"The leader must own everything in his or her world."- Extreme Ownership, page 30
Looking at leadership through the paradigm of “Extreme Ownership” makes a complex subject quite simple. In any organization, on any team, “all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader”. This is one of those mindsets that “say easy but do hard”. We all have egos and none of us like to fail or fall below the line, however, it’s going to happen. The best leaders check their egos, accept blame, seek out constructive criticism and take detailed notes to improve individually and as a unit.
It’s unfortunate how common and acceptable it is in business and society today to place blame elsewhere and say “that’s the reason we failed” or “it’s that person’s fault”, etc. Willink and Babin write, “The best leaders don’t just take responsibility for their job. They take Extreme Ownership of everything that impacts their mission. This concept is the number-one characteristic of any high-performance winning team, in any military unit, organization, sports team or business team in any industry”.
What I found compelling is that, by a leader taking Extreme Ownership of their team and the situations the team encounters, they will actually increase their trust and credibility with their leadership team and their subordinates at an accelerated rate. When leaders set this precedent, this mindset of “Extreme Ownership” starts to permeate into the culture of the team and the organization. When this starts to happen, look out!
"Whether a team succeeds or fails is all up to the leader. The leader’s attitude sets the tone for the entire team. The leader drives performance – or doesn’t."- Extreme Ownership, page 49
The title of this insight captures the very nature of what Extreme Ownership is all about. “This is a difficult and humbling concept for any leader to accept,” the authors write. “But it is an essential mind-set to building a high performance winning team”.
As a leader, you must take full ownership of the standards of your team. Any leader knows all too well how difficult this can be but when it comes to these standards, as the leader, “it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate”.
No matter what those standards are, no matter if they are written or spoken, if team members are falling below that line and aren’t being held accountable to that precedent, then that poor performer/performance becomes the new standard. To put it bluntly, leaders must enforce their expected standards.
“A leader must find a way to become effective and drive high performance within his or her team in order to win,” the authors advise. “Whether in SEAL training, in combat on distant battlefields, in business or life: there are no bad teams, only bad leaders”.
"Although discipline demands control and asceticism, it actually results in freedom"- Extreme Ownership, page 272
Discipline defined is: strict order, regimen, and control. While that sounds like the complete opposite of freedom, Willink and Babin challenge us to look at discipline past the initial inconvenience of doing the task. They suggest that discipline is the pathway to freedom and is paramount to success for any leader, team and organization.
Think about your team and the standard operating procedures that you have in place. Why do you have them? I would venture to guess it’s so that things get done in an efficient, effective manner, across the variance of people that may be responsible to accomplish a task. These standard procedures allows you to not have to reinvent the wheel every time this situation presents itself. By creating a culture of disciplined execution, it allows your organization to be more flexible, adaptable and ultimately more efficient. Now there is a balance between discipline and freedom and as a leader that balance must be identified and maintained but once you get it right, you open up the opportunity for success within that setting.
Jocko and Leif also share with us a list of leadership dichotomies that must be carefully balanced. A good leader must be:
“A good leader has nothing to prove, but everything to prove,” they say.
There are thousands of books out there about leadership and while many are great, few I’ve read are as practical, actionable and frankly emotionally moving as Extreme Ownership. Extreme Ownership is a mind-set, an attitude, and the authors do an incredible job of laying a foundation for both in this book. I’ll leave with you the last paragraph from the book as I feel it is so appropriate…
JOCKO WILLINK is a decorated retired Navy SEAL officer, author of the book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win, and co-founder of Echelon Front, where he is a leadership instructor, speaker, and executive coach. Jocko spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy SEAL Teams, starting as an enlisted SEAL and rising through the ranks to become a SEAL officer.
