Jocko Willink's Campfire Talk Will Change How You Lead Your Life

I said you're feeling paranoid he says yeah I say you're thinking you're kind of dwelling on the fact that you should have performed better he says yeah I said you feel guilty that this innocent person was killed and you couldn't help them and he says yeah and I said you know what bro you're fine when you're in a leadership position if you don't get resolutions with things you have to keep pulling the thread if Jamie is if she's got if there's some kind of tension if there's some kind of disagreement if there's some kind of

uh misunderstanding if I'm not seeing eye to eye I have got to ask questions and try and understand that perspective that she's got when we leave things unresolved that's like the foundation of of Destruction right so from a leadership perspective let me tell you what's not resolution uh shut up and do what I told to do you know what I made my decision so go ahead and execute it uh uh you know what I outrank you this is my company like all those things none of those things are resolution none of those things are resolution

and then you take it to like your family like you could see Jamie was like there's something like there's some it's not resolved it's not resolved and if we're not getting to resolution with our with with our people things don't get better they get worse I usually hit resolution pretty quickly with people listen to listen to what they have to say ask good questions if the questions answers don't make sense ask more questions listen harder but if you're walking away from a meeting or you're walking away from an interaction and there's this weird gut instinct

that you have there's a decent chance that what you're feeling is a lack of resolution you're talking about another way down here you're like there's things going on where people are missing more work than they should you're putting out word you're asking some questions but it's not resolved and and we have to look this doesn't mean we say aggressively resolve these things I don't mean like go at people but to listen to what they have to say hold the Str ask more questions you'll know when things get resolved you know you know it you feel

[Music] it every time you baby a kid they become more babyish and every time you treat them with like an adult they become more like an adult every time you take responsibility away from them they they have less responsibility every time you give them more responsibility they become more responsible and and again we're talking about kids but we're also talking about employees you know you want your employees to step up and Lead put them in leadership positions do you want your employees to take ownership give them ownership this is like the Crux of what we

talk about and it's it's so functional it's so functional like I said you know what I have to do Aton front I have to do jack [ __ ] you have to do a Joo fuel barely anything you have to do at origin barely anything why cuz there people there that stepping up that leading that make it this apple that's amazing you know what I have to do with my kids what was it oh yeah somebody asked me about my kids one time and like didn't you feel bad that you were like not around and

look do I do I wish I could go back and like be at certain events with my kids when my kids learned how to walk and I wasn't there they learned how to swim and I wasn't there they did a recital it's gone a lot it's gone a lot but my kids wen't ryant on me my wife is not rying on me and that's what I want I don't want my wife and children to be reliant on me I want them to be independent human beings that make things happen and guess what I want at

my companies I want my companies to be able to want run regardless of where I am and regardless of what I do regardless of what's Happening they already know what to do and you do that by giving that ownership giving that leadership opportunity giving them responsibility whenever you can that's how you grow people they grow into the mold you put them is put them in a little tiny mold they'll grow into it put them in a nice big open mold they'll [Music] grow these leadership principles they actually don't change up down or across the chain

of [Music] command so when we wrote about leading up the chain of command which I don't no one ever told that to me like I don't know where leading up the chain of command came from but I think it came from me like that's something that people say oh yeah leading up the chain of command that's such a good principle most people don't think of the fact that they're Leading the People above them in the chain of command so that was sort of one of the anomalies and and fresh thoughts inside of the book extreme

ownership is leading up the chain of command you are actually leading the people that are above you in the chain of command that's a a counterintuitive thought that a lot of people didn't grasp but just bringing it out brought it to the world but what what makes it interesting is that the way you lead up the chain of command is actually the same way you lead across the chain of command is actually the same way you lead the people below you in the chain of command and that is very strange to some people because if

Jamie works for me I can just tell her what to do right she works for me I don't have to listen to her she needs to listen to me like those are the things that we're doing when we when we're in charge and we think we we want to use our Authority our our knowledge our position our rank to lead that's what we're doing but it's not the correct thing to do the correct thing to do is listen and so if Jamie's above me in the chain of command and she's got an idea for something

I try and figure out how I can support it if she's a peer of mine in the chain of command and she's got an idea I try and figure out how I'm going to support it if she's below me in the chain of command and she's got an idea I try and figure out how I can support it this is so much easier for life yeah but if someone's above you in the chain of command you've got to treat them with respect yeah you do and you have to treat someone that's parallel to you in

the chain of command with respect and someone that's below you in the chain of command with respect there's actually no difference there's no difference that's radical that's a radical idea that I actually utilize the same principles strategies and tactics up down and across the chain of K so that's different that's different for people remember I said 50 million people that are actually in leadership positions that every the vast majority of those people still have somebody above them true and even if you're the CEO of a publicly traded company you're answering to the shareholders so like

even if you're the president of the United States you're answering to the voters so there's always or the [Music] lobbyists was I getting cynical did you guys catch me yes you would amen said the choir so so that's a that's kind of a a radical concept A New Concept and really when I wrote in leadership strategy and tactics page 157 158 it's like rules for a new leader it should just be rules for a leader because it doesn't matter where you are you should use those principles be humble listen treat people with respect up and

down the chain Comm work harder than everybody else those are just what you [Music] do how do you get people to voluntarily give you authority over them that's kind of a wild thing right am I about to just drift off into some uh brainwashing techniques of how we can get people to magically you know obey what you're saying there and there are those things right sleep deprivation taking people away from their friends and family making them feel guilty about things that 've done and then you come in as the Savior to them like that stuff

happens it's real it's brainwashing you can brainwash people and get authority over them obviously that's not what we're doing here there was uh Dave and I were on a podcast and it was like I think it was just an unraveling or not an unraveling it was a debrief podcast and I I I posed this question kind of like boom I POS this question like oh if Dave called me right now and he really needs something from me I would do it and I was trying to think of like why we were talking about relationships and

and what I realized is the actual reason why I would do something for Dave if he called me is because I care about him right like that's that's ultimately what it boils down to if Leif calls me up and he's like hey Joo I need a bunch of money and I need uh you need to drive to my house and bring a wheelbarrow a shovel and some duct tape I'm like cool you know I'll be there in an hour but why am I doing that I'm not scared of him I don't owe him anything right

so it's not intimidation I don't owe him anything why am I doing that why am I doing that because I care about him so if people care about you in this weird bizarre way it actually gives you some level of authority with them and guess what this doesn't just apply to your friends this applies to your team if your team cares about you all of a sudden they do way more than you expect them to do they do way more than you ask them to do they do way more than you could expect from [Music]

them because they care about you what a wild concept if you've read leadership strategy and tactics I had that terrible officer that we fired that we had a muy on we didn't care about that guy at all and we wouldn't do anything for him we didn't care about him we didn't like him we didn't care about him everything that we did was the bare minimum we had to do when he got fired and the new guy the the new officer took over Delta Charlie we cared about him and we would do anything for him they

both had the same rank they both had the same position so if we end up with a team where we all care about each other all a sudden we've got this mutually supporting unit this mut true team that is truly working together to help each other out and when we've got that when we've got that then we've what we end up with is the ultimate form of [Music] leadership one of the guys I can see he's got a look on his face like a distressed look on his face and so you know I'm like preparing

what's this guy going to talk about and and he first words out of his mouth are can you help me and so you know of course yeah man what what's going on and it turns out he's a police officer he was involved in an incident incident was there was a hostage taker with a weapon the hostage taker took two hostages this guy was first second guy on scene something like that I didn't get into the details of what happened but this officer I was talking to got shot he got shot I think twice and then

the hostage taker killed one of the hostages and then wounded the other before he was shot by other officers and he was apprehended so as he's telling me this what what he gets to is I need help can you help me work through this what's going on I I'm having a nightmares um I'm feeling paranoid I feel like I should have done a better job you know uh I feel like I should have done a better job and meanwhile one of the hostages is dead and I was the person I was supposed to protect him

and the look on his face like I said from the the moment that I saw him I knew that he there was something wrong with this guy and his face was just distressed and depressed kind of looking and I looked at him and I could also see that there was something else there like confusion almost and I said you know man I said so you're having nightmares and he says yeah I said you're feeling paranoid and he says yeah I I say you're thinking you're kind of dwelling on the fact that you should have performed

better he says yeah I feel I said you feel guilty that this innocent person was killed and you couldn't help them and he says yeah and I said you know what bro you're fine that's all normal and the look on his face I I I saw his face changed in in a moment from like this burden and as we got into but I found out that guess what they did to him so he's had his badge taken away he's been put on one year oh his gun taken away he's been put on one year of

paid leave because they're telling him how messed up he is they're telling him how traumatized he is by this incident that happened and when I looked at him and said oh you're paranoid you're feeling guilt you're feeling like you should have performed better you're dwelling on that yeah you're fine that's no normal the look on his face totally changed and he like literally kind of chuckled he kind of chuckled and so then we talked for a little while and you know we as we were leaving what I was joking with him because his mind and

his attitude had totally changed I'm like hey bro they want you gone for a year have a good time I said but listen you know I also said listen don't I go go start training Jiu-Jitsu go get on a ro routine get start doing stuff and I said also in another month reach out to them and say Hey listen I know you think I'm traumatized I'm actually fine give me 30 days and I'm ready to go back to work and he was like that sounds like a plan so you know what does this what does

this have to do with leadership I actually think it has everything to do with leadership I actually think this have has everything to do with leadership because here you've got an individual human being that's going going completely in the wrong direction that's being told that they're traumatized being told that they're not going to be able to recover from being told that their life is going to be abjectly worse and he's accepting that leadership that's leadership that's telling him that and just a simple reframing of saying hey you know what you're fine actually what I told

him was like Hey of course you're going to have nightmares you got shot you're going to have some nightmares man that's okay that's normal and this attitude shift that I saw on a guy in a in a maybe it was a 10-minute conversation was radically different so all of us that are sitting in this room that are in leadership positions we're doing that with people all day every day you're having an impact on the way their life is going that's all that's all of us that's what we're doing so we have the have the opportunity

to reframe things for people we have the opportunity to show people different perspective we have the opportunity to have just the most massive impact on people's lives through leadership every single day every interaction that we have we actually lead people through their lives that's what we're doing [Music]