Leadership Book Club: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink

Is extreme ownership the key to unlocking your leadership potential? In this episode of Love and Leadership, Kristen and Mike dive into "Extreme Ownership" by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, a book that's been transformative for Mike's leadership journey. They break down the core principles of this Navy SEAL-inspired approach to leadership, discussing how taking full responsibility for everything in your world can lead to better decision-making and team performance. Kristen also shares some of her initial skepticism and the challenges she faced with the book's military-heavy narrative. This episode offers practical insights on how to apply extreme ownership in your professional life, while also highlighting the importance of finding your own leadership style. Discover how this powerful concept can reshape your approach to leadership and drive success in your organization.

Highlights:

• The concept of extreme ownership and how it applies to leadership in business
• The importance of simplifying plans and communication in complex situations
• How to prioritize and execute tasks effectively when everything seems urgent
• The power of decentralized command and empowering team members
• The balance between taking ownership and maintaining mental health
• The significance of understanding the "why" behind decisions and directives
• The value of leading both up and down the chain of command
• The dichotomy of leadership and finding balance in seemingly contradictory requirements
• The goal of working yourself out of a job by creating more leaders
• The importance of finding your own leadership style and mentors

Links & Resources Mentioned:

• Book: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
• Book: Boundaries for Leaders by Henry Cloud
• Book: It's Your Ship by D. Michael Abrashoff
• Book: The Dichotomy of Leadership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
• Book: Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual by Jocko Willink
• Book: Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet
• Podcast: Jocko Podcast

Mike’s Recommended Episodes from the Jocko Podcast:

69 David Berke
129 The General Principles of War
163 Ja

Get your FREE 5 Day Leadership Reset Challenge guide here: https://llpod.link/challenge

Podcast Website: www.loveandleadershippod.com
Instagram: @loveleaderpod

Follow us on LinkedIn!
Kristen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenbsharkey/
Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-s-364970111/

Learn more about Kristen's leadership coaching and facilitation services: http://www.emboldify.com

Transcript

[00:00:00] Kristen: Welcome to Love and Leadership, the podcast that helps you lead with both your head and your heart, plus a bit of humor. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey, a leadership coach and facilitator.

[00:00:15] Mike: And I'm Mike Sharkey, a senior living and hospitality executive. We're a couple of leadership nerds who also happen to be a couple.

[00:00:23] Kristen: Join us each week as we share our unfiltered opinions, break down influential books, and interview inspiring guests.

[00:00:29] Mike: Whether you're a seasoned executive or a rising star, we're here to help you level up your leadership game and amplify your impact.

[00:00:38] Kristen:  Hello and welcome back to Love and Leadership. I'm Kristen

[00:00:50] Mike: I'm Mike.

[00:00:51] Kristen: And today we are back with another LBC Leadership Book Club episode with Mike's favorite leadership book of all time.

[00:01:01] Mike: Well, I don't know if it's my favorite leadership book of all time, but it is certainly, I call it one of my three holy trinity books that I think you can teach leadership on a pretty comprehensive level.

[00:01:13] Uh, the other is for Boundaries for Leaders for sure. And then the third one is It's Your Ship, which we will do in, in detail at some point. So, uh, this book is called Extreme Ownership, How U. S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win. It is by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.

[00:01:32] Kristen: The overall theme of this book is leadership is the most important factor in any organization or endeavor.

[00:01:40] Mike: By exercising extreme ownership, you can lead your team to success in any arena, whether in business or in life. So a little background on Jocko. If you don't know who he is, he's pretty much, in the zeitgeist now, but, Jocko is a former U. S. Navy SEAL. He is now an author, podcaster, and entrepreneur. He actually owns a clothing company where they make, jeans and boots in America, like, handmade from scratch.

[00:02:03] It's pretty cool.His military service includes combat actions in the Iraq war, where he commanded a SEAL task unit and was awarded the silver and bronze stars. He later took over command of the SEAL training detachment for the West Coast. He has a black belt in Brazilian jujitsu under the beast of, competitor Dean Lister.

[00:02:24] Jocko's written several books including The Dichotomy of Leadership and multiple children's books. He is, yeah, I have not read them, but I've listened to him talk about them.

[00:02:35] Kristen: Interesting. Okay.

[00:02:37] Mike: They're worth checking out.

[00:02:38] Kristen: He is a prolific podcaster at this point with over 450 episodes. Most of his stuff is three hours long. When we started this, I couldn't believe that Kristen only wanted to do 45 and 50 minutes. I was like, that's not enough. Uh, but it turns out that it is. And it really is. He does really in depth interviews with people who have written books, military leaders.

[00:03:00] Mike: His podcast is, I've listened to many of them. We will leave, a list of a couple of my favorites down below in the show notes. His coauthor Leif Babin is a decorated former Navy seal who, along with Jocko is the co founder of Echelon Front, where he serves as a leadership instructor, speaker, and executive coach.

[00:03:19] He was one of two platoon commanders in Jocko's unit and Beezus is on her way for her first visit.

[00:03:26] Kristen: You know, Mike even tried to get the cats high.

[00:03:30] Mike: We did get the, we gave the cats catnip in the hope that it would, entertain them, which it did, for 15 minutes, and now Beezus is making her appearance. she wants to podcast too.

[00:03:42] Kristen: She has a lot to say, I guess,

[00:03:45] Mike: Okay, so quick disclaimer. Jocko is a little bit of a leadership hero of mine for sure. but, and he will talk about this. He talks about this a lot.

[00:03:54] So though we can take many lessons from the experiences of these Navy SEALs and other military leaders throughout history, this does not in and of itself make any particular SEAL warrior or combat operator a virtuous person. Jocko himself warns against the fetishization, that is so prevalent in the mainstream media today.

[00:04:13] He discusses this often describing how there is the normal gamut of men in the teams, both exceptional and those that are lacking. 

[00:04:21] Kristen: I, of course I respect them and thank them for their service. but being extremely skilled at war shouldn't automatically put one on a pedestal. I do feel like I need to give this disclaimer because I will go into depth on many military books throughout the course of this. Navy SEALs, they have an almost 100 percent divorce rate, and they come back from deployment with extremely serious PTSD and long term social issues.

[00:04:45] The divorce rate by the way is kind of funny because I just put into Amazon to see how many results I would get for Navy SEAL romance books is an extremely popular genre within romance novels, but the reality. Not so great.

[00:05:00] Mike: Yeah, that's, II was amused to learn that. it makes sense. there's this idealization of what the, perfect man is, and of course he's a warrior and a provider and a protector.All of that being said, I obviously admire Jocko very much.

[00:05:15] I've adopted his leadership teachings to great effect. He even responded to one of my tweets asking about a jujitsu topic, which I thought was pretty cool. Um, Uh, so with that, disclaimer, I do want to say this can be an overarching theme of our podcast. You can learn from anyone, but you have to follow your own internal compass.

[00:05:36] Confucius said, wherever I see three men walking together, one of them is my teacher. So he would, even being enlightened, he would learn from everybody. And

[00:05:46] Kristen: For some context with this, so we decided for what we agreed on doing Boundaries for Leaders with our first book, and we decided with the next two initial books in our podcast, we would each choose one that we think is part of the core that we come back to. So for me, it's one that I go to with my top recommended book in coaching.

[00:06:06] Mike: And for Mike, it was extreme ownership. And I have not read this book until now, You mean this morning?

[00:06:14] Kristen: I started yesterday.

[00:06:16] Mike: Okay.

[00:06:17] Kristen: I'm a very fast reader, for the record. But I did run into some challenges with this book. I'll talk about them as we go. I generally just have very little interest in military strategy, history outside of core important to know history. And I just always was like, I don't think this is my kind of book.

[00:06:36] But I do think there's some good, there's some really good stuff in here. I have some criticisms as well. And some of it's also just I don't feel like I'm necessarily the true target audience of this. But, but there's some really good stuff in here and we will talk about that. But I do think that disclaimer up front is important.

[00:06:56] Mike: The reason I like this book is I find it to be a very fundamental instruction manual that you can teach, these, skills, these techniques to young leaders, to anyone, and it's very easy to see if they're doing it and hold them accountable and hold yourself accountable.

[00:07:12] It starts with holding yourself accountable.So the overall premise, the consistent attribute of any highly successful leader is that they take ownership, not just for the things for which they are directly responsible, but for everything that impacts their mission. They don't cast blame. They don't make excuses.

[00:07:30] They leverage assets, relationships, and resources to get the job done.They sublimate their own egos for the good of the mission.

[00:07:39] And I have put this to effect in my own life, not just in business, but, for myself. When you stop making excuses and blaming others, you are compelled to take action to solve your problems.

[00:07:50] And also with that, solutions will appear when you don't, when you don't try and, look outside of yourself for a solution. You will start to at least come up with ideas and you will just, you will start the process of figuring stuff out. 

[00:08:07] So in each of these chapters, Jocko and Leif detail a combat lesson learned, and then give a breakdown of an application of this lesson in the business world. They've been consulting for companies for a while now.

[00:08:19] And,they very smoothly take these, soldier lessons to the business world. And I think it works very well. Chapter one, Extreme Ownership. I'm not going to go into the background in each of these chapters. I think it's worth a read. but Jocko has an experience where, in combat, they, they have a, what they call a blue on blue, so it's friendly fire, which is something that actually happens far more often than, the public is led to believe.

[00:08:47] Stonewall Jackson, one of the most famous generals of the Civil War, was killed by friendly fire. Wrong place, wrong time. And things go bad very quickly. So you know, any military operation, it's a complex endeavor. There's a lot of, planning.

[00:09:01] There's a lot of junior leaders, but it goes bad and none of his, none of his team or, were killed, but it was a very serious situation.

[00:09:09] And, as soon as this happens, their higher headquarters tells them to shut down, stop. All operations, the, investigating officer, command master chief, and the, the in charge Seal for the theater are en route to investigate, and they do a whole inquiry, and Jocko goes around the room, and he starts asking people, like, who's to blame for this. And to their credit, all of his seals, pipe up and say, it was my fault, I didn't do this, or I didn't do this, and I forgot to talk to him, and he does this for a while, and then he says, no, I'm in charge.

[00:09:42] It's absolutely my fault. And he doesn't blame anybody else. He takes ownership of that. And they're all surprised because,I think a lot of people are used to leaders who like pass the buck down the chain of command and Oh, this guy's not cutting it. Let's, and when you have, somebody in charge with position that has a lot to lose, who stands up and says, I'm to blame.

[00:10:05] I take full responsibility. He could have been fired. It could have ruined his career. 

[00:10:09] This action by taking, extreme ownership, he actually. gets more trust from his,his leadership. They're like, okay, we can trust this guy. He's, he's, he's, you know, and the minute he does this, he starts to put practices into place so that this doesn't ever happen again.

[00:10:28] So I say, taking full ownership actually inspires and informs one to create systems and solutions that will never allow a mistake to happen again. So the moment where you have to like stand up and say, I'm at fault. that's, can be emotionally challenging. But the minute you do that, you're gonna start to like, move forward on yourself and figure out like, what can I do to make sure this doesn't happen again?

[00:10:52] Kristen: I, I do think in Western culture we shift blame a lot. Being wrong or making mistakes is bad. We've talked about that a lot already. This is an internal value compass. It says, I would rather have a clear conscience and learn and progress on my own path, then take the safe route.

[00:11:09] Mike: I can tell you as a recovering perfectionist, this lesson has been very difficult for me,but if you can lower your ego, if you can lower your ego, you will actually, surprise people with this, very sincere tactic.,The leader bears full responsibility also, for explaining the mission to or explaining the job to people.

[00:11:31] If you expect your, people down the chain of command to execute things properly, you have to explain to them the why it's not enough just to give orders. He'll talk about in this book a lot, the image of the military, it's just people giving orders and their subordinates just carry that out.

[00:11:48] That is not accurate at all. If you can't get buy in from your troops, they are, yeah, they have to do what you say, but they don't have to do it like fully with their sincerity and their hearts and their full effort. You need people to believe in what you're in the vision you're casting and understand your rationale.

[00:12:08] Kristen: Yeah, I think this chapter, this is like really the premise of the book. Yes. Summarized and talking about what extreme ownership is. I do think this is really important. We see this all the time this inner desire to always be right, which can come from a lot of things.

[00:12:28] Like there's a lot of reasons why you could have a fear of failure, going back to perfectionism and imposter syndrome and all sorts of other factors. But this whole idea ofnot being the person who tries to shift blame and just taking full ownership is really important. It's kind of like what we've talked about when I talk a lot of my work, like normalizing failure and making failure be seen as accepted so people are actually going to speak up and be honest about their mistakes is so important. And this does that because your leader is showing as an example, speaking up and taking accountability for what happens for their team.

[00:13:12] I think 

[00:13:13] Mike: that's awesome. You can't expect people to take ownership if you don't.

[00:13:17] Kristen: Yep,

[00:13:17] Mike: And this next part, I use to great effect when I'm, guiding young leaders. When you go from being a high performer to a leader, It's a drastic shift because you can micromanage yourself into high performance, but you generally can't micromanage an entire team and control other people.

[00:13:35] So if somebody on your team is not getting it or not performing, you don't blame them. You say, I haven't done a good enough job teaching them or I haven't done a good enough job explaining the why to them. Or I haven't figured out how this person learns or I haven't been able to reach them You know and you do that for a long time until you reach the point where this person is not the right person. But you have to take ownership for teaching them.

[00:14:00] Yeah, for sure. In each of these chapters, there's basically a lesson that's applied to a military experience usually from the Iraq war and there's a quick kind of like a brief summary of what the principle is and then there's another story or case study from a business application of that lesson and in the business application story I really liked how he went through this whole process of explaining this to this VP who didn't want to take accountability for his plan.

[00:14:33] Kristen: Constantly failing and had all these excuses. In the end, it ended up with him having this really, no nonsense list of all the corrective actions that they were going to take to make it effective, but it started with what he was going to do differently first. And I think that's a good lesson for not even just taking accountability for mistakes, but also starting with yourself when you're talking about what making a change or actually executing a project effectively, starting with what you personally are going to be doing differently, is a really good example for your team. 

[00:15:09] Mike: that's exactly right. What I'm going to do different.

[00:15:12] Okay. Chapter two, no bad teams, only bad leaders. So in this, example, Leif, is, a trainer at BUDS, basic underwater demolition training. And during the, the week, the hell week, I think theso they're doing these boat carries. They have these big heavy Zodiac boats.

[00:15:31] And one team is winning everything, and another team is losing all the time. And, the winning team, the leader keeps the, he keeps his team, engaged, focused on, the next steps, working together, working in unison, and the leader of the losing team is blaming everything else. Oh, it's too hard.

[00:15:49] whatever. It's somebody else's fault. The terrain's not right. I don't know. And so the SEAL instructors, they switch the leaders and they put the leader of the successful team with the unsuccessful team and they, they reverse it. And lo and behold, the unsuccessful team becomes almost instantly successful. 

[00:16:07] So that leadership filtered down the, the chain and they already knew how to behave. And now, the leader of the losing team who's now on the, higher performing team sees very clearly that it was his leadership and not his men and not anything outside of himself.

[00:16:26] Kristen: So the moral of this is leaders must accept total responsibility, own problems that inhibit performance and develop solutions to those problems. Yeah, and there was definitely overlap in this concept with Boundaries for Leaders to like the, it's not what you preach. It's what you tolerate.

[00:16:45] Like the actions speak louder than words. I think that's already been a theme on our podcast. It came up with Boundaries for Leaders that came up with our interview with Gianna Driver. So always keeping an eye out for like, what are you tolerating and what message is that sending to everybody else. And if then that means if there's their substandard performance is happening and then nothing is changing as a result of it, there's no consequences, then that becomes a new standard. So I think that's important, especially for leaders who have a tendency towards people pleasing and have a hard time with setting these hard lines on what is and isn't acceptable. Like remembering this, you're going to get what you tolerate.

[00:17:33] Mike: I think leaders too, as you're talking about that, again, going from high performer to leader is a big transition.

[00:17:39] You may regulate well your own behavior. But that doesn't mean when you are finally in a leadership position, you're going to know how to regulate other people's. Yeah. And you might be like, Hey,I'm performing great. And you might be, but if your team's not, you're actually not. yeah.

[00:17:58] And I see you wrote the tortured genius. I think that's a fun example.

[00:18:02] Kristen: Yeah, I really like this concept of the tortured genius, which is, he defines as somebody who accepts zero responsibility for mistakes, makes excuses, and blames everyone else for their failings and those of their team. And their whole point of view is that the rest of the world just can't see or appreciate the genius in what they're doing.

[00:18:25] And oh my god, have I met this person before.

[00:18:29] Mike: Before.

[00:18:30] Kristen: I think we all probably have if you've been in the workplace for any significant period. And I, it's really important to hold yourself up to a mirror and really look at, because I think we all have some tendency towards this, right? it's easier to, give excuses for something than it is to take on full responsibility for it.

[00:18:58] I struggle with this for sure. So I liked this concept and it's try not to be a tortured genius. That's a good archetype to try to stay away from.

[00:19:09] Mike: For sure. Chapter 3, Believe.Jocko uses in this, chapter, an example. He gets some controversial directive from his, higher ups. they start requiring,seal operators to take Iraqi soldiers with them on all missions, despite these soldiers being drastically underqualified and under trained.

[00:19:29] When his team pushes back, Jocko leads them down the logical conclusion that underlines his senior leadership's intent. So first of all, he had to think this through. Why are they making me do this? Whatever you're doing, your COO or your VP or your, your commanding officer, they probably don't want you to fail, right?

[00:19:49] That's not their intention. So you have to step back and put yourself in their shoes. Why are they doing this? So he figures out. his senior leadership's intent, which is if they don't train and bolster up the Iraqi army, it's going to be the, U. S. 's responsibility to provide security for the country in perpetuity in perpetuity.

[00:20:07] So when he starts to explain this to his men, they start to, okay, that kind of makes sense. And in, in a lot of cases, as a leader, you've got to have to align your thoughts and vision to that of the overall mission. You might not agree with it a hundred percent. You might see the pitfalls.

[00:20:23] You might see,the roadblocks, but if you don't get on board, the people below you in the chain of command can feel that, If you speak badly of your leadership, that is not a good practice. It's okay to not always, agree 100%, but you have to, take the time to explain and answer the questions of junior leaders, so that they can understand the why and believe in the, overarching goals.

[00:20:49] As a leader, you must make sure you are humble and approachable enough for your junior team members to ask questions and even challenge you. I've had a lot of junior leaders challenged me. I had a front office manager after I was promoted to be the GM came to me after like six months and she's like you're a corporate shill now.

[00:21:10] I was like what you know. But I hadn't really learned to balance the demands of the business with still being, caring and kind to, to my team. And I thought it was really gutsy that she came and did that. I was like, okay, that's cool. First of all, I'm super impressed by you. The second of all, it's okay, I'm glad that I'm approachable enough that you could do that.

[00:21:34] Kristen: I think there's a lot of fear that causes us to not ask questions of senior leaders. And a lot of it goes back to the same, the fear of failure, the fear of looking stupid, like the fear of asking a quote unquote, stupid question.

[00:21:51] And that fear can be very powerful, but I liked the way he framed it as like your responsibility as a leader is to understand the why behind the decision. You don't necessarily have to agree with it, but you need to understand like the why behind it, and that's the most important part of it to communicate to your team.

[00:22:12] So you need to be willing to ask whatever clarifying questions you need to understand the why behind it. And I think that makes it a little bit easier because it's less around knowledge and more about understanding intent. 

[00:22:27] Mike: Yeah, I think that's smart. We get wrapped up in right and wrong a lot, but let's find out what's the intent and see if we can get on board with that. Something you, you mentioned there too, like explain, and we're going to get into this in a later chapter. It's called the lead up the chain of command.

[00:22:42] If you don't understand the why, you have to go to your senior leaders and find out. That's extreme ownership. That's ownership. Like I don't get this. Leading up takes, a different kind of diplomacy, but you have to be able to go to your boss and say, Hey, I want to make sure that I fully understand this.

[00:22:58] And I want to be on board and help the mission. Can you explain this to me a little bit? What's the reasoning? And if you, create a good relationship with your boss, you should be able to do that. He said, your goal should be to have the same relationship with every boss, whether or not they're good, bad, or atrocious.

[00:23:17] You want them to trust you. You want them to listen when you have something important to say, and you want them to give you the resources to accomplish the mission and making that happen is an art and a science.

[00:23:28] Okay, chapter four, check the ego. He gives an example of a special operations unit newly assigned to Ramadi.

[00:23:36] I guess in some of the teams they are, they think they're, pretty awesome.

[00:23:40] And they might be, but they still have to work with conventional forces and the bigger groups, and they don't want to do that. And they just, they refuse to take any advice, they refuse to share information with the larger group.

[00:23:52] So not only is their unwillingness to take advice and share information, dangerous, it gets them fired and the battlefield commander who's a regular army, I think a colonel, he won't work with them and he kicks them off the base.

[00:24:06] So admitting mistakes, taking ownership and developing a plan to overcome challenges are integral to any successful team. Ego can prevent a leader from conducting an honest, realistic assessment of his or her own performance and the performance of the team. We go back to boundaries for leaders, right?

[00:24:24] The most important skill any leader can foster is developing the observing ego. When you develop that, you will become more humble. You will take advice. you will be willing to admit your mistakes and you will, you'll progress, 

[00:24:39] Excellent advice about how to have a difficult conversation with team members. It always starts with, it's my fault for not explaining this, or it's my fault for not, showing you the big picture. Yeah. Take responsibility.

[00:24:52] Kristen: And I don't, I don't think that necessarily applies in every situation, but yeah, especially if you have a high performer who does something wrong, I think that's a really, especially a good situation to do that.

[00:25:04] Like when you have that inherent trust, take responsibility. For not making it clear first and I think there's a lot there's a theme of kind of assuming good intent. Which he doesn't say that's outright, but I think there's that theme in a lot of places where it's like Give people a chance to show you who they are

[00:25:22] and I do want to take a pause here before we get into the quote unquote laws of combat, which is the second part of this. The first book was more about winning the war within. That's how it fits up, but basically your inner work. So I do want to say, I think it's extreme ownership as a concept, I think is really important to understand.

[00:25:42] I think it's also important to have some self awareness and really know where you're at with this and how it's going to affect you. I do think that there are some like more traditional leadership models in, in this book, which, one of my criticisms I guess is that There's very little emphasis on emotional intelligence, I think, outside of your own emotional regulation, which is definitely a theme in here.

[00:26:12] But, um, Which is, which is okay. It's not necessarily, this is one, one person's opinion and I think there's a lot of really good stuff to take away from this book regardless, but I do think it's also important to when you're taking ownership of things to make sure that you're not putting unfair blame on yourself in a way that could impact your mental health, that especially if you have tendencies towards anxiety, imposter syndrome, self esteem, etc.

[00:26:45] It's important to be able to talk about mistakes as not having to do with your own character. And I can say as somebody who has I definitely struggled with that. I'm definitely recovering perfectionist. I have a deep fear of failure that I, has gotten a lot better with a lot of time and work, but you, it's important to not let yourself just get into, well, this means I'm a bad leader and like these big overarching judgments, right?

[00:27:17] I think the benefit of this, and I talk about this a lot with improv too, is by being open about making mistakes, you're actually de stigmatizing it, you're making it more normal. And I think the more you do that, the less it is connected with your identity. But if that's something that you are vulnerable towards, just have that awareness going into doing this.

[00:27:41] Mike: I agree with a lot of that. When you're talking about not taking extreme ownership to the point where it harms your mental health later on, he, in future books and podcasts, he talks about the title was a little bit of a problem because people took too much ownership, and you have to be balanced about it and you have to see the big picture.

[00:28:01] But something I wrote down where you're talking about that hard on the problem and soft on the person also applies to you. Yeah. Yeah. And that I'm not good at that. And you're probably not good at that. And a lot of high performers are not good at that, and just cause you make a mistake or maybe a big mistake, doesn't mean you're a bad person or a terror, but you made a mistake.

[00:28:20] But I also wrote down something that I think can color the situation with this book a little bit. The level of consequence of what happens when you make a mistake is a little bit different when you're leading, people in combat. And when you're doing business, so business is serious, you're dealing with people's livelihoods their ability to feed their family many, you know their career many things are important, but it's not quite the same as being a heart surgeon or a seal task unit commander.

[00:28:49] So you have to look at the level of consequence. Later on, you know In line with the level of consequence of what he's doing, Jocko becomes the, commander of the training detachment, I think for the West Coast, maybe for the whole SEALs.

[00:29:03] I don't know, but he puts such,elaborate and aggressive training regimens in place that people were complaining, this isn't fair. You know, it's not like, and he's like, this is what it's like to be on the battlefield in Iraq. And I'm trying to get you ready for it. And if he, he didn't do that.

[00:29:18] And then he sent, soldiers off to war to die because they weren't prepared. that's his version of I got to take ownership of it. So I agree with all of that. Jocko is very archetypical, I mean,I've never met him. He is definitely, he could definitely comes off like that.

[00:29:34] I don't think he's like the one stop shop for all leadership, but the techniques and a lot of these,concepts are very fundamental to growing your leadership skill set.

[00:29:46] Kristen: And that was one thing I wrote down is like things that didn't resonate as much with me. It's, I think overall there's just a lot of very like black and white thinking in this book. And there's reasons for that. I mean, I think you need that in the military because the stakes are especially for SEALs, the stakes are so unbelievably high that there's a lot of Bush era, like good guys, bad guys, everybody is one or the other.

[00:30:09] There's not really as many talks of nuances, and complexity. And I think that's just the nature of the book and the military perspective. And I have not listened to his podcast, but I know from what you've said, I think that there's a lot more nuances discussed in that. But I think it's important for anybody reading it to take into mind, right?

[00:30:29] Like this is not all going to apply to every business situation, but it's really like the overarching principles to, to think about and apply them where it makes sense. For sure,

[00:30:42] Mike: Totally agree. there's a lot to leadership. No, that's what we said in the beginning. No one person, no one book is going, no one, anything is going to completely round out your leadership tool,

[00:30:53] Kristen: Yeah, and he does basically say that

[00:30:56] Mike: Oh, he

[00:30:56] Kristen: the app and he says in the afterword of the book specifically too.

[00:30:59] This is more just things to keep in mind.

[00:31:02] Mike: For sure. Okay. Moving on. part two, the laws of combat again, a little aggressive. we could, term that the laws of action. Even before I read this book, I used to use the art of war by Sun Tzu a lot. It has a lot of, applicable stuff and I would always tell people it shouldn't be called the art of war.

[00:31:20] It should be called the art of action. Okay, so Chapter five cover and move. I think you know every at least every boy listening to this. We'll have some you know, quick picture of, soldiers running between buildings, one shooting while the other one runs to cover and then that new guy shooting while the other guy runs.

[00:31:39] So that's cover and move. But essentially it's, it's teamwork. It's essentially teamwork. All elements within the greater team are crucial and must work together to accomplish the mission. Departments and groups within the team must break down silos, depend on each other and understand who depends on them.

[00:31:56] If you forsake this principle and operate independently or work against each other, the result will be,catastrophic in the military, certainly. And, in, in business, you won't win. And we see this a lot, like people have their own agendas, like they want to, do very well in their department and sometimes at the expense of the overall mission. 

[00:32:18] You know, we see this concept executed very well in high performing kitchens. The cooks are constantly communicating with each other on the timing of dishes. There's 30 seconds out, 20 seconds out, 10 minutes walking to the window. Everybody's talking all the time, and working together to produce a finished product under very high stress environments.

[00:32:39] You know, in French kitchens, they call, the team, the brigade. And,it has a, a more militaristic, hierarchy than maybe we see nowadays. But there's a reason for that, you know? Yeah.

[00:32:53] Kristen: In the opening story when he's talking about howthere was a much better alternative that utilized other resources that he just hadn't even considered because he was so, so, so in tunnel vision by thinking about how to leverage just his team's resources.

[00:33:07] That really just reminded me of why I think it's for every leader, it's so important to have a sounding board and ideally a coach to ask you the kind of open ended questions that will help raise those blind spots, right? Because we all have things like that where after somebody says it to you, it's like, why didn't you just do this?

[00:33:26] You're like, duh, that was so obvious. In retrospect, it is so stunningly obvious, but we all like get tunnel vision with some things. So I think that's another thing that it made me think of that wasn't necessarily said in the book. But it's so important to have your sounding board, to have a coach, to have those people that you can go to as a leader and to help avoid that.

[00:33:53] Mike: Yeah, because those people are detached from the situation, I don't he I don't know he talks about it I'm sure he talks about on this book at some point the ability to step back to detach to emotionally disinvest from whatever's going on and Take a take an eagle's eye view of the situation. Usually when you do that, you'll come up with at least a couple of things that you didn't think were possible.

[00:34:15] Oh yeah, I didn't see that. Oh, I see that guy's he's too close to the action or he's too invested in this or he's sunk cost fallacy down a rabbit hole. So I think that's awesome. 

[00:34:26] Chapter six, simple. And I wrote down, I thought it was. Funny, they didn't even put the title.

[00:34:34] They didn't even write the title. It's Keep It Simple because why use five words when one will do? Simple. Okay. in this, in this chapter, they have a new commander. He's assigned to their unit and he's very ambitious. And for his first patrol, he works out this like very elaborate. patrol that will take him through three different battle spaces, three different like conventional force units.

[00:34:56] And he's like, well, this is fine. And the guys that have been in there a while are just like, this is going to get no way. And he resists at first. He's I, thought this through and Jocko prevails upon me. He's like, listen, for the first one, can we just keep it a little? No. No. And so he scales it back and sure enough, Jocko was right, like the minute they're outside the wire, they're encountering,enemy forces and he comes back and he's like, Oh my God, thank you for, thank you for making me scale it back.

[00:35:28] I just, I see that in operational, efficiencies across everything I've ever done, be it music, be it the kitchen, be it how I set up my desk at the hotel, like the simpler it is, the more repeatable it is, the better result you're going to have. and also if you have to involve other people in your plan, If they're too complicated, people aren't going to understand them.

[00:35:51] And when things go wrong or, and they have an inevitably go wrong, complexity compounds issues that can spiral out of control into total disaster.

[00:36:00] If your team doesn't get it, you haven't kept things simple enough. All right.And this is one of his quotes that I think is fun. and he's, I think I hear him say this all the time, right?

[00:36:11] The enemy gets a vote. So what does that mean? It means you can plan however you want, but like, the customers are going to get a say in how your shift goes. Do they all come in at once? Do they come in staggered? Do they come in angry? Do they, regardless of how you think an operation is going to unfold, something will absolutely not go according to plan.

[00:36:31] And this is where like simplicity is the key. If you've already like coached people on the main goal, people can adjust, they can make quick changes.

[00:36:41] Kristen: Yeah, I think that, you know, the, the enemy gets a vote does not really resonate with me personally, because I think there's not that many black and white enemies, I think, in the actual business world, right?

[00:36:52] People are complex, but I think it's external factors, right?

[00:36:55] Mike: It's external

[00:36:56] Kristen: Like something outside of your control is going to go wrong.

[00:36:59] Mike: Well, you say that, but like,you say you're bringing a new product to market and you think you're the only one. And then all of a sudden Apple launches the same product is that's an external factor.

[00:37:10] It's like the market gets, yeah, the market gets a vote. Your team gets a vote. Like everyone outside of you is gonna put a little something in that recipe.

[00:37:19] Kristen: If you're doing a SWOT analysis, it's what is the half of it that is the external, right? You have strengths, weaknesses, and then you have opportunities and threats.

[00:37:27] So what are the potential threats? That's what we're really talking about here. So if like me, you're like the enemy gets a vote, there's other ways to think of it.

[00:37:36] Mike: These are, metaphorical and allegorical. Yes.

[00:37:39] Kristen: Yes.

[00:37:40] Mike: I don't go into my, director's meetings talking about the enemy, they are conceptual.

[00:37:45] Kristen: yeah.

[00:37:45] Mike: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:37:47] Kristen: Yeah, and I think the other thing, the thing in this chapter that was so incredibly relatable to me was the part where he's talking about working with a client who just had an insanely complicated incentive plan and nobody got it. Nobody understood why it was implemented. It was just so complex that the people who are actually, the actual employees who it applied to, or their managers who needed to explain it to their team, were just like, we don't get it.

[00:38:14] What does this even mean? And, um, Oh my god, I have had, I have had sales incentive plans that were like, 40 page docusigns that you had to sign every quarter, like no joke, like 40 pages, and are so complex. And it was not very effective because it was really hard to relate it back to, like, what are the actual things that I'm doing.

[00:38:38] So what I like he says is like the connection between action and consequence needs to be clear. And if that is not clear, you are not going to properly incentivize people. So I like that.

[00:38:50] Mike: So as you were, that's awesome. So as you were talking about that, I wrote down Steve jobs and I can't remember where I heard this.

[00:38:57] It's probably in, I'd have been in Boundaries for Leaders, but at some point, I don't know a lot about Steve Jobs. I don't pray at the altar of Steve Jobs, Apple, but there's a, at some point the company was trying to figure out what to do and you know, they're around the board room and everybody's coming up with ideas and so many ideas and Steve comes up and he's like, okay, crosses out everything, erases the board.

[00:39:20] He draws a four square grid and he writes personal and like business and then on the other side, he writes mobile. And he's like, we need four products. That's all we need. And that kind of visionary focus,is what Apple's known for. Cut through the chatter and the noise and keep it simple.

[00:39:41] Kristen: Like the iPod changed our lives. It changed society. It changed culture. Yeah. Right.That's a good segue into the next

[00:39:48] Mike: chapter. Yes, it is. Prioritize and execute. Execute. Execute. I mean, it's true. Like, Oh gosh, even, you know, in all of my service jobs, it's so easy to get emotionally overwhelmed very quickly.

[00:40:00] He says, even the most competent of leaders can be overwhelmed if they try and tackle multiple problems or a number of tasks simultaneously, the team will fail at each of those tasks if you cannot prioritize and execute. So he has a little, his little mantra is relax, look around, make a call.

[00:40:20] I gotta be honest. I've used that so many times in the hotel, people, Oh my God, this is on fire. That's on fire. The elevator is broken. we got some guy locked himself in the bathroom. He's, the customers are screaming. Okay. Okay. I'm off. Okay. okay. Okay. Take take a breath. Step back. Prioritize. What's the most important thing. And if I don't deal, like if I don't deal with that thing, it's going to have the most serious consequences. Fix that. Okay. And that is, I don't know, maybe one of the most important things of actually being in charge, especially of a bigger operation. 

[00:40:57] When everything's a priority, nothing is a priority. Okay. And something I found out recently is the word priority is actually singular. We've changed it to priorities. But if you look at the word, it means it, break it down prior. So what am I doing prior to everything else I'm doing?

[00:41:15] It's one thing. And then sometime in the fifties or the sixties, it became priorities. And now we're running around insane trying to, we're on our phones all the time. We're answering email all the time because everything's apart. So in my stand up meetings, I ask the team to what is your priority today, tell me the one thing that if you accomplish this, it's going to leverage success for the overall mission. One thing.

[00:41:43] Kristen: Yeah, and I'm so on board with this. I think it applies both on a bigger perspective. So knowing like your why so no, like what is the main thing you are trying to accomplish on like a higher level and Looking at your day, what is the one thing that's going to help you with that overall mission, or what is the thing that is most important to get done that day?

[00:42:05] I know for me, it's helped a lot just for me to take this approach where I have a very significant, complicated, Asana to do list, but now I've gotten to the practice of every morning I sit down and I'm like, what is the one most important thing? That I need to get done today. And then what are the nice to get dones?

[00:42:24] And it does really help with focus.

[00:42:27] Mike: Eisenhower matrix.

[00:42:28] Kristen: Yeah. Yeah, it does. It also feeds into the Eisenhower matrix, which we like.

[00:42:32] Mike: Relax, look around, make a call, it will help you. right. Next chapter 8, Decentralized Command.Why don't you take the lead on this one. Okay.

[00:42:47] Because I'm decentralizing command.

[00:42:48] Kristen: Oh my God.

[00:42:51] Mike: god. Okay, I'll start, right? I'll get her going. Come on! I find this to be one of the most important and least utilized concepts in business. We might conventionally call it empowerment, but the concept is broader and it requires everyone's alignment, training, learning, understanding, buy in, and you gotta get the right people in the right positions.

[00:43:14] Okay? Jocko says when he was on the battlefield, he expected his subordinate leaders to do just that, lead. People assume, that he was yelling and screaming in, and he says in combat he didn't say a word.They already knew what their mission was. They knew the commander's intent.

[00:43:32] They knew the right and left parameters of what they could do, what they were responsible for, and not just responsible for, required to do these things.It's a really powerful concept. You got to put faith and trust in your junior leaders. You got to give them the coaching, and that takes time. That takes months and years, and in business, we very much like to centralize command. It does. It requires a lot of, deprogramming. We're taught in grade school to just get in line, follow orders, complete the assignment, and, you know, 

[00:44:05] No one senior leader can be expected to manage dozens of individuals. Much less hundreds, really six to 10 is the max and 10 is a lot.

[00:44:14] Kristen: Yeah, I want to, I want to just broadcast this to so many companies because, oh my god.

[00:44:22] Mike: I saw NVIDIA. Is that how you say it?

[00:44:25] Kristen: I think so.

[00:44:26] Mike: The CEO has a different take on it. I'd like to explore that at some point. They're very successful, but generally you need to, lead four to six people who are then leading four to six people.

[00:44:36] And those are leading four to six people. And there are little units of, you don't have to be the bossy boss to be the, to be a leader. the line cook in the morning that's just there with the dishwasher and the waiter, he can drive performance, he knows what his responsibilities are and he knows what he can do and he knows what needs to get done.

[00:44:56] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:44:57] Kristen: Yeah. And I think that it, I think it's a good number. I've definitely found that to be true. I think where a lot of companies also make the mistake is somebody manages six people, but then they also have a full load of responsibilities that an individual contributor would have.

[00:45:12] And it all falls apart. Yeah.

[00:45:17] Mike: So the most important part of this is, what he calls the commander's intent. and that's the most important thing that your entire organization understands. What is your intention? What is your main goal? Be honest. Is it money? Is it profit? And then explain how we're going to get there and how everybody plays a role in that and how it benefits them.

[00:45:39] Businesses exist for profit. I don't think we should, shy away from saying that. We can still be great people with, good hearts and accomplishing great things. Worthwhile things and still make a profit. There's, we've got to read Denise Duffield Thomas's stuff for that. But, so one, one thing in here that I wrote about the commander's intent is the Ritz Carlton is famous for empowering every team member to spend up to a thousand dollars to make a guest happy.

[00:46:06] There's a story of a line level team member who booked a round trip flight to Hawaii to return a guest's laptop for them that they needed for an important meeting. They didn't even stay in Hawaii, they just got right back on the plane and came back. They very clearly,teach and understand the commander's intent for the Ritz is above expectation service and happy customers who will return to the Ritz throughout their lifetime and be incredibly loyal.That's their raison d'etre and they teach that, preach that and empower that and you get pretty cool results.

[00:46:39] Kristen: I love that example i think it's a really good example of how you can make it clear to people what the boundaries are right so they know exactly what they can and can't do but empower them within that to, to pursue things with creativity too.

[00:46:55] Like they get to figure out the how.

[00:46:57] Mike: Yeah, that's awesome.

[00:46:59] You get a team that's like working in harmonics.

[00:47:03] Kristen: Yeah, I like that this chapter too, he also just addresses the leaders who have a really hard time letting go of the reins. And I see this so much in my, in my coaching practice and also just in my corporate experience.

[00:47:19] Like I worked at Yahoo for a long time, including most of the Marissa Mayer years. And like, she was infamous for needing to personally approve every single hire at Yahoo when it was like a 10, 000 plus person company. And I can say this as somebody who was a hiring manager, it took a really long time to get offers approved just for that specific reason.

[00:47:44] And I think it's just a good example of asking the question, why? And he, I think he gets more into this actually in the appendix. I briefly skimmed some of his podcast answers to questions and somebody asked, is there a good time to micromanage? He's like, yes. But know why. Like, why are you micromanaging?

[00:48:03] Is there actually a specific reason? Like, there's an underperformer and something needs to get addressed. Ask yourself why, because I think for a lot of times it's just like, oh, well, I like to get into the details. Or, I like to. So, like, know why, right? Sometimes I think as a leader you do need to roll up your sleeves.

[00:48:19] I know with technical leaders, a lot of times they do every once in a while, they want to code and get in there and show that, still keep up those technical chops, right? But that. That should not be the bulk of your work, and you should always understand what the why behind getting into it is.

[00:48:36] Mike: Yeah.

[00:48:36] So for, I totally agree. That's, very insightful. But for like decentralized command, it doesn't just mean a laissez faire approach. If you do have an underperformer, you have to get in there and micromanage them until they, it's like teaching a child to tie shoes, right? First you tie them for them and then you do a hand over hand method and that's the micromanagement.

[00:48:56] And then a little by little you take a, take away your hands. that's the goal. And if you get to the point with someone where you just can never take away your hands. That person is not the right person.

[00:49:08] Kristen: Yeah. Yeah. He does. He does talk about the other extreme of battlefield aloofness. Yeah. He calls it.

[00:49:14] But that's when you're so disconnected that you're ineffective.

[00:49:18] Mike: His second book is The Dichotomy of Leadership, so It's an exploration of balance, right? You have to be close to your team, but not too close, right? You have to have extreme ownership, but not so much that you don't decentralize command. So these are, this is the art of it. Okay. part three, sustaining victory.

[00:49:37] I will say that this is the least impactful part for me. Chapter nine is plan. I it's worthwhile, come up with SOPs for everything. He talks about,discipline equals freedom.

[00:49:48] And I agree with that. I use the example of the kitchen before where everybody's talking all the time. There's ways to say it, walking to the window behind you coming around a corner and the more that everybody does these SOPs, this discipline, the more, the smoother the operation will go. 

[00:50:06] I'm not going to go into how to plan, except to say that the most important part is to let everybody know your commander's intent.

[00:50:14] Kristen: Yeah, I think that's, that suffices.

[00:50:17] Mike: The The part of this part that I found very impactful is leading up and down the chain of command, super important, obviously leading down the chain of command.

[00:50:25] Not only do you have to give your subordinates, subordinate leaders, technical skills, you also have to explain the why and get them to believe in the mission. The leading up the chain of command was a bit revolutionary for me in that,you have to take ownership of your responsibilities, your mission.

[00:50:44] And that means being able to get resources, approvals,team member, anything you need from your higher ups. And if they're not giving you what you need, you have to take responsibility. You haven't explained it well enough to them. You haven't asked the right questions of them. You don't know the full it's up to you to go find that out.

[00:51:04] And that is an art.

[00:51:06] Kristen: Yeah. This kind of made me think of, I have a whole process that I walk coaching clients through for starting a new role, which also a lot of it applies like when you get a new boss, there's a reorg.

[00:51:17] And a big part of that is understanding your manager. And the biggest thing within that is knowing what are their goals, like what is important to them, what motivates them, like what is their point of view. And the more you understand that, the more effectively you can manage up.

[00:51:38] That's like really it's own topic in a lot of ways, but I liked the, he had these three kind of points for this, the take responsibility for leading everyone in your world, subordinates and superiors alike. If someone isn't doing what you need or want them to do, look in the mirror first and determine what you can do to better enable this instead of putting all the blame on them.

[00:52:01] Then think about, okay, what can I do? To give them, what kind of information can I give them? What support can I give them? What questions can I ask them to support that? And then I think another just great thing to keep in mind for everyone is don't ask your leader what you should do. Tell them what you're going to do and give them an opportunity to weigh in maybe.

[00:52:22] But having that direction going into your one on ones, like already having an idea of what you're going to do is way better than going like, so what should I do?

[00:52:33] Mike: There's a, there's another military book I like. It's called Turn the Ship Around, and it's a submarine commander, and he teaches the team to use the words. I intend to. So the, I don't know who's responsible for submerging the boat, but whoever that was, he wouldn't ask the commander, can I submerge the boat?

[00:52:50] He would say, captain, I intend to submerge the boat. And the captain would say, very well, you know,that's ownership.

[00:52:58] Kristen: Yep.

[00:52:58] Mike: Chapter 11, decisiveness amid uncertainty. Jocko works with a company that's having two leaders of rival, like computer teams or something, and they're fighting and they're threatening to quit and all this, and they keep saying, if you don't fire the other guy, I'm going to quit.

[00:53:16] So instead Jocko coaches the VP to fire them both and look for a leader, look for leaders in the team. She was paralyzed with what to do. I think that happens a lot. This chapter, I think is a bit reductive. But,it can be hard to pull triggers as a business leader.

[00:53:34] You're afraid what's going to happen when you lose somebody that feels key to your organization or, they've been there for a long time. Maybe at one point they were the right person and now they're not the right person and you're just riding it out cause it feels safer. Sometimes you just have to,make a big decision.

[00:53:52] Fortune favors the bold.

[00:53:54] Kristen: Yeah. It's be honest with yourself. Know the picture is always going to be incomplete. You can always give an excuse to wait until you have more data. You can always, or wait until this one thing happens until you have a better understanding of this.

[00:54:06] But yeah, knowing that point where you just need to make a decision.

[00:54:13] Mike: Okay. 

[00:54:13] I'm kind of going on to the next one. Discipline equals freedom. I've seen Jocko cry a a lot, like more than you would expect a Navy SEAL to cry. Um,so the next part is discipline equals freedom, the dichotomy of leadership.

[00:54:30] And he says every leader wants to walk a fine line. Just as discipline and freedom are opposing forces that must be balanced, leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory, requirements. 

[00:54:45] Leaders must close to their team, but not so close. And the reason that I thought of that is, he writes, you must show emotion, but not be governed by it. I've seen him tear up, talking about the people he lost in battle. battle

[00:54:59] At a, an event, I think in New York, somebody asked him, who are the three people you'd most like to have dinner with?I don't know, Jesus, Gandhi, but that's not who he named. He named the three Seals that died under his command. So,You gotta be strategic, but not heartless. You must be attentive to details, but not obsessed by them.

[00:55:19] Confident, but not foolhardy. That is a whole book and he wrote one on it. so that's, that's kind of it, you know, discipline equals freedom, right? You get up early to work out, you're free from, health problems. It's, it's self explanatory, I think, but it's hard to do. So to sum up, all of this in support of our podcast raison d'etre. I'm sure I'm not saying that right. Uh, Jocko, proposes that while some people are born with leadership qualities, leadership is most definitely a skill that can be taught and learned. And the most important quality any leader can have is humility. And yeah, that's the book.

[00:55:59] Kristen: Yeah, and I liked, my favorite quote from the conclusion of the book was, The goal of all leaders should be to work themselves out of a job. And that really goes into our point of view that we talked a lot about on the first episode, where the goal of a leader should be to make more leaders.

[00:56:15] So, I like that.

[00:56:17] Mike: Awesome. So what least resonated?

[00:56:21] Yeah, we always ask these two questions at the end of our book book club episode. So what least resonated with us and what the most life changing takeaway was. was. So least resonating for me was really the third part, sustaining victory and the decisiveness chapter. I get it. I feel it's a little reductive though.

[00:56:39] Decision making is a whole science and I feel like that was just um,

[00:56:46] a surface level view. It's, that's a whole university class. You could have a PhD in decision making, so there's a lot there

[00:56:52] Kristen: lot there to explore. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[00:56:55] Mike: no, I agree. Kristen, what was your least impactful?

[00:57:00] Kristen: So, I mean, I had a few things on here. I've talked about, I think, a couple of the my caveats of things to keep in mind while reading it. I would say just in general with the book a few things it is very heavy on the narrative and the I think that's good for some people, just for me personally, I tend to prefer books that have, go more into like frameworks and, have like just more practical tips in them.

[00:57:27] So, um, just know that going in if you like very narrative heavy books. You will probably enjoy this. For me, I, those were the parts I struggled with because they're also pretty heavy on the military jargon. And a lot of the words he does define, but it was still, it's a lot of military jargon.

[00:57:45] So I struggled with some of the narrative parts of it personally. And it was like, okay, what's the point of this? I do think like it would really benefit, for just some some key takeaways and bullet points and action items, think like more like practical tips. I really liked like the checklists that he included a couple of.

[00:58:01] Mike: So that was, I found myself wanting for a little more, but I also am not really familiar with his larger body of work. Like Leadership, Strategy, and Tactics, a field manual.

[00:58:11] Kristen: Sure. okay.

[00:58:14] Mike: Which, interestingly, I did not love.

[00:58:17] Kristen: I

[00:58:17] Mike: prefer like a more conceptual approach, and then for me the how to becomes apparent. If you have the,

[00:58:24] Kristen: I just like some summaries, I, it's also my reading style. I tend to skim through the story parts and reread the like summary parts.

[00:58:33] So this is all like personal preference, right?

[00:58:36] Mike: Okay. my most life changing takeaway, the ownership part. Extreme ownership. You own everything. Don't look outside yourself, even if you have a a job, say you're like the manager of a restaurant, if you own that job, like it's your restaurant, you will behave differently than if you're just clocking in and clocking out.

[00:58:59] But I feel like that pertains to life too, you may have, or I definitely have issues that I don't necessarily feel like were my fault.

[00:59:09] But they're my problems and I'm experiencing them. So if I want to fix them, I have to take responsibility and even the word, I love to break down words.

[00:59:19] Responsibility is made up of response and ability. So it's the ability to respond. So it's not about blame. It's about how do we move forward. So yeah.

[00:59:31] Kristen: And mine was, I liked this persistent questioning throughout the book of understanding the why. So this started out with knowing like the why between the overall why of the mission or that the why what is your company's vision and mission statement, right?

[00:59:50] But then also taking that down to like the why behind actions. So if you're unhappy with something that somebody in another team is doing or something that your like senior leader passed down as a directive, like asking for the why behind it, understanding that. And I think there's some inherent assumed good intent in there as well, where he would always ask, Do you think this person wants you to fail? What, what do you think their intent is? And that really humanizes people when you ask that question instead of just assuming.

[01:00:21] Mike: Awesome. I love this book. I feel like it's a step by step manual of a lot of the fundamental principles of leadership. It's easily understandable by everyone. It's very teachable. It's very repeatable. So that is our LBC of Extreme Ownership.

[01:00:37] And, Kristen, do you have anything else to add?

[01:00:40] Kristen: No, I think that, yeah, I think that kind of summarizes my take. like I've said, I think there's some really good stuff in here. Will it be a book that I personally re read over and over again? Probably not, but I like a lot of the points in it. And I think it is, it does have a lot of value. I

[01:00:59] Mike: I will say, I think this just goes to show leaders are not carbon copies.

[01:01:04] Everyone has a different approach, things they do well, things they, you need to work on and, you've got to find your own style. You've got to find your own path. You've got to find, leadership mentors that resonate with you. And there's no one, there's no one right way or one person you have to, get to the heart of the matter.

[01:01:25] Kristen: Absolutely, yeah. Find what works for you.

[01:01:27] 

[01:01:27] Mike: Well, that's, that's our LBC and thank you very much for joining us.

[01:01:33] Kristen: Thank you, everybody. The Love and Leadership Podcast is produced and co-hosted by me, Kristen Brun Sharkey and co-hosted by Mike Sharkey. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We can't stress enough just how much these reviews help. You can follow us on LinkedIn under Kristen Brun Sharkey and Michael Sharkey, and on Instagram as loveleaderpod.

[01:01:58] You can also find more information on our website, loveandleadershippod.com. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you again next week.