Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
Extreme ownership
The leader is truly and ultimately responsible for everything. That is extreme ownership, the fundamental core of what constitutes an effective leader.
The leader bears full responsibility for explaining the strategic mission, developing the tactics, and securing the training and resources to enable the team to properly and successfully execute.
If an individual on the team is not performing at the level required for the team to succeed, the leader must train and mentor that underperformer. If the underperformer can’t improve, the leader must make a tough call to terminate then and hire others who can get the job done.
No bad teams, only bad leaders
When setting expectations, no matter what has been said or written, if substandard performance is accepted and no one is held accountable, if there are no consequences, that poor performance becomes the new standard. Leaders must enforce standards. Leaders should never be satisfied. They must always strive to improve, and they must build that mind-set into the team.
The best teams are constantly looking to improve, add capability, and push the standards higher.
It’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.
Believe
In order to convince and inspire others to follow and accomplish a mission, a leader must be a true believer in the mission. When leaders receive an order that they themselves question and do not understand, they must ask why? If they can’t find a satisfactory answer themselves, they must ask questions up the chain of command until they understand why. Not knowing the why prohibits you from believing in the mission.
Leadership is not one person leading a team. It’s a group of leaders working together up and down the chain of command, to lead.
Check the ego
Ego can cloud judgement, block learning, and damage team cohesion. When someone refuses to admit mistakes, blames others, or gets defensive, that’s ego getting in the way of leadership.
Put aside personal pride, emotional reactions, and the need to be right in order to focus on what truly matters: the mission, the team, and achieving results. How it applies:
- Admit mistakes quickly
- Stay open to feedback
- Prioritize the mission
- Lead with humility
Cover and move
It’s the most fundamental tactic which means teamwork. If the overall team fails, everyone fails. Alternatively, when the team succeeds , everyone within and supporting that team succeeds.
Simple
Simplifying as much as possible is crucial to success. When plans are too complicated, people may not understand them. Plans and orders must be communicated in a manner that is simple, clear, and concise.
Prioritize and execute
If a leader tries to tackle multiple problems simultaneously, they will likely fail at each of those tasks. Instead, leaders must determine the highest priority task and execute.
Decentralized command
Leaders are expected to figure out what needs to be done and do it - to tell higher authority what they plan to do, rather than ask “what do you want me to do?”. Junior leaders must be proactive rather than reactive.
Tactical leaders must be confident that they clearly understand the strategic mission. They must have implicit trust that senior leaders will back their decisions. To ensure this is the case, senior leaders must constantly communicate and push information “situational awareness” to subordinate leaders. Likewise, junior leaders must push situational awareness up the chain to keep senior leaders informed.
Plan
Leaders must understand the mission by themselves. There are some risks that simply can’t be mitigated, and leaders must focus instead on those risks that actually can be controlled. After each execution, there must be a post-operational debrief.
Leading up and down the chain of command
Leaders must convey the strategic vision to their subordinates who are doing tactical job. Subordinates don’t need the full knowledge and insights of their senior leaders, nor do senior leaders need the intricate understanding of the tactical level operators job. But it’s still crucial that each have an understanding of the others role.
Leadership doesn’t just flow down the chain of command, but up as well. Leading up the chain of command requires tactful engagement with the immediate boss to obtain the decisions and support necessary to enable your team to accomplish its mission and win. To do this, a leader must push situational awareness up the chain of command. Leading up, the leader cannot fall back on their positional authority. Instead, they must use influence, experience, knowledge, communication, and maintain the highest professionalism.
One of the most important jobs of any leader is to support your own boss. A public display of disagreement with the chain of command undermines the authority of leaders at all levels. If you don’t understand why decisions are being made, requests denied, you must ask those questions up the chain. Once understood, you can pass that understanding down to your team. Leaders in any chain of command will not always agree, but once debate on a particular course of action is over and the boss has made a decision, even if you don’t agree with it, you must execute the plan as if it were your own.
The major factors to be aware of when leading up and down the chain of command:
- Take responsibility for leading everyone in your world, subordinates and superiors
- If someone isn’t doing what you want or need them to do, first of all, determine what you can do to better enable this
- Don’t ask your leader what you should do, tell them what you are going to do.
Decisiveness amid Uncertainty
There is no 100% right solution. The picture is never complete. Leaders must be comfortable with this and be able to make decisions promptly, then be ready to adjust those decisions quickly based on evolving situations and new information.
Discipline equals freedom - the dichotomy of leadership
While increased discipline most often results in more freedom, there are some teams that become so restricted by discipline that they lose ability to make decisions and think freely. So the balance b/n discipline and freedom must be found and carefully maintained. That lies in dichotomy: discipline - strict order, regimen, and control - might appear to be the opposite of total freedom - the power to act without any restrictions but, in fact, discipline is the pathway to freedom.
Just as discipline and freedom are opposing forces that must be balanced, leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many contradictory qualities, b/w one extreme another.