Why You Should Take Extreme Ownership Over Your Life | Jocko Willink EP 728

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation show. today's episode is all about unlocking the power of your mind having a growth mindset is one of the most crucial decisions you can make in your life mental toughness can allow you to respond instead of react to be in control instead of out of control and give you the endurance you need to follow your dreams

0:32if you act like you know everything you're gonna get eaten alive humble quickly especially you step up into a leadership position do you know everything no

0:48you're gonna get humbled and not only that but your your troops are gonna look at you and say why are you who do you think we are do you think we're stupid their respect for you goes down. There was a blue on blue, a fratricide, meaning friendly forces killing friendly forces. And that happened. They got basically attacked by a friendly Iraqi element. And got into a gunfight with them. It was a nightmare.

1:26So, yeah, and I was in charge.

1:33When that unfolded, it's like, oh, guess whose fault this is? It's my fault. Wow. You want to talk about humbling? That's humbling.

1:50How do you transition back into a confident place? number one take ownership take extreme ownership of it if that would have happened and i would have said hey guys that wasn't my fault it was his fault and his fault and his fault people would have looked at me they know the truth the truth is i'm the guy in charge so everyone's respect level for me would have gone down the problems never get solved we never progress and their confidence in me would have gone down But when I go in and say, hey guys, look, this is what went wrong. This is my fault because I'm the guy in charge. And this is what we're going to do to fix it.

2:30Their confidence and their respect for me goes up and we can move forward.

2:38And what leadership to me, it boils down to understanding human nature. The place where human nature gets revealed most clearly is in chaotic situations. Whether it's war, whether it's a concentration camp, whether it's a prison camp, whatever that is, that's when you start to see what people, how people react. Survival situations. Yes.

3:06The thing that's driving in a corporate setting often is your ego. Which by the way is the same thing that drives a lot of things that unfold The same things that unfold in a combat scenario. It's like oh your ego is involved Hey, I think we should do this plan this way And then you think you should do it you think we should do it a different way my plans better You think your plans better we bang heads like that's bad that happens in war and it happens in the corporate society as well

3:36Egos drives all kinds of decisions that you make bad decisions it drives some good decisions too yeah right i mean it does you're ignorant not to admit that you know like i like to win at things right cool what's driving that it's 100 ego now if it goes overboard and you start making decisions so that you can win but you're stepping on the backs of other people that means you've let your ego get out of control and now you're making mistakes and that's going to end up in your downfall eventually you might get pretty far allowing your ego to smash other people and abuse other people you might get pretty far but eventually it's going to come back on you I guarantee it's going to come back on you if you want to open yourself up for a massive downfall just let your ego get out of control

4:26go forward with an open mind with a humble mind that's what you have to do as a leader

4:36can you take too much ownership yes yes you can really you yes you can i thought you said you need to take ownership of everything two different things listen to this if you're working for me and i say okay here's the mission that i want you to accomplish tonight here's the people i want you to take here's the weapons i want you to bring here's the vehicles i want you to bring here's the here's the route i want you to use to get to the target here's the method i want you to use to secure the target. Here's the route I want you to do to get back. So that's the plan. Now you take ownership and go execute.

5:09Now, can you really take ownership of that plan? If someone else gave you the whole thing. I mean, I gave you the whole thing, right? Is that your plan? No. No, it's your plan. It's my plan. So what I need to do is I say, hey, here's the plan or here's the mission. How do you want to do it? And now when you hit an obstacle in the field, what's your attitude? I need to adapt. I need to adjust. What's your plan? You'll make it win. We came up with this. yes so can you take too much ownership the answer is yes you can with just about every you can name a trait right you can name a trait from a leadership perspective that you think is a positive trait and you'll immediately see that if you go too far with it it'll become bad you can't be extreme in one direction or the other if you're if you're in a leadership position you can't talk all the time right obviously as a boss you need to communicate you need to talk to your people but if you talk too much guess what happens people start stop listening to you you're putting out too much information they don't know what's important what's not so that's bad you can't go too far in that direction the other direction is you can't not talk enough and now no one knows what's going on no one knows what's happening so you have to be balanced and that's the whole idea of the dichotomy of leadership The question is, can you be too aggressive?

6:26Yes, absolutely. You can, hey, there's a machine gun nest over there. Let's attack it. So you charge up the hill and everyone dies. If I'm trying to force my plan down my team's throat, the more resistance I'm going to get from it. Whereas if I plant the seed and I allow that plan to grow with them, the better it's going to be received. So what you have to do is you have to be balanced. There was plenty of missions that I went on where I was the ground force commander in charge of 30 or 40 seals or a hundred seals and Iraqi soldiers combined together. Plenty of operations like that. You know how many people I talked to?

7:08I would talk to three. But the bigger you get, the more you have to rely on those subordinate leaders to spread the word, to understand what the mission is, to understand what the end state is, to understand why they're doing what they're doing. number one, you have to make sure that your message is simple, clear, and concise, right? You've got to communicate in a way that even that frontline trooper can understand what you're talking about. There's companies where I'll go into the CEO and we'll be talking. I'll say, so how well does everyone understand what your mission is here? And he'll say, oh, absolutely.

7:39I'll go to a frontline person and say, what's the mission of this company? They have no idea. If you're a frontline troop and you don't understand what the mission is, you can make bad decisions on the front line. So there are certain companies at certain stages where the most important thing they can do is, is be cost effective, save money, right? And that's if a frontline troop needs to make a decision about, Hey, should I redo this thing right now, which is going to cost us a little bit more money, or should I just let it go with a little bit lower standard? Well, if what you're focused on is saving money, that guy says, okay, you know what?

8:12I'm going to let this go. You know, the standard is a little bit lower. That's, that's a decision that can get made.

8:20I don't want to fail at things. If there's people out there that could use the lessons that I've learned and I haven't gotten it to them, to me that's a failure. What is preventing most people from moving in the direction that they want to move is a lack of discipline. You know, I don't spend a lot of time with regret, you know, because there's not much that you can do about it. It's happened. So the way I look at regret is what did I learn from it. I'm trying to take the lessons that I was lucky enough to learn and get them to as many people as I can so they don't have to suffer through the same mistakes that I made.

9:10I worry about missing out on opportunities that I have because I got friends that will never get the chance to execute on opportunities because they didn't come home and so for me to squander any moment any second of my life my life is a gift your life is a gift I know that for a fact and for me to squander that is something that definitely haunts me. It haunts me every day and I won't let it happen. The real things that I'm trying to do, that I have the opportunity to do, I'm going to do them to the best of my ability. My definition, what is my definition of greatness? Is to help out other people.

10:03I am so excited for you to finish the rest of your day strong. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description and it'll take you to the full episode of my other show, The School of Greatness. Make sure to come back tomorrow for another episode of The Daily Motivation Show.