Jocko Podcast - 252: When You Cast Judgement, Start with Yourself. Be Reliable, Show Initiative, and Anticipate Problems. "Guidelines for the Leader and Commander" pt.2.

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

0:00:00 - Opening 0:01:48 - "Guidelines For The Leader and Commander", by Gen. Bruce Clarke  1:45:49 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:01:35 - Closing Gratitude.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 252 with Dave Burke and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. Echo Charles is taking care of some other business. On the last podcast, number 251 with Laf Babin, we started getting into the book, guidelines for the leader and commander by General Bruce Clark, but we only made it 13 pages. in two and a half hours.

And it's a 117 page book. Just to recap a little bit, this is a book that I searched for for over a decade. I originally heard about this book in my favorite book, which is called About Face by Colonel David Hackworth. Finally found a copy a month and a half ago. And so here we are.

Just a little background. Once again on General Bruce Clark, World War I, World War II, Korea, enlisted in 1917. Ended up going to West Point. Colonel in World War II, then a general, commanded the Fourth Armored Division in Patton's Third Army. Battle the Bulge, distinguished service cross, three silver stars, 45 years of service. And then spent a bunch of time not only leading troops, but also training troops or overseeing training commands.

So awesome career. Hackworth talked about him glowingly in the book About Face. And that's where this started. It took me a long time to find this book. Who did somebody text me about it and said it was the white whale like you know this was that it was definitely hard for me to find this book but we have it and that's it that's what we're going to do we're going to go back into this book so here we go back into guidelines for the leader and commander by Bruce general Bruce C. Clark so this section starts off with administration some thoughts for the commander and he says In summation, I would like to point out the close interrelationship between training programs and sound overall management. So this is something, you know, when you're that young gung-ho leader that just thinks,

hey, we're here to operate, whatever that operation is, whether it's shooting machine guns or whether that's out selling things or making things, and you think, hey, I'm on the front lines, I'm going to make things happen. And you think all the administrative stuff, you shouldn't have to worry about. That's not me. And I know many individuals that are like that. I know one individual in particular that's like that, whose name is Jocko. Because I was definitely like that.

Many commanders, well, I should say I was like that when I was younger. Because I absolutely, I realized this. And you can hear, you know, we'll talk about the paperwork drills that we had to do and how Laif and Seth came to me. We shouldn't have to do this stuff. And I said, oh, we're going to do it. We're going to do it better than anybody. else so I figured this out but it is it is definitely a learning moment that people have

and so why not learn it right now many commanders are defeated by poor administration imagine that just that statement many commanders are defeated by poor administration not defeated because they were tactically unsound not defeated because they made bad decisions not defeated because they couldn't come up with a good plan they just fail because they're administrative losers without sound administration a a commander cannot succeed in his training and maintenance programs. Good administration is nothing more than applied common sense. I'm including here a number of items that may well be considered a checklist of indicators of sound administration.

Number one. Importance of time. The principal coordinating device in the army is time. Learn the proper time space factors so you can be on. time and make reasonable demands of your subordinates. So that's number one, by the way, which is probably why you hear a lot of talk about time management. Just think about the idea that the first thing he's going to say is time. This is someone who clearly understands that of all the resources in the world that we have,

that's the one that matters the most because we just can't produce more of that. Yeah. I was going to say it's the one that matters the most and it's the absolute one that we have the least control. You know how much control you have time? You've zero. You cannot stop it. You cannot bring it back.

You've got to stay ahead of the power curve. I hate that feeling. I hate that feeling. And let me tell you what. I realize this a while back. So when you go to the airport, if you show up to the airport late, and now, look, TSA doesn't care that you're late. The baggage handler doesn't care that you're late.

The Uber driver does not care what time your plane is leaving. They're doing what they're doing. And so what that does is it takes you have no control over that time once it started to commence. What do you have control over? Going to the airport a little bit earlier. That's all. That's all. Not that big of a deal.

Go to the airport a little bit earlier. And you won't have to worry about TSA. You won't have to worry about baggage. You don't have to worry about how long it takes for the Uber driver or the lift. Let's get proper credit or lift driver to show up and bring you to the airport. So how do you get control? You can't control time. Once it's unfolding, you can't bring it back. You have to you have to plan for it appropriately and there's a there's a sense of urgency and I don't I have a pretty good sense of urgency and you you may have may may may not I know like at the muster especially the earlier musters when we weren't when the back side wasn't quite the well-oiled machine that it is now and it certainly is a well-oiled machine now the early musters it was not a well-oiled machine so on the on the front side people wouldn't know that

When Laif and I were walking out on stage at 8 o'clock in the morning, we had two hours of sleep because we had to do whatever we had to do behind the scenes, and that's just the way it was. I can feel, I can feel the shortage of time. In fact, I think I feel the shortage of time every single day, every single waking minute. There's a thing that happened at some point in my life, and I don't know when that was, but I still think about it now. When you were just talking about the feeling, what I thought you were going to talk about

is the feeling of when you feel like you don't have enough time to do something. So being late or whatever or I've got stuff I need to prepare for. It used to be that I used to feel there wasn't enough time. And the feeling that makes me sick now is that any time I'm behind, which happens. I look at it like, man, I'm behind. I didn't get enough done here. I didn't prep enough here. The feeling that bothers me the most is looking back on the time that I wasted the day before

or the week before when I thought, hey, this is now I need to get ahead. I got a little window. I got some white space here, which is actually pretty rare. and I look back on the time that I wasted, which is very different than there isn't enough time. I honestly don't think I've ever felt like I didn't have enough time. I always feel like I have wasted time. And that feeling of when I'm behind or unprepared,

man, that drives me nuts as to look back on what did I do yesterday or the day before? How did I waste so much time knowing that I can't get that back? And that's the feeling that bothers me. I think more than any other feeling is I wasted my time. Yeah. That is a dozy. And this is, by the way, item number one. Item number one.

Importance of time. Next, anticipate problems. Troublesome incidents or situations can be avoided if the probable consequences of existing conditions are previously anticipated. Incidents do not occur until the stage has been set for some time. The outstanding officer knows where things are likely to go wrong and, plans preventive action. Spend a little bit of time thinking of through contingencies and then come up with a plan. And you don't even have to come up with this elaborate plan.

You just have to know what you're going to do in a broad sense. Next, personality of the commander. Personality of the commander has an enormous influence on his unit. In fact, the unit may be said to be nothing but an extension of the commander. commander's personality. It is essential that he makes his presence felt by leaving his desk to appear where work and training go on and by talking to and knowing and influencing his men. How many times did you see that in the Marine Corps?

How about going for like checking into a squadron? How much would the squadron reflect the commander of the squadron? Completely. I mean, that was always the ultimate difference. Because the thing about squadrons, it's probably true in a SEAL team, is that if you look at the squadrons from the outside, I was base at Miramar. There were seven F-18 squadrons when I was there. On paper, they're all identical. Same equipment. Every metric that you would measure it, it's all the same. There isn't one squadron, like, that they get better stuff or better people.

They just get the same thing that everybody else gets. And the only difference was obviously the commander or the leader, and the squadrons would take on those personalities, almost immediately when the new commander take over. It's not it's it's crazy. It's crazy. That's an extension of, you know, the boat crew story in extreme ownership. Hey, we swap out, we put in a good leader into this boat crew that's failing and all of a sudden you've got this totally legit boat crew that's winning. And that happens.

How many people in a squadron? 200. 200 people. How many aircraft? 12. 12 aircraft. 200 people. And boom.

You put a good leader in there. But I will say this, though. Well, you can correct me if I'm wrong. but the Marine Corps, from my experience, has a tighter group, a tighter variance on their officers than, well, then certainly in the SEAL teams. So in other words, you might get,

in the SEAL teams, you might get these outstanding officers, and then you'd get some really good officers, some solid officers. That's kind of like the normal. You have some really kick-ass guys. You have a bunch of normal guys. And then you have the bottom group, which would be pretty outside the range.

So the range would be pretty big. It seemed to me like the Marine Corps always had just tight. You know, it's more controlled. It's a more controlled group. It's a tighter group. Maybe the high end is not as often that you're going to get some just guy that's outside the box of stellar. Look, maybe, I don't know.

But I do know this. The chances of having a Marine Corps platoon commander that doesn't meet the grade is very low. And in the SEAL teams, it would happen more often because there's more slack. There's more room. You're given more rope to hang yourself. And you give guys rope and they can take that rope and they can turn it in something awesome or they can hang themselves. I always kind of notice that. Yeah, I think that's right.

And, you know, when you're inside that, the disparity or that variance becomes more evident to you as you're inside that. And you can see that. So there still is a variance. And when we looked at good squadrons or bad squadrons, however you wanted to define that, a lot of times it was kind of just a feeling. Almost like an intangible quality of that's a good squadron and that's a bad squadron. And the way we judge that was how their people acted. And you know how their people acted? A reflection of their leadership, which is exactly what he just said.

and the squadens would take on the persona and the personality of their leaders, and the good leaders had good squads. And the bad leaders, or the leaders that weren't as good, their squages reflected that. So you got 12 aircraft. And then are those aircraft broken up into sections or platoons somehow? Or is it just every man for himself? No, I mean, they had 12 aircraft that in theory were all the same. You know, they weren't all flyable at a time.

But no, we wouldn't break them down. We would fly an element sometimes at two or four. ship, but the aircraft were just rotated through. So you could be in any given aircraft on any day. So in a seal platoon, you could have a great officer and you could have a great platoon. You could also have a great platoon chief or a great leading petty officer or assistant platoon commander, chances are you're not going to get a pipe hitting assistant. You can get some really solid guys, but they just don't have the experience.

So basically what you needed was ah. Ah, singular, really good leader. Didn't necessarily need to be the top guy, but somebody, you know, at a SEAL team, you might have a great SEAL team commanding officer. You also might have, and that could really make the whole SEAL team great. You could also have a great SEAL team command master chief who's a kick-ass guy. You could have a great SEAL ops master chief.

So as long as you had one of these guys in the team. that was legit badass, you could, you're going to pull it off unless you get somebody that's an idiot in there too. If you get somebody with the big ego, you know, the, the, the, the command master chief has a big ego or the commanding officer has a big ego and all of a sudden you got conflict. Then you, you know, all bets are off and we got mayhem. But chances are if you got one good leader, you're going to, you're going to, the group will take on the personality of the commander. So if you don't like the personality of your team, guess what? Go look in the mirror. Next, counseling of individuals.

At the company level, the commander and the chaplain are the ones to whom the men will come for guidance when they have to, when they have or think they have problems. Most commanders are usually surprised at the number of men who actually have real personal difficulties. These may take a variety of forms, money, troubles, family difficulties, disciplinary problems, character weaknesses and spiritual conflicts. The commander's problem is twofold. First, he must train himself to recognize and to look for the early signs that identify a man with problems. Early recognition of a problem, like timely diagnosis of a disease, makes the treatment and cure easier. Second, having identified the problem, the commander must take the proper steps to correct it. Often his own counseling will have to be sufficient.

But in other cases, he will have to call on others for help. Here it is essential that the correct source be used that the man whose pay record is in correction be sent to the chaplain But to the finance clerk. All right. So we're we're we're making sure that we identify problems We have to look for that This has always been a problem for me because no one ever tells me anything when something's going wrong No one wants to tell me that they're overworked or they're they don't want to do another operation or whatever no one ever wants to tell me that So I have to drag it out of people. I have to have intel sources that will tell me that the troops are getting tired or the guys are worn out or whatever.

Recognition of outstanding work. This is the next section. A sure way to instill loyalty is to recognize outstanding work from your subordinates. Satisfaction in a job well done as a trait of all men. And recognition by others of the same good work will appeal to the vanity that lies in all of us. Another thing I'm bad at. I'm horrible at recognizing people for good work. I just think everyone's doing what they should be doing,

and it's very seldom that I take the time to thank somebody. I usually have to think about it. I'm horrible at that. Leif has told me, though, that when I would say something that someone did good, they'd be super stoked that every go would be fired up. Recognition can take many forms, decorations, letters of comments, Oral acknowledgement at a formation or the issuance of a three-day pass, but whatever the form is essential that the commander is alert To outstanding performance to give timely public recognition when it is due

Can I just can I what about just a simple head nod? Is that work? Yeah, that can work man I mean part of that is you got to pay attention to what matters to your people Yeah, and you know the thing that I always craved the most the recognition I didn't I The recognition I wanted was to be left alone and if my leadership didn't When my leadership wasn't micromanaging me and giving me the flexibility, that was him, okay, I must be doing something right. Cool. We're good. But there's nothing wrong with recognition.

I'm not trying to pile on the idea of like don't acknowledge your people's good work. But what it matters to somebody doesn't always matter to everybody. And you got to actually pay attention to what matters. And over time, the head nod and keep doing what you're doing, dude, that's good to go. Yeah. You know, I had trouble with this because, and I still do, because, you know, when you're the boss, right? Well, in my mind, you know, if I say, hey, Dave, good job. I just, I think you don't care about that because I'm just some other guy that's trying to work hard and whatever.

And I remember, I've told the story before I was, first got to Ramadi, needed a certain type of laptop computer for my office. and the radio guy, the IT guy, the radio man guy, who's a great dude, I told him, hey, I need to have a sipper and a nipper laptop side by side. And he's like, hey, we don't really have enough nipper. These are, I needed a classified computer and an unclassified computer side by side so that when I was working, I could, if I needed some information that was from the unclassified side, I could look it up if and then continue to work on whatever else working on. So I remember I said, hey, I called him into the Tackle Operations Center and I said, hey, I want a classified computer here and an unclassified computer here. And he goes, well, we don't really have enough unclassified computers. And I kind of went, oh, okay. And then a few minutes later, I walked through the chow hall.

And we had set up this unclassified computer station with six computers for everyone to use. Now, everyone had computers in their tent too. This wasn't like, you know, everyone was lined up to use these six computers. No, it was just somebody decided, hey, we'll put some internet computers out here. And so I walked out there. I said, wait a second. We have all these unclassified computers right here. And I went back and I said, hey, man, those computers that are out there give one to me.

And he was like, oh, Roger that. And I realized, oh, I need to make the call on that. And what I say has impact, you know. And so when you say something negative, it has a big impact. Because, you know, sometimes that plan doesn't make any sense. and everyone just will be quiet because they think that you don't like the plan. When reality is, you're just thinking,

maybe we could come up with a different plan. So you got the overall, and I wrote about this in leadership strategy and tactics, your words have power and impact. So remembering that when you give someone some compliments, it may have some, it has more significance than you might think. Efficiency reports.

I was thinking myself when I saw this, I was like, ah, you know, I'll kind of skip over this. Who cares? You know, no one wants to hear about efficiency reports. Then I read it. And I said, oh, I will absolutely include this. With the advent of enlisted efficiency reports, the commander, so efficiency reports,

so for in the civilian sector, what this would boil down to is, you know, an evaluation, so performance evaluation for someone. The commander now has a new tool, which will assist him in gaining the desired motivation from his key enlisted personnel. Too often, the efficiency report becomes the padlock on the barn door after the horse has been stolen. What a great way to think about wasting some kind of evaluation format, performance evaluation. Hey, Dave, you went and did something for a year. You did your job and then you show up after a year and I say, yeah, you didn't do that great of a job. What good is that? The horse

already got stolen. I have found that unacceptable performance and the resultant bad efficiency reports can often be reduced to a minimum through early effective observation and counseling. Gee, what a novel idea. When Dave starts screwing up, don't wait six months to give him an efficiency report. Say, hey, Dave, it's been three weeks you've been on this project. I already see that you're heading the wrong direction. Let's talk. If a commander makes it a practice to observe his men closely and call them in periodically

for an evaluation of their performance in terms of strengths and weaknesses, he can often correct deficiencies without it becoming necessary to issue an unsatisfactory efficiency report. Boom. It's a tool that you've got that you can use. A three-part program of, and here's the three parts, observation and evaluation, counting and guidance of the individual, and then further observation to determine. the response to the counseling is your key to effective use of the efficiency report then it becomes a tool for

improvement rather than merely a reward or punishment for past performance wow Wow imagine that and it's unsat because in the Navy you get an evaluation or a fitness report once a year and there's a lot of companies that we work with that do something similar there's that's just not often it's not often enough It's not even close. And those periodic evaluations, they actually don't even need to be that formal. It's really just the core of building relationships is getting to know your people by being out with them. The best thing you can do is know your people well enough to be able to recognize when they're going in the wrong direction.

And if you talk to your people once a year, you're not going to know that because you don't even know what they're typically like. And so if I'm working with you and I know Jocko pretty well, and all of a sudden Jock shows up one day and he's not Jock, I can get involved for you. right then. But the only way for me to tell that you're not yourself or not doing the things that I'm used to is I've got to be around you just a little bit more. And you don't need to track all this stuff every single time. You don't need to know the formal piece of it. Formal counseling is important. But the best tool you've got is to actually know them well enough to go, something's not right. And if you can intercept that on day one rather than day 30 or 60 or 90, not only do you actually help solve that problem, that other person recognizes

that you know and care about them enough to get involved. And being able to do that is really a function of your time more than anything else, of being around your people to know them well enough to identify that when they're off the path. So it comes down to time management. When I talk about planning and I say, okay, if I give Dave a mission tasking and say, okay, Dave, come up with a plan on how you want to do this, if I leave for 12 hours and you were three degrees off in what you thought you should do versus what I thought you should do.

I come back 12 hours. There's 12 hours of wasted time because you've been going on the wrong direction. And now you're way off course. If I go, hey, Dave, here's the mission you need to execute. Here's the task. Come up with some con-offs. I'll be back in a half an hour.

You're three degrees off. It barely even takes a nudge to get you right back on track and we're tracking. So the earlier you give people corrective measures, the minimum, the limit of what, what you have to do to get them back on course is totally limited. It's the minimum force required. So if you and I, if I said, hey, Dave, here's a mission tasking.

Come up with how you want to do. I'll be back in half an hour. When I came back in a half an hour and you're three degrees off course, I barely, I probably would be able to get you back on course by asking you a, not even telling you anything, just by saying, hey, what do you think about, what do you think about this area up to the north? Do you think there could be enemy up there? that's kind of what the Intel says, right?

And you'd say, yeah, and I'd say, oh, are you going to put a blocking force up there? You didn't have a blocking force in your plan. You go, yes, absolutely. And cool. Now we're totally square. If I walked away for 12 hours and let you come up with a plan, you're wide open to the enemy attack from the north. You use your blocking force in a totally different area. You don't even have enough people now because you didn't.

So it's just, it's totally wrong. And now we've got to come in with blunt force trauma. And now it's not your plan anymore. You've given up ownership. It's just a nightmare. It's crazy. So the earlier I get involved, the less force I have to use. And my goal is the leader is to use the minimum force required.

And the longer I wait to use force, the worse it's going to be. And if you're out there thinking about the time, the daunting task of spending all that time up front, the ROI on your investment of time up front is, is, it's unlimited because if you make that investment up front, which seems like a lot of time, what you save on the back end of that. So from the time manager standpoint, yes, it is an additional investment

of a little bit of time up front. It is, and you got to account for that time. That is not free time. But what you save from that, all day. All day. It's not even close.

And you know what's funny is you, I disagree with you because you say it's this big investment up front. It's not, it's no investment up front. It's me going, hey, Dave, how are you going to execute this?

And you go, oh, I'm going to do it like this. And I go, oh, don't forget there's enemy. there you're going to put a blocking force. Oh, okay, cool. There we go. That took 18 seconds.

It's the story we tell ourselves like, hey, I can't come back in 30 minutes ago. You actually can. You're absolutely right. And it's the idea of whatever it seems like I don't have time. A, you do have time. And if you do need to do some mental calculation of that time, the ROI in that time is well worth whatever you might miss for that five minute check-in that happens up front. And it also shows another person, oh, Jocko cares.

Jocco's in the game. Jocco's paying attention. I wonder if that means I'm going to be more or less interested in giving you a really good plan if I know you care about it. You know, it's interesting too. R.O.Y. The R.O.Y on time is that it doesn't even make sense. And I'll tell you why. Because I don't get that time back.

If you're supposed to execute a mission tonight and I give you 12 hours to plan and I go, hey, here's the mission you got to execute. And I don't come back and check in. By the time 12 hours go by and I don't. realize that your plan is a total disaster it's not that the ROI it's not I don't get return on my investment it's that we it's it's it's bankruptcy it's total failure it's total and complete failure I can't even get it back the ROI is negative it's horrible whereas a little investment up front total game changer totally now here's another section I wasn't going to read and I remember I sent you a picture of this book

or a section of the book and you you said just read the whole just you're gonna just cover the whole thing yeah and I was kind of like yeah you know that's cool I'm sure I'll cover a lot of it but I you know I'm always I don't want to waste people's time so I'm looking for okay what can we streamline a little bit so there was a section called promotion then look if you're in the civilian world how much do you care about how they advance people in the army in 1952 right whatever and then I read it a little bit I go okay well looks like we're covering this too and I'll tell you how in a second so it says promotion the promotion policy of a commanders of a command has a strong bearing on morale and overall efficiency. It must be fair.

And by the way, this is one thing that you're going to start to pick up in this section of the book and in some of the other sections. There is absolutely part of General Clark that is looking to get promoted. And you can feel it and there's going to be other places where you feel it. And what's cool is you'll feel it and he'll say it. And then a little later on, he's, He'll hint that, you know what, that doesn't really even matter. So we're going to go back and forth. We're going to come up against some of these things where you say, okay, he's a, he's a guy that really cares that's in the game just to get promoted, right?

Which I am not a big proponent of, hey, your main reason to be in the game is get promoted. That being said, if I have got a team and I want to take care of my team, well, how do I do the best job taking care of my team? I get promoted so I have more leverage and more power and I can be positive influence on even more people. So getting promoted, if you're getting promoted for yourself, we don't like that. And by the way, when I say we, I'm talking about the people that work for you. If you're getting promoted for yourself, they don't like it. We don't like that.

But if you're getting promoted so that you can help the team achieve their mission, protect the team, take care of the team, grow the team. influence the team in a positive way. If that's why you're getting promoted, cool, good on you. Good. We like that. You're doing it for the right reasons. And if you think, if you think,

if you think you can sneak around and get promoted for yourself, but you don't really meet it, I'm promising you. I promise you, everybody sees it. So, promotion, it must be fair. Buy it, the commander can encourage men to develop themselves for permissions,

for positions of super, and leadership the commander should consider the following qualifications and attributes when considering a man for promotion so he goes into a list and what I did and what I wrote down here was when I go through this list aim the aim this list at yourself you aim this list at yourself are you promotable number one reliability number one reliability number one reliability number one reliability when when when I talk about relationships I use the word relationships I'm really talking about trust and Trust if you don't have trust inside of a team all is lost

We yeah so the question is how do you build trust? Well, let me give you a good hint the number one clue right here Be reliable be reliable. Okay, so that's number one number two His knowledge of his present job and his preparation for the next higher one So be knowledgeable. Proficiency test scores. Leadership. Can he direct men? Ability to organize and manage a job.

Again, these are all things. If you aim these things at yourself, it is a powerful thing to think about. Knowledge to detect and courage to correct errors in subordinates. Initiative. Does he perform well without close supervision? appearance, military courtesy, and neatness. This makes me happy that I wrote the Warrior Kid Books. Maintenance of equipment, individual and organizational, attitude, loyalty, enthusiasm, ability as an instructor.

Ability as an instructor. And I'll tell you where I've been thinking about that. There's a couple of the things that will clue in on this. We've been talking, we've been developing leadership. certification program at Eshlam Front. And one of the things that we've been dancing around is the fact that there's, there's maybe, well, we were dancing around with like two different pipelines. Like, you're either a trainer that's going to train people how to lead or you're a leader

and you're in a supervisory position and you're a management position and you're a leader. And then we've kind of gotten to a point where we say, listen, these are the same thing. and in order to become a good leader, you have to be able to teach. You have to be able to show people how to do things. So it's interesting that he's got ability as an instructor. Because listen, if I'm going to promote you, Dave, from being in charge of a squad to being in charge of a platoon, I want you to be able to teach. I want you to be able to instruct.

That is absolutely important. And in a leadership environment, I want you to be able to teach the team about leadership. I want you to be able to teach When I put you in charge of a platoon, I want you to be able to teach your squad leaders how to lead. I want you to be able to teach your fire team leaders how to lead. And I also want you to be able to teach them how to break down a 240 golf, right? I want you to be able to teach those things.

So the ability to be an instructor is important, and it's equally important because when we teach, we learn. Yeah. That second point was what I was thinking in my head a lot is, you know, Top Gun for my community is kind of the apex of instruction. You know, the quality of instruction is kind of at its peak there because you get to focus just on that. You don't have all these other distractions going on, so you focus on that. I learned more there than I did anywhere else.

And the ability to teach really comes from how much you truly understand something. And for me, being able to fly an airplane or run the radar or manage the systems, a lot of people can do that. But when you try to teach something, it exposes your gaps in knowledge. And a good teacher, when they break down what they're going to teach, they recognize, oh, I don't actually understand this very well. So before I teach it to you, I got to go learn about this more. So the learning connected to the teaching, I learned more because my obligation was to teach it. And as I'm learning to teach, exposed all the things I didn't know.

So a good teacher actually has to understand it better than anybody else. And that connection between those two is so critical. And the idea of teaching is, I think, a reflection more than anything of how well you truly know something. And you don't really test yourself on how well you know it until you have to explain it to somebody else. Yeah. Right as you started, I just wrote down, you know, well, I hope he's about to say that as you teach, you learn. And that's exactly what you said. You identify the gaps in your own knowledge and you go, okay, I better figure this out.

I better go run this drill. I better pull the thread on that until I understand it better. Next, participation in unit and community activities. Does he use his time off to improve himself? Aim that one at yourself. Is he a good soldier all the time? Is the job he is charged with being done better now than it was when he took over? Judgment and common sense.

A good scale of values. Ability to receive and carry out instructions. has he been efficiently filling his grade position? Accident record, incident record, AWOL in Article 15, which means has the dude gotten in trouble before? Really powerful list. There may be other considerations. They should add up to confidence that the man will play as part well under any conditions,

especially in unusual situations. What's interesting about that? Why does that make me like think awesome thoughts? Because what that says is that this military guy who believes in discipline and believes in being able to do your job and being able to receive and carry out instructions, that's what he said. But he wants you to be especially able to perform in unusual situations. Well, how do you get good at performing unusual situations? You get tested, you get tasked, you get things thrown at you and you have to use your mind. It's great that you can, you have the ability to receive and carry out instructions.

This is my point. It's great that you have the ability to receive and carry out instructions. That's great. But if I throw something unusual at you and what you have to do is figured out and you don't know how to do that, we got a problem. Unless you want him as a member of your team, do not promote him or recommend him for promotion. The promotion policy of a unit commander should be published and understood by all. And then it goes into this next section, elimination of ineffective personnel.

Dicotomy leadership. When to hire, when to fire, when to fire. When to mentor, when to fire. It is the commander's duty to contribute to raising the standards of the United States Army. What a beast statement that is. It is the commander's duty to contribute to raising the standards of United States Army. One approach to this goal is a continuous evaluation of his personnel, officers, non-commissioned officers, and enlisted men alike. When ineptness is revealed or continuing ineffectiveness is detected in officers and non-commissioned officers, it is the commander's duty to see that corrective measures are taken elimination or reduction in grade as appropriate. it. So you've done your escalation of counseling. I've done everything I can to see if I can

straighten Dave Burke out. He can't make it happen. Dave Burke needs to go bye-bye. The importance of a good but fair reduction policy is often overlooked. Few things disrupt a unit more than the presence of inefficient leaders. Gee, that comes as a big shock, right? Few things disrupt the unit more than the presence of inefficient leaders. So let's think about this. If Dave's work for me and Dave is inefficient and Dave doesn't do a good job and Dave drops the ball and Dave's working for me and I continue to allow Dave to be there. What is the team think of me? Yeah, what does it say about you as a leader? It says I suck as a leader. That's what it says. Or it says that you don't actually care because this leader, this Dave that's underperforming, who is he actually affecting?

He's affecting the whole team. And, you know, a synonym for that reduction in rank is that's Rank is essentially responsibility. So as your rank grows in the military, your responsibility grows. So you don't have to have a ranking structure in your organization. You've got responsibility for, you know, this guy's a team leader or a supervisor or impacts a team. This guy's underperformance that you tolerate doesn't just affect this underperformer.

It's all the people in his influence. And they're looking at you saying, this is what Jocko's going to put up with. This is the bar that he's going to tolerate. And oh, by the way, this affects me personally. And just like on the, other extreme of getting rid of people way too soon, way too prematurely that you haven't invested

in, keeping the wrong people around in terms of what that does to your leadership capital? Regulations provide for the reduction of enlisted men and the separation of officers for inefficiency and actual performance of their job or as a result of misconduct. The latter is where we fall most often. We fail or sorry, the ladder is where we fail most often. We fail most often. We We fail because we do not face up to the fact that key personnel to be good leaders of young men must also have good character. Poor character will inevitably manifest itself in poor conduct. Leaders influence the actions of their subordinates. Most leaders are considered by those of less rank as highly qualified and competent.

Therefore, when poor conduct is manifested off duty by anyone in leadership capacity, It has a detrimental effect on the entire unit. Especially dangerous in this regard are those key personnel who are outstanding in their work. For their influence is even greater on troops who, observing them, will often emulate their actions even to the point of delinquency. If this condition persists, it can lead to a broken breakdown of discipline throughout the unit in an incredibly short time. leaders with character deficiencies, regardless of how good they might appear in field training, are a luxury we cannot afford. What did you write down?

I wrote down character and conduct. What I was thinking, as you're reading this, you cannot, and I learned this in the Marine Corps, you cannot separate your work life from some other part of your life. If you were a leader, you are committed to being. a leader all the time. And where you are scrutinized the most, where there's most risk is how you act off the clock, if you want to call it that. So I could stand up in front of my Marines and tell them all the things I expect from them, whatever those might be. I could make a list that are all good and I could behave like that at work. If I go out in town or back in my personal life or

anywhere else outside of work, and I reveal that I don't live by the expectations I set for my people, and my character is revealed that I don't actually apply those to myself. the degree to which that undermines me as a leader at work is actually much worse than if I just wasn't great at work and I'm just working on it and trying to get better. And your character, your character sooner or later is going to be revealed because you're going to find yourself in a place where you think nobody's looking or you're going to find yourself in an environment where you think it's okay. And who you are is going to come out.

And he said, I wish I read exactly what is, your character will be connected to your conduct. So who you really are eventually is going to influence how you behave and if your plan is to put on a good front at work You're gonna get found out and the damage to that your credibility and the damage to the team if that's That you just you simply cannot separate who you are as a leader and have a period of time or a place where you don't have to hold yourself to that same standard Yeah, that's what I was that's what I wrote down when you were talking was hey you can try to and put up that front, what you already said, if you try and put up that front, if you in your mind and your little tiny brain,

because it is tiny, if this is what you think, you have a small brain, if in your brain, your tiny little brain you think, it doesn't really matter. No one will notice. Your brain is small and you are stupid

because everybody sees that. Everybody. And everybody is watching you all the time. They're watching it. They see you all the time. Crazy. Reenlistment. While the commander should play

heavy emphasis on reenlistment and do all in his power to retain effective personnel he should bear in mind that the army wants quality not quantity make your program selective social life every army post should be close-knit happy family commanders can foster this by ensuring that families of their men have adequate social life a particular importance is the inclusion of youth activities designed especially for youth and not for adults good programs in this field will not just happen they will require your best people you know when you you start looking at building what you just said.

You know, how do you expect the people to act if you haven't given them a good support structure with their family? It just doesn't work. It is essential that all recommendations, he talks about this non-commissioned to officers advisory council, which is, hey, you can assemble groups of your workers, of your team, of your employees, the leaders, the frontline troops. You can assemble groups of them and get feedback from them. And he says it's essential that all recommendations receive the attention of the major commander concerned for failure to act on justified recommendations will defeat the whole purpose of having these councils. And you know, it's interesting. We've been doing some work at Eshlam Front with some of these councils, which is always cool because now you're getting people from different cross sections of the company that are sort of these councils.

And that's been interesting. It's been very interesting. And it's kind of what we do anyways. When we go into a company, we get a cross-section. But it's nice when the companies already have a cross-section that we are talking to. So if you're running a company right now or if you're in a company right now, it's a good idea to think about putting together some kind of a council where you say, hey, we need to take the best ideas, take the best practices, take the grievances that we have. Assemble them together in a logical way to push them up the chain of command. Because if the boss has us working late every Friday and the boss doesn't know how much that negatively impacts us, how can we expect them to change it?

Answer, we cannot. Get together. Put forth information in a consolidated effort so that the boss knows what's happening. And if you're the boss and you get that feedback, implement as best you can. Act on it. Direction of staff. The staff is no more than an extension. of the commander's abilities and a good commander must be able to handle the staff property.

Officers of a staff should carry out the commander's policies enthusiastically by the same token should bring to the attention of the commander those matters deserving his personal attention. Staff visits. To make sound decisions, the commander must receive timely and reliable reports from his staff, which means that his staff must visit unit activities. So talk to us, Dave, about what they're talking about when they say staff. So the command, like when I was a commander of a unit, my staff, I had, I had subordinate leaders that were responsible for, for different elements.

So I'd have like an operations staff that ran the operations. I have a maintenance staff that ran the maintenance and logistics and supply and all the different components. And out underneath these leaders, which were really staff officers, kind of, of building the plans were a whole bunch of people implementing their processes or their or their SOPs or whatever they had created. If you got a staff officer, someone working for you that has a plan and has their team implementing the plan out in the field or out on the flight line and they don't go out there to see how effective it is, what the real barriers are, what the problems are,

and they are sort of operating in that vacuum of their staff position or in their cubicle, their office and they're out there with those people. They have no sense of the real feedback of the problems and the challenges their people facing while they're implementing their plans. And so it comes, I think it's as simple as what you described. I think he said it like in the first pages, leave your office and go out and spend time with your people to see what's really going on down there. But what if seven years ago I had that job and I kind of remember what it was like back then.

Is that good? Does that cover me? No. The, it also is just the connection to having. your people see that you're willing to go out there and just spend time with them, the benefit of spending time with your people, on one sense, it's actually really important. And we can talk about all the different things that I would learn when I just spent time with my people. I learned about things. I learned how things worked. I learned the challenges they had. But there is a amount of,

there is some level of effort that it takes for you to get away from your desk as a leader to go spend time with your people. And I, and most of the time, your troops actually understand that. They know it's not as simple for the, for the CEO to just get away. So when you do, The power of you doing that is really significant. They recognize that you're making the effort to do it. Now, if you're planning to do, we call these touch and goes, had go out there and like show your face to the team. If that's your kind of like, hey, I'm going to show my face

and you don't actually get out, spend time with them, they're going to see that coming a mile away. But if you just spend a little time, what you'll end up getting is a bunch of unfiltered feedback that didn't run through the chain and get chopped by all your staff all the way up to you. You get unfiltered feedback. Get sterilized.

Totally. You know what? What you want more than anything? You want a 19-year-old Lance Corporal who's turning a wrench on a jet to explain to you why this is hard. Now, of course, you want you to use the chain to command. I want that to run through the chain.

I want to see that in multiple ways. But if you want unfiltered feedback to what's really going on with your team, you have to get down to spend time with your team. That being said, back to the book. It is essential, however, that a staff officer making such visits understands the thin line that divides staff supervision from meddlesome interference.

So there's the dichotomy of leadership. Don't be jumping the chain. He must realize that he is not a commander, should avoid criticizing subordinate commanders and report instead their shortcomings to his commander. And should he see that his reports reflect favorably as well as unfavorable conditions? So you've got to make sure that you're not just being a rat going out there. Yeah. And you've got to make sure that you don't.

Don't interfere, right? It can cause interference. You know, some if if Dave, you're having a meeting at Eshalon front and you've got all the instructors because you want to cover some L DAP information and you're doing a Zoom meeting and you're going to talk shop about a bunch of different things and all of a sudden I just pop in there. Well, you know, what am I doing in there? And you had an agenda and all of a sudden I'm in there like there's times where I'm just causing interference and that's really not what we're. looking to do. Now all that being, oh, go ahead. I was just going to say, especially as I got more senior, when I was in charge of an entire squadron, my bias was actually towards trying to spend time. And my bias was towards normalizing their view of me as a person. And let me just explain that for a minute.

Every single person in the squadron knew who the squadron commander was. Everybody from the next in command to me, my number two guy, all the way down. to my most junior Marine. And if I did nothing, the natural state would be for them to put a, almost put me in a pedestal, but they couldn't even relate to me as a person. Along with that, I really didn't have a lot of time. I was busy doing a lot of things, especially dealing with higher headquarters and other components.

So I didn't have all day every day. So the times that I was out there was rare because I'd simply had a lot going on. So my bias, and I'm talking the needle a little bit off-scent. My bias was if I could spend a little more time instead of a little less time. If I could get a little more understanding what's going on than a little less, that was my bias. Because the natural tendency for most people would almost put a commander on a pedestal. It's not even a person. He's elevated to a status that it's almost unrelatable.

And if I could create just a little bit of thawing of, hey, I'm a normal person. I really want to know what's going on in here. I really want to have some connection on what you're doing. I would bias towards that. There were so many other forces at play. There was very little risk of me being the type of guy that I'm just hanging out, hey, what's going on down here?

How's your boss and what? So the risk of there was lower. Your point, I think that point is totally valid. And the reason I'm making mention of this is that at least in the military, the chain of command is understood. And the barrier for me was that being so rigid that people didn't see me as a person

who really wanted to know what's going on. So I would bias in that direction as a if I was splitting the difference when what I was going to do I would try to spend more time than less If you're not seen as a human being You don't have connections with the troops if you don't have any connections with the troops None of this none of it nothing that we're talking about even matters in the way shape or form basically Basically just you've got to be a person Yeah the question of visitors back to the book a commander can expect many inspectors and visitors and it should be his policy to encourage and welcome visits and import from important officials this of course

means that his house must be constantly kept in order that is how it should be for the unit that is uniformly excellent in all things at all times is one that will be outstanding in battle look upon visitors not as interruptions or harassment but as the chance to show the public just how really good your unit is that's that's that That's pretty epic. Dude, that is so important. And I keep coming back to my time as a squadron commander because when I commanded a unit, it was the very first operational F-35B squashing in the world.

It was the focal point of all things marine aviation. It was under a microscope. And we had visitors all the time. Everything from like U.S. senators, four-star generals, the local congressmen, everybody wanted, there's a massive investment in time. and they wanted to know what's going on. And there's a propensity towards when we get, hey, you're getting a notification, you're getting this delegation's coming to visit, was what they would focus their time on is

preparing for that visit. And I wanted no time spent on preparation for the visit. We're not going to clean the floors. We're not going to, we are going to operate as normal. I want them to come down and see. And if you actually are that squared away unit, you don't need to prepare for those visits. And if your plan is, oh, they're coming. Hey, everybody started to shine in your boots and empty in trash cans and cleaning the tops of doors that you would, things you would not normally do.

My view on visits was they can show up any place, any time, anywhere with no notice. I don't care. And if I'm not there, no factor, somebody will cover down. Staff sergeant will cover down. Lieutenant, I don't care. And the message that sent to the Marines was twofolders. One is, hey, the boss doesn't freak out when people come to visits, no big deal. And if we're actually as squared away as we think we are, who cares?

Show up. Come check it out. You're going to see. What you're going to see is the best squadron in the world. That's what you're going to see. So no factor. Visits are not a big deal. Check.

Unit athletic programs. Athletic programs developed in conjunction with the physical fitness program will do much to enhance the physical stamina of unit. Why do I cover this? Why do I, why don't I even cover this? Well, because it's true. Well, because if we're out there so focused on leadership

that we don't. We let our physical bodies fall apart. We're wrong. And he knows that. An active interest in athletics is provided by the commander through proper motivation and personal interest. A well-planned and integrated athletic program is an important part of any units training program. It will. Take the minds of the men off what some of them consider as the monotony of training.

Help keep the command in better physical shape. help build a unit of spree to core, help develop self-discipline and team spirit. Man, we get away from that. Emphasis in athletic programs should be on the small unit level, such as company battery troop rather than at higher levels. So look, I don't know what situation you're in in life or what your business is doing, but doing something physical together is very, very, very. Helpful.

Anybody that's ever done an FTX with Eschalon Front knows exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, even come to the muster, you know, come to the muster and come do PT at the muster and you're doing something that's hard, but it's fun and we're having a good time. We're doing them. Oh, by the way, we're doing the muster December 4th and 5th. No, December 3rd and 4th in Texas. And we're still going to do PT. We're not quite figured out what we're going to do instead of Jiu-Jitsu on the closing night, but we're going to figure something all. Awesome out.

But why? Why do we do that? Because people feel better. It brings the, look, people that will have a thousand people there. Well, for the muster in the next muster, we won't have a thousand people there. We'll probably have a third of that or maybe half that. But people from all over the country will get together. They've never met before.

And they will bond in 45 minutes of early morning PT. If you get up at five in the morning and PT, you'll be less tired. that if you got up at 7 in the morning and went straight to the conference room, you'll be less tired. Stopped at the donut factory. So he talks about attractive living areas, you know, providing people a good place to live. Well, that applies with supplying people a good place to work. Maintenance and supply economy.

You'll recall that on the subject of training habits, I said that men will do in combat what they have been taught and practice in training. This is equally true in the area of maintenance. in combat, high maintenance standards become a matter of life and death. Of equal significance is supply economy. That wasted bullet or gallon of gas may seem insignificant now, but what a difference it may make when the chips are down! Exclamation point, I think that's the only exclamation point he uses in this book.

You train how you fight, and if you're allowed to be sloppy or cut corners and not do the maintenance where are you going to end up you're going to end up in a bad way good leadership on the company level can only thrive in a climate of good commandership on the battalion level and above what company commanders have a right to expect from commanders above so so here look if you're working if you're a boss this is what you should be providing to the people below you that their honest errors be pointed out but be underwritten at least one in the interest of developing initiative and leadership. Boom.

What does that mean? It means if someone makes a mistake one time, you don't drop the hammer on them. You show them support that they had initiative, that they showed good leadership. So that's what we're supposed to point them out. Hey, Dave, bad initiative or good initiative, bad judgment. You know, I like that you took action,

but let's think through the action that you took. That's fine. To be responsible for and be allowed to develop their own units with only essential guidance from above. You are responsible for developing however you want to do it. Dave, you got your team. However you want to develop that team, here's the minimum requirements and this is the mission. Only the essential guidance. What do we say?

We say minimum force required. We want to lead with the minimum force required. a helpful attitude toward their problems, loyalty down as well as up, that they not be subjected to the needling of unproductive statistics, competitions between like units. Just harassing people,

the best in commandorship, that the needs of their units be anticipated and provided for. That's not too much to ask. That I anticipate that Dave's going to need more bullets or more ammunition or more fuel, and I have it for them. To be kept oriented as to the mission and situation of the unit above, a well-thought-out program of training, work and recreation, good training and work management,

to receive timely, clear-cut and positive orders and decisions which are not constantly changed, that the integrity of their tactical units be maintained in assigning essential tasks. That's so smart. That was a little trick that I did. I would keep my little fire teams together. I keep the squads together as much as I could.

I keep the platoons together as much. Look, we were interoperable. But if you can keep a fire team together, they are so good to go. Yeah. You want them tight. I think a couple of you said anticipate the needs. That the needs of their units be anticipated and provided for. Yeah.

Think about that word, though, that the needs are anticipated. That is a real word in there. That is not, I'm here. Hey, when you run out of stuff, come up and tell me, hey, and you run it through the chain and command and give me the triplicate paperwork to give you what you need. It's me knowing what's going on down there and going, hey, Jocko, you and the team have been getting after it, man. How's your stash of this supplier?

How's this going on here? Are you running low? Because I can start working this now to get this to you. And you're thinking, damn, he didn't just cut us loose. He's actually paying attention to what's going on down here. And I was about to send up the request. But I don't like asking my boss for stuff, so I was kind of worried about asking him. And he's thinking, I've noticed you guys have been cranking.

Do you need some of this? You're anticipating the needs, not just responding to their needs, but actually thinking about it. I mean, you want to talk about being a commander, being a leader, knowing what your people are going through and giving them what they need before they have to ask for it. That word is no small word. Yeah. And then the parsing of that word that you just used could clarify that for everyone here. You said you need to actually think about it. What does that mean?

That means while you're daydreaming, while you're sitting around doing whatever you're doing, this anticipation isn't just going to come and smack you in the face. You need to set aside a little time. You need to look at what that unit's doing. You need to figure out you need to actually think about what's going on. What a novel idea. That reminds me of Way of the Warrior Kid, where the first one, Mark thinks he should know his times tables. And Uncle Jake says, we'll have you studied.

And he says, what do he mean? mean study. No, I should just know them. No. And you're not going to be able to just randomly anticipate people's needs. You need to actually think about it. And the last one in this chapter. Oh, sorry, not the last one yet.

That their successes be measured by the overall ability of a unit to perform its whole mission and not by the performance of one or two factors. So look at people holistically. Look at units holistically. And then this is the last one. that good works by their units be recognized and rewarded in such a way as to motivate the greatest number to do well and seek further improvement. Good. Now we're going to roll into chapter two.

This is called Leadership versus Popularity. And this is interesting. This is where I start to, sometimes when I'm reading leadership things, I'm like, way, wow, that's really not my viewpoint. Hold on a second. Like this is a little, and then I continue to read and I find, oh, he's saying it a little bit different. but he or he sometimes people are actually saying something different but they don't even mean it they don't even mean it you're going to see what I'm talking about so leader versus leadership versus popularity the example of a strong leader during the world war two period I served as a division

commander I served a division commander as his chief of staff and later as one of his combat commanders for a period of over two years he was a strong character and a strong leader He had firm ideas about things that he liked and disliked and placed requirements on his officers and men in the fields of wearing equipment and uniforms, tactical disposition during field training, the care and handling of vehicles and other things, many of which were unpopular. At one time in an evening discussion period, I pointed out that these requirements to him and asked him if he felt that the effort he put into them was not excessive for the practical results which he achieved. His answer gave me insight into the problems of training and preparations and preparing troops for emergencies or battle for which I have never forgotten. He stated that in case of an emergency or battle, a commander was required to place upon his officers and men many requirements that were unpopular and for which time was not available

for hesitation. The thought of being popular or unpopular should never enter the mind of a commander. So that's the part where I start going, heesh, wait a second, what are we talking about? And I'm not totally there yet, but I'm a little bit nervous because what this translates to, and Laif has talked about this before, Leif had someone come and speak to the junior officers,

a senior officer come and talk to the junior officers. And the message was, in no uncertain terms, A, when you're in charge, you should not be liked. You should not be liked. When you're in charge, you're going to make all these hard decisions. People aren't going to like you. You need to be okay with that. And Leif had to kind of like when this senior officer would leave,

Leif kind of had to back these guys down and say, listen, let me put that in perspective. Yeah. So this is, he pointed out that a commander who was unable to obtain compliance with unpopular requirements from his officers or men during training and during preparation for combat would not be able to obtain prompt compliance with his requirements to meet emergencies or to attack an enemy in battle. He said that the requirements he placed in the training period served three purposes.

One, they conditioned his command to carry out promptly his instructions. Two, the way which his men carried out these requirements served as a constant measure to him of his hold on his officers and his men. And they, with other things, helped instill a fierce pride in the division. I might add that this officer was one of the most respected division commanders that I have known. Even now over 15 years after he left the division, he is the most popular man present when the division association has a convention. So all this talk about him not being concerned about this guy. Everybody loves him, yeah. Everybody loves this guy.

Why do they love this guy? Do they love him because he was nice? Do they love him because he gave him extra brownies and ice cream? No, he loved them because he was dis. They loved him because he was disciplined. That's what they loved. Later on, when I was placed in command of a combat command of the division, I remembered the procedure off. And I was actually, when I first read this thing, I thought he was talking about Patton because he worked for Patton.

But Patton wasn't alive 15 years later to be the most popular guy. So I don't know who it was. I have to do more research. And this says an unpopular requirement that paid off. Later on, when I was placed in command of a combat command of the division, I remembered the procedure often used at Leavenworth of attacking at first level. in the morning. One of the reasons for doing this was in hopes of catching the enemy unprepared to resist attack. If we were taught this, if we were taught this, probably the enemy did likewise. Because of this, whenever I had combat command in the field for training,

I required every man to be up, dressed, and manning his battle station at first light. Communications were checked all the way from squad level to me, and reports of readiness were laid from the squad level to me. After daylight, and if it was, decided that no attack was probable the troops were permitted to eat breakfast and then proceed with the day's activities I talked about this on one of the earliest of podcasts this early morning Stand 2 that's what it's called was never popular and there would be many requests to relax the requirement of it particularly for men who had been on guard or night duty while these requests were never granted because these requests were never granted because I felt that if that if we were

overrun while still asleep the enemy would not spare the man who had been late getting into bed. Boom. This procedure was followed in my command throughout the war. I can say that even in the face of the enemy, it was not particularly popular. So even in combat, guys were like, bro, let me sleep in. Sir, let me sleep in. Even in combat, even in combat, where the enemy might really attack and kill you and overrun you. People are, hey, man, can we just get some sleep in the morning? but he never he never submitted to that and he said however it did save elements of my command on several occasions from being overrun and destroyed in the early morning at one time a portion a portion of the 37th tank battalion how cool is that the 137th three seven or seven shout out to

the bandits battle of romadi a portion of the 37th tank battalion was saved from destruction by an enemy tank brigade attack in the fog at first light because it was ready. This particular requirement was probably most unpopular in my combat command headquarters and there was considerable griping about it on many occasions. However, one morning when my command was in the rear of the enemy lines east of Nancy, the headquarters personnel were alert at first light. Men were manning their defensive positions. Weapons had been checked and communications had been established.

In particular, the three tank destroyers attached to my headquarters were in position, loaded and manned. At first light, a platoon of enemy tanks came into the headquarters area, which in the case of a combat command headquarters was not very large. The tank destroyers immediately took them under fire and succeeded in knocking out three of the tanks. The other two withdrew. Our loss during this engagement was only one tank destroyer, which was destroyed by a direct hit from one of the enemy tanks. There was much discussion of this attack in the headquarters in the days that followed. One of the men stated that he never realized

how crowded a combat command headquarters could be when an enemy attack came. I heard no more comments in my headquarters about the requirement for everybody being dressed, alert, in position, and daylight. The purpose of this account is to point out that a commander and leader owes a responsibility to his men to require them to do things,

which are for their own benefit. and for the benefit of the command as a whole, even though their requirements are not popular. So you want to follow a thread? You want to follow a thread? Go read the book about face and read what Hackworth did when he took over the 439th. It's the exact same story.

What he made these guys do was change their, you had to dig a hole to the sleep. First of all, they actually started digging in. They started moving their positions every night. They started expanding the perimeter, retract their perimeter. And by the way, when you dig a hole in Vietnam, or really anywhere, when you dig a fighting hole, a fighting position, and then you're going to move, guess what you got to do with that one that you just left? You got to fill it in. So if we put out the perimeter and then we move back that night 25 or 50 meters because we don't want to get mortared because we know the enemy saw where we were, we got to fill in that fighting position because we don't want the enemy to be able to use it.

So that's a lot of digging to be doing. Well, guess what? He did this. Hackworth did this. Hey, they got rid of all the crap that they had in their battalion CP. They got rid of all that junk. They started digging in. They started moving their perimeter.

And the first time they got mortared under his command, there were no casualties because the elements had moved. And guess what? There was no more complaining. This is the exact same story. I wonder where Hackworth figured that out from. Totally. Next chapter.

Ethics, conduct, and standards of officers. Subtitle. Set an example. You know, I had such a good benefit. My benefit, the luck that I had in my career and my life is amazing. But one of the most amazing things is, when I was a young enlisted guy in the SEAL teams, I was watching my lieutenant. I was tracking.

I was tracking those boys. When they forgot a piece of gear, I was like, oh, when they were late, oh, I was tracking them. And so I knew that. I knew I knew better than anyone could have ever taught me or told me. Like, we're sitting here saying this. You've said it five times today. I've said it eight times today. Your people are watching you.

Your people are watching you. Your people are watching you. I could have been told that a hundred times and it wouldn't have been as effective as me actually knowing what it was like to watch my bosses. And note the good and note the bad. Yeah. Set an example. The ethics, conduct, and standards of behavior of a few of our officers are matters of real concern to me.

Except for a few junior officers, our officers are either regular officers or reserve officers serving because they chose to do so. It is up to the latter group to set the proper example in all things for those junior officers. It is up to all officers to conduct themselves in such a manner that the prestige of the Army officer will be high in the eyes of the public and of our enlisted men. An officer who behaves in an unbecoming manner destroys his standing in a unit. Man, if we broke out and just started talking about what's unbecoming for a leader, because you know, when you hear the word conduct unbecoming an officer, you think like,

oh, this guy is outwacked and like an idiot. What about when that guy shows up 12 minutes late? What about when that guy does bring the right piece of gear? What about when that guy loses temper? Well, you're like, whatever it is. All those little things. All those little things add up. And if you were a leader in an organization,

you got to understand that your people are watching you. And what that actually is is an opportunity to pull them into your sphere of influence. Because as a young Marine, I was looking for role models too. I was looking when I was keeping track of those little things, that little slip here, that little slack over here, that little error here. and I was looking around when I saw the ones that were holding the line, that's where I wanted to be.

And if you're that leader, you will pull these people into your sphere of influence and you can lead and mention them. And you can have, you can design the culture of the entire unit by yourself just by setting that right example. Because you will pull people into your sphere and they will follow that lead and they will do the same thing. And then all of a sudden you got folks down the organization that aren't holding the line. you don't have to be the one to go down there and fix it because you've got this little army of people on your little team that are doing that across the organization.

So I was in the times back in the day and I was getting ready. I think I was actually I had been picked up for the Seamen to Admiral program. So I had been picked up and I was super stoked but I was still at Seal Team 1.

I had finished out my time there before I went to officer candidate school. And then I would go from officer candidate school. So I either had been picked up. I think I'd been picked up. But another guy, another officer, another prior enlisted officer who did the program that I was doing, right? And he'd been picked up and he had gone to officer candidate school. And then he showed up at SEAL Team 1. So he was, you know, he was almost, he was very similar to me in the fact that we were both prime list of guys.

He got picked up. I think it was one year ahead of me. And he shows up at Steel Team One. And I remember seeing this dude for the first time. And look, you, you know, I just looked at him and I was like, damn, this dude is squared away. And I couldn't even really, I couldn't even really understand. I said, well, why does this guy's whole uniform look? squared away.

This guy looks like he's on another level. And, you know, we're in the locker room or whatever. Well, guess what? He was wearing shirt stays. Do you know what those are? I do. Absolutely. You do.

So he was wearing shirt stays, which is the way that you roll with at OCS. It's like you're wearing shirt stays. That's all there's to it. So for those of you who don't know what shirt stays are, they are a piece of elastic material that you attach. from the bottom of your shirt, which is tucked in, and they run down your legs, and then they attach to your socks.

So no matter what happens, your shirt is freaking stay and put, and it looks like, you look like it's, it looks like the uniform on a mannequin. Yeah. It looks like that. Somebody dressed this thing for a mannequin.

And so I remember seeing it and going, damn, this, and he just looked, everything looks squared away about him. You know, he was an awesome physical shape, you know, just a great guy, and he is an incredible guy. but I remember looking at him going,

damn, this dude is squared away, and I saw those shirt stays. I didn't even know what those were as an enlisted seal. You had no, I had no idea, showed up at OCS. And you know what? Those shirt stays, because pretty much when you're done with OCS, you don't really need to wear them anymore. Yeah.

Guess what? He did. He did? And I did. I freaking wore those things religiously, because that's the difference. That's the difference. That's setting the,

example, you better look squared away. Yes. A hundred percent. All the time. All the time. Where do you not want to look squared away? And look, if you got long-term plans and you want to build a team and you got long-term plans of having a good team around you, start early.

I remember joining my first squadron and there's the training officer bill. It's called the training officer. It's like the junior, it's the senior of the junior officers. So it's kind of the guy that's elevated himself amongst all the junior pilots that's kind of in a key leadership role. And I remember seeing a train and you see a squared away training officer like, I want to be like that guy. And then that training officer would go away and then a couple years later, he'd come back to a squadron. He'd be the ops officer, which is like a senior of the middle guys.

And he'd be squared away by the time. And this guy that I worked within my squadron, by the time that guy came back to be a squadron commander who had been squared away from day one, dudes are running down to headquarters with cases of beer. Beard like, I want to get in this guy's squadron. And people were fighting to get into his unit. Was that because he was nice? Yeah. Was that because he gave people extra liberty?

Because he was squared away and he held the line. And we all wanted to be like him. And he didn't like wake up one day like, oh, I'm a commander. Now I guess I got to square myself away. He'd been like that forever. Dudes were fighting to get in his unit. You know, I was talking about leadership capital the other day on EF online. Because somebody asked a question about it.

And one of the things is your reputation can contain. a positive bank account of leadership capital. Yeah. It can also contain a negative bank account of leadership capital. And if you're not, if you just decide that you're going to get squared away when you're put in charge, if that's when you make that decision, you're rolling in there with all kinds of negative bank account. It's a disaster. And with people you don't even know, your reputation extends well beyond the people that you hang out with. Oh, for sure.

You know, in these communities, people know you have heard of you. People are going to run towards you or avoid you. and you don't even know who they are. And it's going to all be based on your account with them, how much leadership capital you've built. And it goes well beyond the sphere that you think you're part of. Everybody knows you in those leadership roles and they're watching you. Back to the book.

The enlisted men have no further respect for him. Oh, this is for the guy that behaves in conduct unbecoming of an officer. The enlisted men have no further respect for him and he can no longer lead or command effectively. his value to his unit is largely been destroyed. When an officer accepts his commission, he is presumed to have had enough experience to have acquired the ethical and moral precepts expected of an officer and a gentleman.

A record of long service is not an excuse for laxity in this matter. Damn, he's coming off the top ropes right there. I just put myself in mental check for my whole life. Too often incidents are brought to my attention, involving the intemperant use of alcohol. Drunkenness at any time and place is disgraceful. When combined with the operation of a motor vehicle,

it becomes a potential killer. Drunk driving didn't used to be a thing. Do you know that? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Drunk driving didn't used to be a thing. No, it was a badge of honor back in the day in some units. When my dad,

my dad crashed a car drunk in like 1955 or something, and the cop, like, pulled his car out and gave him a ride home. I mean, my dad was like, whatever, 19 or something. Yeah. And I got hit by a drunk driver when I was a kid on a bicycle. And I got hit by a drunk driver. I got thrown off my bike.

I had to get stitches in my head. And my dad was like, oh, yeah. It was almost like, well, you know, you had a little too much to drink. You know, no factor. the kid will be all right. Can we get some money for a new bike? Because the bike was trashed. Nowadays, that would be game over for that guy's whole life, right?

That'd be going to, but would you go to jail for that? If you hit a kid on a bike while you're drunk, I would say like, no question. We'd be going to jail, right? So it's pretty interesting that way back then, he's saying, when combined with the operation of a motor vehicle, it becomes a potential killer. Yeah, he's way out in front of the curve here.

This is someone who's probably spent way more time thinking about that type of character than others, because back then, that wasn't a thing. Yeah, you want to know why? He's probably gone to visit all a bunch of guys in the hospital that had drunk driving accidents and repaired, you know, had jeeps, had to ride off jeeps and trucks and whatever else. These results are not only detrimental to the individual,

but also to the service, particularly in overseas commands. Commanders at all levels must continually take aggressive action to reduce excessive drinking and prevent drunken driving. A long time ago, again, officers are expected to set the example. The officer's code army regulations provide that an officer's signature is in itself a certification. His signature is his bond. A requirement is that an officer is so to conduct himself that he is deserving of such trust. Appropriate, administrative, and disciplinary action must be taken against officers who are guilty of misconduct and unwilling to live within proper code.

The officer, an officer cannot expect to retain his standing in prestige as an officer where he is, where he is inefficient or guilty of unbecoming conduct. Each officer must clothe himself with such a scale of values that he knows instinctively the things that an officer does not do. The officer's code does not get less binding as he goes up and rank. The opposite is true. It becomes more binding. Dude, this dude is holding the line big time. I'm feeling like nervous. As I always have to point out,

I was a young wild frog man. I did not come close to achieving these standards. I would have loved to have read this book when I was 18, 19, 20. I would have love to have people that were telling me, hey, bro, this is the path. this is it. This is what you want to do. And you know what it takes to be able to do that?

Here's the reality for me to say, hey, you know what? I made mistakes and I do not want you to make them. I want you to be better than me. I want you to be better than I am. I want the end state of your life. I want to be superior to mind. That's what drives giving this kind of advice.

Hey, listen, I want the end state of your life. life to be superior to mine. That's what we should be thinking when we interact with other people. We shouldn't have that little thing in the back of our minds that's saying, you know what, I had to do this. I had to learn the hard way. I wish I would have done that, but no one told me to do that. Why should I tell him?

What do you got? Just wrote it down because that's a good one. That's leadership. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. I was recently invited to the U.S. Army Command. and general staff college to address the faculty and students on the subject of

commandership and generalship following my talk i was asked to comment on the problem of integrity versus professional loyalty when an officer is confronted with orders with which he has a strong disagreement i answered by citing two examples in my experience once while a cadet i asked a tactical officer a similar question his answer was to carry out the order loyally and then when you are in a Tenable position to recommend changes if warranted. I followed this with good results. So there's your first answer. Hey, you know, I asked Dave to do something that you don't agree with. What should you do? Well, you should carry it out and then you should pull me aside when you can, as soon as you get a chance go, hey, Johnclin, this doesn't seem like it's a good idea to me. Here's why. Good. Got that. This is a longer example. In another instance, when I was a commanding general of the US Continental Army command, we were charged with the service testing of an exceptional. and important piece of army equipment. This was important enough to assign my deputy a lieutenant general to monitor closely. The test went on for several weeks. One day my deputy reported to me that the piece of equipment was not proving out satisfactorily. He was fully convinced of his position. I told him

how serious and how sensitive such a finding would be. I directed that he call in several officers closely concerned with the test for a conference with me. This was done and all were unanimous supporting the position of my deputy they had data and results supporting them so they're supposed to test this piece of gear there's a sounds like there's an expected outcome it wasn't turning out that way i directed that they prepare a personal letter for my signature the chief of staff of the army or for my signature for the chief of staff of the army setting forth their findings and conclusions with supporting data and information after approving and signing it i had my aid deliver it by hand to the chief of staff. Within 48 hours, I had a phone call from the chief of staff. He was disturbed.

He told me how serious this was, how important the equipment was, and how not only the United States, but an allied power was interested in it. He wanted us to take a positive approach and proceed with the program. My reply, so there you go. He wrote out, hey, there's the problems. These are the shortfalls. This is what we all agree on. I'm letting you know. And his boss says, hey, this is an interesting terminology. I want you to take a positive approach and proceed. Take a positive approach and proceed. So to me, I translate that as, hey, lean towards making this work.

My reply was that I felt I owed him the loyalty to bring the facts as I believe them to his attention. And having done that, I was prepared to carry out fully his further instructions. The morals of this true story are the chief of staff was in a position to now this is important The chief of staff was in a position to know of considerations and factors of the higher highest importance which I could not know now where I think this is if Dave comes to me and says hey I object to this or I got this issue my response to me like hey Dave here's what's going on man Here's why this is important here's what's happening I would tell you why here's some things you see that I don't see yep Here's some things you know I need to know.

Yep, yep. I had satisfied both my integrity and professional loyalty as well as my duty to my superior. I was now free to proceed without compromise on my part. To take a negative or I told you so attitude would not have been becoming to a member of the team, all members of which were dedicated to doing their best for the army and their country. So I wrote about this in leadership strategy and tactics. almost that nausea. But there's so many different ways to talk about it.

And I even, one that I cite all the time is the band of brothers, dick winners. Totally. Yep. You do the recon. Someone gets killed. The war is literally within days of ending. You do a recon. Someone gets killed.

You come back. You get told you could do another recon the next night. And you say, got it, boss. And then you go have the guys drink wine in a cellar and you don't do the recon. Is that a good call? Yep Is it supporting the chain of command? Nope

Did it protect the guys? Yes, did accomplish the mission? Yes. Could he have argued it a little bit? And I forget from the movie How they showed it. I think he pushed back. He definitely pushed back.

But at a certain point, pushing back would have just gotten him fired and then guess what? Then they're going on the patrol. Then they're going on the patrol. With a yes, man. With a yes, man. Yep, for sure.

And as you're building, as this story is building up, there's a little part of me too, but I think of people listening like, So he's already done that. He's going to now hold the line. No, sir. I cannot, in good conscious, put this in a positive light.

Cool. I'll find somebody that can. And there's a part in there, the humility that it takes. He's a four-star general in this case to go, you know what? The Chief of Staff knows something I don't know. He sees something I don't see. Can I consider that and try to go out and go, hey, I'll tell you what, there's some places over here this piece of equipment actually does work pretty well.

Maybe not here or here, but here's some positive. Can I do that? Yeah, it takes a ton of humility. But if you don't do that, the influence you lose to actually provide the outcome that you want, which is exactly what you're saying, think about the humility it takes to go, maybe I don't have the whole picture. And this, I'm going to dig my heels and hold the line because it's the right thing to do. Maybe I actually don't even know the whole story.

Cool. You're fired. Right. Yep. See you later. And I'll get a yes man in there. And he's going to give me whatever I want for report. And that's that.

Yeah. So good. Next section. And this is chapter four, prestige of the non-commissioned officer. And once again, I sort of said, well, maybe we don't need to cover this. And then as I read through it, I realized what this is talking about. And this is talking about something that I've referred to quite a bit on EF online lately. So if you think about it from this perspective, it starts to make a lot of sense way beyond the military.

and that is respect, respect. So prestige of the non-commissioned officer. So if you think about this from perspective of how do you respect people? How important that is, because that's what he's talking about. Continuing on. Advances in weapon systems over the past few years have forced many changes in our tactile organization and operational concepts. The keynotes of our modern army are mobility, dispersion, and small unit operations.

This concept coupled with the many new tools of work. requires greater reliance than ever before on our non-commissioned officers. What are we talking about? We're talking about frontline leaders. So if you're in the civilian world, we're talking about frontline leaders. And guess what? This guy was in World War I. And in World War I, there was not a bunch of reliance.

There was not dispersion, meaning everyone was together. You're in a big trench. You're all together. When the trumpet blows or the whistle sounds or the signal comes, we're all going at once. We're going to go over the top. We're going to charge with hundreds and hundreds of men at the same time there's no dispersion we're all close together it's not small unit operations

and we're not moving so he saw that and look he says mobility dispersion and small unit operations what was world war one it was not mobile it was not dispersed and it was not small unit operations by the time he gets to korea and then he gets a world war two or sorry world war two and then korea it's totally different and now he realizes the importance of the front line leaders so how do we rely on these frontline leaders so if you're thinking about your frontline leaders, here's what you need to do. Fully develop the non-commissioned officer to fulfill his role, a commander must place responsibility on him and permit him to assume his place in command.

You have to give them ownership. In doing this, standards of performance need not be lowered. Honest errors must be expected and tolerated but corrected. Senior personnel must not usurp responsibilities which provide the experience needed in developing our junior leaders. Don't be the yes, man. Don't be the easy button. Sorry, don't be the easy button.

Emphasis should be placed on the non-commissioned officer's role. Leader, trainer, supervisor. Leader, trainer, supervisor. This goes back to developing the echelon front certification program. Think about this. Leader, trainer, supervisor. He's got them all mixed in like we eventually got to. I didn't even have this book when we were starting to develop the program.

Now that I have it. I'm super stoked that we came to the same conclusion. Yeah. And that is that a leader, a trainer, a supervisor, a manager, an instructor, they're all qualities that are needed as you come up the chain of command if you're going to be in charge of people. There follows a list of suggested actions that may be taken by each commissioned officer at all levels of command to further the efficiency and enhance the stature of the non-commissioned officer corps. Again, how do we respect our frontline leaders? because the more respect we give them, the more respect they're going to give us, the more

ownership we give them, the more ownership they're going to take. Authority. Prevent the use of non-commissioned officers for menial and degrading tasks. Okay. Ensure that non-commissioned officers are consistently addressed by their rank. So you're giving them that respect. Adhere to the chain of command through non-commission officer ranks, right? So you don't jump down to the front line.

and start talking them without talking to that front line leader. Reduce requirements for officer supervision or mandatory presence at troop formations. Let the non-commissioned officer take charge. Give them ownership. Sometimes for those of you that aren't watching this on YouTube, when Dave just fully agrees with something, he doesn't nod his head. Yes. He shakes his head, no, as if to say, this is just no disputing this at all. Yeah.

Avoid mass withdrawal of non-commission officer privileges, but take positive action against individual concerns. So don't do collective punitive actions. When appropriate, permit key non-commission officers to attend staff conferences and commanders briefings. Hello. Take that frontline leader. Bring them into your higher-level meetings. Let them see what's going on. Ensure that deserving high-quality non-commission officers are commended for outstanding performance.

of duty by awarding them, commendation ribbons, letters of appreciation or commendation or certificates of achievement, or and this is Jaquois edition, give them more responsibility, give them more ownership. Refrain from oversupervising the non-commissioned

officer after a task has been assigned. Don't micromanage. Issue mission type instructions rather than detailed orders. Once again, I feel like I owe this guy money. I haven't said, I haven't said that yet on this podcast, but when I read these things, I feel like I owe this guy money. Whenever possible, place senior non-commissioned officers under the supervision of commission to warn officers.

Informed non-commissioned officers in advance of significant matters pertaining to the unit, such as maneuvers, field problems, training requirements, disciplinary matters, standards to avoid unfounded rumors and allow for necessary advance planning at all echelons. Does it make sense that you keep your unit informed? You keep your front line leaders informed. What do you think they do when you don't tell them what's happening? Do you think they sit there and silently await your word? No, they make shit up. Make it up. Is there more?

This is ridiculous how good this is. Grant non-commissioned officers. Again, if you're listening to this and you're not in the military, just replace this with your frontline leaders. Yeah. Grant frontline leaders a greater voice in allowing privileges or awarding punishment. consult with them on matters involving the reclassification and promotion of their subordinates. Let it be known that they greatly influence these matters. This is all, this whole thing is about giving away responsibility and giving away ownership.

Use senior non-commissioned officers to assist in conducting inspections. Ensure distribution of directives to non-commission officers so that they may have current information on military matters. Keep your front line leaders informed. Use senior non-commission officers as instructors. Back the actions of non-commission officers publicly. Refer to them as non-commission officers, not as NCOs or non-coms, which are two slang terms, which I do all the time.

NCOs, non-coms. He's saying, give them that. And look, it's a little slang term. Give them that respect. Yeah, and the title is, is the prestige of the end of the non-commission officer. I mean, that's what he's talking about. I mean, that was just, that was just a recipe for leadership right there.

And like you said, these are your supervisors. These are your frontline supervisors whose management is of the people right at the point of friction, the ones doing the work. So these are your first line supervisors and second line supervisors closest to your people out there making it happen. And if you want them to respect you, you got to give them respect. If you want them to trust you, you have to trust them. And if you want them to lead, like you've got to let them lead.

And every single time, you take responsibility away from them. He said in the beginning, you got to expect them to make mistakes and make errors. You don't ignore it. You correct it. But you don't take responsibility away from them. If I take, if you do something, it's not what I want. You work for me. You're one of my supervisors.

You go out there and do something. It's not how I wanted it. And if I take that responsibility away from you, that's me. telling you, I don't trust you. And you know what the return on me again is that is? You don't trust me as much. That means I still got to correct that. I got to show, hey, Jocko, that's not what we're looking for. Let me talk you about why we did this and why. Let me explain these things. But I get you right back out there to go do it. The reciprocal nature of the relationship, everything you want from them, you have to give them. That it was literally a list. It is a checklist of leadership to get the

behavior that you want. You and I were on a call with one of our clients the other day. And It was one of those questions came up and there's these four things. It's a call. Christy was on the call and she was quite fired up. She's awesome. Absolutely. But if you want people to listen to you, listen to them. If you want people to respect them, respect that.

If you want people to respect you, you have to respect them. If you want to influence people, you have to allow them to influence you. And if you want people to trust you, you have to give them trust. Couple more things on this section. Responsibilities. Insist on a thorough appreciation of the non-commissioned officer's full-time responsibility to his men and to his commander. Thorough appreciation. What does that mean?

That means respect. Appoint senior non-commissioned officer councils at each level of command starting with the battalion separate. So again, this idea of creating these councils, these groups within your organization so you can get good feedback is brilliant. encourage non-commission officers officer participation in civic affairs great the last section here is education and training this is the last thing we're going to cover nothing can clothe with prestige a non-commission officer who does not know his job and does not play the part expected of him as a non-commission officer because of that we should one hold classes to ensure that non-commission officers are thoroughly trained for their jobs and prepared to handle instructions or duties

when they appear before their subordinates. What is that right there? Look, I am responsible for making sure the people blowing me in the chain of command are ready to do their job. Totally. Number two, encourage attendance at non-commissioned officers academy and other courses designed to enhance the prestige and set the standards expected of non-commissioned officers. And three, encourage non-commissioned officers to take advantage of the men.

opportunities to increase their general level of education and what's just amazing about this this that's just another 13 pages of this document which is 117 pages long we made it through another I think we made it might have made it through 14 pages but the section that closed it out is to treat people with respect and give them responsibility and train them and educate them to take care of your people now let's point this out I don't don't care how good of a leader you are if you don't invest in these subordinate leaders so it doesn't matter what you do because those those those those frontline leaders are the ones

that win dude they're also the ones that lose yep so invest in them treat them with respect listen to them allow them to influence you give them trust and I don't care what your job is or what your vocation is in life, you have to work with people. And if you work with people, take care of those people, and those people are going to take care of you. And speaking of taking care of people, Dave, I know that you know that when the aircraft cabin loses pressure, the oxygen masks drop down. And you have to take care of others, of course.

But before you can take care of others, you've got to take care of yourself to make sure that you have enough oxygen to live so that you can then put the oxygen masks on your children. So even though we need to take care of others, we need to take care of ourselves. First, we got some ways of doing that. One of the ways is Jocko Fuel,

which is supplements. We got a bunch of them. We got joint warfare, krill oil. We got discipline, discipline, we got discipline with the cans. Are you on number two right now? Number two.

What flavors have you torn to today? Dax Savage, Jocco, Pomp. What's the preference? That doesn't actually count the one I had earlier today for my gig. Check. So I guess I'm on number three. We got vitamin D, D3, Cold War. Look, there's all kinds of diseases out there.

I'm not making any claims, but some of us haven't caught those diseases. So, yeah, check that out. Mulk, Warrior Kid Mulk, Adult Mulk, which is just dessert. We got, oh, wait, we got a new flavor coming. And it's so good. It says, like, allegedly we're doing it seasonal, but this thing ain't going to be seasonal. This thing is going to be all the time. It's smashing pumpkin.

And I don't even know, look, I don't even know what, I don't even know what pumpkin things are supposed to taste like or whatever. but damn this thing is good it's so good it's like a pumpkin the original B little sent me it was he called you know the generic name the flavor name it was pumpkin spice you know and so I'm I don't even know I mean you don't really eat pumpkin a lot right I mean there's a pumpkin pie I get it but you're not sitting around you know going to the store grabbing a piece of pumpkin and eating it that's not happening is that happening not not my house okay negative so you're not even really 100% sure what pumpkin flavor is. Are you?

Is anyone? The only thing I can think of is pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving maybe, but to be honest with you. So I don't even know what we're doing, but all I know is we created something that's freaking tasty. It's got, it's got like, I guess, have you ever tried eggnog before? Yeah. It's sort of an eggnog cinnamon scenario.

Sweet. Just monk fruit. But it's so good. Anyways, we got that. We got that going on. All this stuff. We got jaco white tea Vitamin shop. You can get all the stuff at the vitamin shop. Also, if you're in Florida right now, you can get this stuff at Wawa. Coming soon, hopefully, to all Wawa's. If you're in Florida and you want to just kind of just full on support the cause, great. Here's a good way to support the cause. Go in there and just clean them out. go get your wah-wah on. Also, you can get this stuff at origin, main.com.

What did I miss? Did I miss anything? Nope. I'm on board with all that. And I'll be, I'm actually excited about that new milk. Nobody has knocked strawberry off the, uh,

the top of the platform. Oh, that is still remains my number one. My go to. Hey, speaking of, speaking of discipline go in the can of which you've had two. Three.

Three. What, what flavors you have earlier today? Uh, I had, Oh, I had a second Jocko Palmer this morning. Is that your kind of go-to? No, look, I'll be honest with you.

I drink all of them. I don't even look for flavors anymore. Oh, you're just in the game. Dude, I'm just in the game. There is not one that I can't just be totally stoked to be drinking. Now, will there be one in the future that you'll be more stoked to be drinking? Yeah, I think there might be. So tell us.

So, dude, let's go talk to us. After Burner Orange is coming out. After Burner Orange. Yeah. Dave Burke is. getting his own signature flavor. It's so crazy to think that I'm getting my own signature flavor of a product that I actually already love anyway.

But I'll be honest with you. When Pete and Brian at the team were like, hey, bro, we would love to have you be part of this, I immediately went to my all-time favorite soft drink, which I don't drink anymore, which is orange crush. or orange soda, whatever that was back when we were kids. I don't drink it, but I'll tell you, it's the best thing I've ever, I mean, as a kid. So you're saying you don't drink it anymore because you're just not going to sit around and drink sugar. Dude, I don't drink soda.

Yeah, I don't sit around drinking orange crush. You're a human. You don't want to have conduct unbecoming of an officer sitting down sucking down sugar. Negative. But I would be lying of it and tell you that I don't miss that flavor big time. So they were like, hey, what do you think? And it was immediate like, bro, I love orange. And then the connection afterernerner,

It was so easy because... Who thought of Afterburner Orange? I think it was me. I really do. Cool. Yeah. Cool. And, of course, they designed it.

Wait, did you have it going into the conversation? Did you have it? Well, kind of like, they had mentioned, hey, I think the thing was like, hey, think about it. It'd be cool to do something with you. Were there any other name options that got floated? No. Just that was it. It was, hey, we, you should do one.

I thought about it. I said, hey, what do you think of this? And Pete was like, done. We're executed. And then Brian executed and it happened and it was totally good to go. Would you know when the release date is? I think it's like in the next month. I think it's even, wait, what month?

November. So it's coming out in November? I think so. After Burner Orange. Yes. The Dave Burke signature signature drink. Yeah. And he's got a plane on it.

What kind of plane did they put on it? An F-35 silhouette. Oh, dang. Did you influence that? Maybe. And I might have made sure it was the Marine Corps variant. Oh. Damn layers in the business we call those layers absolutely dang yeah even though

When you were were you a charge when you were a squadron commander was that a Marine Corps squadron? Yes It was a Marine Corps squadron with the Marine Corps variant of the plane what did you do with the Air Force didn't you take over an Air Force squadron at some point I had an Air Force division that was the F-22 Raptor that was a straight up Air Force unit Air Force aircraft I was a Marine in an Air Force squadron inside that squadron had a division of all these different airplanes one was the Raptor division and that's where I operated. Dang. Yeah. Check.

All right. So we got all these cool drinks and they're good for you. They are. Which I know it doesn't make sense because people don't understand how it can happen. I'll tell you how it can happen. You don't cut corners. You maintain the scrutiny on your product to make sure that it's not junk. So like I said, vitamin shop, origin main.com.

You can get them. And wah-wah. soon to be worldwide. Also, if you want Jiu Jitsu gear, so Jiu Jitsu gear, you're going to need Jiu Jitsu gear because you want to train Jiu Jitsu because it's going to free your mind.

It is going to free your mind. Go to origin, mane.com, you can get geese, rash guards. You can also get shorts, t-shirts, joggers, and guess what just went back into production? Do you know, Dave? I don't. Oh, a little something called Delta jeans.

And I'll tell you what. They're freaking savage. I said one time and Pete like got a big what is it a chuckle out of this which you can picture Pete chuckling right he's kind of a chuckler he was chuckling when I said that Delta jeans are the greatest thing that I've ever put on my legs and yeah so check out that we got boots there all that stuff's available it's all made in America and that is what we're doing we're bringing manufacturing back to america that is what we're doing go to origin main dot com for that we also have another store which echo name jocco store did i go name at that

yes he did actually he legitimately did i guess so i was going to take the hit on the lack of creativity but i'm going to say echo is definitely involved in making joccl store jocco store com we got rash guards t-shirts hats beanies all that kind of stuff we got warrior kids soap there so you can stay clean so check out jocco store dot com All this stuff will help support the podcast as well. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Leave a review. I also have some other podcasts.

One's called Unravelling, Jock Unravelling with Daryl Cooper. Another one's called the debrief podcast, which is still on this thread for now, but we talk about just pure leadership. It's a little shorter. We try and make it a little bit more concise because we know leaders are out there working. You don't always have time for a three-hour podcast. Grounded podcast, Warrior Kid podcast. We have a YouTube channel where you can check out to see Echoes, videos that he makes,

where he puts just a ridiculous amount of fire and explosions. He's not here to defend himself. This is boring. YouTube channel, psychological warfare, album, tracks, MP3, flipsidecanvas.com, Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall. Got a bunch of books, About Face, the thread that leads to this book that we're talking about today. About Face, I wrote the forward to the newest version. You can check that out.

Also the code, the evaluation of protocol written by Dave Burke and me and Sarah Armstrong. Leadership strategy and tactics field manual. The answer to all the questions. The answer to all the questions. Yeah, leadership strategy and tactics field manual. Way of the Warrior Kid 1, 2, and 3. Way of the Warrior Kid 4. Field Manual.

available for pre-order right now. Hey, guess what? I used to make fun of my publisher and say, they're scared about ordering too many books. They don't know how many books to order. I'm telling them, if you pre-order this, it lets me know how many books to order because this is hard to sit on a bunch of books.

I want to produce the amount that are needed. I don't want anyone to get Christmas to come and you got no way the warrior kid. For Field Manual. So pre-order that if you want. Mikey and the Dragons get some of that. Disply Freedom Field Manual. Brand new versions out.

Got a bigger picture of my head on the cover. Like, oh, we want to make it. Oh, we want to make a new version. We want it to be better. Oh, what should we do? Make the picture of my head bigger. Is that supposed to make it better? I don't know what they're thinking.

Also, extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership. The OG books. Check those out. Eschonfront, it's our leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to Escalonfront.com. Hey, if you want me or Laif or Dave or JP or anyone on the Escalon front team to come and talk to your company, don't Google Jocco speaker.

Go to Escalamfront.com. If you Google Jocco speaker, there's going to be people that are paying Google words to get you to click on their thing and they're going to be a middleman. You don't need them. Go to eslamfront.com. If you want to get some other training for leadership, go to eFonline.com. This is what we do. We teach leadership.

There's courses on there. We're doing live Q&A's all the time. There's a forum. There's other people to interact with. There's leadership primers. There's immediate action drills. There's questions of there. There's all kinds of stuff.

And if you're in a leadership position, go there. And guess what? You're in a leadership position. If you interact with other human beings, you're in a leadership position. What else on EF Online, Dave? We're there live all the time. We were there yesterday, we're there tomorrow, and you don't even know what day it is that you're listening to this podcast

because it's either going to be today or tomorrow you can talk to us directly live. So come join us. The questions are awesome. What if someone has a question for Dave Burke? What should they do? They should come to Eiff Online live and ask me that question. What if they have a question for JPM to know? What should they do?

The same thing. What if they have a question for me? What if they say, well, you know, I Twittered it, I sent nine tweets to Jocko, but he didn't answer. Because he has 80 million tweets. What should I do? Same thing. Go to Eiffonline.

It's awesome. Go to EFonline.com. We have a live event. Mustard 2020 is the only one we're doing in 2020. We have, this is not the first live event we're doing. We've done other live events. I know you've done some live events. I know I've done live events.

Look, there's social distance. You can maintain the social distance. We'll have the appropriate measures in place. So you can come to the muster. It will be fully engaged. Look, one thing that's kind of cool, at the muster, at the previous musters before COVID,

there's 1,000 people there. There's 800 people there. There's 900 people there. So that means 900 people trying to talk to us during the breaks, whatever. There's no green room. If you've never heard, there, no green room,

we're there, we're talking. So if you want to hang out with us, if you want to get some information directly from us, come to the muster. There's probably going to be a fraction. I would say there's going to be less than half, probably going to be less than 500 people at the muster. And believe me, you spread that out over a couple days. You are going to talk to us, ask the questions, we'll do whatever we need to do to make sure that you come away from that with the knowledge that you need.

So go to extreme ownership.com for details there. Of course, we have EF Overwatch. If you need leadership in your team, which you do, we have, we are selecting leaders. from the military that understand the principles we talk about all the time, and we're placing them into civilian companies, into your business. Go to eFoverwatch.com if you need leaders in your company. If you want to help service members, active and retired, if you want to help their families,

if you want to help Gold Star families around the world, then check out Mark Lee's mom, mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, then go to America's mighty warriors.org. And if you, look, if you just are constantly seeking that hard path and you want to do things that are tough, do things that cause you a little bit of suffering,

then maybe you want more of my guttural groans as I talk. Or maybe you want more of Dave's frothing phonetics. Well, either way, you can find us, On the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Facebook, Dave is at David R. Burke, and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks once again to General Bruce Clark for your service to America and for leaving these lessons of leadership behind for us. And thanks to all those people in uniform out there right now that are utilizing these lessons to protect freedom in the world. to police law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all other first responders.

Thank you for protecting us from chaos and mayhem here at home. And to everyone else, remember these lessons from General Clark. Remember the importance of time. That's where we started this whole thing today. Don't forget about that one. Remember the importance of time. The clock is ticking. Try and anticipate problems.

Be reliable. Be knowledgeable. Show initiative. And when you cast judgment, which I do, I read these books and I think, oh, that person, I wish that person would do that. And I wish that person would do the other thing. And then I remember that when you cast judgment,

start off by judging yourself because it all starts with you. And until next time, this is Dave and Jaka. out