Mastering Leadership and Influence

Jocko Willink: "Become A Dangerous Man Others Respect" - Master Power, Influence & Discipline

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In this stimulating interview, Tom Bilyeu converses with Jocko Willink, a decorated former Navy SEAL and best-selling author, about leadership, influence, and discipline. They discuss the importance of mutual influence, respect, and trust in building strong relationships. Jocko emphasizes learning from past experiences and adapting to challenges. The conversation also touches on his children's books, which impart important life lessons in a fun and engaging way. Through various stories and insights, Jocko shares how to cultivate strength, character, and resilience, both as individuals and as leaders.

Highlights

Jocko discusses how allowing others to influence you increases your own influence 🤩.
Understanding human nature is crucial for effective leadership 🧐.
Jocko outlines how stepping back helps in making clearer decisions 👀.
His children's books teach discipline and overcoming challenges in a relatable way 🤗.
The importance of building meaningful relationships and earning trust is emphasized 🤝.
Jocko shares lessons learned from military experiences that apply to everyday life 🌟.

Key Takeaways

Influence and respect are earned through openness and reciprocity 👐.
Effective leadership involves understanding human nature and emotional control 😇.
Building trust is crucial; relationships rely on shared values and transparency 🤝.
Jocko's children's books offer valuable life lessons around discipline and resilience 📚.
Practicing self-control and stepping back from chaos can improve leadership skills 🧘.

Overview

In this engaging episode of Impact Theory, host Tom Bilyeu sits down with Jocko Willink, a former Navy SEAL, to delve into the dynamics of influence and leadership. They explore the idea that to gain influence, one must also be open to being influenced. Jocko provides riveting anecdotes from his time in the military to illustrate key leadership principles.

Jocko emphasizes the need for mutual respect and how it correlates with the ability to influence others. He draws from his experiences to show how true leadership requires understanding and manipulating human nature for the benefit of the team and mission. His philosophy revolves around self-control and evaluative thinking in high-pressure situations.

Beyond his military and leadership insights, Jocko introduces his children's books that encapsulate core values like discipline and resilience. These materials are aimed not only at children but also serve as valuable resources for adults, offering strategies for personal development and effectiveness in various aspects of life.

Chapters

00:00 - 01:00: Influence and Respect The chapter explores the concept of reciprocal influence as a pathway to gaining influence and respect. It emphasizes that in order to influence others effectively, one must first be open to being influenced by them. The speaker advocates for a dialogue where both parties can share their ideas openly, allowing for mutual influence. This approach, where influence is a two-way street, is positioned as essential for opening minds and fostering respect, thus allowing for greater influence.
01:00 - 02:30: Introducing Jocko Willink Chapter 1: Introducing Jocko Willink - The chapter emphasizes the principle of reciprocity in leadership and interpersonal relations as highlighted by Jocko Willink. It underscores the idea that to earn respect, influence, or trust, one must first extend these qualities to others. Treating others with respect, listening actively, and understanding them leads to mutual respect and increased influence. This foundational concept encapsulates the essence of effective leadership as practiced and advocated by Jocko Willink.
02:30 - 09:00: Leadership Principles and Field Manual This chapter introduces the speaker, a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer, a New York Times best-selling author, and the host of a top-rated podcast. The focus is on leadership principles, drawing from the speaker's experiences and expertise in both the military and entrepreneurial ventures. The chapter emphasizes the application of these principles in real-world scenarios and the speaker's role in various successful business endeavors.
09:00 - 15:00: Building Relationships and Trust in Leadership In this chapter, the discussion revolves around building relationships and trust in leadership, highlighting the accomplishments of Jocko Willink. During his service in Iraq, he earned the Bronze and Silver Stars for his valor in combat. Under his leadership, Task Unit Bruiser became the most highly decorated special operations unit in the war. The chapter also mentions his authorship of notable books on leadership, showcasing his extensive experience and insights in the field.
15:00 - 21:00: Decision Making and Ego in Leadership The chapter discusses the impact of leadership and how reading books has played a crucial role in the author's success. The author mentions how people often ask about the books that influenced their life trajectory. They have created a list of impactful books, with 'Extreme Ownership' ranking highly, suggesting its significant influence on the author's perspective on leadership and success.
21:00 - 29:00: Navigating Leadership Challenges and Human Nature This chapter delves into the challenges of leadership and understanding human nature. The author discusses the transformative power of adopting a mindset that embraces ownership of both problems and solutions, as highlighted in Carol Dweck's book 'Mindset.' This approach has significantly benefited the author in improving business relationships. The chapter also touches on the excitement of exploring leadership themes further by developing a field manual, emphasizing key leadership rules the author aims to convey.
29:00 - 46:00: Children's Books and Lessons from "The Way of the Warrior Kid" This chapter discusses the concept of 'extreme ownership' and 'the dichotomy of leadership', illustrating these principles through war stories and business examples. The author co-wrote the book with Leif Babin, a fellow Navy SEAL, and emphasizes the straightforward approach they took in conveying their ideas. The chapter also hints at the authors' consulting business, through which they engage in discussions on these principles during their travels.
46:00 - 51:00: Final Thoughts and Impact of Jocko's Work Jocko discusses the common issue people face in applying learned principles to real-life problems. Through his podcast, he provides guidance on practical applications of these principles, especially in complex situations such as when dealing with credit-hungry bosses. He illustrates the gap between knowing a principle and effectively acting on it, emphasizing his role in helping bridge this gap through his advice and discussions.

Jocko Willink: "Become A Dangerous Man Others Respect" - Master Power, Influence & Discipline Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 if i want to gain the ability to influence you well then what i have to do is give you the ability to influence me and when i say hey here's what we're trying to make happen here's what i want to do and you say well i think we should do it like this you know what i should say okay well let's take a look at that the more i allow you to influence me the more open your mind gets for me to influence you so that's that's that's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna allow you to influence me and the more i allow that to happen the more
00:30 - 01:00 influence i'm gonna have respect same thing if i treat you like you're a plebe like you don't matter you're not gonna respect me at all but if i treat you with respect when you try and talk to me i listen and i respect what you're saying and i try and understand it fully then your respect for me is going to go up as well so when you want to earn respect give respect when you want to earn influence give influence we want to earn trust give trust all those three are related
01:00 - 01:30 [Music] hey everybody welcome to impact theory today's guest is a retired u.s navy seal officer and new york times best-selling author he's also the host of the top-rated jocko podcast and the co-founder of echelon front and partner in origen maine
01:30 - 02:00 during his time in iraq he was awarded the bronze and silver stars for his actions in battle and under his leadership task unit bruiser became the most highly decorated special operations unit in the war so please help me in welcoming the author of extreme ownership the dichotomy of leadership and most recently leadership strategy and tactics the decorated combat veteran and children's author jocko willink thanks robbie appreciate it thanks for being here dude
02:00 - 02:30 doing good so your thoughts on leadership have been really impactful for me i have a list because people would ask me all the time what books i read because in no uncertain terms my success is in direct correlation to the number of books that i've read and so people started asking me like what have you read how did you change your trajectory in life and so i made sort of my ultimate playlist of books and extreme ownership i think comes in number two behind the only book that i think is maybe more foundational which
02:30 - 03:00 is mindset by carol dweck but when i read your book man i was like [ __ ] the notion of just own it like take it in own it own the solution as well as the problem was really transformative for me and has played out wonderfully in terms of my business relationships so seeing you continue to go deeper on themes of leadership and now making a field manual has been really exciting for me what are some of the rules of leadership that you wanted to get across in the new field manual
03:00 - 03:30 so what happens is with extreme ownership with the dichotomy of leadership we get these principles across when we did it in the most simple straightforward possible way that we could which is we tell a war story we tell what the principle is and then we show an example from the business world and i'm saying we because i wrote these books with a buddy of mine leif babin that i was in the seal teams with and so that's what we did and it's pretty straightforward but you know we have a consulting company too so as we go around and talk to people we start
03:30 - 04:00 hearing questions and then i have a podcast and people send me questions all the time and these questions are really about how do i take these principles because they get the principles they can explain the principle they can quote you the principal but then they get faced with a problem and they don't understand how to actually apply the principle so on my podcast i was answering these questions all the time of hey what do i do when what i do when my boss wants all the credit what
04:00 - 04:30 do i do and and and what do i do when i've got a young individual that has a lot of potential but they're not really taking advantage of it they're not motivated to make things happen what do i do then and question after question after question after question and i realized okay i need to actually put these principles in a field manual that people can pragmatically take the lessons take the principles and apply them to what's happening in the world and that's what i try to do in the
04:30 - 05:00 in the new field manual so i'm writing a book now that's sort of conceptually about building yourself how you use beliefs values your sense of identity all that stuff to change the direction of your life by changing the way that you think one of the things i'm finding most difficult in putting the book together is like the order so what do you need to understand first what do you need to do first when you were putting this together you have like 80 some chapters how did you decide the order like what is leadership building block number one
05:00 - 05:30 well actually what i did was i started off with what i considered leadership building blocks one two and three from my life from the seal teams when i got to the seal teams my first three seal platoons this is the 1990s there's no war going on and i looked at these situations and said okay these are things that i took from these specific events or these specific scenarios and i applied those
05:30 - 06:00 for the rest of my career and for the rest of my life and i apply them today and so what i did was i started off by telling these three stories about my first platoon my second platoon my third platoon my first platoon to summarize the story we were doing a training operation we get into this tactical situation everyone in my platoon is focused on one area everyone's looking down their weapons waiting for a threat to expose itself which means you got 16 guys looking down their weapons and i'm waiting for someone to make a call i was a new guy
06:00 - 06:30 i'm waiting for someone above me in the chain of command to say hey move here or hey move forward or make some kind of a decision and as i'm waiting no one's doing it so so i'm a new guy i'm scared to say anything and i know i shouldn't say anything so i'm just waiting and no one's giving an order no one's giving any direction so i wait longer and this goes on for probably 30 seconds or a minute which is a really long time when you're trying to take down a target and finally i said to myself all right i'm gonna see what's going on so i actually point my weapon at the ceiling
06:30 - 07:00 and i take a step back and i just look around and and i see that every single person in my platoon including my platoon commander including the assistant platoon commander including the platoon leading petty officer everyone is just focused on their weapons and no one's making a decision and i can see this and because i'm looking around and i'm detached from the scenario just by just by eight inches i stepped back stepped back to look around i can see what decision needs to be made
07:00 - 07:30 and so i i summoned up as much courage as i could as a new guy because new guys don't make decisions and i said hold left clear right which is a basic command that we had rehearsed and you would practice and i expected someone to say you know shut up shut up jocko but instead they repeated the command they all said hold left clear right which means we were going to execute it and sure enough the guys in the left held and the guys in the right cleared and we got done and instead of someone saying hey you need to keep your mouth shut like one of the more senior guys said hey good job up there way to make a
07:30 - 08:00 call so i looked at it i said wait a second how could i have an as a new guy have made a decision in that situation that was better than what the more senior more experienced guys were making and i realized it was because i took a step back and detached from it so at that moment i said to myself okay from now on when i get into these tactical scenarios i'm gonna take a step back and i'm gonna try and look around and i'm gonna try and detach myself from the chaos and the mayhem and i started doing it all the time in
08:00 - 08:30 every tactical situation in the land warfare in the mountains in the urban environments i was doing it all the time and i was able to like see what was happening it was like a superpower to be able to see what was happening and make decisions and so then i actually started doing it when i was having conversations and if you and i were in disagreement and you started getting emotional instead of me getting emotional back at you i would just take a step back and be like oh okay he's really he's really
08:30 - 09:00 concerned about this why is he so concerned what does he see that i don't see and i started actually just detaching all the time and that became a very powerful tool in leadership that i used to this day my second platoon we have a great platoon chief we have a great platoon lpo we have a great assistant platoon commander but our platoon commander the guy actually in charge of the whole tune he's not very experienced he had come from a different job in the
09:00 - 09:30 navy so he didn't have a lot of experience and which is fine like it's okay to be inexperienced as a leader you can get through that as long as you're humble and you listen and you take advice from other people you're gonna you should be able to do fine no one expects you to know everything as a leader but he didn't do that he didn't listen he didn't take advice he didn't take guidance everything was like his way or the highway and eventually we in the platoon got kind of fed up with it and we had a mutiny inside of our platoon we went to our commanding
09:30 - 10:00 officer and said hey sir we don't want to work for our platoon commander he he doesn't listen he's arrogant and eventually what ended up happening was this guy got fired as our platoon commander and that left an impact on me because as i'm watching this going i'm thinking myself why don't we like this guy why doesn't anyone want to listen to this guy why don't we want to follow this guy and the reason because he was arrogant and he didn't listen and he didn't give us any ownership of everything everything was about him and that would that would have made an impression on me that would have left a mark but
10:00 - 10:30 the mark got left even more clearly because when that guy got fired the guy that came in and took over for him was was like i hate to use the word legendary but he was a pretty legendary seal had a ton of experience he'd come up through the ranks and he had been stationed at every different kind of seal team and he took over as platoon commander and i kind of thought to myself well he's going to take over because we're a bunch of mutineers and they need to put someone really strong that's going to like whip us back into shape so i was
10:30 - 11:00 anticipating that we were gonna have this super hardcore guy and and this guy shows up and he's got a nice smile on his face and he's super humble and i remember one of the first things he said to us was like i look forward to working with you guys and i was that word right there i'm gonna work with you guys not not i'm in charge i'm glad i'm taking over i'm glad to be your commander there's nothing like that he said hey i'm looking forward to working with you guys so all of a sudden it was totally different and he started putting
11:00 - 11:30 us in charge of things instead of him coming up with a plan he would say hey you guys come up with a plan and let me know how you want to do it and all of a sudden we had all this ownership and that made me reflect on the way the first guy had acted compared to way this guy had acted and i realized how important it was to be a humble leader and to listen to other people and to give ownership to other people so that was the second platoon and then in the third platoon the story that i tell is we were it was a good solid platoon and we had a good
11:30 - 12:00 platoon commander and we were out in the desert doing some training and uh some targets popped up it's just fake it's just it's not war but we start engaging the targets like we're supposed to and everyone gets in the prone position and is returning fire and i did what i had been doing this whole time which was detached i kind of took a step back took shot a couple rounds then kind of pulled back and looked to see what was going on and i saw the call that needed to be made and i gave the platoon commander a couple seconds to make a call and he didn't make it so you know i call i made
12:00 - 12:30 the call peel left and everyone said okay peel left and we peeled left and we left the scenario and we got our distance and then we stopped the training exercise and we did a little debrief and during the debrief the platoon commander you know he said to me well why did you make that call and i said well i could see what we needed to do you know and you hadn't made a call so i you know i made the call and he goes well i actually didn't want to peel left i wanted to assault the target and and right there in that split second i kind of thought to myself
12:30 - 13:00 well like part of my ego flared up and i was kind of thinking i could have said something along the lines of well you need to make a call faster if you're not going to step up and lead then i'm going to do it like i could have said that but i realized at that moment in time wait a second i didn't need to make a call the problem could have developed more but for some reason i thought that i needed to be the guy and i said no you know what you don't need to be the guy your leader you need to support your leader and it's not about you
13:00 - 13:30 and so that right there also changed my attitude because then from then on in my career and in my life i realized hey i don't always need to be the center of attention which is what our ego wants us to do our ego always wants it to be about us and it's not about us it's not about us at all in fact in a situation like that where the platoon commander wants to do something maybe he sees something that i don't see maybe he's got a different strategic objective that he wants to accomplish and i'm undermining that and what does that do to our platoon hey it makes me feel great because i think oh yeah i might
13:30 - 14:00 not be the guy in charge but i'm out here making the calls that's your ego and what you have to do is subordinate your ego and be supportive of the person that's in charge and you move forward together as a team because that's what it's about it's not about me it's about the team and so when you ask me how do i start off the book and how did i figure out what order to go in that's what i started with these three kind of foundational things and you know i built on those things and obviously the book extreme ownership which you mentioned
14:00 - 14:30 that became kind of the core tenet of the way i think but those seeds were planted in those earlier platoons and so although i built upon those things it was those three fundamental lessons that i started with and so that's what i started the book with knowing that you get that sense and the way that you structured things they do build on each other and it's you know building a mindset and having the principles to act through
14:30 - 15:00 is i think really effective and if i you call it out as being a field manual and i think it feels like that like even if that had not been on the cover you you start to get the sense of okay wait one thing is going to stack to the next is going to stack to the next and also there there are sort of larger movements in the book one of them you touched on a little bit here i'd like to go deeper on is the notion of relationships and you talk about how important relationships are and how especially in the military in such high
15:00 - 15:30 pressure situations how do you build those relationships so that they're really meaningful so that in the dichotomy of leadership you talk a lot about you can be too friendly but you can also be too distant so in a field manual sense how do i like and i ask myself this as the ceo right there are days that i want to come and and play with my teammates right like i care about them and i want them to know that like i really do care like as a human being and so you want to sort of be in it some days and play and and just be you know
15:30 - 16:00 one of the the guys as it were but i do worry about going too far and then you don't have the distance to get the things done that need to be done so how do you build those kind of lasting and useful relationships yeah this is when when i say that relationships are the most important thing in getting things done when i look back at my career in the navy and the seal teams just about every single thing that i
16:00 - 16:30 ever did was through relationships so the amount of times that i looked at one of my subordinates and said no you will do what i'm saying because i'm in charge i don't think i actually honestly ever said that one single time i think it was always hey this is what we got to get done how do you think we should do it do you think this is smart and it was all based on relationships and up the chain of command too there was never a time that one of my bosses said
16:30 - 17:00 hey jocko shut up and you do what i told you to do there was never a time that one of my bosses said that to me there was you know if i had a question if i pushed back they gave me legitimate answers if they didn't have good answers then they would modulate or change what it is that they were telling me to do so this idea of having relationships up and down the chain of command and and there's a word that people bring up a lot and i think they're pretty interchangeable and it's relationships and trust right it's relate trust
17:00 - 17:30 is built on relationships relationships are built on trust if you don't trust me we don't really have a relationship the more deeply you trust me the better relationship we have so how do i build trust with you so if you're above me in the chain of command well this and this is one of those uh answers that's so obvious it's it's crazy but people actually fail to do this which is if if you ask me to do something as my boss i do it and i do it well and i do it consistently and i go above and beyond
17:30 - 18:00 what you ask and if you want me to deliver this project by this date i deliver it earlier and i deliver it to the best of my ability above and beyond what you expected and you say oh wow when i ask jonko to do something he actually does it and that's where it starts it starts with that right there with me performing me offering advice me me taking what you asked me to do and doing it that's the number one thing if we flip those roles and now i'm in charge of you how do i build trust with you well what i do is i
18:00 - 18:30 give you a project and instead of me giving you a project and then saying hey here's how i want you to do this and here's how i want you to the next part instead i say hey here's a project let me know how you want to do it and then you go figure out how you want to get done and i don't micromanage you and i don't ask you a million questions about and and tell you no don't do it like that do it like this i let you do it and what does that tell you that tells you that i trust you i trust you and when i trust you you start to trust me and by the way
18:30 - 19:00 if something goes wrong instead of me jumping down your throat and hanging you out to dry and making you an example in front of everyone i say hey let's figure out what went wrong did i not support you well enough did i not give you what you needed and so you realize oh he's not going to hang me out to dry he's going to give me the support he's going to try and teach me if something goes wrong instead of trying to drop the hammer on me and in order to do this properly of course let's say you just started working for me the first thing i would hand you wouldn't be a massively strategic
19:00 - 19:30 important project and say hey here's the here's you know here's a multi-million dollar project you take and run with it i'll be over here i trust you you make it happen because i don't know you how can i trust you if i don't know you so i'm gonna give you a smaller project i'm gonna give you something a little to start on and then you do that you do that well boom now i'm gonna give you something bigger and we continue to go in that direction until pretty much we get to a point where all i really have to tell you is hey this is the vision this is what we're trying to make happen run with it if you go if you if you need to pass this
19:30 - 20:00 barrier of whatever kind let me know so i can let everyone else know but it's on you run with it um one thing that i think i've struggled with as a leader is i my success is all predicated on being the unreasonable man and i don't know if you've ever heard that quote um bertrand russell i think he said all progress depends or the the reasonable man conforms to the world the unreasonable man insists that the world conform to him therefore all progress
20:00 - 20:30 depends on the unreasonable man and i have literally proven that in my life like everything has been an echo of everyone's saying something couldn't be done and then me going in and it's a game i play called no [ __ ] what would it take and then you figure out what it would take to do this thing everybody else just writes off because they say it's impossible going in and doing it so then as things settle and now it's not just me sort of having to be this chaotic madman to get everything done you've got a team the temptation is when you assign something to somebody and they tell you that that's impossible the reaction is
20:30 - 21:00 to basically give them all the parameters of the job and say no it is possible go go go and i think that ends up robbing agency from people because i have to like be so aggressive just to convince them that it is possible and so where i would love to hear your thoughts is how much of the parameters of the project do you give someone like if you say i know this can be done in a week i know it can be done on this budget and you say that hey get this done like it can't be done then of course to convince them what i
21:00 - 21:30 do is i give them the path and i say well if you did this it would work do we agree and then when they agree they can go do it but by then i've now taken all of that ownership away from them and they're just executing on exactly my plan and so i know i'm not getting what you're talking about so it's like [ __ ] do i really just back off and go i know it's not impossible but it's impossible if i don't want to ruin this relationship how do you handle situations like that i ask questions now when i ask questions
21:30 - 22:00 this is a this is a tool but it's also legitimate questions so when i say hey tom here's the project i want you to get done can you take a look at it and tell me how you want to get it done and you come back to me you know three days later and you say hey boss i was looking at this thing and it's just not possible and i don't say well actually it is possible so i've already thought it through here's how here's how you need to do it instead i go well what's what what do you think our real challenges are and then you say well you
22:00 - 22:30 know we can't get the supplies in time and then you say well and also we don't have enough manning and i say okay well how what's taken the supplies so long to get here and you say well you know they're coming across the country on a truck and so it's going to take you know a week and a half for them to get here and we don't have enough people because it's going to take 190 man hours in this amount of time and and i only have three guys so it's impossible and i go is there any other way to ship stuff across the country
22:30 - 23:00 and you say well i mean i guess we could we could fly but it's going to be more expensive oh okay well how much more expensive you see what i'm saying right and so eventually eventually you're going to come to the solution you're going to come to the solution and and i'm going to be happy that you come to solution or there's a chance that you actually say hey jocko it's it's not possible and here's why and you tell me something that i didn't i didn't foresee because i'm at a higher level i'm elevated i'm working on i'm overseeing 14 different projects you
23:00 - 23:30 just got one when you dig in and you pull the thread you realize it can't be done i go oh okay well i that makes sense okay yeah i uh i love that and you have two elements that i'll say maybe are a dichotomy but i'll be interested to hear what you think which is your you always soft shoe it a little bit to talk about it is kind of manipulation uh and then truth and you have chapters on both in the book
23:30 - 24:00 where do you come down on how just sort of transparent you are versus knowing i have an outcome that i need to get to i'm realistic about human psychology if i just come in and [ __ ] give you the answer it doesn't work you feel robbed of your agency and your ownership and so i have to get you there slowly but i'm also trying not to make it obvious that i'm leading you there i'm legitimately asking these questions i'm not i'm not doing this okay well we're going to get you there and that's what's going to happen i already know the outcome no i i think i know the outcome but i'm not sure of it you know
24:00 - 24:30 how many times i'm sure of what the outcome's going to be not very often so that the truth is i i am i'm being totally transparent i'm asking legitimate questions i think i know the answers i think they're going to lead to the right place and so it's okay to let that run its course now you talked about manipulation manipulation obviously has a bad connotation leadership has a good connotation what's the difference between the two because guess what if i'm manipulating you i'm trying to get you to do something
24:30 - 25:00 if i'm leading you i'm trying to get you to do something and many of the tools are very similar so what's the difference between me leading you and me manipulating you it's very easy for me to answer that question if i'm manipulating you i'm trying to get you to do something that's going to benefit me if i'm leading i'm trying to get you to do something that's going to benefit you it's going to benefit the team and it's going to
25:00 - 25:30 benefit the mission so for me those are those are too easy those are too easy it's it's real obvious and and by the way if i'm a manipulator i can get away with that for a little while but eventually you're going to look at me for what i am you're going to see that the maneuvers i'm making the tools i'm using i'm utilizing those tools for my own benefit and as soon as you see that you you won't fully support me you you won't the same goes for when i'm trying to make you do something good for yourself and for the team you're going to see
25:30 - 26:00 that too and you're going to say he's he actually cares about me that's what he's doing this for and when you know i care about you you'll do anything for me i mean that's what it boils down to if my team and i i mention that in the book it's like oh i want to give you hard criticism how do i give you hard criticism the first thing i have to do is make sure that you understand i care about you which is not which is not easy to do and it's not always obvious but if you know that more than anything else what i want is for you to be successful when i say
26:00 - 26:30 hey tom i'm looking at the outcome of the last project and you were like three weeks past the time i think there's some things that we could do to kind of make you a little bit more efficient in leading these things if you know that my number one thing is that i care about you you're gonna be all ears to an extent because guess what percentage of the world is truly open for criticism what's the number oh it's tiny
26:30 - 27:00 there's so few people that are truly open to criticism i i always use this example like if if i went and talked to your company and got done and was like you know hey tom you know it's great talking your company you got any feedback for me and you said well yeah you know i think you could have spent a little more time talking about extreme ownership it would have been a little bit better for my crew and in the back of my mind i'm thinking oh really oh you think no that's what we even though even though i actually asked for
27:00 - 27:30 feedback i'm getting getting mad my ego is perking up so most of the time people don't want to get that direct feedback and and in fact sometimes when i hear people say you know i'm just going to get direct with this person you know i'm just going to i'm just going to let them know exactly what they're screwing up almost always that's a bad idea now and there's some people that sit there and they say well that's weak or whatever but it's not because i'm gonna get the message to
27:30 - 28:00 you i'm just gonna deliver it in a way that you accept it more that your mind is open to it that that's what i'm trying to do as a leader as a friend as someone that cares about you hey look i need to get this information to you now this will escalate over time and if i've tried you know if i said hey hey tom i think we could do this better and you still fail and i say hey tom maybe you should try this and you still fail i know and then i say hey tom i think this is the way you should go and you still fail and then i you know i'm going to get to a point where i'm saying listen tom this isn't working the way
28:00 - 28:30 you are doing this is not working and i told you this and i told you that and i told you the other thing and what i'm trying to say is that you need to change this part of your game it is hurting you so sometimes it gets there where i've i've totally exhausted every conversation that i can think of you know how often i escalated to that point in my career my life like almost never almost never do you get someone
28:30 - 29:00 that is so thick-headed that they're not going to listen to you and when they are it's because they have a giant ego it's because they their ego they can't see the fact that oh i'm making some real bad mistakes and by the way when you've delivered them that final message of like hey here's exactly what you're screwing up what they say is you know no you just don't know what it's like in my shoes and that's when you know you can't help them what is it you've you've said that your entire podcast is about human nature
29:00 - 29:30 why is that so important to spend that kind of time on what is it you see that you want to communicate well if you want to be a good leader you have to understand human nature and the places where human nature reveals itself most clearly are times of extreme sorrow pain suffering and inhumanity so if you want to see what happens to
29:30 - 30:00 human beings how they behave see what they do in a concentration camp if you want to understand humans better understand what they do in the genocide in rwanda when 800 000 people were killed in a hundred days mostly with machetes there's something going on there that we need to understand if you want to understand leadership you want to understand human nature you need to look at the milai massacre which
30:00 - 30:30 happened in vietnam which was perpetrated by american soldiers normal american soldiers normal american soldiers you know you're you know you see the typical war movie they got the typical americans you know they got the kid from the city they got the kid from the country they got the jock they got the rock that's what they and that's what this was that's what that company soldiers was and they went in there and committed a heinous atrocities and if we don't recognize
30:30 - 31:00 what causes that where that comes from and that it's actually possible then it's bound to happen again you've talked on your podcast very eloquently about emotional control you've talked sort of fun and tongue-in-cheek about stuffing your emotions down um how the [ __ ] do you do that when the person you're standing next to who you love and care about just got shot like how do you not hulk out and just
31:00 - 31:30 [ __ ] shoot indiscriminately that's one of the things you have to watch out for that's why you have to understand human nature right because you have to understand and and believe me like my deployments to iraq i was 30 plus years old my last deployment to iraq i think it was 34 35 years old but that's me i'm a 35 year old man with a wife and kids i have guys in my platoons that are 20 years old 21 years old 22 years old i need to pay attention to them
31:30 - 32:00 because they're going to have less insight into the world and so it's going to be challenging so what we that's what we do that's what leaders are there for so we as leaders we have to constantly look at that and say okay i've got that going on and and i need to control it so when people start getting emotional when when guys get killed how do i get control over that yeah i absolutely have to control my own emotions
32:00 - 32:30 because it's your guys and believe me when you lose one of your guys you want to kill everyone everyone and you know you can't and you know you shouldn't so you have to detach from your emotions you have to get control of them and you have to make sure that you lead your your men in the right direction so they don't do something that is not the right thing to do i imagine brazilian jiu jitsu is a really [ __ ] extraordinary way of
32:30 - 33:00 practicing that where and look man don't get me wrong i am in no way shape or form experience than bjj but um i know enough about it sort of from the outside to say sometimes the right answer when it seems like you should be fighting and kicking as hard as you can it's actually to relax and so having to be somewhat counterintuitive has that helped you like i'm always trying to find the thing for the guy that isn't good at this yet like what can he do to practice because you don't want to send him to afghanistan right now and say hey go out on the
33:00 - 33:30 battlefield and figure this out so what can he do or she do to practice learning to get better control of their emotions well it's interesting that you asked me that question that might one of my answers for people when they say how can i get better at detaching and control my ocean emotions i tell them to start training jiu jitsu because you're going to get tapped out in jiu jitsu your ego is going to get smacked around so hard you're going to lose your mind and what you in the work the more the
33:30 - 34:00 matter you get the more aggressive you are the more you're going to get beat down and the worse it's going to be so you have to learn to control your emotions no doubt about it and then what you have to do is you have to start practicing all the time you have to start paying attention to the to the the red flags that go up when i start raising my voice at you i go oh that's that's your emotion and for me like the minute i feel some sort of anger some sort of jealousy some sort of
34:00 - 34:30 frustration most of the time i go oh you're getting mad that's your ego that's your that's you're getting emotional about this take a step back and listen to what the other person's saying take a step back and try and see it from their perspective take a step back and try and understand what they're trying to say because sometimes you know if you're not if you're not a very articulate person you're just making me mad it's only because i don't understand
34:30 - 35:00 what you're trying to say take a step back let's talk through it so pay attention to you know i always talk about when you're sending an email to someone and you're typing like this don't don't send that email that's not a good email to send that's an emotional email wait write it out fine and then save it and read it later and you'll realize oh yeah i was really mad about something i was really frustrated so how do you do it you practice it you pay attention to your emotions and you get control over them have kids if you have kids you'll have to learn to get control
35:00 - 35:30 of your emotions how do you gain influence and respect like what's that process very similar to when we talked about trust and building trust and giving trust if i want to gain the ability to influence you well then what i have to do is give you the ability to influence me and when i say hey here's what we're trying to make happen here's what i want to do and you say well i think we should do it like this you know what i should say okay well
35:30 - 36:00 let's take a look at that the more i allow you to influence me the more open your mind gets for me to influence you so that's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna allow you to influence me and the more i allow that to happen the more influence i'm gonna have respect same thing if i treat you like you're a plebe like you don't matter you're not gonna respect me at all but if i treat you with respect and respect you when you try and talk to me
36:00 - 36:30 and i i listen and i respect what you're saying and i try and understand it fully then your respect for me is gonna go up as well so when you wanna when you wanna earn respect give respect when want to earn influence give influence we want to earn trust give trust all those three are related no that makes a lot of sense and speaking of making sense your children's books are rad rad and this is one of those things where uh for better or worse the lesson
36:30 - 37:00 i had to learn was to toughen up so by nature i am um conciliatory i am fearful and that was not getting me anywhere in life and so i had to find the gym i had to put myself in situations where i was forced to stand my ground against people that were very intimidating and it was like coming up in business for me was literally a uh it was it was a brutal environment and it was perfect
37:00 - 37:30 it was exactly what i needed and like that's becoming i don't know passe for people and it seems sort of middle ages now to to have to sort of scrap and fight your way up but there is something in that process of of getting tougher that gives you your own agency like i feel like i control my own life now in a way that i did not before i learned how to and look when i say learn how to fight i'm talking intellectually but having to stand up for myself having to always be in deeply uncomfortable positions and then also physically getting tougher
37:30 - 38:00 through just adding strength to my body what made you want to write children's books and what are some of the core principles you hope kids take away from that well i decided to write kids books because i have four kids and if you go out into the market these days and look for a book for kids that actually espouses the values that will make them lead a good life there aren't very many
38:00 - 38:30 so instead of complaining about it i said okay well i'll write some books and the first book that i wrote was the way the warrior kid which is about a little kid who can't do any pull-ups so he gets made fun of doesn't know his times tables so he gets made fun of doesn't know how to swim so he gets made fun of and gets picked on by the school bully so his life is miserable last day of school kind of everything comes to a head he's crying behind the library on his way home he remembers that his uncle jake is coming to stay with him
38:30 - 39:00 for the summer his uncle jake was in the seal teams so his uncle jake is actually staying in his bedroom with him so they you know uncle jake shows up and says hey you know what do you want to do tomorrow you don't have to go to school you want to go for a swim you want to go play basketball what do you want to do and the young kid named mark says well you know i don't know how to swim i'm not good at sports i can't do anything and i'm getting picked on he breaks down and his uncle jake says well okay let's look at these problems all these different problems that you have we can solve these problems
39:00 - 39:30 but you have to be committed you have to be able to willing to put in the work and so over the course of the summer he teaches him how to study teaches him to eat right teaches them how to work out teaches him how to swim and teaches him jiu jitsu so he knows how to fight and it's obviously it's uh transformational for the kid he ends up writing his own warrior kid code about being a warrior and that's what the story is i i
39:30 - 40:00 was telling you earlier i get little handwritten notes from kids all over the world that say you know dear mr jocko or dear uncle jake i'm six years old i just did my first pull-up and i know my times table's up to five thank you melvin and those are the most rewarding things that that i get
40:00 - 40:30 are those things but there was a really interesting i got i got a letter and i know you get all kinds of stuff from people that say hey thank you thank you for doing this thank you for showing me the path whatever and i get a lot of those and i never read them on my podcast i always read them but i never read them but i got one this let this letter from this guy and it was it was a great letter and he says you know i'm 37 years old i was out of shape i was overweight i was eating horribly i wasn't advancing in my job wasn't happy wasn't getting along with
40:30 - 41:00 my wife and he goes then i read your book he goes and i started with i started waking up a little early i started just doing a little bit of workout i stopped drinking beer on the road i did this i did that and he said you know it's been whatever it was it's been eight months i've lost 22 pounds i got a promotion my wife and i are happy and i just wanted to say thank you for writing that book and by the way the book was way of the warriors
41:00 - 41:30 and so that that's the one it took me by surprise you know because i've written the discipline equals freedom field manual which is really focused on this kind of stuff for adults and he read that kid's book and it's it made it had a big impact so then people say all the time hey you you flanked us because you wrote this book you said it's for kids but every one of those moms and dads that reads those books go oh this is what it is so that's how i ended up writing all these kids books just seeing how seeing the struggles that my kids went
41:30 - 42:00 through growing up and this is the other thing that made me do it was when you're when you're an adult right and your kid has some problem you're kind of like whatever you know it's you know you're running a business or like i was in the military and you know my problems are these big giant problems of of we're at war with other countries right there's guys being killed that's a problem and you know i look at my daughter and say you know oh she doesn't know her times
42:00 - 42:30 tables who cares right and what i realized is when you're a kid that's the whole world right the whole world is you're you feel stupid because you didn't know your times tables yet and that's a real story that story in the way of the warrior kid was my oldest daughter who's very smart young well she's she's old now and goes to one of the best country colleges in the world so she's not dumb but she came home from school one day and said i'm dumb and i kind of said what are you talking about she said i'm stupid i said what do
42:30 - 43:00 you mean she said all the kids know their times tables and i don't know them and i said well how much have you studied them and she said what do you mean and i said well you need to study them you need to learn them and so i sat her down we made flash cards and she studied them and in an hour she knew all of her all of her time tables of course this is my fault bad dad i didn't teach her how to study but you know in her mind she thought she was stupid but you know i said you're not born knowing the times tables you need to study them so
43:00 - 43:30 if i can make that mistake as a dad that cares about his kids how many other parents are making that mistake how many other kids go through life and they go oh i'm stupid or oh i i'm not strong i can't do any pull-ups i'm not strong actually have you ever done pull-ups before no oh guess what in order to get strong you got to do pull-ups and i talk about this in the book sure are there some kids that are going to be able to do pull-ups out of the gate sure are there kids some kids that can learn their time tables really quickly sure you're not going to you're not going to be great at
43:30 - 44:00 everything but you can get better as long as you have the discipline put your mind to it and are willing to work hard so there's the kids books dude they're so good i remember as a kid in uh middle school and we had to do pull-ups and because my last name starts with the b i was one of the first people to try so it was like my friend lauren ahrens jumps up he just hangs like am i really supposed to be able to do it and he lets go i jump up and i go to pull myself and i'm like oh this actually isn't possible like there is no way to pull yourself up like
44:00 - 44:30 this and i'm like why are they having a scissors i couldn't understand and then we get to christian russell and he bangs out 22 and i was like what like that was so startling to me that somebody who had never done a pull-up before in his life could do 22 and i was like yeah we are not all born equal some people have some advantages but unfortunately the message i did not have your book and so i did not think oh i could get good at this i just thought i suck at this and you might not be able to get to 22. and if he worked out he can get to 72 right but you can get to 17 you can get to 20. you
44:30 - 45:00 can get to one which if you can get to one you can get to three if you can get to three you can get to seven so many kids these days miss out on the fact that the correlation between working and studying and and pushing yourself to the results that you get that's one complaint that i have about or i shouldn't say complaint but it's it's what i think hurts kids is they don't connect what they're doing now with the future i know i didn't you know when i was a kid i was you know what's the future it's tomorrow
45:00 - 45:30 the future is oh the weekend on friday night we're gonna go to johnny's house and we're gonna play war that's the future you don't realize oh there's you can actually set yourself up what you're doing today is connected to the future okay once you make that connection you say okay maybe i'll study maybe i'll train maybe i'll work out harder you can start doing those things because you can improve and you can have a better life if you have discipline now it'll give you freedom in the future yeah for sure have you gotten any pushback on the fact that the way he deals with the bully is learning to
45:30 - 46:00 fight which i think is genius and the obvious answer but i wouldn't say it's the common answer i don't think i've gotten any pushback i'm sure there's people that hate me or whatever i'm sure there's people that disagree and think that the method that you should do is is turn the other cheek or or you know try and talk your way out of it the problem is you need to be in a position where you can talk your way out of it because if you're around a person that's a bully they don't understand talking they don't care what you say to them they're gonna
46:00 - 46:30 physically bully you so if you don't have the physical knowledge presence ability to stand up and stop that then you're gonna get abused you're gonna get beat up that that's hey that's the horrible reality i'm sorry i'm sorry that it is that way and as you know in the book he's actually able to once he has the confidence and the true ability he stands up to the bully and the bully is is actually a weakling he's he doesn't want to fight but he's never been challenged before
46:30 - 47:00 which is a very realistic bully bully big kid no one ever stands up to him because they're big when someone finally says oh i'll actually fight you if i have to and the bully says oh you've never been in a fight before never never had anyone stand up to him and that that makes them it makes them get humbled really quickly so and that is what happens when someone knows when someone knows how to fight you don't have to fight and that's you know that sounds like one of those like uh
47:00 - 47:30 whatever spiritual things about hey the warrior that knows how to fight mate does not have to fight it's like i'm not saying like that i'm telling you right now if you know how to fight you have a much rarer chance of going of getting into a fight when you're you know when i was a kid a younger kid you know a teenager i got a lot of fights and you could recognize when someone knew how to fight you you could look at them and now that i've been training jiu jitsu and fought a ton when i look at someone
47:30 - 48:00 you can see like oh this person knows how to fight when someone looks at me they're not thinking i'm going to take advantage it's not even just like hey this guy's big but they can tell hey you know i'll i'll fight i don't really want to because i'm busy but if you want to push me you know we're going to have a problem and it's going to get solved my way so having that is is important and i can tell you right now the amount of fights i've gotten since before i knew jiu jitsu since after is like it's a it's a it directly correlated to the more you
48:00 - 48:30 know the less you fight that is a spectacular place to wrap this particular edition up man where can people find out more about you i guess i'm on the typical social media platforms instagram facebook twitter i'm i'm at jocko willing at jacqueline willink i have a podcast called jaco podcast that we talked about it's available wherever you listen to podcasts i have my company on front which is
48:30 - 49:00 echelonfront.com and i have my company origin main which is origin main.com where we sell stuff for jiu jitsu and stuff for life like these jeans and um and then jockopodcast.com is the podcast website so yeah normally i have a pretty good guess how my guests will answer the last question with you your life is so varied i'm actually not sure what's the impact that you want to have on the world just just help people learn the lessons that i've learned so they don't have to
49:00 - 49:30 learn them for themselves there's a lot of mistakes that i've made there's a lot of i've been blessed and lucky and i explained this in leadership strategy and tactics that i've been very lucky to have been through what i've been through to been around the people that i've been around to learn the things that i've been blessed and lucky enough to be able to learn and i don't want to hoard them i want to give them away so that's why i'm doing what i'm doing and trying to help people as much as i can it's amazing guys uh you will not be sorry if you
49:30 - 50:00 dive in and read everything this man has ever written even for the adults i'm gonna tell you checking out his kids book is equally powerful he has several a coloring book by the way is out now i think or coming very soon um the podcast is surreal you you owe yourself listening to the podcast and hearing such a fascinating glimpse into the human condition uh it is it is really incredible somebody who can go from the the beauty
50:00 - 50:30 of life so quickly to the horror side of life uh and yet wrap it up and make it all make sense is really extraordinary if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care jacob [ __ ] help me i was amazing man appreciate it there's a lot of people in mediocrity who have a nice resume but they're one-timers man they hit they hit a one-time deal they busted it open got a lot of money but they're good
50:30 - 51:00 you're mediocre now man what are you [ __ ] doing today tomorrow the next [ __ ] day