Navy Leadership Quotes

After all, there can be no leadership where there is no team.

We learned that leadership requires belief in the mission and unyielding perseverance to achieve victory, particularly when doubters question whether victory is even possible. As

We learned that leadership requires belief in the mission and unyielding perseverance to achieve victory, particularly when doubters question whether victory is even possible.

leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities, between one extreme and another. The

The Dichotomy of Leadership A good leader must be: • confident but not cocky; • courageous but not foolhardy; • competitive but a gracious loser; • attentive to details but not obsessed by them; • strong but have endurance; • a leader and follower; • humble not passive; • aggressive not overbearing; • quiet not silent; • calm but not robotic, logical but not devoid of emotions; • close with the troops but not so close that one becomes more important than another or more important than the good of the team; not so close that they forget who is in charge. • able to execute Extreme Ownership, while exercising Decentralized Command. A good leader has nothing to prove, but everything to prove. APPLICATION

To me, this is one of the strongest marks of great leadership. Nobody is always right. Great leaders use that to learn and improve, instead of fighting it.

Leadership is simple, but not easy.

Leadership isn’t one person leading a team. It is a group of leaders working together, up and down the chain of command, to lead. If

The best predictor of success is grit. How you choose to respond to life’s trials—your uncommon moments—is everything.

The U.S. Navy SEAL Teams were at the forefront of this leadership transformation, emerging from the triumphs and tragedies of war with a crystallized understanding of what it takes to succeed in the most challenging environments that combat presents.

Purposeful living is a strong indicator of happiness. Live big. Believe bigger. Thrive always.

We wrote this so that the leadership lessons can continue to impact teams beyond the battlefield in all leadership situations—any company, team, or organization in which a group of people strives to achieve a goal and accomplish a mission.

If you don’t understand or believe in the decisions coming down from your leadership, it is up to you to ask questions until you understand how and why those decisions are being made. Not knowing the why prohibits you from believing in the mission. When you are in a leadership position, that is a recipe for failure, and it is unacceptable. As a leader, you must believe.

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.

Finally, leaders focus on people. In the words of Grace Murray Hopper, computer scientist and rear admiral in the US Navy, “You manage things; you lead people.” Naturally,

As a leader, it is up to you to explain the bigger picture to him—and to all your front line leaders. That is a critical component of leadership,” I

I’m absolutely convinced that positive, personal reinforcement is the essence of effective leadership.

Leading large groups of people, motivating and inspiring them to accomplish a common goal regardless of adversity or danger—that’s the essence of dynamic leadership.

Leadership doesn’t just flow down the chain of command, but up as well,” he said. “We have to own everything in our world. That’s what Extreme Ownership is all about.

Free discussion requires an atmosphere unembarrassed by any suggestion of authority or even respect. If a subordinate agrees with his superior he is a useless part of the organization.1

The goal of all leaders should be to work themselves out of a job. This means leaders must be heavily engaged in training and mentoring their junior leaders to prepare them to step up and assume greater responsibilities. When mentored and coached properly, the junior leader can eventually replace the senior leader, allowing the senior leader to move on to the next level of leadership.

It was time to confront everything I had hated about the Navy as I climbed up through its ranks, and fix it all. Though the goal was presumptuous, I told myself that it was important that I try to do this. I might never get promoted again, but I decided that the risk was worth it. I wanted a life I could be proud of. I wanted to have a positive effect on young people’s lives. I wanted to create the best organization I could. And I didn’t want to squander this leadership opportunity. I have learned over and over that once you squander an opportunity, you can never get it back.

To be extraordinary is to accept and embrace repeated failings, recover as quickly as possible; that is let go of all your reasons and excuses to justify the failing; then move on to carry out your

Nevertheless, the mere spark of an unsuccessful revolution is often sufficient to breed other revolutionaries, and Zumwalt broke some ancient glass that could not be replaced, no matter how hard fools later tried.

The most impressive thing about this improvement in performance was that it did not come from a major process change or an advance in technology. Instead, it came through a leadership principle that has been around for ages: Simple.

Boat Crew Six had become comfortable with substandard performance. Working under poor leadership and an unending cycle of blame, the team constantly failed. No one took ownership, assumed responsibility, or adopted a winning attitude.

Merik had seen potential trade for Nubrevna where there was none. He’d seen a navy that had “needed his leadership” when it hadn’t. He’d seen a selfish domna in Safiya fon Hasstrel, a frustrating Threadwitch in Iseult det Midenzi, and then an inconsequential ship’s boy in Cam—yet none of those presumptions had proved true.

The Dichotomy of Leadership A good leader must be: • confident but not cocky; • courageous but not foolhardy; • competitive but a gracious loser; • attentive to details but not obsessed by them; • strong but have endurance; • a leader and follower; • humble not passive; • aggressive not overbearing; • quiet not silent; • calm but not robotic, logical but not devoid of emotions; • close with the troops but not so close that one becomes more important than another or more important than the good of the team; not so close that they forget who is in charge. • able to execute Extreme Ownership, while exercising Decentralized Command. A good leader has nothing to prove, but everything to prove.

But without a team—a group of individuals working to accomplish a mission—there can be no leadership. The only meaningful measure for a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails. For all the definitions, descriptions, and characterizations of leaders, there are only two that matter: effective and ineffective. Effective leaders lead successful teams that accomplish their mission and win. Ineffective leaders do not. The

Some may wonder how Navy SEAL combat leadership principles translate outside the military realm to leading any team in any capacity. But combat is reflective of life, only amplified and intensified. Decisions have immediate consequences, and everything—absolutely everything—is at stake. The right decision, even when all seems lost, can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The wrong decision, even when a victorious outcome seems all but certain, can result in deadly, catastrophic failure. In that regard, a combat leader can acquire a lifetime of leadership lessons learned in only a few deployments.

Are these not the phrases you hear kids declaring? Whenever you hear yourself using these words and/ or phrases, you are in the meadow of a million bulls! To recreate one's life as extraordinary is to acknowledge failing as healthy. Failing is an integral element in the art of being unbeatable. It is also a secret. The more comfortable you become at failing, the less time you'll need to recover. The faster you recover from each failure, the faster you'll be able to RE-create your life to be extraordinary. If you are uncomfortable with this idea, no doubt you are someone who is interested in winning all the time. If winning is all that interests you, I suggest you find a game of which you are currently proficient and keep playing it. This will ensure that you will constantly win.

In each moment you are either being a volunteer (being fully responsible for your life and choices) or you are being a victim (defeated and victimized by your own justifications and reasons). Anything other than you being fully responsible for all aspects of your life IS a basic lie that you are telling yourself and are most definitely telling others.

Getting a job done fast is fruitless if it isn’t done right. Individuals and Teams must constantly evaluate their progress. If an individual or Team starts to lose focus, they must take a step back and review.

The greatest enthusiasm in the world won’t make up for a business plan that doesn’t work.

Dear Admiral Rickover, If you want to stop killing people, read this.                                                          Very respectfully,                                                          Dave Oliver                                                          Captain, US Navy

Take care of your people" is one of the principle lessons of military leadership. If we take care of our people on deployment, why should that change when we come home?

Our relations seemed poor to me, and I wasn't surprised that the US intelligence picture in the Horn of Africa was weak. Much of what I read consisted of recycled news headlines repackaged as intelligence. Real, valuable intelligence only came from real people, yet we hadn't done much to meet and work with the people.

On the other hand, when you work hard, do your job, and help others on your team, you’ll make a lasting impression. People remember who was competent, who worked hard, who was fair, and who was their friend. People will remember when you came through.

A functioning team is more than just a group of people with a common goal. It’s a group of people who can work toward that common goal despite having different opinions about how to reach it. No, not everyone has the same say. No, not everyone’s opinion will play a part in the end. The boss makes the final decision and will live or hang by that decision.

How do successful leaders respond when someone congratulates them on a good job? They start talking about the great team they’ve got working for them. How this person or that person stepped up in the effort. Or how everyone really came together to pull through. Why? Because they know what it takes to succeed. It takes a team.

The staff used to say, “When the president eats, everybody eats.” That kind of leadership is real. I figured the saying applied to every president but really the saying came from Bush 41’s years. He appreciated the lowest on the totem pole because he’d once pounded the Navy pavement.

I’ve tried to analyze the four five-star Admirals that we’ve had in this Navy,” Smoot reminisced. “You have a man like King—a terrifically ‘hew to the line’ hard martinet, stony steely gentleman; the grandfather and really lovable old man Nimitz—the most beloved man I’ve ever known; the complete and utter clown Halsey—a clown but if he said, ‘Let’s go to hell together,’ you’d go to hell with him; and then the diplomat Leahy—the open-handed, effluent diplomat Leahy. Four more different men never lived and they all got to be five-star admirals, and why?”15 Smoot answered his own question with one word: “leadership.” Each of the fleet admirals, he said, had “the ability to make men admire them one way or another.” But

growing greater by the day, David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Weizmann, and delegates from Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia arrived in London to meet with the British leadership. They had been summoned by British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, in order to explain the empire’s new policy toward Palestine. Jewish immigration would end. The Jews would live under Arab rule in an independent state. Ben-Gurion erupted: “Jews cannot be prevented from immigrating into the country except by force of British bayonets, British police, and the British navy. And, of course, Palestine cannot be converted into an Arab state over Jewish opposition without the constant help of British bayonets!

It’s natural for anyone in a leadership position to blame subordinate leaders and direct reports when something goes wrong. Our egos don’t like to take blame. But it’s on us as leaders to see where we failed to communicate effectively and help our troops clearly understand what their roles and responsibilities are and how their actions impact the bigger strategic picture. “Remember, it’s not about you,” I continued. “It’s not about the drilling superintendent. It’s about the mission and how best to accomplish it. With that attitude exemplified in you and your key leaders, your team will dominate.

Extreme Ownership—good leadership—is contagious,

Leadership isn’t one person leading a team. It is a group of leaders working together, up and down the chain of command, to lead. If you are on your own, I don’t care how good you are, you won’t be able to handle it.

There are, likewise, other senior leaders who are so far removed from the troops executing on the frontline that they become ineffective. These leaders might give the appearance of control, but they actually have no idea what their troops are doing and cannot effectively direct their teams. We call this trait “battlefield aloofness.” This attitude creates a significant disconnect between leadership and the troops, and such a leader’s team will struggle to effectively accomplish their mission.

As assistant secretary of the navy, working for seven years under Secretary Josephus Daniels, a former newspaper publisher with long experience in Democratic Party politics, Franklin had to learn for the first and last time in his political career how to operate as a subordinate. The situation proved challenging for the young man, who, despite his unfolding leadership skills, remained deficient in one essential quality—humility.

This epiphany had come to Jocko in examining his own frustrations up the chain. “Leadership doesn’t just flow down the chain of command, but up as well,” he said. “We have to own everything in our world. That’s what Extreme Ownership is all about.

The Dichotomy of Leadership A good leader must be: • confident but not cocky; • courageous but not foolhardy; • competitive but a gracious loser; • attentive to details but not obsessed by them; • strong but have endurance; • a leader and follower; • humble not passive; • aggressive not overbearing; • quiet not silent; • calm but not robotic, logical but not devoid of emotions; • close with the troops but not so close that one becomes more important than another or more important than the good of the team; not so close that they forget who is in charge. • able to execute Extreme Ownership, while exercising Decentralized Command.

There are only two types of leaders: effective and ineffective.

The greatest of these was the recognition that leadership is the most important factor on the battlefield, the single greatest reason behind the success of any team.

Ask others the same questions you ask of yourself: “Am I a good leader? Am I trustworthy? Am I inspiring?

Santiago de Cuba In 1553, Santiago was first invaded and plundered by the French. They were followed by the British, led by Sir Christopher Myngs, a British officer in the Royal Navy, who served under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, an infamous buccaneer. Cromwell promoted Myngs to the rank of Admiral and ordered him to the Caribbean in 1656, where he was responsible for looting Spanish settlements and conquering the island of Jamaica from the Spanish. During his career Myngs was also responsible for spawning the privateering career of Henry Morgan. The British considered Myngs an Admiral, but to the Spanish he was a pirate when he broke through the strong Spanish defenses of Santiago de Cuba to plunder and sack the city. Santiago had lost its status as the capital of Cuba when the seat of power was moved to Havana in 1589, but many people to this day, feel it is still the capital city when it comes to culture. Of course, anyone from La Habana would strongly disagree with this! Carnival is the predominant pageant in the city because it relates to the Afro-Cuban beliefs rather than Christianity. It also occurs in July instead of February. The large number of Afro-Cubans in Santiago were responsible for bringing in much of the African culture found in eastern Cuba. Many of these people practice Santería, a syncretic religion that had emerged from different West African beliefs and was brought to Cuba from Haiti.

passionate leadership.

Passion makes others feel like they are working not for someone but, rather, with others—and working for something bigger than the individuals involved.

Last, you’ve got to do more leading and less managing. Be a visible and motivating presence.

Pain is weakness leaving the body.

leadership requires belief in the mission and unyielding perseverance to achieve victory, particularly when doubters question whether victory is even possible. As

Leadership doesn’t just flow down the chain of command, but up as well,” he said. “We have to own everything in our world. That

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

Management does not just involve praise--anyone can do that, although many do not. Management also involves looking someone in the eyes and delivering the hard message that the employee has reached too high.

Greater cause for insomnia lay in not knowing the proficiency of one’s crew. Admiral Ghormley had been hampered by this uncertainty. He didn’t know what his ships and commanders were capable of. He hadn’t spent time with them, or among them; hadn’t been physically present to assess critical variables, from their intangible esprit to the physical soundness of their machinery. He was candid about this. “I did not know, from actual contact, the ability of the officers, nor the material condition of the ships nor their readiness for battle, nor did I know their degree of training for warfare such as was soon to develop in this area. Improvement was acquired while carrying out combat missions,” he would write. This was a startling admission of a leadership failure.

This can have devastating consequences for the fast-growing company. Over a short period of time, say a year, the number of employees can leap from 50 to 150 in a startup, or from 150 to 500 or more during a later phase of rapid growth when the business model is promising and the funding is in the bank. Seemingly overnight, the new employees can vastly outnumber their predecessors, and this dynamic can permanently redefine the corporate culture. Brent Gleeson, a leadership coach and Navy SEAL combat veteran, writes, “Organizational culture comes about in one of two ways. It’s either decisively defined, nurtured and protected from the inception of the organization; or—more typically—it comes about haphazardly as a collective sum of the beliefs, experiences and behaviors of those on the team. Either way, you will have a culture. For better or worse.”2

Keep wise people around you who have similar goals. Iron sharpens iron.

Don’t be ordinary; strive for extraordinary. Demand excellence in everything.

Everyone walking this planet has a compelling God-given purpose. It’s unique to you. No one else can pull it off. It’s yours. It fulfills your deepest need for significance.

Failure’s nothing more than an opportunity for greater success.

Look for the best in others, even when it’s obscured. Positivity begets more positivity.

You can measure the joy in a person’s life by the amount of joy they invest in others.

One of the most important jobs of any leader is to support your own boss—your immediate leadership.

In any chain of command, the leadership must always present a united front to the troops. A public display of discontent or disagreement with the chain of command undermines the authority of leaders at all levels. This is catastrophic to the performance of any organization. As a leader, if you don’t understand why decisions are being made, requests denied, or support allocated elsewhere, you must ask those questions up the chain. Then, once understood, you can pass that understanding down to your team. Leaders in any chain of command will not always agree. But at the end of the day, once the debate on a particular course of action is over and the boss has made a decision—even if that decision is one you argued against—you must execute the plan as if it were your own. When leading up the chain of command, use caution and respect. But remember, if your leader is not giving the support you need, don’t blame him or her. Instead, reexamine what you can do to better clarify, educate, influence, or convince that person to give you what you need in order to win. The major factors to be aware of when leading up and down the chain of command are these: • Take responsibility for leading everyone in your world, subordinates and superiors alike. • If someone isn’t doing what you want or need them to do, look in the mirror first and determine what you can do to better enable this. • Don’t ask your leader what you should do, tell them what you are going to do. APPLICATION TO BUSINESS “Corporate doesn’t understand what’s going on out here,” said the field manager. “Whatever experience those guys had in the field from years ago, they have long forgotten. They just don’t get what we are dealing with, and their questions and second-guessing prevents me and my team from getting the job done.” The infamous they. I was on a visit to a client company’s field leadership team, the frontline troops that executed the company’s mission. This was where the rubber met the road: all the corporate capital initiatives, strategic planning sessions, and allocated resources were geared to support this team here on the ground. How the frontline troops executed the mission would ultimately mean success or failure for the entire company. The field manager’s team was geographically separated from their corporate headquarters located hundreds of miles away. He was clearly frustrated. The field manager had a job to do, and he was angry at the questions and scrutiny from afar. For every task his team undertook he was required to submit substantial paperwork. In his mind, it made for a lot more work than necessary and detracted from his team’s focus and ability to execute. I listened and allowed him to vent for several minutes. “I’ve been in your shoes,” I said. “I used to get frustrated as hell at my chain of command when we were in Iraq. They

In any chain of command, the leadership must always present a united front to the troops. A public display of discontent or disagreement with the chain of command undermines the authority of leaders at all levels. This is catastrophic to the performance of any organization. As a leader, if you don’t understand why decisions are being made, requests denied, or support allocated elsewhere, you must ask those questions up the chain. Then, once understood, you can pass that understanding down to your team. Leaders in any chain of command will not always agree. But at the end of the day, once the debate on a particular course of action is over and the boss has made a decision—even if that decision is one you argued against—you must execute the plan as if it were your own. When leading up the chain of command, use caution and respect. But remember, if your leader is not giving the support you need, don’t blame him or her. Instead, reexamine what you can do to better clarify, educate, influence, or convince that person to give you what you need in order to win. The major factors to be aware of when leading up and down the chain of command are these: • Take responsibility for leading everyone in your world, subordinates and superiors alike. • If someone isn’t doing what you want or need them to do, look in the mirror first and determine what you can do to better enable this. • Don’t ask your leader what you should do, tell them what you are going to do.

PRINCIPLE: LEADING UP THE CHAIN If your boss isn’t making a decision in a timely manner or providing necessary support for you and your team, don’t blame the boss. First, blame yourself. Examine what you can do to better convey the critical information for decisions to be made and support allocated. Leading up the chain of command requires tactful engagement with the immediate boss (or in military terms, higher headquarters) to obtain the decisions and support necessary to enable your team to accomplish its mission and ultimately win. To do this, a leader must push situational awareness up the chain of command. Leading up the chain takes much more savvy and skill than leading down the chain. Leading up, the leader cannot fall back on his or her positional authority. Instead, the subordinate leader must use influence, experience, knowledge, communication, and maintain the highest professionalism. While pushing to make your superior understand what you need, you must also realize that your boss must allocate limited assets and make decisions with the bigger picture in mind. You and your team may not represent the priority effort at that particular time. Or perhaps the senior leadership has chosen a different direction. Have the humility to understand and accept this. One of the most important jobs of any leader is to support your own boss—your immediate leadership. In any chain of command, the leadership must always present a united front to the troops. A public display of discontent or disagreement with the chain of command undermines the authority of leaders at all levels. This is catastrophic to the performance of any organization. As a leader, if you don’t understand why decisions are being made, requests denied, or support allocated elsewhere, you must ask those questions up the chain. Then, once understood, you can pass that understanding down to your team. Leaders in any chain of command will not always agree. But at the end of the day, once the debate on a particular course of action is over and the boss has made a decision—even if that decision is one you argued against—you must execute the plan as if it were your own. When leading up the chain of command, use caution and respect. But remember, if your leader is not giving the support you need, don’t blame him or her. Instead, reexamine what you can do to better clarify, educate, influence, or convince that person to give you what you need in order to win. The major factors to be aware of when leading up and down the chain of command are these:

You have to train yourself in leadership, and you can’t afford to wait until you get promoted to begin the process. While you’re still an individual contributor, learn to think like your boss, so when the day comes to be a leader, you’re ready to step right in with your game plan in hand.

But for all that American industrial brawn and organizational ability could do, for all that the British and Canadians and other allies could contribute, for all the plans and preparations, for all the brilliance of the deception scheme, for all the inspired leadership, in the end success or failure in Operation Overlord came down to a relatively small number of junior officers, noncoms, and privates or seamen in the American, British, and Canadian armies, navies, air forces, and coast guards. If the paratroopers and gliderborne troops cowered behind hedgerows or hid out in barns rather than actively seek out the enemy; if the coxswains did not drive their landing craft ashore but instead, out of fear of enemy fire, dropped the ramps in too-deep water; if the men at the beaches dug in behind the seawall; if the noncoms and junior officers failed to lead their men up and over the seawall to move inland in the face of enemy fire—why, then, the most thoroughly planned offensive in military history, an offensive supported by incredible amounts of naval firepower, bombs, and rockets, would fail.

if there really is no way you can win, you never say it out loud. You assess why, change strategy, adjust tactics, and keep fighting and pushing till either you’ve gotten a better outcome or you’ve died. Either way, you never quit when your country needs you to succeed. As Team 5 was shutting down the workup and loading up its gear, our task unit’s leadership flew to Ramadi to do what we call a predeployment site survey. Lieutenant Commander Thomas went, and so did both of our platoon officers in charge. It was quite an adventure. They were shot at every day. They were hit by IEDs. When they came home, Lieutenant Commander Thomas got us together in the briefing room and laid out the details. The general reaction from the team was, “Get ready, kids. This is gonna be one hell of a ride.” I remember sitting around the team room talking about it. Morgan had a big smile on his face. Elliott Miller, too, all 240 pounds of him, looked happy. Even Mr. Fantastic seemed at peace and relaxed, in that sober, senior chief way. We turned over in our minds the hard realities of the city. Only a couple weeks from now we would be calling Ramadi home. For six or seven months we’d be living in a hornet’s nest, picking up where Team 3 had left off. It was time for us to roll. In late September, Al Qaeda’s barbaric way of dealing with the local population was stirring some of Iraq’s Sunni tribal leaders to come over to our side. (Stuff like punishing cigarette smokers by cutting off their fingers—can you blame locals for wanting those crazies gone?) Standing up for their own people posed a serious risk, but it was easier to justify when you had five thousand American military personnel backing you up. That’ll boost your courage, for sure. We were putting that vise grip on that city, infiltrating it, and setting up shop, block by block, house by house, inch by inch. On September 29, a Team 3 platoon set out on foot from a combat outpost named Eagle’s Nest on the final operation of their six-month deployment. Located in the dangerous Ma’laab district, it wasn’t much more than a perimeter of concrete walls and concertina wire bundling up a block of residential homes. COP Eagle’s

And they wouldn’t hold it against me, nor did I think they were infringing on my ‘leadership turf.’ On the contrary, I would thank them for covering for me. Leadership isn’t one person leading a team. It is a group of leaders working together, up and down the chain of command, to lead. If you are on your own, I don’t care how good you are, you won’t be able to handle it.

The Dichotomy of Leadership A good leader must be: • confident but not cocky; • courageous but not foolhardy; • competitive but a gracious loser; • attentive to details but not obsessed by them; • strong but have endurance; • a leader and follower; • humble not passive; • aggressive not overbearing; • quiet not silent; • calm but not robotic, logical but not devoid of emotions; • close with the troops but not so close that one becomes more important than another or more important than the good of the team; not so close that they forget who is in charge.

Leadership isn’t one person leading a team. It is a group of leaders working together, up and down the chain of command, to lead.

For me, surfing represented balance, a conscious commitment to every aspect of my health and wellness, from the physical to the emotional to the spiritual. Believe it or not, it was because of this commitment to the things outside my work that I was able to thrive inside my work.

While Hall was taking it upon himself to re-arrange the leadership of the navy, and shuffle the cabinet, he was also perfecting the art of the intelligence dirty trick. He created his own fake code book, to be used only at a time of national crisis – called the Secret Emergency War Code – and had it sold to the Germans by a representative in Rotterdam for £500.

Just as discipline and freedom are opposing forces that must be balanced, leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities, between one extreme and another.

Each time a conversation went down this path I only prayed for a poker face as I silently nodded. But inside I was thinking, “Oh really?” How was that going to work? In the event of war with the Soviet Union, you were not going to execute the War Plan that the president and all your subordinate commands had been so carefully planning? As things got tense, then you were going to dial up the Oval Office and explain you were having second thoughts? But that’s what most of them told me. Except for Admiral Foley and the Atlantic Fleet commander, Adm. Harry Train. And my old boss, Vice Adm. Bud Kauderer, who I now suspect had been in cahoots with Admiral Foley from the beginning and had been instrumental in suckering me into the meeting. He knew me so well. A final question and closing thought. Are you surprised by how such an important issue was disguised by silence? How big a “conspiracy” can be? How few of the supposed leaders were actually leaders? Never, ever let foolishness stand, no matter how high it originates. If something is wrong, it is wrong. Don’t condemn yourself to live the rest of your life with regrets.

JOHN LEHMAN, PRESIDENT REAGAN’S SECRETARY of the Navy during the 1980s, recently published a book (Oceans Ventured, W. W. Norton, 2018) discussing the maritime security strategy that he promoted while he was secretary. In his book (p. 96) he comments: “In early years of the strategy, while we modernized the fleet a certain amount of bluff was necessary.” Even for those not involved at the time, that specific note might prompt someone to ask three questions: •  Just how much bluff are we talking about? •  Was any sort of net assessment made before the maritime strategy was launched? • What really happened? Well, the maritime strategy was a whole box full of bluff. And what actually occurred makes for an interesting case study. It was a while ago, so it is necessary to set the stage. It also involves providing some background as the situation had developed over some time. Our own submarine force had become more and more secretive in their war against the Soviets. As a result, nonsubmariners

Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare: Theory and Practice.

We learned that leadership requires belief in the mission and unyielding perseverance to achieve victory,

leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield and the principles of good leadership do not change regardless of the mission, the environment, or the personalities of those involved. Leading is leading.

Burdens grew heavier the higher one ascended in rank. Captains concerned themselves with ships and crews, commodores with squadrons, task force commanders with objectives, and theater commanders with campaigns. The burdens of sailors weighed mostly on the muscles. The weight of leadership was subtler and heavier. It could test the conscience.

Leaders must live by the same principles and values that they expect from their teams and people. Leadership is about action: leaders must do their part before asking others to do theirs. Walk the walk; don’t just talk.

The greatest of these was the recognition that leadership is the most important factor on the battlefield, the single greatest reason behind the success of any team. By

One of the most important jobs of any leader is to support your own boss—your immediate leadership. In any chain of command, the leadership must always present a united front to the troops. A public display of discontent or disagreement with the chain of command undermines the authority of leaders at all levels. This is catastrophic to the performance of any organization.

All responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world, there's no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes, and admit failures. Take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.

As a fit and necessary military measure for effecting this object, [preservation of the Union] I, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, do order and declare that on the first day of January in the year of our Lord 1863 all persons held as slaves within any state or states, wherein the constitutional authority of the United States shall not then be practically recognized, submitted to, and maintained shall then, thenceforward and forever, be free.

there can be no leadership where there is no team.

Some may wonder how Navy SEAL combat leadership principles translate outside the military realm to leading any team in any capacity. But combat is reflective of life, only amplified and intensified.

A surprising number of Tribal Leaders in our study learned their most important leadership lessons in the military. Gordon Binder, for example, the former CEO of Amgen, credits his time in the navy with learning the importance of values and vision. As he told us, “if you walk on board a ship and the brass is polished, the guns will shoot straight…Walk on a ship where the brass is dirty, and that’s a ship where we have to check the guns.” Stage Four cultures tend to express their values in both big things (guns) and little things (brass).

it is up to you to ask questions until you understand how and why those decisions are being made. Not knowing the why prohibits you from believing in the mission. When you are in a leadership position, that is a recipe for failure, and it is unacceptable. As a leader, you must believe.

leadership is the single greatest factor in any team’s performance.

There was one big problem with the book Extreme Ownership: the title. While it drove home the most important leadership foundation in the book, it was also slightly misleading. Extreme Ownership is the foundation of good leadership. But leadership seldom requires extreme ideas or attitudes. In fact, quite the opposite is true: leadership requires balance. We addressed that concept in chapter 12 of Extreme Ownership, “Discipline Equals Freedom—The Dichotomy of Leadership.” But as we assessed legions of leaders in companies, teams, and organizations as they implemented the principles we taught in the book, many struggled to find that balance. This struggle represents the biggest challenge we observed as we trained and advised hundreds of companies and thousands of leaders over the past few years with our leadership consulting company, Echelon Front.