How to Consistently Control Your Ego
The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke #14
The DEBRIEF PODCAST
The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke #14:
One of the biggest challenges in Leadership is checking one’s ego. Up and down the chain of command.
Jocko Willink (00:00):
This is the Jocko Debrief podcast, episode 14 with Dave Burke and me, Jocko Willink. And this is a little bit of behind the scenes of what we do at Echelon Front. At Echelon Front, our leadership consultancy, we work with a wide range of companies and we solve their problems through leadership. And as a team, we often debrief the things that are unfolding inside these companies, as we uncover problems and we get them solved. And sometimes I think it’d be great to share these debriefs with everyone, so everyone gets to learn. So, here we go. Dave’s with me today, Dave, let’s debrief. What do you got?
Dave Burke (00:49):
This is actually, I cherry-picked this one, because I wanted to, actually, wanted you to be talking about it a little bit. This is an unanswered question from EF Online, or a question that didn’t get answered initially during one of online sessions that we had. And the reason I wanted to talk about this is that a version of this question gets answered, or gets asked all the time.
Dave Burke (01:11):
And the question was simply, how do you consistently check your ego? And not only is there a version of this that gets asked regularly, the connection to ego, I would say, sits in almost every question we get, or every problem we get, there is a connection to ego inside there. Because oftentimes, when we’re working with clients and we are working then individually with someone inside a company, the questions will be, “Hey, I have a problem with this person, or I have an issue with this team, or my boss, or my subordinates.”
Dave Burke (01:47):
And there’s components of friction inside the organization that they’re trying to solve. And listen, they come wanting to solve these problems. These are people that believe in the principles and they want to get better leaders. But as you peel back, most of these questions, ego is almost always sitting inside there. Sometimes it’s right on top and it’s this big giant thing. And sometimes it’s more subtle, it’s more underneath the question.
Dave Burke (02:10):
But the question that’s being asked is representative of one of the most common things we get is the ego is part of this. So how do you consistently check your ego? And I was thinking about not just how to answer this in a Q & A scenario, but how to connect the idea of ego to any problem that we’re solving. And we say it all the time. We all at Echelon Front will give you the same answer. The most important attribute in a leader is humility. That is verbatim how we answer that question, because humility is what allows you to listen. What allows you to change. What allows you to evolve, and adapt, and let other people do the things they need to do.
Dave Burke (02:52):
And all the things we talk about are almost always connected. The reason I wanted to bring this up is that a lot of times when we hear people ask the explicit ego question, what often comes to mind is, is ego gets connected to this over arrogance where almost your demeanor is arrogant. And people think about this external arrogance that’s associated with ego, whether it’s a swagger, or it’s a look, or it’s the way you interact with the people around you.
Dave Burke (03:20):
Like the word I wrote down was people that are cocky. We say, “Oh, those people have an ego.” But the ego that’s really the problem sometimes sits underneath, it’s not visible. And it’s certainly not visible in the way that you look, or the way you walk, or the way that you act. But it’s your ego that gets offended by what other people are doing, when you get offended by your behavior.
Dave Burke (03:46):
And I talked to you about this a while ago when we were just talking about this idea of humility. And one of the things you described, and I think it was on a podcast. I think we talked about this on one of the Jocko podcasts was this mechanism, this idea that is a physical mechanism inside your brain in the way you think about that.
Dave Burke (04:04):
And what I wanted to talk about was how I described this to someone who was talking to me about how do you keep your ego in check? Is the way I said, I said, your ego has a voice. Your own ego has a voice. And you have to learn how to decipher the voice that’s in your head, which one is your ego, and which one is the other part of your brain that isn’t the ego part.
Dave Burke (04:32):
And where I took that from is when you were describing me a situation, and I can’t remember what the situation, doesn’t matter. And you said, and then I go, “Oh.” This is you talking, “Oh, that’s my ego.” And your recognition of what you were hearing in your head, which was, “Hey, the problem is this person, the problem is this…” And you said, “Oh, that’s my ego.”
Dave Burke (04:52):
And that got me thinking about the idea that ego, this thing that takes over is actually a voice that you can learn to identify. And you don’t want to mute the ego. You actually want to, you want to hear it, not shut it up. You want to be able to recognize when it’s talking, so you can then go, “Oh, that thing that’s talking is my ego. I hear what it’s saying. And now I can actually hear it, listen to it. And then more than likely do something different with that.”
Dave Burke (05:20):
And you said, “The reason that’s important is that your ego, we all have it. Your ego loves you. It’s the way it’s talking to you. It loves you. And you want to hear what it has to say. The problem with your ego is that it will love you.” And the way you said this, “It will love you to death.” Which means it’s going to drive you to making bad decisions. It’s going to drive you to do things that you shouldn’t be doing.
Dave Burke (05:40):
When you talk about, for me, when I think about consistently keeping your ego in check it’s that recognition that you have to develop a mechanism in your own mind that you are constantly looking, and listening, and hearing for your own ego’s voice. It never just goes away. It never just stops. You are not going to keep it from talking, but it’s the recognition of when that’s the thing that you’re hearing, and how to do that.
Dave Burke (06:02):
And there are so many examples of people that are in the game. People that believe in the power of humility and people that believe in the power of extreme ownership and the principles they teach still run into trouble. And almost all, always, almost always it’s the ego that is the instigator of those problems.
Jocko Willink (06:28):
That quote that your ego will love you to death is a permutation of a quote that I heard from a guy named Jay Adams, who was a skateboarder in the seventies. And he was the guy that gave skateboarding. You know, skateboarding has a rebellious attitude to it?
Dave Burke (06:51):
Yeah.
Jocko Willink (06:51):
At least a large portion of skateboarding has a rebellious attitude to it. He’s the guy, I guess maybe him and Tony Alva. That crew, that crew of guys were the guys that gave skateboarding this rebellious attitude. He ended up having a pretty rough run. Ended up, drugs, alcohol, drugs, prison, out of prison, back into prison. And he eventually became sober and went off drugs. And, but he was able to talk about this addiction.
Jocko Willink (07:27):
And that’s what he said, that’s what he said about drugs. He said, “Everybody love drugs.” [inaudible 00:07:35] What he said, he said something like, “Hey, it doesn’t matter if you love drug drugs or not. Drugs love everyone. And they’ll love you to death.” He eventually did. He died of a heart attack while he was sober at a pretty young age. I think he was maybe 50 something, 53, 54, something like that.
Jocko Willink (07:51):
But I just thought to myself is… The fact that something can love you to death. And I immediately, I immediately thought of, that’s your ego, because your ego loves you. Your ego absolutely loves you. And you said this statement, which is the right statement, but I need to think about how you said it. You said, you want to hear what your ego has to say, which is true.
Jocko Willink (08:15):
You want to hear what your ego has to say, but that doesn’t do it justice. That doesn’t do it justice. Your ego is, is this demon that has intimate knowledge of your desires, and wants, and needs. And it knows exactly what it is that you want. And so you want to listen to that thing. So, but you want to hear, that voice is an archangel to your brain, but it’s really a demon. And that’s why you have to watch out for it. And it’s going to tell you all these things that it’s not just that you want to hear them, it’s beyond that. It’s beyond that. It’s a deeper want. And so that’s why it’s so tempting.
Jocko Willink (09:11):
And I’ll tell you another thing. There’s an attitude of, hey, if I say, you know what, that’s my… You know what? If I admit it, then it’s okay. So there’s some things where in life, if you admit it, then it’s almost like it’s okay. Right? And it’s a horrible thing. I think echoes the first person I heard this when someone says, “I’m just direct with people.” And therefore, if I treat you horribly, it’s okay, because I already told you that-
Dave Burke (09:43):
[crosstalk 00:09:43].
Jocko Willink (09:43):
… I’m direct and that’s just the way it is. Or I’m just, “Look, I’m just a straight shooter. So you just need to deal with it.” And as if that makes it okay. Sometimes people do that with their ego when they say, “I know this is just my ego, but this is what…” And I’m here to tell you, that does not make it okay. Just admitting that it’s your ego that’s driving your decision making process doesn’t make it okay. It doesn’t make it okay. It still is a negative. And by the way, it’s the same amount of negative. Whether you hide it and I see that you’re doing something for your ego, or you are blatantly telling me about it. Either way, I know what you’re doing, and it’s bad. So it’s a… That ego will, it will love you to death.
Dave Burke (10:29):
And again, I’m paraphrasing. I won’t get any of these quotes exactly right. But you once said, “Every problem you have, if you dig deep enough, if you peel it back enough, eventually you’ll find out how you are causing that problem. How you are contributing.” Every problem you have, if you dig deep enough, you will eventually find out how you are causing it, which is a good thing, because that means then you can fix that.
Dave Burke (10:56):
And it’s your ego that will keep you from doing that. And in every question we have, or if you even think of it in larger terms, every problem you’ve got and you think about how you want to solve that problem. And I think the reason why I said you don’t want your ego to not talk, you want to hear it is, the point is you got to recognize where your ego is contributing to whatever problem you’ve got as you splay it out, is it someone else, or it’s the market. But whatever you’ve rationalized as the real problem? If you dig deep enough, you’re going to find the problem is you. And the only thing that keeps you from doing that is your own ego. That’s how much power your ego has. It’ll stop you from solving the problems in your life.
Jocko Willink (11:37):
I’m not trying to take this just level 20 [crosstalk 00:11:41].
Dave Burke (11:41):
I’m hoping you will.
Jocko Willink (11:42):
So there’s this whole concept of telling the truth, right? Telling the truth. Tell the truth. And you can take that to extreme, right? Of, “Hey, listen, I am going to tell the truth. And that is the best solution.” And Sam Harris, a friend of mine, he’s 100% like, “You need to tell the truth about what’s happening.” So you run into the, what is the expression that Sam Harris and other people use too? Oh, it’s a thought experiment, right? This is the term, thought experiment.
Jocko Willink (12:16):
Oh, we’ll do a thought experiment on this. So a thought experiment is, okay, if your wife asks you how does dinner taste that your wife cooked for you? Right? And the dinner didn’t taste good. Well, should you tell the truth? Because the truth is that dinner doesn’t taste good. And I know I’ve always said, well, here we are, we got to think strategically, right? We got to think strategically. Tactically, you might be telling the truth. Strategically, it’s going to cost you. You need to think through that more. And I always felt uncomfortable with that answer, because I am a truth speaker. And I believe in telling the truth.
Jocko Willink (13:00):
So here’s the deal. Guess what? You should tell the truth. You should tell the truth. And you know what? The truth is, you made 47 mistakes to get to a point where that dinner that your wife made doesn’t taste good. You didn’t give her feedback six years ago. You didn’t… There’s a million things that you did wrong that put you in this position. So that’s why we don’t tell the truth. The reason we don’t tell the truth is because if you tell the truth, what you’re going to be telling is that it is your fault.
Jocko Willink (13:36):
This is the Charlie Plum thing. When Charlie Plum’s like, “Hey, if my cellmate annoys me, it’s my fault.” So that’s the truth. The truth is when Dave says to me, “Hey Jocko, is it annoying you that I keep picking my nails while you’re talking?” The truth is, you’re not annoying me. The truth is, I am being annoyed because I’m allowing myself to be annoyed. And the truth is if I was a good leader, I’d actually be able to get you to stop doing that with your nails during that time. That’s the truth.
Jocko Willink (14:09):
The truth is I should be a better friend and be able to communicate better and have a better relationship with you where I could get you to cease doing things that annoy me. That’s the truth. So when you really tell the truth, the truth is, it’s your fault. So when somebody says, “Well, if Dave is doing a bad job at his job, if he’s doing a bad job, should I tell him the truth?” Yes, you should. And the truth is, “Dave, I haven’t given you good direction. Dave, I haven’t given you good guidance. Dave, I haven’t given you the resources that you need.” That’s the truth.
Jocko Willink (14:41):
And if we ultimately get to the truth where Dave actually is incapable of doing his job, yes, I should tell him the truth, but we skip all the ones that were our fault along the way. We skip them. And we go straight to, it’s Dave’s fault. And that is your ego.
Dave Burke (15:00):
Terrific.
Jocko Willink (15:01):
All right. What’s your next example?
Dave Burke (15:03):
So this one’s a little more traditional situation working with a company. There’s a supervisor that’s of one of, I don’t know, I think there’s seven or eight supervisors that are all working for this one manager. So the scenario is, you got this manager, he’s got seven teams all working for him. And I know them all. The supervisor calls me and he’s like, “Hey man, I’m kind of losing my patience with my boss. We have these monthly…” I think they call them a hot wash, or a wrap up. Where basically the manager goes around all the teams and does the highs and lows, or what’s been going on. And just catches everybody else up on what’s happening with all the teams. And so lately, like the last several months, his teams is getting skipped. He’s not even being acknowledged. So let’s say you’re that supervisor working for me. I’ll be like, “Mary’s this. Bill’s team’s this. John’s team’s this. Joe…” And I’m going to go right past you and not even acknowledge you.
Jocko Willink (15:56):
Dang.
Dave Burke (15:57):
And this supervisor and his team is getting overlooked and it’s creating some frustration, which is totally understandable. So I wanted to dig a little bit of like, “Hey, A what’s going on? Why do you think that is?” And then like, “What do you think the intent is behind it?” So it turns out that his team is actually unique. The other six or seven teams that are supervisors, they all work with a client, or an outside agency, or a contractor, or they all work with somebody else. This one team is actually responsible, they call it the continuous improvement team.
Dave Burke (16:30):
So which is, it’s strictly internal. So they just work for themselves to help the rest of the teams, but they don’t actually generate revenue. They don’t actually do anything that has an external focus for the team. So there is a little bit of a difference in what this team does in terms of how this supervisor and his team operate.
Dave Burke (16:47):
And another question I had is, “Hey, what do you think what’s going on with your manager? Why is this is happening?” Because came in pretty hot like, “Hey, this is bad. This is a real problem.” And the focus of the problem, which I think is very similar to what you said was, we skipped a whole bunch of steps and got to what is wrong with the manager? And as we just asked a couple of questions like, “Hey, is he trying to prove a point? Is he calling you out? Is he maybe trying to make you look bad?”
Dave Burke (17:16):
And he’s like, “Well, no, no, no. It’s not that at all.” I’m like, “Well, what is it?” And it was, more than anything, he’s like, “I honestly just don’t think he knows exactly what we’re doing in this continuous improvement thing, this internal thing.” So the last conversation that actually helps me summarize this more succinctly was, is he doing this on purpose? No. Is he doing it to make you look bad? No. Is he trying to marginalize your team? No. So what’s the real issue here?
Jocko Willink (17:46):
Just to follow up on each one of those questions. What leader would proactively marginalize a team? What leader would proactively try to make someone look bad? Right? There’s all these things. Now. Now I’m not saying that couldn’t happen. But the chances are me, as a leader, my goal is not to proactively make Dave’s team look bad. That’s not what we’re doing.
Dave Burke (18:09):
That’s right. And yeah, is the chicken dry? Yes, the chicken’s dry. But here’s why this is what’s happening. And we started to dig a little bit and the details probably aren’t that important. One of the things that I started digging on is that what the boss, this manager was doing, he would share his agenda on the share drive for each meeting and have his subordinates take a look at it. And when the team that was being overlooked wasn’t on the agenda. What he first thought was like, “Oh, okay, well, I’m not going to say anything because maybe he’s got a plan.”
Dave Burke (18:45):
And he created this scenario by which why this is happening until that scenario spun out of control. What turns out the boss didn’t have any… None of those things were true. None of those intentions were true. And really, what this conversation came back to, and it’s crazy how you just pulled from that last thing about the ego connected to this was, “Hey, how does your boss get to know what’s going on with your team? How does your boss become aware how the piece of what you’re…?”
Dave Burke (19:11):
And all these questions about how does your boss get to understand all the positive things you’re doing, all the ways you’re contributing, all the impact that you’re making on this uniquely designed team. Who is really in the ideal position to set your boss up, to understand all these things. So he can explain and articulate that to the rest of the big team.
Dave Burke (19:30):
That’s seven supervisors, 15, 20 people. It’s like a hundred and something people team. Who’s in the best position to do that? And of course, the answer is, he is. “I am. I’m in the ideal position.” So the takeaway from that was, “Hey, one thing is, obviously, your boss is not out there to do it by design.”
Dave Burke (19:50):
And the other part was, so the second piece, and that part was, I think, relatively easy to resolve. The second piece was that what he had also done was perpetuated the narrative he created with his team. So these meetings would come and go. The way it was set up is, the seven leaders are all there. The rest of the team are remoting themselves. And so they’re watching this just as observers. And when those meetings was over, he was saying somewhat succinctly, like…
Jocko Willink (20:15):
“Guess we don’t matter.”
Dave Burke (20:16):
Guess we don’t… Yeah, exactly right. And so both the up and down solution was, “Hey, listen. If your boss isn’t aware of all those things, you’re in the ideal position. And what you have to actually go do now, is you got to go solve that problem with your subordinate leaders as well, or your subordinates as well, of what you’ve created.” This one was not a hard problem to solve, but it was really cool to make the connection between what you just said of, “Hey, how do we get to this point?” Well, there’s 47 things that you’ve done to get to that meal that didn’t taste good, or that situation is what it is.
Jocko Willink (20:51):
Yeah. There’s 47 mistakes that you made as a leader to get to a point where my boss, my subordinate, whoever, is doing something that I don’t agree with.
Dave Burke (21:06):
I don’t want them doing that.
Jocko Willink (21:07):
I don’t want them doing that. There’s 47 mistakes. What kind of influence do you have over your boss if that’s happening? What kind of relationship have you built? This is a similar, and we wrote about this in the books. When Leif came to me and didn’t understand why our commanding officer, Ramati, was asking these questions. “Why is he asking these questions?” And it’s like, “Hey bro, who’s the one that’s supposed to… Who is it that should inform the boss so he doesn’t ask these questions? Oh yeah, that’s us. That’s us. So let’s do a better job of keeping the boss informed because then the boss won’t ask questions.”
Jocko Willink (21:45):
And what’s beautiful about that. And you already said this is, if it’s just the boss’s fault, what can we do about it? Nothing. It’s the boss. We can’t do anything about it. If it’s my fault, I can fix it. I can fix it all day long. Little something called extreme ownership. And I guess it is now my turn. So you’ve ever seen the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?
Dave Burke (22:14):
Yeah. A while ago. Jack Nicholson, is that right?
Jocko Willink (22:17):
Jack Nicholson, right. I saw it for the first time when I was a kid. I mean, I saw it for the first time when I was a little kid. It must have been when they used to put movies on TV and they would edit out the profanity and maybe they edit out some of the nudity. So you get to see the movie. But I saw it when I was very young. And young to a point where I didn’t really even remember it, but I remember, there’s one thing that I remember about this. So the movie takes place in a mental hospital, a mental ward.
Jocko Willink (22:49):
There’s two main characters. One of them is, like you said, it’s R.P. McMurphy. Who’s played by Jack Nicholson. And the other main character is this main character named Nurse Ratchet, Mildred Ratchet. And she’s played by an actress named Louise Fletcher. So I saw this movie when I was a little kid. And I’m saying, I saw it when I was a little kid, it came out in 1976. So I guess little kid was maybe 1980? I don’t know how long it took to get movies, or I didn’t see it in a theater or anything, but I remembered seeing it. And my first memory of it was there was this nurse character. Do you remember this nurse character?
Dave Burke (23:36):
Not really. Just she wasn’t, she wasn’t good though. I remember that. [crosstalk 00:23:41].
Jocko Willink (23:41):
So even as a young child-
Dave Burke (23:43):
She’s not good.
Jocko Willink (23:43):
… there was this person that I, that I just remember thinking, “Not good.” Like, “We don’t like this person.” So, that’s the only thing I remember from being a little, little kid was there was a bad person, a person that I didn’t like in this movie. And then I saw it when I was older, probably a bunch of times. And that just reiterated the fact that there was this character that I absolutely hated, and was universally hated. Everybody hates her.
Jocko Willink (24:16):
So the other night I was… My daughters, my two kids just… My wife is gone with my couple of my kids. So it’s just me and my college daughters that are right now home, finishing up school, finishing up their college. I’m at home. So it’s COVID lockdown in San Diego. And my kids are trying to figure out what to watch. And something clicked in my head. And I said, “Oh, have you ever seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?” “No, we haven’t seen it.” “Okay. Let’s watch it.”
Jocko Willink (24:46):
So we started watching it, and almost within the shortest amount of time you could imagine that she comes on the screen, both my daughters are like, “What’s up with her?” As she starts going through this first scene, it’s like, “I hate her.” My daughters are saying like, “Oh, I hate her.” And of course, this is the feeling that I had when I was a kid too. And you think, and it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, right? Because the two characters that you’ve got, right? One is a nurse. A nurse. Right? And I will tell you, quite frankly, I think that nurses are near sainthood, right?
Jocko Willink (25:32):
The job that they have, it’s an incredibly hard job. It’s a thankless job in many respects. It’s crazy hours. The pay isn’t great. I mean, it’s a… If you do that job, you have to be a caring, loving, sacrificial person to do that job. And so here’s this nurse in this… And she’s in a mental institution by the way. So she’s got people that are got all kinds of issues. And on top of that, you’ve got this Jack Nicholson character who’s the other side of the spectrum. He’s only taking care of himself. He’s completely looking out for himself. He’s a miscreant, he’s a criminal. But you get this affection for R.P. McMurphy. Randle McMurphy. You like him, but you hate this nurse.
Jocko Willink (26:31):
You hate this nurse. Why is it? Well, it’s very obvious. She’s cold, and she lacks emotions. She doesn’t have any emotions. The way she plays this role is absolutely brilliant. Every response that she gives is in this measured, monotone voice. No emotions, no real emotions behind it. And the other side of the spectrum… And look, we’ve got the one that’s a nurse. So we’re setting her… I mean, she’s set up to be near sainthood, right? A nurse, she sacrifices for other people. Meanwhile, and I didn’t remember this, but when I watched it the other night. The reason that McMurphy’s in this mental institution is because he’s being evaluated because he’s in prison.
Jocko Willink (27:24):
And he’s in prison, and this is clearly stated, he’s in prison for statutory rape of a 15-year-old. So you have no reason to connect with this guy in any way. He says, “I’m in there for fighting. I fight all the time.” You can clearly see that this guy is the opposite. He is a pure, emotionally-driven person.
Jocko Willink (27:43):
So on the one side, you’ve got this emotionally-driven person that fights and goes wild with women. And he’s drinking. That’s his thing. He’s a bad guy. He’s a traditional bad guy. We should not like him. But we do. And the other side, we’ve got this person that has good… How many thousands of millions of times have you heard me talk about keeping your emotions in check? Right? I talk about it all the time. So here, I’ve got the paragon of emotional control in Nurse Ratchet, and I hate her.
Jocko Willink (28:18):
And as you watch the movie, you see his emotions start to come out. You want to bring him back. You’re like, “No. Hey. Hey, don’t do that. Don’t let your emotions run this situation right now. You’re going to make bad decisions. You’re making a bad decision. You’re making an emotional decision. Stop it right now.” You’re also looking at her going, “What kind of cold, evil person is this that has no emotions whatsoever?” And that’s how she rules. She rules as a tyrant. She leads as a tyrant. She leads through imposition of her will on this group of people. He is a leader as well, and he leads with his emotions and connects with people.
Jocko Willink (28:57):
And it’s an incredibly good example of why we, as leaders and as human beings, we need to maintain balance between emotion, and logic. Because if you’re too detached, you cannot connect with people. And if you don’t connect with people… Look, at a minimum you don’t connect. At a maximum, you are hated for not having emotions. The other end of the spectrum is, if you only act on your emotions, you will make bad decisions. And if you do that through everything, through your business, through your coworkers, through your relationships, through your life, you will end up in a bad spot. I’m not saying you’re going to end up with a lobotomy in a mental institution, but you will end up in a bad spot.
Jocko Willink (29:55):
So, think about that. And another thing that I was actually very stoked on is, the other day on EF Online, I had been talking about, look, the worst thing you can do is impose your will on people like… And we said it I don’t know if it was in this podcast or another one, but if I’m imposing my will, I’m making a mistake as a leader. And then one guy on EF Online said, “Hey, you mentioned the other day on the Unraveling podcast, that there was an experiment where the reaction that got the lowest level of compliance, the lowest level of compliance came from the imposition of an authoritarian leader over the subordinate.” That’s the worst. That’s the worst level of compliance. The best level was when the connection was made.
Jocko Willink (30:57):
So, if you’re brushing up against imposition, be careful. And if you are leaving your emotions out of the equation, because you’ve heard me say detach from your emotions, rethink it. I don’t say detach and be void of emotions. Detach, take a step back from them, because emotions are part of being a human being. We can’t let them run the roost, but we have to employ them properly so we can form relationships and we can actually lead.
Jocko Willink (31:40):
And with that, I guess that’s a good place to stop. And if you want to go deeper, and we go deep, into all aspects of leadership. In case you can’t tell, this is what we do. This is what we love to do. Join Dave, join me, the rest of the Echelon Front team at efonline.com, where we solve problems through leadership. We’re having these conversations all the time. And we’re having them live, we are having them live. You want to ask a question? Come ask it. Ask Dave, ask me, ask anyone on the Echelon Front team. If you want leadership guidance inside your organization, we can do that too.
Jocko Willink (32:18):
Come and check out our leadership consultancy, echelonfront.com. The examples that we talk about here are coming from the business that we work with all the time. The examples are changed. Your secret is safe with us. We modify the examples to a point where there’s no possible way you could trace it back to you, or nor could anyone else. I’ve also written a bunch of books on the subject of leadership. Extreme Ownership, The Dichotomy of Leadership, Leadership Strategy and Tactics. Have some other podcasts. One is called Jocko podcast. One is called Jocko Unraveling. One is called Grounded. And one is called the Warrior Kid podcast. And if you want to support any of these podcasts, including this one, you can get some gear from Jocko store, or from Origin Maine, or from Jockofuel.com. Thanks for listening to us debrief. Now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko. Out.