the reason, maybe I'll believe you. But I think for me it was like, “I'm going to see and experience new things, but mostly I wonder what the women look like. This is great, I can't wait.” Then you get down there and you're like, “All right, this is just everything I wanted in more, hopefully, hopefully.” So we were talking about the book, we were talking about publishers and flexibility, and it seems like being nimble and being flexible enough, obviously that's one of the ideas in the dichotomy of leadership, and you said he had a story about that.

Jocko Willink: [00:05:09] I think that publishers have a lot going, on and there's a lot more than meets the eye to what they do and what they try and get done. And so even when you look at the fact that they have to print the books, right? They have to copy it, they have to edit the books and they have to print the books and then they have to make sure that the edit and the copy went well, and then they have to distribute those books to thousands of locations. So there's an element of logistics behind publishing, actually a huge element of logistics, which is probably the most challenging thing for publishing company is the logistics behind everything. So yeah, with the dichotomy of leadership, you know, it was a tight timeline and part of the thing that made the timeline tight is getting the book approved through the Pentagon, so for military books, you have to submit them to the Pentagon for approval. They look for any information in the book, which may be classified in any way, and if they find it then they remove it, and then you can publish the book. And that process can take, because that's another huge bureaucracy is the Pentagon. And so we submitted our book and that was the last thing we were waiting for was to get any recommended or any changes that the Pentagon was giving us to make. And once we had those changes then we had to do those fast final edits, which we literally did in probably 30 minutes, Leif and I, we’re on the phone, he lives in Texas and we were on just on the phone when we talked through it because it wasn't really, really small edits from the Pentagon. I mean almost miniscule, probably even take a half an hour because we know what's classified and what's not.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:46] What kind of stuff is classified like the names of gear and what it does or like places?

Jocko Willink: [00:06:50] The things that you think would be classified are what's classified.

 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:54] So it’s all obvious.

Jocko Willink: [00:06:55] And on top of that, there's some little random things that occasionally you'll have a certain, because they get reviewed by a team of individuals, right?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:03] Sure.

Jocko Willink: [00:07:03] And those team of individuals might have different opinions of what's classified and what's not. And Leif and I both, we both held top secret clearances. We know what's classified and what's not. So we're writing the book within the realms of what we already know is we can say, and obviously more importantly, we're absolutely making sure that we're not going to say anything that would in any way give away tactics, techniques or procedures to the enemy, right?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:30] Right.

Jocko Willink: [00:07:30] Any information that the enemy could use in any way. We're not putting in there, and so we know that and that's how we submit the book and that's why the corrections are these really minor things. Maybe it's the name of a piece of gear, maybe it's something like that where we go, “Okay, you know what? We know that that information is common knowledge and then every single person that has any interest whatsoever can Google that and find it out in 30 seconds.” But if you want to us to pull it out of the book, that's fine. We would rather be safe than sorry. And that's mostly what it is, some little item that we know for a fact is, I mean we could literally Google the things that were removed from the book, which is again, it's really minor, removed from the book and I could say, “Oh, this got removed from the book.” I'm not going to do that because--

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:13] Yeah, well that’s kind of the point.

Jocko Willink: [00:08:14] That doesn’t make sense, yeah. But then once that gets done, that's the last thing we were waiting on. And then finally in the end, we were actually getting close to where we might've had to push back the release date, which is a problem. Is it a catastrophe? No, it's not a catastrophe, but we have our schedule constructed in such a way that we have some time off when the book comes out so that we can do some interviews when the book comes out and whatnot. And if we moved to the book launch, then we'd probably move it into somewhere that we already have previously scheduled things, and that would be that. So luckily we got the book and the books coming out as it's supposed to on September 25th.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:51] Nice. And this should be out at that point anyway, so nobody has to worry about that. The title, by the way, The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win. Was this partially inspired, I guess by people going, “All right, I'm going to take extreme ownership,” and then taking it way too far, being too extreme with their extreme ownership?

Jocko Willink: [00:09:10] Absolutely, and one of the things that we write in the opening of the dichotomy leadership is one of the problems with the book extreme ownership is the title extreme ownership, and the word extreme in the title, because people think, “Oh, we're just going to be super extreme with everything.” And some people would have a tendency to do that. And if you read the whole book, you realize that that's definitely not the message. Should you take extreme ownership and should you be fully responsible of everything in your world to the utmost of your ability? Yes, you should. But when we say to keep things simple, does that mean you keep things so simple that you don't think about any contingency plans or you don't carry out a detailed plan at all or you don't look at what might happen, you'll look at secondary consequences? No, that's not good planning.

[00:09:58] So you can be too simple. Even with something like cover and move, which is, “Hey, we're going to support other teams around my team.” If I'm on team A and team B is doing something while I'm going to cover and move, I'm going to help them, I'm going to support them. And that's a really positive thing. But what happens if I take that to the extreme and now I start getting into the weeds with what they're doing and I start stepping on the toes and I start interfering with what they're actually trying to get done. I can actually take that too far. So yes, the idea of extreme ownership is awesome, but there is a tendency for people to take things to the extreme, or to try and take things to the extreme.

[00:10:39] And the hardest thing about being a leader is that all these positive characteristics, if you take them too far, they can become a negative. So if you've got someone that's a good aggressive leader, that's great. You've got someone that's going to make things happen, that's awesome. But if you've got someone that's overly aggressive, well, then they're doing things that are dumb, they're taking too much risk. If you've got a leader that is a good orator and can speak well, and that's great, right? Can make himself clear when they communicate with their troops, that's great. But can you have someone -- a leader that continues to talk and talks too much, and ends up talking so much that the people in the team don't know what's important and what's not? Yes, that can happen.

[00:11:26] Now, the other side of that is can you have a leader that doesn't talk enough? Yes, you can. You can have a leader that is too shy, or won't put out the word when it needs to be put out. So every characteristic that you can have for leader can be taken to an extreme, even the most important characteristic that I talk about all the time, which is humility. Like you've got to be humble as a leader. You've got always look, “Okay, how can I improve? I need to listen to other people.” Well, as a leader, you can actually be too humble where you don't stand up when somebody is telling you to do something that you don't think is right, but you're like, “Hey, I'm humble so I'm going to do it anyways.” Well if you don't think it's right, you actually shouldn't do it. So every positive characteristic can be taken so far to the extreme that it becomes a negative, and that is why as a leader you have to be balanced, and that's what the dichotomy leadership is about.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:13] Yeah, it’s each chapter has a different dichotomy. So like train hard but train smarter, aggressive but not reckless. And so each chapter is kind of a standalone, and it's similar to Extreme Ownership in that it has, like it starts off with bullets or something like that, generally combat, and then, or simulated combat and then a business principle and then a business story that goes into it. And Extreme Ownership is people know, crushed it as a book. Tons of people were impacted by this. I was having dinner with a friend of mine the other day and he said, “Yeah, I'm thinking about breaking up with my girlfriend because she blames other people for everything,” and I'm always like, “You know, you got to take some extreme ownership over your situation.” And then he kept complaining about her over and over and over and I was like, “You know, you need to take some extreme ownership over your situation.”

Jocko Willink: [00:13:01] Indeed.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:01] And it was like, “Aw man, because it goes deep, because you can always come if you go so far with it, the clock a hit you in the ass when it goes back around to 12.

Jocko Willink: [00:13:09] Yeah, the example that I used on my podcast the other day of this is, and it's a great example to use is the weather. So if you're planning a mission and you have to go execute this mission and the weather, so you're going to take helicopters to go hit a target somewhere, and the weather turns out bad, and the helicopters can't fly and you go, “Hey, that's not my fault because the weather was bad and I can't control the weather,” and everyone will agree that we can't control the weather. And so it's like, “That wasn't my fault.” And you can say, “Yep.” Everyone says, “Yep, you're excused.” But a good leader will say, “You know what? We didn't execute the mission because the helicopters couldn't fly, and I can't control the weather. But what I could have done is I could have come up with a contingency plan in case the weather was bad. I should've thought of that. I should've had vehicles on standby, I should have pre-stage somewhere that was closer so that if we did get a weather problem, we could still execute the mission, so I'm still goanna take ownership.” And when you have that attitude, what it does is it drives you to be more successful because if you always have some kind of excuse in the back pocket that you can whip out at any time, then you don't try and cover all the bases, you're not going to plan as well. But when you know that, “Hey, this is on me, it's on me to get this mission accomplished. It's on me 100 percent.” If that's your attitude, you'll cover those bases and you'll get the mission executed.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:27] You've got a story in the book about you actually planning things yourself and not handing things off to other people. And then the process of like, “Oh I got to let some of this stuff go.” Tell us about that because I think a lot of people suffer from that too.

Jocko Willink: [00:14:39] Yeah, well it was my first deployment to Iraq, so it was my first time being in any combat situation. And of course, I don't want to call it paranoid, but yeah, I'll call it paranoid. I wanted everything to go really well. And when you get that attitude, you start thinking, “Okay, I got to do everything myself,” and so I kind of grabbed all the planning myself and kind of held onto it. And it wasn't a long period of time, it was a couple operations where I said, “I'm going to, I'm going to plan this, I'm going to plan this, I'm goanna plan this.” And I kind of held onto it all, and my guys were sort of doing what I told them to do, which is great because they're great guys. But I was thinking to myself, “Why aren't they stepping up?” Well, the reason they weren't stepping up and taking ownership because I was holding onto all the ownership myself. And then luckily what happened was we started getting the opportunity to just do so many different missions that one day, I think we had four missions in one day, and I knew I couldn't plant them all. And so let's task them out, “Hey, you covered this one, you covered that one, you cover this one, you cover the other one.” And of course the guys who are great guys, they went out, they came up with great plans, went out, executed the missions and it hit me like a slap in the face like, “Oh, you were micromanaging,” and when you micromanage people, they lose their initiative, and that's what I did. And like I said, luckily it didn't last very long. It may not have even been obvious to those guys, but it was pretty obvious to me once I saw it get resolved.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:59] If we're running a business or we're running an organization and we're just starting to realize that we might need to hand some things off, how do we balance taking the extreme ownership part or any ownership with actually empowering other people on the team? I mean, is there a point where you go, “Oh crap, I'm doing everything myself?” Well, how do you know when you're doing that?

Jocko Willink: [00:16:15] Well, you know you're doing everything yourself, and it's a problem when you're getting overwhelmed, when the ball starts getting dropped. If I can do everything that I'm supposed to do and I can still survive and still do a good job, well then guess what? Then that's fine, I don't need any support. You know like, “Okay, I've got this.” But the minute that you've got things falling through the cracks, then you go, “Okay, it's falling through the cracks. Why is it falling through the cracks? I'm a good person. I'm a hard worker, but things are falling through the cracks.” That's because I need support, and I need to hand some of this stuff off, and I need to put trust in my troops to get things done, and that's an empowering thing. Now, of course, this doesn't mean that you give up ownership when something goes wrong. When things go wrong and you still got to take ownership of that so that you can get the problem solved.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:58] Yeah. I think a lot of folks don't realize, and I know this just from entrepreneurship or small business ownership, which is a term I prefer because entrepreneurs, word that's been beaten to death. When you're freed up, you get less time in the weeds so you can see the bigger picture and you can go, ”You know, we've been busting our ass on the strategy for month. I don't even want to achieve this result.” Like if everything is successful, I ended up with a really successful YouTube channel and I don't want to be on freaking YouTube. I just want to do something else. I was trying to write a book where did that happen? I got bogged down with this other project, and I think a lot of people, especially when they own a business with themselves or one other person, it's so tempting to be like, “All right, I'll handle everything on the Internet and you handle everything in the brick and mortar,” and then you just end up tearing your hair out, if you have any left, six months later and wondering why the hell you built this terrible life for yourself.

Jocko Willink: [00:17:44] Yeah. Well, I used to talk about standing back and being the tactical genius. And I do, it's an extreme ownership, which is if I would task guys with coming up with a plan for an operation, and they would get dive into it. And they'd basically be staring at the map from one inch away. They're just staring at this thing up close, they're in the weeds, and I'd let him plan for two, three, four hours, and come rolling in. And when I'd come in and say, “Hey, what's your plan look like?” And they'd kind of say, “Okay, we're going to go in here, we're going to do this.” And of course, I'd say, “Well, hey, that looks like a good plan, but you missed this piece of high ground over here that if we don't have that, the enemy can get the drop on us and we'll be in a big problem.” And they would kind of think, “Man, how did we miss that? How did we not see that?” One of the reason they couldn't see it is because they were too close to the planning process. So yeah, when you get into the in the weeds too much, you can't see the strategic picture for sure.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:18:38] You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guests, Jocko Willink. We'll be right back after this.

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:13] Symptoms of micromanagement that you listed in the book, which I thought were really interesting. Lack of initiative are I find if you're taking all the responsibility, why should I bother. Waiting to be told about solutions to problems, kind of the same thing or similar thing. I'm not going to turn on my critical thinking if you're just going to do it for me and will not mobilize and take action. One thing though that I hadn't heard before, was bold action becomes rare. Can you tell us what that even means? Because I think a lot of us don't really know what bold action even is.

Jocko Willink: [00:21:41] I'll tell you when you'd see that is when you get a situation that requires bold action. For instance, you're at a job site somewhere, and there's some kind of an emergency, and if you've got a team that's been completely micromanaged and all of a sudden the boss or the foreman of the job isn't there and you have a major emergency, a water main breaks, a piece of building collapses or something goes really wrong, that needs a bold action to solve the problem, and people will sit around and wait for to be told what to do. Maybe they'll be making a phone call, “Hey, the water main broken, or this pipe broken and we've got a serious problem, we've got a gas leak, whatever. What do you want us to do?” And because it's going to require, “Oh by the way, we're going to have to shut off water. It's going to shut off the water to the whole block, or it's going to shut off the gas of the whole block, it’s going to a disruption here to the residents in this area or whatever.” But they won't take that bold action because they haven't been trained, they haven't lived in a culture where taking bold action is rewarded even by taking minor action is rewarded. That's how you build up the trust. That's how you get people to take bold action eventually is you let them take small actions and when they take small actions, you praise them for it. If they take a small action and the outcome is bad, which will happen because that's how we learn, we learn by making mistakes. If they take a small action, if someone on your team takes a small action, and it ends up with a bad result and you tear into them and rip them apart and publicly humiliate them, they're not going to take any more small actions, and they definitely aren't going to take a bold action. But if when they make a mistake, you say, “You know, if they make a decision and there's a bad outcome, and you come back to him and say, “Okay, look, here's the outcome that happened. Not a good outcome. I'm glad you made a decision, but here's how we can improve what you do next time. And by the way, let's think about what the cost of inaction would have been.” So sometimes any action is better than no action, and in fact, that's often the case. And so you say, “Look, I'm glad you made a decision, which is definitely better than no decision, and here's how we can improve your decision making process for next time.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:44] Yeah, makes sense. I suppose in the water main example, it's like, “All right, we shut off the water to the whole block.” Now everybody's pissed and we have some sort of regulatory fine because we turned off the 25 story building next to us water. “Yeah, I suppose I could have used the different valves that would've just shut off our area, but I wanted to make sure the thing wasn't leaking. I could've just left it on and then we would have all been screwed.”

Jocko Willink: [00:24:06] Yeah, and then okay, you're doing math in your head. What's more expensive the regulatory fine that we're going to get hit with or the damage that we're doing to the construction project that we're actually working on right now? And that's the math, you've got to figure out really quickly, and maybe, maybe you did the math wrong. Maybe you didn't understand the strategic objectives and the strategic overlaying of the whole situation where it might be, If I'm a bad leader, I might not have told you, Hey Jordan, one of the most important things we've got on this whole job is to keep these people in this 25 story building next to us. We want to keep them happy because we're trying to get a job with them in the future. That's what we're trying to do. They've got a project that they're going to run and we want to make them happy. If you'd have known that you would've made a different decision. You know what? We're going to do our best to contain this water, but we're not going to shut them down.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:53] Yeah, we'll pump it out.

Jocko Willink: [00:24:53] So these are all these things that you learn from, but again, if you blow up and you rip someone apart because they made a decision, you're creating a culture of indecisive people that wait, and don't make decisions.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:08] You said before, you need to stop being the easy button. So instead of like, “Hey, this water main broke, what did we do?” “Call Jocko.” “Oh, okay.” “Hey, what do you guys want for lunch?” “I don’t know, call Jocko. Ask him.” You got to turn that off, but I think then you, you'd mentioned also that it can swing too far on the other direction. You get leaders that are too hands off and you end up with a lack of coordination, lack of vision, people overstepping the bounds of authority and kind of just probably too many chiefs I guess you would say, and focusing on the wrong priorities as you'd mentioned. But that leads into this concept that you discussed. I had never heard before called Leadership Capital, and I would love to discuss that a little bit because this concept does show up a lot in one form or another in the book. And first of all, tell us what leadership capital is and then how it's used.

Jocko Willink: [00:25:52] Well, basically as a leader you got a bank account of capital that you can use to make things happen and it's one of those things that when you think about it, you realize it's true. So I want my team to do 10 things. Some of those things are really, really important, some of them aren't important at all. If I expend a bunch of my leadership capital on things that aren't important, then when it comes time to ask my team to do something that's really important, I might not have enough leadership capital in the bank anymore and they might blow me off, right?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:27] Yeah.

Jocko Willink: [00:26:28] It's similar to Crying Wolf. If everything is a priority and I'm yelling and making sure that you do everything perfectly the way I want it every single time. Well, the things that are really important, you won't know the difference between something that's really, really important and something that's maybe not quite as important, and that's a problem.

[00:26:45] So I mean the case that that's talked about in the book is a leader that's demanding that no phones in this meeting. No phones in this meeting, no phones in this meeting. And let's see, he's one of the guys, one of the guys running this strategic meeting and he says, “No phones in the meeting.” Well, three minutes into the meeting or whatever, the CEO pulls out his phone and starts checking his email because they're in charge of a bunch of money. The other CEO's got things to do. And of course, once the CEO pulls out his phone, the other guys start pulling out their phone and next thing you know, the person that's running the meeting kind of loses his mind. “Oh, this is crazy. I told you no phones!” And he invested all of his leadership capital into not having phones and it turned the whole meeting just went South because he's concentrating on something that's not important. And the other example that we talk about is, I was very strict about uniforms.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:41] Yeah, the patches.

Jocko Willink: [00:27:42] The patches and the uniforms and being in good uniform. So when we were deployed overseas in Iraq, when I was a task unit commander, it was, “Listen, we're going to be working with the Army, we're going to be working with the Marine Corps. We need to be in a squared away, uniforms. We need to look professional. The Army and the Marine Corps absolutely judge people on how they look, And that makes sense because if you can't put on a uniform, if you can't complete this simple task of putting on a uniform correctly, how can I expect you to operate effectively out on the battlefield? And so I knew that. Now on the SEAL teams, we have a very bad reputation of how we--

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:18] Beards. Beards and jeans.

Jocko Willink: [00:28:19] Beards, jeans, patches, hats, mix-match uniforms, civilian uniforms or civilian camouflage, hunting pants, and just putting those random ragtag looking bunch of hoodlums, you could imagine is what. And in the SEAL teams, we don't really care because we know that, if you've got a pair of boots that works really well for you and they fit your feet right and they breathe right and they're comfortable, that's cool. I want you to wear those. The Army, the Marine Corps doesn't necessarily think that way. They think, “Hey look, this is what we do. This is how we do things.” And that goes through the whole uniform. So for us it was like, okay, I told the guys, “Look, we're going to be in squared away uniforms, so that we can gain a good reputation with the Marine Corps and with the Army who we're working with.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:05] So the priorities were set.

Jocko Willink: [00:29:06] The priorities were set. Now the story in the book is about the patches, which is along with wearing mismatched uniforms. Once it was like, “Hey, you got to wear the right uniform,” then guys said, “Okay, well you know, we can do is we can get some cool patches.” Little Velcro patches and put them on their uniforms and they'll be all kinds of random, mostly pretty funny things. But you know, skulls and daggers and then little jokes and little one liners and quotes from movies and just dumb stuff. And eventually, I told the guys, “No patches.” And Leif, the platoon commander that worked for me, who wrote the book with me and his compadre, the other platoon commander, a guy named Seth, they got together and decided they really wanted to have patches. And of course, they didn't tell me about it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:58] Yeah, they didn't want you to know.

Jocko Willink: [00:29:59]. They went behind my back. They disobeyed the direct order, right?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:02] Oh men!

Jocko Willink: [00:30:03] And they had patches made and they smuggled them overseas. And what they were doing was, what they were doing was when they would leave the wire, when they would leave the gate to go on an operation, if I wasn't going on the operation with them, when they'd get outside the gate, they would have their patches with them and they'd get on the radio and make a call, patches on, And so they pull out their patches and put their cool guy task unit bruiser patches on, and that would've been fine and they would have gotten away with it, but they went on an operation where there was an embedded combat photographer and the embedded combat photographer took a bunch of pictures of them, and then sent me the pictures to have the pictures cleared. And obviously when I saw the pictures I saw my guys wearing unauthorized patches.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:45] It's like a big Lebowski quote embroider in herself.

Jocko Willink: [00:30:48] It was actually a Mad Max quote. And the other one was from a country Western song, Big Balls in Cal Town, so these are the patches. And so I see these patches and Leif of course, thinks I'm going to crucify him because I told him specifically no patches and he actually, you know, premeditate it. This is premeditate.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:10] First degree patches smuggling.

Jocko Willink: [00:31:11] First degree patch smuggling, premeditated patch smuggling and doing it completely by them having my back with the whole task unit. And so then he thinks I'm going to, just just kill him, crucify him, fire him or whatever. And to his surprise, I didn't say anything, and a day went by and I didn't say anything, and two days went by and I didn't say anything, and three days went by and I didn't say anything, and he realized that I wasn't going to say anything. And when we got back from deployment, we talked about it. And the reason why I didn't say anything, there's a multitude of reasons. Number one, I was already asking these guys, all of them, to risk their lives, risk being blown up, risked being wounded, risk being killed every single day. I was asking them to risk all that. I was asking him to conduct these incredibly hard operations. I was asking them to be do dehydrated and hungry and in the field for two, three, four days at a time, and I was asking them to act professional all the time and they were doing this massive planning cycle. I was asking a lot of these guys. So for me, to not only ask them for all that, but also to say, “Okay, on top of all that, I want you to make sure that you don't wear these little patches.”

Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:37] Don't wear are the patches.

Jocko Willink: [00:32:38] Right.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:38] Yeah.

Jocko Willink: [00:32:39] I would have been investing leadership capital in something that in the big picture didn't really matter. The patches, they were uniformed. The patches were actually desert colored. They matched our uniforms, so it wasn't that big of a deal. And I also knew that if the guys were hiding the patches when they were around me, then they would also be hiding the patches if they were around any Senior Marine Corps or Army officers, that might be offended, and so I let it go. So I didn't invest my leadership capital in something that didn't matter. Instead, I invested my leadership capital in the things that did matter, and this is one of those dichotomies. The other example in the book is that I told the guys that they had to know how to program their own radios themselves, which is something that it might not seem like a big deal, but in the SEAL teams, in a SEAL platoon, you've got a radio man and you just have him program your radio for you, and if it breaks you just give it too many fixes it or reprograms.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:35] But it's kind of like not knowing how to use your phone.

Jocko Willink: [00:33:37] It would be like that. And it'd be like, “Okay, what if your now don't have a radio man with you, and that's the way it was in Ramadi, we were in small elements and sometimes you might not have a radio man with you, and so if your radio is not working, you're going to need to know how to reprogram it yourself. Especially in this case because we had to talk to the Army and the Marine Corps, which took a little bit more understanding of the way the radios worked. And so I told the guys, you have to know how to program the radios or else you can't go on missions. And I checked them to make sure, and so that was a situation where I allowed no slack whatsoever. You will know how to program the radios. No Slack. It will happen. I invested leadership capital in that. But with the patches it was an example of where I allowed slack and that's an example of where you want to put your leadership capital and that's kind of what the definition, or that's kind of what the meaning of it is.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:23] Plus you punished Leif enough probably he didn't sleep for four nights. Because he was worried, he’s like “When is it coming? It's coming tonight. It's going to come in the middle of the night.” How do you know when somebody needs to be coached upwards and like, “All right, we've got to work on this guy's skill set,” versus, “Look, I got to fire this guy. He's not going to make it.” You get an example in the book of a guy who -- it seems like you just went through a lot trying to get him up to speed.

Jocko Willink: [00:34:46] Yeah, and you're going to that -- that's what you do. As a leader, you're going to invest, you're going to coach, you're going to mentor, you're going to train, you're going to re-explain things. You're going to make sure that you're doing your job as a leader to ensure that they can do their job, and after you reach a point where you say, “Okay, I've invested, I've done everything I can. I've put all the effort that I can as a leader where I'm now starting to take away from my other responsibilities. I'm now not spending any time with anyone else because I'm investing all my time and this one guy that's really having problems.” Well, when you start going in that direction, well now you realize that you have a person that's incapable of doing the job. And if you have someone that's incapable of doing the job, you have to get rid of them or you have to put them in a job that they can handle.

[00:35:31] And that's really challenging because we as leaders, that person's part of my team, we develop a relationship, we developed loyalty. And so I have loyalty, if I have loyalty with you, Jordan, and you're part of my team, I want you to win, I want you to succeed, I want you to do well. And I coach you and I mentor and I invest in you, and when that doesn't work out, and especially, and this is another reason why we put this in the book, because if I take extreme ownership of things, and Jordan's not doing the right, I'm your leader and you're not doing the right thing, that's my fault and I need to do better, I need to train you better. But there is a point where the loyalty that I have to you get trumped by the loyalty that I have to the team. Because if I'm investing all my time into you and you still can't perform your duties, well guess what? Everyone else on the team needs you to perform your duties as well. So if I allow you to continue to not be able to perform your duties, I've got a problem. And it's not just affecting me and it's not just affecting you, it's affecting the whole team. And so what I have to do at that point is get rid of you.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:28] It's got to be a tough calculation, especially because similar to firing anybody from a career, if you get rid of somebody from a team, they don't just go to another one, right? They're done.

Jocko Willink: [00:36:37] Yeah. And it depends on the circumstances of the situation. If a person has a bad attitude, yeah, they're done. If a person lacks humility and they say, “I shouldn't get fired, I'm perfect in this job.” They're not going to fix themselves. If you have a person that's humble that says, “You know what? I did my best and I can see it's not good enough and I really want to make it work and I'm going to put every effort I can into squaring myself away.” That person's probably going to get another shot and they'll get recycled and sent back to another team and go through some more training and hopefully get up to speed and maybe they will, maybe they won't.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:37:09] You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guests, Jocko Willink. We'll be right back after this.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:14] All right, this episode is also sponsored by Blue Apron. You know, I love Blue Apron like crazy. We love -- we've been using this stuff for years. Jason, you love it eh?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:37:24] Oh my God. I just cooked some of the best shrimp. I can't even remember what it was called because it was so fantastically good that my mind was blown last week. I love Blue Apron so much.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:36] Jason, it doesn't even matter if you don't know what it was because they don't repeat recipes at all within a given calendar year, which is pretty incredible. So you're always eating new stuff. If there's one thing my taste buds like it's variety. Basically what you do with Blue Apron, you'd go online, choose some chef designed recipes, they deliver fresh seasonally inspired ingredients. You can cook it in as little as 20 minutes. They do all the meal prep for you. Everything's measured out, everything sent to you. Skip all the meal planning, skip the shopping, get straight to the cooking with Blue Apron. Recipe are always, always good, man. We keep them, we put them in a binder. These things are delicious. I find that Jen is always remaking stuff like, “Oh, that was really good. Let me go shop. Let's try this. Let's add a dash of that.” So I feel like most of my life I'm eating Blue Apron or Blue Apron derived meals, and I'm totally cool with it.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:38:23] Yeah, that recipe that I mentioned before, it was Vadouvan shrimp and sweet chili sauce with aromatic rice in almonds.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:30] Fancy.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:38:30] And Oh my God was it good? It was so good.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:33] Nice.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:38:34] We also had fresh basil fettuccine with tomatoes and sweet corn, which was so good, highly, highly recommended.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:40] Nice. Well, next year when they repeat it, maybe I'll grab that. Tell them where they can get the Blue Apes.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:38:45] You can check out this week's menu and get your first three meals for free at blueapron.com/jordan. That's blueapron.com/jordan to get your first three meals for free. Blue Apron, a better way to cook.

[00:38:55] This episode is sponsored in part by Wrangler. Everybody has a favorite pair of jeans. The pair that fits perfectly in always looks great. The pair you wear out at night, at home on the couch, at work, wherever. They're the go to, do not underestimate their importance. No one knows this better than Wrangler, the authority on jeans. Using their expertise and comfort and durability, Wrangler jeans are made for the adventurers, the go getters, folks who like to keep moving, whether you ride a bike, a bronc, or a skateboard, or if you're the type who walks the Earth in search of something. These are the jeans for you. Classic or modern styles, a range of fits and a price that works for you. Vintage rereleases, Wrangler has something for everyone. Visit wrangler.com and check out their great selection of jeans, shirts, pants, outerwear for men and women, new styles, great fits. Wrangler, real comfortable jeans.

[00:39:43] Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers is what keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard. Visit jordanharbinger.com/advertisers. We also have an Alexis Skill, so you can get inspirational and educational clips from the show in your daily briefing. Go to jordanharbinger.com/alexa, or search for Jordan Harbinger in the Alexa App. Now for the conclusion of our show with Jocko Willink.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:09] What kind of jobs are there that people mostly have trouble with?

Because it seems like learning how to program a radio or being a radio man, like anybody can kind of maybe learn those technical skills with enough drill.

Jocko Willink: [00:40:19] The problems that people have is being overwhelmed in pressure situations, that's the biggest problem. So you're moving down a hallway, there's people shooting simunitions at you, there's targets moving, there's tactical decisions that are being made and that need to be made. And a lot of times in the SEAL teams, there is a tactical decision that's being made by the person that's in the situation. So if I'm a platoon commander or an assault force commander or a tasking unit commander, I'm in a building, we're taking down a building while I'm on the first floor, and there's a guy on the third floor looking down a hallway and he's on his first deployment, he's very inexperienced and he's got to make a decision which way to go down that hallway. And by the way, people are shooting, people are shooting machine guns. There's smoke in there, there's crash grenades going off. There's a lot of chaos and mayhem. And if you don't have someone that can go at that moment, “Okay, we need to move left, follow me,” that's going to be problematic. And it's generally it's someone that can't make decisions under pressure situations.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:20] Yeah. I think that's a skill that you have to build over time as well. I did a bunch of charity events with this military charity, so the Delta guys or retired Delta guys took us in a building of firehouse, and then one of those training firehouses and taught us how to clear it and at the end we were like, “Oh, how'd we do as a bunch of like business guys? And they're like, “You all would have been dead before you got in,” because they're shooting at us from the roof. And we're like, “I don't know, scattered all over the place.” And then the second one, we were all clumped together and they're like, “Yeah, I just would have thrown a grenade in your general direction, you all would've died.

Jocko Willink: [00:41:50] So those are the technical skill, that's the technical skill that usually the frontline Seals would be fired for. The SEAL leaders, of course, and I talk about this all the time, the SEAL leaders would generally get fired because they lacked humility because that's just the ultimate problem for a leader when they don't listen to anyone else, they don't make any adjustments. They don't listen to their subordinates, they don't listen to their peers, they don't listen to their bosses. They think they know everything, and when you have that attitude in combat, it's going to be a problem.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:22] Yeah. You have that story towards the end of the book where there's a -- I think he was regular army and he just wanted to drive straight into town on this road that had like a 100 percent chance of getting IEDs in disabling vehicles and he would not listen to anybody. And he was new to town and it was just like a terrible combination.

Jocko Willink: [00:42:37] Yeah, that's a bad situation. And that's why humility is so important. If you can't be humble and you've got some guys that have been on the ground in Ramadi for 10, 12, 14 months and they're advising you, and that's not a good plan. I would listen to them, I would listen to them. But if you're not humble, if you lack the humility to think, “You know what? These people that have been here for a long time, they might know something that I don't, I don't care. I'm not listening to them.” That's going to be a problem.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:05] This is random, but it just came to mind. What happens if somebody loses a radio? Like it just falls off? I don't know if that's even possible. Or maybe they get injured in their radio and somebody it can, that person -- how do you deal with that?

Jocko Willink: [00:43:18] The way the system is set up, and I don't want to say too much about it, but the way the system is set up, if a radio gets lost, it can be made so it can't be communicate anymore.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:28] Oh so, it's all digital and they're like, “All right, radio number 27 is off then.”

Jocko Willink: [00:43:32] Yep, it's going to be nonfunctional.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:34] Gotcha.

Jocko Willink: [00:43:34] So an enemy could get ahold of the radio, and within a very short period of time, the radio would be just a brick.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:41] Nice. Yeah, I wondered about that because it's got to happen at some point.

Jocko Willink: [00:43:44] yeah, I know, and of course, we try and prevent it. But there is sensitive gear in a combat situation, you can lose some sensitive gear and there's a little form that you fill out and you say, “This is the gear we lost.” And we filled out a few of those.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:57] It's classified though, I can't tell you what it is, but yeah, I think handing that in must feel pretty terrible.

Jocko Willink: [00:44:03] Handing in that form?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:04] Yeah.

Jocko Willink: [00:44:04] Yeah. That's a bummer, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:06] Yeah, it's kind of like losing your wedding ring or something.

Jocko Willink: [00:44:09] Very similar.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:09] Hey, Honey, I don't know what happened to it. It's gone.

Jocko Willink: [00:44:12] Yeah. I mean there's some times where my guys were getting shot off of targets and they left some stuff behind it and I was like, “Okay, I get it.” Sometimes it was a little bit of negligence on the guys, which is really, whose fault is that? It's my fault. Means I didn't explain it and make it clear enough and inspect occasionally to make sure that the procedures were being followed to secure the gear. So when you're in charge, it all comes back to you.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:38] Yeah, a lot of responsibility. I mean, hence the title of the original book. One concept that I thought was super useful in a business world is that everyone has to lead, and we kind of touched on this earlier, but a team can be really hamstrung if the performance relies really on one or two leaders. And the example in the book is Big Walt, super effective leader. You took them out of the picture, thankfully in a training exercise, and everybody just kind of sat there and getting shot with paintballs or whatever, simunitions.

Jocko Willink: [00:45:05] Yeah, that's a classic example that we would do when I was running the training, the advanced training for the SEALs is if they had a really effective leader and we'd watched, you'd see an effective leader and it's very obvious to see every call is made by him, every direction is given from him. And as I'd see that I'd say, “Oh, it looks like he's doing a great job,” which means he's going to die next. And so then we have paintball or whatever, we'd walk up and said, in that case it was like, “Hey, Beowulf, you're dead, lay down.” And then what happens is no one's making the decisions, no one's making the calls, and everything just turns to total chaos and everyone gets murdered, again, it's training. So it's paintball murder, but everyone gets murdered by the opposing force, which is actually other SEALs that are dressed up like bad guys. My SEALs, and my cadre from my training department would go and just slaughter the SEAL platoon, because they're not making any decisions and there's no one leading. And then in that example then this was a great Leif was actually the executive officer at the -- or the operations officer at the SEAL team at the time, that we put Beowulf, we killed Big Walt, and then we let everything kind of go to crap for a little while. And then just to -- it was so poignant to go up to Beowulf, and say, “Okay, Big Walt, you're alive again.” And Big Walt springs up immediately starts making decisions, immediately starts making calls, immediately starts giving direction and within -- I'm serious, within like 30 seconds, the guys are now doing the right things and it was great to bring that back to the debrief and say, “Okay guys, what happened with Big Walt was down?” Nothing happened.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:45] Right nothing.

Jocko Willink: [00:46:45] No one did anything. And what happened when Big Walt came back to life? He took ownership, he took charge, he made things happen, and you guys got the problem solved. Big Walt is Big Walt, never going to die. Is Big Walt indestructible? Is Big Walt bulletproof? The answer to all those questions is no. And so someone else has to be ready to step up and we're going to keep killing Big Walt until we see the leadership start to step up.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:09] So you did it just to highlight, because you brought them back in and I was like “Why bring him back in?” But really you can't go, “Oh yeah, the situation, a lot of different things. It changes.” Like no, the only variable that changed twice was we took out Beowulf.

Jocko Willink: [00:47:21] It's so obvious. And I mean that was one of the best things about my last job in the SEAL teams running that training was I got to do this over and over and over and over and over again. Just platoon after platoon, after platoon, after platoon, putting them through training. So I got to see this. I knew, I knew exactly what would happen. I knew it would happen when I killed him. Well, I didn't because sometimes no one else will step up because there's a good leader there and the person that's a good leader is generally a good follower. So if Big Walt making all the calls, cool. I'm just going to, I'm just going to follow a Beowulf, he's doing a good job.

[00:47:56] But if Big Walt gets killed, “Okay, now I'll step up.” So occasionally I wouldn't know, or actually, I wouldn't know if there was a really dominant leader. You might not know if there was another dominant leader, there are another couple of dominant leaders there, and believe me, if another bleeder stepped up underneath Big Walt, and started making calls, we'd kill that guy eventually and see if there's someone underneath him and if that guy, someone stepped up again, we'd kill that guy because we wanted to as you started off, we wanted everyone on the team to be able to lead, and that's what you need now. That also, like I said, “Good leaders are generally good followers as well,” so you wouldn't always see it, but seeing it over and over again, I can tell you without question, when you have a good leader and the good leader goes away, if no one else steps up, there's going to be problems, and if there's real problematic situation anywhere, guess what? You insert a good leader into that situation, the problem is going to get solved, that's leadership.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:49] It reminds me of the boat team story.

Jocko Willink: [00:48:51] Absolutely.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:52] About extreme ownership where they -- I think you'd switched the worst teams captain or whatever with the best one, and they ended up winning and losing, yeah.

Jocko Willink: [00:49:01] Yep. Yeah, well the actually the boat crew that was winning didn't end up losing the boat races. Now they came in second. You know why? Because other leaders in the team stepped up, other leaders in the team stepped up and they had seen how to lead. They'd seen how to work together as a team and so they continued on. But the other boat crew, which had been losing one, and that's because they had a good leader in that situation.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:24] So you took athletic ability or endurance or whatever, completely out of the equation.

Jocko Willink: [00:49:28] Leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:30] So this decentralized command where everyone has to lead. The way that you illustrate that is by throwing people into the deep end and then taken out the one guy who's the best swimmer, so to speak.

Jocko Willink: [00:49:40] Well that's one thing, but decentralized command, when you start, the other thing that you usually see, the problem with decentralized command that you usually see is someone is trying to control all the decision making. That's the problem that you usually see. No Big Walt is controlling all the decision making because he's a dynamic personality. But sometimes in the corporate world do you see the same thing, you see someone sitting there running every single meeting, they're making every single decision, no one down the chain of command is allowed to step up and show any initiative whatsoever and they eventually just don't have any initiative. So that's why decentralized command is important because when you have people on the front lines that can't make decisions on their own, that can't decide to shut off the main water valve that can't decide to adjust pricing, that can decide to skip some part in the manufacturing process because we're going to catch it in the backside, because we need to get this done right now. If you don't have people that are on the front lines that can make decisions and every single decision that they make, they have to run up to the top of the chain of command and get permission. They can't react quickly enough, and when you can't react quickly enough, you get ambushed, you get flanked, you get maneuvered on by the enemy and you get killed.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:49] How do you design training that's hard enough that the team learns and comes together but isn't so hard that people are just getting wiped out every time.

Jocko Willink: [00:50:57] Yeah, that's a challenge, and again, this is the dichotomy. And we have a chapter about it in the book. You want to push them so hard that they feel massive amounts of stress, but at the same time you can break them, you can break them, and where they're not learning anything and they get a defeatist attitude of no matter what we do, we're going to lose. And so I was always, I mean, I erred on the side of, I wanted the training to be too hard, that was where I aired. But I could also see when I'd see a platoon or a task unit start to fall apart and now I realized I'm breaking in, they're not getting anything out of it, and that's when I back off and let them do some runs without much interference. Let them do some runs where they win. Let them get their confidence back up. Let them see how it's supposed to be. Let them see how it's supposed to feel, and then I'd start turning up the turning up the chaos on them again. And the funny thing is I'd have a task unit or I'd have a platoon that would say, “We're not learning anything because we're just getting our asses kicked every single time. And I'd say, “Hey, you remember the run that you did, the iteration that you did three iterations ago? Do you remember that?” And they'd think about it and they'd say, “Oh yeah.” And I'd say, “Well what went wrong on that one?” And they'd say, “Oh well, nothing went wrong and we won. And I said, “And you barely remember it. And I say, “Why is that?” I said, “What did you learn?” And they'd say, “Well, we didn't learn anything.” And I'd say, “Okay, that's why we're kicking your ass every time because we want you to learn.” And this was all scheduled, I'd schedule -- the heat would be scheduled. “Hey, this run, they're going to get crushed to this run. They're going to get crushed. This run, it's going to be moderate. This run, they're going to get a freebie. Nice, easy run. Let them get their mind straight. Let them almost like a really good solid rehearsal so they know what it feels like. Then we're going to amp it up a little bit. Next one we're going to crush them. We had no -- I'd know exactly now I would modulate that depending on how the tasking or the platoon was doing. If they were doing great, I turned up the heat really quickly. If they were having trouble, I'd maybe back off a little bit, let them try and sort themselves out, but it was a great process and I was so lucky to be able to have that job and do that job. It was a great leadership laboratory is what it was.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:10] Yeah, I would imagine. Do you have any sort of rules of thumb? Like “All right, right before lunch we're going to let them win, or like before they quit for the day so that they feel good about it going into the rest of the day, or you're not thinking about that kind of thing.

Jocko Willink: [00:53:23] Literally, we would be looking their performance and thinking, “Okay, well how is it a performance and what is going to help? What is going to teach them the most right now?” Because sometimes you give somebody an easy run and they immediately get arrogant, and then when you get arrogant, as I said, if you lack humility that's a problem. So then you're going to get put in check really quickly. Sometimes you have someone that crushes things in that and okay you can handle more. Cool. We're going to give you more.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:50] The discipline but not rigid dichotomy was really interesting as well because it seems like discipline and rigidity almost go hand in hand. Like always get up at 4:30, and lift, or always study for your math exam or whatever the stuff is in your inbox, I can only imagine. How do you strike the balance and the example in the book to business was these sales guys that knew their scripts word for word and just went and delivered this script word for word, which as a former sales guy can imagine is awful. It's like when you get that phone call and the person's like, “Hi, this is Cathy from the reward center,” and you're like, “I'm not really interested.” Instead of going, “Well hold on, I think you would be,” there just like “Congratulations, you've won it,” and you're like, “What are you doing? What are you doing right now?”

Jocko Willink: [00:54:29] Exactly. That's the great example of, and we see it in all kinds of different businesses. It's not just sales, you can see in any business where there is so much discipline put them and obviously I am a fan of discipline, right?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:44] Yes.

Jocko Willink: [00:54:44] I have a book called Discipline Equals Freedom, and it's been my mantra for a long time.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:49] Product right here.

Jocko Willink: [00:54:49] Yeah, I have a product called discipline, and so I'm a huge fan of discipline. But can discipline be taken too far? Yes, it absolutely can. And if you put so much discipline on your people and so much rigidity on your people that they stop thinking, that is going to be problematic. And that's why even discipline, as much as I love discipline and as much as I believe discipline is the root good quality of all good qualities, even discipline has to be balanced.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:55:20] How do you get there? Because usually the pendulum swings in the other direction, right? You want to get the sales guys so good that they maybe could recite that script word for word and then dial it back somehow.

Jocko Willink: [00:55:29] Yeah. Well I think what you do is you need to get people to understand things. They need to understand because let's take your example of a script. You're writing the script because it's a good way. You're kind of capturing the best way to provide this information. But once you have that information provided, then an individual has to learn how to modulate that information based on feedback that they're getting from a client. And it's the same thing you do as a leader, as a leader, you step up in front of a group of people and you're going to pass a message. Well, depending on the reaction that you get, you're going to have to modulate that one way or the other. You might have to give more detail. You might have to give less detail. You might have to be louder. You might have to be quieter. You might have to break people into smaller groups. There's things that you have to do as a leader to modulate the way you communicate with other people. But if you don't have the base line, if you don't have the facts, it's going to be hard for you.

[00:56:27] So I look at, like in that example, the script is the facts. That's what you need. You need to know this information. Once you know the information, then you need to have the freedom to maneuver. You know, I always talk about Jimmy Page, the guitarist from Led Zeppelin. He had complete freedom on the fret board to make crazy and insane music, but the only reason he had that freedom to do that is because he was highly disciplined for many, many decades of practice and worked as a studio musician, playing the notes that he was told to play, the exact way that he was told to play them. And when he had the discipline background to understand the script of the notes and how they fit together, when he was able to let loose, he was able to make Led Zeppelin.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:13] Yeah, yeah. Can't argue with that. You mentioned leaders and followers and how it's just as important to be a good follower. And the example or one of the examples is this rock, is it rock, scissors rank or rock, paper rank? Something like that.

Jocko Willink: [00:57:27] Rock. What does it rock paper rank? What'd you say? Rock paper scissor? Yeah, it's rock paper rank.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:31] That makes sense. Yeah, the idea that this erodes trust among the team. Can you explain that a little bit?

Jocko Willink: [00:57:36] Well, it's the thing of, “Okay, Jordan, here's what we're doing and you're going to do it my way and you don't have any say in it.” “Oh, and you want to debate with me?” “No, the debate is I outrank you. I win.” And the minute that you pull your rank as a leader, the minute you pull your rank, you've really lost, you've really lost, because now you're going to go out and you're not going to execute the thing I told you to do, the action I told you to execute, you're not going to execute it with the same vigor you would if it was your plan or something you would come up with. So the minute I'm pulling rank on people--

Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:15] You lost the battle.

Jocko Willink: [00:58:16] Doing a bad thing as a leader.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:17] There's three elements in the book, have a good relationship with your boss. I'll refresh your memory because I know you wrote this a long time ago. You might already remember these, I don't know. But they trust you, they value and seek your opinion and guidance and they give you what you need to accomplish the mission and then let you go execute that and we'll throw that in a worksheet for people who are listening. That'll be in the show notes as well. How do we begin to create that type of relationship? Let's say we've always been kind of an a-hole and we're like, “Look, you're going to do this because I'm your manager.” How do we develop that trust and start to fix those relationships?

Jocko Willink: [00:58:48] Well, I'm not quite sure how you paired those two up because the one that you mentioned, the way that I want my boss to view me, that's up the chain of command. That's how I want my boss to view me. I want my boss to trust me, to listen to what I say and to give me what I need and then allow me to go execute the mission.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:08] Oh, so I'm looking at it from the other -- I'm looking at it backwards.

Jocko Willink: [00:59:10] Yeah. Like, this is what I want my boss to think of me. And I always say that, “Look, I worked for every different type of boss that you could imagine while I was the military.” I worked for guys that were awesome, incredible leaders and tactical geniuses, and I worked for guys that were complete nightmares and tactical idiots. And regardless of where my boss was on that spectrum, my relationship with all my bosses was the same, which is they trusted me, they listened to me, and they gave me what I needed to do my job and then they let me go do my job. So I had to build that relationship. So to your question of like, “How do I build that?” Well, it's different how you're going to build that. And if you've got someone that's a great leader and they are a tactical genius, well, all you have to do with them is kind of show that you understand the mission, show that you're competent in getting the things done tactically and give them what they want and go out and perform. That's great. You'll build that relationship pretty, pretty easily.

[01:00:14] If you have someone that's super micromanager, well guess what? You're going to have to figure it out how you build a relationship. And the way I always tell people to build relationships with, for instance, a micromanager, is you start giving them more information than they could ever want about what you're doing. So if I've got a guy that wants to know everything that I'm doing, I'm going to tell him everything I'm doing and then some. I'm going to say, “Hey boss, I'm going to go use the bathroom at about 0600 this morning before I come into the meeting with you, I just want to let you know and make sure. I'm being a little bit facetious here. I'm going to give them so much information that eventually they say, “Hey Jocko, I get it. Just go do what you need to do.” So I'm going to build those relationships up and that's the relationship I'm going to have with all my bosses.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:54] There's a lot of people who I think read a lot of most of these business books and they're looking maybe to fix a specific problem. And one of the problems that I see a lot in organizational structures, especially in people that are really rigid with their structure is this humble but not passive kind of problem that shows up. And I assume you see that a lot because it's an entire chapter in the book. Be humble or get humbled is a term that I love. Can you tell us what this means?

Jocko Willink: [01:01:20] We'll be humble, actually, I said that originally on the podcast where I had Tim Kennedy on and we were just talking about the nature of the world and the nature of the world is if you're not humble, you are going to get humbled. So that's a good attitude to have and it's a good attitude to always think, I need to stay humble, but -- and this is the dichotomy. This doesn't mean that you're completely passive, and there are times as humble as you should be. There are times when you need to stand up and say, no. No, that doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense at all. Now where this ties into the building relationships with your bosses. If you're my boss, Jordan. And you tell me to do something that doesn't make much sense. But you know what? It's a little thing. It's a minor thing. It's not going to cost me a bunch of time. You know what I'm going to do?

Jordan Harbinger: [01:02:13] You do it.

Jocko Willink: [01:02:14] I’m going to do it. And then you tell me to do something else. Maybe this one's cost me a little bit more time, but you know what? Okay, it's not that big of a deal. I'm going to get it done. We'll make it happen. I'm going to do it. And then you give me something, “Hey, you know what? This is a little bit of a problem. It's going to actually impact my guys a little bit and they might give me a little push back, but you know what I'm going to do?

Jordan Harbinger: [01:02:34] You’ll do it.

Jocko Willink: [01:02:34] I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. It's a little pushback on my side. I’ll say “Guys, hey look, we're going to make this happen, and I know it might not be clear to us right now, but you know what? We know we are doing, we're building trust with a boss or we're going to make this happen, we're going to do it well.” And then eventually, Jordan, you told me to do something that doesn't make sense. You tell me to something to do something that's going to get one of my guys hurt or killed, or you tell me something that's going to lose the my branch a bunch of money, and now I'm going to stand up. I'm going to say, “Hey Jordan, on the last thing you just told me to do. I don't think that makes sense, and let me explain why to you.” And now since I've built a relationship with you, since you trust me, since you know that I get what you get and I get what you want me to get done, I get it done. When I give you some push back, your mind is open. You're going to listen to me more than if -- “Hey, this doesn't make any sense.” You tell me to do something little and I don't like it. I go “This doesn’t make any sense, and now you have to battle me on something little, and you battled me on something else, and then you battle me on something else, that'll eventually you don't listen to me anymore. So I build the trust, I build the relationship and when I have to not be humble but I actually have to stand up and say no, or ask for a different direction then it's more accepted.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:03:44] Yeah. Then you got people smuggling patches and in all goes to hell from there. I thought it was funny there's a military version of the butt dial which is the hot mic.

Jocko Willink: [01:03:54] Yeah there is a military version of the butt dial.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:03:57] Yeah, so if you leave your radio button presser, it's like pushed up and get some shoulder strap or something.

Jocko Willink: [01:04:02] Yeah, you usually get pushed up against some shoulder strap or something.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:08] It’s so annoying.

Jocko Willink: [01:04:14] Yeah, I could do that for like 28 minutes, because that's what happens sometimes.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:18] Oh, it’s so annoying.

Jocko Willink: [01:04:19] And yeah, it's a real problem.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:21] And you can't turn your radio off obviously because you can't get off.

Jocko Willink: [01:04:24] And honestly, normally it would get fixed and five minutes or three minutes, but it is a pain, and in those three minutes when that's happening, there might be critical information that needs to get passed over the radio and when there's a hot mic going on, it's not going to get passed.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:39] So you can't talk over something else.

Jocko Willink: [01:04:41] You can't talk over. Well, generally it depends on where someone is. There's a little bit of the dynamics in the physics of the radio waves, but generally if someone's hot miking, the fact is you're not going to get any clear communication through when someone is hot mic.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:55] Ugh man! So it seems like they should have fixed that by now. Those radios are probably like 10 grand each. Yeah, we were really good about it. We got it to a point where we very seldom would have a hot mic. Generally, if we had one, it would be a guy that would be not from our unit right now, not from tasking bruise or someone else that was on our radio frequency that was patrolling with us because we were pretty -- and how did we do that? We were self-policing and if you had a hot mic and you were uncovered, it was like, it was a nightmare of hazing of just total ridicule if you were uncovered.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:27] Uncovered, what does that mean? Oh, like discovered.

Jocko Willink: [01:05:30] Yeah, yeah. If you were--

Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:31] Oh, so you don't even know who's doing it.

Jocko Willink: [01:05:32] No, you don't know who's doing it. If you knew who was doing it, you could just stop the patrolling and pass the word. No, it's just some random person one out of 40, that's sitting on their mic or that's leaning on their mic or that their mic is caught underneath their sling or their weapon. And you know, like I said, eventually people positioned their mic so that that doesn't happen, but occasionally it would.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:53] Military, butt dial. This book has great stories that you can really feel. I found -- you can almost like smell the nasty sewage canals in Ramadi when the way that things are described and like these machine gun or guys, they all sound like death metal fans with like bullets dripping off of them walking around light and people up and it's actually, it's kind of -- I was talking with Jen, my wife would read this as well. It's a miracle that more people are not injured on these missions or killed on these missions because every story in here is like you're just inches away from having something taken off by a bullet or fallen through like a crappy built floor or having some wall fall on.

Jocko Willink: [01:06:35] Yeah, you say it's a miracle and it is, absolutely.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:06:3] It is.

Jocko Willink: [01:06:38] And we had a lot of guys get wounded, we had guys get killed and the fact that more guys didn't get wounded and the fact that more guys didn't get killed. It’s definitely a miracle. There's definitely times where we got away with way more than we should have, and also the guys were extremely well trained. They were extreme professionals, they took care of each other and we were a lot better than the enemy at our job than the enemy was at their job. And that doesn't mean you get away with it all the time. That doesn't mean you know combat, it's something else I say in the new book is if you cut wood, you get saw dust. I mean, when you're in combat, it doesn't matter if you do everything perfectly, you can still take casualties. The bullets don't care if you train hard or not. The bombs don't care, the IED is don't care how well you plan that mission. That idea has been sitting there for however long, and if someone steps on it, it's going to main people and it's going to kill people, and that's one of the horrible things about combat is there's a certain level of risk that cannot be mitigated. It cannot be mitigated no matter -- the only way to mitigate, completely mitigate all risks from combat is to not engage in it. And sure, that's great option if there's no evil in the world, but unfortunately, there is evil in the world and therefore there's war.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:08:12] I don't think a lot of us civilians realize that like 25 yards away from some of these enemy combatants. Towards the end of the book, there's a time where you and Chris Kyle, are on some sort of mission in Ramadi and there's like insurgent kid. I imagine all these guys are kind of young, and they're just like right in front of you.

Jocko Willink: [01:08:30] Yeah, and that's actually Leif, that's actually Leif and Chris was Leif’s point man. And so yeah, they were patrolling at night and sure enough, that's the way it is. That's one of the things about the urban combat that is very challenging is that you can be separated by the enemy by one wall, by a concrete wall that's six inches thick, and that's it. That's one of the things that -- and also the enemy can be anywhere around you, and that's another thing that makes urban combat very challenging is you have to react to things very, very quickly because you won't see someone until you turn the corner, whereas in the desert you can see someone a little further out.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:09:13] Yeah. I think a lot of us, when we watched the news or whatever or watch whatever's on TV or YouTube, we don't realize that you're that close because we only see as close as Geraldo Rivera, whatever wants to get close to the action. He's 150 yards away sitting with some guys or maybe shooting or looking over some building wall add combatants that are the size of ant on the screen because they're so far away. We don't really know how close everyone really is and that stuff is terrifying, and that seems like an emotional kind of an emotional skill set that you have to have where you don't just freak out the second you see somebody that close to you with an AK 47 right in your face at that point.

Jocko Willink: [01:09:56] Yeah. Well again, this comes back to the training. This comes back to the extensive training that we go through and I mean the other thing is the guys got used to combat, I mean it was a daily situation. It wasn't like, “Hey, we're on deployment for six months,” and the guys got in a firefight. It was like almost a daily scenario where it was gun fights with the enemy. And so by that point, the story that you're talking about, by that point, that was pretty deep into deployment and I wouldn't say -- actually wasn't that deep. It was probably, there's a couple months into deployment, but by that point, Leif’s reaction was, “Okay, there's a guy there, he's an enemy, obviously. Take them out.”

Jordan Harbinger: [01:10:40] How quickly do people usually adapt to that combat mindset?

Jocko Willink: [01:10:44] It depends on the person. It also depends -- well it depends on the person. It depends on the training, and then it also gets to a point where guys can't handle it anymore. And that happens in the Cheshin War that they, they talk about three or three months tops, maybe four months tops with the Soviet said someone can handle that urban combat for, because the stress level is so high. I was just reading book about the front lines of World War I again where you're getting massive bombardment from artillery and mortars and those guys had even shorter periods of times where if they didn't get off the front line, they were going to break mentally. So luckily for us, when I talk about the guys being out in combat daily, but they'd also come back to base. They'd also come back for a couple of days and be back on base in a relatively secure environment and be able to decompress a little bit. Again, you're still overseas. We got mortared on base, the guys that were in Eastern Ramadi. They got mortared and attack with machine guns on a fairly daily basis, but it still is relatively secure. The enemy is definitely going to be --they're not going to be five meters away or 10 meters away or within grenade throwing distance. So the guys did have an opportunity to decompress a little bit, but yeah, the combat trauma that it puts on guys can be very, very hard to deal with, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:12:16] Yeah. It seems like -- where do you sleep when you're out for three days? I mean, you have to sleep right there, and somebody who's watching your back.

Jocko Willink: [01:12:23] Yes, you have watch standards. Someone's up, someone's asleep, you get the time, Leif and I joke about it sometimes the most we'd get to sleep was when we were in the field because preparing to go on the field, we'd be awake for 36 hours, going through the planning cycle, deconflicting with all the units we're going to work with and then finally get to go on the field. And it's like, “Okay, can you guys stay and watching? I'm going to go to sleep.” And I know Leif jokes about that, I joke about it too. Or there's a funny picture of myself and Dave Burke, another guy that was with us in Ramadi, in the Marine Corps ANGLICO guy, but there's a picture of him in me. And he was the leader of his assault team, and I, as a leader of Task Unit Bruiser, and there's a picture of he and I on a rooftop. It's probably, it looks like it's about 11 o'clock in the morning and we're both sitting there. We're both asleep, we're both sitting there.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:13:13] A 110 degrees.

Jocko Willink: [01:13:13] Yeah, it’s a 110 degrees. And we're both asleep and clearly this was probably the first time we had to rest in 24 or 48 hours, so we put our heads down and sleep. Yeah, you learned to sleep anywhere on concrete and floors and stairwells and whatever else.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:13:30] The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win, really good. I got an advanced copy, lot of classified stuff in there. I can't talk about it, but the rest of it is going to be out soon so go pick it up. Thanks Jacko.

Jocko Willink: [01:13:43] Thanks for having me on, man.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:13:46] So this was a great one. It was kind of cool to go fly down to San Diego and hang out with Jocko again. He was one of our first guests on the new show. He's been guests on a lot of my other stuff as well. So it was kind of cool to come back and you know, we're still waiting for the final, final copy of the book to come out and there's going to be maybe some surprises. We still don't even know what the covers go look like.

Jason DeFillippo: [01:14:07] Nice. Yeah, I was so bummed I couldn't meet you guys in San Diego for this and because I'm such huge Jocko fan. I loved Etreme Ownership and I actually incorporated that into my life every day. If I screw up, I take ownership for it, and you know that I'm the first guy to say, “Ah, my fault.” But I also got to say thanks for you and Jen for going down there and sending me a Jocko care package, which you can see if you go to instagram.com/jpd. I've got all the stuff that you guys sent me, including his new tea, which is delicious.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:14:37] Ah, yeah, the white tea. I dig that too.

Jason DeFillippo: [01:14:40] The white tea is so good.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:14:43] Great big thank you to Jocko. The new book is called The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win. A lot of great stories in there, just like Extreme Ownership. Balance is kind of the battle stuff with the business stuff and if you want to know how I managed to book all of these great guests, manage my relationships, business and personal using systems I've developed over the years, definitely check out our Six-Minute Networking course which is free over at jordanharbinger.com/course. A lot of people go, “Oh, I don't need to network right now or I'll do that in a bit. I'm really busy these days.” The problem with that mindset is that you cannot make up for lost time when it comes to relationships. Networking, you cannot build those relationships when you need them, and I see that problem with students, business owners, you postpone it, you don't dig the well, then you get thirsty and once you need those relationships, you're way too late. You got to dig the well before you're thirsty. These drills are designed to take a few minutes per day and it's the type of habit that we can ignore only at our own peril. This is the stuff I wish I knew a decade and change ago. This is not fluff, it is crucial. So that's at jordanharbinger.com/course.

[01:15:52] And speaking of relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Jocko. I'm @jordanharbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, and doing a lot more on Instagram these days. Little videos, answering questions like I do on Feedback Friday, and don't forget, if you want to learn how to apply everything you've heard from Jocko, make sure you go grab the worksheets, also linked up in the show notes, jordanharbinger.com/podcast.

[01:16:15] This episode was produced and edited by Jason “Yo, Send Me Some More of That White Tea” DeFillippo. Show notes are by Robert Fogarty. Worksheets by Caleb Bacon. Booking back-office and last minute miracles by Jen Harbinger. And I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful. That should be every episode, so please share the show with those you love and even those you don't. Lots more in the pipeline. Very excited for what's coming to you in the future. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.