On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Jocko Willink ON: Leading Like a Navy Seal & Taking Extreme Ownership of Every Problem in Your Life
Episode Date: May 31, 2021Jocko Willink (@jockowillink) joins Jay Shetty to talk about extreme ownership and discipline, switching from a competition-based to a collaborative culture, building trust even in stressful situation...s, and mastering your self-discipline. He is a retired naval officer who served in the Navy SEALs and an author of several books including Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win. He also co-hosts Jocko Podcast that discusses discipline and leadership in business, war, relationships, and everyday life. What We Discuss with Jocko: 00:00 Intro 02:08 The most difficult thing to go through 02:57 How do you process a difficult situation and be ready to go through the experience 06:07 What you go through is your present, nothing else will matter 08:18 Are you born a leader or did experience make you one? 13:44 Working through procrastination and overthinking 18:01 Lessons learned from joining the Navy Seals 20:14 Turning a competitive and comparison based culture to a collaborative culture 26:37 Principles and methods to build trust in high stress situations 29:53 The biggest leadership mistakes and the key takeaways 33:20 Rather than beating yourself up, practice extreme ownership 36:34 Taking criticisms from someone you don’t respect 38:54 Your ego against the decentralized command strategy 43:07 When people are struggling with self discipline, where do you start? 47:06 Start self discipline by waking up earlier in the morning 49:24 Life lessons learned after leaving the military 53:20 Jocko on Final Five Like this show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps! Post a screenshot of you listening on Instagram & tag us so we can thank you personally! Episode Resources: Jocko Willink | Twitter Jocko Willink | Instagram Jocko Willink | Podcast Jocko Willink | Books Achieve success in every area of your life with Jay Shetty’s Genius Community. Join over 10,000 members taking their holistic well-being to the next level today, at https://shetty.cc/OnPurposeGeniusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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If you're saying, okay, when my alarm clock goes off
in the morning, I hit this news button
three or four times, I don't want to start my day.
I don't want to go face that hard workout.
And that kind of procrastination, that kind of overthinking and having a debate in your
own head.
In those situations, I just turn my brain off and I do what I'm supposed to do.
I rely on discipline.
I'm going to make things happen immediately.
I know that hesitation is going to bring me regret in two or three hours when I realize I wasted my morning
doing something that I shouldn't have been doing.
Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose,
the number one health podcast in the world.
Thanks to each and every single one of you,
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Now you know that I'm always on the lookout
to find guests that I can have
really interesting conversations with and people who've had quite extreme and different experiences.
I really love finding people who've had stories and journeys that are very different from my own
so that I can learn from them so that I can be inspired in different ways and maybe even affirm some of my beliefs.
And today's guest is Jocco Willink.
Now, he's a retired decorated Navy SEAL Officer and author and a podcaster.
He served as a Navy SEAL Officer for 20 years before retiring.
Since his retirement, he co-wrote the book, Extreme Ownership,
How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win
and co-founded Eshelam Front,
where he teaches his clients how to be leaders in their respective fields.
Jocco also has his own podcast called Leadership and Discipline,
where he talks about his approach to business, relationships, and life.
Jocco, welcome to the podcast and thanks so much for your time.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Appreciate it.
Yeah, absolutely.
I've been looking forward to this conversation.
I've watched a lot of your interviews with some of my friends, seen a lot on YouTube,
and I'm fascinated because I love how you're bringing really deep truths and difficult breakthroughs
into the world of work, into the world of the mainstream life
that we live today.
And my first question to ask you is,
what is the most difficult thing you think you've ever done
mentally or physically?
Most difficult thing for me that I've been through
is losing guys and combat, losing my friends and combat.
And it's obviously something that is completely jarring to go through its soul crushing.
And yet at the same time, you have to continue with the mission.
The war doesn't end because you lose your friends.
You have to keep fighting.
And so for me, that was definitely far and away. the hardest thing that I've ever been through is losing friends
in combat. Yeah, I mean, that does sound like the hardest thing. Do you train for that?
Or is that something you have to respond to in the moment or you deal with afterwards? How do
you even process that? The reason why I ask is it's very different the circumstances under
which you've lost friends. But this year obviously in the last 12 months a lot of people lost
people they loved. How were you able to lead through that, continue the mission? And when
do you get a moment to actually experience whatever you need to experience?
Well, so what's interesting about that, you know, I lost my first guy in combat, Mark Lee,
in 2006, and at that time, for the SEAL team that I was at, they're heading been any SEALs killed in action. Well, actually, I was at SEAL team three, and SEAL team three
wasn't around during the Vietnam War, so there had never been a SEAL killed in action.
So there was no real instruction on this is what you do when
when you lose a guy in combat. Now there was some protocols to follow in terms of hey this is
what you have to do. This is who has to be notified. This is how the family gets notified. So there
was protocols from a from a process that you have to do physically to notify people, but there certainly wasn't any
protocol that I had been taught or had discussed with people about what to do, because no one knew,
no one knew, no one had experienced that in a long time. So I had to kind of figured out on my own
So I had to kind of figured out on my own in that scenario. And you know, what I realized we had to do was, was we had to go to work.
We had to go back to work.
And I know that that's a very difficult thing to do.
But like I said earlier, the war was still happening.
The battle was still, we're still going on.
And so we stood down the guys for a couple of days
and we mourned the loss of Mark
and we celebrated his life.
And then I got in front of the guys
and I said, hey, listen, this is what we need to do.
What we need to do is get our gear back on,
lock and load our weapons and we need to go out
and execute the mission, which is exactly what Mark
would want us to do if he could
talk to us right now. And that's what we did. Now, clearly, it takes a little more time than a
couple days to process the loss of one of your brothers and of one of your friends. And I would say
that that happened months later when I finally got back to America and had time to grieve properly.
But that's the most difficult thing to grieve properly. But that's
that's the most difficult thing I've been through and that's kind of the process that I that I took to get through it. Thank you, man. Thank you for sharing that and I'm glad I asked
you that question because I didn't know I had no idea what to expect when I asked you that and
that answer was really really useful and I think for anyone who hears it, well, we'll be moved by it and touched by it for sure.
When you're leading in such an extreme environment,
when you have to lead your team through that,
when you have to lead the other seals
through something like that,
now when you're teaching leadership,
when people are not going
through the same extreme things you've gone,
how do you manage yourself from a compassion
and empathy standpoint or a feeling standpoint
of understanding people's problems,
but realizing that you've gone through things
that people can't even imagine.
Like how do you still relate to almost reality
feeling less extreme, if that's even true?
Yeah, so I had an interesting experience years ago.
I've got four children and at one point while I was still in the SEAL teams, I was at work
and there was something, something crazy was going on at work.
There had been, there had been some guys killed overseas.
There was the word was coming back and I remember getting home and you know one of my one of my kids
said to me that had this problem at school whatever that problem was and I
remember for a moment I thought to myself you know how can you even complain
about this problem that you're going through right now this doesn't even matter
some kid called you a name or whatever I don't even remember what the problem was
and I realized I learned a lesson from it As I sat there and talked to my kid, I realized that
you know what people are going through is that is their world. And so depending on who you are and
what your situation is, people go through different things and whatever's happening in your world is
the biggest emergency that's going on in the entire world because it's happening to you.
The other thing is we work with companies and I work with leaders all the time and
they're in charge of you know hundreds or thousands of people inside of an organization.
And even though lives aren't at stake, livelihoods are at stake.
And people earn their money from the decisions that this particular leader makes.
And so there's a lot of pressure there as well.
And I just try and always look at things and see other people's perspectives and not look down on other people's situations maybe because it wasn't as extreme as my situations
were. I just try and pass on the lessons that I learned from those extreme situations
because I know that they apply to things that might not on the surface seem as extreme.
Yeah, I love how children are always the the softener and the ones that make us
make us realize how everyone has their own pain and their own suffering. Tell me, Jocco,
were you always since you joined the seals because you joined at a very young age if I'm not mistaken,
were you were you always a natural leader? Did you see yourself as that? Was that something that you became
through the experiences you had?
Because we always, obviously,
there's always this argument of are you born a leader
or do you become a leader?
But I wanna know about you.
Did you always feel like you had that natural instinct?
I'd say I had a pretty decent proclivity for leadership.
And the argument of whether you're born a leader
or whether you're made a leader.
The answer is absolutely both. And in my later years teaching the young seals, you could see some
people are going to have some pretty good natural characteristics that are that are very nice to
have for leadership. Some of them will be lacking some of those. And the fact of the matter is most
of the characteristics that most of the characteristics,
first of all, no one is born with
every perfect characteristic for leadership.
That doesn't happen.
So you get some people that might be really articulate
and that's a great thing to have if you're a leader.
You might have somebody that is very good
at simplifying problems
and that's a great quality to have as a leader.
Might have somebody that's very charismatic
and that's a great quality to have as a leader. Might have somebody that's very charismatic, that's a great quality to have as a leader.
So you might have some of these characteristics,
a little bit more, a little bit less than others.
You know, I got a funny example about this.
I had a guy, because another characteristic
that's nice to have as a leader,
especially in a combat leadership situation,
is having a loud voice.
And I know that might sound trivial,
but if you're in a gun fight
and you need to communicate with the other people,
you have to have a voice that is loud enough
to project and carry over gunfire.
And some people are born with louder voices
than others, just like some people are taller than others.
And I had one particular guy that was,
I was putting through advanced seal training
and he was a very smart guy.
He was very tactically sound.
He was a good athlete and he was,
he had the vocal cords of a mouse.
And so when it came time to make a call,
he just couldn't project his voice.
And I started talking to him after these training missions.
I'd say, hey, listen, it doesn't matter if you make a good call if no one can hear you it doesn't help
You need that you need to get louder and he'd say okay
I mean I put on the other training mission and and once again, I said about another training mission and
And it was came time to him for him to make a call and he tried to raise his voice and it just didn't carry. And this went on for a few of these training operations and finally I said,
hey, listen, I hate to say this, but if you can't project your voice, you're gonna have problems.
I don't even know if you can do this job. And he had a very grave look on his face. He was worried
and then I sent him out on another training mission.
And that moment in time came where he needed to step up
and make a loud call to tell the guys what to do.
And in that moment, he grabbed one of his other guys.
He grabbed, you know, Bill, Bill's a loudmouth.
And he told Bill, hey, get everyone to move to that building
over there.
And Bill barked out that order and everybody heard it.
And I realized that he did what he needed to do.
He complimented the weakness of his own capabilities
with someone on his team that had a very loud voice.
And that's what we need to do as leaders.
You're not gonna be perfect in every category.
So when you have an area that you're weak,
maybe you're not very articulate. And I say, hey, Jay, you know, why don't you talk to the
guys and explain to them what we're doing? Because you're more articulate than I am.
That's perfectly fine. Or I say, Hey, Jay, can you take a look at this problem? I'm a
little bit, I'm seeing all kinds of options. And I know you have a good way of simplifying
things. Can you take a look at it and simplify it for me? And there's nothing wrong with
that. So we all are born with some natural leadership capabilities
and most of them we can improve.
I mean, let's face it, if you're not very articulate,
then you should write and you should read
and you should practice speaking
and you'll become more articulate.
If you're not very good at simplifying things,
you can start to address problems in a more simplified way
and really make that your goal
and you can improve in that.
If you've got some skills that are a little bit harder to improve upon, like how loud
your voice isn't, and I was very lucky to have been born with a loud voice.
It's genetic and well, it's lucky until you have four kids and then that genetic loudness
can be a little bit harder on your ears.
But what you need to do is a leader is, first of all, work on your own skills, get
as good as you can at the various categories.
And then when you have areas of weakness, it's okay.
Be humble enough to build a team that complements your leadership weaknesses so you can become a
solid leadership team.
Great advice, really, really great advice.
And that story or that moment in time is a brilliant example for what you just shared with
us. So thank you for sharing that. And one of the things that hit me when you were giving
that example is this decisiveness, the need to make decisions in really high pressure
moments. Today, a lot of people have challenges with procrastination, overthinking, boredom,
and we see these conversations going around and around whether it's on Twitter or whether it's
inside an organization, or whether it's someone sitting on their couch and they're procrastinating
and they're overthinking. Seeing as you've come from a place where I don't know if you had any time
to overthink or even a moment to procrastinate,
how would you advise people in leadership or anyone who's listening or watching this
podcast to work through procrastination and overthinking?
Okay, so there's really two components that I would address here.
The first one is straight forward.
Look, if you're saying, okay, hey, when my alarm clock goes off in the morning, I hit the
snooze button three or four times, then I finally get out of bed and I brushed my teeth
for 20 minutes because I don't want to start my day.
I don't want to go face that hard workout.
And that kind of procrastination, that kind of overthinking and having a debate in your
own head and saying, well, I know, I did work out yesterday,
I'm kind of sore from that.
So maybe you're rationalizing,
I, in those situations, I just turn my brain off
and I do what I'm supposed to do.
I rely on discipline, I'm gonna do what I'm supposed to do.
I'm gonna make things happen immediately.
I know that that hesitation, I know that hesitation
is gonna bring me regret in two or three hours.
When I realize I wasted my morning doing something that I shouldn't have been doing.
So from that component, turn off your brain, turn off your brain and go do what you're supposed
to do. That's what you need to do to overcome that procrastination. Now, when it comes to decision-making,
I was actually had a reputation in the sealAL teams of being very decisive, of making
decisions very quickly. But quite frankly, I kind of cheated. I had a method to cheat when
it came to making decisions. And the method was, instead of looking at a scenario and making
a big, giant decision about what to do, I would make a guess on to which direction
I thought we should go, and then I would make a very small
decision and make a very small step in the direction
that I guessed was correct.
And then I would analyze the feedback,
and if it was positive feedback, and it seemed like the right
move, I would make another small step in that direction,
and I would analyze the feedback again quickly,
and I would make it, if it was positive feedback, I would make another small step in that direction, so would analyze the feedback again quickly and I would make it if it was positive feedback I would make another small step in that direction so I would
make very small decisions but I would make them very rapidly.
And I had to stay humble enough that if I make a decision or make a guess and say okay
I think we should go in this direction to the left over here.
I'm going to go to the left.
So I start moving to the left and I read the feedback and the feedback goes, oh this is
not a good decision
You've got to be humble enough to say hey everyone
I actually made the wrong assessment. We're gonna start moving to the right
You've got to be humble enough to do that
But if you make small decisions very quickly you mitigate the risk of making a big giant decision a big giant commitment
You know people will ask people ask me say hey, I'm stuck in this nine to five job
I don't really like it.
I'd rather do this other thing that I'm really passionate about.
How do I know when it's time to quit my job and take up this other, this other passion
that I have?
To me, that's too big of a step because, you know, the thing that you're passionate about,
other people might not be passionate about.
There might be no market for it.
So you quit this good job that you have
with a steady salary and you step out into the world
and you realize that you've made a terrible mistake.
That's not what I like to do.
I would rather say, okay, you've got a steady job,
you've got a good income.
How about you start doing a little something
on that passion on the side?
You know, you maybe produce a little bit of that thing
that you wanna make.
You make a hundred of them and you see what it does.
And if you get good feedback and people are buying that product that you made, great.
Maybe you can make 200 next time and see how those sell.
And you can continue to do that and you make these slow steps.
And eventually you can look around and say, wait a second, I got a great income coming
from my passion.
I can go ahead and step away from my nine to five job that I didn't really care for.
So that's an example of making small steps and it's something that call the iterative
decision making process.
And it's very beneficial to move through life, not trying to make big,
giant decisions, but by making small decisions rapidly, listen to the feedback and then
repeat that process. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner
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I'm Mungesha Tickler and to be honest I don't believe in astrology but from the moment I was born
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What I like about it is that it's doable for everyone.
It's practical. It's right now. Today, tomorrow, anyone could start living that advice right now,
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Jocco, what would you say is the biggest thing
you learned about yourself during your time
at the Navy SEAL, and during that 20 year period,
was there ever a time where you wanted to give up
or you wanted to let go
or you just felt like it was it was too
much and what kept you going at that time?
The biggest thing that you learn in the SEAL teams is that you you are not as good as you
think you are.
There's always going to be someone that's better than you at something.
You know, and I was not the fastest guy.
I was not the strongest guy.
I was not the fastest guy. It was not the strongest guy. It was not the smartest guy.
And so you're always surrounded by someone on your team
that can run circles around you in whatever category,
whether it's shooting or diving or parachuting.
So it's a very humbling experience.
And it's the same thing with combat.
You go into combat, maybe you think,
hey, this is what I was born to do.
And I'm gonna dominate in this situation. this is what I was born to do. And I'm going to, I'm going
to dominate in this situation. And you realize you're getting the combat. It's a very humbling
experience. So for me, my, my career in the military was, was an extremely humbling
experience. As far as times where I wanted to give up or I wanted to quit, you know, quite
frankly, I never really had moments like that. I, I, I went through seal training or I wanted to quit. You know, quite frankly, I never really had moments like that.
I went through seal training.
I wanted nothing more in my life than to be a seal.
They would have had to kill me to get me to think about quitting.
And I guess it wouldn't have mattered at that point.
I just what I wanted to do.
And so it didn't matter what they did to me.
And then in the seal teams, being in the seal teams,
that's the job that I wanted.
And so every day to me was, look, were there hard days?
Is there parts of the daily grind?
You're going out on, you got 120 pound rucksack on your back
and you're marching for 10 or 15 kilometers.
Like it's hard.
It's not fun always.
But I always knew that's a job I wanted to do.
And so quitting wasn't really part of my gig.
Yeah, I love hearing that.
That's so beautiful to hear.
And it comes across very sincere.
When you talk about the first thing that you are responding to
around the idea of you were humbled by being around people,
how do you turn what today we see as this competitive and comparison-based
culture to a collaborative culture? Because at the end of the day, you guys have to work
together. You have to look out for each other. But at the same time, when you're training,
like you said, you can get lost in the comparison of like, oh, he's stronger than me at that
or he's a better swimmer. You obviously took it very humbly, which is beautiful.
But how did you see, did comparison ruin collaboration
and how did you make that switch
for a lot of the people you were leading?
Is that what a lot of the seals struggled with?
Or whereas everyone like you and just blown away
by the fact that they had more times
than people around them?
I would love to tell you that everyone had the open mind and are able to put their ego
in check, but that's certainly not always a case.
It's not always the case in the SEAL teams.
I work with companies all the time and teams and it's not always the case in really any
organization.
No, it isn't.
And unfortunately, it is the downfall for people and it can be the downfall for teams.
And I was very, very fortunate. I was in a
seal platoon. It was my second seal platoon. So I was, you know, 20-something very, very young,
22, maybe 22 years old. And the youngest guy and the most junior guy and my first two seal platoons.
And in my second seal platoon, we had our platoon commander, our platoon leader. He was, he was, he couldn't
put his ego in check. And he kind of came up with his own plans and then dictated his plans
to us and imposed his plans upon us, didn't ask for any feedback, didn't even listen to
the feedback when it
was given to him.
It was his way or the highway.
And we ended up really just not wanting to follow this officer.
And it actually ended up that we had a that we had a mutiny with this officer.
We had a mutiny in the the the troops us young seals went to his boss and said, we don't
want to work for this guy.
He doesn't take our input.
He doesn't listen to anybody else.
He's arrogant and we don't want to work for him.
And luckily our commanding officer, the guy that was an overall in charge actually got
rid of that platoon commander.
Now when that happened, it was, that's basically a mutiny, right?
It's basically a mutiny, and I'm not sure if you know this,
but mutinys are not very well looked upon in the military.
As a matter of fact, the punishment for a mutiny is death.
They execute you.
Now, look, this was the 90s.
We weren't going to get executed, but it is a serious thing
to have happen.
And so they put a replacement officer in charge of Arpaltoon.
And when I heard about this replacement officer,
this replacement officer was a guy who was kind of a legendary seal
at the time.
He had risen up through the ranks.
He had been stationed at all the different types of seal teams.
He had combat experience in a time when not too many people had combat experience.
So he was this like legendary seal.
And when I heard that he was coming to take charge of our platoon,
I thought to myself, okay, they're taking this guy and they're they're putting him in here
to straighten out these mute nears.
And we're in, we better brace for impact with this guy.
So we're sitting in the platoon space
and I see this guy for the first time,
this legendary seal.
And while I was a little bit taking it back,
because first of all, he was probably 155 pounds,
he was probably five foot six at the most,
so he's this small guy.
And then on top of that,
he was like the oldest
person I'd ever seen in my life, because he was probably about 36 or 37 years old. And of
course, I'm only, I'm only 20, whatever. And we're looking at him like he's an old man. And I'm
thinking to myself, how is this old man, this little old man gonna, how, how is this the legendary
guy? And he comes into our platoon space and he says something along the lines
of, Hey, Gents, it's really nice to meet you all. And I'm really looking forward to working
with all of you. And so right there, I knew that there was something different. He didn't
say, Hey, I'm taking over on now and charge. You're my man. I'm the commander. He didn't
say any that, which is what we were used to from the previous commander. He said, I'm taking over, I'm now in charge. You're my men. I'm the commander. He didn't say any that, which is what we were used to from the previous commander.
He said, I'm looking forward to working with you guys.
And that humility that he had,
that he showed even though he was this legendary guy,
he was so humble, we,
and he acted that way all the time.
And we would do anything for that guy
and would follow him to hell and back.
And he's the guy that I still try and emulate today.
So as far as me recognizing that you better be humble
if you wanna be in a leadership position,
I absolutely learned it from not just from that platoon commander
who was good, who was humble,
but also getting to see the contrast
between the arrogant platoon commander and the humble one,
and then the way we felt about the arrogant one, and the way we felt about the humble one,
left a mark on my brain, like I said, I'm still trying to emulate that good platoon commander to
this day. That's beautiful, man, and it's amazing to hear about it in a space where I think there's
a big misconception
about masculinity and the seals or the military
and the idea that everyone has to order each other around
and there's commanders like the one that you all had removed.
Like, you, that's kind of what you expect,
or that's what you see in the movies,
or that's how it's presented.
And to hear your version of what you responded to
and who you're trying to become even in yourself.
I mean, that's an incredible lesson for so many young people out there as well, hearing
what it actually takes.
When you're talking about the mutiny and one of the biggest things I see as a cause for
inefficiency in companies, and I work with lots of organizations as well, more from a mental
health stress and well-being space.
When I'm working with people, one of the biggest things I find is that a lack of trust is
the cause for the greatest inefficiencies in an organization.
People make bad decisions, they introduce the wrong people, they connect in the wrong way
because they don't trust each other.
How did you, when the fact that your lives are on the line, what were your principles and
methods of building trust in such a, you know, high stress environment?
So there's a few things that I've been talking about lately together and they're all very
related.
One of them is trust. One of them is related. One of them is trust.
One of them is trust.
One of them is listening.
One of them is influencing and the other one is respect.
And what's interesting about these three is that everyone thinks,
well, you know, I want to gain trust.
I want people to listen to me.
But if I want Jay to listen to me, what I need to do is I need to listen to you.
So if I want you to listen to me, I need to listen to you.
If I want you to respect me, I need to give you respect.
If I want, if I want to be able to influence you, then I need to allow you to influence me.
And then the last one is trust. So if I want you, if I want Jay to
trust me, I need to give trust to Jay. So if you're working for me, how do I, how do I
let you know that I trust you? Well, I say, Hey, Jay, you know what, we've got this project
that we've got to do. Why don't you take charge of that? Let me know how you want to execute
that project. And then I actually let you execute it. You know, me know how you want to execute that project.
And then I actually let you execute it. You know, look, I'm going to give you some oversight.
I'm going to check out what your plan is.
But when you come up with a plan to me, if your plan is, if your plan is going
to be functional, if it'll get the job done, I'm going to let you run with it.
And when you realize that I trust you to do these things, you start
to trust me as well. And by the way, when the plan doesn't go exactly as you thought it
would go, and maybe there's some hiccups along the way, do I jump down your throat and
say, I never should have let you do this. No, I say, okay, I got it. What can we learn?
What can we do different next time? You know, what can I tell the other teams to make sure
that they learn from this experience? So I give you trust and you start to trust me back.
And that's exactly what I did when I was in a, when I was in a
CEO leadership position.
I would let my subordinate leaders, I would task them with things
and I would trust them to get it done right.
Like I said, this doesn't mean I would send them on a mission
that they didn't have any experience on at all and not check out
what their plan was going to be. No, I would of course make sure they had some experience, make sure that they were headed
in the right direction, make sure that their plan made sense. But if it was in the ballpark,
I was going to give it to him and I was going to let him run with it. And that's, that's how I built
trust. And like I said, it's all for those things, it's respect, it's trust, it's listening,
and it's influence. If you want to get those, it's trust, it's listening, and it's influence.
If you wanna get those things from other people,
you have to allow them to start with yourself.
That's a brilliant way of thinking about it.
I love hearing the idea of having to give
what you wanna receive first,
and it's 1,000% the only way to do it. And it's, you're so right that you
could spend your whole life waiting for someone to respect you and waiting for
someone to trust you and you're doing everything to get them to feel a certain
way about you. And it just, you can waste your whole life waiting around for
that. What would you say is the biggest mistake you made in leadership? What do you think was your moment where you looked to Dan?
You were just like, oh man, I look back at that
as one of my ones where I lost.
And I failed and I didn't get it right.
And how it did that impact the next time you addressed
something like that.
Did you have one of those moments where you just felt like
that was the worst?
Absolutely.
And I wrote about this in the first book
that I wrote about leadership, which is called,
which is called Extreme Ownership.
And we had a situation unfold where there was a,
there was a friendly fire incident.
There was a friendly fire incident that took place
a friendly Iraqi soldier was killed.
So one of the Iraqi soldiers that we were fighting alongside,
one of our, one of our compadres, one of one of the Iraqi soldiers that we were fighting alongside one of our one of our
Compodre's one of our comrades and arms one of our Iraqi soldiers was killed. I had one of my seals
get wounded a couple other friendly Iraqi soldiers were also wounded. So it was a terrible situation
and I was the guy in charge. I was the guy in charge. And even though there was a bunch of little tactical mistakes
that were made along the way,
and there was plenty of blame that could have been placed
on a whole bunch of different people,
it really didn't matter because I was the guy overall responsible
for everything that happens on the battlefield.
So, absolutely, I came away from that.
You know, I felt sick to my stomach.
It was awful, but
I had to take ownership of it. And look, it wasn't like that was the first time I had ever
decided that the best thing to do when you make a mistake is own it. This is something
I learned from the early days of in the SEAL teams. If you make a mistake and you try and
make excuses, you're going to get crushed even more. So, it's a culture where taking responsibility is taught,
and it's the right thing to do.
But it's just the consequences in that particular situation
were so awful that it was painful to take ownership.
It was painful to look myself in the mirror and say,
this is all on you.
So, what did we do?
Well, I took ownership of the situation.
I told the task you and I told my guys, this is the mistakes that I made and here's what
we're going to do to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.
And then we implemented those solutions.
But certainly that was a moment in my life that I remember of realizing, you said something in your introduction.
It was like a confirmation of something that I had already known, but it was such a heavy
confirmation that that was the right thing to do.
When you make a mistake, you take ownership of it, you get that problem, you figure out
what a solution is and you get that problem solved.
That's on us as a leader. And so often, because of our egos,
we feel like the right move is to blame someone else
and point fingers and that just does not work.
It makes you look horrible as a leader.
It makes the problem not get solved.
And you lose the respect of everyone around you.
And therefore, the team can't do it.
It's job anymore.
You fail the mission.
I mean, that sounds like another intense experience.
And you're practicing extreme ownership
in these really intense experiences.
I know you've shared this before, but for our audience,
explain extreme ownership, but with this lens of a lot of people today,
if they try and take ownership,
they end up destroying their own self-esteem
or holding themselves back,
whereas the way you describe extreme ownership
is that actually it propels you forward
and pushes you forward,
with that skew explained to our audience,
extreme ownership and how you're able to
do that with it rather than just beat yourself up.
Yeah.
So let's take a workplace environment.
And I'm working for Jay and Jay's my boss and I'm up for promotion and I'm hoping I
get promoted and the promotion board comes out and it turns out I don't get promoted.
Fred gets promoted instead
Now what am I gonna do? How am I gonna handle this? I can say well, you know, Jay doesn't like me or Fred
He cheated on the examination or he's he's he kisses up to Jay and that's why he get promoted
I could point fingers all day long. I could point fingers at you. I could point fingers at the whole organization
And if I point fingers at everybody else and I don't take any ownership of it, what am
I going to change? How am I going to improve? What control do I have over my own destiny
if my whole destiny is is held by Jay, my boss. It's it's a horrible position to be and
I feel powerless. Now if I say, okay, I'm up for promotion, I don't get promoted.
Okay, let me take ownership of that. I must be doing some things that J.C.'s that I can
improve upon. Hey, Jay, can you do me a favor tomorrow? You know, can I come into your
office during lunch for 15 minutes? I just want to kind of go through what your expectations
are. I know I didn't get the promotion, but believe me, I'm hungry,
and I want next time that opportunity comes up,
I want you to be thinking to me,
can we sit down for 15 minutes,
and can you give me some critique points
on what I could do better?
And you say, of course, you say, of course, yeah,
Jocco, come on in, and we sit down,
and you say, hey, look, your time line's been off
on a couple of the big projects.
And you've actually been late a few times. And meanwhile, I got Fred over here. He hits the timeline every always and he's never been late. And I say, God it, Jay, God it. And what do I do?
I make those adjustments. I buy another alarm clock. I start paying more attention to my projects
and the timeliness of my projects. I actually improve.
So at the next time there's an opportunity for promotion, you look at me and say, hey,
way to go.
You fix those problems, you're getting promoted.
So that's the difference.
We either take ownership of what's going on.
We figure out how we can fix it.
And we do fix it.
Or we point fingers, blame other people, we don't change and we say stagnant.
We don't make any progress.
I'm putting that straight into our recruitment retention and reward video.
I'm going to play that video anytime, anytime we have that complaint or insight.
I'm going to play that video to someone.
I completely agree with you.
I love that example of putting it into
that space because it just, it almost when you hear it that way, you're like, oh my gosh,
that sounds so obvious. That would be the right thing to do. But that's never our response.
99% of us will do the opposite. Like, oh yeah, they got through because of this and justifying
yeah.
You said 99% of us and it's an instinct.
An instinct is to protect our ego.
An instinct is to protect our ego.
So like I said, I got four kids.
If one of my kids is in the kitchen
and I walk into the kitchen and the milk is spilled on the floor,
what do my kids say?
You know what they say?
They say the milk spilled.
Right?
An inanimate object did this. Not me, it was the milk spilled. Right? An inanimate object did this.
Not me, it was the milk.
So we all have this instinct of our ego,
trying to protect our ego, and it's a horrible thing.
And you know, I wrote about this in the last leadership book.
I wrote leadership strategy and tactics.
One of the sections is how do you take criticism
from someone that you don't respect or you don't like?
And it's very plain and simple. Jay, if I don't like you, I don't respect or you don't like. And it's very plain and simple.
Jay, if I don't like you, I don't respect you,
and you come to me and you say,
Jocco, you know, you're late on your projects.
What should I do with that?
Well, I should put my emotions in check,
put my ego in check, listen to what you have to say,
and then actually look at you and say, thank
you for that feedback.
That's how we improve as human beings.
Now is there a risk that someone is attacking you or trying to undermine you or insulting
you?
Absolutely.
There is a risk that you could get into a situation like that.
But guess what?
You listen to what people have to say.
You apply it without emotion.
You apply it without ego.
And then you can look at it and you can analyze whether this is an actual thing or whether
perhaps maybe it's, maybe it's, there we go.
Maybe Jay is trying to cut me down because he feels like I'm climbing the ladder really
fast. Maybe I'll get promoted above him. so you're trying to come and undermine me. That's okay
Listen to what people have to say analyze it without ego without emotion
Say thank you for the feedback and move forward. I love
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I hope that you keep mentioning the the presence of ego. One of the ways I think the ego also plays out, which I'm interested in the form of the
military is you've got people that are on the front lines that are actually like physically
there on the battlefield. And then you've got people sending orders and making decisions
who may not be on the actual front lines. How did you well build that respect and trust
of recognizing that everyone was playing their role? Because I find that the ego often
is, well, I'm on the front lines. I'm the one who's actually going to lose my life.
You're comfortable sitting there in your ivory tower. You've got nothing to worry about. How do you avoid those kind, that kind of ego also getting in the way or, or, you know,
is that common at all? Does that exist? So luckily inside the military, inside the US military,
and inside most modern militaries today, there is something called decentralized command,
There is something called decentralized command, which means the senior leadership
is giving the broad strategy of what we're trying to accomplish,
but they're allowing the front line people to make decisions on how we actually move in that election.
So that's what usually happens.
Now, occasionally, there are situations where you're told to do something that doesn't make much sense and maybe it doesn't make any sense
And maybe it's gonna put lives at risk and you don't agree with it. So what do you do in those situations?
I've had those situations happen to me very seldom do they happen to me, but they have happened
Well, let me give you a little backstory first. I
Spend all this time building a good relationship with my boss
Building a good relationship listening when boss, building a good relationship,
listing when my boss wants me to do something,
cool, I get it done, I get it done on time,
I do it correctly, when my boss wants me to do something else,
I do that, I do that correct,
I do it to the best of my ability.
I give feedback so we can improve the process,
that's what we're doing.
So all those iterations of performing my duties correctly,
they build the trust that we talked about earlier.
So by the time you fast forward six months or a year and my boss says, hey, this is what
I want you to do.
And it doesn't make sense.
I press pause and say, hey, boss, can I ask you a couple of questions about what's going
on here?
This is what you want me to do.
This is what you're asking me to do.
Can I explain some of the secondary and tertiary effects
that are gonna transpire if we do what you're asking me to do?
I wanna make sure that you know those things
because if that's the direction you're giving me,
I want you to understand how it's gonna impact us
on the front lines.
And 100% of the time, when I explained things up to the chain
of command to my bosses, they said,
oh, okay, well, we didn't, I didn't think of that.
Or I didn't know about that.
Thank you for telling me.
Because by the way, if my boss doesn't know what the impact
is going to be for me, whose fault is that?
It's my fault because I haven't built a good enough
relationship with him.
I haven't explained to him what's going on.
I haven't given them the clarification relationship with him. I haven't explained to him what's going on. I haven't given them the clarification
of those impacts in the first place.
So developing a good relationship up and down the chain of command,
because by the way, I want to make sure
that I have a relationship with the people below me
and the chain of command, so they can tell me
the negative impacts of what we're being directed to do.
And then I've got to build that relationship up
with the chain so I can pass those forward.
So if we build good relationships,
and as you mentioned earlier, if we can build trust up and down the chain of command, we don't really
have these issues. And like I said, I got a couple times in my career where I was told
that we were going to do something a certain way. And I just kind of explained why I didn't
think that was a good idea. and got to move forward in a
more effective and more efficient manner.
Yeah, no, and it's good to hear that it doesn't happen too often, but I'm glad that you
expanded on what if it does happen, because like you said, in the work environment or in
our day-to-day lives, it can happen quite often.
And on the receiving end, like you said as well, that your juniors or the people that are reporting to you, if they don't open enough to tell you
as well, then you made a mistake as a leader. One of the things that massively stands out
that I hear you talk about a lot when I've been watching your videos recently, and I appreciate
you bringing this so much to the fore because I don't think it's talked about as much is
discipline. And, you know, I spent three years living as a monk and discipline was like our,
you know, a big, big part of our lives.
And I'm so grateful to have had that training because without that training,
it would have been so easy for me to lack discipline as well.
When you talk about discipline, how many people listen to you and go,
Jocco, yeah, you're in, you're in AVC or we get it, but like discipline, I just
find discipline is so unpopular today because it's not the sexiest thing to talk
about. It's not the easiest thing to get people to do. When people are struggling
with self-discipline, where do you start? Where does someone start
when they haven't had that training that you've had?
I think like many other taskings and missions
that we get in life,
we have to understand why we're doing what we're doing.
The book I wrote about this is called
Discipline Equal So Freedom.
You have to understand why you're implementing
this discipline in your life.
Why are you in implementing discipline in your life? It's because you want to reach discipline in your life. Why are you implementing discipline in your life?
It's because you want to reach a level of freedom.
And that's what discipline gives you.
And the obvious examples that I talk about all the time, one of them is financial discipline.
Right?
We all want to have financial freedom, of course.
Everybody wants to have financial freedom.
But if you want to get to financial freedom, what do you have to have? You have to have financial freedom, but if you want to get to financial freedom,
what do you have to have?
You have to have financial discipline.
You have to have the discipline to work hard.
You have to have the discipline to save your money.
You have to have the discipline to invest your money properly.
You have to have the discipline not to buy stupid things
that you don't even actually need.
And if you can have that kind of financial discipline,
you'll end up with financial freedom. Same thing with time. Everybody wants more free time. How do you
actually get more free time? You get more free time by having more discipline time management.
By making a schedule, by sticking to the schedule, by not wasting time, doing things that
provide you no benefit whatsoever.
And if you can, if you can have that more discipline time management, you'll end up with
more free time.
And this applies to everything that we do.
It applies to our health.
It applies to the, to the, the way that we work inside of an organization.
It applies to the skill sets that we have.
It applies to everything that we do.
So I think understanding why you need to implement discipline into your life because there is such a
massive reward for it. I think that's where I, well, that's why I start with that. That's why I start
with discipline equals freedom. It's not discipline equals pain. It's not discipline equals suffering.
And look, there is pain and suffering that comes with discipline. There is. But it's not that's not what you're doing. That's not why you're doing it. You're doing
it because discipline will give you freedom in the end. I'm so glad that you wrote that book
and you have that mantra discipline equals freedom because it's such a, it's such an interesting
thing. Usually we think of discipline as a restriction. We think of
regulation as like you're like controlling yourself and you're like not expressing yourself and
people will say like, oh, you're just, you know, you're like in a prison and you're you're
suppressing yourself. And actually you're spot on actually thinking that you can do whatever you
want and spend as much money as you want and eat what you want, that's actually not freedom.
That's being a slave and that's being a prisoner
to your desires.
And so I love that discipline equals freedom.
Everyone who's listening or watching
write that down right now because any area of your life
where you don't feel freedom from based on what Joko's saying
is from a lack of discipline.
And so any area of your life where you're like, I'm not experiencing freedom, it is from a lack of discipline. And so any area of your life where you're like,
I'm not experiencing freedom, it's from a lack of discipline.
And I can honestly say that that's so in line with,
that we had something in our monk tradition called
the regulative principles of freedom.
It was the same concept of the idea that we had
certain regulative principles that we had to practice.
And they were seen as suppression
from a modern perspective,
but actually they were so freeing
because now your desires didn't control you.
And so I love hearing that,
that similarity and that connection
and to hear you say is really empowering
and I hope everyone.
But let's say, Jocco, let's say someone just doesn't know how to build discipline, right?
Like I feel like it's a muscle, it's a skill, it's a habit, like anything else.
How does someone start building discipline?
Like what are the building blocks from a practical standpoint of discipline?
I've got, I've got my recommendation that absolutely nobody wants to hear.
I want to hear it.
The recommendation is start getting up a little bit earlier
in the morning and start going up earlier at night.
So start getting, and the reason I say get up in the morning
earlier, first, because people, you can't just decide
you're going to fall asleep earlier, right?
You'll lay in bed with your mind racing, because you're not tired, because you slept
in.
So wake up a little bit earlier in the morning and take 15 minutes, take a half an hour,
do some physical exercise, do something that you would normally have to do during the
work day or when you got home from work so you can spend more time with your family. Just start getting up 20 minutes, a half an hour earlier than you normally do.
Over time, you can, if you keep kind of pushing that, you can end up waking up an hour
earlier than you normally would.
And that gives you time to get some workout, gives you some time to go for a run, gives
you some time to spend a little bit of extra time with your family in the morning before you have to go to work.
There are so many benefits to it.
And what do you lose on the other end?
At night time, instead of looking at social media for an extra hour, you'll be asleep.
And it's a beneficial thing.
So I would say set that alarm clock a little bit earlier.
When you wake up in the morning, go and do some exercise, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour, whatever you can fit in to start with.
And I think that is a great place to start building discipline.
I completely agree with you.
I think waking up earlier is like the best reinvention formula because what we're all lacking
is time and what we're all lacking is time for ourselves.
And the only way you get that is by waking up earlier.
What's something, Joker, that you learned only after being a Navy seal, that being a Navy
seal couldn't teach you, being a father, being a leadership consultant, you know, all the
amazing things you've achieved after is what did, what have you learned in the afterlife
almost, that you didn't learn during being a seal.
So when I got done with my career in the seal teams, I was asked to go and talk to a company
executives about leadership.
And I had no idea.
I had never been, I mean, I was an institutionalized.
I had been in the military since I was, you know, 18 years old.
I didn't even understand anything about civilian companies.
Nothing, I didn't know anything about them.
And this very first time that I presented
these leadership principles that I talk about all the time
and that I've written about,
the very first time I presented them,
when I got done, the CEO of the company came up to me
and said, I want you to talk to every division of my company.
And that was like the icing on the cake because I could tell by the looks on people's faces,
by the questions that they were asking, that the leadership principles that work inside
of a seal platoon, they work inside of a finance company, they work inside of a manufacturing
company, they work inside of an army platoon, they work inside of a Girl Scout troop.
These leadership principles, they apply everywhere.
And I would never have known that if I had stayed in the SEAL teams, I would have just continued
to use them and utilize them in that one category, but they're applicable anywhere.
And that was a real blessing to figure out very quickly after I retired.
It's incredible, isn't it?
How we think what we know only applies to this area, this thing.
And when you find this wide varied application of stuff that you know so well, and I'm sure
now I love the Girl Scouts too.
I love that.
Have you ever done anything with a group of Girl Scouts?
Have you actually given them like a talk or a keynote. I have I have three daughters and one son and I've run all kinds of random team events for children.
And yes, these principles are 100% applied.
I love that one. That that would be something I would pay to watch.
That would be amazing.
Like I'd love to see how that goes down, especially with your with your doors in the room. That would be amazing. Like I'd love to see how that goes down, especially with your with your door as in the room. That would be brilliant. And then you know, that's what
brought me to write the kids books that I've written is. Yes. So I was out there trying
to find books to read to my kids when they were younger. And books just didn't exist that
sort of talked about these principles that we're talking about, about discipline, about
hard work, about taking care of other people, about being prepared.
There just wasn't books out there
that had that message.
And so as soon as my first adult book came out,
this, I was immediately writing my first kids book.
And those books, honestly, from a,
from a, from a gratification perspective,
I get letters every day from kids all over the country
and all over the world, that's
say, I did my first pull-up today, or I got an A on my math test, or I made the hockey
team, or whatever they set out to achieve, they realized that when they put discipline
in place and they live like a warrior kid, those principles they work, regardless of how
old you are and where you are in life. So that was very also a great discovery for me, which I realized while I was still in the military,
that these principles, if you can teach them to an eight-year-old kid, that eight-year-old kid
has a real leg up on moving in the right direction. So I've been real blessed in the fact that
the things that I've learned in the military
translate very well if you can look at them
through the right lands.
Absolutely, man.
And I'm so glad that you're doing it
because it's always fascinating
when you've heard about someone,
you've read about someone,
you've seen them and then you actually get to experience them
even though we're not with each other physically.
It's amazing. I'm so happy that you're the one doing it and in the way that you're doing as well, it comes across effortlessly, it's powerful, but it's got a really special heart.
We end Jocco every on purpose interview with the final five. These questions have to be answered
with one word or one sentence maximum. So there's a cap on the amount of words that are about to be used.
So this is your final five.
The first question is, if you could meet any leader in the world,
dead or alive, who would it be and why?
It would be Colonel David Hackworth,
who was an American soldier in the Korean and Vietnam war.
He wrote a book called About Face,
which I ended up writing a forward to.
And I would never got to meet him.
He died in 2005, but he was my mentor,
even though I never met him just through his books.
I love that. I love that you said that.
I always say to my audience,
you can be mentored by people you've never met.
And that's amazing that you wrote the forward for one of your idols. I love, love hearing that. Second question,
what was your purpose when you joined the seals and what is your purpose now?
When I joined the seals, I wanted to be a good seal. That was it. And as you can imagine,
that drove a lot of my decisions. And what I realized about the definition of a good seal,
when you really break it down,
what makes a good seal is a good seal looks after
and takes care of his teammates.
And what am I doing now?
What's my purpose now?
It's the same thing.
I'm trying to help people as much as I can
pass on the lessons that I've learned so that they don't have to learn in the hard way like I did.
Yeah, I love that.
All right, question number three. What's one thing that you think people value that you
don't value? I think there's a lot of things that people value that I don't value. I guess
one thing is I'll make it real easy. Watches.
I wear a $30 time X watch and...
I see you posted all the time.
Sometimes people comment, why don't you buy a nicer watch?
This watch is functional, it does what I need it to do.
And so if you're walking around with a $1,000 watch on,
you might think it's cool. I don't really care.
We'll get a good shot of it.
This is on Jocco's Instagram page.
Go follow Jocco, we'll link on Instagram.
Okay, question number four.
What's the best piece of advice you ever received?
When I got to SEAL team one,
the master chief that was in charge
to the senior en listed guy told us,
show up on time, don't forget anything,
keep your mouth shut and keep your ears open.
And especially the part about keeping your mouth shut
and keeping your ears open, listening is the most
underrated skill in leadership and as a human,
you should listen a vast majority
of the time. So I think that's great advice.
That is. And fifth and final question. If you could create one law in the world that everyone
had to follow, what would it be? Be good to your neighbor. That's a good law. There's lots of
people been trying to teach that. Lots of important people. I'm glad you're adding, adding it on
and sharing it forward.
Everyone, Jocco, Willink, make sure you go
and follow Jocco on Instagram.
Check out his many books.
As he spoke about his children's books, his adult books,
please, please, please, go and grab a copy
of what resonates with you.
Jocco has an amazing podcast as well
that you can go and listen to.
All of the links will be in the description.
Jocke, we need to do a part two.
This was too good, man.
I love spending this time with you.
Next time we gotta be in the same room
to feel your energy, but honestly,
this has been such a joy.
I learned so much today and have an even deeper appreciation
for you as a person and what you're doing in the world.
So thank you for taking out the time to be on on purpose. And I hope we get to meet soon.
Thanks, Jay. Yeah. I know we're not located too far apart. Next time we'll do it face to face.
Absolutely. Thank you, Jaco. Thanks everyone for listening. Make sure you share your insights
on Instagram. Tag me and Jaco with what stood out. What were the wisdom points? What were the insights
that resonated to do? What are you going to? What discipline? Are you gonna start from tomorrow?
You're gonna wake up 15 minutes earlier? Are you gonna do that one push up or pull up?
I'd love to know. I know Jocco would too, so make sure you tag us and we'll see you again next time on on purpose.
Thanks for listening.
Hey, it's Debbie Brown, host of the Deeply Well Podcast, where we hold conscious conversations with leaders and radical healers and wellness around topics that are meant to expand and support
you on your wellbeing journey.
Deeply well is your soft place to land, to work on yourself without judgment,
to heal, to learn, to grow,
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Deeply well with Debbie Brown
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or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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