Jocko Podcast 302: Have a Plan, a Protocol, and a Code. Iron-Sharpened Leadership. Gen. John Gronski

this is jocko podcast number 302 with echo charles and me jocko willink good evening echo good evening sir we have a tech as i quickly walked across our tactical operation center to the opera to radio operator i’m sure my heart rate spiked a tick pronounced tick stands for troops in contact it is something arresting everyone’s attention because it meant one of our patrols was taking enemy fire on the mean streets of ramadi as i pressed the handset of the radio to my ear i could hear a sense of urgency in the voice of the patrol leader on the ground he was leading a group of soldiers on a dismounted patrol on ramadi’s southwestern side of town things could get kind of sporty there the young sergeant leading the patrol was requesting a direct super cobra gunship helicopters to fire at insurgents on top of a building they were engaged by insurgents with small arms from behind a building but now he could see guns and other weapons on the roof the insurgent had ceased for the moment but the patrol leader was concerned about what might come next something did not feel right people need to pay attention to gut feelings and instinct i have found the more experience one gains the more gut feeling factors into decision making if something does not feel right it probably requires a little more attention i used a steady voice to calm the patrol leader down i let him know i would call in the cobras but first i needed him to provide positive identic identification of exactly who was on top of that building my intuition was telling me to let the situation develop before calling in heavy firepower after a few minutes the patrol leader made a positive identification of the force on the rooftop on the rooftop i was glad i did not pull the trigger on the cobras a u s marine corps civil affairs team were on the top of the building a stressful situation was averted calmness and coolness prevailed as it turned out the small arms fire he received was some harassment fire and the insurgents who initiated the incident had quickly disappeared so that right there is an excerpt from a book which is called iron sharpened leadership which was written by general john gronski who served in the us army and the national guard for over 40 years and i had the honor of serving with him during the battle of ramadi where our deployments overlapped by about a month or so in the spring of 2006 and he’s actually been on the podcast before episode 235 so if you haven’t listened to that podcast yet stop and go and listen to that one to get some background on general gronsky but we are honored to have general gronsky back again tonight to discuss his new book which as i said is called iron sharpened leadership and the subtitle is transforming hard-fought lessons into action so general gronsky once again thank you for coming by hey jocko it’s great to be with you thanks for inviting me always good to be uh here in san diego san diego’s not a bad place to be uh so your first book that we did we touched upon on the last podcast it was called the ride of our lives and it was about a bike rate bike ride that you made across america with your wife and your infant child and you talked about some of the lessons that you learned along that voyage and the experience you had but that was very early in your army career and this is reflective of your entire army career so what what made you decide to write this book iron sharpened leadership yeah you know jaco when i wrote that book the right of our lives uh near the end of the book i put some um just leadership lessons that i gained on that ride as you mentioned and i actually had people uh asking me to expand on those lessons and you know the book focused just on that very short period of time three months in 1983 and i i just uh gained so much more experience and learned so many more lessons over the next 30 plus years and i just felt compelled to to put those lessons down in the writing and hopefully would help other people gain from really most of the mistakes i made along the way did had you written the ride of our lives in close proximity when it actually took place or was that did you remember back 30 years or whatever it was yeah you know going i took that bike ride with my wife and 15 month old son back in 1983 i kept the journal got it that journal sat in a shoe box for over 35 years and then when i retired from the army in 2019 had a little bit of time on my hand so i decided to you know write the book the right of our lives and it was really meant to be for for myself to reflect back on and for my family to have and then i decided to self-publish it as as a book and uh it turned out to be quite popular awesome so so this book like you said this is this is going back on your whole career and the lessons that you’ve learned and you you’ve been through the entire leadership spectrum in in the army and spent a bunch of time in combat and so this is a great book and uh let’s jump into it so and then just so everybody knows look if i have to skip around i’m not going to read the whole book right now there is an audiobook version of this as well but we’re not going to read the whole thing so i’m going to jump into some spots it’s it’s obviously not going to be completely cohesive when we read it on the podcast it’s it’s set up in a very cohesive manner in the way it’s read but i gotta make that uh caveat before i start reading but here’s the one i wanted to start with go into the book some of the best leadership advice was given to me by a crusty non-commissioned officer during my first experience in the army when i was training as an rotc cadet at fort knox kentucky in 1976 i was a patrol leader during a training event in the scenario my patrol was passing through a cleared lane within a minefield the lane was about 40 yards in length as we began as we were crossing them the minefield on the cleared lane we began to receive small arms fire from an enemy position about 200 yards away i hesitated the soldiers were waiting for a command i did not give it took less than a minute for the enemy to destroy my entire patrol the sergeant who was a seasoned vietnam veteran pulled me aside and loudly advised when in charge be in charge your followers expect you to lead so you better damn well lead good lesson learned out of the gate yeah again i could just say as i reflect back on my career it was those non-commissioned officers especially uh early on in my career those vietnam vets uh who i was fortunate to be around and fortunate to get you know just just some hard advice from you know no no punches pulled hey this is the way it should be you know so square yourself away and lead when you’re in a leadership position yeah you know i was thinking in that particular case and when i was running training a lot of times the the younger guys the young seal officers one thing that would happen to them would be there would be a a platoon chief or a leading petty officer that would get in the habit of making a lot of the calls and so the officer would get in the habit of not making calls and it was a it wasn’t even a fine line what they had to realize was if uh if one of the ncos makes a call awesome you help them you support their call you’re gonna go no factor all good it’s in those moments those rare moments where you know in this particular case maybe the nco got hit with the first volley of fire or the ncl was in a position on the minefield where he could see where the fire was coming from so they can’t make a call or they’re panicked or whatever the case may be so you get that leadership vacuum and that’s when that officer has to be detached enough has to be heads up enough to go oh wait a second my ncos aren’t making a call i need the lead right now so it’s a little bit of a cautionary tale too you know if when you’re in charge that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to make the call but you better be prepared in case you know the the people that you’re subordinate leadership doesn’t make something happen in an ideal world subordinate leadership makes a call you don’t have to do anything i hate to say it but in an ideal world when you’re in charge you don’t have to do anything yeah i ideally and you know jackie you speak to the fact that you know you have to put your followers into positions where they have that opportunity to make some of those tough calls and you know i even think of this uh reflecting back you know my kids are both in their 30s now but reflecting back when when my children were teenagers and i really think it’s important for parents to let young teenagers make decisions because if parents are making all the decisions for their kids when are they going to learn how to make a decision you know they’re going to learn learn how to make a decision when they become an adult well that’s kind of too late uh so i i do think you need to to put your followers in positions where they they gain that experience hey and if they make a mistake you know that’s usually how we learn more is when we make a mistake when than when we do something right by accident yeah that’s uh i was gonna say when you were saying let your kids make decisions let your kids make mistakes too and just like in the military this doesn’t mean you’re gonna send a young you know first lieutenant out on an operation that they’re not capable of conducting because they don’t have the experience yet they don’t have the knowledge you’re not gonna say oh let’s see how it goes no you’re not gonna do that just like you’re not gonna say oh my kid wants to go play in the street which is not a good decision where they could get hit by a card and that’s not what we’re talking about but you can certainly let them make decisions and let them brush up against the guardrails of failure because that’s where you learn through those little scratches that you get on the on the body exactly i’mma fast forward a little bit um because this this section kind of sets up the rest of the book my personal leadership philosophy is based on three elements of character competence and resilience there are sub components to each element of my leadership philosophy character competence resilience and their subcomponents are skills and like any other skill they can be learned and strengthened although some may be born with higher levels of any one of these elements everyone can improve them through training and practice and this is something that i think there’s a lot of people in the world that think that leadership is something you’re born with and either you have it or you don’t and like you said there are certainly you might have some advantages in some areas you might be pretty articulate you might be pretty you know visionary you might be have a good sense of other people’s emotions there’s different levels that people have in all those categories but no matter where you are in all these categories you can improve upon them then you can get better and i think a lot of people think oh leadership is just just going to come through osmosis or it’s something you’re born with and there’s nothing you can do to actually train it when the fact of the matter is there’s a hundred percent things that you can do to improve your leadership skills yeah and uh you know i think it’s like athleticism you know some people are are born with better athletic skills than others but everybody could improve in that athleticism it doesn’t mean everybody’s going to be a you know an nfl player or nba player whatever but everybody could get better and i feel the same way about leadership and and that’s another reason why i wrote the book and just as you’ve written many leadership books to to try to help people develop those skills that we know could be improved yeah yeah and that’s the benefit of being in the military is you get to see over and over again young leaders actually improve and get better and and make better decisions and get more experience so it’s something that you and i through the blessing of being in the military got to see over and over again it’s it’s fact it’s a fact that you know leaders can be improved um let me get into these these components here the first one character character is the root of leadership a leader of character will be able to establish an environment of trust a character-based leader grows trust by trusting others first providing a vision displaying integrity leading by example and sincerely caring about others a leader must have values and principles values are something a person believes in and will be guided by when times are good and when times are tough a character-based leader sincerely cares about those they lead and they place the interests of their followers above their own the key component i had a guy on this podcast by the name of general james mukayama and he was he served in vietnam and he worked for he worked for colonel david hackworth when hackworth was the battalion commander mukuyamo was one of his company commanders but that was a point that he made so clear was that idea of you got to care about your people and that was a thing that hackworth had that i don’t know if it always comes about or comes across in in his books and in his writings but hackworth just cared about his soldiers and that elevated him so much in their eyes and that’s exactly what you’re talking about here yeah and um you know it’s it’s easy to say you know uh care about your your people that you lead but it’s i think extremely hard to do to put the interest of those you lead before your own interest i think the only people who could naturally do that are parents you know i think parents could naturally put the interests of their their kids before their own but to do that to uh people that you know aren’t aren’t blood relatives of yours that that that’s a hard thing to do and i’ve been fortunate enough to be around uh leaders in the military who have that ability to do that was almost an innate sense they had to put the welfare of those they lead first and you know we learned this in in the army and the marines and the navy air force you know that uh you know leaders eat last and and the reason we do that you know you could imagine you know you’re out there either in a training environment uh or on an operation you get this ciao mermaided outy in the field and you know it’s rainy it’s cold and if that leader jumps into child line first there’s probably whoever is going to be the last guy in the child line probably isn’t going to eat or at least get a full portion i mean that’s why leaders eat last you want your folks that you lead that have the benefit of of that nutrition before before you suck suck it down you know and again we we learned this in the military and i think you know uh folks in the civilian sector uh some some know that kind of innately and others uh maybe never experienced that and that’s why i think there’s some organizations uh that cannot develop that le that that trust that is so essential if you’re going to have an organization effectively run another thing about this is i think there’s people who think that they can fool their troops and their subordinate leadership into thinking that they care about them and and i promise you having been a young enlisted guy having been the youngest and most junior guy in my first two seal platoons everybody can tell when you’re looking out for yourself everybody can tell you’re not fooling anyone and that’s why the people that truly care about the the team and put the team above themselves that’s why they always shine yeah yeah and uh you know you think of examples that we’ve seen in the military you know uh uh a a leader who i remember when i was over in ramadi you know one one of the platoons was getting some better version of an up armored humvee and the platoon leader refused to take that better version he made sure you know this his other soldiers in in the platoon got that version before he would take it to to ride in himself and that’s putting yourself more at risk for the benefit of those you lead so there’s a perfect example of how one could do that especially if it means putting your life at risk uh that this guy was a true leader 100 no that’s that’s a outstanding example right there next thing next characteristic competence when i talk about competence being an element of leadership i am not referring to the technical confidence in a specific job i am referring to the general competence of a person to lead others many elements make up competence but the most imperative are providing a vision and purpose for the organization decision making developing others and communication a leader must be able to articulate a vision which is simple unique ideal image of the future leaders must explain the why behind the vision and tell their followers what they believe in when leaders provide vision and purpose they instill confidence and provide inspiration that fuels an organization empowering it to success a leader must learn and apply problem-solving skills and decision-making processes a leader also must possess the courage to decide one of the most important roles of a leader is to develop other leaders a leader must mentor and coach must be a mentor and coach willing to take others assigned and provide insight into what it means to be a leader a leader must communicate in clear concise and respectful manner most leaders spend between 70 and 90 of their time communicating it is important for a leader to develop listening skills and the ability to get a consistent message out to all stakeholders so that’s the the competency of being a leader all these skills that you list in here and again what’s interesting about these skills is you know if you scan through them can you get better at [Music] explaining the vision yes you can can you get better at decision making yes you can can you get better at problem solving yes you can can you get better at decision making yes you can can you get better at mentoring yes you can every one of these can you get better at communicating in simple clear concise language respectful manner yes you can everything you’re talking about here with the competence of a leader is is something that you can you can improve upon yeah and uh you know in in the book as people go through it they’ll see you know there’s stories associated with these lessons that i’ve learned and then there’s certain actions i i found uh through my experience over the last 40 years that uh help one get better and stronger at these particular skills that you mentioned yeah so just to make that clear because i don’t know how much i did in my notes but you you broke the book down almost like a military learning manual where hey here’s the actions that you need to take if you want to improve in these areas and i know i don’t hit them i think i hit a couple of them but that’s what that’s the way the book is broken down um the last thing is resilience anyone who has ever led anything will tell you that at some point in time the organization you lead will face adversity for that matter every living person faces adversity at some point in their lives it all comes down to how prepared one is to face these challenges and how one responds leaders must prepare themselves and give their followers and their followers to overcome challenges positive energy is essential when leading a large organization or a small team optimism and enthusiasm are two key traits of a resilient person like any other trait they must be exercised to become a strong part of one’s makeup a leader must be physically emotionally mentally and spiritually fit to strengthen resilience leaders must follow themselves must allow themselves to be vulnerable by moving out of their comfort zone by taking risks and taking on tough challenges scar tissue is developed and resilience is improved so the person that’s going to lead had better be able to be able to get back up again if they get knocked down yeah and you know jaco i think resilience is something that has been talked about a lot a lot over the last few years but resilience i don’t i don’t believe resilience actually just happens by itself uh you know you’ve got to train to become a resilient person by doing certain things that that you just mentioned you know moving out of your comfort zone i mean if if you’re a leader or a person who just wants to take the uh easy way of just staying in your comfort zone doing things that you know how to do never stretching yourself never putting yourself in a position where you might make a mistake because you think you’re going to look bad in front of your followers or your peers or whomever you’re not going to grow that way and and then when tough times do happen you’re going to be less likely to demonstrate the resiliency that’s needed in order to help your organization get through those tough times reminds me talking to some of the some of the tankers actually this was the one one ad that replaced you guys in ramadi but one thing that i found interesting was so they do the and and it was actually a guy named mike bahima who is the was a company commander fantastic guy but he was explaining to me what what they do to prepare for deployment one of the things that they do to prepare for deployment is they bring their tank on this tank range and they do gunnery where you’re shooting and you’re moving and maneuvering the tank and doing comms and reloading and it’s a challenge it’s like uh i i guess in for an infantry guy for or for a seal it’s like doing a combat conditioning course where you run you shoot you got head plates to hit you got long distance shots to take you got to do pull-ups and rope climbs and you got to shoot more it’s like that but it’s in a tank and one thing that he said to me was when they go do gunnery the first person that goes is battalion commander exactly that sets the example hey this i’m going first and so what you’re talking about getting out of your comfort zone i can’t imagine a lot of those tanker those tank battalion commanders they’ve probably been out of the tank for a while and yet they’re going to step up and they’re going to show okay this is it this is what we do yeah and um you know you kind of reminded me of of something that i wouldn’t mind sharing with you because i i think it’s it’s uh kind of a great lesson in in resiliency and and this goes back to ramadi um i had a uh a national you know one of our national guard tank companies when we were training it at uh camp shelby before going over to to iraq uh this this company has three platoons and one of their platoons went through that tank gunnery that that you just talked about only one of their platoons did uh and when they got over to ramadi we actually task organized them to 269 armor which was an easter mighty combat outpost corrigador area and since 269 armor was was an armored battalion they didn’t need this company to operate in tanks so they made the motorized infantry so they operated as motorized infantry for the six the first six months they were over in ramadi and then two six nine armor leaves and they get replaced by first of the 506 infantry from the 101st airborne light infantry but tanks were still needed in easter madi so now these these national guard soldiers who were tankers operating as motorized infantry for the previous six months are now in tanks and they just did a remarkable job they had several main gun engagements while they were over there and it just goes to show you how by training to be resilient and training in those skills even when you’re taken out of that particular job in a combat situation for six months and then having to go back into those tanks again and then just performing remarkably i think is just just a great story of not only resiliency but but adaptability yeah i think that’s something that has made the seal team successful and it starts in the basic seal training and i always say that hey you know the basic skill training you don’t really learn anything because you’re just doing push-ups and being wet cold and miserable you learn how to suffer and if you don’t like to suffer you’re not going to be there but one thing i will say is you’re getting total chaos like it’s total chaos when you’re there you everything that happens i mean you go out you go out your boats in the ocean and they’re getting flipped over and you’re getting washed up on and people are confused lost you got chem lights bouncing all over the place you know when hell week kicks off there’s just total chaos confusion there’s they’re throwing smoke grenades everywhere you can’t see anything there’s machine guns going off you can’t hear anything and it’s just like that all the time so you get used to this environment where there’s total chaos going on and you have to figure it out you have to adapt and then when i got to the steel teams and it’s not so much like this anymore but it still does have this still does have this this dna which is there there was no doctrine when i got the seal teams if you want to do a raid if someone didn’t tell you if your platoon chief didn’t know how to do a raid you had to just figure it out and there’s good and bad to that i mean it’s kind of good in the army you want to do a raid you can pick up the what is it seven tac six infantry platoon and squad you can figure out how to do raid it tells everybody what they need to do seal teams doesn’t have that and so you just go okay well what makes sense how can we do this and and like i said there’s some good to that there’s some bad to that because now you might not come up with the best plan but there’s also some good because you’re constantly learning to adapt and and i think that’s one of the things and it’s look the whole i’m i’m saying that about the seal teams because that’s my environment but the military in general does that and that’s exactly what you’re talking about you take guys you train them in one in one aspect of combat you take them on deployment you put them into a totally different aspect of combat they perform and then halfway through you switch them back to the original thing and they get back on that horse and do it again or in this case get back in those tanks yeah and do it again yeah and uh you know i remember when we got over when the brigade uh i was part of got over to to ramadi in 2005 coin doctrine wasn’t written yet and uh you know coin doctrine wasn’t uh written by uh general petraeus and general mattis until early 2006 really and uh so there was no coin academy that you know leader that leaders from my brigade went to when we got to iraq but i think 2006 2007 after that any brigade that got uh deployed iraq went through this thing called the the coin academy the counterinsurgency academy and so we we kind of had to figure it out on our own and the way you figure it out you know you read history uh you see how it was done in the past you just use some common sense you talk to uh leaders that that you respect and they that you count on and you kind of figure it out and that was the interesting thing that was done there you know a brigade of 5 000 soldiers and marines but a lot of the operations were occur occurring at the platoon and company level so it’s not like you know because i was a brigade commander i was directing some type of large brigade operation that didn’t exist they were all done at very small unit levels and and uh just just an amazing thing about our american you know uh uh servicemen and women uh they figure it out they have a way to figure it out and i think uh if you read history of the military which i know you you do when you read on on your podcast regularly uh it’s just amazing how we have uh you know how our american uh military has just figured things out as we went yeah i don’t even remember because the first went up so i arrived in ramadi in like april of 2006 i visited one of my friends who was an intel officer at one of the at one of the bases and in ramadi and she had the big targeting board and i had worked with her before she had that big targeting board when i was in iraq before the same big targeting board i was like man this is this is not a good sign because if we’re just going to be targeting these people and this is this board is just as big as as it was when i left yeah and i went back to my talk my tackle operation center and i googled i think i must have heard something about this new counter insurgency manual but i googled it and it was on it was a draft copy because it didn’t even get released yet it was a draft copy that i got and i was just like okay this is it and i found it on i forget those websites those uh there’s a couple websites i want to say one of them was like globalsecurity org maybe i found out but i was on one of those websites that i used to read about what was happening in the world sort of from a from a military geopolitical perspective also has a bunch of manuals so it had the new fm three tac 24 counter insurgency and i i i literally read it that like that night day it’s pretty long and i just plucked things from it yeah and realized okay this is what we need to do and i remember i know i i stole from it because i remember my boss saying you know what what’s your objective in these types of operations and i said provide security for the populace which i know i didn’t make that up on my own i didn’t come up with that that’s 100 stolen from uh from the the insurgency manual and and that’s what that’s what kind of drove me in that direction of like hey how can we really help the broader conventional forces that are here as as they start to move in and and try and stabilize what’s happening yeah you know it’s it’s it’s funny you mentioned that because we we kind of uh evolved and and i read somewhere or somebody told me you know you can’t kill yourself out of an insurgency and we when we first got there you know our our mission was to you know kill the insurgents and we evolved into protecting the populace because we realized you know the the main the main uh goal here is to protect the populace in order to change chaos into into something that was going to be calmer than chaos there and so uh the same type of thinking you had about your your mission of protecting the the people of ramadi we we kind of evolved into that too from uh again reading history uh talking to some of the uh iraqi leaders in ramadi that we would be dealing with on a regular basis and and we came to the conclusion that hey if we’re going to be successful here it’s about protecting the population not not not simply killing the bad guys now sometimes you would have to kill bad guys in order to protect the populace so i’m not saying you know that was totally off the table uh but the mindset completely changed for us throughout that one year that we conducted operations there yeah awesome stuff um getting back to the book here um you say discipline respect and selflessness are part of the united states army’s dna forged over 200 years ago during the training of the continental army at valley forge pennsylvania you throw in pennsylvania any chance you get can’t don’t you i got to yeah these traits have served our military well and account at least in part for the reason the united states military always tops polls announcing the most trusted organizations in america any leader would do well to demonstrate the traits of self-discipline respect for others and selflessness in order to lead effectively now you got a story in here about uh was it sergeant mike catcher mike hutch kocher tell us that story yeah uh mike is uh an amazing uh person mike kacher was a soldier in the pennsylvania national guard 28th infantry division uh who uh was deployed to afghanistan and while he was in afghanistan a rocket came in this rocket landed about 10 feet away from him and it just caused significant wounds to my catcher broke his jaw uh you know internal bleeding and and damages and then his his his left arm was wounded so signific significantly that it had to be amputated and they you know as they were treating him he was eventually put in a in a in a coma in an induced coma and it took him two years to recover from these very very significant wounds that he had and you know he had a lot to deal with obviously recovering from these wounds not you know losing his arm etc etc and he decided that the way he was going to overcome this adversity that he was facing was to just build himself up physically and compete in physical competition and so he decided to enter the invictus games and uh the invictus games uh uh were created i think by prince harry if i’m not mistaken and it was all about bringing you know wounded warriors together to compete in olympic-style competition and so i i believe it was in 2018 in in sydney australia when mike was competing in his third invictus game as he was competing in some track and field events he noticed this young girl about eight years old in the stands and she was kind of you know shadowing him whatever event he would go to compete in she would kind of you know move her seat and come over and watch him and then he he realized she had one arm and um when it came time for him to receive his silver medal that he earned he asked gemma to come up on the podium with him and when he was given the silver medal he took it from around his neck and put it around gemma’s neck and gifted the silver medal that he worked so hard for to this young eight-year-old australian girl and i had the opportunity to uh email back and forth with gemma’s father who again is australian and he went on to tell me how that had just completely changed gemma’s life another interesting thing he told me he said you know gemma’s arm was not amputated she was born without that arm and he said and there’s a psychological difference between having your arm amputated or being born without an arm so he made that distinction clear to me and he went on to say that you know from mike doing that what mike probably thought was a very simple gesture it just dramatically changed jim gemma’s life and now she’s competing in sports as a matter of fact i see pictures of her on instagram where she’s winning swim meets and uh she’s just ready to to tear it up because of this very simple leadership gesture that that mike kocher demonstrated to her and it go it just goes to show you that the the simple things we do in life as leaders have a profound effect on on those that we do those things for and uh you know you call it similar to the butterfly effect you know that uh you know this this this could have a generational impact i don’t want to sound true too dramatic here but it could it could have a generational impact on gemma and on gemma’s children if she has children someday etc etc uh just because of that very selfless act that that mike carter did and you got to realize you know you work hard to get the silver medal you know i mean just to give it away like that to somebody that you don’t really know uh was was quite a gesture so uh that that’s that’s the story about mike yeah i can only imagine a a young girl like that and you know young girls and boys but i would i’ve got three daughters and one son and i would say that girls are really self-conscious about you know those kind of things their body their they’re self-conscious about that and you could imagine someone like gemma who’s sort of avoiding any time where all of a sudden this becomes the focus is like what’s different about her and and him just coming along and saying yeah it’s cool yeah it’s good yeah don’t worry about it go do your thing exactly and how much that just changed your life that’s awesome to hear yeah yeah um you wrap up this uh idea here you say self-discipline giving up could become a habit working hard and striving continually to get better is also habit habits are developed through repetition and where self-discipline comes in leaders who are self-disciplined adhere to the same standards they have set for their followers they lead by example and share hardship struggles and tough jobs with their followers by the way adhering to the same standards you expect from others and sharing the load are two of several actions a leader must take to instill trust throughout an organization self-disciplined people have the motivation to do the hard work behind the scenes which makes them great at what they do these people have the drive to act in order to make themselves better and to avoid anything detrimental to achieving their goals this work ethic generally has a way of making everyone around them better too self-disciplined leaders have a bias for action and in uncertain times leaders dispel uncertainty through competent and confident actions self-discipline leaders have an offensive mindset and do not allow setbacks or obstacles to stop progress good leaders find a way to win and inspire faith and belief throughout an organization some people are born with a greater propensity to be self-disciplined than others like other traits self-discipline can be developed for those who have poor self-discipline i have found the best way to improve self-discipline is to do some small things and work yourself into a more difficult things if you hit a bump and backslide a bit do not beat yourself up just get back with the program remember good habits are developed through self-discipline of continuing to do those things i get asked this question a decent amount um am i disciplined because i was in the navy or am i disciplined because i am disciplined and i don’t know what do you think i think i think the training that you received in the navy certainly certainly helped is my belief um and and i think goals are important you know i mean if if if you have no goals in your life nothing that’s meaningful and purposeful for you to work toward what the hell are you going to be disciplined about you know i mean you’re going to be kind of like just just drifting one way or the other so i think uh you know people that have specific goals you know your goal to be a seal your goal once you were a seal to you know be a seal commander etc etc kind of sets you up to be more disciplined about achieving those goals so uh i i think it’s probably a little bit of of both uh but i do think the path you chose and those goals you had probably did a lot to help you become a very self-disciplined person and you think that’s the same for you then well um i do i i think if i didn’t take the path i i did by by getting into the army uh i probably wouldn’t have had the benefit of those ncos and and other role models who showed me that in order to achieve something you really got to work hard for now yeah when i was growing up as a kid you know my dad my family tried to show me those things uh so i i think it’s you know now that i’m thinking of it it’s it’s kind of i think uh building blocks along the way in your life you know you’re going to learn some of that from your family and then you know i’m a big believer in sports you know you play sports like you know i played some sports in high school and you have to be disciplined in order to get out there on a field and not get yourself beat up right uh and and then you know you you join the military and again you’ve got to show some discipline in order to because you know people are counting on you in in in order to achieve what what you want to in that regard so i think it’s really like a building block as you go through your life and some people are fortunate to have role models and and and mentors in their life who are going to show them why discipline is important and then you just continue with it yeah i think i was i don’t know if this is lucky or unlucky i was lucky in the fact that i wasn’t really great at anything and when i got to the seal teams if i didn’t work hard i was going to look like an idiot and i didn’t want to look like an idiot and i didn’t want to let my teammates down so i had to just work hard to be ready for stuff that’s definitely the that definitely influenced my path quite a bit i think if i would have been a natural a naturally gifted athlete i would i probably would have had less discipline i would have needed as much discipline but but the other thing you gotta remember is people get out of the seal teams and sometimes they’re even still in the steel teams and they you know they let themselves go they don’t practice they don’t train they get out of shape yeah um you know it’s so just because you were in the military just because you were in the seal teams or whatever you did and you got to maintain that discipline that discipline is not it’s not a chip that they put into your brain and now you got it you don’t have to worry about it anymore no no you still got to go yeah you know jack and i i do think that’s why purpose is so important and those goals are so important because the same at ranger school you know uh you know you get you get that ranger tab and that’s when the hard work should start because now you’ve got to prove it every day that i i deserve to have this ranger tab on my shoulder and i and i see it uh you know folks i know that that went to ranger school and now they’re out of the military and they kind of just like let themselves go and and it’s probably because they don’t have that that purpose anymore or that goal anymore and uh i i think that’s an unfortunate thing and that’s why purpose is so important that’s why i think leaders have to uh be able to communicate purpose to their followers so their followers understand and i know you talk about this in your dichotomy of leadership book you know so so people understand why am i doing this thing that the leader has told me to do well if you don’t explain the purpose the leaders are the the followers aren’t going to get it yeah 100 yeah um fast forward a little bit dignity and respect leaders demonstrate leaders demonstrate respect for others by the words they choose the tone of voice they use and by treating people with dignity demonstrating respect is also about being considered of a person’s time and showing interest in what others think good leaders treat others respectfully regardless of position good leaders treat the maintenance person with the same amount of respect they treat the ceo i believe it is impossible to be toxic leader to be a toxic leader if you treat those people you lead with dignity and respect this does not mean you cannot hold people to the prescribed standard and counsel them however there is a dignified and respectful way to do those things a leader could even fire someone in a dignified and respectful way a rule to follow is praise in public reprimand and private now what’s interesting about this paragraph is this is anybody that doesn’t that has sort of a surface view of the military they don’t think that this is they don’t think this is applicable at all in the military i guess it’s just from boot camp movies right yeah i guess it’s just from full metal jacket full metal jacket has has given and i love that movie it’s a great movie it’s an it’s an incredible movie and it is accurate you know you talk to any marine look they don’t use the same language that they used back then but man boot camp is boot camp and it is yelling and screaming making people uncomfortable and and really not treating them but treating them with disrespect especially in the beginning so i think movies like that have given this false image of the military that that’s how military leadership works and it and it is not true now are there leaders that act like that yeah there are absolutely are in the military and guess what there’s leaders that act like that in the civilian sector too that act that are disrespectful that treat people bad they’re in leadership positions and and it’s not good it is not good and and what’s interesting about this is i can yell and scream if i if i’m your boss i can yell at screaming you and you’re probably gonna do what i tell you you’re intimidated you don’t want to get fired you you don’t want to hear me yell and scream so you go do what i told you to do and so i get some positive feedback on my yelling and screaming however as soon as you get home you’re on monster com looking for a new job because you don’t want to be working with me because i’m a jerk right and by the way how much effort do you actually give you know do you give 110 no you probably give 72 which is the bare minimum you needed to give to get the job done so all my yelling and screaming got me the bare minimum that you’re gonna produce whereas if i treated you with respect you’re gonna give 110 you’re gonna do that job better than i could do it and better than you could do it with your minimum effort so this idea treating people with respect i mean this is just it seems like common sense and i think sometimes i mean i had this happen when i when i started working with companies the very f actually was one i wasn’t the very first it was one of the first companies i started working with and i’m on the phone with the ceo doing an introductory call and he says i can’t wait till you get out here and whip my people into shape and i said hey you know something if you want someone to whip your people into shape you should get someone else because whipping people is what happens that’s what you do to slaves and slaves is not a good environment and no one wants to be a slave and they don’t do the job that they’re supposed to do they’ll do the bare minimum so they don’t get punished for it so i’m glad you got this section in here yeah you know jocko i have uh you know business owners talk to me about that all the time you know like why can’t i be a toxic leader you know get get get the job done you know get done you know that type of thing and it’s kind of like you know what you could be a toxic leader and like you said you could yell and scream and people are going to listen to you they’re going to do it but if you’re looking for sustained success over a long period of time that’s where you know toxic leadership does not work because toxic leadership could work for short-term gain but if you want sustained success over time that that’s not the way to do it certainly is not um fast forward a little bit here and again if you’re listening to me read this i’m i’m just jumping through various sections it’s it’s not going to sound completely cohesive as i read it but you get the book and it is completely cohesive next section i want to read here is uh to be successful in life you must make yourself vulnerable there’s no risk without reward with that said the risk you take must be prudent and must include risk analysis and risk mitigation measures nothing is risk-free and seldom can a person eliminate risk entirely although risk cannot be eliminated leaders must identify ways to reduce the most probable and highest impact risks i i think this is funny because i say to leaders all the time if there’s no risk it’s not even a decision what’s the decision if there’s no risk and it’s just a benefit cool we’re doing it right we’re not even talking that’s not a decision that’s just what we’re doing yeah absolutely and uh and i think that’s why some leaders fail to have the courage to make decisions because with almost any decision you’re making there’s some sort of risk associated with that and uh again if if you’re going to look at gaining anything for your organization you know we talked about you know moving yourself out of your comfort zone you’ve got to move your organization out of its comfort zone too and so it’s it’s it’s it’s about okay understanding what those risks are and then how am i going to reduce the probability of this happening and also reduce the impact of it happening and those those are certain steps you you could take you know um i talk about optimism a lot and especially you know if if you hit a a really bad day a really bad day uh you know you have to be optimistic and then lead your organization through that but it’s not just because you’re telling people hey things are going to get better you’ve actually got to put a plan together that’s believable to your followers so it’s it’s just not about you know what you say it’s about okay what plan have we put together now that’s that’s going to show that we’re going to be able to do things a little bit differently to overcome this adversity so um you know that that that’s really and and it takes a lot of hard work and it doesn’t come easy yeah i always whenever i talk about you got to believe in the mission right and i say believe isn’t doesn’t mean the the old saying if you can believe that you can achieve it actually not true i i because i could say i believe i can fight i’m not gonna be able to fly to me believe belief in the mission means you see an actual pathway to achieve the mission and it might be challenging and there’s going to be bumps and hurdles and obstacles along the way but we are going to be able to do it and hey everyone here’s how we’re going to get there and as long as you can show people an actual pathway to get to this victory then you can then people can believe in what you’re doing for sure yeah yeah and uh you know i’ll just reflect back on a bad day uh you know i had uh january 5th 2006 i think you’re familiar with the glass factory bombing there in ramadi and uh you know you have a bad day like that and you just you know as a leader you you just can’t cave in i mean because so give everyone a little briefing i mean obviously i i knew about it i arrived there shortly thereafter and i tracked it as it happened i mean it was a horrific incident at a police recruiting event so recruiting local police in the city of ramadi to to come and join the the iraqi police and become the defenders of of the city and help the local populist what we talked about earlier defend the populist here you go come and sign up and it was actually going pretty well and then this event happened yeah it was it was going remarkably well you know when we first got there i guess it was julian uh or july of of 2005 uh next june and july up there of course but july of 2005 uh you know we we started uh police recruiting events and we’d have like two or three people show up to join the police i mean it was pathetic and you know we started to talk to the shakes and actually through our talks with the shakes they would tell us some things that our troops were doing that probably weren’t that beneficial to the citizens of ramadi uh so we started to change up some of our tactics and procedures that didn’t affect our operation but it helped the shakes understand that hey we were really here for your people for your tribe and this uh really uh demonstrated itself in in uh january of 2006 we held this recruiting event it was january 3rd 4th and 5th and on january 3rd we had 200 people show up at the glass factory in ramadi where we’re conducting this event and the glass factory is an old factory but it’s a nice big building and it was right outside or very close to the main u s camp of camp ramadi so it’s a pretty good spot today exactly it was it was a good spot to do it 200 people showed up the first day it’s like we can’t believe this like before we’re having two or three people show up we’ve got 200 people standing in line to join the police so the shay you know that told us the shakes were getting the word out to their tribes people hey come and we we trust these americans come in and so the second day we had around 450 500 people standing in line to join the police it’s like this is incredible the third day and as i reflect back on it uh you know whenever you’re operating in an insurgency environment you don’t want to do things three days in a row so it was a big mistake i made uh third day we had about 800 people standing in line i mean we were ecstatic we thought we really turned a corner here and a suicide bomber because this was the third day in a row we were doing this suicide bomber shows up and detonates their vest right in the middle of this large crowd killing over 100 iraqis and killed a marine dog handler sergeant khan and and also a good friend of mine lieutenant colonel mike mclaughlin and injured uh several other of our our soldiers some some severely but thank god no no one else died no no other us military died from that attack and so that was a really really bad day the way i handled it is uh i brought the leaders together the following day because because two weeks from that particular day we were going to have 200 iraqis show up at the glass factory again so we could ship them to baghdad to attend police training so we knew we were going to have a similar situation so got everybody together the next day and the importance of leaders admitting when they do something wrong i think really comes out here because uh when i got everybody together i don’t know what they were thinking maybe they were thinking i was going to try to blame somebody i don’t know but the first thing i i said was we’re not going to waste time fixing blame on anybody because because i’m the one responsible for this so forget about fixing blame it’s it’s it’s on me what we need to spend our time doing is talk about how are we going to change things so this doesn’t happen two weeks from now when we do the same event again because you know we had to publicize this so people knew knew to show show up so it’s not like you’re keeping it from the insurgents and so i’m not going to get into the details of how we change things but we change things significantly in terms of the way the outside of that glass factory was set up so if god forbid a suicide bomber was going to blow themselves up again the most they could take out would be about 10 people rather than 100 or more and so uh the the point is uh when leaders hit these bad days this is this adversity there’s the organization is counting on you to find a way through it and and that that was a lesson i learned i mentioned you know uh this book is filled with mistakes i made that i was able to learn from and by putting this book out hopefully others won’t have to make similar mistakes and so the whole point of what i just said is when you hit adversity you’ve got to be able to be resilient enough to fight your way through that for the organization and again that’s not going to come uh by itself you’ve got to you’ve got to prepare and and and develop your resiliency before these bad days happen because we all know they’re going to happen and and then it’s also the important part of a leader admitting they made a mistake so the organization doesn’t have to start pointing fingers at one another because if if you don’t do that and you can’t develop that sense of of of trust where because people know when you’re screwed up okay and if people are are spending more energy on watching their own back they’re not going to be expending energy on getting done with the organization needs to to get done uh because watching your own back takes a hell of a lot of energy doesn’t it and so and so that that’s really the moral of the story yeah no it’s a and you were there when this when we had a we had a blue on blue that i wrote about extreme ownership and it’s the same you know the same exact approach i took which was hey there’s a friendly iraqi soldier dead there’s several iraqis wounded one of my guys is wounded who are going to blame don’t look any further than me because this is on me and it is on me this is this is happening i’m the senior guy on the battlefield it’s 100 my fault and that way yeah we don’t have to look at who we’re going to point fingers at no one has to worry about hey am i going to leave you out the dry i’m not going to hang you out to dry this is 100 on me and then we how do we prevent this from ever happening again it’s the the thing a leader has to do in those situations yeah absolutely um fast forward a little bit here you talk about creating a vision you say the concept of a leader providing a vision to an organization they lead is at least 2 000 years old in the kings james version of the bible proverbs 29 18 reads where there is no vision the people perish an early point in my experience leading people i became aware that providing a vision of the future was one of the most important things a leader can do the whole concept of leadership is about taking people to a place where they could not reach on their own i have found that when i provide a vision of the future to a group i lead it motivates and inspires them to work toward achieving a desired end state that is why i believe creating a shared vision and communicating it consistently are important roles of a leader visualizing achievement is essential if you are to gain success a vision must be a simple unique ideal image of the future ideally the vision a leader develops should be a shared vision a shared vision not only does not only mean everyone in the organization believes in the vision but also that represents a representative members of the organization have provided input to create the vision occasionally i’ll get i talk about decentralized command all the time with all the companies i work with and occasionally i’ll get someone saying hey you know i i i feel like that the team doesn’t really know where we’re going and i’m trying to lead them in the right direction but i don’t want to impose it on them and and i say listen it is okay for a leader sometimes to say hey everyone this is where we’re going because not everyone has the visibility that you have from your leadership perspective you know if you’re in charge of a project not everyone can see all the moving pieces so they might not see hey this is where we need to go this is what we’re doing is it good to get input for that collective vision absolutely absolutely but you may be in a situation where other members of the team don’t have the vision that you have because just because of where you’re sitting or where you’re standing you can see a little bit more you have a little bit more visibility on things so sometimes you do have to make the vision and as soon as you make that vision your vision doesn’t isn’t uh written in stone or you shouldn’t write your vision in stone if you write your vision in stone you’re probably making a mistake and some people might think that that sounds weak well you know what are you going to change your vision actually i may change the vision if we get to a point where we need to do something just like when you’re in ramada you say hey wait a second we’ve been doing things like this we are not getting any progress with the shakes the shakes are telling us oh guess what we’re going to do adjust our vision so there’s nothing wrong with adjusting your vision and there’s nothing wrong with if you’re not getting feedback it’s okay cool watch this here’s the vision here’s what we’re gonna do start moving that direction adapt as needed yeah yeah you know uh totally agree uh one one thing i learned when got this is back uh around late 90s around the year 2000 was before 9 11 uh when i took command of 55th brigade uh you know national guard brigade so you know about 3 000 soldiers distributed across northeastern pennsylvania down toward the philadelphia area and you know 85 of them had full-time civilian jobs so like man i gotta develop a vision for this organization in order for us to show some you know to move forward here and what i did is i went around uh to representative uh samplings of soldiers who were part of that brigade i would talk to a pfc that had like a year in the army you know i would talk to a major who had you know maybe 16 17 years in the army and and every in a few folks in between there i mean 3 000 soldiers you can’t talk to all of them and say hey where do you want to see this brigade go and and uh the question i would ask them i would say hey you know if you fell asleep for five years and woke up five years from now what would you want to see this brigade look like then you know and uh the funny thing is whether it was a soldier low rank one year experience or higher ranking officer with 17 years experience everybody kind of wanted the same thing they wanted to be well trained so if we had to deploy we’d be able to do our job successfully and that ended up essentially what what what the vision was so what it taught me uh and this goes for any business leader out there trying to develop a vision for their organization and many organizations are working distributed now uh you know with the pandemic and everything else it’s try to get it you know when i say shared vision try to get a representative sample if you could of where people would like to see it go and ultimately you as the leader like you said you you’ve got a broader view of everything so yeah it’s you’ve finally got to put a stake in the ground say yeah this is going to be our vision but i think it’s a good idea to get a representative sampling of those in your organization and and then you know when you get it out there you know you you’ve gotta you’ve gotta share it in a in a multitude of ways you know when you’re speaking to people one on one you’ve gotta communicate that vision when you’re speaking to a group of 500 you’ve got to communicate the vision through email through your website through whatever you know social media means you you might uh want to use but the vision then has to be consistent you know it can’t be a a new flavor of the month or a new vision of the quarter you know like you said visions could change but it shouldn’t it shouldn’t be changing on a very very frequent basis so that that’s what i learned about developing a vision you know over 20 years ago yeah and it’s it’s it’s always interesting like that’s alignment right no matter who you talk to you talk to a front-line individual that’s been in the army for six months you talk to someone that’s been in the army for 20 years enlisted officer on both ends of that spectrum and they all say oh well i’d like that if we get deployed we’re ready to do our job you can make so many decisions based on that just knowing that right there hey is it going to help us do our job if we spend time you know clowning around at work on our drill weekend is it going to help us be ready to do our job no it’s not so let’s do something else and that goes up and down the chain of command and now that we have that shared aligned vision now we can all make a bunch of decisions just based on the fact that we know that when we deploy we want to be ready to do our job we want to be effective okay does this help us be effective or not and we can make a decision so that’s important stuff um fast forward a little bit you know this got a chapter in here called keeping your feet on the ground which is about humility uh you say i worked for an arrogant leader before it was not any fun all of us who worked for this man felt our opinions were not valued he was the kind of guy who said things like when i want your opinion i’ll tell you what it is stereotypical military but not actual military we believed we were not respected and we felt more like objects rather than we were part of the team the result was our initiative imagination and creativity were stifled as you could imagine the leader failed again this is a this is one of those false images of military leadership does it happen yes it does happen and and here’s something else i’ll tell you about this you want to know why it does happen more often in the military and one of the reason it happens more often in the military is because in the military you’re only in command for two years generally speaking so mostly enlisted guys you’re working for a jerk or an arrogant person it takes them three months or three to six months to go hey this guy really is arrogant then at six months they’re like oh god what are we gonna do about it this guy’s horrible now it’s a year now they start thinking hey we should really do something about this we should get rid of this guy we should run up the chain of command we should fill out our surveys our command climate surveys and report what a jerk this guy is and then it’s 18 months and then they go you know he’s gonna be gone in six months let’s just freaking deal with it and that guy never gets the feedback and so everything that he did worked and it’s positive feedback and it’s a positive feedback loop he thinks he did a good job because he yelled and screamed and didn’t take anyone’s opinion and now he gets promoted that’s the unfortunate reality of the military yeah and the other interesting thing with that you know we could call that guy a toxic leader is i’ve found that toxic leaders are very good at not letting their people they work for their superior officers whatever you want to call it see their toxicity oh for sure they’re able to hide it i’ve known a lot of military leaders that everyone above them in the chain of command loved them everybody below the chain of command hated them yeah yeah because above the chain of command they see someone that’s making stuff happen right below the chain of command they’re getting they’re the ones that are freaking being driven to you know bloody fingers as they try and get the job done and yeah that happens often yeah it’s amazing how good they are at hiding that toxicity when they’re talking to somebody who who they work for yeah and you’ve got to be careful as a leader to make sure that that’s not happening that’s why it’s important like you said to go down and talk to the troops yeah and say hey what’s what’s echo charles like as a leader how’s that going and you know what they’re going to say at first and say he’s he’s great but you got to ask him well how often does he talk to you does he take her you know you got to dig it out of them because most of them they don’t want to they don’t want to they don’t want to make they don’t want that beef as echo would say yeah [Music] and you know the the more you get down there you know i call it money muddy boots leadership the more you get down there to talk to the troops you know whether it be military civilian uh then you’re able to develop that trust too because you’re right the first time you go down and ask somebody hey how’s it going they’re not going to be totally honest with you if they don’t know you but the more they get used to seeing you come around and just having a rapport and see that you’re hey normal guy and you really do want the best food organization yeah they’re going to loosen up and tell you the truth also don’t burn your sources you know yeah don’t go back and say hey echo i need to talk to you john gronski said you were a tyrant and all that you’re never going to get any information again no so you got to be careful about that one uh fast forward a little bit one of the best ways a leader could show respect to others is by asking for their opinion and then seriously considering it leaders empowers others in an organization simply by listening to stay level-headed and keep one’s feet placed firmly on the ground leaders must acknowledge others for their contributions to this team’s success so this is something i’ve i’ve written about talking about listening is i think is the most underrated possibly the most underrated aspect of leadership the only other one that’s in a close second and it correlates very directly is asking earnest questions ask ernest questions and then listen to what people have to say and and you know uh some leaders think they’re listening uh but their actions don’t show that they’re listening you know like you’re going to talk to somebody hey hey could i have a minute could i talk to you and you know the leader is you know checking their phone while you’re talking to them or they’re you know tapping something on the keyboard or their computer while you’re talking to them or you’re talking to them they’re looking off at somebody else you know it’s kind of like wow is this guy really listening to me yeah you know that leader might think they’re listening but their actions are showing that they’re not really listening so it’s it’s important that you you really do that active listening actually listen yeah yeah fast forward a little bit identify your core values to develop strong character you must take the time to figure out what you stand for and what your core values really are this came to light for me many years ago i attended a dinner at which the speaker gave an impassioned talk about his own personal core values the next day as i was still thinking about what i heard i realized if someone asked me what my personal core values were i would not be able to give an answer sure i had values i tried to be an ethical person but to that point i never took the time to think long and hard about exactly what i stood for and my principles i never took the time to consider what values were most important to me important you know uh the other thing about values if if you don’t understand what your own personal core values are when you make personal decisions or when it comes to time for you to make a personal decision about something i really believe you have to factor your your personal core values in the decisions you make so if you don’t have those core values articulated in your own mind how are you going to factor them in to your decision and the same with organizations you know organization many organizations have organizational values but when the leadership team gets together with the ceo and they’re in the you know they’re going through this decision making process how many of them actually factor the organizational values into the decision that they’re making uh which i i would think i would just guess many don’t even think about their values when they’re making a business decision yeah which is crazy to think about if you’re making decisions that you might as well just be making decisions in the blind exactly and then and then you’re not being true to your values and again that breaks trust with your customers or that breaks trust through your employees or whomever that particular decision is going to affect so yeah really that that’s why values are so important i believe and and then the other thing um behaviors i think are important too you know i know a lot of organizations are getting uh you know they do have organizational values but now they’re also getting into organizational behaviors so they actually list out you know maybe between 10 to 20 behaviors that they expect from their employees which i think is is uh very important as a matter of fact a consulting firm i used to work for greencastle consulting uh has expected behaviors that they want their consultants to demonstrate and i i think that’s a very good way to look at things because you know values are kind of conceptual behaviors are more tangible and and i do think uh talk you know uh identifying expected behaviors is really helpful in in getting your employees to treat customers or treat each other the way you want them to yeah this is uh something that i was acutely aware of especially with kids and when i wrote the first warrior kid book the whole pr actually the entire premise of the first book is the kid has to come up with a warrior kid code of what he’s gonna and and his uncle in the this book it’s a kid’s book but the kid’s uncle is uh was it was in the seal teams and so he introduces him he can see that the kid’s kind of floating around not making the best decisions and so he says hey warriors live by a code and i point out you know the marine corps values the the the ranger code the i just point out the um uh the ancient you know the samurai code the viking and i put them all in the book and say hey you need to make your own code and the kid ends up writing his own code and the uncle approves it this warrior kid code and then eventually i wrote another book called the code the evaluation of protocols which literally has like a code saying hey as an adult you still need a code you still need to figure out what it is you’re trying to do what are you trying to do with your life and if again if you have this code in place hey i want to be healthy cool is that donut going to help me be healthy no it’s not don’t eat it hey i want to be uh i want to spend quality time with my family okay why am i watching tv right now okay don’t watch tv if you have something to live by then it’s gonna make your life that much better and and that’s why the the warrior kid code and the code the evaluation the protocol that’s the purpose of those say hey listen and in both those cases i say write your own code because you shouldn’t follow my code but i can pretty much guarantee you most people would have an 80 overlap on what their code is going to be i mean i might be more into you know martial arts than someone else might be more into fishing but if you’re going to focus on some part of your life there’s going to be an 80 who doesn’t want to be healthy who doesn’t want to have a good family who doesn’t want to be financially successful who wants to save money like all these things it’s a 90 solution and maybe you can make some small adjustments to it but to wander through life without that stuff is exactly that it’s wandering through life yeah you know jocko i think you putting that uh emphasis on code in in that book is one of the best things you’ve ever done because if you want to keep people on an ethical path one of the guard rails to to stay on that ethical path is by actually writing down what your own personal code is and then that will help you stay grounded and help you stay on that path that that’s just a great technique to use to keep somebody you know staying within those limits because how many times have we seen ceos ceos governors you know stray ethically off the path presidents yeah presidents you know anyone in the chain of command bottom to the top yeah and and again it’s because they either never took the time to write down their own personal code or if they’ve written it down now they’re not paying attention to it so i think that’s great advice you gave out there um this is one of the sections where i actually made a note of what your action section of the book so here here’s the actions and you did this for every one of these sections you get you identify actions to actually take to move forward and improve this area of leadership so here the actions are identify your own personal core values ensure your personal personal core values and the values of the organization you work for are aligned when making a decision factor your personal values and your organization’s values into your decision making process strive to place the welfare and interest of your followers ahead of your own and and those are some things some actions that you can take to make this a reality and hey identify your own personal core values and write them down it’s something everybody should do um section here called uh cultivating trust and you you get in this situation where it’s 1999 um 1999 you’re going to lithuania uh let me go to the book here the country had regained its independence only about six years earlier it was going to be my job to work with the lithuanian military to help them understand how the us military functioned and grow the relationship between the u s and lithuania i would have a team of three other u s military personnel representing the marines army and air force and the team would also include one lithuanian army officer and three lithuanian civilians and this is you’re coming off i think you’re coming off a battalion command at this point so you were just done leading 800 people and now you got a team of seven you arrive in lithuania for this job and i gotta read this part after i was on board for a couple weeks i began to come up with what i thought were some excellent ideas instead of tackling the work myself i gave began to shoot off yellow sticky notes to everyone giving them tasks to do i had plenty of bright ideas and i shot off plenty of taskers to them i thought i was making a great impression on the team because of my exceptional ideas however i could not explain it but something seemed to be a miss somehow i did not feel the team was comfortable under my leadership i had an army reserve major working on my team as an operations officer he was a bright guy with an analytical mind and positive demeanor one morning when i was sitting in my office he knocked on my door and asked if he could speak to me privately i brightened up i was all about this i thought to myself there is a young officer who needs advice from a sage like me the major sat down and i asked him what was on his mind his answer floored me he said sir you are tearing this team apart he went on to say that since i arrived morale was at an all-time low the team’s perception of my leadership performance was 180 degrees from what i was hoping for their perception was not the boss is a sharp guy he has great ideas rather their perception was negative including such thoughts as the new boss thinks things are all screwed up here the new boss thinks we are all screwed up the new boss thinks we have nothing to do the new boss does not trust us notice the us versus him attitude that developed here this was definitely a lesson learned for me thankfully i had someone on the team with enough guts to discuss the issue with me i thank the major for the personal and moral courage he displayed by discussing the issue with me i had no idea that through my behavior and tone i was giving everyone such a negative perception of how i thought they were performing you go on here fast forward a little bit what i did to to repair trust i immediately met with the team members and apologized for the mistake i made i took full ownership of creating a perception that i did not trust them i told them i trusted them completely i explained to them that i now realized how my behavior was negatively affecting the team i promised them i would change my behavior that’s a good story yeah and the freaking battalion commander post post battalion commander rolling in the good idea fairy is what we call that you know and and that taught me that whether you lead an organization of 800 or you lead an organization of eight the leadership challenges are there you know it it doesn’t it doesn’t get any easier or harder depending on the number of people you lead you know you still got those challenges uh the the folks on your team are still expecting you to be a good leader a positive influence on them and uh as i mentioned in the book i’m just glad uh that this this guy had the the personal courage to come up and and and and tell me about it because it was really it was really life-changing for me because that really got me on a uh a journey to really study what trust is all about and not only how to cultivate trust but also how to repair trust if if you unfortunately break it you know and one thing that is nice is luckily you must have given him some kind of a impression that you were somewhat approachable and i can guarantee you there’s pro the the fitness reports of the world and evaluations are littered with people that decided they were gonna go tell their boss hey this is what it looks like and they get scorched for it because the person didn’t have an open mind and didn’t really want to hear them so luckily you had an open mind and were humble enough to say oh that’s not good i i made a mistake unfortunately the bosses that oftentimes need that sort of personal guidance are the types of bosses that aren’t open to that type of personal guidance unfortunately yeah yeah scary i’m glad you i’m glad you complimented his moral courage yeah no i i realized how hard that that was for him and and and again i think that you know the lesson for anybody out here listening is hey you know you you could be you know you could be a jackass you know if you want to be and not be approachable and you know hey my way or the highway i’m the boss you know who are you to tell me what to do or give me advice but you’re probably only gonna go so far in in you know your journey as a as a leader and if you really want to have long-term success you’ve you’ve got to follow some of these basic leadership tenants you know next chapter what leadership is all about and and and you have a great combat story about uh was a gunnery sergeant yeah gunnery sergeant burkhardt or master sergeant mike he retired as a master sergeant outstanding um just a real real show of courage you told the story on the last podcast you recite it with some more detail in here in the book just of a of a guy that just is unstoppable um so i i won’t cover that right now get the book to read that story um but you do say this about leadership effective leadership is measured by the results an organization achieves after all organizations exist to achieve their purpose and attain results leaders cannot attain results on their own leaders must enlist the support of their followers to be successful when leaders demonstrate to followers they care by placing their followers welfare ahead of their own that is a great way for the leader to gain follower support former army chief of staff general gordon sullivan in his book hope is not a method says our effectiveness as leaders is not so much what we do is as in what influence as what we influence others to do a leader must inspire others to be their best and to work toward achieving organizational objectives a leader is nothing without support of those he or she leads using the model of character competence direction and overcoming adversity is a framework for enlisting and retaining support which will lead to organizational results and success if you’re doing your job as a leader the the team is going to be doing what they’re supposed to be doing yeah don’t forget that and and you know uh it it it’s all about you know being fortunate enough to have people around you like like a gunny michael burkhart and one other quick story one tell that’s that’s not in the book i didn’t mention it last time uh but i i think it’s inspiring we have this one soldier from the 28th infantry division who came to ramadi with us his name was anthony jorgensen and uh again we got there in uh july of 2005 it was in the fall of 2005 he was in an up armored humvee i believe it was in the gunners position id detonates uh causes his up armored humvee to flip over on its side he ends up having a broken arm and i think a broken leg both and so gets sent back home to the united states recovers from his wounds and it was sometime in early 2006 he tells the leadership in the pennsylvania guard hey i want to go back over to ramadi you know it’s like they can’t believe it’s kind of like no we are not sending you back so i did have a battalion from the vermont national guard there with me task organized my brigade so so this guy leaves the pennsylvania national guard joins the vermont national guard just so he could get vermont to send them back over to ramadi be part of that battalion so he gets back over there and then it’s april 2006 he’s out there on another patrol and he’s in a support by fire position he’s in the the gunners compartment of this up armored humvee there’s some dismounts going into a building uh that ins they uh believed insurgents were in and an insurgent fires an rpg a rocket propeller grenade at this up armored humvee that jorgensen is in and and just like wings it you know slight damage to the humvee uh he gets knocked down out of the the gunners hatch gets back up there he sees that insurgents are pinning down these dismounts that are out there so he jumps down into the driver’s compartment drives that up armored humvee between where the insurgents are firing and these uh dismounts that were pinned down gets back up into the gunner’s compartment and lays down suppressive fire on these insurgents allowing these dismounts to to disengage and then can continue to mission all this after suffering these wounds and that attack back in the fall now how many you know how how many people would you know leave ramadi with with you know honorable wounds like he did and then fight to get back over there and then you know does this heroic action uh which i believe he got a bronze star with v4 for for doing what he did but just just again the reason i want to bring that story up is these soldiers are so inspiring and and and you know you know we think as leaders we should be inspiring our followers but our followers have a way especially in the military of inspiring us and some of these stories just have to be told anthony jorgensen what’s he doing now do you know yeah he lives up in the scranton area and he’s getting after it in this grand area yeah he is so just just very proud of him you know what he does for a living um offhand i don’t know right on yeah but uh well we salute you anthony jorgensen yeah he needs that shout out what a beast yeah yeah i mean you get blown up by an ied and thrown out of your vehicle like you say oh he he had these wounds you he’s lucky to be alive yeah after that happens yeah and then you get hit with an rpg you’re lucky to be alive in a humvee yeah and uh again i hope he’s playing the lottery up there anthony jorgensen it’s grant p a he’s got some luck he’s a guy i’d want you know watching my back any any time awesome awesome stuff uh here’s an interesting title do not for a chapter do not treat everyone equally talk to us about that yeah basically what what that’s about is uh you know i don’t think leaders should treat everybody on the on the team equally uh you got and when i say that that’s what i mean by you got to get to know the the people on your team everybody’s a little bit different so you got to really get to know what makes them tick and and what’s going to motivate certain people as opposed to motivating others and so uh you know you can’t treat them equal i think there’s a story in there i think about uh jimmy johnson when he coached the dallas cowboys and he was asked by a reporter hey you know if if you uh saw troy aikman asleep in one of your team meetings and a third string offensive guard asleep in in in your team meeting would you treat them the same way and and he answered absolutely not he goes and this is what i do he goes i would probably cut that third string offensive guard immediately and with troy aikman i would go up to him and i would kind of nudge him gently awake and i would say hey could i bring you a cup of coffee you know so the point is you know you’ve got to understand the talent you have on your team and and not everybody should be treated equal you know some some people need a kick in the butt some people need a pat on the back um another interesting story with this a football story you know i i grew up as a green bay packer fan so in 1966 10 years old lombardi you know winning his first super bowl i became a packer fan so i started to read all kinds of books about the packers and there’s this one story you know bart starr who was the quarterback for for lombardi uh i think it was like the second year lombardi was the head coach he was just chewing bart start out relentlessly during this practice and you know talk about moral courage uh after practice uh bart starr goes to coach lombardi’s office and he goes hey coach could i talk to you privately for a few minutes coach says yeah sure what’s up and star says to him he goes coach he goes i don’t want you ever chewing me out in front of the team again he said i’m the quarterback i’m leading this team he goes if if they see you chewing me out the way you were chewing me out he goes i’m not going to be able to lead this team effectively and lombardi light bulb went off in his head and he realized he could not treat everybody exactly the same way you know so he never chewed bart star out in front of the team again because he realized that hey what star said was exactly correct you know he couldn’t lead the team effectively if he was going to be treated like that and uh so again just just some great lessons we could learn from from from from past leaders and you know i’ve just tried i think we all try to do our best when we hear these lessons to try to apply them if we could you know that’s when you get a guy like vince lombardi and the reputation that he has and he’s humble enough to think oh if he if he can be humble in that situation and maybe listen to one of his subordinates and say oh he’s right i’m wrong that’s another indicator that you might want to stay humble as a leader you got some stuff to learn no matter who you are yeah absolutely uh you talked earlier about muddy boots leadership and and you tell a story in here about you got complimented on the fact that you were in charge but you you were your boots were muddy because you’ve been out in the field going seeing what was happening and and that’s a whole concept of get in the field get out there talk to people find what’s going on in the front lines um you say this here a mentor in that same chapter you say a mentor of mine told me the personal presence of a leader is probably the greatest key to influencing the action once a plan has been put into motion a leader’s presence demonstrates to one’s followers the importance of the work at hand when the leader is where the action is they are then positioned to motivate others and make timely adjustments when necessary leader sometimes has to go and make things happen yeah you know i remember as a young army officer reading in some manual somewhere uh or maybe it was even some senior leader who was coaching me but said you know through there’s three things a commander could do to positively impact the battle once it begins he said the commander’s use of fires you know close air support and indirect fire um the use of the reserves you know because usually the commander retains the authority of when to use his reserve and the third thing is personal presence on the battlefield and he said those are the three things a commander could do to influence the battle once it begins uh and and that always stuck to me stuck with me especially that notion of the personal presence on on the battlefield and just having that personal presence there uh which help uh i think you know soldiers in in battle or in the civilian sector uh you know employees in an organization realize that hey this leader is out with us sharing the load sharing the danger uh you know sharing what’s coming our way and and and you know they they kind of get bolstered by by that whole notion well i i can attest to that i remember seeing you out on the battlefield in ramadi looking over and say well there’s the brigade commander roger that i guess he’s i guess he’s not uh sitting back in the talk all the time he’s out here with the troops like you said uh seeing what’s happening understanding what’s happening and taking that risk i mean if you were in ramadi and you were out in the city you were at risk and ieds and and roadside bombs and rpgs and and machine guns don’t they don’t care what your name is they don’t care what your rank is they’ll they’ll they’ll kill you one way or the other if they want to yeah and you know i did try to get out there a lot not because i had any type of uh you know courage to speak of but just because i felt it was necessary to do and the other thing for any military leader listening to this and really it applies to business leaders too i would encourage my staff to get out there and and the reason i encourage my staff to get out there is because i felt it was important for my staff to also gain ground truth if if the staff was gaining what they thought was the truth from reading reports they were missing about 80 percent of what was happening so although i know you know in the military a lot of times especially in operations like that the staff needs to be back doing staff work i always encourage them that hey they did have to make time to actually get out there talk to troops see areas with their own eyes and again just a history from less than hurtkin forest 28th infantry division fighting in the hurricane forest in in november uh 1944 the battle of schmidt was a devastating time for the 28th infantry division in about four days over six thousand casualties and one thing that was written about that period is uh it said that general kota who was a division commander at the time most reports i read said he never even went as far forward as one of his regimental command posts and the staff did not go forward either so they didn’t realize that the call trail through the hurricane forest which they were sending sherman tanks down a sherman tank is eight and a half feet wide the call trail was nine feet wide i mean it was not a good um you know mains you know msr main supply route uh or or good route of any sort for those tanks to be going along and so the lesson there is because the commander didn’t get out on the battlefield because the staff didn’t get out there they’re relying on maps they didn’t get the full uh understanding of what that hurricane forest area was was like so again for any civilian leader any military leader absolutely important not only to get out there yourself but to get your your staff the ones that you depend on to advise you to get out there as well yeah there’s another piece of this one when you are the leader and you what you’re supposed to be doing is you’re supposed to be detached you’re not supposed to go out there and get in the firefight you’re not supposed to go out there and and run the marketing meeting or meet with the client necessarily or get and start manufacturing stuff on the line you’re supposed to go out and look do you do you maybe do a couple moves on the manufacturing line to make sure you understand what’s happening yes but you don’t start manufacturing things you come in from a different perspective you come in with a different perspective and then what you have to look for as a leader is you have to make sure that things are going in the right direction and the test that you should put on yourself is like it the basically the momentum is the momentum that we’re going in correct because the momentum could be wrong and the momentum could be right and if the momentum is right cool you can just get out of the way if the momentum is wrong that’s where you’re gonna have to step in and stop it and and one of the places where you see this is well in combat when things lag you know you get an element that’s not moving as quickly as they’re supposed to move they’re lagging they’re moving too slow and they don’t even realize that they they can’t realize it because they’re doing it you can come in and say hey we got to step it up hey we need to push that next building so when when an element is lagging a leader can step in and move things quicker and they should because that’s the the momentum is inertia the momentum is hey we’re we’re going slow we’re being methodical but they need to move faster the leader’s got to make that happen there’s also times where the leader steps in and says hey i need to slow down guys are moving too quick you guys are taking you not not uh taking too many risks slow it down so there’s all these situations where i think what the leader needs to be cognitive cognitive of in their mind when they step into these situations is is the momentum we have is the crowd as the mob moving in the right direction if they are great get out of their way let them keep going but if they’re not that’s when your opportunity comes to uh straighten it out and check it yeah yeah it’s not and it’s not just about speed it’s about tempo and a couple of things came to mind jaco as you were talking one is [Music] my personal security detachment in ramadi uh you know it was generally for up armored humvees i had a platoon the platoon leader’s name was jacques smith just just an excellent leader and uh early on as we were out there with me you know uh being transported by this uh when we when we moved mounted by this uh four up armor humvee formation um you know i was kind of on the radio directing the movement of these four up armored humvees and and uh jack smith you know the lieutenant he looks at me goes sir he goes you’re you’re leading the brigade he goes let me lead this platoon and i and i said you know what jack you’re exactly right i’m going to shut up you know we’re out when i when we’re out here this is your platoon you’re going to lead it i’m going i’m not going to say a damn word uh about how how you should maneuver this platoon because he was right i had i had a a brigade elite and then the other story is command sergeant major uh chris kepner he was my command sergeant major when i commanded 28th infantry division he used to say as he would go out and talk to leaders and coach and mentor leaders he would he would say leaders could stop things from getting screwed up just by the fact that they were there just by their mere presence uh so you know that’s why it’s so important again you know for for leaders to get out there because people are going to do the right thing and adhere to those standards when they know the leader is is there i was uh down in florida a while back doing some leadership training for a sheriff’s department down there and one of the the deputy sheriff’s was speaking to a group of corporals and he told the story how in the in the in the jail there uh how um some deputies that should have been in the kitchen watching the prisoners do what they were doing uh you know cooking the meal just neglected to be there as they should and things really got out of hand and his point was just because the sergeant wasn’t going down and checking to make sure those deputies were doing the right thing they you know they’re human beings they just decided hey you know this mustn’t be that important because nobody’s checking on us so we’re not going to be doing the right thing and so his point was again just by the mere fact of a leader being present they’re going to fix things just by being there this is a reminds me of of another chapter in the book here chapter 11 an organization’s personality you say in 1985 i took command of an infantry company in the 28th infantry division pennsylvania national guard the infantry company i commanded was designated alpha company 2nd battalion 109th infantry and the unit had an authorized strength 144 soldiers i was honored to have an opportunity to lead the commissioned officers non-commissioned officers and soldiers assigned to the outfit i remembered reading an army leadership manual earlier in the in my career before taking this command in the manual there was a statement i will never forget it’s at a military unit and any organization for that matter takes on the personality of its leader when reading that statement as a young inexperienced leader i doubted it i could not believe a unit of almost 150 soldiers would take on my personality i do not believe someone like me could have that type of impact whereby over a hundred of the people assigned would take on my traits based on my experience commanding that company i learned i was wrong and the leadership manual is correct an organization will take on the personality of its leader in my case the commander i took over for was a good man however his focus seemed to be more on being a nice guy than on emphasizing physical fitness and tough training that was exactly what the person personality of the unit was when i took command everyone got along everyone was comfortable but many of the soldiers were relaxed on their fitness levels and the unit did not go into the field much to conduct rigorous training i believe soldiers need to be in excellent physical condition and i also believed infantry soldiers needed to train rigorously in field conditions be experts with their weapons and take excellent care of their equipment over time the unit took on a tough persona this was ratified by our brigade commander when he selected our unit to train at the national training center at fort irwin california in late 1980s this was a big deal and an honor for a national guard company to be selected for that training so there you go yeah case in point yeah the the next section i wanted to just jump into and it’s called decision making and there’s some tap some topics in here that you write about and i i just want to kind of do a high level review of some of these some of these uh sections one of them is hit the ground running which means when you show up get started um get your butt in gear yeah yeah another one’s character is foundational again this is what we’re doing what we’re doing this is who we are and if we don’t have good character hey listen if you don’t have good character you might be able to get away with it for a little while you might even be able to weasel out a promotion because you you maneuvered and you manipulated and and you took credit where you didn’t and you didn’t give credit to the team or you still you you might you might even get a promotion you might even get two promotions it can happen but eventually it’s not it’s not going to last no no you know uh a friend of mine len morella he graduated from west point in like 1958 or something retired as a colonel in the army he wrote this book about character and in the book he would go and interview different leaders who were known to be character-based leaders and one of the people he interviewed was coach krashewski coach k from duke and uh in the in this interview he was doing with coach k he you know len len said to coach k hey like what does character have to do with winning a basketball game and coach k’s answer was you know character has absolutely nothing at all to do with winning a basketball game but it has everything to do with winning a championship you know and exactly what you say you know you might have a win here or there if you’re not character based but if you want to be a champion if you want to have long-term success you you got to be a character based leader at least that’s what i believe um another sub headline here is know your job and do your job and this my note that i took on this one is there is such a thing as a stupid question and let me explain that you know people say oh there’s no such thing as a stupid question if you show up to a job and you’re going to be in charge of a tank and you say hey what’s the name of this vehicle how far can this gun shoot how many rounds can we get if you’re asking questions that you should have done some research and know when you showed up you’re wrong if you show up to a manufacturer to run a manufacturing plant and you show up and say hey what is it we’re making or how many employees do we have or who’s in charge of the day shift if you’re asking questions that a little bit of research could have answered you didn’t do a good job preparing you don’t you so know your job that’s my part of know your job there is stupid questions don’t show up your first day and ask stupid questions that you should have known if you had taken an ounce of effort to to figure out what was happening no you know you’re exactly right i mean uh you got to put forth some of that effort now if it’s some type of you know inane you know technical you know thing that maybe a guy with 10 years experience would know and you wouldn’t know hey that’s that’s fine and you can ask those questions all day long yeah yeah but it’s just showing you really don’t care if if you didn’t you know take the time to do that type of research before coming into the job for sure uh you say take on tough assignments and this is there’s a this is this is just a good thing across the board you’re gonna learn a lot you’re gonna show everyone that you don’t you’ll take the not just the tough ones but the crappy ones hey no one wants to work this weekend cool i got it um one of my buddies uh seth stone who’s in ramadi with us he was he was on a ship he was a ship driver in the navy and they had his his department got assigned to do some cleaning like they hadn’t been in port for a while and his department got assigned to clean whatever and uh i heard this after he died someone the story got passed to his brother was uh you know as as his department was leaving for liberty they looked up and they saw he was cleaning whatever it was they were assigned to clean and he had just said you know what i’m gonna let the guys go and go on liberty and i’m gonna do whatever menial task we’ve been told to do and he was the guy in charge of the department so do the do the tough ones do the crappy ones too yeah yeah and again you know all in line with hit the ground running you know a lot of people say don’t volunteer for anything right you know i i think that’s a big mistake i mean you you got a volunteer to take on those tough things and and when you do that uh you know a couple of benefits first of all nobody’s gonna expect you to succeed if you’re just starting you’re you know out in your career uh you know you’re not going to have high expectations if you’re just starting out and so by tackling those tough things gaining that experience uh you know it’s just like you know in the military you know a second lieutenant in the army the lowest ranking commissioned officer you’re expecting a second lieutenant to make a mistake you know so that that’s the time to take on those tough assignments gain that experience make some of those mistakes learn from them and uh you know hopefully have the right leaders guiding you along the way and that that’s how you’re really going to get off to a good start and be successful another one um develop your leadership philosophy early but continue to refine and this is once again important even vince lombardi refined his philosophy and that’s what you need to do come up with a philosophy but then refine it make it better as time goes on um next section here is is uh competence and i don’t know if you did this on purpose but some of your chapter titles have a little bit of uh you know you’re gonna get some arise out of some people this one’s not everyone deserves a mentor yeah i kind of did that on purpose all right what do you mean by that one uh you know and again this gets back to uh uh an infantry conference i was at uh and and general cohn you know he since passed away but he was i think the tradoc commander at the time speaking to us there and he basically said that during his remarks and it’s like wow you know that kind of hit me you know like like a brick hitting me in the face it’s like well what’s he talking about uh but but what he went on to say and and which what i have you know come to to see as true is you know not everybody deserves a mentor because if you’re not out there actively looking for a mentor for somebody to you know somebody’s example to follow you probably don’t deserve a mentor and i remember even as a as a young officer thinking you know hey nobody’s mentoring me you know what’s up with this you know and i was expecting some you know uh graybeard you know to sit me down at their side and and tell me all the facts of how to lead but hey that that doesn’t happen and then i realized mentorship is happening all around us all we got to do is look for it for so again if if you’re a young executive in a company uh you know uh and and and you’re observing how one of the senior leaders in that company is acting how they’re talking to people how they’re relating to people and you’re learning the good and the bad from that that’s actually mentorship uh and and you know mentorship is all around us if we took just look for it but nobody should expect somebody to kind of sit us down and and tell us about hey these these are the things you really got to look out for that that’s not realistic that’s that’s just just not going to happen no it is not uh chapter 18 this one’s always a big topic getting buy-in napoleon used a technique to obtain buy-in it was the same technique used by the union general who commanded the army of the potomac at gettysburg general mead mead was a disciple of napoleon the technique was called a war council on july 2nd 1863 mead brought his lieutenants into his makeshift headquarters at the leicester house he had an agenda that evening the council had to provide their recommendations on one of three courses of action mead would have to decide one the union army should leave the battlefield two the union army should stay and fight an offensive battle three the union army should stay and fight a defensive battle mead began by asking his lower ranking and least experienced lieutenants to voice their opinions first he used this method because he knew if the more senior officers spoke first more junior officers in terms of rank reputation or experience might feel too intimidated to disagree after all this was by design a hierarchical organization mead knew he had to get the lower ranking leaders to speak first in order to get their unvarnished thoughts after everyone spoke mead decided the union would stay and fight a defensive battle the rest as they say is history the union army was victorious and won the battle and would go on to win the war although it would take another bloody two years before the confederate army laid down their arms i when when people ask me this question how do you get people to buy into the plan i say let them come up with a plan you don’t have to worry about buying anymore you don’t have to worry about it you came up with it i i’m buying into your plan and i can do that easily i can control my own thoughts and if you come if john comes up with a plan that’s pretty decent i’m cool with it and and we’ll go with it yeah yeah um you know as a leader i found you know give the task give the purpose but don’t give the how uh you know give the what in the why but not the how and usually you know those people who work for us are going to figure out a better way to do it than we would have figured out so yeah you know let them run with it uh in any organization usually those people at the grassroots level have um they’re closer to the problem set so turn it over to them now yeah you might have to provide a little bit of guidance you might have to you know kind of you know uh just just adjust one way or the other but essentially uh you know giving them the one y and let them figure out the how is generally the best way to handle it and i’ll get leaders say well what if my what if my subordinates come up with a stupid plan i’ll say what’s wrong with you if you’ve got subordinates that are coming up with a stupid plan yeah i’ll tell you what’s wrong you haven’t trained them properly you haven’t given the right mentorship and guidance you haven’t let them come up with plans before so they could learn how to plan better so if they come up with a stupid plan what do you do you start asking them some earnest questions about their plan and kind of it reveals to them what some of the holes in their plan are and then they can make adjustments and while they’re making adjustments they’re also learning so the next time you ask them ask them to come up with a plan it’s may not be a brilliant plan but at least it’s less stupid than the first plan and you look up in three months or six months all of a sudden their planning is outstanding and you look up in a year and they’re probably planning better than you are because like you said they’re the ones that are closest to the problem yeah yeah and you know what you said a little bit earlier i think is exactly true you know sometimes you know our followers will come up with a plan that isn’t exactly the way we would do it but you know i let them run with it anyway you know as long as you know it’s not flawed in any way it’s just a different way than i would have thought of doing it and and i think that’s really where leaders have to leave their ego at the door you know to say you know hey this isn’t the way i do it but it’s going to get the job done it’s still going to be cost effective or you know whatever the case might be so so let them go forward with it and it’s you know like you said you don’t have to worry about the buying if they came up with it i go into every meeting with my subordinates when i was in a platoon when i was a tasking commander right now in the business world i walk into a meeting with my people my goal is to use their plan that’s my goal i don’t want to use whatever i’m coming up with i want to use theirs and if you have that goal at the beginning that’s going to lead you to the best possible place and look like you said if their plan is dumb which which you know you get some people come up with some dumb plans occasionally but occasionally some people come up with some dumb ideas that’s okay ask them some earnest questions and they’re going to see that their plan is well the reality of their plan which is dumb yeah yeah and you know this kind of leads into the whole you know asking your followers what their recommendation is and you know some some followers are going to come up with some type of crazy recommendation that just you just know for your experience it ain’t going to work uh but i think what leaders need to do is then get back with those followers and explain to the follower hey this is why i didn’t use your recommendation now again i’m you know talking about situations where there’s time to have those conversations you know if you’re in the middle of the fire fight you know you gotta sometimes hey you know go left not right whatever but i’m just saying you know in in most situations uh where you’re asking for recommendations on some type of long-term plan you’re putting together somebody comes up with something wet you know that’s really wacko and you’re not going to use it i i do think you show people the respect by at least getting back with them and explaining to them why i’m not going to use your plan yeah because that’s your that’s also your opportunity to teach them why that plan wasn’t good and again i’ll do it by just by saying hey john i just want to ask you about you know this this channelized area that you want to take your patrol through do you think that’s the best approach to the target going through this valley where there’s elevated positions on both sides that could be occupied by the enemy and you’ll look at me and say you know what boss let me get back to you and you’ll come up with a different plan exactly um fast forward a little bit you got a section in here talking about tactical patience which is a concept everybody needs and i think it’s the younger you are the more you need to understand tactical patients because the younger you are the less tactile patients you generally have and that goes all the way to like little children that are four years old they have the least amount of tactical patients so you talk about that but what i like here is you also throw in a section that is is uh called what tactical patients is not demonstrating tactical patients is not about putting off a decision it is about taking the time when you have the luxury of having time to think through the information available and the recommendations before deciding just as nothing happened in business before somebody sells something nothing happens in business until the leader decides good leaders have to have the courage to make a decision with less than perfect information so it’s good to be tactically patient but also there comes a time where you got to make a call yeah absolutely and uh you know jack welch you know the ceo at general electric for for 20 years uh i think from like 81 until 2001 you know he he wrote in one of his books that the problem he saw with mid-level managers throughout general electric is the the unsuccessful ones were the ones who did not have the courage to make a decision and again when you make a decision you’re putting yourself out there and and some leaders just don’t want to take that uh you know that risk to put themselves out there and and and uh potentially make the wrong decision but it’s so important because again once you make a decision it doesn’t mean that you have to stick by that decision no matter what you know you’ve got to assess what’s going on you know get some feedback about what’s actually happening out there you know the real deal and then you know make those adjustments as you go but anybody who thinks that hey once i made this decision i can’t i can’t deviate from it i don’t think that’s a good technique yeah and that’s a technique that i talk about in leadership strategy and tactics book is i call it iterative decision making i’m going to make the smallest decisions i can you know you want me to go assault a part of the city of ramadi i say hey got it boss we’re gonna take one building we’re gonna start with this one little building over here and see how that goes if like we get a good foothold and now we can put some troops in a good spot now i can go to the next building i don’t send you know all my troops in a bunch of different buildings at the same time no i’m gonna make small steps in that direction and and then then it’s very easy for me to make adjustments it’s very easy for me to say oh you know what hey boston i need more troops or hey boss this doesn’t make sense right now this is way more fortified than we thought it was going to be whatever the case may be i can make adjustments but i start off by making very small decisions and then adjusting and the other thing that that i was thinking about while you were saying that is when you were talking about jack welch and and the mid-level managers failing to make decisions because they don’t want to put themselves out out there and this reminds me of what you were talking about earlier and what’s in the book the idea of forming like scar tissue and a habit if you get in the habit of saying hey look i made a decision wasn’t the best call it’s on me here’s the adjustment we’re gonna make once you realize that that doesn’t it’s not the end of the world to do that now i can tell you you can you can you do that to an extent where people don’t think hey chocolate’s just nothing but bad decisions and every decision he makes goes hey my mistake okay this one was my mistake hey sorry guys this was my mistake eventually you’re going to lose some clout and you’re going to lose some credibility you can’t just make bad decisions all the time but if you make decisions hey even a what is it a a broken clock is right twice a day you’re gonna be right some of the times you know if you’re doing a good assessment you make a decision and it turns out to be wrong hey guys sorry my fault that we should have gone a different direction here’s the adjustment we’re making people don’t lose respect for you they gain respect for you but if you don’t experience that and you don’t build up the muscle of making a decision owning the outcome whether it’s good or bad own the outcome you can build up a muscle memory for doing that where it becomes habitual and it’s okay and i think if you never if you never step into that arena you’re just scared of it you know it’s like mikey in the dragons other kids book i wrote the the he the kid’s scared of the dragons he doesn’t realize that the dragons are small and that’s true with most things we fear so if you don’t open that door go in that cave and make a decision occasionally you’re never going to understand that there’s a once you do that if it was a bad decision just own it make adjustments and move forward you need to learn that you need to feel that and you can get used to it yeah and and you know jacco i was listening to an interview you were participating in once and i think you said something to effect that every every problem is a leadership problem and and you know what that gets to is you know leaders have to create an environment where subordinates feel comfortable taking the risk to make a decision and know hey if it doesn’t turn out exactly right at least you know i’m not going to get my legs chopped out from underneath me so you know it’s really important that you know if you if if you’re a leader and you see that you’ve got subordinate leaders who are hesitant to make a decision maybe you should look in the mirror and think to yourself hey what am i doing to create an environment where these these people are afraid to even even decide or or make a mistake that’s not a good environment a horrible environment and you’re going to end up your team is going to fail eventually yeah um fast forward a little bit chapter 25 iron sharpens iron as iron sharpens iron so one person sharpens another proverbs 27 17 and this is right in line with what you were just talking about demonstrate initiative an attribute i felt strongly about was initiative at every level of leadership throughout the division and this is again this is when you were in a in a leadership position this was a result of my combat experience in ramadi iraq i saw during my time in ramadi how it was essential that junior leaders demonstrate initiative in order to get ahead of the decision-making loop of our enemies i believed if we did not encourage initiative in steady-state operations and training exercise subordinate leaders would not display the necessary level of initiative winning combat i put out written guidance and i continually reinforce stating i believe demonstrating high levels of initiative was worth the risk of making honest mistakes so this is exactly what you were just talking about if you’ve got a team that’s not making decisions you’re you’re the problem and the way you the way you instilled that culture inside your division when you were a division commander was by talking about it by putting out written guidance by demonstrating it and i like this this point of the fact that initiative is worth the risk of making honest mistakes that’s a huge deal if you’re a subordinate leader and you know that the boss wants you to take initiative and that it is worth the risk of making honest mistakes that’s that could be a game changer for a young leader yeah you know i think that’s an important statement uh there about you know demonstrating initiative is worth the risk of making honest mistakes but the caveat to that is is if you’re a leader and you put that statement out there guess what your subordinates are going to be looking for they’re going to be looking for the first time somebody demonstrates initiative and makes an honest mistake and they’re going to they’re going to watch how do you react to this thing and um and actually i i think it was my sergeant major you know chris kepner who mentioned that to me after i put that statement out he goes you know people are going to be watching to see how you react the first time somebody makes an honest mistake by demonstrating initiative and that was a little you know some good counsel from him so again leaders again to to develop and cultivate this trust and organization they put something out there now they really have to pay attention to make sure that they you know they they walk the talk there and and and do what they said they’re going to do because people are going to be watching nobody’s going to be leaving nobody’s going to believe that written word until they actually see an action uh fast forward here you’re talking about some of the internal attributes it says if leaders cannot get in touch with their own feelings they will have difficulty understanding the feelings of others leaders must practice self-awareness and mindfulness once one develops self-awareness and you talk about i’m fast forward a little bit you talk about journaling is a good technique like writing down what your thoughts what your feelings are so that you get some perspective on them i’m going to fast forward a little bit once one develops self-awareness one can then become better at controlling emotions followers look to leaders to be able to get things get stable when things get chaotic controlling one’s emotions has many personal organizational and societal benefits i remember when i was young i was a young inexperienced leader i acted out in front of a group of my followers showing great displeasure not with them but with the situation we were dealing with i ranted and raved and threw my notebook across the room as an inexperienced leader i thought this would demonstrate to my followers followers i was all in instead when i saw the negative reaction of my followers i realized this was a poor technique you remember what happened what made you so mad yeah it was uh actually i was a lieutenant on active duty commanding a platoon and uh i can’t remember the actual incident that made me upset but it was something that was upsetting to to our to our unit the whole platoon got weekend duty or something like that something you know and i thought okay i’m going to show them i really you know care care about this and acted out and i realized that they were they were not looking for a leader to act like that they were looking for the leader to act professional and more stable and and i think i might have either wrote in that book or or somewhere else uh that they were looking for a rock and instead what they got was a pile of sand you know and uh you know that that really taught me that you know it’s it’s kind of like being a parent you know kids aren’t looking for friends they’re looking for parents you know and and and subordinates aren’t looking for for buddies they’re looking for followers that they could count on and it’d be be a father and and the other thing is i i like to say is that leaders don’t need to be great all the time but they need to be great when it makes a difference they need to be great when it matters you know because you know let’s face it you know steady state operations 80 of the time thing 90 of the time things are kind of moving along right you know but then you hit this bump in the road and that’s where you really got to stand up and you got to be a leader and you’ve got to show that that ability to control your emotions and to be stable because that that that is something that creates confidence into organization if a leader falls apart like that uh then then heck the subordinates don’t have anybody to count on because even the leader is starting to crumble that that’s not a good thing so that happened on early on that happened early on in my career and i realized what a mistake that was so i was always very very uh cognizant of of the fact that hey yeah you had a you had to show strength when things were kind of caving in all around you that that’s what that’s what your supports are expecting i always looked at it if my leader couldn’t control his emotions how the heck is he going to be able to make good decisions and i always remembered i saw when i was younger some of the leaders i had would fly off the handle and i just think well how’s this guy going to make a decision no one makes a good decision when they’re emotional no uh displaying empathy empathy is an essential element of being a servant leader empathetic leaders can sense what their followers are feeling this eliminates tone deafness and the perception leaders do not understand or worse yet the perception the leader does not care when followers think a leader does not care they will stop bringing forth their problems and issues empathy is the capacity to show followers you care about them a leader must understand how followers feel and what their issues are in order to provide their resources allowing followers to do their job more effectively and increase the probability of mission accomplishment you want to see the perspective of the people on your team and you know i think it was colin powell who said something to the fact that when when soldiers stop bringing you their problems you’ve effectively stopped being a leader and you know you could apply that to you know civilian sector as well when you’re the people who work for you stop bringing you problems you you’ve really effectively lost your ability to to lead them because you know folks are going to stop bringing us their problems when they figure either um you can’t do anything about it or you just don’t care enough to do anything about it um and and and that’s just a terrible position for for a leader to be in yeah you gotta you gotta maintain that connection as always a running joke whenever i’m in a leadership position that no one ever tells me that they’re tired that they don’t wanna work more it just never happens right so i always have to make sure that i’m pulling that string a little bit more than normal because no one wants to come and say hey jonker we’ve had enough we want to do don’t want to do another operation we don’t want to go we’ve been on the road too no one ever wants to tell me that so i always have to make sure i’m digging a little bit deeper otherwise they won’t say a damn thing uh section three is resilience and i’m gonna read a little section here um our four up honored up armored humvees launched themselves out of the gate of ford operating base ramadi on a sun drenched sunday morning in september 2005 the heat was stifling the euphrates river running through our area added a high degree of humidity causing my eye protection to mess up with sweat we were traveling around around along route michigan toward observation post hotel overlooking east ramadi op hotel a suicide bomber attacked the observation post a few weeks earlier but failed to dislodge the tenacious soldiers who operated out of there i wanted to check on the soldiers and gauge their morale our vehicles made their way through the city through a city struggling due to the violent insurgency there still as we made our way east toward east ramadi the streets were busy with vehicle and pedestrian traffic i was happy to have my brigade chaplain riding along with me in the back seat of our vehicle in the army i have always been a big fan of our chaplains these warriors of a higher power could bolster the spirit of soldiers anytime they visited a unit the chaplain was also part of my personal staff and i valued their insight prior to making a decision affecting the welfare of soldiers after our visit to op hotel we made our bat our way back through the center of the city the chaplain noticed the same thing i and every soldier in our mounted patrol noticed the vehicles and pedestrians covering the streets about two hours earlier had disappeared there was a strange quietness clothing the neighborhood we were passing through we had seen this before we braced ourselves for an insurgent attack we all became a bit tense as our senses were alerted the banter we usually engaged in as we moved about the city was quieted as we gave the alleys and buildings around us our full attention in order to calm down our crew the chaplain announced in a loud voice fear not boys god is with us the young specialist operating out of the gunners compartment of our vehicle heard the chaplain’s announcement and from his more exposed position atop the vehicle he playfully called down to the chaplain god may be with you all down there but he certainly is not up here with me about 20 seconds later we heard the boom of a rocket-propelled grenade the grenade squarely hit the armor shield surrounding our young gunner and harmlessly ricocheted into the air before exploding and causing no harm to personnel and no damage to equipment our stunned gunner did not miss a beat he quickly and loudly proclaimed i stand corrected chaplin god just arrived of course we all broke up with laughter it was good having the chaplain with us that day and this is a section that you’ve got called spiritual fitness talk to us about spiritual fitness yeah you know um you know when we talk about fitness of course you know we think of physical fitness and you know mental fitness emotional fitness but i think spiritual fitness is a big part of helping us develop our leadership strength and that’s whether we are part of some type of formal you know religion or whether we just uh are connected to our spirituality in another way you know through nature through meditation whatever the case it’s it’s important that we understand that there’s something i this my own personal beliefs there’s something larger going on in the universe around us it’s not all about us you know we’re just just we’re just a speck of everything that’s going on and i think that helps us keep grounded i think it keeps it helps us keep humble and and i think it again kind of aligns with whatever values we say are our personal values where it will help us uh stay on the right track as as we’re making these these decisions so i think if if leaders don’t take the time to reflect on uh the the notion that there’s a higher power out there that there’s something going on that’s really much bigger than ourselves they may be missing something and this that that’s one part of this whole section of the book which is called resilience and this is one of your three overall themes and you’ve got some other facets of resilience in here positive energy and that’s an overused statement right and and what i was thinking about what i was reading this is you know you can think of the positive energy as someone that’s sort of like it’s it’s hard to understand or it can be hard to understand but if you think of people that have negative energy it’s real easy to understand those people right it’s really easy someone is oh this is never gonna work oh we’re screwed all this is horrible you we all know people like that and it seems easier to identify maybe i shouldn’t use the word hard to understand it can be hard to under hard to identify someone that has positive energy it’s really easy to to there’s more people it seems that have negative energy and occasionally you’ll get someone that’s just got super positive and and then you’ll remember that and you’ll remember how their you know what their response was when something was going wrong and how they took it and they look around like oh good we get another chance to go at this or whatever the case may be so i think that’s that’s a good one you got fitness physical fitness in here yeah which is again something that um i get often asked does that come from the military or is that just part of you and the answer is look there’s plenty of people in the military that get out of the military and physical fitness their physical fitness fails yeah and they get out of shape so it’s not something that you get it’s not a chip you get programmed you need to work at it yeah yeah and just getting back to your your uh piece there about the positive energy you know you mentioned those negative people i like to call them energy sponges because they just kind of sap the energy from everyone around them it’s kind of like why do i want to be around this person man you know uh and uh it’s it’s just not good for a leader to be that way uh i like to say a leader should brighten up the room when they enter it not when they leave it you know if you’re the type of leader that brightens up a room when you when you leave it it’s kind of like man you’re doing you’re doing something wrong there so uh again it’s not like you got to be you know all smiling and slapping people on the back and glad-handing people all the time but but people have to know that you’re expecting tomorrow to be a better day than today and who doesn’t want to be around a leader who believes that tomorrow is going to be better than today you know because you know we want to move forward and and that’s what i mean by by positive energy and like we talked about earlier in the podcast here uh you have to have an action plan a believable action plan you know if you want to be known as as a as a positive leader because people aren’t going to to follow you if they just think you’re glad handing everything and you really don’t have a plan to back it up that’s important yeah you got to you got to see a pathway to get this mission done yeah and see a way to get out of this miserable situation that we’re in and see a way to have some fun with it yeah yeah i mean hey you know it’s human nature people want to be able to you know have people want to be able to enjoy their work you know and uh if you know the old saying you know if you enjoy your work you’re not going to work a day in your life and i truly believe that and you and and again you just got to find those things that really you know keep you motivated keep you excited about life what about vulnerability this is another thing that you clue into here um talk to us about vulnerability from a leadership perspective yeah when i when i talk about vulnerability uh and we already talked a little bit about the first part it’s about uh having the courage to leave your comfort zone allowing yourself to be vulnerable to try something maybe you haven’t tried before or something that’s a little bit hard but the other aspects of vulnerability is putting yourself out there and exposing yourself to your followers and i’ll i’ll tell you what i mean by that one way to expose yourself to your followers and i i think this is a helpful technique is sharing stories with your followers about times maybe when you tried something and you failed you know or or you made a mistake and uh the reason i think that’s important is because you know followers look at at a leader to think man they’re in this position of leadership everything they touched in life must you know must have turned a goal they probably never made any mistakes so they want to be in this position of leadership and we know nothing could be farther from the truth so by by explaining to your followers how hey you know i’ve i’ve tried and i’ve failed sometimes and i’ve made mistakes and this is how is it able to overcome these mistakes that that inspires uh those followers and then the other piece about vulnerability is having the humility to ask people on your team and i know you’ve written about this because i’ve read it but have the humility to ask people on your team what they think and how they would do something and then having the humility to follow through with their recommendation when you see it’s a good recommendation that should be followed and and again not just having that attitude that hey i’m the leader you’ve only got two years on the job what could you possibly know you know more more than i i know uh but again you don’t know what life experience that person had so so asking people their opinion we talk about respect i think one of the best ways you could show somebody on your team that you respect them is by asking their opinion could you imagine working for somebody for 10 years and you’ve never had that person you worked for ever ask you for your opinion i mean you know how could that make you feel good and and how could that make you feel that that leader of yours respects you man you never even asked me what i thought you know so i think one of the best ways to show people you respect them is to ask their opinion doesn’t mean you have to follow their recommendation like we mentioned earlier and if you don’t follow their recommendation a good technique is getting back with them and explain to them why uh but i think uh to me that’s what vulnerability is is all about those couple of things there yeah this is another negative example that i think is easier to see is if you’re talking if you work for me and you’re talking and i cut you off right that’s everyone knows that’s disrespectful well it’s that also means that if i actually listen to what you have to say that i’m being respectful i’m giving you respect so that’s a if you can’t remember to listen to people remember how rude it is when someone cuts you off and the opposite of that is to actually listen to people here’s another i think this is a a vulnerability that is so uncomfortable for leaders and people and subordinates up and down the chain of command it’s a vulnerability that is that is people avoid almost at all costs and that is the ability to say i don’t know yeah i don’t hey i don’t know hey what do you think we should do this i don’t know up and down the chain of command i think the first the first place i learned this when when i got to the seal teams you didn’t get your you weren’t a seal when you got to the seal teams you were a new guy uh an fng as a matter of fact so you get there you’re an fng you don’t have your trident which is the insignia that means you’re a seal and so you have to study for six months you’re on a probationary board you have to you’re on probation i should say and then you have to eventually go in front of a verbal board and you go to the diving you go to the weapons you go to parachute you go to tactics you go to the radios you and all these chiefs and master chiefs and senior chiefs and they’re asking you questions and what they tell you isn’t this is this is probably the first place i realized okay well that’s that’s the right thing to do if they ask you a question and you don’t know what you say is i don’t know let me do some research and i’ll get back to you and that’s the right answer and they’re going to ask you some questions they’re going to dig so deep into those manuals they’re going to get that answer or you can sit there and say you can try and make up an answer you can try and pretend like you know it and then you’re going to get crushed because you lack the humility and you’re not being vulnerable enough to say hey i actually don’t know so up and down the chain of command just like you said no one expects the leader to know everything as a leader we think everyone expects us to know everything and when we try and act like that we look like idiots yeah you don’t know everything just say hey i don’t know what do you think it’s perfectly fine three powerful words there that leaders should live by when they don’t know say it uh skipping forward a little bit remaining calm during the storm you you talk about some ways to do this and you got a couple points in here take control over the things you can i think this is something that even though it’s so obvious we still fail to do that as people we worry about things we have no control over so don’t do that but you got another another section in here do not catastrophize now did you make up that word no that’s actually a word i heard when i went through resiliency training okay they talked about the concept of catastrophizing so here’s the section on catastrophizing the united states army trains soldiers on techniques that will help them display resiliency one of those techniques which i think is particularly relevant during these uncertain times is how to not catastrophize when you catastrophize you focus only on the worst case scenario you believe the worst will happen and of course this produces a great deal of anxiety this can also sow the seeds of a self-fulfilling prophecy a method to place things in perspective and avoid catastrophizing is by going through a practical thought process promoting resiliency and reducing anxiety first look at what the worst case scenario would possibly look like second identify what the best case scenario might be third consider the most likely or probable outcome then focus your attention on the plan on the most probable case and develop your primary plan of action around that scenario so this is something i think the reason i got a little bit focused on this is because this is what our news media gets paid to do catastrophize everything yeah everything is catastrophized everything is a worst case scenario the world’s gonna have i if you follow the headlines the world ends every single day it gets killed by kovid by war by this politician by that politician every single day there’s a catastrophe that happens and and if you do that as a leader you nee you’re making a mistake but but what’s also important is you can’t react to these things and someone runs into the office with some massive problem it’s like okay let’s think through it okay i see you’re excited awesome let’s think through it catastrophizing you know i’m surprised uh i woke up this morning you know watching the news i thought the world ended yesterday uh but but yeah you’re you’re exactly right and and i do try to use this technique uh because usually the very worst case doesn’t doesn’t happen and and you get yourself all spun up about it all friggin tense and and stressed out about and it’s not going to do you any good anyway um this is uh one of one of the most beautiful things i learned in the military is the is the counter to the catastrophizing individual above you in the chain of command below you in the chain of command appear whatever they they’re panicking they’re freaking out and what you learn in the military you learn this powerful word which is roger that or either roger or roger that someone comes in they’re going crazy like oh you gotta believe this happened i’d be like roger meaning okay i understand let’s let’s think about it so any time be very careful as a leader be very careful with the words you choose to to explain what’s happening and and sometimes as a leader we want to get a reaction out of people where we’ve got this situation happening and we know it’s critical and we need to make some adjustments and so in order to get people moving instead of explaining to them what’s happening and why we need to make a move we just go straight to level 12 catastrophize right in order to get it in order to get people to move we catastrophize and the problem with that is it ends up being the little boy that cried wolf where you catastrophize everything everything’s a catastrophe everything’s gonna end the world everything’s a strategic failure for the team everything’s a catastrophic event and it’s like no in fact there are so few catastrophic events that can actually happen that there’s almost nothing that you can catastrophize with me you’re gonna get through just about everything that’s kind of like the whole thing if everything’s a priority nothing’s a priority exactly you know you’ve you’ve really got to be clear about what the priorities are and then get everybody working toward achieving those you know probably maybe two or three priorities so things that are really important prioritize and execute i believe i believe that’s the word um hey i want to close out with one last uh section here um and it’s it’s how you close out the book but it’s it’s a good indicator of everything else that’s in the book so it says this i was raised by my father to have faith in god though we though my father faced setbacks such as losing his wife at an early age and raising seven children after her death he never lost faith my father made it a point to march us march all seven of his children into church every sunday morning this made a lifelong impression not only on me and my siblings but many others who resided in our community there are certain things i learned about good leadership as a young boy from my father and others that have been reinforced throughout my life the things i learned were the importance of having strong character and staying true to your values even when things got tough being service oriented and helping other people whenever you could regardless of their race religion and setting an example by doing the right thing even when no one was watching i know i am not a perfect leader but i continue to do my best to learn how i can become a better person and a better leader and i encourage all who read this book to do the same seek to place the organization you lead in good hands well i think that’s what we’re all trying to do we’re all trying to do the same thing continue to learn um continue to try and become better people and better leaders and definitely appreciate you for writing this book and and giving some of these lessons learned no jocko i appreciate the um the time to talk about it i appreciate the time to uh talk about the book with you and just uh really grateful that we could spend a little bit of time you and i just just talking about our own leadership philosophies and and uh what it means to continue to to learn and continue to grow to be a better leader so thank you for the opportunity yeah there’s i mean obviously we use some different verbiage and some focus here and there might be a little bit different but the underlying themes i mean these are these are what leadership these these are the underlying themes that exist in leadership anywhere you look anybody that understands it is gonna you’re gonna see these common themes um so right now you’ve got a consulting company called leader grover’s at leaders grove leader leader growth leader grove and it’s leadergrove com yes um you got johngronsky com people can find you there you’re on twitter at jlgronski [Music] you’re on youtube youtube channel that’s john gronski yeah linkedin john gronski there’s a good thing about having the last name gronsky it’s not a real common last name it’s like mine the last name not correct not not real comment yeah so you can you can get away with it and and you can just call everything gronsky um linkedin john gronski and then you got facebook which is john gronski leeds and uh what else oh the gram oh you’re on the gram yeah you’re on the ground see echo charles you know what’s up yeah and that and that’s that john gronski leads on the ground uh so any any other echo you got anything no sir i think we covered it that’s it huh nothing from mac oh it was interesting to see the the i mean not necessarily the contrast but the overlap so much overlapping you know different terminology how you said but very interesting yeah yeah it’s um good leadership good leadership across the board any closing comments the only closing comment i have is that i’ve got a i’ve got a good time drinking your jocko go uh energy drink so i love that mango yeah that that’s echo’s favorite flavor as well but i just want to thank you again for the message you put out i mean you put out a message that uh so many uh people could follow whether they’re in a leadership position or not and by the way i think everybody is in some position of leadership uh and and i think you agree with me when i say you don’t have to be in a formal position of leadership in order to lead but anyway thank you for putting the message out you do and and to the kids too you know what your your kids um uh you know the books you put out for for children to help them get on the right path uh is very important so appreciate that the other thing i want to thank you for is uh you know getting a picture myself you echo together so when people look at the picture they could see what a a small unmessed unmuscular man i really am compared to you two so i appreciate that but no really jocko uh thanks for having me back again and and again thanks for the leadership message that you continue to get out there so i appreciate that i i always say um if you interact with other human beings you’re in a leadership position so if if you’re listening to this right now you’re in a leadership position hey thanks thanks for writing the book that’s going to help people lead and more important once again thanks for your service thanks for your service in the army national guard the army and the national guard and thanks once again to you and to your soldiers and the the service and sacrifice and the battle of ramadi um the efforts that your guys put forth they they literally saved my guys lives we learned lessons from you when we got on the ground we listened to what you had to say you told us to do operations you told us not to do other operations you told us to stay off this street you told us how to better do our tactics so your guys from the 228 literally saved the lives of my guys i know it and uh we will never forget what you and your men did for us and and did for america thanks jocko thanks for coming on and with that general john gronski has left the building so echo yes kind of close that out talking about how people we all want to be better need to be better can be better it’s true where do we start well we start with our health without health we have nothing straight up from what i understand you had a little disregard of your health the other day and went to a mcdonald’s restaurant it was uh i ate food it was a momentary lapse of judgment and discipline and discipline for sure but it’s the it was it was very did you break um opportunistic and this is the kind of stuff we got to be careful for or about or whatever you know how you have a routine and every once in a while get reminded of the importance of a routine okay all right i’m not a i don’t 100 sign on to the whole routine this mcdonald’s party but it’s an example if you don’t have a routine what it does is create little opportunities okay this part is nothing new if you have a routine it’s like okay you don’t you don’t have opportunities it doesn’t doesn’t matter okay i bought i got the the item that is a soft soft bun and inside that bun is a fish flavored concoction you got the fish fillet yeah yeah i don’t think that’s there’s a real fish in there at all but either way do you think there’s like a crayfish or something in there you know you know what it is it’s like one of those are just pure sugar yeah it’s like a cinnamon synthetic they they do i don’t know but this is what it feels like maybe like a synthetic material that’s made maybe you know like a 3d printer or something like this with like some some stuff and then they put like some fish like extract flavor in it and then fry it okay was that the path is that the path is just making you better okay okay okay the path is kind of a routine it essentially is and this importance of the routine where if you have a routine there’s way way way less opportunity to make to have like oh like a decision-making conundrum right because the routine the decision you have already made before it’s part of the routine well you’re not hangry hey go through emotional departure depression because you haven’t had a freaking fish sammy a few hours either way if you’re hangry even you already know because dinner’s soon or you know when the dinner is see i’m saying if you have a routine or lunch or breakfast whatever you can you’re about to eat whatever comes in with these big shoes ready to take you off the bath here’s here’s what ronald does he just waits he waits for the people with no routine or or he’ll slide into your routine but a lot of times for people like me in this case where the little the little crack in the routine he’s right there he’s like hey you need a decision to make i’ll make it easy for you what’s the one that’s going to give you the payoff the quickest you see him saying that’s what it was instead of going home to dinner my wife was somewhere else and she was like hey you know like you know i don’t know how much food there’s going to be here or whatever so you know grab something this was like cool i made the turn in like literally on my way home changed trade trajectory took the uh exit and boom mcdonald’s was right there made it happen in a bad way all right so we don’t want to consume things that are are horrible no what do we want to do the point is health health is something with no health look if i’m going to mcdonald’s every single day my health goes down down down and then eventually i become incapable of pretty much anything so if you’re unhealthy or your health is in decline or whatever by your own meanwhile you have if you have control over it and you choose to not be healthy you can have some problems okay so let’s choose to be healthy that’s what i think i like it so on this path starts with health fitness capability uh mental and physical now with that we can have little helpers on the way that helper is choco fuel so i’m actually working on a video charcoal fuel video cool just a small one about why you jocko started choco fuel interesting it actually doesn’t go very deep when you think about it it’s like the stuff that you were using anyway that’s one of the worst hype you know things i’ve ever heard i think i’m so not hyped for this video right now yeah but here’s the only reason i’m a little bit hyped is i know you wouldn’t bring it up unless you are hyped so you must have some vision about some explosions that are going to happen uh yeah you know potentially i mean maybe may not have explosions either way the point is though the point is the reason jocko started jocko fuel is stuff that you use anyway yeah so you figure okay let me just refine and and maximize the quality on these things that i use anyway produce them boom and then we’ll have that product there you go one of the many little helpers in life helpers on the path because let’s face it you’re it’s late you dinner chance dinner plans change you’re hungry you you could easily go to mcdonald’s like echo charles did which is taking him in the wrong direction off the path unhealthy feeling sick later not doing a good workout the next day just everything is turning bad or you could power and be like oh cool i got milk at home yep i got mulk at home very high it’s a savior yeah it is true and and i’ll even explain it’s the same how much of a savior it is so look okay so energy drinks right mm-hmm we all know that we’re like hey i had to get the enough sleep or dang i have a huge workload today and tomorrow maybe i needed a little boost or maybe i’m just used to a little boost at some point in the day right but usually we’ve got to pay a price either we crash or either we’re drinking something that’s unhealthy boom these energy drinks go jocko discipline go may or may not be called discipline anymore it’s called this fungal all right there you go boom jacob this lingo is an energy drink with front side and backside benefits and no downside no downside we kind of went off on that recently we’re talking just this is the no downside piece yeah most things that are as gratifying and have so much upside usually yeah well there’s always a little downside right no downside not this time boom little helper on that path and me you’re on the path you’re still on the path literally in fact you’re even more down the path yeah in a good way totally positive across the board so boom or you get home let’s face it every once in a while you eat dinner you had a good day you had a good week great week spent time with the family got your work done you know you’re you’re you moved ahead you just want a little celebratory dessert something like this even the weird thing is even after you have a 26 ounce rib eye steak sure and it’s perfectly cooked even after you get done with that you’re you’re totally good to go but there’s another little part of your brain that wants something called dessert oh yeah and you could just be like oh well where’s the cheesecake or whatever oh yeah and kind of negate a lot of the the stuff that you’ve been doing all week working hard with yeah we made you dessert yep garmu so we got some mold boom and here look you wanna moc is good let’s say you’re tired it’s a hard week just add the milk to the milk or the whatever your your preferred mixer this is not a challenging recipe exactly directive yeah but not limited to that simplicity add some stuff in there i had a half a banana that’s me that’s my jam right there do what you will it’s the same deal this will not have you slip off the path you’re still in the path and all of this is a really long way of saying go to jugglefield com get yourself some stuff get yourself some joint warfare krill oil super krill um vitamin d3 cold war yeah these are all helpers with all all [Music] just a b testing things to make it taste good they don’t care they don’t care what you feel like and they don’t care about your health yeah don’t care there’s not one single person advocating for your health no they’re advocating for your wallet don’t do it isn’t that because you know how you just said that like almost with like a like a i don’t see like a joking tone right yeah but but it’s not scary part is that is 100 true where it’s there is not one single person one single person interested in the success of that business which is not necessarily a wrong thing to be interested in success of your business well it’s wrong if you’re going to sacrifice people’s health not one person cares about your health in fact your health is kind of like a pawn in their big game at jocko fuel your health is paramount that’s the only otherwise we wouldn’t do we we waited like an extra six months and built out the line to pasteurize the the the jocko go so that we didn’t have to put chemicals in it to keep it preserved yeah that’s that’s that shows you your health is paramount oh yeah otherwise we hey you know it’s not that big everybody else uses these chemicals no no don’t matter yeah isn’t that kind of scary when you put it into perspective not once it’s like you know what the most important thing about you is your wall you know what i’m gonna use that as a pawn in my business savages that’s insane oh that’s scary nonetheless jockofield com boom energy drinking wah wah you can get go at wawa you get everything at vitamin shop too go and hook that up it’s true also origin usa american-made stuff this is good stuff by the way so you get your american-made denim some leather on there jiu-jitsu stuff geez rash guards um some some fitness a tire they’re they’re hoodies so i got a new one and i had the old ones from before which is fine but when you wear them every other day they kind of you know they get worn out and get used to them and you’re like cool but i went to the camp i got a new one i was like that’s a nice one um they have a new uh heavy hoodie too it’s legit yeah called the heavy yeah we all know what that’s from nonetheless all the materials that are that make these the heavies what a freaking epic epic freaking moment in life yeah pete does a good job with those names those creative names and stuff the heavy yeah but yeah so even the materials that they make these things with our mage and grown in america so keep that in mind originusa com also jocko has a store it’s called jocko store this is where you can get your discipline equals freedom t-shirts hoodies hats whichever way you want to represent on this path it’s not an easy path but it’s worth it as a wise man once said if you want to represent boomjocklestore com also we have a thing called the short locker this is where you can get a new shirt with cool designs is that sure you’re wearing sherlock or shirt yes sir okay sure now something i have to say it’s cool all right i even got jocko signed on to that one but yeah there’s some cool i would say it’s a pretty much of a pretty much successful as far as accepted designs people like them i’m gonna agree yeah yeah so yeah i’m gonna again jocklestor com that’s where you can get all the stuff you like if you’d like something was the the wolf shirt yes the shirt locker shirt so these are approved like highly approved highly approved desired even desired yeah for sure um we uh we are opening a thing for a member like some of the members are like hey what about that one i signed up two months ago but i kind of want that shirt from six months ago or four months ago whatever so we’re opening up the the store for the members as well so they can they can add us add a password if they want yeah so be on the lookout for that one dang that’s awful nice of you yeah man i’m trying to be accommodating to the people uh subscribe to this podcast wherever you subscribe to podcast we also have jocko unraveling with daryl cooper and daryl cooper’s been on a mission lately so we haven’t released one in a bit but we got a ton of topics to talk about so check out jocko unraveling with myself and daryl cooper we got the grounded podcast we got the warrior kid podcast we also have the jocko underground podcast and that’s um well it’s sort of a little bastion of freedom that we have that we’re kind of setting aside it’s our it’s our contingency ao area of operations look if people get crazy with this whole platform the platforms and there’s a bunch of them you figure hey well you know you got this platform and that platform what are the chances that they all decide to either start inserting ads or start making people pay or whatever they’re gonna do i don’t know but if it happens we have our own little our own little world carved out we appreciate you coming into our world it’s called jock underground go to jockowunderground com if you want to join if you want to support it cost eight dollars and 18 cents a month and that’s how we’re paying to build this alternative platform and that way we don’t have to read ads from some freaking whatever apple company or banana outfit i don’t know [Music] if you can’t afford it that’s cool we still want you in the game email assistance at jacquelineground com we appreciate the support and we also have a youtube channel speaking of platforms it’s true where we put up videos yep so far youtube pretty straightforward towards the platform you know videos we’ve gotten demonetized a couple times yeah we’ve had warnings only a couple times like what is the the warning of info yeah and keep in mind when you say demonetized because there’s a difference there’s different levels of demonetization you can get a video to monetize you can get the uh or the whole channel straight up demonetized or there’s somewhere in between where it’s like okay you can proclaim that hey this video contains some heavy stuff bro i had um one halloween i did like a quick video of working out or whatever or something and i put in the background halloween the song by the misfits uh yeah yeah and we almost instantly it was whatever blocked banned and whatever else because it was copyrighted material i was like bro you know spreading the word on the misfits like you know what i mean yeah it’s true but they were on that yeah and you know they did they they kind of consider both sides i think anyway because it’s like hey what if um they assume that you’re making money off of your your probably your video this is a post oh not on youtube it was on something else it was on the gram oh yeah yeah that’s different it’s weird they came at me well you know what what it is it’s my hypothesis i think danzig and the misfits highly protect their i would ip yeah because you’re you’re essentially acting as a distributor yeah essentially i all i meant to do is actually spread the word hey man this is a great band yeah the misfits bro this is iconic band yes iconic it’s true but the rules gotta kind of apply to everybody you know so without some kind of approval uh distributor um process i saw the misfits recently with the chromebacks like before covid in la in a big giant stadium and you know what it was freaking outstanding i mean the crow mags were awesome yes absolutely harley was rocking and then the misfits came out and i was like this is i salute these guys that’s why you’re spreading the word and then yeah i was trying to spread the word a little bit and like they thought i was trying to jack their stuff well in their defense they didn’t see your post and and was like hey jocko take that down i don’t want you you know distributing myself that’s not how it went down but wouldn’t some people be like hey can you put a clip out of our music so more people buy our music right yeah that could happen right what wouldn’t they think of it that way instead of the other one technically the misfits didn’t do it directly technically instagram did it misfits probably signed up signed that song up to be monitored or whatever automatically so without them checking back with you specifically or arbitrarily glenn danzig and the misfits i was not doing it nefariously i was actually doing a promotional way if you ever want to license your songs to me yeah i’ll throw them out there into the world you can uh you probably never even heard a misfit song which is kind of sad no i’ve never i don’t think i’ve heard a misfit song but i heard you talk about the message right so kind of the same thing but that’s if you heard a misfit song you’d probably be like pretty good yeah oh yeah it’s it’s iconic music to be honest with you it’s iconic music it’s iconic an opinion or a factual standard factual um so you can have the misfits what’s called the white list they can white list your channel actually this is on youtube i know you can do this on youtube so because this is something they say hey it’s called jacqueline’s jackass down they can’t whatever the he posts all good as far as our account goes if they do that with us i won’t abuse it i’m not gonna make like you know what i mean this is only on youtube right away on youtube but maybe we’ll do it on instagram yeah just apply the youtube rule to instagram yeah i don’t know i don’t know i should talk next time see how long it takes them to shut me down i did some other old older hardcore bands and that that just were around for a short period of time no one ever said anything so i think it depends on the band yeah they have to you have to register your your songs and stuff like even on youtube like if if if i use a i don’t know your other favorite band like if i use like taylor swift or something like this right you know that all taylor swift songs have been registered with youtube through some process that’s like hey if this little thing this little print imprint or whatever however they monitor it turns up automatic either and they choose whether it’s shut down blocked or um just silence something some videos will just be silent because like hey that audio is not not cool or they’ll just take the monetization did they demonetize my guitar uh playing when i played a song by the white buffalo no no interesting not yours but when he was on popped right off oh yeah interesting um so you know it makes sense it’s a process i got a new jam coming all right got a new song i’m prepping cool i’m gonna record it right on uh so subscribe to that youtube channel jacob podcast also we got origin usa if you want to find out what’s going on in america oh their youtube channel yes yeah there’s their origin usa it’s cool to track what’s going on up there see see it feel it be a part of it yeah it’s true check also what do we got uh also psychological warfare that’s a an album with tracks that we have not put whatever thing to restrict it because people have jacked it and use it for all kinds of things so but if you want to like uh be a good human and you want to listen to the psychological warfare album that has tracks of me telling you not to freaking go to mcdonald’s not to order a fish filet mig sandwich then you can do that go to go to whatever mp3 thing and you can you can buy psychological warfare and i’ll be on your phone waiting to tell you stop also flipside canvas flipsidecanvas com dakota meyer he’s got a company here in america american made making cool stuff to hang on your wall and of course it’s dakota meyer even if you just had something dakota dakota meyer could take a white piece of paper yeah and be like hey i made this i’d be that cool let’s hang it on my wall because that’s the coat of meyer like a little hangman game he can really let’s put it on the wall yeah yeah i’m down i agree um got some books the book that i covered today was iron sharpened leadership by john gronski it will be on our website you can click through there yes and then you then you then you’ll be supporting the podcast while you buy a book you can buy whatever you want once you click through there through amazon or whatever it’s true uh final spin book coming out i wrote this book not it’s not a book about leadership it’s a book about brotherhood it’s a book about sacrifice and it’s a book about corn dogs gallon jugs of mayonnaise salmon pie and buick century wagons that’s what the book’s about no one can explain this book no one i can’t even explain it as you can see i just tried hey if you want to check out this new book i got it’s called final spin it’s a book it’s a poem it’s a transcript we don’t even know what it is but so far we have an audience of one deb the audio engineer who listened to me read the audiobook and she quote loved it she laughed she cheered she cried that’s what we’re talking about uh also leadership strategy and tactics field manual the code the evaluation the protocol dysfunctional freedom field manual way the warrior kid one two three and four mikey and the dragons about face and extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership a bunch of books i’ve written or co-written we have a company called echelon front where we solve problems through leadership go to ashlandfront com if you want help inside your organization this is also where you can find details for our live events including the muster including field training exercises and ef battlefield talked a little bit about gettysburg today the battle of gettysburg you can come to gettysburg with us and we will talk through the leadership challenges that they faced and decisions that that got made good and bad next muster is in las vegas october 28th and 29th next ftx is september 20th and 21st i think we already passed that so sorry keep your eyes open we also have an online training program extreme ownership academy it is online leadership training that you can go to you don’t get good at leadership by listening to one podcast or by reading one book you’ve got to work out in the leadership gym the leadership gym is extremeownership com go check it out and if you want to help service members active and retired their families gold star families check out mark lee’s mom mama lee she’s got a charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved in that go to america’s mightywarriors org and if you want more of me regurgitating reading or you need more of echo’s uncanny quips you can find us on the interwebs on twitter on the gram and on facebook echoes addict with charles hi matthew willock general gronsky general john groncki john gronski com leaders leadergrove com twitter j l gronsky youtube john gronski linkedin john gronski facebook and the gram at john gronski leeds and thanks again to general gronsky for joining us special thanks to all the men and women from the 228 that served in ramadi iraq in 2005 2006 we only overlapped with you all for about a month but we appreciate the what you did there and the turnover that you got that you gave to us as i mentioned to general gronsky you all 100 kept my guys alive from the lessons that you passed on to us and we appreciate it from the time we were working after you left with the 1-1 ad so thanks to all of you and the rest of the military out there serving right now thank you for taking the watch now that we are done and the police law enforcement firefighters paramedics emt’s dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service and all first responders thanks to all of you for standing on the watch here at home and to everyone else out there here’s a little here’s a little action you can take you need a plan a plan to live by a code a set of principles values a protocol for behavior if you don’t have that if you’re just don’t have that you’re just wandering around i wrote about it with dave burke and sarah armstrong in the book the code the protocol the evaluation i wrote about it first in the warrior kid books come up with a code the marine corps falls a code the rangers follow code the seals and the army and the samurai and the knights and the vikings all followed a code don’t wander around get on the path follow the code and keep getting after it and until next time this is echo and jocko out