EntreLeadership - #352: Setting the Standard with Jocko Willink

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

As a former Navy SEAL, Jocko Willink knows a thing or two about beating impossible odds and working tirelessly to do so. Perhaps that’s why, even now as a civilian, Jocko sees tremendous value in pushing himself personally and professionally—and tracking his progress every step of the way. Tune in to hear the bestselling author and leadership coach explain why performance standards are an invaluable tool for self-evaluation—and sometimes a much-needed reminder to step up your game.   entreleadership.com/podcast USMC Fitness Report Jocko Podcast Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink Echelon Front website Leadership Strategy and Tactics by Jocko Willink Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is no worse feeling than climbing hard and working your tail off only to reach the summit of a mountain you never actually intended to climb. And sadly, I'll tell you, as a business coach, I run into business owners and business leaders all the time that face and confront this exact problem. They work their tail off only to reach a goal they never actually set in the first place. And I think the reason why we are all susceptible to running this race only to be dissonable. disappointed is because for our leadership, for our business, and even for our life, we fail to ask one very powerful question. What does winning actually look like? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teens, and their profits. I'm your host Alex Judd, and today we've got a repeat guest for you, one that many of you probably recognize as one of the most intense human beings alive.

It's Jocko Willink. He's a Navy SEAL, a best-selling author, and a leadership teacher whose life and message embody the characteristics of selfless service, determination, and extreme ownership. And today, we're diving deep into a topic that he is deeply passionate about. It's the topic of standards. And this is something that relates directly to that question, what does winning look like for you as a leader? It connects directly to a lesson he learned as a Navy SEAL. One thing I can say about this idea of standards and specifically looking at the Marine Corps standards, the Marine Corps standards are really well written. But it's important to remember that everything for me kind of ties back into my experiences in the military.

So one of the things about being in the military that you do a lot of is land navigation. So you're out on patrol. You're walking through the woods. You're walking through the desert. You're walking through the mountains. You're walking through an urban environment. and you have to know where you are, and you have to know where you're going. And in order to kind of track where you're going, what we do is we do a really good terrain

study so we know what to look for. We know that we're going to cross a ravine in 300 meters. We know that we're going to have to go up a little hill. We know there's going to be a clearing. And as you're walking, you're looking around to make sure that you're on track with where you want to be. And if you don't keep on track with where you want to be, you'll look up after. walking for eight hours and you will have no idea where you are and you certainly won't be at your objective.

So it's interesting that that can unfold and the way that unfolds and I watched it unfold many times where people weren't paying attention to where they were going and they look up and they're lost and they can't find the objective. But it makes sense that if you would do that for an eight hour patrol, it might be a good idea to do that with your life as well. and to set some weight points along the way to have some goals, to be able to look around and say, yes, this is where I'm at, this is where I want to be. Or, hey, I'm a little off track. So I think that if I had to say where this idea of mine of looking at standards and trying to figure out exactly where I wanted to be at

was probably rooted in land navigation. But I will also say this. You know, I was a leader in the military. And I would have guys occasionally that would, come to me thinking that their evaluation. So in the military, you get an evaluation once a year. And then you get some smaller evaluations along the way, but once a year you get an evaluation. And Jocko, is that with the person that you directly report to? Is that how it works in the military? When I was a task unit commander, let's say I had 40 seals that worked for me, and those 40 seals would all get an evaluation that's going into their permanent record.

That's what their promotion is based on. And so once a year, I would fill out and sign 40 or 39 of the for my subordinates. And yes, I would have one done about me as well. So as I would give these evaluations to guys, occasionally a guy would come in and say, you know, something along the lines of, you know, hey, why is my grade a 3.0 instead of a 4.0 or a 5.0? It's a hard question to ask or answer, you know,

because everyone's uncomfortable when someone, you've got to tell someone where they're not meeting their standards. That's not a comfortable conversation to have. And this happened to me enough times that I eventually would just take out the actual evaluation and start reading to them what 50, the highest possible grade you could get, which, you know, in a couple of these cases, people thought they deserved a 5.0. And it's basically, it's almost an unachievable level of excellence. And as I would read it to these guys, I'd say, okay, so you're saying that you do all these things, every one of these things you're hitting. And, of course, they would all walk out of there pretty humbled and say, no, I'm happy and I got work to do.

Okay, but is the reason why they were asking the question because they had never actually looked at the form? They had never actually looked at what they were being evaluated against? Of course, they looked at it, but you can look at things, you can read things, and then you can actually look at them and you can actually read them and we can try and put context around them because to read through and go, you know, I should be a 50. Of course, everyone thinks, hey, I should be a 5-0. And as you read through it, you say, you know what?

I actually see some areas where I can improve and time to get to work. And so you already referenced it, but the thing that I've heard you talk about with regard to this topic is that marine evaluation form. And the time I've heard you talk about it, you referred to it as an epic document. So whenever it comes to standard setting, why does that form specifically set the standard whenever it comes to evaluating character qualities, leadership, growth, all the things. that matter most. Why does it stand out so much to you? The big difference between the Navy one and the Marine Corps one, which I used the Navy one and the Marine Corps one is the one that I came across working with the Marines. But there's just more detailed. So in the Navy one, there's a total of probably seven, eight things that you're going to get graded on. In the Marine Corps one,

just under leadership alone, there's five different elements of leadership. There's a section called intellect and wisdom. There are some very legit little sections of this that, you know, individual characters, another one, mission accomplishment. So those are big chunks of information. And it just has a lot more detail than the Navy one had. It all boiled down. They have a visual representation of the breakout ratio of how many people are at the top of the chart. And it kind of looks like a Christmas tree. In each graphic representation, they have one little eagle globe and anchor, which is the Marine Corps symbol, the eagle, the globe, and the anchor. And at the top of this thing, it looks like a Christmas tree, because at the top, there's one eagle globe and anchor,

meaning only one person, only one Marine out of this group is going to be what they call the eminently qualified Marine. And then it goes down like a Christmas tree. And the lower you are, the more people there are. And then at the very bottom, it gets small again, just like the trunk of a Christmas tree. So it's, it was a pretty cool visual representation, but also, I love the adjectives that they put together to say this person is the eminently qualified Marine. There is nothing higher. This is it. I just think it's a great document and that's why I refer back to it from time to time when it comes to trying to assess where you are at. And we're going to put the link to this document and the show notes for those people that are

listening. But it says at the top, it says the completed fitness report is the most important information component in manpower management. Like not even and just marine manpower management. In manpower management, period, this is the world. They are pretty assertive about that. But then I think what you said was so true, that Christmas tree, and it's on the document here, the lowest level that they even deem worth talking about in this report, the description of the lowest level is qualified. I thought that was crazy. And then from there, the base, like where probably the average of the bell curve lands with regard to how they perform, the description is one of the many highly qualified professionals who form the majority of this grade.

So if you are average, you should be highly qualified. That's crazy to me. And so for you, in your experience, having an evaluation like this, how does that affect leadership? I've got a funny story about this. Really, I created a document when I was running the training for the West Coast SEAL teams. And the training that I ran was the training, the tactical training. It's not the training where guys run around with logs, boats on their head and carrying logs around. No, I was running the tactical training.

And I made a little evaluation, a self-evaluation for everyone to fill out. You know, what's your tactical savvy? How well do you communicate with your troops? How well do your troops respond to your directions? How open are you to receiving input from them? Just like a really basic. It probably was actually not that basic. It was probably 14 or 15 little things to grade yourself on.

And this is what was really fascinating. And I didn't think much of it. You know, I kind of did it, and I would hand it out at the beginning, and guys would fill it out. And I didn't think much about it. And I think I did, was probably three quarters of the way through a training cycle for a SEAL team. And there was a guy that was a real problem. One of the leaders, one of the, one of the SEAL platoon leaders was having serious problems. And his problems were all based on the fact that he wasn't listening to anyone else coming

up with his own plans, not taking any input, just an ego, an ego driven guy that wasn't listening to people. And so it started to get to a point because when you don't listen to people and you don't take input, well, then you don't perform well because you're trying to, you think you can control everything and you can't. And yet you're not decentralizing command. You're just, you're just failing in a multitude of areas. And that's what was happening. So his platoon's performing poorly. And it starts looking like, hey, maybe this guy needs to get fired. And as we start approaching this cross-section of life, I said, oh, you know what, I had these guys fill out these evaluations about themselves. Why don't I take a look and see how this guy evaluated himself?

So he was evaluating himself? Yes. So he was evaluating himself, and I pulled this thing out, and it was the same grading structure. You know, one is the worst and five is the best. And I go through this guy's thing. And of course, he graded in each of the 14 categories, he graded himself a 5.0. In every category? In every category. I think that is the clinical definition of EG. It is.

And I kind of said, well, that makes sense because that's why he's not listening to anybody. Because in the SEAL teams, we're not looking to have to fire a leader. It's horrible to fire a leader. It's horrible to fire anyone. And in the SEAL teams, when you fire a leader, you don't, you know, that's a body that has millions of dollars invested into him to get him up to speed. and now if we're going to get rid of them, we're throwing away millions of dollars. Not to mention we're ruining someone's life.

You know, not to mention you're going to disrupt the platoon at some level because you're replacing a leader. So we don't want to fire the leader. So we're doing all these things to try and help them and coach him. And the problem is if you've got a big ego, guess what? You're not listening to any of that. So I look at this thing and I go, wow, this is going to be a problem because he obviously thinks he's great at everything.

And then just out of my own curiosity, there was another guy that was going through the same training in a different platoon, a different platoon leader, and he was doing great. His platoon was doing great. They were functioning well. They were performing well. The morale was high. And so I just I wonder what that guy grades himself. And so I pull out his, you know, I search through the file and I find his file and I pull it out. And, you know, he had given himself an average grade of like a 2.4. And I said to myself, hmm, that's pretty telling. And this isn't a universal rule. but I'll tell you what, it's at a very high percentage that people that think they are doing outstanding generally are not.

And people that think they have room to grow and things that they can do better, they're the ones that are actually performing well. So that's another thing about evaluations is you can look at someone. And if they evaluate themselves and they give themselves super high marks that probably says that they have a big ego, that they don't think they're doing anything wrong, and in which case they don't think they need to improve. And I think one of the things that you hit on specifically with kind of where this came from with regard to navigation and navigating to meet a specific destination is just this idea that, I mean, we are all, whether we know it or not, we are all holding ourselves to certain standards from a leadership perspective, from a business perspective, from a personal perspective. But a lot of times what I realized after listening to you talk about this is a lot of times I think we don't actually define. what those standards actually are.

And so how do you go about defining that? How do you define, okay, here's what winning looks like in my role, in my arena, and here's what matters to me? I think you have to do exactly what you just said is, and that's what people, to your point, don't do. They don't sit down and say, hey, what does it actually mean to be a good dad? What does that actually mean? What am I doing?

What does it mean to be a good leader? Hey, if it's just profitability for the company, okay, great. Well, we made a bunch of money. That means I'm a great leader. We know that that's wrong because we could be stomping all over the people below us in the chain of command. When you actually sit down and think about it and say, okay, what would make me a good dad? What would make me a good leader? What would make me a good husband?

What would make me a good business partner? What would make me a good client for someone else? What would make me a healthy human being? what would be good health. So I bet that most people, if they do what you just said, which is sit down and define it, you'll probably get the 90% solution out of the gate after you just sit down and think about it.

So that is what people don't do. And that's why guys would come into my office and say, hey, why am I not a 5.0? It's because of what you said. They read the document. They didn't read the document. They didn't actually think. The Navy one has.

the same thing in there, similar things in there that are like, hey, if your subordinates are not ready to promote, then you failed as a leader. So I'd have somebody come to me and say, you know, hey, why am I not a 5.0? And I'll say, well, I'm looking at your qualifications of the guys that work directly for you and three of those guys have lapsed qualifications, which means they're not promotable. So how can I give you a 5.0 when the primary concern of a leader should be your troops and you're not even taking care of your troops. And so there you go. So sometimes I would say, even though we want a self-defined and look at what we think,

then you kind of put that together for yourself and then show it to some other people and say, hey, this is what I think would make me a good husband. Maybe show that to your wife. This is what I think would make me a good business partner. Show that to your business partner and say, hey, what do you think? I'm trying to be the best I can. Does this make sense? Is there anything I'm missing?

Is there anything that I could do better? Is there anything that you need for me? Show it to your subordinates. Hey, everyone, this is what I'm trying to do. So there's a bunch of different ways to build out this sort of format where you have something to judge yourself on. And I think if you take one of those ways and move forward, it'll be good. I'm doing it. I'm actually doing it with one of my buddies.

We're making this document for the emily qualified human being. And we've actually completed it. And I'm just trying to figure out how I'm going to get it out to the world. We have two things. one of them is going to be an app, and believe it or not, the app will probably come out before the hard copy paper version, because if you know anything about publishing, which I do, it takes longer to get something published than you would think. So, and that's coming from me. I have my own publishing company, so it's not like it's a big challenge here. You know, it still will take

a while. None of us would be upset if you just wanted to release it here on this podcast. If you just want to give it to us right now, you're more than welcome to. I'll get, I'll get it. I'll get it out there. And again, unfortunately, it's not a, it's not really a standalone book. I can't, I can't, you know, publish this thing because it's not long enough. But I'm

not going to sit there and make something longer just to fill paperwork or just to fill pages. Like, I don't do that. So the app will be out, and it's the eminally qualified human, and it talks about how jogged it around with a few of our friends, like, what does it mean to be the best you can be? And again, to

your point, if you don't know what that looks like if you haven't spelled that out, then you're treading water. You're not moving. You're not making any progress in life. So it's important. What's crazy is it seems like, and we work with business leaders every day, and it seems like the overriding narrative that's in the business owner's mind is, I am not enough. And it seems like they're constantly operating, if they're coming from an unhealthy place of feeling guilty, that they're not doing enough. And it seems like a lot of times that's not in reality. It's just because they've never actually sat down and clarified what winning looks like. Has that been your experience? So let me ask you this. When someone says to you,

I am not enough, what do they mean by that? Meaning they just don't think they're doing enough? I think a lot of people don't say outright, I am not enough. But I think that's the overarching narrative or belief in the way that comes out a lot of times is I need to be doing more I'm not a good enough leader for my people. A lot of times we see it with physical fitness, right? I am not physically fit. And I should be in better shape than what I am. I should be waking up earlier.

I should. And it's like there's so much that people feel like they should be doing. And I think that's just magnified by leadership responsibility that it feels like people are perpetually living in this state of guilt. And I wonder if that ties into this topic of standards at all. Does that make sense? if someone has that attitude, I think that there's a level of that that's positive, right? Which is, hey, I need to work hard. I need to do better.

I need to support my people more. The problem with it is if they take that burden onto themselves and can't manage it and now things start to slip, right? So a good leader. And this is something I talk about with leaders a lot. If you want to be in charge of everything, your goal should be to be to be. in charge of nothing and this is a strange dichotomy for people to get their hands around it but if you want to truly be in charge of everything then that means you don't want to be in charge of anything so I don't want to have the tasks on

me to do all these little minutia around the daily basis right if I'm the leader I want to be able to look up and say hey Alex hey how's that project coming and you look back and say coming good I need a little support over here and I say okay cool here's the support you needed and then Mike How's it going with you? How's your project going? Hey, we're doing great. I'm driving forward.

I don't need anything right now. Okay, Bill, how are you doing? Hey, we're doing good. Okay, Jennifer, how's it going? So the minute I am doing Jennifer's job or Mike's job or Bill's job or Alex's job means I'm not looking up and out into the future. Instead, I'm looking down and in inside my team. If I'm looking down and in, then we don't know where I'm going.

I can't see what the competitors are doing. I can't see what the enemy's doing. I don't know what is changing on the battle. I don't know what's changing in the market. So I want to be in charge of nothing. That's what I want to be in charge of. So I think that's where this idea would become negative in my mind, where someone that thinks that, oh, we're failing on this project, I'm going to get in there and fix it.

Oh, now we're failing on another one. Now I'm going to go fix that. And then someone's got to go talk to this client, and I think I'm the only one that can do it. So I have to go do that. The minute I say to myself, oh, you know what, the only person that can talk to the client is me. I'm the only one.

Tell me about my leadership at that point in time. Well, you're not leading. Exactly. If the team beneath me can't do everything that I can do as good as me, if not better, then that means I got work to do as a leader. I got to get them up to speed. So that's my goal always. My goal is always to have my subordinates able to do my job even better than me.

That means I'm looking up and out instead of down and in. So when you talk to me about someone feeling guilty that they're not enough, I think there's a positive side to it, which is, hey, cool, they care about doing a good job. There's a bad side of it. And the bad side is they're going to try and absorb too much of the day-to-day stuff that's happening. They're going to get bogged down. And they're going to miss out on doing what leaders are actually supposed to be doing,

which is leading the way forward. And there's the standard. One of the things that I love about this Marine document is that it establishes that a 3.0 is qualified, and then a 5.0 is this ideal, right? Like, I was evaluating myself on this thing. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I feel like a failure in life and leadership and everything right now, right? So how do you establish incredibly high standards like that without just being bogged down and feeling like a failure and using it more as a motivation and a sense of clarity? I think that everyone, you know, in the, let's say in the business world, you know, you said a stretch. goal of what you want to be, of what you want to achieve in a sales environment. And that's good,

right? But if we set a stretch goal that's completely unachievable, like I'll never ever make it, I can't even comprehend how we would be able to do that, then that's kind of worthless. And it actually can have a negative effect because now my team looks at the stretch goal, which is so beyond actually being able to be achieved, that they go, well, we're never going to make that. So we'll just kind of do whatever. So we don't want to do that. And even when you look at the Marine document, I think I said this in the beginning. I said it's almost unachievable, but it's achievable. Like you know some people that actually behave that way.

You know, when you read that, you go, you know, I had that one platoon chief or I had that one manager. I had that one boss that really was like that. Can we read a couple of them, like the leadership one? So here's a couple of the leadership, the imminently qualified Marine whenever it comes to leadership. And if you have any of your favorites too, I'd love to hear them. the model marine frequently emulated exemplary conduct behavior and actions and tone setting. I love that. Their actions and behavior are tone setting.

An inspiration to subordinates, peers, and seniors, remarkable dedication to improving self and others. So like you said, I read that and I say, man, that is an incredibly high standard to live up to. But it is achievable and I can think of people that have achieved that. Yeah. Developing subordinates. And again, this is the reason I fall back on. developing subordinates a lot is because a lot of times when we think of leadership, we think of me, right? What should I be doing as leader? Leadership is about me and actually no, wrong. Leadership is not about you. Leadership is about your team. And so developing subordinates, this is under the leadership

section, widely recognized and emulated as a teacher, coach, and leader. Any Marine would desire to serve with this Marine because they know they will grow personally and professionally. Subordinate and unit performance far surpasses expected results due to mentorship and team building talents. Attitude towards subordinate development is infectious extending beyond the unit. So that's a person that is, and I've known people like that, right? I've known people that everybody, when there's a certain guy that picks up a platoon and he's going to be a platoon commander, everybody wants to go and work for that guy or a platoon chief. This guy, oh, he's going to go start starting a new platoon.

Everyone wants to be in a platoon. Or you see this in the business world where somebody forms up a new business and everybody wants to be there working with them because everybody knows that it's going to be the place to be. Why is that? Because they know they're going to get taken care of. They know that this leader is going to look out for them, is going to help them grow. That's what it says. They know they will grow personally and professionally.

You don't think about that much. You think, well, why does someone want to go work for a leader? Is it because the job's going to be easy? No. Is it because they're going to make a bunch of money? No. Is it because they're going to get more time off? No. It's because they're going to grow personally and professionally. That's what a leader does. All those other things, all those things will come if the leader's doing what the leader does. I read Dan the 5.0s, and I would encourage you all to do this because it's a powerful exercise and it's an inspiring exercise just to read the 5.0s whenever you pull up this document. But I thought to myself, my first thought whenever I read it was, you could spend your entire life going after this and still not get there. But then it's like, okay, well, what would I rather spend my life on? Right? Like, it's like that seems like a pretty worthwhile place to spend your time.

Yeah, I think that's an accurate statement. And again, I think both of us pointed out that although these, the high scores on this document are definitely very, very hard to achieve, there is part of you that knows that they're not unachievable. and, you know, one out of every 100 people is going to hit the highest mark in that category, and that's pretty awesome. Are you at the stage of business where for you as an owner and certainly for your team, you are just overloaded with tasks and activities, and you're recognizing that you're at the stage where you need to start bringing system and process into your organization? Well, from a coaching perspective, the first step that we recommend you take is start

automating any tasks that are repeated. And specifically, whenever it comes to automating customer communication, the service we recommend is called Keep. We've worked with them for years to grow our business and serve our customers well, and we've seen small business owners win by leveraging the power of this service. And so if you're at this stage where you need to start working smarter and not just harder, Keep is offering a free trial to our podcast listeners. So if you want to take advantage of that free trial with Keep, text the word work smart to 33444.

Again, that's the word work smart, no spaces to 33444, and work with Keep to start automating your customer communication. I think it's really cool, too, that you're kind of bearing the torch of this message to a degree because you are someone that, I think largely if people have read your work and certainly listen to your podcast and you are someone that I read Extreme Ownership years ago, and you're someone that I look to as an exemplary standard, right? And you do so many things really, really well. You're someone that calls donut sugar-coded lies. Like, that's the kind of person I want to be. That's awesome. But how do you personally deal with when you make mistakes or have setbacks in the areas that matter?

How do you not let that just devolve into just getting worse and worse and worse? And how do you just recover quickly from mistakes? Well, actually, if you want to be a good leader, one of the marks of a good leader is someone that when they get knocked down, they don't devolve into a downward spiral of destruction. The minute that you feel, oh, we just took a hit. I didn't expect that. I didn't anticipate that well.

My foresight was weak. Whatever, whatever problem you have. The minute that that happens, you say, okay, well, what am I going to do? I'm going to take that lesson. I'm going to learn from it. I'm going to make sure that I do everything I can to mitigate it from ever happening again. I'm going to own it, right? So I'm going to tell the troops, hey, this is what happened, this is why it happened, this is what I did, these are the mistakes I made, and here's what I'm going to do to make sure it never happens again.

So I'm not afraid of failing. I'm really not. I mean, and I've failed more times than I can count. We all have, right? I mean, you don't make any progress. You don't make any progress in life without taking risk. So I've taken risk, and sometimes when you take risk, you don't calculate the risk well, and you end up not doing well. It happens.

So what do you do? Do you curl up in a ball? do you panic, do you cry? No, what you do is you say, okay, let's do an assessment, let's see what went wrong, and let's put in some guardrails to make sure that nothing like this happens again. I'm not afraid of it. And I'll tell you what makes people afraid of it is their ego. It's what I had to get over, it's what we all had to get over, to look at your team and say,

hey, you know what, this went wrong, this is my fault, this is what I'm going to do to fix it. the this is my fault part is the hardest part. And here's what's crazy. When you are sitting in a room and your boss stands up and says, hey, this went wrong and it's everyone else's fault but mine. Everyone in the room knows their respect for that leader goes down. When the leader's blaming somebody else, you know, I'm not a huge sports fan, but anytime a coach gives a talk after a game that they lost,

if they say, well, the players should have done this and the refs should have done that, everybody shoots those clips to me on social media and says, this guy needs to read extreme ownership. And every time someone stands up and says, hey, you know what, the players did their best and their shortfalls are my fault because I'm the coach and I should have drilled that more.

I should have called a different player or I should have been prepared for what the opponent was going to do. But this is what I'm doing to fix it next time. Everyone says, oh, look at this guy. He's taking ownership. That's good. So we all know and we all recognize. what it feels like when someone above us in the chain of command or below us in the chain of command, we all know what that feels like.

When someone below you in the chain of command has a problem, fails their mission, and you say, hey, what went wrong? And all they do is point their fingers, your respect level for them goes down. But for some reason, well, I know the reason. When that happened, when we get put in that position, so often we do the same thing. We say it wasn't my fault. It was his fault. It was her fault.

It was their fault. And we should know. we should know that that's us. That's us doing what we don't respect when we see it from other people. The reason we do it is because of our ego. Our ego gets hurt. And I get asked these questions all the time. One of the questions that I get asked is,

is, hey, though, hey, I get it. You know, I get the idea of taking ownership. But, you know, like, what do you do when your subordinate does something that's messed up? But, you know, you take ownership, but, you know, it's not really your fault. and I just smile because that's it that's it it it actually is your fault when someone below you in the chain of command or above you in the chain of command or anywhere in your world when they do something wrong you got to take ownership of it it's your fault when I have someone below me in the chain of

command that doesn't get their report filled in on time whose fault is that hey they're the one that didn't turn in the report guess what I'm the one that didn't make sure they understood how important it was I'm the one that didn't reinforce their deadline I'm the one that didn't follow up and do some some weekly checks to make sure they were on track it's all on me and those are the things that I can fix to solve the problem otherwise what do I do I say it was their fault they don't change anything and that doesn't help so we have to take ownership of things and when we fail to take ownership we fail to solve any of the problems and we stagnate so back to your original question when you make a mistake

what do you do, you own it, you own finding solutions, and then your own implementing those solutions. So even in that, though, I mean, taking ownership, that is a standard. You have applied that standard to yourself that when things go wrong, you take ownership, right? And maybe the leader also applies the standard of themselves that when thing goes right, they give out credit, right? And that's part of leadership. And that's the standard. So now that that's the standard and that's the ideal, and I'm sure probably everyone that listens to this podcast says read Extreme Ownership, if you haven't, go read Extreme Ownership, right? Because it's a great book.

But once we apply that standard to ourselves that I'm going to take ownership, how do we guard that standard and make sure that we don't slip or start using excuses and apply this question to all standards? How do we guard it and make sure that we're staying on top of these things and not growing complacent? When you get your team in the mode of taking ownership, the minute you start making an excuse, the minute an excuse forms in your brain, it might make it past that point.

When it's starting to come out of your mouth, you will choke on it because it sounds so horrible. Like you said, when you read Extreme Ownership, when you start thinking about that, you'll realize that when you open your mouth to make an excuse, it is going to come out of your mouth and it's going to slap you. That's the mentality. And it does take some time to develop,

because I'll have clients that we work with at Echelon Front, people that have read the book multiple times and listen to every podcast. And some CEO will bring me into their company or some executive vice president will bring me into his division and go, yeah, you know, the problem is my team doesn't know how to do this. And, you know, they're saying, I want you to teach them about ownership. And it's all their fault. When the reality is, if I'm in charge of a team of seven people,

they're not getting the job done, whose fault is it? It's my fault because I haven't trained them correctly, because I haven't given the good clear directives, because I haven't given them support, or because I haven't gotten rid of the people that are on the team that are incapable of doing their job. And once again, me saying it's their fault does me no good whatsoever.

I have to take ownership. The fact that they're not achieving what they're supposed to achieve is my fault, and I need to do something to fix it. So once you get that mentality and you have that mentality in your organization, what you'll see is people start to take ownership. And this is something else that's funny is that, you know, I always say, look, when you start to take ownership in your world, other people will start to take ownership too. And then you'll end up with an organization where everyone is taking ownership. And then I'll say, you know what?

Not everyone. Not everyone. And, you know, I'll be talking to a company with whether it's 50 people or 500 people. people, I'll say, look, I know that someone in the back of the room right now is sitting there thinking, you know, when Jocko says everyone will start to take ownership, there's someone in the back of the room that's thinking, no, no, Fred won't take ownership because Fred has a bad attitude and all Fred does blame everyone else. And so when I ask that question, when I get that feedback, I say, you know what? You're right. You're right. There's a bell curve. There's just like there's a

bell curve with the Marine Corps evaluation system, there's a bell curve. And you're going to get some people at the top of the bell curve that are going to start taking ownership and start making things happen. You're going to get a bunch of people in the middle that are going to try and move in the right direction. They're going to take ownership of what they can. Occasionally, they're going to slip. And then you're going to get some people at the bottom of that are like, that's not my fault. That's a stupid, that's a stupid idea. How can you blame me when I wasn't even there? And those people are not. They're not going to do it. So what do you do? As that organization, as the people inside the organization that do start to take ownership,

they're going to steamroll the people that want to make excuses and blame other people. And eventually those people are going to either leave either because they want to or because they can't stand the environment and they get removed from that environment. And that kind of goes into the culture piece of all this. I mean, I think about organizations. I mean, the one we've talked about, the Marines, certainly the Navy SEALs. But then I think about corporations, Disney, Google. I mean, here at Ramsey Solutions, we have an insane interview process here.

I did 14 interviews to get in the door here. And the reason why is because we have incredibly high standards. And we look at other organizations like the Marines, like Disney, like Google, and we say, okay, those organizations have incredibly high standards. So we expect them to operate in such a way that they are holding people to those standards. How do you begin to set yourself apart? Because sometimes people look at organizations that are not that well established and say, They don't admire them for having high standards.

They just like, oh, my gosh, what are those people thinking? They're being unrealistic. So how do you begin to set yourself apart as an organization that is known for having high standards? So your question is, how does an organization start to become known as a team that has high standards? Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we look at the Marines, and we're not critical of the Marine standards because we know

they're the freaking Marines, right? And the Navy SEALs, like I sure would hope that the Navy SEALs have high standards because they're the freaking Navy SEALs. But then we come into contact with organizations that are earlier in their development and are certainly not established as a brand. And so I think they are afraid to draw that line in the sand and say these are our standards because they fear they'll just be laughed at. Well, I think in a case like that, you have to actually build up, right? It's like the Marine Corps, right? The Marine Corps, you have this level of pride. I've got a book coming out right now called Leadership Strategy and Tactics, and one of the best things you can do inside of an organization is build pride, right? How do you build pride? Well, with an organization like the Marine Corps, okay, well, what is our pride based on?

Our pride is based on 244 years of fighting our country's toughest battles of heroic achievement over and over again of incredibly unmeasurable sacrifices that have been made. There is pride built into that. Okay, great. Like you just said, okay, that's the Marine Corps. How does Joe New Business build pride? How do we do that? Well, first of all, what you can't do is you can't say you can't just raise a flag. and say, hey, we're going to be proud of this flag,

because I just made it. I just made this symbol, and this is our symbol, and now we're proud of it. You actually have to work for it. You actually have to perform. So when I took over as a task unit commander at SEAL Team 3, my task unit was called Task Unit Bravo, when I originally took it over.

It's just the phonetic alphabet. We were the number two task unit out of three task units, Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie. I immediately changed the name from Bravo to Bruiser. meaning look we're going to drop the hammer on the enemy that's what we're going to do now when I first changed the name it was kind of like you know people kind of exactly what you're talking about I wouldn't say they were laughing at us but it just didn't really have much meaning it was kind of hey whatever as we started to begin our training cycle for deployment we worked hard we worked

really hard we focused we came into work early we stayed at work later we trained new guys even more we gave them extra training we trained ourselves more and as we trained more well guess what happened to our performance our performance improved and all of a sudden we started to stand out we didn't start to stand out because we changed our name we started to stand out because we worked hard and we performed and we delivered when we got sent on training exercises we executed and we executed well and so that's how we built the reputation inside of tasking at And this is another thing that happens when you get an organization, an organization as you become elite.

And again, you can't just call yourself elite. You have to do things. You have to push yourself. You have to work hard. You have to chase after clients and get them and then deliver for those clients. So those clients turn around and look at you and say, I can't even believe you guys pulled that off. That was amazing. That's where we start to instill pride.

And what you end up with and what I ended up with in Tasking a Bruiser is we're not a team anymore. We're like a gang. We're like a gang. And the thing that I like about the attitude inside of a gang is a gang is self-policing. So myself as the tasking a commander, as the leader in charge of 40 SEALs, when one of my guys was late, when one of those 40 SEALs showed up late for work, do you think I had to be? to say anything to that person? You think I had to say, hey, Petty Officer Smith, I need to talk to you because you were late? Not even close. The gang took care of that problem. The gang pulled him aside and said, look, hey, where were you? What's going on? We're not late. This is asking a bruiser.

We're not late for anything. We're early. We're 10 minutes early. If you're ever late again, there's going to be some serious repercussions, do you understand what we're saying? So what we have there is these standards are derived from the group itself, right? And then what we have to do is we have to make sure that we capture them. And then we kind of codify them so that everyone says, this is who we are. So I think we have to be very careful. Just like as a leader, you don't want to force things down your subordinate's throats. You don't want to jump up and down and say, hey, here's the standard.

What you want to do is you want to establish the right environment so that when you plant seeds of excellence, those seeds take root and they grow, not based on you watering them, not based on you providing them nourishment, but based on the team actually taking those seeds and nourishing them and they become powerful and they become the culture. So it's important to make sure you think about that. Now, again, at Tasking a Bruiser, did I change the name? Yes, I did.

Did I have guys coming into work early? Yes, I did. Did I one day say, hey, this is Tasking at Bruser. We don't allow that. You know, at some point I probably said some things like that, but more important, it was tasking a bruiser. It was the guys. It was the guys on the team that were saying, hey, this is tasking at Brouser. We don't allow that kind of thing.

We don't allow someone to have rust on their weapon. That's not happening. We will not allow it. We will not allow someone to fall out of PT. It's not happening. So what do you do as a leader? You plant the seeds. You get those things.

You get some water on those seeds. You get them to take root. but you've got to get the team to embrace those seeds and get the team to help those things grow. That's where the standard becomes truly meaningful is not when you force it down on people, but when the team looks at each other and says, you know what, these standards make sense.

If I was to put together a standard sheet like this for my team, absolutely. I might put together a draft, but I would more likely say, hey, guys, here's some categories. Can you write some standards around them? and all of a sudden they're coming up with them. That's Seth Godin.

We talk about it on this program a lot. Seth Godin has that phrase, people like us do things like this. And that's essentially what you're creating when you create that code. The name doesn't mean anything. It's the actions they ultimately give meaning to the name. And whenever you codify, like you said, those actions, that's what creates the framework and the environment

and the culture for people to be able to be able to, able to hold other people accountable. And I think about winning teams. I mean, you just told us the Marines and Navy SEALs, this is what they do. But I also think, I mean, the University of Alabama, the first thing people say is Nick Sabin doesn't have to hold people accountable. The players hold the players accountable. And so I guess what is step one if a, if a leader is saying, okay, I want what Jocco is talking about. What is the first action you would advise that they take to start establishing that culture inside their organization?

This is the same thing I talk about in this new book I've got is what you're going to do is you're going to set the example. And you're not going to bark about it and you're not going to jump up on a pedestal and say, have them, look at me. You're going to set the example humbly, quietly, and people are going to see, oh, oh, that's what's going on. Oh, Jocko's 10 minutes early for every meeting that we have. That's the standard.

That's what he's doing. Oh, Jocko, he's coming in to talk to us on something that doesn't seem like it's that important. He's pulling out his notebook and he's got notes and he's prepared and he's ready. Oh, we're going on a training operation. Hey, Jocko is already, we're supposed to meet at the vehicles at 2 o'clock in the morning. Jocko's out there at 1.30. He's doing an inspection of his gear and he's totally jocked up and ready to go before. anyone else is even there. Oh, and now people start to say yes, okay, I see where this is going. And by the

way, on top of that, what you have to do is you have to perform, right? This is a critical part that people miss out, right? People think, how can I be respected as a subordinate? How can I get my boss to trust me? Well, perform. You need to perform. You need to do well. How do you do well? You plan. You put an extra work. You execute your plan. You keep your mind open. So if something changes, you can make adjustments like performance counts performance counts how do you perform well you perform well by planning by preparing by training and by going on the attack so as you perform and as you're subordinate see you perform they start saying oh what he's doing is good what he's doing works and now they start doing the same thing and eventually you say hey we're going to have to absorb some other people onto our team here

do you guys think we should put together some standards and someone in that group's going to go absolutely we should and you say hey come up with a draft let me know what that looks like and there we're starting we're starting in the right direction um i think i think this idea of things coming from the top down it can be pulled off but things that are grown organically are almost always superior to things that are created from the top down. Okay, let me ask you a question on that, though, because, I mean, you're a pretty driven person. You may be the most driven human being ever, Jocko, just talking to you. You're pretty intense.

So for you to have the patience to be able to slow down and get other people on board and say, I'm not just going to create this and run with this, I'm going to slow down and get alignment on this. how do you develop that level of restraint? It's so easy. What? Shut up. I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why.

You just said it and then you asked a question about it. You know why it's so easy? Because I want to win. I want to win so bad that I have to say to myself, wait, if I want my team to truly be invested in what we're doing, I got to let it come from them. I got to put my ego in check. Because that's the other thing that happens, right? I want to win, so I'm going to step on people. No, if you want to win in the long run, what you should do is lift other people up.

That's what you should do. If you want recognition, the best way to get recognition, you want to satisfy your ego and let your ego get put up on a pedestal, cool. The best way to do that is by setting that thing aside, subordinating your ego to the team and to the mission and getting the job done through performance. And eventually someone's going to look around and go, wow, this is like the ninth project, in a row that's gone exceedingly well. Oh, who's running those?

Oh, that's Jocco. He must have a good team. And you know what your answer is? Yes, I got the best team here. I got the best team here. So I want to win so bad that I know the right thing to do and to form the best team isn't to try and form a team based on my personality. You need to guide the team and you need to to manicure.

cure the team and trim the team, but the growing force of the team has got to be the team itself. You know, this is another conversation I'll have with people, people that are, they're having trouble, right? They're having trouble with their peers. They're having trouble with their boss. They're having trouble with their subordinates. And from their perspective, like, hey, I know how to do this. You know, they'll literally say, I know how to do this and people aren't listening to me.

Or I've been doing this for a long time and no one's paying attention to my experience. Or, hey, you know, I went to one of the best universities in this country and no one's listening to me. And I have a real simple question. And this question actually was derived towards myself. But the question is, if I'm so smart, why am I not winning? And that's a tough question to ask. When you got someone that's got a big ego that says, you know, the problem is, you know, I know what I'm doing and I'm a good leader. but the team is all messed up,

or the company doesn't recognize it, or they're putting these other people in charge. If you're so smart, why is that happening? Why is it happening? Why is my boss selecting someone else to lead this next project? Why is that? If you're so smart and you're so good, why is that?

And I'll tell you, part of the reason, very well might be that every opportunity you get to turn the spotlight on yourself and try and make yourself look good, you do that, you raise your hand, you stick out your chest, And your boss goes, this guy's looking out for himself. And you know what?

I got this other guy over here. I got Alex. And what Alex wants to do is he wants his team to win. And he's over there humbly working and getting it done. And who am I going to pick? The guy that's sticking his chest out or the guy that's over here humbly making things happen. All day long, I'm picking Alex. So if you're so smart, why are you not winning?

And this was a question I originally asked myself when I was in the SEAL teams. I was a young enlisted guy. And I thought to myself, you know, I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing and other people were getting promoted around me. And I would think to myself, why did that guy get promoted? Why did that guy get promoted? I'm better at this job than they are. And then one day I said to myself, hey, genius, if you're so smart, then why aren't you winning?

And the answer is, oh, your ego, your ego, you're looking at trying to, hey, what about me? What about me? What about me? What about me? It's not about you. It's not about you. It's about the team. It's about the mission.

Every single person on this team is more important than me. And this mission is more important than any of us. So let's look at things that way. Let's try and perform based around that. And if you can start doing that, look, are you going to win every time? Nope. There's going to be that loudmouth guy that's seeking attention that's got a big eagle that's feeding their ego and that's taking control and taking credit.

And they're going to get some promotions. That's going to happen. But it's not a long-term win. Because eventually someone says, oh, yeah, that guy, looks out for himself and the boss goes, oh, really? Oh, interesting. And they say, you know who really got that project done was Alex? He was out of the back, he was actually the one that that ran this thing. But you had Bill over here. Yeah, I know. Hey, Bill's a good figurehead. But the guy that makes things happen and over here is Alex. And all of a sudden, Alex gets a promotion. And

the next one that comes around, Bill's getting left behind. So you might lose some short term battles when you subordinate your ego. You might. It's okay. It's okay. You've got to play the long game. You've got to play the long war. You've got to look to win long term, not to win this quarter, not to win this one battle. That's not what you're looking for. As you were talking about that question, all I could think about, I'm a pretty achievement oriented individual, and there are healthy sides to that and awesome sides to that, but just like anyone else, there's unhealthy size of that. And what I thought of was a conversation. It was closer today than I'd like to admit. It was just a couple years ago, but I was talking with one of my friends.

I was frustrated. I was disappointed. And I was saying, I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. Why am I not doing it? I can do all these things. And my friend, although I hated him at the time for saying this, he just looked at me and he said, well, if you can do all those things, why aren't you?

And it's exactly what you're saying. It's that self-evaluation of if I'm so smart, then why am I not winning right now? So how do we have the self-awareness to ask ourselves that question? And how do we cultivate the level of intentionality almost as a leader to not hit a rock bottom where we're forced to reconcile with that moment, but rather regularly look in the mirror and evaluate ourselves? Yeah, this is one of the most common themes that I talk about from a leadership perspective. and in fact in my new book, I talk about the core,

the sort of fundamental leadership principles that everything else that I talk about leadership are built upon. And this principle is called detachment. Being able to take a step back and look around, not emotional, not caught up in the chaos and mayheming. It came from, I was in my first seal platoon, so I'm a new guy. A new guy in a seal platoon, you're not even allowed to talk.

And we're going through our pre-deployment, cycle and we're on an oil rig, an offshore oil rig. So, you know, out in the middle of the ocean, they got these big, giant, crazy oil rigs. And we're practicing, seizing this oil rig and clearing it. So as we're doing these multiple iterations, we're practicing, we're learning some techniques. And then finally, we start doing these live drills where we're going to go through and

clear the whole oil rig. So we're coming up from the water line and we get to the first deck of the, you know, oil rig that's like the full size it's this big giant area and it's covered with equipment and gear and there's pipes going everywhere and there's big boxes full of other equipment and gear so it's a really complicated situation and in order to clear that big area someone made the call to bring everyone in the platoon up onto that deck so so that call gets made everyone floods up onto this deck we're all standing in like a skirmish line in like a civil war skirmish termish line, 16 seals shoulder to shoulder.

And as we're standing there, I'm waiting for someone to make a call, someone to say, hey, move forward, online, hold left, whatever, whatever call was going to get made. I'm waiting. I'm looking down my weapon. I'm scanning the area for threats. And I'm waiting for someone to make a call. And so I wait and no one makes a call. And now I'm thinking to myself, okay, we've been here for, you know, 10 seconds.

Someone needs to make a decision. No one makes a decision. I'm looking down my weapon. I'm scanning. I'm looking for targets. All I can really see is what's in front of me because I'm looking down my weapon. I wait another 10 seconds, another 10 seconds. No calls get made.

Finally, I say to myself, you know, I need to figure out what's going on. So I put my weapon in high port, which is basically lifting my weapon up. So I'm not looking to engage any targets. And I take a step back off the firing line by about probably eight inches. And I look to my left and I look to my right. And what I see is that every single person in my platoon is staring down their weapons, including my platoon commander, including my platoon chief, including my platoon leading petty officer. Everyone in the platoon is just looking down their weapons.

And when you're looking down your weapon, you're not seeing the big picture. Literally, all you can see is the sights of your weapon. So I look to my left, I look to my right, I see that no one is looking around. And I decide, well, I better make a decision here and make a call. So even though I'm a new guy, even though I'm experienced, expecting basically someone just to tell me to shut up, I look and I decide, okay, guys, I say, hold left, clear right, expecting someone to say, shut up. But instead they say, hold left, clear right.

They actually repeat my call, which is what a good COPatoon does when they hear a verbal call. They repeat the call. They repeat the call, and then we execute the call. This is not a complicated thing. It was just like the normal call. So everyone executes the call. And we get done with that iteration. and, you know, one of the older guys, one of the more experienced guys goes to me like, hey, good job on that call.

And I was kind of surprised, right? Because what I realized was all I had to do was detach from the emotions, detach from that immediate tactical problem, detach from looking down my weapon and actually look around instead. And I could see infinitely more than even the most experienced guys in my platoon and make a decision. So from that point on in my life, every tactical situation I was in, I would try and detach. I would try and take a step back. I would try and take a breath. I would turn my head, look around, see where the enemy was, see where the terrain features were, see where we could maneuver to.

I would assess all those things. And I would be way ahead of people that weren't doing that. And that worked for me. It worked in the oil rigs. It worked in the urban environment. It worked in the desert environment. It worked in the wooded environment. It worked everywhere.

And then I started doing it when I was having discussion. with people. And if I was having a discussion with someone and they started getting all emotional, instead of me getting emotional back, I would detach, I would take a step back and I would say, wait a second, why are they mad? Oh, they're mad because they came up with this idea. It's their idea and their egos wrapped around that idea. And by me attacking that idea, I'm actually attacking them. So I need to actually deflect that a little bit, absorb their ego, absorb their idea, and give them an out and then address them in a way that doesn't offend them. And all of a sudden, they let their guard down and we make progress in the conversation.

So this idea of detaching is something that is absolutely critical to leadership. Now, to your question, which is, how do we do this? How do we assess ourselves? It's the same exact thing. What you have to do is you have to detach. You have to take a step back from your decisions, from your plans, from your interactions with other people, and you just said yourself,

hey, how well did I do that? How well did I do that? And you've got to be honest with yourself. So often I see a boss that'll have a counseling session with someone, and they'll feel great about it. They'll think, yeah, you know, I told Alex, I had a little talk,

I had a little face-to-face talk with Alex. I let him know that he's not really meeting the standard right now, and if he doesn't tighten it up, you know, he better start thinking about maybe not getting promoted. Now, what the conversation sounded like to Alex was, this guy doesn't care about, me he doesn't think I have any potential I should actually go look for a job somewhere else because

I have no future here and I'm over here thinking I did a good job so what I need to do is be able to actually assess take a step back and detach and assess what really happened so that I can lead properly so that I can improve my leadership because when I'm failing to assess I'm failing to improve. I'm not going to make any progress on our evaluation chart of our own or that anyone else lays out for us. We've covered a lot of ground in this conversation. We've talked about establishing high standards. We've talked about being so far out front that you're willing to fail. We've talked about getting out of your comfort zone, giving credit, taking ownership for failure, detachment that you just talked about. And ultimately, I think those are all decisions that,

every individual listening to this has to make if they're actually going to move forward in those areas. My final question for you is, why is it worth it? That's a very easy question to answer. Like when you kind of said that, you know, you kind of built it up like it was going to knock me off my feet, right? Hey, why is it worth it? And I can tell you very easily why it's worth it. When you're in a leadership position, you have the ability to impact the lives of everyone around you. there is no better reward in the world than helping other people. And when you have the possibility of doing that, when you have the capability of doing it, and you do it through leadership.

And, you know, I was just kind of giving an example of how I'm going to tell Alex that he messed something up. And I had this conversation a little while ago. When I was in charge of that training for the West Coast SEAL teams, and again, this was tactical training where guys are doing training missions. and when they would do these training missions, oftentimes there would be problems. And I would give the most savage debriefs, especially to the leadership about the mistakes they made,

what they need to do better, where they drop the ball, where they need to improve. And I used to just be ruthless in these debriefs. And yet I would get feedback from guys like everyone, not only they love the training, they would say, they would say, hey, that was great. I appreciate that. Thank you.

They would be thanking me. And so later, someone was commenting to me about, hey, when you used to debrief us, it was like the hardest debriefs we would ever get. The hardest debrief I got in my 25 years of being in the SEAL teams was from you during land warfare, during, they would say you were so, so hard on us. And we loved it. we loved it. And I thought to myself, because I constantly tell people, hey, you know, you can't be,

you know, I can't be hyper-aggressive. If I get with Alex, I can't say, Alex, you know, you drop the ball on this project. I don't know if you have what it takes to be here or whatever. I constantly tell people, hey, you know, you've got to, you've got to make sure that they're listening. You've got to make sure that they're comprehending and understanding what you're saying. And then I kind of contrasted that with the fact that I used to give these super savage debriefs. and I thought to myself, why?

Why was I able to do that? Why was I able to do that? Why did I get away with it? Why were those debriefs not just accepted, but they were desired? And it sounds like they were effective, too. Oh, and they were very effective. It became clear to me in an instant. The reason that guys were so open to me hammering them in these debriefs is because,

because they knew that more than anything else, I cared about them and I cared about their men. And I wanted them to be able to go overseas and I wanted them to take the fight to the enemy and I wanted them to stay alive and come back home. And that's what I cared about. I cared about them. And when your team knows that you care about them,

then it allows you to actually communicate with them. And again, this doesn't give you the license to treat people back. or to be disrespectful, and I never was disrespectful, you know? I never was disrespectful. But I was hard. I was straightforward. But the only reason I was able to get away with that,

the only reason I was allowed to do that and that it was effective is because these guys knew that I cared about them. I wasn't doing it because I wanted to build up my ego. I wasn't doing it because I wanted to look good. I was doing it because truly more than anything, I cared about them, and I wanted them and their men to come back alive. So that idea of being a leader and taking care of your people and it's something that gets thrown around all the time, that's what this is about. So when you ask me why it's worth it to go through these great lengths to become a better leader, it's because when you're in a leadership position, you have the greatest burden and honor of being able to help the people that are below you in the chain of command and that are above you in the chain of command get to a place where they're trying to get to get to.

that's going to make their lives better. And there's no greater blessing in the world than having that opportunity. So to look at leadership and think, well, I'll do okay, that's disrespectful. When you're in a leadership position, that's your profession, that's your job. And the people below you in the chain of command

and the people above you in the chain of command, they're counting on you. They're counting on you to lead. So do everything you can to learn the tools, the tactics, the techniques, the principles that are going to make you a good leader and allow you to take care of those people that you should care about more than anything. Well, Jocko, thank you for your service.

Thank you for your message. And thank you for the way you live out that message every single day. We appreciate you. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it back. Good night. That guy is intense. And I was thinking about why his message is so inspiring.

And I honestly think that the reason why we hear. that and we want to be better and do better is because he is someone that actually lives the message that he talks about. He doesn't just talk about ownership and determination and selfless service. He lives a life of ownership, determination, and selfless service. And I hope that that's an action item you take out of this conversation today is to live a life in alignment with the message that you give every single day. And hey, we referenced that Marine Fitness report throughout the conversation. It's a powerful document. And I've got it printed it on on my desk just to review because that's a great exercise

to really rate yourself as a leader and as a person that is trying to get better every single day. So we want to make it available to you. You can text the word Marines to 3344 and we'll send it to you as a PDF. Again, that's the word Marines to 33444. or you can click the link that's in the show notes. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entree Leadership podcast. If you did, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. For a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card, you can review this episode by clicking the length that's in the show notes.

And be sure to follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, and it was edited and mixed by Will Rutter. I'm Alex Judd, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again. very soon. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like the Chris Hogan Show. I am so excited to be able to talk to you all week in and week out. We're going to talk about your money, your life, your dreams, and your goals. You know why? Because I'm your coach. Whether we're talking about building wealth, paying off your home early,

investing, paying for college, and guess what? How to become an everyday millionaire. We're going to focus on taking your calls because you matter to me. Together, we can do this. This is the Chris Hogan Show. To hear full episodes, just search Chris Hogan wherever you listen to podcasts or go to Chris Hogan 360.com.