Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

But what I can tell you is this: when it comes to performance standards, It’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.

Laws of Combat that Jocko had taught us: Cover and Move, Simple, Prioritize and Execute, and Decentralized Command

How is it possible that switching a single individual—only the leader—had completely turned around the performance of an entire group? The answer: leadership is the single greatest factor in any team’s performance. Whether a team succeeds or fails is all up to the leader. The leader’s attitude sets the tone for the entire team. The leader drives performance—or doesn’t. And this applies not just to the most senior leader of an overall team, but to the junior leaders of teams within the team.

They almost certainly

Leaders must accept total responsibility, own problems that inhibit performance, and develop solutions to those problems. A team could only deliver exceptional performance if a leader ensured the team worked together toward a focused goal and enforced high standards of performance, working to continuously improve.

by his very position as leader—received the most scrutiny from the instructor staff.

The good leaders took ownership of the mistakes and shortfalls. That’s the key difference. And how do you think their SEAL platoons and task units reacted to this type of leadership?”

“They must have respected that,”

All they did was make excuses and ultimately never made the adjustments necessary to fix problems.

The best leaders checked their egos, accepted blame, sought out constructive criticism, and took detailed notes for improvement.

you know who I blamed?” I asked, pausing

slightly for this to sink in. “Me,” I said. “I blamed me.”

I continued: “As the commander, everything that happened on the battlefield was my responsibility. Everything. If a supporting unit didn’t do what we needed it to do, then I hadn’t given clear instructions. If one of my machine gunners engaged targets outside his field of fire, then I had not ensured he understood where his field of fire was. If the enemy surprised us and hit us where we hadn’t expected, then I hadn’t thought through all the possibilities. No matter what, I could never blame other people when a mission went wrong.”