Jocko Podcast - The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke: Your Boss Thinks You Don't Show Enough Passion In Your Leadership

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

Your Boss Thinks You Don't Show Enough Passion In Leadership style with her team. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko debrief podcast, episode 29 with Dave Burke and me, Jock Willink. We have a leadership consulting company, which is over a decade old, which is pretty amazing. It's called Eshalomfront. You can find it atasholamfront.com, and we work with all kinds of companies from all kinds of industries, of all kinds of sizes. And we have, I don't know, 10, 15 instructors. And so we all learn when we work with these companies. We see leadership challenges maybe that we have a different angle on or we get asked a question that we haven't heard before. And so we do debriefs amongst ourselves as instructors and we learn.

And so we want everyone else to learn as well as we do. So we put this podcast together to kind of cover some of the highlights of these debriefs. And we talk about the companies that we're working with. We change the names. We change the industries. We modify the situations so that. We protect our clients and their privacy, but the leadership issues that we discuss are the same. So with that, Dave, let's debrief.

Sometimes you have to play the game. At least a little. This will be a good one. So this is something we've talked around this in other ways too, but this is a person I've been working with directly. She's a key leader in a big organization. And lately she's having a little bit of a trouble interacting with her boss who is upset with her because he thinks she's too passive. A lot going on. Problems to get solved. Issues to address. And she's coming across at least to him as a little bit quiet, a little passive. And she's an interesting role because she manages engineers. And her downstream people are obviously very smart folks, but they're also very opinionated.

They like to work independently sometimes. And so this is not an easy group to manage. She happens to have great relationship with their subordinates. She has a really good temperament too. She's quiet. She listens. She's attentive. And that's actually very helpful with her team.

And that's also authentically who she is. She's very well respected. Team's doing well. But her boss is an emotional guy. And that's fine too. But he is a type of person that leads with emotion. and he displays that. He reflects it. You see it.

It's very much part of who he is. And he likes it when other people do the same. He tends to want to see that from his support. And lately, she's been getting some pushback from him because he's implying like it doesn't seem like you care the same way that I care because I don't see you reacting the same way what I'm reacting. And she's like, hey, this is not my style. He thinks she's not concerned.

And what she's saying to me is that's just not how I am. I care, but I don't show that. And she doesn't know what to do. She was struggling with that. That's how I am. This is how my boss wants me to be. I'm not like that. And what's happening is it starting to cause problems with the boss.

So much so that the boss is starting to think about jumping her a little bit and getting down to the front line folks to solve it that way. And the answer I gave her was not the most satisfying thing, at least at first, which is you might have to play the game a little bit. And so we talked about that. And we can probably make this pretty strong. straightforward. If your boss wants you to show some more emotion, show some more emotion. And that's a fair thing to say. But I think where the struggle is and where the conversation needs to be is there's a

balance in that. The balance is that you have to still be authentic. You have to still be yourself. And in fact, if your response to playing the game is the next day you go out into your team and you just fly off the handle and you're like wildly emotional and you become someone that you're not, that won't work. And if you actually reflect back to your boss, all of a sudden become the same thing that he is, that's not going to work. But you also need to manage the expectations of your boss. And two big concepts came to mind when we were talking about this.

I got to discuss two key illness that we like to teach. One is something we call reflect and diminished, or something you call reflect and diminish. We had a different phrase when I was flying airplanes, which was support the complainer, meaning someone's got something on their mind, like entertain it. Let them get it off their chest.

But to your point, point the way you described is reflect that back too. If you're upset, I want you to see them. I'm a little upset too. I don't want you to see that I'm completely stoic and unresponsive to your frustrations or you're being upset. So I want to reflect that back to you because it actually helps us strengthen the relationship a little bit. You can look at me and go, oh, this guy Dave kind of gets it. I'm fired up and he's getting a little fired up. That's a good thing. And so one of the key concepts there of reflecting and diminish. And there was also a little piece in here too that is another thing that you talked about.

that I remember from very, very early on in my time in the Marine Corps is something we call conform to influence. And that's a word that people don't like. People don't like the word conform. When you're telling them to conform, especially if they're authentically not like that other person. And I'm not saying fake it, don't overdo it, you gotta be yourself.

But you can do some things you might not tend to do, you might not be inclined to do, especially if it helps you, helps the team, helps your relationship with your boss, gives you a little bit of flexibility, some leadership capital, so you can solve the problem the way that you want. And we went through a couple of examples, because she's a, she was a, she's not a hard-headed person,

but she is authentically who she is, and she doesn't want to not be that way. Because I said, hey, if the team is meeting up after work and they're going to go socialize, and you're not a big socializer, should you go? Yeah, sometimes you should go. Sometimes you should go. If Friday is neon shirt Friday at your company,

and you hate wearing neon shirts, Should you should you throw on a neon shirt every now then? Yeah, go for it. It's no big deal. If the sales team's having a karaoke challenge, these are all things that they do with their work. And I don't like singing karaoke. That's okay.

But every now then you can go sing some karaoke with the team. We had something at our squadron that we called Black T-shirt Friday. And the thing that rubbed some people the wrong way with Black T-shirt Friday was that's against the rules. We don't wear black shirts in the Marine Corps. We wore green shirts. But our squadron... With your uniform, you wore a black shirt?

Yeah, well. on Fridays at this one squadron in our squadron spaces, we wore black t-shirts. And just like you just said, like, hey, hang on a second. I'm a rule follower. You know what I did on Fridays? I wore black t-shirts because I wanted to be on the team. I wanted the team to say,

what was your position in the squadron? At the time, I was brand new. I was a young, and now we maintain that tradition in certain ways, but it was, did I have an argument to say, actually, Captain Willink? Here, let me show you this regulation that says you can't make me like, I could have easily done that.

And would I have been right? Yeah, I guess technically, absolutely. But that's not the game I'm playing. And that's the whole point of it, is I don't have to now become like a total violator of all things marine regulations, but I can play the game a little bit. That conforming piece, I think,

was the biggest part that she was struggling with. And the takeaway from that was, can you find a way to show your boss that you get it and that it is a concern, that you are amplifying a little bit and that you're reflecting back enough to give him confidence that he knows that you get it the same way that he does. And then go down your team and lead.

And that's why I said, play the game a little. Yeah. And what's interesting about this is I think you can actually, in this case, play the game even less than a little. Even less than a little. One of the last podcasts I did with Echo Charles, I talked about something called reactive devaluation. I was actually talking to the team of Esselaun fun about it and it's basically the idea that if I don't like Dave

Then any of I Dave's ideas are bad So I have a preconceived notion of what of what you think and it's bad So what do we do when we set up ourselves when my boss comes to me and says Hey Jocko I don't think you care about this stuff because I don't see any emotions from you. And my response is, that's not what I'm like. Think about that.

I just drove a wedge between us. I disagreed. I didn't have an open mind about it. And from now on, I'm going to be judged as if I'm not going to get emotional because that's not what I'm like. So there's a, there's a tent to every action that I, take, which is that I don't show enough emotions. Now, imagine this. I'm not an emotional person. I don't like to show my emotions. And my boss comes up to me and says, hey, Jockel, I've been watching you brief. You have no emotions. You need to show some emotions so people get that you care.

And I go, oh, I really appreciate that feedback. Sometimes I know I'm a little bit cold. I grew up in a family where it was like you didn't show emotions and so that's what I'm like I appreciate this feedback I'm going to work on it if those two bosses watched the exact same briefing one of would walk away saying they'll tell you they just they're not going to fit in here the other one by the way the same brief the other one would walk away saying I can see they're making an effort right yeah so you're setting yourself up with a negative impression of your emotional levels by not saying, hey, I appreciate that feedback.

I'm gonna do better. I'm sure you had this, like you're training a pilot. And you go, hey dude, like what's a common correction you tell a pilot to do? They need to be looser on the stick or something. That's perfect. So you tell me, hey, Jocko, you need to be a little looser on the stick.

And I say, hey, you know what, that's actually how I fly. Now you watch me, I'm an ex flight. What am I? I'm obviously not loose. enough on the stick did improve I'm too that's why it doesn't work if you said to me hey jocco you need to get a little looser on the stick and I say yeah I'm really trying to work on that because I can feel where it messes me up your impression is going to change yeah there's no question that your impression is going to change so you're setting yourself up for

failure by disagreeing so that's playing the game a little bit it's even playing the game a little bit less than a little bit. All you're doing is if you did nothing else, if you didn't change the way you acted at all, you would still change the way you are being perceived by your boss. So that's a key thing to remember. The person that when there's a decision that needs to be made and when your immediate responses, I don't like that idea. You just put yourself in a corner. And now when you now go through the numbers and you actually look at the decision, you say, hey, I'm still over here. No one thinks that you listen to anything. But when you say, you know what, let's figure.

Let's run the numbers first. And then we'll look at what the outcome is. As soon as we say that, oh, Jocco's got an open mind about this. Now you take my decision more seriously because it's not tainted by my preconceived notion, which I imposed on you by telling you where I stood. So let's set ourselves up for success out of the gate here. and let's be open-minded. Let's show that we're open-minded. There was a guy, Leif and I were running, training,

and I told a guy like, hey, dude, you need to, like, not go, what was it? Not go crazy and scream and yell at everybody. Oh, no, no, no. It was the opposite. It was a guy who was trying to make every call on the radio and, like, no one could hear him on the radio. And, you know, I'm with Leif and I'm like, dude, your boy needs to start, like, making verbal commands.

It was the same lesson you've heard Laif tell that story where we were going through Uh, going through urban training and Laf's in this building and there's chaos and mayhem going on. And he's trying to get his guys down to the bottom floor to do a breakout and leave the building. And, and Leif's like on the radio like, hey, everyone, let's get down to the bottom floor. And this machine gun fire going on, no one can hear him. And I go over to him. I'm like, hey, bro, make verbal commands. And he's like, what?

And I go, use your voice and yell what you want. And he kind of looked at me puzzled. And he's like, all right, well, I guess I'll try it. And he yells out, everyone on the bottom floor now. In the SEAL teams, you get trained when you hear a command, you repeat it. So they all repeated it. They all come down. We're out of the building in freaking a minute, right?

So now this, we're watching one of Laif's guys go through training. And the guy's on his radio during a big gunfight, no one's doing anything. No one's listening. No one can hear him. And he goes over and's like, hey, make verbal command. Like, use your voice. And the guy says to Laif, I don't lead that way. Right.

So immediately, like, Laif is like, are you serious right now? Like, he didn't say it, but I mean, he looked at me like, dude, are you serious right now? And now the guy, he's immediately put himself into a situation where it's not a good look. And the attitude is going to be different towards him because he had a closed mind. So let's set ourselves up properly out of the gate here. That's number one. Number two. And this is another leadership strategy and tactics.

How are you supposed to handle it when someone? Someone gives you criticism, and maybe it's someone that you don't like. Maybe it's someone that you don't agree with. Maybe it's someone that's for everything that you can dig out of your mind is wrong about what they're saying. How do you handle that? You open up your mind and you try and figure out how they're right. You open up your mind and you try and say to yourself, you know what? He's saying to me that I need to show some more emotion.

I see him. It kind of looks to me like he's flying off the handle sometimes. It looks like people are losing respect for them. But what can I do? How can I make some adjustments? What do I need to change? Because maybe I am a little too cold. Maybe I need to show some more emotion sometimes.

Maybe there is an element of elevation that I can use that would help me get through to the team and help me connect to the team. What could I do? How can I change? How can I get better? I think if any person is critiqued and they write down what they think they could do better, I think we could all find something. I would go so far as to say, I have never done any activity in my life that I couldn't get out a piece of paper and take criticism from someone and figure out where I. could make some improvement.

I don't think I've ever done an activity in my life where I said, yep, there it was, a 100, a hundred out of 100. So let's give the benefit of the doubt and let's try and figure out where we can get a little bit better and open our mind. And if you do those two things, you're already moving in the right direction. You're probably not going to have to worry about where this ends up. because by the way, when you listen to your boss, your boss listens to you. When you allow your boss to influence you,

you allow yourself to influence your boss. That's what this is. Yep. And if you're responsible for a team, that's not just for your own benefits. So you can be better. It actually is so much better for them too. It's so much helpful for them.

And this one, this has been a fun one because it's been such an easy fix for hers. And it's things like in a meeting with all the executives, It's frustration. Hey, we're behind schedule on this. We're not going to make the deadline. And there's going to be a problem for us instead of it's like, no, we're going to be, we're not going to be behind. I'm going to make the deadline.

I'm not worried. It's, hey, boss, we absolutely see the risk in being late. We do not want to be late. We are going to make sure that we make that deadline. It is not night and day. This is not becoming someone you're not. This is not violating who you are as a human being. It's, oh, yeah, he's frustrated.

I want him to know that I understand why that is, and I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen. Easy, easy. It seems very easy. I know it's work to do that, but these are not dramatic changes in your personality. It's still, it can be yourself, but it's those small things are making a huge difference,

and it's actually working out. Let me ask you this, Dave, let's say you were hard of hearing, and we were in a meeting, and you and I worked together, and you came to me and said, Hey, Jocko, you know I'm hard of hearing and I can't always hear what you're saying. Could you speak a little bit louder?

What would I say to that? Like, that's not how I talk. I'm not going to speak louder. So think about it. There are people that that particular sense, which is they sense emotions and they communicate through emotions. And so you've got someone that communicates different than you. And what you're saying to them is, look, I don't care how you communicate.

I communicate the way I communicate. Yeah. That's what that's all this is. So you're just going to learn, which is a beautiful skill to have as a human being, you're going to learn a different way of communicating. And and like day like you just pointed out, this doesn't mean I have to change the way I communicate. It means I just have to raise the level a little bit.

I just have to put a little accent on it. I just have to say, ah, yeah, you know what boss? I do realize how critical it is that we get this thing on done on time and I'm going to double down with the team. We're going to make sure it happens. That's all it is. As opposed to negative boss, we'll make the deadline. Nope.

That doesn't, he doesn't hear that. Emotionally does not hear it. And he communicates with emotions. That's the way some people are. It's like you said, I'm laughing like, that's even less than a little. That's making, bringing back to the thing you said at the beginning, which I didn't know what you're going to comment on.

I'm like, that's less than a little. I mean, less than a little. It's less than a little. It's like you have to play, you have to play the game. A tiny, tiny, tiny bit. Yeah. That's what we're talking about here. And by the way, these are all good skills.

And by the way, adjusting the way you communicate as a leader is being a leader. There's the other end of the spectrum. At some point, you're going to work with someone that gets all, that you have to bring some emotion to. Because they're about to go brief their team about people getting laid off and they're doing it like a robot. Yeah. And that's not going to help. So that's what's going on. Good one.

Got to play the game a little bit. You got to play the game at least a little, little tiny bit. At least a little tiny bit. And it just is so beneficial to open your mind. It really is so beneficial to open your mind in this world. And not close your mind, especially when people are given you recommendations.

And I'd like to say especially when they're your boss, but it's actually especially when they're just another human being you have to work with, whether your peer, your boss or your subordinate, you need to be open to what they're saying. All right, my turn. Recon by fire. So we got this term, reconnaissance by fire.

What this is is we're out in the field and we shoot our weapons. We shoot a couple rounds. And what we do is we're trying to see if the enemy shoots back, thereby revealing their position. So you're out in the woods, don't know where the bad guys are, you fire off a couple rounds and see if people start shooting back at you because you don't know where they are. Oh, they started shooting back

at us. Now we see the muzzle flash. Now we hear the sound of the weapons. Now we know where we can attack them. It's a good move. It works. If the enemy doesn't respond to it, well, you can keep moving in that direction or moving in a direction and eventually they'll either have to shoot back or you'll just overrun them. So this is what recon by fire is. And this isn't a direct translation to what I want to talk about, but the idea is there. This idea of recon by fire as a leader, as a person, we have to learn and understand other people and their perspectives and their limitations and their strengths and weaknesses. That's what we're doing as a leader. You're wanting to understand the form of the people that you work with.

Right? If you take all those things I just said, if you took their perspectives, their limitations, their strength and weaknesses, that creates the form of a person that once you understand that form, you kind of know what you can do with it, what it can be used for, how you can operate with it, how it will interact with other forms that you have to set up as a team. So that's what we are constantly trying to do, right? If you're, you've got to know your people. How many times have you heard that? Oh, you got to know your people. Got to know your people. That's, I say that all the time. Got to know your people.

Got to get to know your people. What do we, what does that mean? It means we want to understand their limitations. It means we want to understand their perspectives. It means we want to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Yes, it means we understand what's happening in their personal lives. But guess what all that does? All that's happening in their personal lives creates their form, their entity as a human being.

Now, in order to understand a human being, sometimes you have to do more than just ask questions. Sometimes you have to apply things. Sometimes you have to push things up down across the chain of command. Sometimes you have to apply a little pressure to find weaknesses. Sometimes when you walk into a dark room and there's no light at all, what do you got to do? You got to like feel around and find the wall. Okay, I found the wall. It should be by the door here.

Yep, there's the light switch. Now you can see. But you have to probe around to figure that out. And that's kind of what we have to do with people. And yes, a form of that is asking earnest questions, right? That is a form. But asking earnest questions sometimes is the equivalent of at the end of a brief saying, Does everyone, hey, does everyone understand?

Because whatever, when I ask the team, when I ask the platoon, when I ask the sales team, Hey, does everyone understand the brief? What does everyone say? Yeah, yeah, we got it, boss. Oftentimes, that's what they say. So sometimes we got to do a little bit more than just ask questions. Sometimes we've got to do a little recon by fire. A little recon by fire.

giving little tasks to people that they might not expect. It's a little bit outside their job description. Maybe put them in a charge of a portion of the planning, right? A little task, a little something. Maybe throw a contingency at them. Hey, here's something that's going on. Hey, how do you handle this? What are you doing?

Like you're saying, hey, Dave, hey, can you handle this? I'm actually doing a little probe. I'm doing a little recon by fire because Dave might say, What do you mean? Or we might be like, yeah, I got it, boss. I'd learn a little something about him. Maybe I'd take Dave and put him with the other team, with the team that has that guy in it.

The guy that's, you know, friction. Let's throw him in there. Hey, Dave, can you go jump on this project with Fred? And I know Fred rubs everybody wrong. I want to figure out what I'm, what is Dave? Who is Dave? What does that form look like? And I bet we could come up with some kind of a diagram where we could put all of the components of leadership into that diagram and how well they cover and move and how well they simplify things and how well they prioritize and execute and how much they take ownership.

There's all these kind of things that we could put in there. How well they read other people, how well they articulate themselves. Like there's all these things that create that form. But what we're doing is leaders. We're trying to figure out what the form looks like and what we're dealing with. And part of it would be hard to quantify as well. That's what this is going to help with. This is going to take and help that kind of hard-to-quantify area

and put all those quantifiable things and some of those unquantifiable things and put them together in a form that we go, okay, and I know what I'm dealing with now. Maybe it's like, hey, Dave, we got to do a budget cut. What do you got? And maybe Dave says, what are you talking about? Or maybe he goes, how much you're looking for, boss? Right? So there's these little indicators.

And maybe, you know, you can propose or you can actually put someone in a leadership position. Right? You can say, hey, Dave, how would you like to run this? Dave goes, oh, dude. Or maybe he goes, oh, oh, I'd that be an honor, right? Those are the things you're going to find out. Maybe I say, hey, Dave, I'm going to put you underneath Fred over here for a little while. What does he do? I'm not working for Fred.

That guy's an idiot, right? Maybe I just propose it. Just do a little probe, do a little recon by fire. Hey, Dave, would you? How would you feel about going to work for Fred for a little while? Dude, I'm not doing that. Or maybe, hey, whatever you need? Like, you see what I'm saying?

A little recon by fire. It's a little recon by fire. And it allows you to know people. Now, listen, I'm not talking about playing games, all right? That's not what I'm talking about here. So please don't get that idea that I'm talking about playing games. I'm doing a little manipulation. Like, hey, Dave, I'm going to put you over here under him for a little while.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about, okay, hey, we got a task. Fred's been doing this. for a while. Dave hasn't done this before. I know Fred's hard to work with. Let me see how Dave does over there. I'm not talking about like little playing games with people's lives. That's not what I'm talking about doing. So these little things that I'm discussing, they're real things. It's not just, it's not playing games. It's real things. It's real questions. Hey, how would you feel about working for Fred? I'm not just setting him up, take the biggest jerk in the company and be like,

Dave, I'm going to make you work for Tim over here. And I'm setting him up. that's not what I'm talking about, but I'm talking about doing a little recon by fire by seeing, by probing around, by asking questions, by putting people in situations where we can start to figure out

what they're made of. And listen, we don't take big footsteps in the dark, right? We take little footsteps in the dark. And we have to pay attention to the feedback that we get. That's what this is about.

Paying attention to the feedback that we get, when we put a little pressure, when we do a little probe, when we set up some scenarios, so that we learn about our people, we get to know them, we get to understand what their limitations are, we get to understand their strengths and their weaknesses. And by the way, this works with teams as well. You can take a team. There's something that Seth wrote about me. He wrote that I had the officers fight. I had the officers fight each other in jiu-jitsu. And he said something along the lines of,

I, Jocco, wanted to know and discover the strengths and weaknesses of the leaders, the fault lines in the platoons. And I was like, that's a pretty good assessment because that's what you're doing. Because, you know, when you watch two people fight that don't really know how to fight that well you're not really well at least in this situation I wasn't putting them so I could see who is the better fighter that's part of the outcome but really what you're seeing is what is their attitude how do they take a defeat how do they take a victory

when do they give up are they the type of person that's going to give up are they the type of person that doesn't want to show up again because they got humiliated or are they going to be back with an open mind ready to learn. These little things, these little recons by fire, part of what I'm saying to you, you won't have to change anything, you won't have to do anything. The only thing you'll have to do is start to pay attention.

Normal life is training. Your business every day is training. When you go out and you go to a construction site, you start building something, there's training happening. When you start to manufacture something, you've got a new line that you set up, there's training happening. When you've got a sales team that has got to go pitch somebody, there's training that's happening.

You're doing everything that I just said. So it's almost like you don't have to actually do anything new. You just have to start paying attention to the feedback that you're getting so that you understand the people, their strengths, their weaknesses, their perspectives, who they work with well, what their limitations are. And if you do that, you're going to be a lot better off. So probably a good place to stop. If you want to dig deeper in any of this, we have an online training academy. Where are these little techniques that we're talking about right now? These are things that you can learn as a leader.

Leadership isn't a, it is not a inherent trait that people have. It's a skill that can be learned. and we teach it, extreme ownership.com. That's what we do there. Extremeownership.com, we teach these tactics, techniques, procedures, skills to people so they can learn. So they can be better leaders. And by the way, leading in your life, in your business, and everything that you do. So that's extreme ownership.com.

We also have echelonfront.com. That's our leadership consultancy. We work with businesses all over the country and all over the world. And if you need our help, let us know. Go to ashlandfront.com. Also got a bunch of books on the subject of leadership. Also have other podcasts where we talk about leadership. Jocko podcast being the primary one.

And if you want to support these podcasts, including this one, you can get some gear from jocco store.com, origin, USA.com. You can go to eslamfront.com or, of course, you can go to joccofuel.com. And that's what we've got for today. Thanks for listening and learning. From the debrief, now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko. Out.