Extreme Ownership
A huge part of leading any team is understanding that you are responsible for every success and ever failure. Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, two former Navy SEALs, now teach on this principle. Their book, “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win,” focuses on the idea of owning everything you do as a leader.
What does it mean to have ownership over something?
Think about it like owning a car. When you own a car, you have responsibility over it. You have to fill it up with gas, clean it, change the oil, do maintenance on it, and keep it in good working order. You have the responsibility for making sure it is a finely tuned machine, ready and capable of delivering every time you need it.
But ownership is more than maintenance. With that same car, you have other responsibilities. You actually have to drive the car. That means, you need to have the skills to direct it where it should go. Even more, you have to direct it where it should not go. By owning and operating your car, you have the responsibility to protect yourself, your car, and the others on the road . If you get lazy or are not tuned in to what you are doing, serious injury and death can occur.
Willink and Babin bring this principle of Extreme Ownership to life by relating it to their experiences on the battlefield. As leaders of SEAL teams and units in South-Central Ramadi (Iraq), they demonstrate first hand the great importance of owning your team.
With your role as a leader in any situation, how are you taking ownership? Willink and Babin define ownership as the single most important factor in leadership. So how do you bring your leadership up to the owning level?
A lot of extreme ownership can be thought of as humility. A leader who is also an owner is easily humbled by the responsibility they have. They understand that whatever occurs, it is on them. “There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.” Whatever mistake, failure, or missed opportunity has happened, it was your fault as a leader not to prepare your team for it. It was your lack of communication, your lack of oversight, your laziness.
This concept is humbling and it is easy to rebel against it, natural even. The thing is, it’s also right. Problems will come up and mistakes will happen. It’s the leaders job to correct these mistakes, to learn from them and help their team grow. He makes his team always push, always grind to their highest potential (something that is always growing with them).
One of the other great concepts brought up by Willink and Babin is the idea of prioritizing and then executing. On the battlefield, this is quite literally a matter of life and death. With most of our own teams, the stakes are not so high. But the principle remains.
As a leader, you will run into difficult situations, moments that challenge you and send your mind and heart racing. It is your responsibility to lead your team. You know the stakes and you understand that it is up to you to decide the success or failure of your team. So what do you do when the world is turning?
You prioritize. This is often easier said than done. You must look at what needs to be done and what needs to be done first. You can’t necessarily do this all on your own either. Sometimes you will need to spread the responsibility to other leaders on your team. The principle stays the same. Figure out what needs to be done now, then do it.
As you practice your prioritization skills, you will get better at them. Your speed will increase as well as your ability to decipher what truly needs to be done and when. But it is important that it doesn’t stop there. You need to take action. Knowing all the right steps and then dragging your feet – because of uncertainty, fear, or perfectionism – will not help you succeed. You have to execute and then learn through the process.
Leadership has many characteristics. There are principles that help us understand the foundations of every good leader. With Willink and Babin, we get a great look at what true ownership is and can mean for you in any environment. They describe the ways that you can use leadership in combat and in the business world. Your responsibility is to own up to your role, to be humble, prioritize, and execute.
Click the link for Extreme Ownership here and get started owning your team now.