The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - 5 Ways to Embrace the Concept of Extreme Ownership | Foundations Friday 86

Episode Date: March 12, 2023

I talk about how "Extreme Ownership" has become very popular over the past eight years thanks to the incredible book by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin of the same name and the outstanding teachings from the Echelon Front organization. In the episode, I also share how extreme ownership has existed for over 1,000 years and was practiced by Marcus Aurelius, according to Ryan Holiday of "The Daily Stoic." the five barriers we have to accept ownership and the five ways to embrace owning up to mistakes.

It's time to lace up, chalk up, get logged in, and get locked on to the KevTalks podcast. Get ready to hear compelling interviews with extraordinary people, hear industry-leading best practices that will help you and your teams make progress together. Now let's get to this episode in three, two, one. Hey everybody, welcome to the KevTalks podcast. This will be a Sunday send-off, a send-off into the week. I missed Foundations Friday, apologies. Today, what I want to talk about is something I posted about on LinkedIn earlier,

and it's the concept of extreme ownership, right? There's a book called Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, and the principle is that you own everything, right? You own the mistakes of your team, you give them credit for success, and there's a lot of other principles in there, but that's the gist of it, right? Is you don't say, well, they didn't do this. And they didn't listen. When when someone messes up, you own it, you're the leader. And so this morning, as part of my morning routine, I did the savers program. So you have silence and you do affirmations and visualization and exercise and you read and you

scribe. And my reading and scribing had to do with the Daily Stoic, which is a book by Ryan Holiday, very, very popular principles. And so he quotes and gives perspective on stoicism and stoics throughout history. Folks like Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and a few other folks. And so in this instance, though, Ryan Holiday was talking about how Marcus Aurelius really embraced the concept of if there's a mistake, how could I have done better? And this is over 1,000 years ago. And, of course, Jocko and Leif and the Extreme Ownership crew, the Echelon Front folks there, they talk about the principles didn't come just from them, but they make a huge difference. And I thought, man, this is so old. So why is it so hard for us humans to embrace this

concept of extreme ownership and to really own mistakes and own how we could be better and how we could have made our team better when something doesn't go well. And so I shared my two cents on the top five reasons that I think that it happens. And it's really based on me, right? Not pointing the fingers at other folks, but then also five things and five ways that I think we can better embrace extreme ownership. And so let's jump into this. So the first one is ego, right? Ego is, God, it gets in our way so much. You know, it causes us to blame others quickly and to redirect failure, right?

So we're not associated with it. And it's just a hard thing to get past that ego of, well, it's not me. It's not my fault. I can't take ownership for this. And so that's the first thing we got to work on. And I'll talk about how we can do that. And the second thing is the need for more confidence, right? A lot of folks aren't confident. I've seen that a lot in Reddit or in different interactions I've had with folks and maybe unconfident people can't comfortably accept the criticism because they feel like is it an attack or it beats them down or something. And so that's a challenge. And thirdly, for me, no one likes to

lose, right? Everybody loves a winner. That's a very popular saying. But in any contest, in any sport, anything, there's losers, so to speak. But we'll talk about the value of losing. And I've talked about that here, particularly in jujitsu, where you lose all the time, but when you lose, you learn how to defend yourself a little bit better. And the fourth thing for me is the ease of blaming them or they, right? They didn't do this. It was them. It wasn't me. And that's just easy cop-out kind of thing. And the fifth is team cohesion for me, right? So not being able to embrace extreme ownership across team members is because your team is not working well together. You're not a cohesive unit. So hey, Kev, I hear you

talking, but what do we do about this? Well, I'm going to tell you. The first thing is you have to supplant your ego, right? With openness to improve all aspects of your life. You have to realize you're not perfect at work. You're not perfect at home, you're not a perfect dad or husband or wife or child or whatever it is, and just accept it, right? We're human, we're imperfect, and that's just, that's life. And so the quicker we can accept that, the better we can embrace this extreme ownership and build better teams and be better leaders. The second is to do your best and present your case with confidence, right? You could be nervous before a meeting. You cannot have done presentations before or talk to folks, kind of like my teenage son putting his job flyers out, right?

He's nervous about doing it. But show yourself with confidence, that head up, shoulders back concept of the 12 rules for life from Jordan Peterson. And just, it's good, right? Portray confidence, even if on the inside you're screaming in terror, right? It makes a big difference and it sells the plan and it shows, hey, I believe in this and it gives courage and it inspires the

folks that you're talking to and it makes a really big difference. The third is to accept life is filled with loss, right? And I touched on this a little bit earlier and I have before on this podcast, both personally and professionally, and that's hard to deal with sometimes. I know I've had a really hard time dealing with loss or potential loss or all of the above at the same time, whether it's at work or at home, but that's life, right? And so not every job proposal is gonna go well, not every program or project pitch is gonna be successful.

And that's just it. And so don't fall in love with your plan right so that if the plan doesn't work out you're heartbroken that's a little harder to do in our personal lives I think right you know we're in love with folks and love folks and care about folks that that we lose we just have to kind of project ahead and and accept it it's just it's going to happen it doesn't make it any easier at the time but in this extreme ownership concept right we can know that life's not perfect. It's filled with loss.

We're not always going to hit home runs. And that's just it. The fourth thing is that there is no there them to point the finger at. You can't do that, right? You just, you have to say, you know what, I'm the team lead or I'm the person in this position on the team. That was my responsibility. I messed that up.

How can I get better? I accept it. And everybody respects that way more than pointing fingers get better? I accept it. And everybody respects that way more than pointing fingers, right? And it just, it makes sense. And it's true that we can always improve. And the fifth thing for me is to be proactive in building your team's communication and coordination. So if I'm leading a team, you know, I need to make sure that everybody's talking to each other. If I don't, then communication breaks down. People don't talk to each other. We don't coordinate tasks as well. And that's on me, right? I should have maybe intervened or escalated something maybe a little earlier. I should facilitate team calls,

discussions. There's difficult discussions, right? Sometimes we need to have a discussion where we don't want to talk to each other because we're not getting along well. That's the time when we need to do it and say, look, here's what I'm feeling. What are you thinking? How's it going? Let's work through this. How can we get past it? And so to me, these are five ways that you can embrace extreme ownership, whether you're Marcus Aurelius, Jocko, or Leif Babin in modern times, is you supplant your ego, you do your best and present with confidence. You accept that life is filled with loss. You stop blaming or saying they or them as opposed to I and we, and you'd be proactive in building up your team's communication and coordination. Thank you all for coordinating a bit of time with me on the KevTalks podcast. I appreciate your time. And for you checking out

KevTalksPod.com, please subscribe to the show. Leave a review, particularly on Apple Podcasts. That really helps give the show visibility. And I hope to provide more compelling stories of folks. I've got some interviews lined up that I think you'll really enjoy. And I know I will. I'll learn from them, grow from them. And I hope you all are growing from this show. Follow me at PenelKG on Twitter and Instagram.

And remember, everybody, have a plan so you can keep your teams aligned, stay informed with facts, not fear and get involved so you can make a difference in this world. Godspeed y'all.