Jocko Podcast - 302: Have a Plan, a Protocol, and a Code. Iron Sharpened Leadership. W/ Gen. John Gronski

Episode Date: October 6, 2021

0:00:00 - Opening0:03:33 - General Gronski. "Iron Sharpened Leadership"2:35:43 - How to stay on THE PATH.2:59:24 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 302 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, echo. Good evening. Sir, we have a tick. As I quickly walked across our tactical operation center to the radio operator, I'm sure my heart rate spiked. A tick pronounced tick stands for troops in contact. It is something arresting everyone's attention because it meant one of our patrols, was taking enemy fire on the mean streets of Ramadi.

As I pressed the handset of the radio to my ear, I could hear a sense of urgency in the voice of the patrol leader on the ground. He was leading a group of soldiers on a dismounted patrol on Ramadi's southwestern side of town. Things could get kind of sporty there. The young sergeant leading the patrol was requesting I direct Super Cobra gunship helicopters

to fire at, On top of a building. They were engaged by insurgents with small arms from behind a building, but now he could see guns and other weapons on the roof. The insurgent had ceased for the moment, but the patrol leader was concerned about what might come next. Something did not feel right. People need to pay attention to gut feelings and instinct. I have found the more experience one gains, the more gut feeling factors into decisions. decision making if something does not feel right it probably requires a little more attention

I used a steady voice to calm the patrol leader down I let him know I would call in the Cobras but first I needed him to provide positive identity identification of exactly who was on top of that building my intuition was telling me to let the situation develop before calling in heavy firepower After a few minutes, the patrol leader made a positive identification of the force on the rooftop. I was glad I did not pull the trigger on the cobras. A U.S. Marine Corps Civil Affairs team were on the top of the building. A stressful situation was averted.

Calmness and coolness prevailed. As it turned out, the small arms fire he received was some harassment fire and the insurgent, who initiated the incident had quickly disappeared. So that right there is an excerpt from a book, which is called Iron-sharpened Leadership, which was written by General John Gronsky, who served in the U.S. Army and the National Guard for over 40 years. And I had the honor of serving with him during the Battle of Vermont,

where our deployments overlapped by about a month or so in the spring of 2006. And he's actually been on the podcast before, episode 235. So if you haven't listened to that podcast yet, stop and go and listen to that one to get some background on General Gronsky. But we are honored to have General Gronsky back again tonight to discuss his new book, which, as I said, is called Iron Sharpened Leadership. And the subtitle is transforming hard-fought lessons into action. So General Gronsky, once again, thank you for coming by. Hey, Jacko, it's great to be with you.

Thanks for inviting me. Always good to be here in San Diego. San Diego is not a bad place to be. So your first book that we did, we touched upon it on the last podcast. It was called The Ride of Our Lives, and it was about a bike ride, bike ride that you made across America with your wife and your infant child. and you talked about some of the lessons that you learned along that voyage and the experience you had, but that was very early in your Army career. And this is reflective of your entire Army career.

So what made you decide to write this book, Iron Sharpened Leadership? Yeah, you know, Jocko, when I wrote that book, The Ride of Our Lives, near the end of the book, I put some just leadership lessons that I gained on that ride. as you mentioned. And I actually had people asking me to expand on those lessons. And, you know, the book focused just on that very short period of time, three months in 1983. And I just gained so much more experience and learned so many more lessons over the next 30-plus years. And I just felt compelled to put those lessons down into writing.

and hopefully would help other people gain from really most of the mistakes I made along the way. Had you written the ride of our lives in close proximity when it actually took place, or was that? Did you remember back 30 years or whatever it was? Yeah. You know, jogging, I took that bike ride with my wife and 15-month-old son back in 1983. I kept a journal. Got it. That journal sat in a shoebox for over 35 years.

And then when I retired from the Army in 2019, had a little bit of time on my hand. So I decided to, you know, write the book, The Ride of Our Lives. And it was really meant to be for, for myself, to reflect back on and for my family to have. And then I decided to self-publish it as a book, and it turned out to be quite popular. Awesome. So, so this book, like you said, this is going back on your whole career and the lessons that you've learned. that you've learned and you've been through the entire leadership spectrum in the army and spent a bunch of time in combat.

And so this is a great book. And let's jump into it. And just so everybody knows, look, if I have to skip around, I'm not going to read the whole book right now. There is an audiobook version of this as well, but we're not going to read the whole thing. So I'm going to jump into some spots. It's obviously not going to be completely cohesive when we read it on the podcast. It's set up in a very cohesive manner in the way it's read.

But I got to make that caveat before I start reading. But here's the one I wanted to start with. Going to the book. Some of the best leadership advice was given to me by a crusty non-commissioned officer during my first experience in the Army when I was training as an ROTC cadet at Fort Knox, Kentucky in 1976. I was a patrol leader during a training event. In this scenario, my patrol was passing through a cleared lane within a minefield. The lane was about 40 yards in length.

As we began, as we were crossing the minefield on the cleared lane, we began to receive small arms fire from an enemy position about 200 yards away. I hesitated. The soldiers were waiting for a command. I did not give. It took less than a minute for the enemy to destroy my entire patrol. The sergeant, who was a seasoned Vietnam veteran, pulled me aside and loudly it, it was. advised when in charge, be in charge. Your followers expect you to lead so you better damn well lead. Good lesson learned out of the gate. Yeah. Again, I could just say as I reflect back on my

career, it was those non-commissioned officers, especially early on in my career, those Vietnam vets who I was fortunate to be around and fortunate to get, you know, just some hard advice from. You know, no, no punches pulled. Hey, this is the way it should be, you know, so square yourself away and lead when you're in a leadership position. Yeah, you know, I was thinking in that particular case and when I was running training, a lot of times the younger guys, the young SEAL officers, one thing that would happen to them would be, there would be a platoon chief or a leading petty officer that would get in the habit of making a lot of the calls. And so the, the, The officer would get in the habit of not making calls.

And it wasn't even a fine line. What they had to realize was if one of the NCOs makes a call, awesome. You help that you support their call. You're going to go. No factor. All good. It's in those moments, those rare moments where, you know, in this particular case, maybe the NCO got hit with the first volley of fire or the NCO wasn't a position on the minefield

where he could see where the fire was coming from. So they can't make a call or they're panicked or whatever the case may be. So you get that leadership vacuum. And that's when that officer has to be detached enough, has to be heads up enough to go, oh, wait a second. My NGOs aren't making a call. I need the lead right now. So it's a little bit of a cautionary tale too.

You know, if when you're in charge, that doesn't necessarily mean you need to make the call. But you better be prepared in case, you know, the people. people, your subordinate leadership doesn't make something happen. In an ideal world, subordinate leadership makes a call. You don't have to do anything. I hate to say it, but in an ideal world, when you're in charge, you don't have to do anything. Yeah, ideally. And, you know, Jocka, you speak to the fact that, you know, you have to put your followers into positions where they have that opportunity to make some of those tough calls. And, you know, I even think of this reflecting back, you know, my kids are both in their 30s now,

but reflecting back when my children were teenagers. And I really think it's important for parents to let young teenagers make decisions because if parents are making all the decisions for their kids, when are they going to learn how to make a decision? You know, they're going to learn how to make a decision when they become an adult? Well, that's kind of too late.

So I do think you need to put your followers in positions where they gain that experience. And if they make a mistake, you know, that's usually how. how we learn more is when we make a mistake than when we do something right by accident. Yeah, that's, I was going to say when you were saying, let your kids make decisions, let your kids make mistakes too. And just like in the military, this doesn't mean you're going to send a young, you know, first lieutenant out on an operation that they're not capable of

conducting because they don't have the experience yet and they don't have the knowledge. You're not going to say, oh, let's see how it goes. No, you're not going to do that. Just like you're not to say, oh, my kid wants to go play in the street, which is not a good decision where they could get hit by a card. And that's not what we're talking about. But you can certainly let them make decisions and let them brush up against the guardrails of failure because that's where you learn through those little scratches that you get on the body. Exactly. I'm going to fast forward a little bit. Um, because this, this section kind of sets up the rest of the book. My personal leadership philosophy is based on three elements of character, competence, and resilience.

There are sub-components to each element of my leadership philosophy. Character, competence, resilience, and their sub-components are skills. And like any other skill, they can be learned and strengthened. Although some may be born with higher levels of any one of these elements, everyone can improve them through training and practice. And this is something that I think there's a lot of people in the world that think that leadership is something you're born with and either you have it or you don't and like you said there are certainly you might have some advantages in some areas you might be pretty articulate you might be pretty you know visionary you might be have a good sense of other people's emotions

there's different levels that people have in all those categories but no matter where you are in all these categories you can improve upon them then you you can get better. And I think a lot of people think, oh, leadership is just going to come through osmosis or it's something you're born with. And there's nothing you can do to actually train it when the fact of the matter is there's 100% things that you can do to improve your leadership skills. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's like athleticism. You know, some people are born with better athletic skills than others, but everybody could improve in that athleticism. It doesn't mean everybody's going to be, you know, an NFL player or NBA player,

whatever, but everybody could get better. And I feel the same way about leadership. And that's another reason why I wrote the book, and just as you've written many leadership books, to try to help people develop those skills that we know could be improved. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the benefit of being in the military is you get to see over and over again young leaders actually improve and get better. And and make better decisions and get more experience. So it's something that you and I, through the blessing of being in the military, got to see over and over again. It's a fact.

It's a fact that you know leaders can be improved. Let me get into these components here. The first one, character. Character is the root of leadership. A leader of character will be able to establish an environment of trust. A character-based leader grows trust by trusting others first, providing a vision, displaying integrity, leading by example and sincerely caring about others.

A leader must have values and principles. Values are something a person believes in and will be guided by when times are good and when times are tough. A character-based leader sincerely cares about those they lead and they place the interests of their followers above their own. I had a guy on this podcast by the name of General James Mukayama

and he was he served in Vietnam and he worked for he worked for Colonel David Hackworth when Hackworth was the battalion commander Mukuyama was one of his company commanders but that was a point that he made so clear was that idea of you got to care about your people and that was a thing that hackworth had that I don't know if it always comes about or comes across in in his books and in his writings but Hackworth just cared about his soldiers and that elevated him so much in their eyes. And that's exactly what you're talking about here. Yeah. And, you know, it's easy to say, you know, care about your people that you lead. But it's, I think, extremely hard to do to put the interest of those you lead before your own interest. I think the only people

who could naturally do that are parents. You know, I think parents could naturally put the interests of their kids before their own. But to do that to people that, you know, aren't blood relatives of yours, that's a hard thing to do. And I've been fortunate enough to be around leaders in the military who had that ability to do that. It was almost an innate sense they had to put the welfare of those they lead first. And, you know, we learned this in the Army and the Marines and the Navy Air Force, you know, that, you know, leaders eat last. And the reason we do that, you know, you can imagine, you know, you're out there either in a training environment or on an operation, you know, get this chow-mermited out to you in the field. And, you know, it's rainy,

it's cold. And if that leader jumps into Chow Line first, there's probably whoever's going to be the last guy in the Chow Line probably isn't going to eat or at least get a full portion. I mean, that's why leaders eat last. You want your folks. that you lead to have the benefit of that nutrition before you suck it down, you know. And again, we learned this in the military, and I think, you know, folks in the civilian sector, some know that kind of innately, and others maybe never experienced that. And that's why I think there's some organizations that cannot develop that trust that is so essential if you're going to have an organization effectively run.

Another thing about this is I think there's people who think that they can fool their troops and their subordinate leadership into thinking that they care about them. And I promise you, having been a young enlisted guy, having been the youngest and most junior guy in my first two SEAL platoons, everybody can tell when you're looking out for yourself. Everybody can tell. You're not fooling anyone. And that's why the people that truly care about the team

and put the team above themselves, that's why they always shine. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, you can think of examples that we've seen in the military. You know, a leader who, I remember when I was over in Ramadi, you know, one of the platoons was getting some better version of an uparmored Humvee.

And the platoon leader refused. used to take that better version. He made sure, you know, his other soldiers in the platoon got that version before he would take it to write in himself. And that's putting yourself more at risk for the benefit of those your leads. So there's a perfect example of how one could do that, especially if it means putting your life at risk, this guy was a true leader. 100%. No, that's an outstanding example right there. next thing next characteristic competence when I talk about competence being an element of leadership I am not referring to the technical competence in a specific job I am referring to the general

competence of a person to lead others many elements make up competence but the most imperative are providing a vision and purpose for the organization decision making developing others and communication a leader must be able to articulate a vision which is simple unique, ideal image of the future. Leaders must explain the why behind the vision and tell their followers what they believe in. When leaders provide vision and purpose, they instill confidence and provide inspiration that fuels an organization, empowering it to success. A leader must learn and apply problem-solving skills and decision-making processes.

A leader also must possess the courage to decide. One of the most important roles of a leader is to develop other leaders. A leader must mentor and coach, must be a mentor and coach willing to take others assigned and provide insight into what it means to be a leader. A leader must communicate in clear, concise, and respectful manner. Most leaders spend between 70 and 90% of their time communicating. It is important for a leader to develop listening skills and the ability to get a consistent message out to all stakeholders.

So that's the competency of being a leader, all these skills that you list in here. And again, what's interesting about these skills is, you know, if you scan through them, can you get better at explaining the vision? Yes, you can. Can you get better at decision making? Yes, you can. Can you get better at problem solving? Yes, you can.

Can you get better at decision making? Yes, you can. Can you get better at mentoring? Yes, you can. Every one of these, can you get better at communicating in simple, clear, concise language, respectful manner. Yes, you can. Everything you're talking about here with a competent.

of a leader is something that you can improve upon. Yeah. And in the book, as people go through it, they'll see, you know, there's stories associated with these lessons that I've learned. And then there's certain actions I've found through my experience over the last 40 years that help one get better and stronger at these particular skills that you mentioned. Yeah. So just to make that clear, because I don't know how much I did it in my notes,

but you broke the book down almost like a military learning manual where, hey, here's the actions that you need to take if you want to improve in these areas. And I know I don't hit them. I think I hit a couple of them, but that's the way the book is broken down. The last thing is resilience. Anyone who has ever led anything will tell you that at some point in time,

the organization you lead will face adversity. For that may matter. Every living person faces adversity at some point in their lives. It all comes down to how prepared one is to face these challenges and how one responds. Leaders must prepare themselves and give their followers and their followers to overcome challenges. Positive energy is essential when leading a large organization or a small team. Optimism and enthusiasm are two key traits of a resilient person. Like any other trait, they must be exercised to become a strong part of one's makeup.

A leader must be physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually fit. To strengthen resilience, leaders must follow themselves, must allow themselves to be vulnerable by moving out of their comfort zone. By taking risks and taking on tough challenges, scar tissues developed, and resilience is improved. So the person that's going to lead had better be able to get back up again if they get knocked down. Yeah. And you know, Jacko, I think resilience is something that has been talked about. a lot over the last few years. But resilience, I don't believe resilience actually just happens by itself. You know, you've got to train to become a resilient person by doing certain things that you

just mentioned, you know, moving out of your comfort zone. I mean, if you're a leader or a person who just wants to take the easy way of just staying in your comfort zone, doing things that you know how to do, never stretching yourself, never putting yourself in a position where you might make a mistake because you think you're going to look bad in front of your followers or your peers or whomever, you're not going to grow that way. And then when tough times do happen, you're going to be less likely to demonstrate the resiliency that's needed in order to help your organization get through those tough times. reminds me talking to some of the some of the tankers actually this was the one one ad that replaced you guys in romadi but one thing that i found interesting was so they do and and it was actually a guy named mike bahima who is the who was a company commander fantastic guy but he was explaining to me what what they do to prepare for deployment one of they do things that they do to prepare for deployment is they bring their tank on this tank range and they do gunnery where you're shooting and you're moving and maneuvering the tank and doing comms and

Reloading and it's a challenge. It's like I guess for an infantry guy for or for a seal It's like doing a combat conditioning course where you run you shoot you got headplates to hit you got long distance shots to take You got to do pull-ups and rope climbs then you got to shoot more it's like that but it's in a tank And one thing that he said to me was when they go do gunnery The first person that goes is battalion commander exactly sets the example hey this I'm going first and so what you're talking about getting out of your comfort zone I can't imagine a lot of those tanker, those tank battalion commanders, they've probably been out of the tank for a while. And yet they're going to step up and they're going to show, okay, this is it. This is what we do.

Yeah. And, you know, you kind of reminded me of something that I wouldn't mind sharing with you because I think it's kind of a great lesson in resiliency. And this goes back to Ramadi. I had a national, you know, one of our National Guard tank companies when we were training it at, Camp Shelby before going over to Iraq. This company has three platoons and one of their platoons went through that tank gunnery that you just talked about. Only one of their platoons did. And when they got over to Ramadi, we actually task organized them to 269 armor, which was an East Ramadi, Combat Outpost, Corrigador

area. And since 269 armor was an armor battalion, they didn't need this company to operate in tanks. So they made them motorized infantry. So they operated as motorized infantry for the first six months they were over in Ramadi and then 269 armor leaves and they get replaced by first of 506 infantry from the 101 Airborne light infantry but tanks were still needed in East Ramadi so now these National Guard soldiers who were tankers operating as motorized infantry for the previous six months are now in tanks. And they just did a remarkable job. They had several main gun engagements while they were over there. And it just goes to show you how by training to be

resilient and training in those skills, even when you're taken out of that particular job in a combat situation for six months and then having to go back into those tanks again and then just performing remarkably, I think is just a great story of not only resiliency, but adaptability. I think that's something that has made the SEAL team successful. And it starts in the basic SEAL training. And I always say that, hey, you know, the basic SEAL training, you don't really learn anything because you're just doing push-ups and being wet, cold, and miserable. You learn how to suffer, and if you don't like to suffer, you're not going to be there.

But one thing I will say is you're getting total chaos. Like it's total chaos when you're there You everything that happens I mean you go out You go out your boats in the ocean And they're getting flipped over And you're getting washed up on And people are confused lost

You got chemlights bouncing all over the place You know when hell week kicks off There's just total chaos confusion There's they're throwing smoke grenades everywhere You can't see anything There's machine guns going off You can't hear anything And it's just like that all the time

So you get used to this environment Where there's total chaos going on And you have to figure it out You have to adapt And then when when I got to the SEAL teams and it's not so much like this anymore, but it still does have this, still does have this, this DNA, which is there, there was no doctrine. When I got the SEAL teams, if you want to do a raid, if someone didn't tell you, if your platoon chief didn't know how to do a raid, you had to just figure it out. And there's good and bad to that. I mean, it's kind of good. In the Army, you want to do a raid? You can pick up the, what is it, seven, tax, six infantry platoon and squads. You can figure out how to do a raid. It just tells everybody what they need to do. Seal team. teams doesn't have that and so you just go okay well what makes sense how can we do this and and like I said there's some good to that there's some bad to that because now you might

not come up with the best plan but there's also some good because you're constantly learning to adapt and I think that's one of the things and it's look the whole I'm I'm saying that about the seal teams because that's my environment but the military in general does that and that's exactly what you're talking about you take guys you train them in one in one aspect of combat you take them on deployment you put them into a totally different aspect of combat they perform And then halfway through, you switch them back to the original thing and they get back on that horse and do it again, or in this case, get back in those tanks and do it again.

Yeah. And, you know, I remember when we got over, when the brigade, I was part of got over to Ramadi in 2005, coin doctrine wasn't written yet. And, you know, coin doctrine wasn't written by General Petraeus and General Madison until, like, early 2006, really. And so there was no coin academy that leaders from my brigade went to when we got to Iraq, but I think 2006, 2007. And after that, any brigade that got deployed Iraq went through this thing called the Coin Academy, the Counterinsurgency Academy.

And so we kind of had to figure it out on our own. And the way you figure it out, you know, you read history, you see how it was done in the past. You just use some common sense. You talk to leaders that you respect and that you count on and you kind of figure it out. And that was an interesting thing that was done there, you know, a brigade of 5,000 soldiers and Marines, but a lot of the operations were occurring at the platoon and company level. So it's not like, you know, because I was a brigade commander, I was directing some type of large brigade operation. That didn't exist.

They were all done at very small unit levels. And just an amazing thing about our American servicemen and women. They figure it out. They have a way to figure it out. And I think if you read history of the military, which I know you do when you read on your podcast regularly, it's just amazing how we have, you know, how our American military has just figured things out as we went. Yeah, I don't even remember because the first went, so I arrived in Ramadi in like April of 2006. I visited one of my friends who was an intel officer at one of the, at one of the bases in Ramadi.

And she had the big targeting board. And I had worked with her before. She had that big targeting board when I was in Iraq before, the same big targeting board. I was like, man, this is, this is not a good sign. Because if we're just going to be targeting these people and this, this board is just as big as it was when I left. Yeah. And I went back to my talk, my tackle operation center and I googled. I think I must have heard something about this new counterinsurgency manual.

But I Googled it. And it was on, it was a draft copy because it didn't even get released yet. It was a draft copy that I got. And I was just like, okay, this is it. And I found it on, I forget those websites, those, there's a couple websites. I want to say one of them was like global security.org. Maybe I found out, but I was on one of those websites that I used to read about

what was happening in the world, sort of from a military geopolitical perspective, also has a bunch of manuals. So it had the new FM3-Tac-24 counterinsurgency. And I literally read it that, like that night day. It's pretty long. And I just plucked things from it. Yeah.

And realized, okay, this is what we need to do. And I remember I know I stole from it because I remember my boss saying, you know, what's your objective in these types of operations? And I said, provide security for the populace, which I know I didn't make that up on my own. I didn't come up with that. That's 100% stolen from the counterinsurgency manual. And that's what that's what kind of drove me in that direction of like, hey, how can we really help the broader conventional forces that are here as as they start to move in and try and stay. what's happening. Yeah, you know, it's it's funny you mention that because we kind of evolved and and I read somewhere or somebody told me, you know, you can't kill yourself out

of an insurgency. And we, when we first got there, you know, our mission was to, you know, kill the insurgents. And we evolved into protecting the populace because we realized, you know, the main, the main goal here is to protect the populace. in order to change chaos into something that was gonna be calmer than chaos there. And so the same type of thinking you had about your mission of protecting the people of Ramadi, we kind of evolved into that too from, again,

reading history, talking to some of the Iraqi leaders in Ramadi that we would be dealing with on a regular basis. And we came to the conclusion that, hey, if we're going to be successful here, it's about protecting the populace, not simply killing the bad guys. Now, sometimes you would have to kill bad guys in order to protect the populace. So I'm not saying, you know, that was totally off the table. But the mindset completely changed for us throughout that one year that we conducted operations there. Yeah, awesome stuff.

Getting back to the book here You say discipline, respect, and selflessness Are part of the United States Army's DNA Forged over 200 years ago During the training of the Continental Army At Valley Forged Pennsylvania You throw in Pennsylvania any chance you get, can't, don't you? I got to, yeah

These traits have served our military well And to count, at least in part, For the reason the United States military Always tops polls announcing the most trusted organizations in America. Any leader would do well to demonstrate the traits of self-discipline, respect for others, and selflessness in order to lead effectively. Now, you got a story in here about, what was it, Sergeant Mike? Cotcher. Mike Cotcher. Tell us that story. Yeah. Mike is an amazing person. Mike Cotcher was a soldier in the Pennsylvania National Guard, 28th Infantiary.

Division, who was deployed to Afghanistan. And while he was in Afghanistan, a rocket came in, this rocket landed about 10 feet away from him. And it just caused significant wounds to Mike Kotcher, broke his jaw, you know, internal bleeding and damages. And then his left arm was wounded so significantly that it had to be amputated. And they, you know, as they were treating him, he was eventually put in a coma, an induced coma. And it took him two years to recover from these very, very significant wounds that he had. And, you know, he had a lot of deal with, obviously, recovering from these wounds, not, you know, losing his arm, etc., etc. And he decided that the way he was going to overcome this adversity that he was facing,

was to just build himself up physically and compete in physical competition. And so he decided to enter the Invictus Games. And then Victus games were created, I think, by Prince Harry, if I'm not mistaken. And it was all about bringing wounded warriors together to compete in Olympic-style competition. And so I believe it was in 2018 in Sydney, Australia, when Mike was competing in his third Invictus game,

as he was competing in some track and field events, he noticed this young girl about eight years old in the stands. And she was kind of, you know, shadowing him. Whatever event he would go to compete in, she would kind of, you know, move her seat and come over and watch him. And then he realized she had one arm. and when it came time for him to receive his silver medal that he earned, he asked Gemma to come up on the podium with him. And when he was given the silver medal, he took it from around his neck and put it around Gemma's neck

and gifted the silver medal that he worked so hard for to this young eight-year-old Australian girl. And I had the opportunity to email back and forth with Gemma's father, who again is Australian, and he went on to tell me how that had just completely changed Gemma's life. Another interesting thing he told me, he said, you know, Gemma's arm was not amputated. She was born without that arm. And he said, and there's a psychological difference between having your arm amputated or being born without an arm. So he made that distinction clear to me. And he went on to say that, you know,

from Mike doing that, what Mike probably thought was a very simple gesture. It just dramatically changed Gemma's life. And now she's competing in sports. As a matter of fact, I see pictures of her on Instagram where she's winning swim meets, and she's just ready to tear it up because of this very simple leadership gesture that Mike Kocher demonstrated to her. And it just goes to show you that the simple things we do in life as leaders have a profound effect on those that we do those things for. And, you know, similar to the butterfly effect.

You know, that, you know, this could have a generational impact. I don't want to sound too dramatic here, but it could. It could have a generational impact on Gemma and on Gemma's children. If she has children someday, et cetera, et cetera, just. because of that very selfless act that Mike Cottaged. And you got to realize, you know, you work hard to get the silver metal. You know? I mean, just to give it away like that to somebody that you don't really know was quite a gesture.

So that's the story about Mike. Yeah, I can only imagine a young girl like that and, you know, young girls and boys, but I would say I've got three daughters and one son. And I would say that girls are really self-conscious about, you know, those kind of things. their body, they're self-conscious about that. And you could imagine someone like Gemma who's sort of avoiding any time where all of a sudden this becomes the focus

is like what's different about her and him just come along and saying, yeah, it's cool. Yeah. It's good. Yeah. Don't worry about it. Go do your thing. Exactly. And how much that just changed your life. That's awesome to hear. Yeah. Yeah. You wrap up this idea here. You say self-discipline. Giving up could become a habit.

Working hard and striving continually to get better is also habit. Habits are developed through repetition and where self-discipline comes in. Leaders who are self-disciplined adhere to the same standards they have set for their followers. They lead by example and share hardship, struggles, and tough jobs with their followers. By the way, adhering to the same standards you expect from others and sharing the load are two of several actions a leader must take to instill trust throughout an organization. Self-discipline people have the motivation to do the hard work behind the scenes, which makes them great at what they do. These people have the drive to act in order to make themselves better and to avoid anything detrimental to achieving their goals. This work ethic generally has a way of making everyone around them better too.

Self-disciplined leaders have a bias for action, and in uncertain times, leaders dispel uncertainty through competent and confident actions. Self-discipline leaders have an offensive mindset and do not allow setbacks or obstacles to stop progress. Good leaders find a way to win and inspire faith and belief throughout an organization. Some people are born with a greater propensity to be self-disciplined than others. Like other traits, self-discipline can be developed. For those who have poor self-discipline, I have found the best way to improve self-discipline is to do some small things and work yourself into a more difficult thing. If you hit a bump and backslide a bit, do not beat yourself up. Just get back with the program.

Remember, good habits are developed through self-discipline of continuing to do those things. I can ask this question a decent amount. Am I disciplined because I was in the Navy or am I disciplined because I am disciplined? And I don't know. What do you think? I think the training that you received in the Navy, certainly helped is my belief. And I think goals are important. You know, I mean, if you have no goals in your life, nothing that's meaningful and purposeful for you to work toward, what the

hell are you going to be disciplined about, you know, I mean, you're going to be kind of like just drifting one way or to other. So I think, you know, people that have specifically goals, your goal to be a seal, your goal, once you were a seal to, you know, be a seal commander, et cetera, et cetera, kind of sets you up to be more disciplined about achieving those goals. So I think it's probably a little bit of both, but I do think the path you chose and those goals you had probably did a lot to help you become a very self-disciplined person. And you think that's the same for you then? Well, I do.

I think if I didn't take the path I did by getting into the Army, I probably wouldn't have had the benefit of those NCOs and other role models who showed me that in order to achieve something, you really got to work hard for. Now, yeah, when I was growing up as a kid, you know, my dad, my family tried to show me those things. So I think it's You know, now that I'm thinking of it,

it's kind of, I think, building blocks along the way in your life. You know, you're going to learn some of that from your family. And then, you know, I'm a big believer in sports. You know, you play sports. Like, you know, I played some sports in high school, and you have to be disciplined in order to get out there on a field and not get yourself beat up, right?

And then, you know, you join the military, and again, you've got to show some discipline. in order to, because you know, people are counting on you and in order to achieve what you want to in that regard. So I think it's really like a building block as you go through your life. And some people are fortunate to have role models and mentors in their life who are going to show them why discipline is important. And then you just continue with it.

Yeah, I think I was, I don't know if this is lucky or unlucky. I was lucky in the fact that I wasn't really great at anything. When I got at the SEAL teams, if I didn't work hard, I was going to look like an idiot. And I didn't want to look like an idiot, and I didn't want to let my teammates down. So I had to just work hard to be ready for stuff. That definitely influenced my path quite a bit. I think if I would have been a naturally gifted athlete, I probably would have had less discipline. I would have needed as much discipline.

But the other thing you had to remember is people get out of the SEAL teams. And sometimes they're even still in the SEAL teams and they, you know, they let themselves go. They don't practice. They don't train. They get out of shape. Yeah. You know, it's so just because you were in the military, just because you were in the SEAL teams or whatever you did, and you got to maintain that discipline. That discipline is not, it's not a chip that they put into your brain and now you got it.

You don't have to worry about it anymore. No, no, you still got to go. Yeah. You know, Jack, I do think that's why purpose. so important and those goals are so important because the same at ranger school you know uh you know you get you get that ranger tab and that's when the hard work should start because now you've got to prove it every day that i i deserve to have this ranger tab on my shoulder and i and i see it uh you know folks i know that that went the ranger school and now they're out of the military and they kind of

just like let themselves go and and it's probably because they don't have that that purpose anymore or that goal anymore. And I think that's an unfortunate thing. And that's why purpose is so important. That's why I think leaders have to be able to communicate purpose to their followers. So their followers understand. And I know you talk about this in your dichotomy of leadership book. You know, so people understand why am I doing this thing that the leader has told me to do? Well, if you don't explain the purpose, the followers aren't going to get it. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Fast forward a little bit.

Dignity and respect. Leaders demonstrate respect for others by the words they choose, the tone of voice they use, and by treating people with dignity. Demonstrating respect is also about being considered of a person's time and showing interest in what others think. Good leaders treat others respectfully regardless of position. Good leaders treat the maintenance person with the same amount of respect they treat the CEO. I believe it is impossible to be toxic leader, to be authentic. toxic leader if you treat those people you lead with dignity and respect. This does not mean you cannot

hold people to the prescribed standard and counsel them. However, there is a dignified and respectful way to do those things. A leader could even fire someone in a dignified and respectful way. A rule to follow is praise in public, reprimand in private. Now, what's interesting about this paragraph is this is anybody that doesn't, that has sort of a surface view of the military, they don't think that this is, They don't think this is applicable at all in the military. I guess it's just from boot camp movies, right? I guess it's just from Full Metal Jacket. Full Metal Jacket has given, and I love that movie.

It's a great movie. It's an incredible movie. And it is accurate. You know, you talk to any Marine. Look, they don't use the same language that they used back then. But, man, boot camp is boot camp. And it is yelling and screaming, making people uncomfortable. And really not treating them with, treating them with disrespect.

especially in the beginning. So I think movies like that have given this false image of the military that that's how military leadership works. And it and it is not true. Now, are there leaders that act like that? Yeah, there are absolutely are in the military. And guess what? There's leaders that act like that in the civilian sector too that act that are disrespectful, that treat people bad. They're in leadership positions and it's not good.

Yeah. It is not good. And what's interesting about this is I can yell in. And if I'm your boss, I can yell at screaming you. And you're probably going to do what I tell you. You're intimidated. You don't want to get fired. You don't want to hear me yell and scream.

So you go do what I told you to do. And so I get some positive feedback on my yelling and screaming. However, as soon as you get home, you're on monster.com looking for a new job because you don't want to be working with me because I'm a jerk. Right. And by the way, how much effort do you actually give? You know, do you give 110%? No, you probably give 72%, which is the best.

bare minimum you needed to give to get the job done. So all my yelling and screaming got me the bare minimum that you are going to produce. Whereas if I treated you with respect, you're going to give 110%. You're going to do that job better than I could do it and better than you could do it with your minimum effort. So this idea, treating people with respect, I mean, this is just, it seems like common sense. And I think sometimes, I mean, I had this happen when I started working with companies. Actually, it wasn't the very first.

It was one of the first companies I started working with. And I'm on the phone with the CEO doing an introductory call. And he says, I can't wait till you get out here and whip my people into shape. And I said, hey, you know something? If you want someone to whip your people in the shape, you should get someone else. Because whipping people is what happened. That's what you do to slaves. And slaves is not a good environment.

And no one wants to be a slave. And they don't do the job that they're supposed to do. They'll do the bare minimum so they don't get punished for it. So I'm glad you got. this section in here. Yeah, you know, Jocko, I have, you know, business owners talk to me about that all the time, you know, like, why can't I be a toxic leader? You know, I get the job done, you know, get shit done, you know, that type of thing. And it's kind of like, you know what, you could be a toxic leader, and like you said, you could yell and scream and people are going to listen to you

and they're going to do it. But if you're looking for sustained success over the long period of time, that's where, you know, toxic leadership does not work. Because toxic leadership could work for short-term gain, but if you want sustained success over time, that's not the way to do it. Certainly is not. Fast forward a little bit here. And again, if you're listening to me, read this, I'm just jumping through various sections.

It's not going to sound completely cohesive as I read it, but you get the book and it is completely cohesive. Next section I want to read here is to be successful in life, you must make yourself vulnerable. There's no risk without reward. With that said, the risk you take must be prudent and must include risk analysis and risk mitigation measures. Nothing is risk free and seldom can a person eliminate risk entirely. Although risk cannot be eliminated, leaders must identify ways to reduce the most probable

and highest impact risks. I think this is funny because I say to leaders all the time. If there's no risk, it's not even a decision. What's the decision? If there's no risk and it's just a benefit, cool, we're doing it. We're not even talking. That's not a decision. That's just what we're doing.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's why some leaders fail to have the courage to make decisions. Because with almost any decision you're making, there's some sort of risk associated with that. And again, if you're going to look at... at gaining anything for your organization. You know, we talked about, you know, moving yourself out of your comfort zone. You've got to move your organization out of its comfort zone too. And so it's about, okay, understanding what those risks are,

and then how am I going to reduce the probability of this happening and also reduce the impact of it happening? And those are certain steps you could take. You know, I talk about optimism a lot, and especially, you know, if you hit a really bad day, a really bad day, you know, you have to be optimistic and then lead your organization through that. But it's not just because you're telling people, hey, things are going to get better. You've actually got to put a plan together that's believable to your followers. So it's just not about, you know, what you say. It's about, okay, what plan have we put together now that's going to show that we're going to be able to do things a little bit differently to overcome this adversity.

So, you know, that's really, and it takes a lot of hard work and it doesn't come easy. Yeah, I always, whenever I talk about you've got to believe in the mission, right? And I say, believe isn't, doesn't mean the old say of if you can believe it, you can believe it, you're You can achieve it. Actually, not true. Because I can say, I believe I can fly. I'm not going to be able to fly. To me, believe, belief in the mission means you see an actual pathway to achieve the mission.

And it might be challenging and there's going to be bumps and hurdles and obstacles along the way, but we are going to be able to do it. And hey, everyone, here's how we're going to get there. And as long as you can show people an actual pathway to get to this victory, then you can, then people can believe in what you're doing for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I'll just reflect back on.

a bad day. You know, I had January 5th, 2006, I think you're familiar with the glass factory bombing there in Ramadi. And, you know, you have a bad day like that and you just, you know, as a leader, you just can't cave in. I mean, because there's, so give everyone a little brief. I mean, obviously, I knew about it. I arrived there shortly thereafter and I tracked it as it happened. I mean, it was a horrific incident at a police recruiting event. So recruiting local police in the city of Vermont to come and join the Iraqi police and become the defenders of the city and help the local populace. What we talked about earlier, defend the populace.

Here you go. Come and sign up. And it was actually going pretty well. And then this event happened. Yeah, it was going remarkably well. You know, when we first got there, I guess it was July. or July of 2005, next June and July up there, of course, but July of 2005, you know, we started police recruiting events and we'd have like two or three people show up to join the police.

I mean, it was pathetic. And, you know, we started to talk to the shakes, and actually through our talks with the shakes, they would tell us some things that our troops were doing that probably weren't that beneficial to the citizens of Ramadi. So we started to change up some of our tactics and procedures. That didn't affect our operation, but it helped the sheikhs understand that, hey, we were really here for your people, for your tribe. and this really demonstrated itself in January of 2006. We held this recruiting event. It was January 3rd, 4th, and 5th.

And on January 3rd, we had 200 people show up at the Glass Factory in Ramadi where we're conducting this event at. And the Glass Factory is an old factory, but it's a nice big building, and it was right outside or very close to the main. U.S. camp of Camp Ramadi so it was a pretty good spot to do it exactly it was a good spot to do it 200 people showed up the first day it's like we can't believe this like before we're having two or three people show up we got 200 people standing in line to join the police so the shake you know that told us to shakes we're getting the word out to their

tribes people to hey come and we we trust these Americans come in and so the second day we had around 450 500 people standing in line to join the police it's like this is incredible. The third day, and as I reflect back on it, you know, whenever you're operating in an insurgency environment, you don't want to do things three days in a row. So it was a big mistake I made. Third day, we had about 800 people standing in line. I mean, we were ecstatic. We thought we really turned a corner here. And a suicide bomber, because this was a third day in a row, we were doing this. Suicide bomber shows up and detonates their vest right in the middle of this large crowd, killing over 100 Iraqis, and killed a Marine dog handler, Sergeant Khan, and also a good friend

of mine, Lieutenant Colonel Mike McLaughlin, and injured several other of our soldiers some severely, but thank God no one else died. No other U.S. military died from that attack. And So that was a really, really bad day. The way I handled it is I brought the leaders together the following day because two weeks from that particular day, we were going to have 200 Iraqis show up at the glass factory again so we could ship them to Baghdad to attend police training. So we knew we were going to have a similar situation.

So got everybody together next day. and the importance of leaders admitting when they do something wrong, I think really comes out here because when I got everybody together, I don't know what they were thinking. Maybe they were thinking I was going to try to blame somebody. I don't know. But the first thing I said was we're not going to waste time fixing blame on anybody because I'm the one responsible for this. So forget about fixing blame. It's on me.

What we need to spend our time doing is talk about how are we going to change things. so this doesn't happen two weeks from now when we do the same event again. Because, you know, we had to publicize this so people knew to show up, so it's not like you're keeping it from the insurgents. And so I'm not going to get into the details of how we change things, but we change things significantly in terms of the way the outside of that glass factory was set up. So if, God forbid, a suicide bomber was going to blow themselves up again, the most they could take out would be about 10 people rather than 100.

or more. And so the point is when leaders hit these bad days, this adversity, the organization is counting on you to find a way through it. And that was a lesson I learned. I mentioned

this book is filled with mistakes I made that I was able to learn from, and by putting this book out, hopefully others won't have to make similar mistakes. And so the whole point of what I just said is when you hit adversity, you've got to be able to be resilient enough to fight your way through that for the organization. And again, that's not going to come by itself. You've got to prepare and develop your resiliency before these bad days happen because we all know they're going to happen.

And then it's also the important part of a leader admitting they made a mistake so the organization doesn't have to start pointing fingers at one another because if you don't do that and you can't develop that sense of trust where, because people know when you screwed up, okay? And if people are expending more energy on watching their own back, They're not going to be expending energy on getting done what the organization needs to get done. Because watching your own back takes a hell of a lot of energy, doesn't it? And so that's really the moral of the story. Yeah, no, it's a, and you were there when this, when we had a, we had a blue-on-blue that I wrote about in extreme ownership.

And it's the same, you know, it's the same exact approach I took, which was, hey, there's a friendly Iraqi soldier dead. There's several Iraqis wounded. One of my guys is wounded. Who are we going to blame? Don't look any further than me because this is on me. And it is on me. This is happening. I'm the senior guy out on the battlefield.

This is 100% my fault. And that way, yeah, we don't have to look at who are going to point fingers at. No one has to worry about, hey, am I going to leave you out to dry? I'm not going to hang you out to dry. This is 100% on me. And then how do we prevent this from ever happening again? It's the thing a leader has to do in those situations. Yeah, absolutely.

Um, fast forward a little bit here. You talk about creating a vision. You say the concept of a leader providing a vision to an organization they lead is at least 2,000 years old. In the King's James Version of the Bible, Proverbs 2918 reads, where there is no vision, the people perish. An early point in my experience leading people, I became aware that providing a vision of the future was one of the most important things a leader can do.

The whole concept of leadership. is about taking people to a place where they could not reach on their own. I have found that when I provide a vision of the future to a group I lead, it motivates and inspires them to work toward achieving a desired end state. That is why I believe creating a shared vision and communicating it consistently are important roles of a leader. Visualizing achievement is essential if you are to gain success. A vision must be a simple, unique, ideal image of the future.

Ideally, the vision a leader developed should be a shared vision. A shared vision does not only mean everyone the organization believes in the vision, but also that representative members of the organization have provided input to create the vision. Occasionally I'll get, I talk about decentralized command all the time with all the companies I work with. And occasionally I'll get someone saying, hey, you know, I feel like the team doesn't really know where we're going. I'm trying to lead them in the right direction, but I don't want to impose it on them. And I say, listen, it is okay for a leader sometimes to say, hey, everyone, this is where we're going. Because not everyone has the visibility that you have from your leadership perspective.

You know, if you're in charge of a project, not everyone can see all the moving pieces. So they might not see, hey, this is where we need to go. This is what we're doing. Is it good to get input for that collective vision? Absolutely. Absolutely. But you may be in a situation where other members of the team don't have the vision that you have just because of where you're sitting or where you're standing, you can see a little bit more.

You have a little bit more visibility on things. So sometimes you do have to make the vision. And as soon as you make that vision, your vision isn't written in stone or you shouldn't write your vision in stone. If you write your vision in stone, you're probably making a mistake. And some people might think that that sounds weak. Well, you know, what are you going to change your vision? Actually, I may change the vision. If we get to a point where we need to do something just like when you're in Ramada, you say,

Hey, wait a second, we've been doing things like this. We're not getting any progress with the shakes. The shakes are telling us, oh, guess what we're going to do? Adjust our vision. So there's nothing wrong with adjusting your vision. And there's nothing wrong with if you're not getting feedback. That's okay. Cool.

Watch this. Here's the vision. Here's what we're going to do. Start moving that direction. Adapt as needed. Yeah. Yeah. You know, totally agree.

One thing I learned when got this is back around late 90s, around the year 2000, It was before 9-11, when I took command of 55th Brigade, you know, National Guard Brigade, so about 3,000 soldiers distributed across northeastern Pennsylvania down toward the Philadelphia area. And, you know, 85% of them had full-time civilian jobs. So, like, man, I've got to develop a vision for this organization in order for us to show some, you know, to move forward here.

And what I did is I went around to, representative samplings of soldiers who were part of that brigade. I would talk to a PFC that had like a year in the Army. I would talk to a major

who had maybe 16, 17 years in the Army and a few folks in between there. I mean, 3,000 soldiers you can't talk to all of them and say, hey, where do you want to see this brigade go? And the question I would ask them,

I would say, hey, you know, if you fell asleep for five years and woke up five years from now, what would you want to see this brigade look like? then, you know. And the funny thing is, whether it was a soldier, low-rank, one-year experience, or higher-ranking officer with 17-year experience, everybody kind of wanted the same thing. They wanted to be well-trained, so if we had to deploy, we'd be able to do our job successfully.

And that ended up essentially what the vision was. So what it taught me, and this goes for any business leader out there, trying to develop a vision for their organization, and many organizations are working distributed now, you know, with the pandemic and everything else. It's try to get a, you know, when I say shared vision, try to get a representative sample, if you could, of where people would like to see it go. And ultimately, you as the leader, like you said, you've got a broader view of everything. So, yeah, you've finally got to put a stake in the ground and say, yeah, this is going to be our vision. But I think it's a good idea to get a representative sampling of those in your organization.

And then, you know, when you get it out there, there, you know, you've got to share it in a multitude of ways, you know. When you're speaking to people one-on-one, you've got to communicate that vision. When you're speaking to a group of 500, you've got to communicate the vision through email, through your website, through whatever, you know, social media means you might want to use. But the vision then has to be consistent. You know, it can't be a new flavor of the month or a new vision of the quarter. You know, like you said, visions could change, but it shouldn't be changing on a very, very frequent basis. That's what I learned about developing a vision, you know, over 20 years ago.

Yeah, and it's always interesting. Like, that's alignment, right? No matter who you talk to, you talk to a frontline individual that's been in the Army for six months, you talk to someone that's been in the Army for 20 years, enlisted officer on both ends of that spectrum, and they all say, oh, well, I'd like that if we get deployed, we're ready to do our job. that you can make so many decisions based on that, just knowing that right there. Hey, is it going to help us do our job if we spend time clowning around at work on our drill weekend?

Is it going to help us be ready to do our job? No, it's not. So let's do something else. And that goes up and down the chain of command. And now that we have that shared aligned vision, now we can all make a bunch of decisions just based on the fact that we know that when we deploy, we want to be ready to do our job. We want to be effective. Okay.

Does this help us be effective or not? and we can make a decision. So that's important stuff. Fast forward a little bit. You know, this has got a chapter in here called Keeping Your Feet on the Ground, which is about humility. You say, I worked for an arrogant leader before.

It was not any fun. All of us who worked for this man felt our opinions were not valued. He was the kind of guy who said things like, when I want your opinion, I'll tell you what it is. Stereotypical military, but not actual military.

We believed we were not respected and we felt more like objects rather than we were part of the team. The result was our initiative, imagination, and creativity were stifled. As you could imagine, the leader failed. Again, this is one of those false images of military leadership. Does it happen? Yes, it does happen. And here's something else I'll tell you about this.

You want to know, it does happen more often in the military. And one of the reason it happens more often in the military is because in the military, you're only in command for years generally speaking so most of the enlisted guys you're working for a jerk or an arrogant person it takes some three months or three to six months to go hey this guy really is arrogant then at six months they're like oh god what are we gonna do about it this guy's horrible now it's a year now they start thinking hey we should really do something about this we should get rid of this guy we should run it up the chain of command we should fill out our surveys our command climate surveys and report what a jerk this guy is and then it's 18 months and then they go you know what

he's gonna be gone in six months let's just freaking deal with it and that guy never gets the feedback and so everything that he did worked and it's positive feedback and it's a positive feedback loop he thinks he did a good job because he yelled and screamed and didn't take anyone's opinion and now he gets promoted that's the unfortunate reality of the military yeah and the other interesting thing with that you know we could call that guy a toxic leader is i found that toxic leaders are very good at not letting their people they work for their superior officers whatever you want to call it, see their toxicity. Oh, for sure.

They're able to hide it. I've known a lot of military leaders that everyone above them in the chain of command loved them. Everybody below the chain of command hated them. Yeah, yeah. Because above the chain of command, they'd see someone that's making stuff happen. Right. Below the chain of command, they're the ones that are freaking being driven to, you know,

bloody fingers as they try and get the job done. And, yeah, that happens often. Yeah, it's amazing how good they are at hiding. that toxicity when they're talking to somebody who they work for. Yeah, and you've got to be careful as a leader to make sure that that's not happening. That's why it's important, like you said, to go down and talk to the troops and say, hey, what's Echo Charles like as a leader? How's that going?

And you know what they're going to say at first? They're going to say, he's great, but you got to ask him, well, how often does he talk to you? Does he take care? You know, you've got to dig it out of them. Because most of them, they don't want to, they don't want to make, they don't want that beef, as Echo would say. Yeah. And you know, the more you get down there, you know, I call it Muddy Boots leadership,

the more you get down there to talk to the troops, you know, whether it be military, civilian, then you're able to develop that trust too, because you're right, the first time you go down and ask somebody, hey, how's it going? They're not going to be totally honest with you if they don't know you. But the more they get used to seeing you come around and just having a rapport and see that you're, hey, a normal guy, and you really do want the best for a organization. Yeah. They're going to loosen up and tell you to truth.

Also, don't burn your sources. You know, don't go back and say, hey, Echo, I need to talk to you. John Gronsky said you were a tyrant. And all that of that says you're never going to get any information again. No. So you got to be careful about that one. Fast forward a little bit. One of the best ways a leader could show respect to others is by asking for their opinion and then seriously considering it.

Leaders empowers others in an organization simply by listening to stay level-headed and keep one's feet placed. firmly on the ground, leaders must acknowledge others for their contributions to this team's success. So this is something I've written about, talking about listening is, I think is the most underrated, possibly the most underrated aspect of leadership. The only other one that's in a close second, and it correlates very directly is asking earnest questions. Ask earnest questions and then listen to what people have to say. And, you know, some leaders think, think they're listening, but their actions don't show that they're listening. You know, like you're going to talk to somebody, hey, hey, could I have a minute? Could I talk to you?

And, you know, the leader is, you know, checking their phone while you're talking to them or they're, you know, tapping something on the keyboard or their computer while you're talking to them. Or you're talking to them, they're looking off at somebody else, you know, it's kind of like, wow, is this guy really listening to me? Yeah. You know, that leader might think they're listening, but their actions are showing that they're not really listening. So it's important that you, you really do that act of listening. Actually listen. Yeah, yeah.

Fast forward a little bit. Identify your core values. To develop strong character, you must take the time to figure out what you stand for and what your core values really are. This came to light for me many years ago. I attended a dinner at which the speaker gave an impassioned talk about his own personal core values. The next day, as I was still thinking about what I heard, I realized if someone asked me

what my personal core values were, I would not be able to give an answer. Sure, I had values. I tried to be an ethical person, but to that point, I never took the time to think long and hard about exactly what I stood for and my principles. I never took the time to consider what values were most important to me. Important. You know, the other thing about values, if you don't understand what your own personal core values are, when you make personal decisions or when it comes a time for you to make

a personal decision about something, I really believe you have to factor your personal core values in the decisions you make. So if you don't have those core values articulated in your own mind, how are you going to factor them in to your decision? And the same with organizations. You know, organizations, many organizations have organizational values. But when the leadership team gets together with the CEO and they're going through this decision-making process, how many of them actually factor the organizational values into the decision that they're making, which I would think, I would just guess many don't, even think about their values when they're making a business decision.

Which is crazy to think about. If you're making decisions, you might as well just be making decisions in the blind. Exactly. And then you're not being true to your values. And again, that breaks trust with your customers or that breaks trust with your employees. or whomever that particular decision is going to affect. So, yeah, really, that's why values are so important, I believe. And then the other thing, behaviors, I think, are important, too.

You know, I know a lot of organizations are getting, you know, they do have organizational values, but now they're also getting into organizational behaviors. So they actually list out, you know, maybe between 10 to 20 behaviors that they expect from their employees, which I think is very important. As a matter of fact, a consulting firm I used to work for Greencastle consulting has expected behaviors that they want their consultants to demonstrate. And I think that's a very good way to look at things. Because, you know, values are kind of conceptual.

Behaviors are more tangible. And I do think, you know, identifying, expected behaviors is really helpful in getting your employees to treat customers or treat each other the way you want them to. Yeah, this is something that I was acutely aware of, especially with kids. When I wrote the first Warrior Kid book, the whole, actually the entire premise of the first book is the kid has to come up with a Warrior Kid code of what he's going to, And his uncle in this book, it's a kid's book, but the kid's uncle is a was in the seal teams. And so he introduces him.

He can see that the kid's kind of floating around, not making the best decisions. And so he says, hey, warriors live by a code. And I point out, you know, the Marine Corps values, the, the Ranger code. The I just point out the ancient, you know, the samurai code, the Viking code. I put them all in the book and say, hey, you need to make your own code. And the kid ends up writing his own code and the uncle approves it, this warrior kid code. And then eventually I wrote another book called the code, the evaluation of protocols, which literally has like a code saying, hey, as an adult, you still need a code.

You still need to figure out what it is you're trying to do. What are you trying to do with your life? And if, again, if you have this code in place, hey, I want to be healthy. Cool. Is that donut going to help me be healthy? No, it's not. Don't eat it. Hey, I want to be, I want to spend quality time with my family.

Okay. Why am I watching TV right now? Okay, don't watch TV. If you have something to live by, then it's going to make your life that much better. And that's why the Warrior Kid Code and the Code Evaluation of Protocol, that's the purpose of those say, hey, listen. And in both those cases, I say, write your own code because you shouldn't follow my code, but I can pretty much guarantee you most people would have an 80% overlap on what their code is going to be. I mean, I might be more into, you know, martial arts than someone else might be more into fishing. But if you're going to focus on some part of your life, there's going to be an 80%. Who doesn't want to be healthy? Who doesn't want to have a good family? Who doesn't want to be financially successful?

Who wants to save money? Like all these things, it's a 90% solution. And you can make some small adjustments to it. But to wander through life without that stuff is exactly that. It's wandering through life. Yeah. You know, Jocko, I think you putting that emphasis on code in that book is one of the best things you've ever done.

because if you want to keep people on an ethical path, one of the guardrails to stay on that ethical path is by actually writing down what your own personal code is. And then that will help you stay grounded and help you stay on that path. That's just a great technique to use to keep somebody, you know, staying within those limits. Because how many times have we seen CEOs, COOs, governors, you know, stray ethically off the path? Presidents. Yeah, presidents, you know, anyone in the chain of command from the bottom to the top. Yeah, and again, it's because they either never took the time to write down their own personal code or if they've written it down now they're not paying attention to it.

So I think that's great advice you gave out there. This is one of the sections where I actually made a note of your action. section of the book. So here, here's the actions, and you did this for every one of these sections. You identify actions to actually take to move forward and improve this area of leadership. So here the actions are identify your own personal core values. Ensure your personal core values and the values of the organization you work for are aligned. When making a decision, factor your personal values and your organization's values into your decision-making process. Stride to place the way.

welfare and interests of your followers ahead of your own. And those are some things, some actions that you can take to make this a reality. And hey, identify your own personal core values and write them down. It's something everybody should do. Section here called cultivating trust. And you get in this situation where it's 1999. 1999, you're going to Lithuania. Let me go to the book here.

The country had regained its independence only about six years earlier. It was going to be my job to work with the Lithuanian military to help them understand how the U.S. military functioned and grow the relationship between the U.S. and Lithuania. I would have a team of three other U.S. military personnel representing the Marines, Army, and Air Force. And the team would also include one Lithuanian army officer and three Lithuanian citizens. civilians and this is you're coming off I think you're coming off a battalion command at this point so you were just done leading 800 people and now you got a team of seven you arrive in

Lithuania for this job and I got to read this part after I was on board for a couple weeks I began to come up with what I thought were some excellent ideas instead of tackling the work myself I gave began to shoot off yellow sticky notes to everyone giving them tasks to do I had plenty of bright ideas and I shot off plenty of taskers to them I thought I was making a great impression on the team because of my exceptional ideas however I could not explain it but something seemed to be a miss somehow I did not feel the team was comfortable under my leadership I had an army reserve major working on my team as an operations officer he was a bright guy with an analytical mind and positive demeanor one morning when I was sitting in my office he

knocked on my door and asked if he could speak to me privately I brightened up I was all about this I thought to myself there is a young officer who needs advice from a sage like me the major sat down and I asked him what was on his mind his answer floored me he said sir you are tearing this team apart he went on to say that since I arrived morale is at an all-time low the team's perception of my leadership performance was 180 degrees from what I was hoping for their perception was not the boss is a sharp guy he has great ideas rather their perception was negative including such thoughts as the new boss thinks things are all screwed up here

the new boss thinks we are all screwed up the new boss thinks we have nothing to do the new boss does not trust us notice the us versus him attitude that developed here. This was definitely a lesson learned for me. Thankfully, I had someone on the team with enough guts to discuss the issue with me. I thank the major for the personal and moral courage he displayed by discussing the issue with me.

I had no idea that through my behavior in tone, I was giving everyone such a negative perception of how I thought they were performing. You go on here, fast forward a little bit. What I did to repair trust, I immediately met with the team members and apologized for the mistake I made. I took full ownership of creating a perception

that I did not trust them. I told them I trusted them completely. I explained to them that I now realized how my behavior was negatively affecting the team. I promised them I would change my behavior. That's a good story. Yeah. The freaking battalion commander, post-Botillion commander rolling in the good idea fairy is what we call that. You know, and that taught me that whether you lead an organization of 800 or you lead an organization of eight, the leadership challenges are there.

You know, it doesn't get any easier or harder depending on the number of people you lead. You know, you still got those challenges. The folks on your team are still expecting you to be a good leader, a positive influence on them. And as I mentioned in the book, I'm just glad that this guy had the personal courage to come up and tell me about it. Right. It was really life-changing for me because that really got me on a, a journey to really study what trust is all about and not only how to cultivate trust but also how to repair trust if you unfortunately break it.

You know, and one thing that is nice is luckily you must have given him some kind of impression that you were somewhat approachable. And I can guarantee you there's the the fitness reports of the world and evaluations are littered with people that decided they were going to go tell their boss, this is what it looks like and they get scorched for it because the person didn't have an open mind and didn't really want to hear them. So luckily, you had an open mind and were humble enough to say, ooh, that's not good. I made a mistake. Unfortunately, the bosses that oftentimes need that sort of personal guidance are the types of bosses that aren't open to that type of personal guidance, unfortunately.

Yeah. Yeah. Scary. But I'm glad you, I'm glad you complimented his most. moral courage. Yeah, no, I realize how hard that that was for him. And again, I think the, you know, the lesson for anybody out here listening is, hey, you know, you could be, you know, you could be a jackass, you know, if you want to be and not be approachable. And, you know, hey, my way or the highway, I'm the boss, you know, who are you to tell me what to do or give

me advice? But you're probably only going to go so far in, you know, your journey as a leader. And if you really want to have long-term success, you've got to follow some of these basic leadership tenants, you know? Next chapter, what leadership is all about? And you have a great combat story about what is it, gunnery sergeant? Yeah, Gunnery Sergeant Burkhart. Or Master Sergeant Michael Burkart. Yeah, he retired as a master sergeant. Outstanding.

Just a real show of courage. You told the story on the last podcast. You recited with some more detail in here on the book. of a guy that just is unstoppable. So I won't cover that right now. Get the book to read that story. But you do say this about leadership. Effective leadership is measured by the results

and organization achieves. After all, organizations exist to achieve their purpose and attain results. Leaders cannot attain results on their own. Leaders must enlist the support of their followers to be successful. When leaders demonstrate to followers, they care by placing their followers' welfare

ahead of their own that is a great way for the leader to gain follower support former army chief of staff general Gordon Sullivan in his book hope is not a method says our effectiveness as leaders is not so much what we do is as in what influence as what we influence others to do a leader must inspire others to be their best and to work toward achieving organizational objectives a leader is nothing without support of those he or she leads using the model of character competence, direction, and overcoming adversity is a framework for enlisting and retaining support, which will lead to organizational results and success.

If you're doing your job as a leader, the team is going to be doing what they're supposed to be doing. Yeah. Don't forget that. And, you know, it's all about, you know, being fortunate enough to have people around you like a gunny, Michael Burkhart. And one other quick story I want to tell that's not in the book. I didn't mention it last time.

But I think it's inspiring. We have this one soldier from the 28th Infantry Division who came to Ramadi with us. His name was Anthony Jorgensen. And again, we got there in July of 2005. It was in the fall of 2005. He was in an up-armored Humvee. I believe it was in the gunner's position. ID detonates causes his up-armored Humvee.

to flip over on its side. He ends up having a broken arm and I think a broken leg both. And so gets sent back home to the United States, recovers from his wounds. And it was sometime in early 2006, he tells the leadership in the Pennsylvania Guard, hey, I want to go back over to Ramadi. It's like they can't believe it. It's kind of like, no, we are not sending you back. So I did have a battalion from the Vermont National Guard there with me, ask organized to my brigade. So this guy leaves the Pennsylvania National Guard, joins the Vermont National Guard,

just so he could get Vermont to send them back over, Vermont, he'd be part of that battalion. So he gets back over there, and then it's April 2006. He's out there on another patrol, and he's in a support-by-fire position. He's in the gunner's compartment of this up-armored Humvee. There's some dismounts going into a building,

that they believed insurgents were in. And an insurgent fires an RPG, a rocket-propelled grenade, at this up-armored Humvee that Jorgensen is in, and just like wings it, you know, a slight damage to the Humvee. He gets knocked down out of the gunner's hatch, gets back up there. He sees that insurgents are pinning down these dismounts that are out there. So he jumps down into the driver's compartment, drives that uparmored Humvee between where the insurgents are firing and these dismounts that were pinned down, gets back up into the gunner's compartment and lays down suppressive fire on these insurgents, allowing these dismounts to disengage and then continue to mission. All this after suffering these wounds and that attack back in the fall.

Now, how many people would leave Ramadi with, you know, honorable wounds like he did and then fight to get back over there and then, you know, does this heroic action, which I believe he got a bronze store with V for doing what he did. But just, again, the reason I want to bring that story up is these soldiers are so inspiring. And, you know, we think as leaders, we should be inspiring our followers, but our followers have a way, especially in the military, of inspiring us. And some of these stories just have to be told. Anthony Jorgensen, what's he doing now, do you know? He lives up in the Scranton area. Just getting after it in the Scranton area.

Yeah, he is. So just very proud of him. You know what he does for a living? Offhand, I don't know. Right on. Yeah, but again. We salute you. Georgeinson. Yeah, he needs that shout out. What a beast. Yeah. I mean, you get blown up by an IED

and thrown out of your vehicle. Like you say, oh, he had these wounds. He's lucky to be alive. Yeah. After that happens. Yeah. And then you get hit with an RPG. You're lucky to be alive in Humvee. Yeah. And again, I hope he's playing the lottery up there, Anthony Jorgensen in Scrant, PA. He's got some luck. He's a guy I'd want, you know, watching my back any, any time. awesome stuff. Here's an interesting title. Do not, for a chapter, do not treat everyone equally. Talk to us about that.

Yeah, basically what that's about is, you know, I don't think leaders should treat everybody on the team equally. You got, and when I say that, this is what I mean by it. You got to get to know the people on your team. everybody's a little bit different. So you got to really get to know what makes them tick and what's going to motivate certain people as opposed to motivating others.

And so, you know, you can't treat them equal. I think there's a story in there. I think about Jimmy Johnson when he coached the Dallas Cowboys, and he was asked by a reporter, hey, you know, if you saw Troy Aikman asleep in one of your team meetings and a third string offensive guard asleep in, in your team meeting, would you treat them the same way?

And he answered, absolutely not. He goes, and this is what I do. He goes, I would probably cut that third string offensive guard immediately. And with Troy Aikman, I would go up to him, and I would kind of nudge him gently awake, and I would say, hey, could I bring you a cup of coffee? You know, so the point is, you know, you've got to understand the talent you have on your team, and not everybody should be treated equally. You know, some people need a kick in the butt.

some people need a pat on the back. Another interesting story with this, a football story. I grew up as a Green Bay Packer fan. So in 1966, 10 years old, Lombardi, you know, winning his first Super Bowl, I became a Packer fan. So I started to read all kinds of books about the Packers. And there was this one story, you know, Bart Star, who was the quarterback for Lombardi.

I think it was like the second year Lombardi was the head coach. He was just chewing Bart's. Starr out relentlessly during this practice. And, you know, talk about moral courage. After practice, Bart Starr goes to Coach Lombardi's office and he goes, hey, coach, could I talk to you privately for a few minutes? The coach says, yeah, sure, what's up? And Starr says to him, he goes, coach, he goes, I don't want you ever chewing me out in front of the team again. He said, I'm the quarterback. I'm leading this team. He goes, if they see you chewing me out the way you were chewing me out. He goes, I'm not going to be able to lead this team effectively.

And the Lombardi, light bulb went off in his head, and he realized he could not treat everybody exactly the same way. So he never chewed Bart Starr out in front of the team again, because he realized that what Starr said was exactly correct. You know, he couldn't lead the team effectively if he was going to be treated like that. And so again, just some great lessons we could learn from from from from from from from last leaders and you know i just tried i think we all try to do our best when we hear these lessons to try to apply them if we could you know that's when you get a guy like vins lombardi and the reputation that he has and he's humble enough to think oh if he if he can be humble in that situation and maybe listen to one of his subordinates and say oh he's right i'm wrong

that's another indicator that you might want to stay humble as a leader you got some stuff to learn no matter who you are yeah absolutely uh you talked earlier about muddy boots leadership and you tell a story in here about you got complimented on the fact that you were in charge, but your boots were muddy because you've been out in the field going, seeing what was happening. And that's a whole concept of get in the field, get out there, talk to people, find what's going on in the front lines. You say this here, a mentor in that same chapter,

you say a mentor of mine told me the personal presence of a leader is probably the greatest key to influencing the action once a plan has been put in emotion. A leader's presence demonstrates to one's followers the importance of the work at hand. When the leader is where the action is, they are then positioned to motivate others and make timely adjustments when necessary. Leader sometimes has to go and make things happen. Yeah, you know, I remember as a young Army officer reading in some manual somewhere, or maybe it was even some senior leader who was coaching me, but said, you know, there's three, things a commander could do to positively impact the battle once it begins. He said the commander's use of fires, you know, close air support and indirect fire, the use of the reserves, you know,

because usually the commander retains the authority of when to use his reserve, and the third thing is personal presence on the battlefield. And he said, those are the three things, a commander could do to influence the battle once it begins. And that always stuck to me, stuck with me, especially that notion of the personal presence on the battlefield. And just having that personal presence there, which help, I think, you know, soldiers in battle or in a civilian sector, you know, employees in an organization realize that, hey, this leader is out with us sharing the load, sharing the danger, you know, sharing with the, you know, sharing with coming our way and and you know they kind of get bolstered by by that whole notion well I

I can attest to that I remember seeing you out on the battlefield in Ramadi looking over and say well there's the brigade commander I Roger that I guess he's I guess he's not sitting back in the talk all the time he's out here with the troops like you said seeing what's happening understanding what's happening and taking that risk I mean if you were in Ramadi and you were out in the city you are at risk and IEDs and and roadside bombs and RPGs and machine guns don't they don't care what your name is they don't care what your rank is they'll they'll kill you one way or the other if they want to yeah you know I did try to get out there a lot not because I had any type of you know courage to speak of it but just because I felt it was necessary to do and the other thing for any military leader

listening to this and really it applies to business leaders too I would encourage my staff to get out there. And the reason I encourage my staff to get out there is because I felt it was important for my staff to also gain ground truth. If the staff was gaining what they thought was the truth from reading reports, they were missing about 80% of what was happening. So although I know, you know, in the military a lot of times, especially in operations like that, the staff needs to be back doing staff work. I always encourage. them that, hey, they did have to make time to actually get out there, talk to troops, see Ares with their own eyes. And again, just a history from lesson, Hurkton Forest,

28th Infantry Division fighting in the Herkton Forest in November, 1944, the Battle of Schmidt. It was a devastating time for the 28th Infantry Division in about four days, over 6,000 casualties. And one thing that was written about that period is, it said that General Coda, who was a division commander at the time, most reports I read said he never even went as far forward as one of his regimental command posts, and the staff did not go forward either. So they didn't realize that the call trail through the Hercan Forest, which they were sending Sherman tanks down. A Sherman tank is eight and a half feet wide.

the call trail was nine feet wide. I mean, it was not a good, you know, MSR main supply route or good route of any sort for those tanks to be going along. And so the lesson there is because the commander didn't get out on the battlefield, because the staff didn't get out there, they were relying on maps, they didn't get the full understanding of what that Herc and Forest area was like. So again, for any civilian leader, any military leader, absolutely important, not only to get out there yourself, but to get your staff, the ones that you depend on to advise you to get out there as well. Yeah, there's another piece of this one, when you are the leader and you, what you're supposed to be doing is you're supposed to be detached.

You're not supposed to go out there and get in the firefight. You're not supposed to go out there and run the marketing meeting or meet with the client necessarily or get and start manufacturing stuff on the line. You're supposed to go out and look, do you maybe do a couple moves on the manufacturing line to make sure you understand what's happening? Yes, but you don't start manufacturing things. You come in from a different perspective. You come in with a different perspective. And then what you have to look for as a leader is you have to make sure that things are going in the right direction. And the test that you should put on yourself is like it the, basically the momentum is the momentum that we're going in correct?

because the momentum could be wrong and the momentum could be right. And if the momentum is right, cool, you can just get out of the way. If the momentum is wrong, that's where you're going to have to step in and stop it. And one of the places where you see this is, well, in combat, when things lag, you know, you get an element that's not moving as quickly as they're supposed to move. They're lagging. They're moving too slow. And they don't even realize that. They can't realize it because they're doing it.

You can come in and say, hey, we got to step it up. Hey, we need to push that next building. So when an element is lagging, a leader can step in and move things quicker. And they should, because that's the momentum is inertia. The momentum is, hey, we're going slow. We're being methodical, but they need to move faster. The leader's got to make that happen. There's also times where the leader steps in and says, hey, we need to slow down.

Guys are moving too quick. You guys are taking, not taking too many risks. Slow it down. So there's all these situations where I think what the leader needs to be cognitive of in their mind when they step into these situations is, is the momentum we have? Is the crowd is the mob moving in the right direction? If they are, great, get out of their way. Let them keep going. But if they're not, that's when your opportunity comes to straighten it out and check it. Yeah, yeah, it's not just about speed. It's about tempo. And a couple of things came to mind, Jocko, as you were talking. One is

my personal security detachment in Ramadi. It was generally four up-armored Humvees. I had a platoon leader's name was Jacques Smith, just an excellent leader. And early on as we were out there with me, you know, being transported by this, when we moved mounted by this four-up armor Humvee formation, you know, I was kind of on the radio directing the movement of these four-up armor Humvees. And Jacques Smith, you know, the lieutenant, he looks at me, goes, sir, He goes, you're leading the brigade. He goes, let me lead this platoon.

And I said, you know why, Jack, you're exactly right. I'm going to shut up. You know, when we're out here, this is your platoon. You're going to lead it. I'm not going to say a damn word about how you should maneuver this platoon. Because he was right. I had a brigade elite. And the other story is command sergeant major.

Chris Kepner, he was my command sergeant major when I commanded 28th Infantry Division. He used to say, as he would go out and talk to leaders and coach and mentor leaders, he would say leaders could stop things from getting screwed up just by the fact that they were there, just by their mere presence. So, you know, that's why it's so important, again, you know, for leaders to get out there because people are going to do the right thing and adhere to those standards when they know the leader is there. I was down in Florida a while back doing some leadership training for a sheriff's department down there, and one of the deputy sheriffs was speaking to a group of corporals,

and he told the story how in the jail there, how some deputies that should have been in the kitchen watching the prisoners do what they were doing, you know, cooking a meal, just neglected to be there as they did. should and things really got out of hand and his point was just because the sergeant wasn't going down and checking to make sure those deputies were doing the right thing they you know they're human beings they just decided and hey you know this mustn't be that important because nobody's checking on us so we're not going to be doing the right thing and so his point was again just by the mere fact of a leader being present they're going to fix things just by being there this is a reminds me of

of another chapter in the book here chapter 11 an organization's personality you say in 1985 I took command of an infantry company in the 28th infantry division Pennsylvania National Guard the infantry company was designated alpha company second battalion 109th infantry and the unit had an authorized strength 144 soldiers I was honored to have an opportunity to lead the commissioned officers non-commissioned officers and soldiers assigned to the outfit I remembered reading an army leadership manual earlier in the in my career before taking this command in the manual there was a statement I will never forget. It said a military unit and any organization for that matter takes on the personality of its leader. When reading that statement as a young, inexperienced leader,

I doubted it. I could not believe a unit of almost 150 soldiers would take on my personality. I did not believe someone like me could have that type of impact whereby over a hundred of the people assigned would take on my traits. Based on my experience commanding that company, I learned I was wrong and the leadership manual is correct. An organization will take on the personality of its leader. In my case, the commander I took over for was a good man. However, his focus seemed to be more on being a nice guy than on emphasizing physical fitness and tough training. That was exactly what the personality of the unit was when I took command.

Everyone got along, heaven was comfortable, but many of the soldiers were relaxed on their fitness levels and the unit did not go to the field much to conduct rigorous training. I believe soldiers need to be an excellent physical condition, and I also believed infantry soldiers needed to train rigorously in field conditions, be experts with weapons and take excellent care of their equipment. Over time, the unit took on a tough persona. This was ratified by our brigade commander when he selected our unit to train at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. In late 1980s, this was a big deal and an honor for a National Guard company to be selected for that training. So there you go. Yeah. Case in point. Yeah. The next section I wanted to just jump into, and it's called decision making,

and there's some topics in here that you write about. And I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I just want to kind of do a high-level review of some of these sections. One of them is hit the ground running, which means when you show up, get started. Get your butt in gear. Yeah, yeah. Another one's character is foundational. Again, this is what we're doing, what we're doing. This is who we are.

And if we don't have good character, hey, listen, if you don't have good character, you might be able to get away with it for a little while. You might even be able to weasel out a promotion because you maneuvered and you manipulated and you took credit where you didn't and you didn't give credit to the team. Or you still, you might even get a promotion. You might even get two promotions. It can happen. But eventually it's not going to last.

No, no. You know, a friend of mine, Len Morella, he graduated from West Point in like 1958 or something. He retired as a colonel in the army. He wrote this book about character. And in the book, he would go and interview different leaders who were known to be character-based leaders. And one of the people he interviewed was Coach Kreshefsky, Coach K from Duke. And in this interview he was doing with Coach K, you know, Len said to Coach K, he was like, what does character have to do at winning a basketball game?

And Coach K's answer was, you know, character has absolutely nothing. at all to do with winning a basketball game. But it has everything to do with winning a championship. You know, and that's exactly what you say. You know, you might have a win here or there if you're not character-based, but if you want to be a champion, if you want to have long-term success, you've got to be a character-based leader.

At least that's what I believe. Another sub-headline here is know your job and do your job. And this, my note that I took on this one is, There is such a thing as a stupid question. And let me explain that. You know, people always say, oh, there's no such thing as a stupid question. If you show up to a job and you're going to be in charge of a tank and you say, hey, what's the name of this vehicle? How far can this gun shoot?

How many rounds can we get out? If you're asking questions that you should have done some research and know when you showed up, you're wrong. If you show up to a manufacturer to run a manufacturing plant and you show up and say, hey, what is it we're making? or how many employees do we have or who's in charge of the day shift. If you're asking questions that a little bit of research could have answered, you didn't do a good job preparing.

You don't, you, so know your job. That's my part of know your job. There is stupid questions. Don't show up your first day and ask stupid questions that you should have known if you would have taken an ounce of effort to figure out what was happening. No, you know, you're exactly right. I mean, you got to put forth some of that effort.

Now, if it's some type of, you know, inane, you know, technical, you know, thing that maybe a guy with 10 years experience would know and you wouldn't know, hey, that's fine. And you can ask those questions all day long. Yeah, yeah. But it's just showing you really don't care if you didn't, you know,

take the time to do that type of research before coming into the job for sure. You say take on tough assignments and this is, there's a, this is just a good thing across the board. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to show everyone that you don't, you'll take the, not just the tough ones,

but the crappy ones. Hey, no one wants to work this weekend? Cool, I got it. One of my buddies, Seth Stone, who's in Ramadi with us, he was on a ship. He was a ship driver in the Navy. And they had his department got assigned to do some cleaning. Like they hadn't been in port for a while. And his department got assigned to clean whatever.

And I heard this after he died. Someone, the story got passed to his brother was, you know, as his, as his, department was leaving for liberty they looked up and they saw he was cleaning whatever it was they were assigned to clean and he had just said you know what i'm gonna let the guys go and go on liberty and i'm gonna do whatever menial task we've been told to do and he was the guy in charge of the department so do the do the tough ones do the crappy ones too yeah yeah and again you know all in line would hit the ground running you know a lot of people say don't volunteer for anything right you know i think that's a big mistake i mean you you you got to volunteer to take on those tough things and

And when you do that, you know, a couple of benefits. First of all, nobody's going to expect you to succeed if you're just starting out in your career. You know, you're not going to have high expectations if you're just starting out. And so by tackling those tough things, gaining that experience, you know, it's just like, you know, in the military, you know, a second lieutenant in the Army to lowest ranking commissioned officer, you're expecting a second lieutenant to make a mistake. You know, so that's the time to take on those tough assignments, gain that experience, make some of those mistakes, learn from them, and, you know, hopefully have the right leaders guiding you along the way. And that's how you're really going to get off to a good start and be successful. Another one, develop your leadership philosophy early, but continue to refine. And this is, once again, important.

Even Vince Lombardi refined his philosophy. And that's what you need to do. come up with a philosophy, but then refine it, make it better as time goes on. Next section here is competence, and I don't know if you did this on purpose, but some of your chapter titles have a little bit of, you know, you're going to get some rise out of some people. This one's, not everyone deserves a mentor. Yeah, I kind of did that on purpose. All right.

What do you mean by that one? You know, and again, this gets back to an infantry conference I was at. and General Cohn, you know, he since passed away, but he was, I think, the Trey-Dak commander at the time speaking to us there. And he basically said that during his remarks. And it's like, wow, you know, that kind of hit me, you know, like a brick hit him in the face. It's like, well, what's he talking about? But what he went on to say and which what I have, you know, come to see as true is, you know, not everybody deserves a mentor. Because if you're not out of it, because if you're not out there actively looking for a mentor for somebody to, you know, somebody's example to follow,

you probably don't deserve a mentor. And I remember even as a young officer thinking, you know, hey, nobody's mentoring me, you know, what's up with this? You know, and I was expecting some, you know, gray beard, you know, to sit me down at their side and tell me all the facts of how to lead. But hey, that doesn't happen. And then I realized mentorship is happening all around. us. All we've got to do is look for it. So again, if you're a young executive in a company, you know, and you're observing how one of the senior leaders in that company is acting, how they're talking to people, how they're relating to people, and you're learning the good and the bad from that, that's actually mentorship. And, you know, mentorship is all around us,

if we just look for it. But nobody should expect somebody to kind of sit us down and tell us about, hey, these are the things you really got to look out for. That's not realistic. That's just not going to happen. No, it is not. Chapter 18, this one's always a big topic.

Getting buy-in. Napoleon used a technique to obtain buy-in. It was the same technique used by the Union General who commanded the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg, General Meade. Mead was a disciple of Napoleon. The technique was called a war council. On July 2nd, 1863, Mead brought his lieutenants into his makeshift headquarters at the Leicester House. He had an agenda that evening. The council had to provide their recommendations on one of three courses of action, Mead would have to decide. One, the Union

Army should leave the battlefield. Two, the Union Army should stay and fight and all Offensive battle three the Union Army should stay and fight a defensive battle Mead began by asking his lower ranking and least experienced lieutenants to voice their opinions first He used this method because he knew if the more senior officers spoke first more junior officers in terms of rank Reputation or experience might feel too intimidated to disagree After all this was by design a hierarchical Organization Mead knew he had to get the lower ranking leaders to speak first and order to get their unvarnished thoughts after everyone spoke mead decided the union would

stay and fight a defensive battle the rest as they say is history the union army was victorious and won the battle and would go on to win the war although it would take another bloody two years before the confederate army laid down their arms I when when people ask me this question how do you get people to buy into the plan I say let them come up with the plan you don't have to worry about buying anymore you don't have to worry about it You came up with it. I'm buying into your plan, and I can do that easily. I can control my own thoughts.

And if you come, if John comes up with a plan, that's pretty decent, I'm cool with it. And we'll go with it. Yeah, yeah. You know, as a leader, I found, you know, give the task, give the purpose, but don't give the how. You know, give the what and the why, but not the how. And usually, you know, those people who work for us are going to figure out a better way to do with them. we would have figured out. So yeah, you know, let them run with it. In any organization, usually those people at the grassroots level have, they're closer to the problem set. So

turn it over to them. Now, yeah, yeah, might have to provide a little bit of guidance. You might have to, you know, kind of, you know, just adjust one way or to other. But essentially, you know, giving them the one and the why and let them figure out the how is generally. the best way to handle it. And I'll get leaders say, well, what if my, what if my subordinates come up with a stupid plan? I'll say, well, what's wrong with you if you've got supporters that are coming up with a stupid plan?

Yeah. I'll tell you what's wrong. You haven't trained them properly. You haven't given the right mentorship and guidance. You haven't let them come up with plans before so they could learn how to plan better. So if they come up with a stupid plan, what do you do? You start asking them some earnest questions about their plan and kind of it reveals to them what some of the holes in their plan are.

And then they can make adjustments. And while they're making adjustments, they're also learning. So the next time you ask them to come up with a plan, it may not be a brilliant plan, but at least it's less stupid than the first plan. And you look up in three months or six months, all of a sudden their planning is outstanding and you look up in a year,

and they're probably planning better than you are because like you said, they're the ones that are closest to the problem. Yeah, yeah. And what you said a little bit earlier, I think is exactly true. You know, sometimes, you know, our followers will come up with a plan.

That isn't exactly the way we would do it. But, you know, I let them run with it anyway. You know, as long as, you know, it's not flawed in any way. It's just a different way than I would have thought of doing it. And I think that's really where leaders have to leave their ego at the door, you know, to say, you know, hey, this isn't the way I do it, but it's going to get the job done. It's still going to be cost effective or, you know, whatever the case might be.

So let them go forward with it. And it's, you know, like you said, you don't have to worry about the buying if they came up with it. I go into every meeting with my subordinates when I was in a platoon, when I was a tasking a commander right now in the business world. I walk into a meeting with my people, my goal is to use their plan. That's my goal. I don't want to use whatever I'm coming up with. I want to use theirs. And if you have that goal at the beginning, that's going to lead you to the best possible place.

And look, like you said, if their plan is dumb, which, you know, you can get some people come up with some dumb plans occasionally. Occasionally some people come up with some dumb ideas. That's okay. Ask them some earnest questions and they're going to see that their plan is the reality of their plan, which is dumb. Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, this kind of leads into the whole, you know, asking your followers what their recommendation is. And, you know, some followers are going to come up with some type of crazy recommendation that you just know from your experience. It ain't going to work. But I think what leaders need to do is then get back with those followers and explain to the follower, hey, this is why I didn't use your recommendation. Now, again, I'm, you know, talking about situations where there's time to have

those conversations. You know, if you're in the middle of the firefight, you know, you got to sometimes, you know, go left, not right, whatever. But I'm just saying, you know, in most situations where you're asking for recommendations on some type of long-term plan you're putting together, somebody comes up with something, you know, that's really wacko, and you're not going to use it. I do think you show people the respect by at least getting back with them and explaining to them why I'm not going to use your plan. Yeah, because that's also your opportunity to teach them why that plan wasn't good. And again, I'll do it by just by saying,

hey, John, I just want to ask you about, you know, this channelized area that you want to take your patrol through. Do you think that's the best approach to the target going through this valley where there's elevated positions on both sides that could be occupied by the enemy? And you'll look at me and say,

you know what, boss? Let me get back to you. And you'll come up with a different plan. Exactly. Fast forward a little bit. You got a section in here talking about tactical patients, which is a concept everybody needs,

and I think it's the younger you are, the more you need to understand tactical patients, because the younger you are, the less tactical patients you generally have, and that goes all the way to like little children that are four years old. They have the least amount of tactical patients. So you talk about that,

but what I like here is you also throw in a section that is called what tactical patients is not. Demonstrating tactical patients is not about putting off a decision. It is about taking the time when you have luxury of having time to think through the information available and the recommendations before deciding just as nothing happened in business before somebody sells something nothing happens in business until the leader decides good leaders have to have the courage to make a decision with less than perfect information so it's good to be tactically patient but also there comes a time where

you got to make a call yeah absolutely and uh you know jack welch you know the CEO at General Electric for 20 years, I think from like 81 until 2001. You know, he wrote in one of his books that the problem he saw with mid-level managers throughout General Electric is the unsuccessful ones were the ones who did not have the courage to make a decision. And again, when you make a decision, you're putting yourself out there. And some leaders just don't want to take that risk to put themselves out. out there and potentially make the wrong decision,

but it's so important. Because again, once you make a decision, it doesn't mean that you have to stick by that decision no matter what. You know, you've got to assess what's going on, get some feedback about what's actually happening out there, the real deal, and then make those adjustments as you go. But anybody who thinks that, hey, once I made this decision,

I can't deviate from it. I don't think that's a good thing. technique. Yeah, and that's a technique that I talk about in leadership strategy and tactics book is, I call it iterative decision making. I'm going to make the smallest decisions I can. You know, you want me to go assault a part of the city of Vermont. I say, hey, got it, boss. We're going to take one building. We're going to start with this one little building over here and see how that goes. And if like we get a good foothold and now we can put some troops in a good spot, now I can go to the next building. I don't send, you know, all my troops into a bunch of different buildings at the same

time. No, I'm going to make small steps in that direction. And then it's very easy for me to make adjustments. It's very easy for me to say, oh, you know what? Hey, boss, I'm going to need more troops. Or, hey, boss, this doesn't make sense right now. This is way more fortified than we thought it was going to be. Whatever the case may be, I can make adjustments, but I start off by making very small decisions and then adjusting. And the other thing that I was thinking about what you were saying that is when you were talking about Jack Welch and the mid-level managers failing to make decisions because they don't want to put themselves out there. And this reminds me of what you were talking about earlier

and what's in the book, the idea of forming like scar tissue and the habit. If you get in the habit of saying, hey, look, I made a decision, wasn't the best call. It's on me. Here's the adjustment we're going to make. Once you realize that that doesn't,

it's not the end of the world to do that. Now, I can tell you, can you do that to an extent where people go, hey, jocco was just nothing but bad decisions. And every decision he makes goes, hey, my mistake. Okay, this one was my mistake. Hey, sorry, guys, this was my mistake. Eventually, you're going to lose some clout

and you're going to lose some credibility. You can't just make bad decisions all the time. But if you make decisions, hey, even a, what is it, a broken clock is right twice a day, you're going to be right some of the times. You know, if you're doing a good assessment, you make a decision, and it turns out to be wrong, hey, guys, sorry, my fault, that we should have gone

a different direction. Here's the adjustment we're making. People don't lose respect for you. They gain respect for you. But if you don't experience that And you don't build up the muscle of making a decision, owning the outcome, whether it's good or bad, own the outcome. You can build up a muscle memory for doing that where it becomes habitual and it's okay. And I think if you never step into that arena, you're just scared of it.

You know, it's like Mikey and the dragons. Oh, the kid's book I wrote. The kid's scared of the dragons. He doesn't realize that the dragons are small. And that's true with most things we fear. So if you don't open that door, go in that cave and make a decision occasionally, you're never going to understand that. Once you do that, if it was a bad decision, just own it, make adjustments, and move forward. You need to learn that.

You need to feel that. And you can get used to it. Yeah. And, you know, Jocko, I was listening to an interview you were participating in once. And I think you said something to affect that every problem is a leadership problem. And, you know, what that gets to is, you know, you. you know, leaders have to create an environment where subordinates feel comfortable taking the risk to make a decision and know, hey, if it doesn't turn out exactly right, at least, you know, I'm not going to get my legs chopped out from underneath me. So, you know, it's really important that, you know, if you're a leader and you see that you've got subordinate leaders who are hesitant to make a decision, maybe you should look in the mirror and think to yourself, hey, what am I doing to create an environment where these people are afraid to even decide?

or make a mistake. That's not a good environment. A horrible environment. And you're going to end up, your team is going to fail eventually. Yeah. Fast forward a little bit. Chapter 25, iron sharpens iron.

As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another, Proverbs 2717. And this is right in line with what you were just talking about. Demonstrate initiative. An attribute I felt strongly about was initiative at every level of, throughout the division and this is again this is when you were in a in a

leadership position this was a result of my combat experience in Ramadi Iraq I saw during my time in Ramadi how it was essential that junior leaders demonstrate initiative in order to get ahead of the decision-making loop of our enemies I believed if we did not encourage initiative in steady state operations and training exercise subordinate leaders would not display the necessary level of initiative when in combat I put out written guidance and I can Continually reinforced, stating, I believe demonstrating high levels of initiative was worth the risk of making honest mistakes. So this is exactly what you were just talking about.

If you've got a team that's not making decisions, you're the problem. And the way you instilled that culture inside your division, when you were a division commander, was by talking about it, by putting out written guidance, by demonstrating it. And I like this point of the fact that initiative is worth the risk of making honest mistakes. That's a huge deal. If you're a subordinate leader and you know that the boss wants you to take initiative and that it is worth the risk of making honest mistakes, that could be a game changer for a young leader. Yeah. You know, I think that's an important statement there about, you know, demonstrating initiative is worth the risk of making honest mistakes. but the caveat to that is if you're a leader and you put that statement out there,

guess what your subordinates are going to be looking for? They're going to be looking for the first time somebody demonstrates initiative and makes it on us mistaken. They're going to be watching. They're going to be watching. See, how do you react to this thing? And actually, I think it was my sergeant major, Chris Kepner, who mentioned that to me after I put that statement out.

He goes, you know, people are going to be watching to see how you react the first time. somebody makes an honest mistake by demonstrating initiative. And that was some good counsel from him. So again, leaders, again, to develop and cultivate this trust in an organization, they put something out there. Now they really have to pay attention to make sure that they walk the talk there and do what they said they're going to do because people are going to be watching. Nobody's going to believe it.

Nobody's going to believe that written word until they actually. see in action. Fast forward here. You're talking about some of the internal attributes. It says if leaders cannot get in touch with their own feelings, they will have difficulty understanding the feelings of others. Leaders must practice self-awareness and mindfulness. Once one develops self-awareness, and you talk about, I'm fast forward a little bit you

talk about journaling is a good technique, like writing down what your thoughts, what your feelings are so that you get some perspective on them. I'm going to fast forward a little bit. Once one develops self-awareness, one can then become better at controlling emotions. Followers look to leaders to be able to get stable when things get chaotic. Controlling one's emotions has many personal, organizational, and societal benefits. I remember when I was young. I was a young, inexperienced leader.

I acted out in front of a group of my followers showing great displeasure, not with them, but with a situation we were dealing with. I ranted and raved and threw my notebook across the room. As an inexperienced leader, I thought this would demonstrate to my followers. I was all in. Instead, when I saw the negative reaction of my followers, I realized this was a poor technique. You remember what happened? What made you so mad? Yeah.

Actually, I was a lieutenant on active duty commanding a platoon. And I can't remember the actual incident that made me upset, but it was something that was upsetting to our to our unit. The whole platoon got weekend duty or something like that. Yeah, something, you know, and I thought, okay, I'm going to show them I really, you know, care about this and acted out. And I realized that they were not looking for a leader to act like that.

They were looking for the leader to act professional, more stable. And I think I might have either wrote in that book or somewhere else, that they were looking for a rock and instead with a, got was a pile of sand, you know? And, you know, that, that really taught me that, you know, it's kind of like being a parent, you know, kids aren't looking for friends, they're looking for parents, you know, and subordinates aren't looking for buddies, they're looking for followers that they could count on, and be a follower. And the other thing is, I like to say, is that leaders don't need to be great all the time, but they need to be great when it makes a difference.

They need to be great when it matters, you know? Because, you know, let's face it, you know, steady-state operations, 80% of the time, 90% of the time, things are kind of moving along right, you know. But then you hit this bump in the road, and that's where you've really got to stand up, and you've got to be a leader, and you've got to show that ability to control your emotions and to be stable, because that is something that creates confidence into organization. If a leader falls apart like that, then heck, the subordinates don't have anybody to count on, because even the leader is starting to crumble.

That's not a good thing. So that happened early on in my career, and I realized what a mistake that was. So I was always very, very cognizant of the fact that, hey, you had a show strength when things were kind of caving in all around you. That's what your supportants are expecting. I always looked at it. If my leader couldn't control his emotions, how the heck is going to be able to make good decisions? And I was remembered. I saw when I was younger, some of the leaders I had would fly off the handle.

And I just think, well, how's this guy going to make good decision? No one makes a good decision when they're emotional. No. Displaying empathy. Empathy is an essential element of being a servant leader. Empathetic leaders can sense what their followers are feeling. This eliminates tone deafness and the perception leaders do not understand or work. Worse yet the perception, the leader does not care.

When followers think a leader does not care, they will stop bringing forth their problems and issues. Empathy is the capacity to show followers you care about them. A leader must understand how followers feel and what their issues are in order to provide their resources, allowing followers to do their job more effectively, and increase the probability of mission accomplishment. You got to see the perspective of the people on your team.

And, you know, I think it was Colin Powell who said something to the fact that when a soldier stopped bringing you their problems, you've effectively stopped being a leader. And, you know, you could apply that to, you know, civilian sector as well. When you're, the people who work for you stop bringing you problems, you've really effectively lost your ability to lead them because, you know, folks are going to stop bringing us their problems when they figure either. you can't do anything about it or you just don't care enough to do anything about it. And that's just a terrible position for a leader to be in. Yeah, you got to maintain that connection. There's always a running joke whenever I'm in a leadership position that no one ever tells me that they're tired, that they don't want to work more.

It just never happens. So I always have to make sure that I'm pulling that string a little bit more than normal. because no one wants to come and say, hey, John,ca, we've had enough. We don't want to do another operation. We don't want to go. We've been on the road too. No one ever wants to tell me that.

So I always have to make sure I'm digging a little bit deeper. Otherwise, they won't say a damn thing. Section three is resilience. And I'm going to read a little section here. Our four up armored Humvees launched themselves out of the gate of Ford operating base Ramadi on a sun-drenched Sunday morning in September 2005, The heat was stifling. The Euphrates River running through our area added a high degree of humidity, causing my eye protection and missed up with sweat.

We were traveling along Route Michigan toward observation post hotel, overlooking East Ramadi, O.P. Hotel. A suicide bomber attacked the observation post a few weeks earlier, but failed to dislodge the tenacious soldiers who operated out of there. I wanted to check on the soldiers and gauge their morale. Our vehicles made their way through the city, through a city struggling due to the violent insurgency there. Still, as we made our way east, toward East Ramadi, the streets were busy with vehicle and pedestrian traffic. I was happy to have my brigade chaplain riding along with me in the backseat of our vehicle. In the army, I have always been a big fan of our chaplains. These warriors of a higher power could bolster the spirit of soldiers anytime they visited a unit.

The chaplain was also part of my personal staff, and I valued their insight prior to making decision affecting the welfare of soldiers. After our visit to O.P. Hotel, we made our way back through the center of the city. The chaplain noticed the same thing I and every soldier in our mounted patrol noticed. The vehicles and pedestrians covering the streets about two hours earlier had disappeared. There was a strange quietness clothing the neighborhood we were passing through. We had seen this before. We braced ourselves for an insurgents. attack. We all became a bit tense as our senses were alerted. The banter we usually engaged in as we moved about the city was quieted as we gave the alleys and buildings around us our full attention.

In order to calm down our crew, the chaplain announced in a loud voice, Fear not, boys, God is with us. The young specialist operating out of the gunners compartment of our vehicle heard the chaplain's announcement and from his more exposed, position atop the vehicle he playfully called down to the chaplain God may be with you all down there but he certainly is not up here with me about 20 seconds later we heard the boom of a rocket propelled grenade the grenade squarely hit the armor shield surrounding our young gunner and harmlessly ricocheted into the air before exploding and causing no harm to personnel and no damage to equipment our stunned gunner did not miss a beat he quickly and last

I stand corrected Chaplain God just arrived of course we all broke up with laughter It was good having the chaplain with us that day and this is a section that you've got called spiritual Fitness talk to us about spiritual fitness yeah you know You know when we talk about fitness of course you know we think of physical fitness and you know mental fitness emotional fitness But I think spiritual fitness is a big part of helping us develop our leadership strength and that's whether we are part of some type of formal you know religion or whether we just are connected to our spirituality in another way you know through nature through meditation whatever the case it's it's

important that we understand that there's something I this my own personal beliefs there's something larger going on in the universe around us it's not all about us. You know, we're just, we're just a speck of everything that's going on. And I think that helps us keep grounded. I think it helps us keep humble. And I think it, again, kind of aligns with whatever values we say or our personal values where it will help us stay on the right track as we're making these decisions. So I think if leaders don't take the time to reflect on The notion that there's a higher power out there, that there's something going on that's really much bigger than ourselves, they may be missing something. And that's one part of this whole section of the book, which is called resilience.

And this is one of your three overall themes. And you've got some other facets of resilience in here. Positive energy. And that's an overused statement, right? And what I was thinking about what I was reading this is You know you can think of the positive energy as someone that's sort of like It's hard to understand or it can be hard to understand But if you think of people that have negative energy

It's really easy to understand those people right It's really easy to someone who's never gonna work Oh, we're screwed oh this is horrible We all know people like that and it seems easier to identify Maybe I shouldn't use the word hard to understand It can be hard to under hard to identify someone that has positive energy It's real easy to, there's more people, it seems, that have negative energy.

And occasionally you'll get someone that just got super positive. And then you'll remember that. And you'll remember how their, you know, what their response was when something was going wrong and how they took it and they look around and be like, oh, good, we get another chance to go at this or whatever the case may be. So I think that's, that's a good one. You got fitness, physical fitness in here, which is, again, something that I get often asked, does that come from the military or is that just part of you?

And the answer is, look, there's plenty of people in the military that get out of the military and physical fitness, their physical fitness fails. Yeah. And they get out of shape. So it's not something that you get, it's not a chip you get programmed. You need to work at it. Yeah. Yeah.

And just kind of back to your piece there about the positive energy. You know, you mentioned those negative people. I like to call them energy sponges because they just kind of sap the energy from everyone around them. It's kind of like, why do I want to be around this person, man? And it's just not good for a leader to be that way. I like to say a leader should brighten up the room when they enter it, not when they leave it.

You know, if you're the type of leader that brightens up a room when you leave it. It's kind of like, man, you're doing something wrong there. So, again, it's not like you've got to be, you know, all smiling and slapping people on the back and glad-handed people all the time. But people have to know that you're expecting tomorrow to be a better day than today. And who doesn't want to be around a leader who believes that tomorrow is going to be better than today? You know, because, you know, we want to move forward.

And that's what I mean by positive energy. And like we talked about earlier in the podcast here, you have to have an action plan, a believable action plan, you know, if you want to be known as a, as a, as a, positive leader because people aren't going to to follow you if they just think you're glad handing everything and you really don't have a plan to back it up that's important yeah you got to you got to see a pathway to get this mission done yeah and see a way to get out of this miserable situation that we're in and see a way to have some fun with it yeah yeah I mean hey you know that's human nature people want to be able to you know have people want to be able to enjoy their work you know

And, you know, the old saying, you know, if you enjoy your work, you're not going to work a day in your life. And I truly believe that. And again, you've just got to find those things that really, you know, keep you motivated, keep you excited about life. What about vulnerability? This is another thing that you clue into here. Talk to us about vulnerability from a leadership perspective. Yeah. When I talk about vulnerability, and we already talked a little bit about the first part, it's about having the

courage to leave your comfort zone, allowing yourself to be vulnerable to try something maybe you haven't tried before or something that's a little bit hard. But the other aspects of vulnerability is putting yourself out there and exposing yourself to your followers. And I'll tell you what I mean by that. One way to expose yourself to your followers, and I think this is a helpful technique, is sharing stories with your followers about times maybe when you're you tried something and you failed, you know, or you made a mistake. And the reason I think that's important is because, you know, followers look at a leader to think, man, they're in this position of leadership.

Everything they touched in life must have turned a goal. They probably never made any mistakes, so they want to be in this position of leadership. And we know nothing could be farther from the truth. So by explaining to your followers how, hey, you know, I've tried and I've failed sometimes, and I've made mistakes, and this is how I was able to overcome these mistakes, that inspires those followers. And then the other piece about vulnerability is having the humility to ask people on your team, and I know you've written about this, because I've read it, but having the humility to ask people on your team what they think and how they would do something. And then having the humility to follow through with their recommendation when you see it's a good recommendation.

that should be followed. And again, not just having that attitude that, hey, I'm the leader, you've only got two years on the job. What could you possibly know more than I know? But again, you don't know what life experience that person had. So asking people their opinion. We talk about respect. I think one of the best ways you could show somebody on your team that you respect them is by asking their opinion. Could you imagine working for somebody for 10 years and you've never had that person you worked for ever ask you for your opinion? I mean, you know, how could that make you feel good? And how could that make you feel that that leader of yours respects you? Man, you never even asked me what I thought. You know, so I think one of the best ways to show people you respect them is

ask their opinion. Doesn't mean you have to follow their recommendation, like we mentioned earlier. And if you don't follow their recommendation, a good technique is getting back with them and explaining to them why. But I think to me, that's what vulnerability is all about, those couple of things there. Yeah, this is another negative example that I think is easier to see is if you're talking, if you work for me and you're talking and I cut you off, right? Everyone knows that's disrespectful.

Well, that also means that if I actually listen to what you have to say, that I'm being respectful, I'm giving you respect. So that's a, if you can't remember to listen to people, remember how rude it is when someone cuts you off and the opposite of that is to actually listen to people. Here's another, I think this is a, a vulnerability that is so uncomfortable for leaders and people and subordinates up and down the chain of command. It's a vulnerability that is, that is people avoid almost at all costs. And that is the ability to say, I don't know.

Yeah. I don't. Hey, I don't know. Hey, what do you think we should do this? I don't know. Up and down the chain of command. I think the first place I learned this, when I got to the SEAL teams,

you didn't get your, you weren't a seal when you got to the SEAL teams. You were a new guy, an FNG, as a matter of fact. So you get there, you're an FNG, you don't have your Trident, which is the insignia that means you're a SEAL. And so you have to study for six months. You're on a probationary board.

You're on probation, I should say, and then you have to eventually go in front of a verbal board and you go to the diving, you go to the weapons, you go to parachute, you go to tactics, you go to the radios, you, and all these chiefs and master chiefs and senior chiefs, and they're asking you questions, and what they tell you is, and this is probably the first place I realize, oh, okay, well, that's, that's the right thing to do. If they ask you a question and you don't know, what you say is, I don't know, let me do some research

and I'll get back to you. And that's the right answer. And they're going to ask you some, they're going to dig so deep into those manuals, they're going to get that answer. Or you can sit there and say, you can try and make up an answer. You can try and pretend like you know it. and then you're going to get crushed because you lack the humility and you're not being vulnerable enough to say,

hey, I actually don't know. So up and down the chain of command, just like you said, no one expects the leader to know everything. As a leader, we think everyone expects us to know everything. And when we try and act like that, we look like idiots.

Yeah. You don't know everything. Just say, hey, I don't know. What do you think? It's perfectly fine. Three powerful words there that leader should live by.

When they don't know, say it. skipping forward a little bit, remaining calm during the storm. You talk about some ways to do this, and you've got a couple points in here, take control over the things you can. I think this is something that,

even though it's so obvious, we still fail to do this as people. We worry about things. We have no control over. So don't do that. But you've got another section in here. Do not catastrophize. Now, did you make up that word?

No, that's actually a word I heard when I went through resiliency training. Okay. They talked about the concept of catastrophes. So here's the section on catastrophizing. The United States Army trained soldiers on techniques that will help them display resiliency. One of those techniques, which I think is particularly relevant during these uncertain times, is how to not catastrophize. When you catastrophize, you focus only on the worst case scenario. You believe the worst will happen.

and of course this produces a great deal of anxiety. This can also sow the seeds of a self-fulfilling prophecy. A method to place things in perspective and avoid catastrophizing is by going through a practical thought process promoting resiliency and reducing anxiety. First, look at what the worst case scenario would possibly look like. Second, identify what the best case scenario might be. Third, consider the most likely or probable outcome. then focus your attention on the plan on the most probable case and develop your primary plan of action around that scenario.

So this is something. And I think the reason I got a little bit focused on this is because this is what our news media gets paid to do. Catastrophies everything. Everything is catastrophize. Everything is a worst case scenario. The world's going to end. If you follow the headlines, the world ends every single day. It gets killed by COVID, by war, by this politician, by that politician.

Every single day, there's a catastrophe that happens. And if you do that as a leader, you're making a mistake. But what's also important is you can't react to these things. And someone runs into the office with some massive problem. It's like, okay, let's think through it. Okay, so you're excited, awesome. Let's think through it. Catastrophizing.

You know, I'm surprised I woke up this morning. You know, watching the news. I thought the world ended yesterday. But, yeah, you're exactly right. And I do try to use this technique because usually the very worst case doesn't happen. And you get yourself all spun up about it, all frigging tense and stressed out about it. And it's not going to do you any good anyway. This is one of the most beautiful things I learned in the military is the counter to the

catastrophizing individual above you in the chain of command, below you in the chain of command, appear whatever they're panicking they're freaking out and what you learn in the military you learn this powerful word which is Roger that or right either Roger or Roger that someone comes in they're going crazy oh you can't believe this happened I'd be like Roger meaning okay I understand let's let's think about it so anytime be very careful as a leader be very careful with the words you choose to explain what's happening and and sometimes as a leader we want to get a reaction out of people where we've got this situation happening and we know it's critical and we need to make some adjustments. And so in order to get people moving, instead of explaining to them

what's happening and why we need to make a move, we just go straight to level 12 catastrophes in order to get people to move, we catastrophes. And the problem with that is it ends up being the little boy that cried wolf where you catastrophize everything. Everything's a catastrophe. Everything's going to end the world. Everything's a strategic failure for the team. Everything's a catastrophic event. And it's like, no. In fact, there are so few catastrophic events that can actually happen that there's almost nothing that you can catastrophize with me.

We're going to get through just about everything. That's kind of like the whole thing. If everything's a priority, nothing's a priority. Exactly. You know, you've really got to be clear about what the priorities are and then get everybody working toward achieving those, you know, probably maybe two or three priorities, the things that are really important. Prioritize and execute, I believe.

I believe that's the word. And I want to close out with one last section here. And it's how you close out the book, but it's a good indicator of everything else that's in the book. So it says this. I was raised by my father to have faith in God. Though my father faced setbacks such as losing his wife at an early age and raising seven children after her death, he never lost faith. My father made it a point to march us, march all seven of his children into church every Sunday morning. This made a lifelong impression not only on me and my siblings, but many others who resided in our community.

There are certain things I learned about good leadership as a young boy from my father and others that have been reinforced throughout my life. The things I learned were the importance of having strong character and staying true to your values, even when things got tough. Being service oriented and helping other people whenever you could, regardless of their race, religion, and setting an example by doing the right thing even when no one was watching. I know I am not a perfect leader, but I continue to do my best to learn how I can become a better person and a better leader. And I encourage all who read this book to do the same. Seek to place the organization you lead in good hands. Well, I think that's what we're all trying to do. We're all trying to do the same thing, continue to learn, continue to try and become better people and better leaders,

and definitely appreciate you for writing this book and given some of these lessons learned. No, Jocko, I appreciate the time to talk about it. I appreciate the time to talk about the book with you and just really grateful that we could spend a little bit of time. you and I just talking about our own leadership philosophies and what it means to continue to learn and continue to grow to be a better leader. So thank you for the opportunity. Yeah. I mean, obviously we use some different verbiage and some focus here and there might be a little bit different. But the underlying themes, I mean, these are what leadership, these are the underlying themes that exist in leadership anywhere you look. Anybody that understands it is going to, you're going to see these common themes.

So right now you've got a consulting company called Leader Grove or is it Leaders Grove? Leader Grove. Leader Grove and it's Leadergrove.com. Yes. You got John Gronsky.com. People can find you there. You're on Twitter at J.L. Gronsky. You're on YouTube channel.

That's John Grosky. LinkedIn, John Gronsky. It's a good thing about having the last name of Gronsky. It's not a real common last name. It's like mine last name. Not real common. Yeah. So you can get away with it and you can just call everything Gronsky.

LinkedIn, John Gronsky, and then you got Facebook, which is John Gronsky leads. And what else? Oh, the gram. Oh, you're on the gram? Yeah. You're on the gram. See? Echo Charles, you know what's up.

And that's at John Gronsky leads on the gram. So any other, Eck, are you got anything? No, sir. I think we covered it. That's it, huh? Nothing from that Coachell's. It was interesting to see that, I mean, not necessarily the contrast, but the overlap, so much overlap, you know. Different terminology, how you said, but very interesting.

Yeah, yeah. It's good leadership, good leadership across the board. Any closing comments? The only closing comment I have is that I've got a, I've got a good time drinking your Jock-Go-Go energy drink, so I love that. Mango. So that's Echo's favorite flavor as well. But I just want to thank you, again, for the message you put out. I mean, you put out a message that so many people could follow whether they're in a leadership position or not.

And by the way, I think everybody is in some position of leadership. And I think you agree with me when I say you don't have to be in a formal position of leadership in order to lead. But anyway, thank you for putting the message out you do. And to the kids, too. You know, your kids, you know, the books you put out for children to help them get on the right path is very important. So appreciate that. The other thing I want to thank you for is, you know, getting a picture myself, you, echo together. So when people look at the picture, they could see what a small unmusking the man I really am compared to you two.

So I appreciate that. But no, really, Jock, thanks for having me back again. And again, thanks for the leadership message that you continue to get out there. So I appreciate that. I always say if you interact with other human beings, you're in a leadership position. So if you're listening to this right now, you're in a leadership position. Hey, thanks for writing the book that's going to help people lead. And more important, once again, thanks for your service.

Thanks for your service in the Army National Guard, the Army and the National Guard. And thanks once again to you and to your soldiers and the service and salary. Sacrifice in the battle of Vermont the efforts that your guys put forth they they literally Saved my guys lives we learned lessons from you when we got on the ground We listened to what you had to say you told us to do operations You told us not to do other operations you told us to stay off this street you told us how to better do our tactics so your guys from the 228 Literally saved the lives of my guys I know it and

We will never forget what you and your men did for us and and did for us and and did for you America. Thanks, Jack. Thanks for coming on. And with that, General John Gronsky has left the building. So Echo, kind of close that out, talking about how people we all want to be better,

need to be better, can be better. It's true. Where do we start? Well, we start with our health. Without health, we have nothing. Straight up. From what I understand, you had a little disregard of your health the other day and went to a McDonald's

Restaurant. It was a, eight food. It was a momentary lapse of judgment. And discipline. And discipline for sure. But it's the, it was very unique.

What made you break? Opportunistic. And this is the kind of stuff we've got to be careful for or about or whatever. You know how you have a routine? And every once in a while, I get reminded of the importance of a routine. Okay. I'm not a,

I don't 100% sign on to the whole routine. Is McDonald's party? The thing. No, but it's an example. If you don't have a routine, what it does is create little opportunities. You slide through those cold arches if you don't have the teeth. No,

but slipping in them chicken neck nuggets. Okay, this part is nothing new. If you have routine, it's like, okay, you don't, you don't have opportunities. What did you get?

It doesn't matter. Okay. I bought, I got the, the item that is a soft, soft, soft bun, and inside that bun is a fish flavored

concoction. You got the, the fish fillet sand. Yeah, I don't think there's a real fish in there at all, but either way. You think there's like a crayfish or something in there. So, you know what it is? It's like one of those. Or it's just pure sugar, fat and salt.

They do a, I don't know, but this is what it feels like. Maybe like a synthetic material that's made, maybe in like a 3D printer or something like this with like some stuff. And then they put like some fish like extract flavor in it and then fry it. Okay. Was that the path? Is that the path? It's just making you better.

Okay. Okay. Okay. The path is kind of a routine. It essentially is. And this is important. It's the routine where if you have a routine, there's way, way, way less opportunity to make, to have like, oh, like a decision making conundrum. Right.

Because the routine, the decision you have already made before is part of the routine. Well, you're not hangary. Hang. And going through emotional departure depression because you haven't had a freaking fish Sammy a few hours. Either way. If you're hangary even, you already know because dinner's soon or you know when the dinner is. See what I'm saying? If you have a routine or lunch or breakfast, whatever you're about to eat, whatever.

Until old Ronald comes in with his big shoes, right? Take you off the bath. Here's what Ronald does. He just waits. He waits for the people with no routine or he'll slide into your routine. But a lot of times for people like me in this case where the little crack in the routine, he's right there. He's like, hey, you need a decision to make, I'll make it easy for you. What's the one that's going to give you the payoff, the quickest?

You see what I'm saying? So that's what it was. Instead of going home to dinner, my wife was somewhere else. And she was like, hey, you know, like, you know, I don't know how much food there's going to be here or whatever. So, you know, grab something. And so I was like, cool, I made the turn in, like literally on my way home, changed trajectory, fucking took the exit. And boom, McDonald's was right there.

Made it happen in a bad way. All right. So we don't want to consume things that are horrible. No. What do we want to consume? The point is health is a big thing. With no health, look, if I'm going to McDonald's every single day, my health goes down, down, down.

And then eventually I become incapable of pretty much anything. So if you're unhealthy or your health is in decline or whatever by your own. Meanwhile, if you have control over it and you choose to not be healthy, you can have some problems. Okay, so let's choose to be healthy. That's what I think. I like it. So on this path starts with health. Fitness, capability, mental and physical.

Now, with that, we can have little helpers on the way. That helper is Jocko Fuel. So I'm actually working on a video, Jock Fuel video. Cool. Just a small one about why you Jocko started Jock Fuel. Interesting. It actually doesn't go very deep when you think about it. It's like just stuff that you were using anyway.

That's one of the worst hype thing. I've ever heard I'm so not hyped for this video right now yeah but I here's the here's the only reason I'm a little bit hyped is I know you wouldn't bring it up unless you are hyped so you must have some vision about some explosions that are gonna happen yeah you know potentially I mean may or may not have explosions either where the point is though the point is the reason Jocko started Jocko fuel is stuff that you use anyway yeah so you figure okay let me just refine and in in maximize the quality of

and these things that I use anyway, produce them. Boom, and then we'll have that product. There you go. One of the many little helpers in life, helpers on the path. Because let's face it, it's late, you dinner plans change, you're hungry. You could easily go to McDonald's like Echo Charles did, which is taking him in the wrong direction, off the path, unhealthy, feeling sick later, not doing a good workout the next day. Just everything is turning bad. Or you could power and be like, oh, cool, I got milk at home.

Yep. I got milk at home. Very true. It's a savior. Yeah, it is true. And I'll even explain how much of a savior it is. So look, okay, so energy drinks, right? You all know that.

We're saying, I didn't get the, you know, sleep or dang, I have a huge workload today and tomorrow. Maybe I'm need a little boost or maybe I'm just used to a little boost at some point in the day, right? But usually we've got to pay a price. Either we crash or either we're drinking something that's unhealthy. Boom. These energy drinks go. Jocco discipline go. May or may not be called discipline anymore.

It's called discipline go. All right, there you go. Jock discipline, go. Is an energy drink with front side and backside benefits. And no downside. No downside. We kind of went off on that recently. We're talking just the no downside piece.

Yeah. Most things that are as gratifying and have so much upside, usually go, yeah, well, there's always a little downside, right? No downside. Not this time. Boom, little helper on that path. I mean, you're on the path. You're still on the path. Literally, in fact, you're even more down the path.

Yeah. In a good way. Totally positive across the board. So boom. Or you get home. Let's face it, every once in a while, you eat dinner. You had a good day. You had a good week.

Great week. Spent time with a family. Got your work done. You moved ahead. You just want a little celebratory dessert. Something like this. The weird thing is even after you have a 26 ounce ribby steak. Sure.

And it's perfectly cooked. Even after you get done with that, you're, you're totally good to go. But there's another little part of your brain that wants something called dessert. Oh, yeah. And you could just be like, oh, well, there's the cheesecake or whatever. Oh, yeah. And kind of negate a lot of the stuff that you've been doing all week working hard with. We made you dessert.

Yep. So we got some milk. So we got some milk. Boom. And here. Look, you want to. Moke is good. Let's say you're tired.

It's hard week. Just add the milk to the milk or the whatever your preferred mixer. This is not a challenging recipe directive. Yeah, but not limited to that simplicity. Add some stuff in there. I had half a banana. That's me. That's my jam.

But either way, do what you will. It's the same deal. This will not have you slip off the path. You're still in the path. And all of this is a really long way of saying go to joccofuel. Get yourself some stuff. Get yourself some joint warfare. Crill oil, super krill,

vitamin D3. Cold War. Yeah, these are all helpers with all upside. Stay away from McDonald's. No doubt. Yeah, stay away from McDonald's. People that are just A, B, testing things

to make it taste good. They don't care, they don't care what you feel like and they don't care about your health. Yeah. Don't care. There's not one single person advocating for your health. No.

They're advocating for your wallet. I know, bro. Don't do it. Isn't that because you know how you just said that like almost with like a like a I don't see like a like a joking tone right yeah yeah but but but the scary part is that is 100% true where it's there is not one single person one single person interested in the success of that business which is not necessarily a wrong thing to be interested in success of your business well it's wrong if you're going to sacrifice people's health

because of it not one person cares about your health in fact your health is kind of like a pawn in their big game at jockey fuel your health is paramount does the only otherwise we wouldn't do we we waited like an extra six month and built out the line to pasteurize the the the jaco go so that we didn't have to put chemicals in it to keep it preserved yeah that's that's that's that shows you your health is paramount oh yeah otherwise we hey you know it's not that big of everybody else uses these chemicals no no don't matter yeah isn't that kind of scary when you put it into perspective.

It's like, you know what? The most important thing about you is your wallet. You know what? I'm going to use that as a pawn in my business. Savages. I'm saying? Ooh, that's scary. Nonetheless, joccofuel.com, boom.

Energy drink, you get at Wawa. You can get go at Wawa. You can get everything at Vitamin Shop 2. Go and hook that up. Also, origin, USA. American-made stuff. This is good stuff, by the way. So you get your American-made denim,

some leather on there Jiu-jitsu stuff geese rash guards some fitness attire they're hoodies so I got a new one and I had the old ones

from before it's fine but when you wear them every other day they kind of you know they get worn on and get used to them and you're like cool but I went to the camp

I got a new one I was like ooh that's a nice one they have a new heavy hoodie too but the one it's legit

yeah called the heavy Yeah. We all know what that's from. Nonetheless, all the materials that are, that make these. It was the heavies. Yeah. What a freaking epic, epic, freaking moment in life.

Yeah, Pete does a good job with those names, those creative names of this stuff. The heavy. But yeah, so even the materials that they make these things with are made and grown in America. So keep that in mind. Origin USA.com also. Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko Store.

This is where you can get your discipline equals freedom T-shirts, hoodies, hats, whichever way you want to represent on this path. It's not an easy path, but it's worth it. As a wise man wants it. If you want to represent, boom, jocco store.com. Also, we have a thing called the short locker. This is where you can get a new shirt with cool design. Is that sure you're wearing a short locker shirt?

Yes, sir. Okay. Now someone have to say it's cool. All right. I even got jocco signed on to that one. But yeah, there's some cool. I would say it's a pretty much successful. as far as accepted designs, people like them.

I'm going to agree. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, again, jocco store.com, that's we can get all the stuff you like, if you like something. Was the Seawolf's shirt? Yes, shirt, lock a shirt. So these are approved, like highly approved.

Highly approved. Desired, even. Desired, yeah, for sure. We are opening a thing for a member, like some of the members are like, hey, what about that one? I signed up two months ago, but I kind of want that shirt

from six months ago or four months ago, whatever. So we're opening up the store for the members as well so they can add a past shirt if they want. Yeah. So be on the lookout for that one. Dang, that's awful nice of you.

Yeah, man. I'm trying to be accommodating to the people. Subscribe to this podcast. Wherever you subscribe to a podcast, we also have Jocko unraveling with Daryl Cooper. And Daryl Cooper's been on a mission lately. So we haven't released one in a bit. But we got a ton of topics to talk about.

So check out Jocco unraveling with myself and Daryl Cooper. We got the grounded podcast. We got the Warrior Kid podcast. We also have the Jocko underground podcast. And that's, well, it's sort of a little bastion of freedom that we have, that we're kind of setting aside. It's our contingency A.O. area of operations. Look, if people get crazy with this whole platform, the platforms, and there's a bunch of them, you figure, hey, well, you know, you got this platform and that platform. What are the chances that they all decide to either start inserting ads or start making people pay or whatever they're going to do?

I don't know. But if it happens, we have our own little world carved out. We appreciate you coming into our world. It's called Jock Underground. Go to jocco underground. Go to jocco underground.com if you want to join. If you want to support it, cost $8.18 a month. And that's how we're paying to build this alternative platform.

and that way we don't have to read ads from some freaking whatever Apple company or banana

outfit I don't know whatever dude we don't want to do it we don't want to talk about any of that stuff if you can't afford it that's cool we still want you in the game

email assistance at joccawonderground.com we appreciate the support and we also have a YouTube channel speaking of platforms where we put up videos. Yep. So far YouTube put pretty straightforward as far as a platform, you know, videos.

We've gotten demonetized a couple times. Yeah. We've had warnings only a couple times like what is the, the warning of info. Yeah. And keep in mind when you say demonetize, because there's different levels of demonetization. You can get a video demonetize. You can get the, uh, or the whole channel straight up demonetized. Mm-hmm.

Or there's somewhere in between where it's like, okay, you can proclaim that, hey, this Video contains some heavy stuff. Bro, I had one Halloween. I did like a quick video of working out or whatever or something. And I put in the background Halloween, the song by the Misfits. Oh, yeah. And almost instantly it was whatever, blocked band and whatever else because it was copyrighted material. I was like, bro, you know, spreading the word on the misfits.

Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's true. They were on that. Yeah. And, you know, they kind of consider both sides, I think, anyway, because it's like, hey, what if they assume that you're making money off of your video. There's a post. Oh, not on YouTube. It was on something else.

It was on the Graham. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's different. It's weird. They came at me. Well, you know what? What it is? It's my hypothesis.

I think Danzig and the misfits highly protect their IP. Yeah, because you're essentially acting as a. distributor. I didn't mean, all I meant to do is I could spread the word, hey man, this is a great band. It's the misfits, bro. This is an iconic band. Yes, it's true.

It's true, but the rules got to kind of apply to everybody, you know, so without some kind of approval, distributor process. I saw the misfits recently with the cromags, like before COVID in L.A. In a big giant stadium. And you know what? It was freaking outstanding.

I mean, the cromags were awesome. Yes, absolutely. Harley was rocking. And then the misfits came out. And I was like, this is, I salute these guys. That's why you're spreading the word. Yeah, I was trying to spread the word a little bit. And they thought I was trying to jack their stuff.

Well, in their defense, they didn't see your post and was like, hey, Jocko, take that down. I don't want you, you know, distribute myself. It's not how it went down. But wouldn't some people be like, hey, can you put a clip out of our music so more people buy our music, right? Yeah. That could happen. Right. What wouldn't they think of it that way instead of the other way?

Technically the misfits didn't do it directly. Technically, Instagram did it. Misfits probably signed up, signed that song up to be monitored or whatever automatically. So without them checking back with you specifically or arbitrarians. Glenn Danzig and the Misfits, I was not doing it nefariously. I was actually doing a promotional way. If you ever want to license your songs to me, I'll throw them out there into the world. You can,

you probably never even heard a Misfit song, which is kind of sad. No, I've never, I don't think I've heard a Misfit song, but I heard you talk about the Misfits. So kind of the same thing. But that's,

if you heard a Misfit song, you'd probably be like, hmm, pretty good. Yeah, oh, yeah. Solid. It's, it's iconic music,

to be honest with you. It's iconic music. It's iconic an opinion or a factual standard. Factual. So you can have the Misfits, what's called, white list. They can white list your channel. Actually, this is on YouTube. I know you can do this on

YouTube because this is happening to me. They say hey, it's cool. Jocco's down. They can, whatever the he posts, all good as far as our account goes. If they do that with us, I won't abuse it. I'm not going to make like the, you know what I mean? This is only on YouTube. Right. On YouTube. But maybe we'll do it on Instagram. Yeah, just apply the YouTube rule to Instagram. Yeah, I don't know. I should time it next time. See how long it takes them to shut me down. I did some other old, old

older hardcore bands and that that just were around for a short period of time. No one ever said anything. So I think it depends on the band. Yeah. They have to, you have to register your, your songs and stuff. Like even on YouTube,

like if, if I use a, I don't know, your other favorite band, like if I use like Taylor Swift or something like this, right? You know that all Taylor Swift songs have been registered with YouTube through some process.

That's like, hey, of this little thing, this little print imprint or whatever the however they monitor it, turns up automatic either. And they choose whether it's shut down, blocked or just silence. Some videos will just be silent because like, hey, that audio is not cool. Or they'll just take the monetization. Did they demonetize my guitar playing when I play that song by the White Buffalo?

No. Interesting. Not yours, but when he was on. He was on, they'd be honest. Right off. Oh, yeah. Interesting. So, you know, it makes sense.

It's a process. I got a new jam coming. Got a new song. I'm prepping. Cool. I'm going to record it. To hear. Right on.

So subscribe to that YouTube channel, Jocco podcast. Also, we got Origin USA. If you want to find out what's going on in America. Oh, their YouTube channel. Yeah. Yeah. There's their origin USA. It's cool to track what's going on up there.

See, see it, feel it. Be a part of it. Yeah. It's true. Check. Also, what do we got? Also psychological warfare. That's an album with tracks that we have not put whatever thing to restrict it because people have jacked it and using all kinds of things.

Oh, yeah. So, but if you want to, like, be a good human and you want to listen to the psychological warfare album that has tracks of me telling you not to freaking go to McDonald's, not to order a fish. Filet mick sandwich then you can do that go to whatever mp3 thing and you can you can buy psychological warfare and I'll be on your phone waiting to tell you

stop also flipside canvas flipside canvas dot com Dakota Meyer he's got a company here in America American made making cool stuff to hang on your wall and of course it's Dakota Meyer even if you just had something Dakota Dakota Meyer could take a white piece

of paper yeah And be like, hey, I made this. I'd be that cool. What's hanging on my wall? Because that's the Codemeyer. Like a little hangman game. Yeah, that would be cool. Let's put it on the wall.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm down. Agree. Got some books. The book that I covered today was Iron Sharpened Leadership by John Gronsky. It will be on our website. You can click through there. Yes.

And then you'll be supporting the podcast while you buy a book. Oh, yeah. You can buy whatever you want once you click through there, through Amazon or whatever. It's true. Final spin Book coming out I wrote this book

It's not a book about leadership It's a book about brotherhood It's a book about sacrifice And it's a book about Corn Dogs Gallon jugs of mayonnaise Salmon pie And Buick Century Wagons

That's what the book's about No one can explain this book No one I can't even explain it As you can see, I just tried. Hey, if you want to check out this new book I got, it's called Final Spin. It's a book, it's a poem, it's a transcript.

We don't even know what it is. But so far, we have an audience of one, Deb, the audio engineer, who listened to me, read the audiobook. And she, quote, loved it. She laughed, she cheered, she cried. That's what we're talking about. Also, leadership strategy and tactics,

field manual, the code, the evaluation of protocol, Discipline and Freedom Field Manual. Way of the Warrior Kid, one, two, three. And four, Miking the Dragons, about face, and extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership. A bunch of books I've written or co-written. We have a company called Ashlandfront where we solve problems through leadership.

Go to Eshlamfront.com. If you want help inside your organization. This is also where you can find details for our live events, including the muster, including field training exercises and EF Battlefield. We talked a little bit about Gettysburg today, the battle of Gettysburg. You can come to Gettysburg with us, and we will talk through the leadership challenges that they faced and decisions that they got made good and bad.

Next muster is in Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th. Next, FTCS is September 20th and 21st. I think we're already past that, so sorry, keep your eyes open. We also have an online training program, Extreme Ownership Academy. It is online leadership training that you can. go to you don't get good at leadership by listening to one podcast or by reading one book you've got to work out in the leadership gym the leadership gym is extreme ownership dot com go check it out and if you want to help service members active and retired their families gold star families

check out mark lee's mom mama lee she's got a charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved in that go to america's mighty warriors dot org and if you want more of me regurgitating reading. Oh, you need more of Echo's uncanny quips. You can find us on the in webs on Twitter, on the gram, and on Facebook. Echoes at Equichichich, General Gronsky, General John Gronsky, John Gronsky. John Groskey.com. Leadergrove.com.

Twitter, J.L. Gronsky. YouTube, John Gronsky. LinkedIn, John Gronsky, Facebook, and the gram at John Gronsky leads. And thanks again to General Gronsky for joining us. Special thanks to all the men and women from the 228 that served in Ramadi Iraq in 2005, 2006. We only overlapped with y'all for about a month, but we appreciate what you did there

and the turnover that you got, that you gave to us, as I mentioned to General Gronsky, you all 100% kept my guys alive from the lessons that you passed on to us. And we appreciate it in the time we were working after you left with the 1-1-A-D. So thanks to all of you. And to the rest of the military out there serving right now,

thank you for taking the watch now that we are done. And the police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all first responders. Thanks to all of you for standing the watch here at home. And to everyone else out there, here's a little action you can take. You need a plan.

a plan a plan to live by a code a center principles values a protocol for behavior if you don't have that if you're just don't have that you're just wandering around I wrote about it with Dave Burke and Sarah Armstrong in the book the code the protocol the evaluation I wrote about it first in the warrior kid books come up with a code the Marine Corps falls a code the Rangers follow code the seals and the army and the samurai and the knights and the Vikings all followed a code don't wander around get on the path follow the code and keep getting after it and until next time this echo and jocco out