0:00:00 – Opening
0:03:22 – Army Techniques Publication / FM 3-21.10
1:35:08 – Final thoughts and take-aways.
1:36:40 – How to stay on THE PATH.
1:56″08 – Closing Gratitude.
237: How to Turn a Vision into a Plan For Ultimate Victory. In Battle and in Life. Army Techniques Publication FM 3-21.10
July 8, 2020
|In Podcast Episodes
Dear Mr. Willink,
I’ve been listening to your podcast almost daily for the past few weeks. I put it on during my 45 minute commute to and from work and I am now on cast number 8. While I absolutely have a journey ahead of me if I intend to listen to all of your lectures, which I do but may not accomplish, I am already empowered and educated by your discussions and teachings of leadership principals.
This comes at a time 1 year after I was promoted to my first ever leadership position. It is more of a substitutional and understudy type role. I never truly have the final say on important matters. I still have people seeking my attention, seeking my training, obeying my orders, and following my lead, but I am constantly undermined or out ranked by my leader who I work alongside. In essence I feel like I am driving a driver’s ed vehicle where I can go and do as I will but there is always someone in the passenger seat with their foot hovering on the break.
While I have grown naturally through exposure and through very very little mentoring by my company, I still have a long way to go before I would consider myself an adept leader. I make mistakes daily and watch opportunities whizz by while I try to figure out what to do. I have many victories, but am frequently humbled as well.
As you might be able to imagine based on how my company promotes, many other leaders in the company including my head leader are not so adept on core leadership principles either. There are a few astounding leaders in the higher up positions, but our company never offered leadership training to most people and only promoted those that were good at their work, not necessarily those who showed leadership aptitude. I was given an online course on leadership and had weekly mentor meetings with higher ups but it ended up being discontinued as soon as the pandemic hit. Those meetings helped a lot, but even still they never talked much about leadership principles I could chew on and while my team leader was supposed to be involved, they were so undertrained and unconditioned they could not think of one thing to teach me or discuss in a 1 on 1 meeting.
This being said, I absolutely want something better for my team. I want to set examples that other leaders might be able to pick up on. However, in my position and rank, I feel like if I impose I will be disrespected by my leadership peers. I have tried to exercise some of your principles and already I am being met with abrasion from my leader. As the way I act under the principals is not how things are normally handled by them.
In secret, every day after I get into work and find a moment to write (most often during my breaks) I type out everything I remembered from the podcast that day. Anything that stood out to me or made me feel an “ah ha!” moment. I then will write a subtext of examples I have experienced in the past that relates to the entry, and then create an exercise for myself so that when the opportunity comes up again I can try one of your principles to see how it fairs. I review my notes daily and have grown to enjoy adding to them. It’s only been 2 weeks since I began and I have pages filled. It has become quite the hobby.
So far, one of the hardest things is ownership.
And judging by how often you talk about it and the fact that you have a book titled “extreme ownership” I know how important ownership is. In fact, I have found ownership and the emotional response to it is probably the core essence of human nature. Anything from declaring war to being upset with traffic. It’s all ownership at its core. When things we own are threatened or praised it squeezes out an emotional response. “Someone is in my way? How dare they!”. “Someone wasted my time!? Inconceivable!”. “Someone offends my way of life? Kill them all!”
And speaking on ownership, at work in my environment it’s so hard to own a mistake of a subordinate even if the fault is entirely on them. It is so hard to take ownership of a mistake from a subordinate that resulted from an order from me while my leader pins the fault on the subordinate, even when ethically I KNOW the right thing to do is own it. It’s hardest when my peers have their sights on the worker. It is so difficult to hold ownership when my leader wants to be out for blood and complains of under training and does not want to look bad to higher ups. While it’s tough and causes agony to me to throw myself in the fire, I still take the responsibility and ownership when I can. When I do this it feels like I am sticking up for those that are under me, making myself look bad to my leader, cleaning up after the leader and leading for them, and causing the leader frustration because I am stepping in. Is this how it should feel? Am I doing it right?
This letter is in part a thank you for your contribution to the leadership world and giving guidance to those who seek it. And you do this podcast without asking for money so it doesn’t feel like a pay-to-win deal and some scam that claims to make you a better leader in 30 days and 20 bullet points. You just bring what you know to the microphone and let people listen to you like a guy telling stories around a campfire. Not only do you bring your own stories but you bring passages from authors throughout time and space to reinforce. Thank you for allowing us to listen and learn.
But I also wanted to ask.
When I feel the pressure from my peers to act like them. When they think they know how to handle situations because that’s how they always handled them and never stopped to think how it affects the team. When they have the best interest of their ego and how they look to higher ups instead of how they make the team feel. When they lack team building skills or interest in the team. When I work alongside these people as leaders and they have a little more power than I do. How do I act and deal with that? How do I introduce basic leadership principles to someone that is supposed to be training me? How do I practice these leadership principles when I am technically not the leader of my team but still expected to be one by job description?
If you have previously touched this topic in one or a few of your podcasts please direct me to them!
Thanks again Jocko, you’re truly a gift with your lectures and demeanor.
I’ma straight shooter and I meant it in a way to describe myself to my bro and a fellow Detroit vet. Based on one of your podcasts it seems like you made it a rare and scarce quality for a man to have naturally. My house has been hacked by the news, people that spy on the Trump administration, and I’m prob known as the fall guy. Because I noticed these fuckers reacting to my actions through the TV, YouTube, CNN news, and anywhere because I figured out there grand scheme by myself because I realized that all the news did was focus on death, violence, and nonstop propaganda on American citizens which is the worst thing to do during the crisis time which we face. Fuck those guys I want payback. Would you invite me to your podcasts to talk about my experience? Thx Broncko👆
Next book. Planning. There are some great life lessons here. The Agile software world needs to understand what planning really means. This is it!