EntreLeadership - #154: Jocko Willink—Lead and Win the Navy SEAL Way

Episode Date: July 4, 2016

We’re going extreme this week with a special conversation with ultimate leader Jocko Willink. The retired Navy SEAL, recipient of the Silver and Bronze Stars, and best-selling author shares the mind-set and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult missions in combat. Also on this episode, Armando Lopez, Dave’s Executive Director of HR, stops by to discuss four onboarding mistakes to avoid. And we’re honoring legendary Tennessee Lady Vols Coach Pat Summit by re-airing her talk with host Ken Coleman on how to build a championship team. entreleadership.com/podcast Jocko Podcast A 90-day Plan to Jumpstart New-employee Performance Another great episode sponsored by our friends at Infusionsoft   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When I fail on a mission, we're going to take that, we're going to analyze it, we're going to look at the situation, we're going to say good. Now we have mistakes that we won't make again. I'm going to say good and I'm going to learn from it. And then I'm going to get better and it's not going to happen again. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now here is your host, Ken Coleman. We are broadcasting from the Music City, and this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, four leaders.

Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Wow, this episode is jam-packed. We should charge you double for this episode because it is so full of goodness. Just kidding, it's absolutely free, but you know what I mean. It's going to be fun. Here's the lineup. Our feature interviews with Jocka Willing, the Navy SEAL and author of the book Extreme Ownership, how U.S. Navy SEALs lead and win.

Love that conversation. You are going to absolutely love it as well. And then a bonus interview today. Go into the Ken Coleman archives, pulling out an interview with Coach Pat Summitt. As we speak to you today, we're just days removed from her untimely death. Really amazing, a legend to die at the age of 64

from early onset, Alzheimer's form of dementia. And it's unbelievable. You folks know I'm a sports fan, but I'm even a bigger fan. fan of leaders and winners. And this six-minute excerpt is just a bonus for you. We'll leave it at the very end of the podcast. Even if you're not a sports fan, you'll get something great out of this as she talks about, what does it take to be a championship team? What does the lesson, if she could just hear one lesson with every young person in the world, what would it be? So this is great

fun, and Eric pulled that from an interview that I did, and it'll really encourage you, as we remember the great Pat Summit. Listen, she was a leader's leader. Then we also had a have Ken's mailbag. We bring that back. We're getting so many emails from you, folks. We'll share a great email there. And we give you another one of our amazing tools. This time is the 90-day plan to jump-start your new employee performance. So we're jam-packed, and we thought, well, we're going to get right to this. And what a great way to really unpack this 90-day plan to jump-start new employee performance by bringing in our expert in-house. He is Armando Lopez, Executive Director of Human Resources here at Ramsey Solutions. And he gives us some great tips here. And these are

super, super important, and it'll really help you begin to dive into this 90-day plan to jumpstart new employee performance. So here's my conversation with Armando Lopez. All right, Armando, great to have you with us in the studio here, and I want to get right to one of the great resources in this tool, and that is four onboarding mistakes to avoid. And you have been an HR professor, how long? Oh, for 20 years. 20 years. So I mean, you really understand what to do and what not to do. There is really a process that works. Absolutely. All right. So, So four onboarding mistakes to avoid. I want you folks to follow along here and take some notes, and Armando is going to really teach us here.

Let's go with number one. Wait until day one to start onboarding. Now, I guess that simply means after you've hired, it doesn't mean you're going to reach out to them and go, hey, do these four or five things. No, all of it gets started day one. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, so most of us remember accepting an offer, right? And so then we don't hear anything from that company, and nothing else happens until we show up day one. And then day one is boring because the first few hours are spent filling out paperwork, right? Ken?

Remember all those papers you had to sign? So really what we try to do is we try to not wait until day one to begin forming a relationship with that individual. And we send the paperwork out. Most companies are using electronic paperwork. Send it out early. Let them complete it ahead of time. So day one is not spent sitting in a chair filling out paperwork. You can truly reinforce the fact they made the decision to join you.

by answering the question of we're glad you're here and why did you join us. Love that. You can move right into tours. How much of a day one I'm actually doing part of my job does this allow for? You're actually doing part of your job? None of it. You don't actually start doing part of your job on day one. Day one is all about reinforcing your decision to join the company.

Okay. Not for you to do the job. All right. I like that. All right. Number two, a mistake to avoid. And that's not being ready for the new hire. Who, yeah, that's a cardinal sin, right?

So we all have stories of people that showed up on day one and nobody knew they were supposed to be there. They didn't know where they were supposed to be. The leader maybe wasn't there. Dave talks in Entry leadership about the leader being on vacation. That's right. And so those kind of things actually do happen. And that is the worst thing you can do is have a new hire show up and nobody knows they're supposed

to be there. And therefore, we're not ready for it. him. We're not ready for him or her to begin day one, and it just sets off on the wrong approach. From that point forward, things don't go well. All right. So number three, a common mistake we want you to avoid, and this is where you make the mistake of passing the welcome buck. Now, what does that mean? So that means that the leader should always be a part of day one. They should always be a part of at least the introduction and saying hi and welcome aboard, right? So if we did a good job with the first one, which is not way of, until day one. The leader has then said, I'm going to see you at X time, right? So you're going to be with HR for X amount of time, then you're going to do whatever. But I'm going to be there to see you to welcome you to put eyeball to eyeball, right? So there's going to be a connection because

ultimately you and I are the two that are going to work together. I love that. And then finally, and you tell me that this has a tie-in to the first mistake. I'll let you explain that. But the fourth mistake we want you to try to avoid is not meeting their expectations. So not. not meeting their expectations really goes back to the interview, right? It goes back to setting the right expectations to begin with. There's a premise that we follow here at Ramsey Solutions that I've been a big proponent of, and that is that smart people, smart people will not put themselves in harm's way on purpose. So think about that. Think about that premise. Smart people will not put themselves in harm's way on purpose. If you lay out the opportunity for truly what it is,

if you lay out the company culture for truly what it is, smart people will say, That's not me. I can do it. I could do it for a short period of time, but it's not me. I wouldn't be happy in that role long term. So maybe it's not that I can't do it. Maybe it's I won't do it. If 70% of the KRA key results area is something that I don't enjoy doing,

I'm not going to put myself in harm's way on purpose, right? So setting the expectation really begins with a clearly defined key results area before you begin interviewing people and spelling that out for the candidate as they're going through the interview process. Yeah, that way there's just tremendous clarity when they come on. Absolutely. How does this tie in to those first 90 days? I'm getting outside of these four things for a moment, but those first 90 days where you've, if you've done a good job setting clear expectations, does it help you, that's why that 90 days is important. It helps you weed out people who you've been super clear with, but they get there and they're just not happy. And it saves you trouble down the road.

It allows for that easy out on both sides, right? It allows for that person to say, okay, I made a mistake. And now those smart people will not continue to put themselves in that role. It allows for the company also to say we made a mistake. But our interview process, what I don't want you to think is that the 90 days is part of the selection process. Yeah, that's right. Because we, in the 90 days, we've bought into them, right? We want them to succeed.

And we're going to do everything in our power to get them to succeed. We're going to dunk them in the culture. We're going to talk about how they're going to win. And so we're not treating it as hands off. We're just going to see if you can sink or swim. That's not a sink or swim time, the 90 days. That's right. That's really good.

He is Armando Lopez, our executive director of HR. He's a good man. A lot of great experience. And thank you, buddy, for stopping by and just unpacking just a few of the great resources in this wonderful tool for our listeners. Thanks, Ken. All right, I want to give you some credibility, folks, if you need it. Ramsey Solutions has the lowest turnover rate in our industry.

We've figured this thing out. Dave and the leadership through Armando and team have done a great job. So this giveaway this month really will help you. 90 day plan. You got to love that. 90 days. We're giving you an actual plan with some measurement on it. This will jumpstart your new employee performance.

The idea here is you've got 90 days to get them assimilated and activated and really rolling. And this works. So make sure that you take advantage of this tool. Armando talked about some of the great things there, but it's very simple. What to do before the hire? One week prior to the day one, day one welcome, and in the first 90 days. And also, we give you Dave's required reading list for all of us as we join. So that's a little bit of a bonus, too.

You can copy that reading list if you want. You can add, two, delete, whatever. But it's a great idea on how you really set culture. This is a simple tool to get, you know how we do this if you've been listening for any amount of time. Two ways to get it. One is to text. You can text the word new hire to 33-444-4. New-hire, that's all one word.

We just cram new and hire together. Text new hire to 33-444. Or, of course, you can go to Entreeleadership.com, click on podcast, go to this episode, and the link for this download will be in the show notes. Ken's Electronic Mail. All right, we're really excited to bring Ken's Electronic Mail back because this is really about you. And we love sharing your stories. We want to brag on you.

So please take advantage of this. We're getting so many. We're going to start sharing these regularly on the podcast because this podcast is about you. So here we go. This is a email that we got from a captain in the Army stationed at Fort Campbell. Now, because of the rules of public affairs, long and short of why I can't share his name, is simply put he just wanted us to share the email. Didn't want to have to run it through all the public affairs process.

So he said, hey, you can share it as long as you don't mention my name. So there you go. So it is an anonymous captain who is a listener of this podcast station at Fort Campbell. And essentially emailed me a long letter and was talking about how he was looking for leadership resources, found this podcast. And the concepts that we're sharing through our guests and through our resources, tools, Dave teaching, and so forth is really directly applying in the Army. And here's what I wanted to share because I think it's relevant to the conversation we're going to have with Jacca Willick a little bit later. and I think to you leaders. He basically goes on to say that the Army is a unique business entity.

Although we get to select who enters, we don't get to select who comes to our team. And, you know, I think I knew that, but I never really processed it that way. He said, the big machine spits out assignments, rarely taking personal preference into account. Oftentimes, this leaves some of our units very short of some ranks of leaders, especially mid-level leaders. It's especially problematic when your managers aren't performing.

Since we work in a very bureaucratic environment, removing someone who has over eight years of service as a federal employee can take years. So he is sharing that the concepts and things that we're teaching him is allowing him to try to maneuver around the leadership challenges. He says this challenge makes developing leaders our number one priority. This podcast is a great resource and gives us the techniques, especially with millennials to teach and establish a dialogue. So this is really fun. And an example of how in this digital age, this podcast is going out to so many leaders

and helping them out and encouraging them. So I tell you what, this is when you think about this conversation with Jaka Willink, you think about having the lead in some presets that they really have no control over. And that's really fascinating. And in the private sector, while we don't have maybe the legal context, right, or the orders that you have to follow and you're getting this person in your squad or in your unit, you can't control that. Sometimes that happens to you in the private sector.

When the leader says, hey, we're hiring this person and maybe you didn't have a say in it, and you've got to make the best of it. So really, really great stuff. Our feature conversation is with Jocko Willing. Jock is a former Navy SEAL. And he actually, for those of you who loved the runaway hit American sniper movie that starred Bradley Cooper, Jocko was a commander of Chris Kyle in Ramadi in 2006. That task unit bruiser became the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War. Jocko, among so many different awards, has been awarded the Silver Star and the Bronze Star.

As you'll hear a little bit in the conversation, he's now. working with the private sector and leadership, training and leadership consulting. But I got to tell you, when I first found out about Jocko, it wasn't that long ago. And the book, Extreme Ownership, How U.S. Navy SEALs lead and win. I thought, we got to do this. And thanks to Eric, the producer, for getting Jocko to be on here. This, simply put, is about as pure of a leadership discussion as you'll hear. And this is an American heroes.

Let's get right to it. This is Jocko Willink. Well, Jock, I, you know, I'm thinking about. the seals and I think that your brotherhood has such a level of admiration in the minds of so many Americans. There's a, we revere the special forces. And I was thinking before we started that I wanted to start with this question because when I think, I love sports. And when I think of great athletes, you know, and you ask the question, what is it about professional athletes? What do they have that the rest of us don't have. And at its base answer, it would be just great physical athleticism.

They can do things with their bodies that most of us cannot do. So when we think of seals, what is it, and I put this to you, somebody who's served, what is it that seals have at its most fundamental level that people who can't be, who can't quite cut it, or who don't serve in that capacity. What is it they have that the rest of us don't have? Well, one thing that's important to remember is that the seals is made up like the rest of the military and like the rest of the world, any organization is made up of a bunch of people, a bunch of individuals. So to say that there's this one trait that every seal has is not true because seals are all different. They're all individuals. They all come from every different background that you could imagine.

And they show up and they go through the training. And some of them make it because they are gifted athletes. And some of them make it, even though they're terrible athletes, they just have a very strong will. And some of them don't have a strong will, but they're just tough. And so that's what you end up with. And that's why in the SEAL teams, the sum is greater than the parts because you end up with a bunch of individuals. Each of them have their own strengths and weaknesses. but what we do is we use our strengths to complement the weaknesses of other people in our team.

And that's why we end up being stronger than what we would be as individuals. So much to ask you here that I think transfers to business leaders. And we'll talk a little bit about some of that stuff later. But I want to stay in this context here of what you face when you're out there. When you're in combat and someone is hit and hurt, what goes through your mind as a leader in that combat situation? what are we going to do to handle the scenario you know you've obviously got someone wounded it's guy you care about and you look at them and say okay we got to deal with this later right

now is not the time to be emotional right now is the time to figure out where we're being attacked from figure out what happened whether it was a bomb whether it was a bullet let's figure out what happened and let's address the problem and we'll worry about the emotional stuff later a little bit off course here but around teams because one of the chapters in the book, and I'm not going to spend much time on this, but maybe this allows you to get into the second chapter of the book is no bad teams, only bad leaders. Certainly appreciate that statement, but how do you, in your environment, handle a team member who just isn't getting it done? Because this is life and death stuff. So it's not like calling in the office and firing them,

or giving them a severance package. If you're in the heat of it in Iraq and somebody's dragging or not doing their job, how do you handle that? Well, we have a, pretty good weeding out process that we're going to find out. I mean, some of it does come during the basic seal training. And then we have a very arduous workup process that we go through getting ready to go on deployment. We're going to be under a lot of stress. And then we're going to get overseas and you're going to get stressed even more. And you know what? There's going to be times where guys are going to get combat fatigue and they're going to be, they're going to start to fade. And so there's a bunch of things you can do in that situation. I mean, if you're talking

specifically about combat, what you need to do is you need to get the person some rest. You need to pull them back off the lines. You need to get them the opportunity to clear their head a little bit, stand down and let some of that pressure off. This is not just in the SEAL teams. The reason I know this, I learned this from reading books about war my whole life. And when guys in Vietnam, when guys in World War II would get to that point, that breaking point, the good leaders would pull them off the line and say, okay, we're going to send you back. You're going to go do some of this administrative work in the rear and give you a chance to recover. Now, you contrast that with World War I, where they just stuck these guys in the trenches. And that's why if you go and you

read about the shell shock is what they called it during World War I, those guys were traumatically injured mentally from the sustained combat stress that they were under. So we do a better job of it now, you know, I'm not saying we catch it all. But when someone in a combat situation is starting to fold, you got to get them off the line, give them a break, give them a breather, let them recoup before you do break them mentally. Let's turn our eye on the leader. When you are duty bound and focus so much on your unit and the team in their lives, that seems to be, it may be a precarious line between duty bound and then you're actually

doing a disservice to yourself, to your team. afraid and not able to lead. How did you handle that? How did you guard against that? I was in a complete mode of getting it done. And I never thought about the stress or that until I got home. And it wasn't until I got home and I'd been home for about a month. This is talking about my last deployment to Iraq, which was a lot more stressful than my first deployment to Iraq. But when I got home about a month after I got home, I felt like somebody lifted a weight off my shoulders and I realized oh wow you know what I'm not worried about one of my guys getting killed today I'm not worried about one of my hum Vs getting blown up today I'm not worried about us

messing up a mission and causing some kind of negative strategic impact I don't have to worry about all that stuff it's all gone and and it was only when it went away that I realized how much pressure was there and then I just you know enjoyed the fact that I could live without that stress anymore on me and at the same time remember that there was many friends of mine that paid the ultimate price and made the ultimate sacrifice. And so now let's focus on living a life that will honor them and the sacrifices that they made. But what about the chain of command? You've got somebody directly under you, obviously. And what's the accountability like with the seals and this high efficiency type operation? Is somebody looking at below you, looking at

you, making sure you're okay? I was at an, I mean, for instance, my last deployment, I was at an outstation, you know, 40 miles away from my immediate boss, and he might as well been a thousand miles away because it was a heavily IDed road in between us and them. And so, no, we were kind of on our own out there. And, you know, I think that's why the leadership is set up. And it is what it is. And if I would have broken down, yeah, it would have been some significant problems. Right.

To be honest with you. Right. Yeah. If I would have broken down, there would have been some issues. Oh, that's interesting. You know, and it's really, it's hard. I mean, we had a, this is, this was in the news, but there was a seal commander that was overseas, the senior seal on the ground.

And he killed himself on deployment in Afghanistan. And so you're right. And I'm not trying to make light of the stress that people encounter. But for me, you're asking me personally. Yeah. I was in a mode and a mindset of getting the job done, taking, care of my guys, close with the enemy and destroy them. That's what my mindset was. And all the other stuff, all the other personal things in my life, I didn't care about any of it at the time. I was

focused on my guys making sure we were doing our job and keeping them as safe as I possibly could while we still executed the mission. The title of the book is Extreme Ownership. Chapter 1 is Extreme Ownership. And I remember when I was reading this, I'm thinking to myself, I really want him to define for our audience. I mean, obviously the book is titled that, the first chapter. but ownership is such a big thing. And I think a big struggle for so many leaders, we probably define it in different ways, but the extreme ownership. There's so many stories you could tell.

But I want you to share an example of what you mean because you titled the book that, the first chapter is that it's a big part of what you're teaching here. And I think it's so spot on. So what does extreme ownership look like as opposed to just ownership? Well, obviously extreme ownership. is an attitude. It's a mindset that you have where everything that you can control in your world and some things that you even can't control or barely control, you're going to take ownership of it all. And you're not going to cast blame on anybody else. You're not going to make any

excuses about anything. And that is very difficult to do. And, you know, the chapter in the book that we start off the book with, and you're right, the reason the book is called extreme ownership is because this is the trait that that we saw not just in our unit and not just in other military units that we worked with not just the individuals but the whole teams themselves have this attitude and when we got in the civilian sector it's the same thing when you see a leader and thereby you see a whole team that takes ownership of situations that takes ownership of problems that's when you end up with a successful team as opposed to when you get a team where the leader and thereby the subordinate leadership and thereby the front line troops. No one wants to take ownership

of anything. No one wants to say, hey, this is, I'm the problem here and here's what I'm going to do to fix it. Instead, they say, I'm not the problem. And then the next person says, I'm not the problem either. And what you end up with is a whole team where nobody's going to take ownership of the problems and therefore nobody's going to solve the problems. Whereas when you have this attitude that you know what, this is my fault. And I'm going to fix this problem. And when you have that spread throughout your team, now you have an entire team. where the whole team, instead of being excuse makers and blame passers, the whole team becomes problem solvers. And that's the difference between an outstanding team that gets the job done

and a marginal team that barely survives. My favorite chapter in the book without question is chapter three. It's entitled Believe. And I just think this is a trait among the great leaders. They just have an overwhelming amount of belief that others can borrow from when they don't have it. And I want to read a couple sentences here to tee you up to talk about this from your standpoint and why it's so critical. But just a couple things here from chapter three. A leader must be a true believer in the mission. Leaders must always operate with the understanding that they are a part of something greater than themselves and their own personal interest. Now listen to this folks. They must impart this understanding to their teams down to the tactical level operators on the ground. This is the biggest,

I think sentence possibly in the book. Far more important than training or equipment. A resolute belief in the mission is critical for any team or organization to win and achieve big results. That's a big statement. And I agree with you. Belief. Talk about that. Well, the thing is, and the thing that makes this so challenging is that if you don't believe in what you're doing,

your entire team both up and down the chain of command is going to recognize that. They're going to see that you don't believe in it. And when you don't believe in something, you just don't have the horsepower to make it happen. And therefore, your whole team is going to lack the horsepower and the will to make these things happen. So, you know, the chapter that we talk about in the book is a classic example where we were tasked with something that was extremely challenging and that was to bring Iraqi soldiers with us out on combat operations. Now, the seals obviously are highly trained and highly motivated and very well equipped and the Iraqi soldiers are the absolute opposite of that. In fact, it is a stretch

to use the word soldier when you're applying it to the individuals that were with us in Ramadi in 2006. And so here we were taking these guys, these seals, going in to the worst battlefield in the world at the time, which was Ramadi, and saying, hey, the guy that's going to have your back, the guy that's going to protect you if something happened is going to be this questionable, poorly trained, poorly equipped Iraqi soldier. That's who's going to have your back. So this was a very challenging mission to be not only a challenging mission to execute, not only a challenging mission to plan for, it was a challenging mission to believe in. Right. And so what I had to do, and this is something that, you know, I talk about it in the book,

what I had to do was I had to figure out if I believed in it or not. And the way I did that was asking the questions, why? Wait, why are we doing this? Because I'll tell you, if I got to, if I got a task with something that I didn't believe in, we're not going to execute it. You know, that's just the way it is. I can't go out and execute something that I don't believe in. Now I'll get asked occasionally, well, hey, what if you get, did you, what if you got tasked with things when you were in the military you didn't believe in? Would you just not do them? And I said, well, no, I didn't get tasked with things I didn't believe in. If you think about it, you know, what was America trying to do? Am I going to be misaligned with America's plans and with America's goals in the war? No, they wanted to pacify Iraq. They wanted to stabilize the city of Ramadi. These were the broad things that we were trying to get done. And I agreed with those things.

and the guys that were with me did as well. But when we got to this specific example of, hey, we want you to take Iraqi soldiers out there with you. Okay, this is going to be more risky. It's going to be much more difficult. Why are we doing this? And I had to just answer that question for myself. And the answer was really obvious once I asked myself the question.

And that was I realized that if we didn't get these Iraqi soldiers ready to handle the security in their own country, then who was going to do it? Who was going to handle the security in Iraq? if they never were able to do it. And the answer was us. And the answer was we were going to be there for years and decades. And our sons would be there and our sons' sons would be there. So if we wanted to turn this thing around,

we had to take the bold and the risky mission of taking these Iraqi soldiers out along with us and getting them trained up so they could fight against the enemy and win. And that belief, once I understood and believed in that mission and was able to explain it to my troops in that same methodology so that they understood why we were doing what we were doing and they believed in it as well, that's when we got on board and we're able to accomplish some some pretty impressive things over there along with the soldiers and Marines that also obviously believed in what we were doing. So as I'm listening to you, when you hear a mission like this come at you and I love how the story started out, I want to make sure people are really locking into what

you just said. And you're looking at these Iraqi soldiers and you're going, you've got some disbelief. at first. You're going, I don't know if they can do the job. But then you went back to the higher question, which we talk about on this podcast all the time, know your why. And you went to the wire we hear, and you just lay that out for us beautifully. So once you reestablish the why and you agree with the why, then you figure out a way to do the how. And it is that conviction that allows you to get down into the actual execution. Is that fair? Conviction first allows execution? Yeah, not only that, but if you don't have the belief and you don't have the conviction, what are you going to do or what is your team going to do when they hit their first obstacle?

Yeah, they're going to fold. They're going to stop. They're going to fold. And we hit obstacles all the time. We didn't win every fight. We were out there. We had guys wounded. We had guys killed.

But regardless and pressing beyond those extreme challenges and those tragic situations, the belief was we are here for the right reason, we are doing the right thing, and we are going to continue to drive towards our mission. And that's exactly what the guys did. And that's why when you look and hear stories of our military and what our military is able to accomplish in these situations, it's so harrowing and it's so humbling to see what they do, because they do this day in and day out. And it's an amazing, an amazing thing to behold. I want to jump ahead. Chapter 10 is entitled leading up and down the chain of command. This is huge for any business leader, you know, to lead up, you know, to lead sideways, you know, if you will. I want you to summarize

that chapter from the context of what you wrote about it and the lessons that we can take from that chapter and more specifically your experience, leading up and down the chain of command. Leading down the chain of command is pretty self-explanatory. And, you know, we do talk about what that looks like. But I think the piece of this chapter that catches most people off guard and is enlightening to them is the fact that I just don't talk about leading down the chain of command. We talk about leading up the chain of command. And that means that my boss is going to support me and give me what I need and do the things that I need him to do for me. Even though they might not think of it, even though they might not see what I need, I'm going to make sure they see what I need.

And you know, a really simple way to explain this is if I'm trying to get something done and my boss isn't. giving me the training that I need or isn't giving me the support that I need or isn't giving me the gear that I need. Whose fault is that? Whose fault is that? Guess what? It's my fault. I got to take ownership of that. And if my boss isn't giving me the support that I need or the training that I need or the gear that I need, that's because I haven't educated my boss. That's because I haven't explained it to my boss well enough. That's because I haven't gone through the little bureaucratic steps and filling out the right paperwork so that I get the support that I need from my boss. I have to take ownership of that. Once I take ownership of that fact, and now I start to re-educate my boss,

and I write him a better email, and I explain to him what the cost is going to be, and I explain to him where the shortfalls are, and I explain to him how this is going to help us in our mission set. That means my boss is going to give me what I need, and that is very simply leading up the chain of command and getting that support that you need from your boss, and you have to work hard to do this. Now obviously it doesn't guarantee you're going to get everything you ever need from your boss because every business in the world and even in the military, there's asset limitations. And, you know, there's only a certain number of airplanes they can put in the sky to support various units that are out there.

And if you have a low priority mission that night, you might not get aircraft even though you ask for it. But at least you can explain to your guys why you don't have those aircraft, that there's other missions happening, that you are lower priority. therefore we don't have aircraft tonight. And that way your frontline troopers aren't looking at you saying, hey, our boss doesn't get it. Our boss doesn't understand that we need air support.

Our boss isn't giving us support that we need. No, here's the reason. Here's the answer. Our boss does support us. I support us. Here's the reason. And they understand that. And then they can go out and execute the mission with a clean understanding

that the whole team is involved and is engaged and does support what we're doing. just don't have all the assets that we need right now. I want you to talk to leaders about failure. We've been talking about belief, and you were so passionate there, and I think it was beautiful, but let's stay there. So you believe in the why, you come up with the how, and everyone on the team is completely committed to the mission.

And in most cases, everybody's giving their absolute best. But for whatever reason, could be a myriad of reasons, could be one reason, the mission does not succeed. That's got to be disheartening. Certainly when you're losing lives, if that's a factor. In business, you're losing a lot of money. Maybe you lose key members, but you're going hard after the mission and you fail,

despite best efforts at the time. How did you respond to that as a leader? Because I think leaders listening in here, they need to be encouraged on this. What would you say to them? Welcome to life. Yeah, well, of course. Welcome to life. Yeah.

Right. Welcome to leadership. Welcome to the burden of command because leadership is hard and the missions. If you're doing anything worthwhile, the missions you're doing are going to be hard. And if you're winning every time, you're not going hard enough. You're not challenging yourself enough and you're not pushing your team hard enough. And so the fact of the matter is when I failed at a mission, I didn't look at it as, is oh, now we're a disaster.

No, when I failed, I'm going to learn from that. I'm going to get better. I'm not going to get worse. I'm not going to fold. I'm not going to break. When I fail on a mission, we're going to take that. We're going to analyze it. We're going to look at the situation.

We're going to say, good. Now we have mistakes that we won't make again. Good. Now we know the way the enemy reacts to this situation. Good. Now we know what we need to train in order to be ready for this next time. So if I have a failure on an operation or a failure, or a failure in a project that I'm trying to do,

I'm going to say good and I'm going to learn from it. And then I'm going to get better and it's not going to happen again. And so that's what failure is to me. Failure to me is a good opportunity to get better and improve. Chapter 11 is entitled Decisiveness Amid Uncertainty. Now, chapter three, we talked a lot about belief. I think certainly these topics, these chapters go hand in hand. But I want to dive into some specifics here.

from your experience so that you can encourage our audience. There had to be times, yes, you've been trained, and you're prepared on that particular mission, but when things go haywire, the unpredictable, and that has to happen so much in war, obviously, much more so than maybe even in business. But when things go bananas awry, it's crazy. How did you maintain that decisiveness amidst unimaginable uncertainty?

And how can we learn from that? Well, one of the most important things that I would drill into the leadership that worked from me, drill into head when I ran training, the thing that I was trying to get the leadership to do is to be able to detach from these emotional situations, be able to detach mentally from the chaos that's happening, from the explosions that are going on, from the gunfire that's happening, from the people screaming that's going on. You've got to be able to detach from all that, take a step back, take a breath, look around at the situation, and make a good assessment, not based on the emotion,

not based on the chaos, not based on the smoke and the noise and the mayhem, but make a decision based on the facts that are in front of you. And so when this chaos ensues, that's what you have to do. You have to detach from it. You have to step back, look around, and make a good solid decision. I want to transition to where you're at now. So you get out, in 2010 and somewhere along the way you move into consulting businesses and business leaders, your passion about leadership. Just curious, before we dive into some specific questions about small business and the leaders that are listening in here, what was the moment where you kind of said, okay, this is where I want

to go. How did you find yourself in the space you're in now? Well, I was still in the Navy, still in the SEAL teams. and I knew a guy friend that was the CEO of a pretty good size company. And he said, hey, I want you to come up and give a talk to my executives about combat leadership and what you've seen. And at that time, I had been working for the past few years training the seals on the West Coast, getting there and ready to go on deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.

I had been training those leaders to deploy and be in combat. And so when my friend asked me this, I said, yeah, sure, I can do that. And I actually took a brief that I used to give the seals and I declassified it. And I took some of the classified information out of it. But the leadership principles didn't have to change anything. Those are just leadership principles. I took that brief. I went up and gave this brief to these executives.

And when I got done with a brief, he came up to me and said, hey, I want you to do this for every division in my company. And at one of those divisional meetings that I was at, there was the CEO of the parent company was there. And when I got done with that briefing, he came up to me and said, hey, I want you to come and talk to all my CEOs of all the companies that I own. So he had a CEO summit. I went to the CEO summit and briefed, you know, 45 or 50 CEOs in a room. And when I got done with that, a bunch of them said, hey, I want you to come talk to my

company. And next thing, you know, I went from, I'm going to return. retire and relax and surf to I've got a staring at another career. And that's how I ended up doing this. That's awesome. All right. Sometimes as in war, in business, sometimes the fight present themselves to us. We didn't go looking for the fight.

The fight comes to us. I'm just curious how much stronger a SEAL team is after combat. And is that transferable to our audience where a fight presents itself and you can either cut and run, which I know you wouldn't unless I guess it was to save the unit. But I just want you to speak to that. Sometimes we were so scared of a fight and a fight's good for the team sometimes. First of all, am I right? And then what would you say about the strength of a team after having gone through a battle together?

There's no doubt about it. There's no doubt about that the challenges. I mean, for us, it starts in the training. We go through the basic seal training. is a challenge and you become tighter as a unit. You go through your workup getting ready to go on deployment. That's a very challenging situation as well and that gets you ready for deployment, but it also bonds you together even closer. Then you go overseas on deployment. If you get into some tough combat, you're going to be even tighter. And it goes beyond just the seal teams. I mean,

of course, I mean, I just went to get together the other day with a bunch of guys that were with me in Ramadi and it's those guys are my brothers for life. And it's beyond the seal teams, when I talked to guys that were in the Army or in the Marine Corps that were in Ramadi with us in 2006, there's an absolute bond and that will be with us forever. And the same thing happens with companies. You know, I entered the business, entered the civilian sector after the market destruction in 2007, 2008. And a lot of those teams, if they had made it through that together, they wore that as a badge of, look, we went through this. We lost X, Y, and Z, but we're still here, we're still standing, we're going to rebuild, we're going to be stronger and better than we ever

were. And so, yes, it applies across the board that being in challenging situations with your team will strengthen your team. So that's a great reason not to shy away from those challenges, but to step up and face those challenges head on. I want you to sing out one trait that you have noticed in small businesses, organizations, teams that are succeeding on a regular basis? Well, like I said, starting this discussion off, the name of the book is extreme ownership. And that is the trait. When you look at a team or you look at a group or a business where everybody has that attitude. I mean, think about you go into a simple business. Think, not a simple business, but you think about a restaurant business. If everybody in that restaurant from the hostess when she meets you,

and she's taking ownership and making sure that you're taking care of. And then the waitress says, hey, do you have what you need? But when the hostess walks by, they goes, oh, it looks like your drink is low. Every, but she doesn't say, no, that's the waitress's job. No, the hostess says, oh, you look like you're still thirsty. Let me get that for you. And the owner comes out and checks in and see how's it going. When you have the whole team taking ownership, that's when you end up with a successful team.

And you can apply that to any business that there is, whether it's a construction business, whether it's a manufacturing business, whether it's a financial services businesses, every team that we work with, every business that we work with, the more ownership we see on an individual level throughout the team, the better the team performs and the better the team does as a group succeeding. Well, Jocko, we have so many people who are small business leaders that are listening in, but we have, if not more, people who are just personal growth junkies. They want to make the most out of their life.

They want to live a life of significance. They care about growing. And I just, as our last question, I just want you to challenge those people, because it's really everyone listening. They all want to be better leaders, better husbands, better wives, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, the whole nine yards. They just want to max out. And I think that's something that you possess as well, that desire. So what would you say, having written this book, having lived a life of great excellence and passion about helping leaders on a personal level, what would you say to these folks? about growing. I would say this. The opportunity that they have, no matter who you are,

if you're listening to this right now, you've got a massive opportunity in front of you. That means you're a living human being that is in the world. And that's a blessing. And that's something that many, many thousands and thousands of men and women have given to you this opportunity to go out, to live a life, to create a business, to make money, to buy things, to support families, to give to charities, to volunteer, to do all those things. And there's guys, there's friends of mine that gave us that gift. So when you wake up in the morning early and your alarm clock goes off, don't hit that snooze button, get up and take advantage of it and cherish that gift that you were given and make sure,

you're living a life that is worthy of the sacrifices that were made. He is Jocko Willink. He's the co-author with Leif Babin of a book called Extreme Ownership, How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win. We've talked around a lot of the book, but it is an absolute instant classic and a treasure for anybody who wants to lead and for anybody who wants to make the most of their life. And that is all of you good people. So, Jock, I got to tell you, could talk to you forever, but we've got to honor your time. Thank you so much for your service to us, for your example of what a leader really is and for spending time with us. We are certainly better for it, and we appreciate you.

Well, I appreciate that. I'm still learning myself, and I appreciate all that you were doing to try and help people get better. That was great fun. Chalk that one up as an interview that I could have gone three hours. You know what I mean? That could have been Tim Ferriss-length. Easy for me. But I'm just not ready to do that to you, people.

By the way, you know what, since I mentioned that, podcast at entreleadership.com, if you want the interviews to be longer, I'm just curious. I'm not saying I'm going to do it. I'm just doing this right now, Eric. I'm just on the fly. Because there are certain guests that I'd love to go two hours with. You know what I mean? And we just kind of say, hey, look, here is the normal length episode. But Ken went two hours and we'll put it at entreleadership.com, get the bonus thing.

I'm not saying we're going to do it. Eric's starting to break out in a rash. But, you know, I don't mind saying that. There are certain people that I want to talk to longer. I don't think that's unkind. Yeah, there you go. We'll see. I'm serious.

People, I want your feedback. Podcast at entreleadership.com. What's too long? How long do you want to go on an interview? We want to please you. Speaking of helping you, Jaku's book is Extreme Ownership, how U.S. Navy SEALs lead and win.

I mentioned that earlier. We've got a link to Amazon for you. Of course, you can search that, but it's also in our show notes. And also, Jocco's got a really, really popular podcast. Love the creativity on the name, by the way. It's called Jocco's Podcast. Which, incidentally enough, if I didn't know it was Jock Willink, and I saw an ad for Jocco's podcast, I would click on that just to see is this.

What kind of a podcast is that? I think there's some real genius in how simple that is. But there you go. Very popular podcast. It will help you. I promise you, I've checked it out. a good resource. And of course, you can go to iTunes to look that up, and we have a link to the podcast and his book in our show notes at entreleadership.com slash podcast. Just when you thought we

might be done, we're not. This podcast keeps on giving. It's like a fruit of a month club. Pat Summitt coming to you in just moments, but I want to thank InfusionSoft. They help us power this podcast. Great organizations, as you know. We want to make sure that you check them out. They're here to help the small business owner. Infusionsoft.com slash entree. Infusionsoft.com slash entree. All right, I told you about this at the top of the podcast. We'll get right to it because, again,

I'm so excited to be able to do this. But just days ago, the legendary basketball coach from the University of Tennessee, Pat Summit, passed away. If you don't know her story, we're talking about at the time she retired, the winningest basketball coach in history.

Men and women's basketball, as far as total wins. And of course, he's a legend here in Tennessee and around the globe when it comes to women's basketball. About eight years ago, I had the opportunity to interview her for Comcast Sports Southeast, something I was doing in Atlanta at the time, 45 minutes sitting down talking to her about life lessons from the game of basketball, specifically. What we did was, is I had posted a clip on a YouTube page,

and Eric, the producer, pulled it. It's about six minutes, 20 seconds. What you're going to hear in this is one of the greatest leaders of all time. I don't care what industry we're talking about. A great leader. I ask her about what are the ingredients of a championship team? The most valuable lesson she'd leave with every young person in the world if she could only leave one with them. This is fun.

It really challenges the last question that you'll hear. And we also talk about her response to losing. It's a great story she shares of talking to her dad and he gives her a great people lesson. You're going to love that. It's totally worth it if you just hear that. So here it is six minutes of gold from a conference. I had with the legendary Pat Seller. So take us to a moment where you experienced victory the first time because we know you hate to lose,

but that taste of victory clearly stuck with you. Do you remember that? I remember the first loss, probably more than the first win. And we played Mercer University. They were good. And I knew after the game that I had not, I just didn't do a good job. You know, and I was young and I just wasn't experienced enough, or confident enough probably. And I remember calling home and my mother answered the phone and we were chit-chatting and she goes, Trish, how are you doing? I go, doing great mom.

Never even asked me about the game. Probably didn't even know we were playing. Or if she did, she probably just forgot about it because she never was into sports. And I said, is dad there? And she said yes. And I said, is this? okay I talked to him and because he didn't like talking the phone much and she said yes so she handed him the phone and he I've never heard him say hello he said all right well I was so nervous because I knew you know he knows how competitive we all are and he's competitive and and I said hey dad and he goes do you win I said no sir we lost long pause and I didn't know what he was going to say other than you need to get out of coaching but he said

And so you lost. I said, yes, sir. He said, let me tell you one thing. You don't take donkeys to the Kentucky Derby. You better get you some racehorses. Wow. And he hung up. He never said bye.

He never said hello or goodbye. But I knew what he was saying to me. And it really shaped me in terms of my philosophy to understand that. You win and life with people. It's not about me. I've never scored a basket for the University of Tennessee. And I'm starting my 36 year. It's all about the people you surround yourself with and what they bring to the court, to the game, and to understanding that it is a team concept and they have to do it together.

Anybody who knows you and knows this program knows that you love to teach. So talk about how you teach life lessons to these. wonderful young ladies who come through your program. What specifically are you trying to release them into the world after they've played in your program? What are you really trying to ingrain in them? That when they leave here obviously they leave here with a college degree. Hopefully they leave here with a national championship. But the most important part of that is they leave here as confident young women that are ready to go out into the world and be secure in who they are and move forward and be successful.

And when our student athletes leave here, I mean, they're ready for the world. I mean, I have no doubt that they are going to be successful in whatever they do. What are the non-negotiable essential characteristics to a championship team? Well, I think first and foremost for us, you know, it's always been offense, sales tickets, defense wins, games, rebounding wins championships. And I think it's to understand what our goals are and we want to meet those and we want everyone to be committed to that. You know you might have an off shooting night but you should never have a bad night on defense and rebounding. You should never have a bad night or an off night on

lack of communication. We have to be in this together and I think when when they understand it's not about the individual we are winning for our team we're winning for our university and for the greatest fans and women's basketball if it's defense and rebounding in basketball is it just the fundamentals and say if I have an off day I've still got to bring my best and do what's best for the team and the culture that I'm in exactly and and this prepares them for life after basketball I know players leave here and they fight you know they they they have adversity in their own lives, maybe some in the pro game, you know, dealing with family and family issues.

And I think they just, they have a preparation that allows them to be able to get through adversity. To be able to understand that it doesn't last forever and you have to figure out a way to be successful. You've shared a lot of wisdom with us today. so before I let you go, my favorite question for people that have achieved great success is if you could just share one life lesson with every young person in the world, what would that one life lesson be? That's a tough one. To always, to look in the mirror and see yourself and challenge yourself to be the very best and to always do. the right thing. And again, never compromise your principles, never lower your standards. Whatever it is that you desire to do in life, have the courage and the commitment to do it and

to do it to your absolute best. And always, always, no, that you have to believe it to do it. Coach Sommet, thank you for your example in the game of sport, the life lessons we heard today, the wisdom, and most importantly, your time. We appreciate it very much. I know I'm better for it. I know our audience will be as well. Thank you, Ken. Enjoyed it. Well, I hope you enjoyed that bit of great wisdom from Pat Summitt, one of the great leaders of all time. Well, folks, we've got two events I want to tell you about our Entree Master Series is coming up in October. Our third Entree Leadership Summit is coming to you in May of 2017. All the details, everything you need to know at Entreeleadership.com. Click on events. forget. We've got that amazing new hire tool. All you've got to do is text New Hire to 33444.

We want to thank Jocko Willing for being with us. What a great guest he was coming up next week. My sit down with Pat Lynchione. Oh my goodness. It's so good. You don't want to miss that. And of course, more goodness coming. On behalf of our producer, Eric Anthony and the entire Entree leadership team. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.