Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: The Political Climate-Are We Headed For Another Civil War in America? The Indirect Approach for the Win. The Fear of Blood?

Episode Date: May 21, 2021

The indirect approach wins. The direct approach loses.Are we headed for another civil war in America?Dealing with a poor superior.Dealing with the fear of blood.Jiu Jitsu: I may have a substandard academy and not know it.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko underground podcast number 19 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. All right. So last week I posted, or maybe it was last week. It was a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago, I posted something from Gettysburg where I was talking about the indirect approach to things. Yeah.

The specific thing I was talking about is that in the Civil War, in the Battle of Chancellorville, Stonewall Jackson, convinced General Lee to take. that he should take the indirect approach in this battle. He should take his troops and walk 14 miles to get to the flank of the Union instead of just doing a frontal assault, which was a half a mile. So either go right at him, go right at the Union Army, or come in from the flank after walking 14 miles. He was able to convince generally to do that. And once they had the flank, they won the battle very quickly with minimal casualties.

So this is the indirect approach. And I was talking about the fact that, It works with people and you should use it. 99% of the time it's the better approach. And it might seem like it's going to be harder because it's longer, but ultimately it's more efficient and it's more effective. And then as I looked, you know, so I posted it, whatever, no big deal. And looked at some of the comments that people wrote.

And, you know, most people were like, yeah, absolutely makes sense. And then that some people wrote things like, it's not good to be deceitful and things like you shouldn't lie to your teammates. And if you aren't direct, that'll hurt the trust that you have. So they made these kind of comments. And I actually understand their misunderstanding because there's a difference between leadership and manipulation, right? It can be seen like, oh, I'm just manipulating you. And one of the big differences between manipulation and leadership is if when I'm when I'm leading you, I'm getting you to do something that's good for you and good for the team. If I'm if I'm manipulating you, I'm trying to get you to do something that's good for me.

Right. So that's one of the differences. But let me break this down a little bit. Being direct with someone and that's the term like you should be direct. If you're not being direct, that's the term that they use. You should be direct with people. And there's a synonym for the term direct, which is truthful. Like, hey, just tell me the truth or hey, just tell me direct, right?

So there's a little synonym there. So therefore, if I say be indirect, that must mean that I'm talking about lying. And so I can see that you can extrapolate and get to that conclusion that what Jacques Hussein is be indirect. So he's saying lie. And that's not what I'm saying at all. Not what I'm saying at all. And if the way I mean it and the way it is intended,

And the way it works is not by lying. It's by, look, if I'm talking to Leif, and if I'm trying to get him to use a plan or we're trying to establish a plan for an operation, being indirect with him doesn't mean that I'm going to lie to him. It doesn't mean I'm going to make up like intelligence reports that are wrong just so we go with my plan. It doesn't mean that I say, hey, Leif,

you know, I already ran this up the chain of command and it's already been approved. so we're going with my plan. Like those are lies, and that's not what I'm talking about. It doesn't mean I make up a timeline and say, well, you know, the target's only going to be there for tonight,

so we have to go tonight, so we have to follow my plan. Like those are lies, and that's freaking absolutely not what I'm talking about. Direct would be Laif, here's the mission, and here's the plan, get on board with my plan.

That's direct. Being direct, right? What does that impact have on Laif? Well, now Leif feels like he's being micromanaged. He feel like he has no input. He also feels like he has no ownership of the plan. And all those things are bad. And when something goes wrong, it's not going to turn out well.

And he's not going to do his best to push through and make things happen because it's not his plan. He doesn't have ownership of it. So all those things are bad. The indirect, so that being direct has a bunch of negative aspects to it. Being indirect, if I take an indirect approach, I tell Leif what the objective is that we're trying to accomplish and then say, hey, how do you want to do it? And I listen to his ideas. And I have him present a plan to me.

And then I ask earnest questions that might reveal some shortfalls of his plan if there are already. All these are indirect, right? All these are indirect. And it's not, it's also not like, I'm not faking it. I'm not asking him these questions. I'm not allowing him to influence me with his plan to get him to do something. No, I'm actually, if he's got a good plan, I'm going to go with it.

by the way, if he comes up with a better plan than me, we're going to use it. There's no, there's no lies, there's no manipulation. It's truthful. The truth is, his plan's better than mine. I'm going to go with his plan. Sounds good. The truth isn't like, I'm not lying to him like, well, your plan won't work because the intelligence says and I make something up, that's a freaking lie.

And that's not what I'm talking about. That being said, if my plan is better and I ask life questions and he sees that, that maybe a different idea would work better, then it becomes revealed to him and it's more powerful and I'm not having to impose my plan on him, the direct method of imposing my plan on him and offending his ego and implying that I don't trust that he can get the job done

because I'm imposing my plan. Like if I trusted him, why don't I just let him use his plan? I'm implying that I don't trust him. So there's all these freaking negative aspects and I don't like it. And also I've been talking about for the last six months, especially on EF online, listen, influence, trust and respect to get these things. You got to give those things, right?

You want somebody to listen to you? Listen to them. You want somebody to influence somebody? Allow them to influence you. You want somebody to trust you. You have to trust them. You want to get treated with respect. Then treat other people with respect.

You can't impose trust on someone. In fact, when you try and impose trust on somebody, this is such a good example. I'm trying to sell you a car and I say hey just trust me I'm trying to impose trust on you does that increase your trust for me at all the answer is no I can't demand respect from someone doesn't work you better respect me does that work how often you go okay great okay thanks for telling me cool now I respect you and influence forcing influence on someone because you outrank them that's not influence that's just freaking orders That's what that is. And the last thing is I can bark at you and I can yell at you,

but does that make you listen to me? No. I mean, you might hear what I'm, you might, you might, you might, you might, the word, the, the, the, the, the noises might go into your ears. You can hear it, but you're not necessarily going to listen. If I want you to listen, you have to listen to me. So that's what I mean by the indirect approach. Um, with that, it is the underground.

So let's get some Q&A. It is true. All right. First question. This question is, not meant to highlight one side is more right than the other. Obviously, every American has their belief, but this question is not about whose side is right and whose side is wrong.

About to be a heated question, I think. Right now in America, we have politically charged climate where each side hates each other. Each party has deep distrust and skepticism and all around cynical view of the other party. For the most part. Lots of people. Well, that's, he says in parentheses, the most part. But where are you getting this from? Well, you're getting this from if you go look at social media, right?

If you go look at social media and even not just social media, media, because the media wants you to watch what they're making and you only want to watch what they're making if it seems a little bit exciting. And the only thing that's exciting is emotions and hatred and chaos. So that's what we're selling. So that's what's clicking. And I work with companies all over America all the time and the companies are out there making things happen.

And the workers, you know what they're concerned about? You know what the employees are concerned with? You know what the leadership is concerned with? They're concerned with improving their market share and delivering good stuff to the consumers. That's what the vast. That's most people. That's for the most part. Yeah.

And that's a critical point right there. Easy to forget, too, by the way. I have to explain this to people all the time, especially, you know, talking to Ben Shapiro. Like, in his mind, it's mayhem. Because that dude's at point blank, you know, grand. Ground zero for political activities and thoughts and comments and hostility. He's ground zero. That's all he sees all day long.

Oh, yeah. I can't even imagine what the world looks like through his eyes. I know, it's falling apart. And even then, even Ben Shapiro, Kandis, so on, you know, these, even then, it's the majority of it, if not all of it is from the internet or the news. Oh, yeah. You know, it's, and it's, that's the way it looks, you know, when you look, you look. at Rachel Maddow.

It's the same thing. She's at ground zero for all this stuff. So it doesn't matter. You can pick your ground zero. And the way the world looks through their lens is like freaking total mayhem. Oh yeah. Total freaking mayhem. And what do they talk about?

That's what they talk about is total freaking mayhem. So this individual that's writing this question, they're looking at the world and going, oh my God, I got Rachel Maddow on one side. And I got freaking Sean Hannity on the other side. And that's the world. chaos. Yep. But let's start in the spirit of that, just try to maybe start from a place of more accuracy, if even possible. I don't know.

We all live different lives. I get it. But yeah, let's say you exclude that. Let's say you exclude any political news and then exclude social media and the internet thing. Exclude that. And then when you go outside, you go to work, you go to the store, post office, jiu-jitsu, lifting. at the gym or whatever. Brother, there's nobody yelling in your face.

I thought you were to say to someone, y'all. I was like, bro, we just, there's, you know, a thousand people at Victory, MMA, and Fitness. I haven't heard anybody talk about any of this stuff. Oh, yeah. In fact, like, you can drive on the street and you can see like someone's bumper sticker. I support Biden or I support Trump or whatever.

And you're almost like, bro, calm down over there. We're over here just kind of crazy, you know, and you're over here representing. The thing is, it doesn't. Everyone has a right to do that for sure. But I'm saying that's how mild it is. is in real life outside of the internet where you can see someone expressing themselves

and they seem out of place. Yeah, that's how it is in real life, quote unquote. Again, depends on where you live, depends what you do for a career. If you're Ben Shapiro, you go to the office and the guys, you know, I get it. But day to day, man, I don't know. This simply doesn't seem true outside of the internet.

But we'll continue with the question. I cut you off. Because it doesn't mean that it's not true. Yeah, because it's just... Obviously, there are parts of the, parts of the world. and parts of the country on those two left and right flanks that are freaking fired up. Yeah. And in regard,

and each party has deep distrust and skepticism. And also the thing is the internet is a real part of life. That's the thing. So, yeah, people are fired up. There's a lot to do with the internet, but at the end of the day, they're fired up.

Yeah. You know, so, okay, so we'll see the question. Okay, so the question continues. Lots of people in these parties assume the worst of the other and do not fill

information gaps with trust. and not just the politicians themselves, but also the American population. Obviously, these are bad dispositions to hold and have already produced violence. The last year in America has been crazy and violent for a myriad of politically charged reasons. The question I have is, do you foresee a civil war in America any time in the near future, and if not full-blown civil war, perhaps pockets of conflict here and there across the country? We've already seen things such as autonomous zones, which have become, militarized and violent and almost and almost seem like a succession.

So that's a logical question right now. You know, you're seeing all this like like we just talked about. You're seeing all this extremism on the left and on the right and you think, well, geez, if that's what's happening, could we could be heading for a civil war? First of all, we've been through a lot worse. A lot worse. First, I mean, the actual civil war. You know, we've been through an actual.

Civil War where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Americans were killed. So that's a huge example. But I mean, even you go back to the late 60s, early 70s, and you had the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army and the Sibianese Liberation. That is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jaco underground.com and subscribe. doing this we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms so we are not subject to their control and we're doing this so that we can support the jocco podcast which will remain

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