Copyright © 2020 ShortForm™ | All Rights Reserved, This is a preview of the Shortform book summary of, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. They honed the principles of Extreme Ownership on the battlefield, then applied the same tenets to the corporate world as business consultants. Ego also causes you to be reactive and inhibits your ability to have productive conversations. Each leader has her own team to direct and supervise, and the top leaders can’t succeed unless the lower-level leaders do. These cookies do not store any personal information.

Each of the principles will get a more in-depth explanation in later chapters. But leaders or not, there are times in life when we all must make decisions based on an incomplete picture — for example, in healthcare decisions when you know only the likelihood of a risk but not its certainty, or in deciding whether to evacuate before a forecasted severe storm. Everyone on the team (or in the company) must be aware of everyone else’s position and objective to be able to move and act cohesively for one effort. When it feels like there are five fires that need to be put out at the same time, a leader has to be able to calmly take stock of the situation, decide what needs to happen first, and carry it out.

If the leader then explains to her team the potential hurdles and responses before executing a plan, the team is also able to quickly adapt and respond if the problem does arise. As Willink and Babin warn, the concept is simple but not easy.

If circumstances cause priorities to change mid-course, it’s essential that leaders communicate that change to higher-ups as well as lower leaders and team members. A leader should also encourage all team members, no matter how junior, to speak up if they have questions or concerns. Thorough planning can help leaders anticipate what problems may come up while carrying out a plan, and develop responses to those issues. He describes how the operation began by both the Charlie and Delta Platoons occupying their preselected locations in which they were to carry attacks from.

How can you effectively explain a strategy to your team, let alone expect them to carry it out, unless you understand and believe in the purpose, or the “why”? Owning your mistakes is a critical aspect of Extreme Ownership and requires leaders to have the humility to admit and address their mistakes in order to find a better strategy for next time.

This may not appear to have much relevance outside a warzone, but the principle of Cover and Move is teamwork. By signing up, I agree to follow Stuydpool’s Honor Code, Extreme Ownership - How US Navy SEALs Lead and Win. Everyone on the team should strive to relay information to each other simply, explicitly, and concisely, especially in times of stress. While many leadership books and training courses focus on developing individual habits and traits, leadership is inextricably tied to the team’s performance. Cutting out the fluff: you don't spend your time wondering what the author's point is. Trying to address several issues at the same time is overwhelming and inefficient. ], AH...September....my favourite month of the year......kids are back to school....the[...]. If you don’t believe in the plan, adapt it (if you have the authority to do so) to something you can stand by. This is called leading up and down the chain of command, and requires careful balance of your role as both a leader and a subordinate, effective communication, and Extreme Ownership.

On the other hand, if you are taking directions from a superior, your ego will make you less receptive to hearing and benefitting from the information. As a leader, you can consistently raise the bar by objectively assessing your team’s and your own performance. It begins when the SEAL teams receiving information of presence of enemy snipers on top of a building.

If a member of your team is underperforming, you must take it upon yourself to train and mentor that person for the good of the team. Furthermore, the mission needs to incorporate the larger purpose and goal, so that everyone, from the leader down to the lowest level employees, understands the “why.”. Simplifying a plan also requires you to narrow your focus to the most critical priorities, which helps reinforce the overarching goal for both you and your team. Nonetheless, this is absolutely necessary to learn, grow, and succeed. Every tactical level team leader must understand not just what to do but why they are doing it.

If people don’t understand the basic plan, how can they execute it? Furthermore, junior leaders need to keep senior leaders in the loop with important information and updates, so that the leaders — who are always responsible for keeping the big picture in mind — can make informed decisions.

Too much ego — whether the leader’s or a team member’s — inhibits a team’s or company’s ability to succeed. If someone on the team doesn’t agree with or understand the purpose — the “why” — of a plan, then the leader must be able to thoroughly explain it. That means neither you nor your team is on the path to achieving anything unless you first believe in it. A leader who resists stepping aside to let a team member take charge often lacks confidence in herself and fears the prospect of a subordinate outperforming her. If you keep plans simple and control what you can, your team is more likely to understand the plan and better able to adapt when something inevitably goes wrong. If a team or team member completes a task that is not up to par, the leader needs to insist that task be re-done until it meets the standard. Senior leaders need to have an understanding of the larger goal and the plan to reach it. You need to practice Extreme Ownership in order to take stock in this way, with brutal honesty and humility.

All individuals and groups within the larger organization have to do their part to contribute to the success of the greater mission. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. It may sound obvious, but a leader has to be able to develop a clear and well-thought-out plan; with a whole team of people following you, you can’t simply wing it. I trusted them.” – JOCKO WILLINK. The junior leaders and their teams may have insights that the bosses have overlooked.

Junior leaders need to ask questions when in doubt and raise concerns so that higher-ups understand potential hurdles in the execution. However, if the team member continues to fall short, the leader eventually needs to make the call to fire that person and replace him with someone more competent. They must communicate this clearly to junior leaders, so that they, too, can understand the plan and the “why” (as we discussed in Chapter 3). Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by: Here's a preview of the rest of Shortform's Extreme Ownership summary: The book’s authors, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, are both former U.S. Navy SEALs who trained SEAL leaders and led teams of their own as officers during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Decentralized Command is a form of delegating that allows leaders to stay focused on their unique job — leading the overall team in pursuit of the larger goal — by allowing each junior leader and team member under them to carry out her own unique job. Simple plans lead to success. The CEO (Chief Executive Officer) should then play the role of coordination and giving a go-ahead in execution activities. Leaders can only do this when they have a thorough understanding themselves of a plan and its larger purpose.

This is a summary of Chapter 8: Decentralized Command, from the best selling book, Extreme Ownership, written by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Once decided, the leader needs to flesh out the details of the plan in a way that uses the resources available and takes advantage of various team members’ expertise.

If a leader appears indecisive or unconfident, that her employees are more likely to start questioning her competence. The second Law of Combat is to keep things simple. Ego impedes progress; you can’t objectively assess your performance and continually look for ways to improve in the future if your ego is telling you that you did everything right. Extreme Ownership calls for leaders to take full responsibility for their failures. Leaders must be able to keep their eyes on the big picture in order to effectively prioritize. This exercise can help you make sense of it (of course, if possible, the fool-proof way to understand it is simply to ask). A team works more effectively when communication is simple and straightforward. Ego is a big threat do top performance.

Describe a recent incident in which you were working with at least one other person to accomplish something, and either you didn’t achieve it or things didn’t go as planned. If a particular team member consistently performs poorly — despite the leader’s efforts to mentor and help her improve — and is holding the team back from its potential success, the leader must remove her from the team as a means to maintain high standards. Even with the right knowledge and strategies in place, leadership comes with many challenges that must be carefully navigated. A leader is responsible for maintaining and enforcing high standards of performance as her team works toward its goals.

Explore Studypool's library of literature materials, including documents and Q&A discussions. Initial consequences for poor performance don’t need to be extreme. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Most likely, you are only dividing your attention and won’t be able to tackle any of them effectively. Finally, every leader will inevitably face failure. It was the only way to operate….In each of those situations, they led with authority and courage, making rapid, sequential, life and death decisions in harrowing situations with limited information. With a thorough understanding of the goal, it’s especially important that a leader adequately explain each mission and its “why” to her junior leaders, so that they can do the same with their teams. Leadership carries great responsibility, and a leader’s authority to direct her team means that she is also the one who must answer for the team’s performance.

A leader should explore different possible ways to achieve the mission before determining the best course of action. Again, controlling what you can makes it easier to deal with the uncontrollable. Whether on the battlefield or in corporate America, Willink and Babin found one primary trait among all successful leaders: Extreme Ownership. The success of the team as a whole must be prioritized above all else. There are times when it feels like everything goes wrong at once, and that there is no way to accomplish everything at the same time.

Effective lines of communications need be kept and decentralization of duties to junior trustees is critical.

Although sometimes it feels like your boss is creating hurdles for you to do your job, Extreme Ownership requires you to analyze what you can do to break down that barrier. Provide support and leadership for your team members, and also... Unlock the full book summary of Extreme Ownership by signing up for Shortform. As the person at the top of the chain of command, everything ultimately reflects back on you. Recognize others’ strengths and expertise and how they can help the team achieve its mission. It is your responsibility to inform everyone of your plan, how that fits into the larger vision and goal, and what you need to accomplish that. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. What’s the secret to being a great leader? How it works| Leaders can only be effective at managing a limited number of people, generally about six to 10 people.