The Debrief w/ Jocko and Leif Babin #10

Jocko Willink (00:00):

This is the Jocko Debrief Podcast, episode 10 with Leif Babin and me, Jocko Willink. Now, I got hit up on Twitter about, someone had listened to The Debrief and we talk about things that happened at Echelon Front or on EF Online. Someone said, “Oh, they must be violating some confidentiality agreements with their clients to be telling these stories.” Here’s the deal, the stories that we tell on this Debrief podcast, we change them so that they are completely unrecognizable even to the client that the event is about. They’re based, look, we change it. It’s like what we did for Extreme Ownership. We change things so much to tell the story no one can recognize who the client was or what the client was, but the point of the principle gets made. That’s the same thing we do here. We consider our client information top secret. With that Leif, let’s debrief, what do you got?

Leif Babin (01:07):

Let’s get some here. The first leader we were working with here, this question was the boss was asking for feedback. They have a boss who was asking for feedback and when the leader gives them feedback, they don’t like it. So the question from this leader was, “Hey, what do I do?” I mean, they’re asking for feedback, and then they don’t want to listen to that feedback, and then they just push back, and they make excuses about it. So they don’t really want feedback at all. So how do I deal with that? That was the question.

Leif Babin (01:43):

So the first thing I had to ask was, “Okay, well, how are you giving that feedback?” And of course, as we started digging into it, the feedback is “Oh, you want some feedback from me? Well, let me tell you how screwed up you are.” And that’s something that I think oftentimes where even if you people mean something that’s constructive, they have a hard time seeing it from someone else’s perspective. And you talk about this all the time, no one likes feedback, no one likes to hear. We even do this. We give presentations, we run workshops and training and then we get, we say, “Okay, how could we do it better?” And the moment people are like, “You know what? If you to focus on this, I can feel myself startling and bristling against that feedback.” I think it’s just human nature everybody falls into that.

Leif Babin (02:31):

What I had to help this leader understand was like, “Hey, think about it from your boss’s perspective. Like what are you actually providing feedback on? How are you providing that feedback? He was like “Well, I’m doing it professional matter.” We went back and forth on that a little bit. So what I actually had to finally get across to him was like, “Okay, if you’re giving constructive feedback that’s valuable to the team and you’re doing it effectively, you’re not going to get pushback from that. That’s the test for whether or not you’re doing that right.

Leif Babin (02:59):

We finally had to get them to take some extreme ownership of, “Okay, I need to be more cognizant of my tone, of the things that I’m actually pushing back on, are they really important? Then maybe I needed little indirect approach instead of that direct approach of just being brutally honest.” “But they asked me for feedback.” When people, people ask you for feedback, they’re lying. You know what they’re doing? When somebody asks you for feedback, you know what they’re doing? They’re fishing for a compliment. That’s what they’re doing. They don’t want to improve. They’ve got their real and rod out, and they got a big worm and the worm says, “Hey, can you give me some feedback?” They want you to say that I was blown away, especially your boss, your boss just wants to hear how great they did. Just keep that in mind when that happens.

Leif Babin (03:41):

Then it’s a good thing when we do this a lot on Echelon Front. I don’t know if you did it in this particular case, but all the time I’ll say, “Okay, cool. Now you understand what I’m talking about?” They say, “Yeah, no, I’ll do it next time.” You say, “Cool. Let’s role play. I’m your boss, give me some feedback.” It might take them two or three tries before they start doing it in an indirect way that’s not going to be offensive, and it’s not easy to do. But it’s impossible to do if you don’t get the right mindset, if your mindset is, “Oh, Leif just asked me for feedback, great. Now I can unload on him.” It’s like, “Mm-mm (negative), probably not the best attitude to go into this thing with.”

Leif Babin (04:19):

I wrote about this Leadership Strategy and Tactics, and it was talking, this whole thing about how to give the truth tactfully. There’s a whole section on that. This is just talking about weak bosses, weak bosses, or indecisive bosses. How do you handle them? And I wrote, be cautious. Of course, right? Be cautious. As with micromanaging bosses or indecisive boss or the weak boss, you have to be careful when you step up to lead. Even the feeblest and weakest of bosses have egos, and if you offend them, they may lash out. You could translate that right to even when somebody asks for feedback, they can get offended and lash out. So don’t be offensive or overly assertive when you start to do this. Use soft language and frame things in a way that it does not diminish the boss’s ego, but actually boosts it. Quote.

Leif Babin (05:15):

Here’s some examples. “Hey boss, I know you have a lot going on. I was thinking it might be helpful if I jumped in on this project over here to move forward with it. Would that be all right?” “Hey boss, I’m sorry for being slow on the uptake, but I just want to make sure I fully understand your vision. Do I have it right when I say, well, whatever.” “Hey boss, I’m trying to step up my game. Would you mind if I took a crack at planning this next project so I can get some experience?” Like all those are ways of me saying, “Hey, I’ll run this for you.” Instead of saying, “Hey boss, you know what? I think I could you this better than you. Why don’t you let me handle it?” What’s that going to do? It’s going to offend somebody. Well, I cut you off. What were you going to say?

Jocko Willink (05:48):

No, I was just going to echo what you were talking about with role playing. You and Dave have talked about that on the Debrief podcast here extensively about how effective that is, Dave does an awesome job with that, of role playing this because I think a lot of times it takes that role play to realize how you’re actually being interpreted. When you’re like, “Okay, let’s role play that.” And when someone realizes that how, they’re like, “Okay, how’s the boss going to proceed that?” And they get to detach from it. They get to analyze it and then they realize, “Okay, that’s a problem.”

Jocko Willink (06:18):

But those examples you just laid out there are really powerful because you want it to be the boss’s idea. If it’s the boss’ idea, that’s the best case scenario for you. Not like, “Oh, Leif came into the feedback and told us we sucked and we needed to fix this, we need to.” I actually want, if you’re my boss and you’re asked for feedback and I want to lay it up there for it to be your idea. You’re running with it. I said, “That’s a great idea boss, I’ll go make it happen. Good call.” I don’t care because I want the team to win and I want us to be able to move forward together.

Jocko Willink (06:53):

So if it comes to criticism, if I want to give you criticism, if you get done with your brief, you get done explaining your plan to me, or you get done explaining your plan to the team and then you pull me aside afterward and you say, “Hey, Jacko, you got feedback how is that brief?” And I go, “Well, actually you went over everything too quick and no one could follow it.” What are you going to do? You’re going to get defensive, at best you’re going to get defensive, at worst you’re going to say, “That’s because you’re stupid.” So instead I say, I take that away from them. I say, “You know what Leif, as far as I could tell it was solid. I’ll tell you what though, I know I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. And for me, I need to review it because it was a little bit too much in for information for me too fast. I apologize for not following everything. I’ll try and take better notes next time, so I can ask some more specific questions, but it was hard for me to fall on. I’m sorry.

Jocko Willink (07:49):

So now I’m taking ownership for being stupid, but I’m actually hinting to you that maybe it’s good idea to slow down a little bit. Again, would it be in an ideal world great for me just to be direct and to, “Oh, you want some feedback? Cool. You go too fast and no one understands what you’re talking about.” That would be great if it didn’t offend you and now you got mad. Here’s another thing, I talk a lot about understanding other people’s perspectives, right? I want to know what someone’s perspective is so I can see it from their view. There’s one more thing to add to that, and lately I’ve been talking a lot about the power of a story, and then Darrell and I did a podcast about how people formulate stories to exist in the world. They actually put together in their minds story that is them.

Jocko Willink (08:44):

if I’m dealing with you Leif, I don’t just want to know what your perspective is. I don’t want to just understand your perspective. I want to know what your story is. I want to think about this not just from the perspective of this moment, but from the perspective of your whole story. You never hear somebody, and you meet somebody, and you and I are we meet somebody, and it’s somebody that I knew. And the guy walks away, say, “Hi, how you doing? Oh, good to meet you.” Then he walks away and you might say to me, “What’s that guy’s story?” Right? That’s a real cool question. It’s a real question. What’s that guy’s story.

Jocko Willink (09:18):

So, When you’re dealing with your boss, don’t just think, “Oh, I want to understand their perspective in this moment.” Think to yourself, I want to understand their perspective and their story. How they get here, are they insecure about their leadership position? Are they over confident about, what is it? What’s the story? And then apply that to their perspective and then apply those things to how you interact with them.

Leif Babin (09:45):

I think if you understand that at a deep level, you can predict their behavior with pretty amazing accuracy. One final thing I’ll say about this situation is it’s really important to prioritize and execute. This is something I struggle with sometimes when people ask for feedback and you’re trying to well, you need to do this, you need to do this, you need to do this. It was something JP and I were just talking about with the leader we were working with, and it was hey, let’s really focus on what really matters here.

Leif Babin (10:19):

And is it that big of a deal? I think a lot of times for folks that get spun up about something if the boss is asking for feedback, like if you’re giving feedback to the boss about something that was screwed up, it’s something that I learned from you into asking a bruiser, you didn’t push back on anything until it really mattered, which then gave us the leadership cap to be able to do that. I think so many people don’t think strategically when they do that so they’re pushing back a little minuscule things that don’t matter at all. So then when they need to push back on something that really matters, it’s like “Oh, it’s just Babin again complaining about something.” And they’re not even really accepting that feedback, so they don’t take that on board.

Jocko Willink (10:57):

I think it’s sound advice to close this one out to say, don’t nitpick your damn boss. Check. All right, what’s your next scenario?

Leif Babin (11:08):

So the next one we had two different team leaders, actually two assistant team leaders on a team. So the team leader got the promoted up the chain so two assistant team leaders, one of them had been on the team for many years, who had 12 or 15 years experience on the job. And one of them who had been on the team for maybe seven or eight years, so about half the experience of the more experienced assistant team leader. Obviously there’s now a gap. The team leader got promoted. So who’s going to get the promotion. The most experienced guy expected it was going to happen and the more junior assisted team leader with half the experience of the really experienced assistant team leader, the more junior guy got promoted to the team leader position.

Leif Babin (11:58):

And so obviously, there’s a lot of issues with this because clearly it’s a big blow to the ego of the individual that expected to be promoted, and he was a talented guy. He had obviously a lot of experience, and I think it almost caught the other assistant team leader off guard and he said, “Hey, how do I handle this situation? Because I don’t want to lose this assistant team leader, he’s a critical member of the team. We need to move forward together. So, what do I do in this situation?” And obviously, that’s a tough problem to have, you’re taking over the situation that now you’re stepping into the role. So, what does he do? How does he move the team forward? And how does he keep that guy on board to be a part of the team?

Jocko Willink (12:43):

So what’d you tell him?

Leif Babin (12:44):

I told him, I said, well, first of all, you’re going to have to do a little ego massage in a big way, which is the term used a lot. I love that term because you’ve got to massage this guy’s ego. He’s obviously upset. He’s over there thinking like, “That team leader got promoted, that’s just wrong. I’ve got all the experience.” So clearly, ego massage by going in there saying, but also being humble right on the bat.

Leif Babin (13:11):

So to humble himself and do ego massage, to say, “Listen, I don’t know why. I don’t know why this decision got made that I got promoted. You’ve obviously got way more experience than me. I was totally surprised by this. It should have been you getting promoted. I don’t know why they promoted me, but I’ll tell you one thing, there’s no way that I can possibly be successful without your experience, and I’m going to need to lean on you heavily in order to guide this team.” So by a little self deprecating, checking your ego and then going forward to actually do a little ego massage there and just address that issue. That was the guidance we gave him.

Jocko Willink (13:52):

Yep. I wrote about this in Leadership Strategy and Tactics. And again, Leadership Strategy and Tactics is like all the questions that I get asked all the time. I finally got sick of answering them all the time. I just wrote them all down. There’s a section literally called Transitioning from Follower or Peer to Leader, and it covers this exact thing. And I actually go through two scenarios that I went through in a couple SEAL platoons, where a peer got promoted, not me, but a peer got promoted in two back to back SEAL platoons. One of them the peers did it well, elevated, stepped up. The other one didn’t do it well. So that’s one part. But the other part is literally what you’re talking about. There’s another section in here called Overcoming a Grudge, which is this exact fig. There are times in your career where you be one promoted into a leadership position and placed above your former peers, right? This can be challenging, but one handled correctly, the challenge can be mitigated

Jocko Willink (14:50):

Some ways to mitigate a bad attitude, don’t try and force your rank down their throats. It’s everything you just said. Tell them you appreciate their experience. Let them come up with plans and ideas, ask them for their input. If they come up with a good plan, run with it. And by the way, all these match the 12 things that I say to do in page 158 of this book, or 157, 158, which is How to Take Over as a New Leader.

Jocko Willink (15:13):

So, these are all things to appreciate and do and as you mentioned immediately, it comes down to subordinating my ego, elevating your ego. Let’s make this happen. I also say this, but also be advised that some people will be hypersensitive and see you putting them in charge of something as condescending, or as proof that you didn’t know, or that proof that you don’t know what you’re doing, and that they should have been promoted.

Jocko Willink (15:43):

If you just have a horrible attitude and I say, “Hey, why don’t you run with this? Why don’t you run this? You got a lot of experience.” If you’re a horrible mindset, you could say, “Oh, you see Jocko doesn’t even know what the hell he’s doing. I should have been the one that should be promoted.” Or you could see it as, “Oh now Jocko thinks he’s just going to make me run everything.” It’s like both those are opposite attitudes. They’re both equally bad.

Jocko Willink (16:08):

When they’re pounding and bad attitude become apparent, recognize a likely reason they were not promoted, is because they likely lacked the humility of maturity to be a leader. That’s why they didn’t get promoted in the first place. Is because they act like this. If that’s the case, continue to be cordial, treat them with respect, try and build a relationship with them. But don’t expect any rapid improvement. This will be a long process. You’re going to have to be patient, and make sure you don’t let them distract you from the mission or from the rest of the team.

Jocko Willink (16:39):

It’s definitely a challenging situa, hey, I did it. I mean, I became an officer, I was in the SEAL teams for eight years as an enlisted guy, and then became an officer and all of a sudden a bunch of guys that were my same rank, all of a sudden I was above them. And I guess part of the reason why I say it like that is because I didn’t really think it was that big of a deal. I knew I had a different job now. My job was a little bit different, but everyone’s job on the team is important.

Leif Babin (17:03):

I think what’s interesting about the question is that people don’t know what to do and you obviously laid out exactly what you need to do in leadership strategy tactics. But it’s something that people really struggle with. I think, no one likes to have a hard conversations. So what’s interesting to me and where I’ve seen this fail drastically with leaders we’ve worked with is, they don’t even address it. It’s a big elephant in the room, they don’t talk about it. Maybe they try to put them in charge. Like when that negative attitude persist is when they don’t act actually have the conversation and pull the other leader aside and say, “Hey, I don’t know why this happened.” You address it, and just talk about it, because it’s always going to be there and it’s going to create problems if you don’t actually address it.

Leif Babin (17:46):

Now, I think that’s one of the times where, we talked about indirect approach is great, but we also talk about being default aggressive to problems. And if you ignore problems, they only get worse. I think that’s one of those things where you got to have take a little direct approach to say, this problem is not going to get better, this guy’s going home over the weekend stewing doing about this thing. As soon as I can actually reach out to him and connect with him and talk about this, the better it’s going to be. I need to do it as soon as I possibly can. And one conversation is certainly probably not going to solve the problem either.

Jocko Willink (18:19):

Yeah. And the dichotomy there is saying, “Hey, we need to be default aggressive in solving our problems. Doesn’t mean that the tactic or technique that we use to solve the problem is default aggressive. Just because I say, “You know what? I can see Leif’s pissed off that I got promoted and he didn’t, I need to confront him about it.” No, that’s not, I don’t need to confront him about it. I need to have a conversation about it. I need to put some feelers out there and see if I can understand what he’s mad about. See if this is, see where this is coming from. Doesn’t mean I need to call you up and say, “Look, I can tell you about your attitude.

Leif Babin (18:57):

What’s your problem.

Jocko Willink (18:58):

Yeah. What’s your problem. cause then, it’s not helpful. But to say, you know what you said earlier is an approach, “Hey look, I’m not 100 percent sure why this decision got made, but it got made, and listen, I know that you have a ton of experience, more experience than me and I absolutely would love to get your help and support as we do this. And for me, this doesn’t mean anything other than I got a different job now, and I’m going to do the best I can.” Something along those lines, it’s not an aggressive attack. So it’s an aggressive meaning I’m going to go solve the problem, but it’s not aggressive meaning I’m just going to be default aggressive and attack you because that is not your first option. Can it be an option later? Yeah. I mean if, and you know this actually-

Leif Babin (19:49):

Yeah, I guess a better way to say that is like I’m telling you to be default aggressive in deescalating the situation.

Jocko Willink (19:55):

There you go.

Leif Babin (19:56):

That’s what I mean. Not in confronting and being what’s your problem. But I’m going to, “Oh, you’re storming out of the room. Okay. Well let me as soon as I can go intercede and say, “Hey Jocko, look man, I don’t know why this happened.” Like, I mean default aggressive deescalation.

Jocko Willink (20:12):

Yep. That’s good. That’s solid, and it’s great advice to, that’s what we mean by default aggressive, taking action that’s going to solve the problem. Not taking action that’s going to escalate the problem. And this actually ties pretty well those are year two scenarios. For my turn, I got a question the other day and this really does tie in well. I got a question the other day about how to handle insubordination. How do I handle insubordination? I think as you go to answer that question, you actually have to think through some things.

Jocko Willink (20:53):

You have to think about this, what is insubordination? What does that mean? Is it “Oh, they’re not following my instructions.” Is it that they’re asking some pointed questions? Is some level of sabotage that you can see happening? I think you have to clarify what you mean by insubordination because When we hear the word insubordination, when I hear it, when I hear the word insubordination, what we think of is some outright muteness behavior or just defiant rebellion.

Jocko Willink (21:37):

Let me ask you this, when you hear the word insubordination, you’re thinking something pretty extreme, right?

Leif Babin (21:43):

You see MJ violation. This is a major deal.

Jocko Willink (21:47):

And I think that type of insubordination doesn’t really happen that often. I mean, it just doesn’t really happen that often. I think most of the time, when people use the word insubordination, what’s really happening is what I said earlier maybe, someone’s not following instructions exactly. Maybe someone’s asking questions in a group, words like, “Why are we doing this?” That type of thing. And I don’t think that’s insubordination. I think that’s resistance. I think that’s what I’m going to call resistance, which I think is a normal thing that’s going to happen to you as a leader.

Jocko Willink (22:32):

There will be resistance from your team. You have to expect it. You have to embrace it. And when I feel that type of resistance, I have to think to myself, guess what? I’m getting this resistance because of me, it’s my fault. That’s what’s actually happening. I haven’t explained something correctly, there’s some part of this that they don’t understand or that I haven’t explained well. There’s why am I having a problem convincing them of the plan? Why, that’s got to be on me. Why can’t I communicate properly? Why haven’t I built a better relationship with this individual? Are they giving me this resistance because I’ve become too familiar. Do I have a relationship that’s too close? Have I become a friend instead of a leader? So, all those things require me to ask myself, okay, what mistake did I make and how can I fix it? How do I fix it? Do I build a better relationship? Or if I’ve got too close of a relationship, do I slowly reinstate boundaries?

Jocko Willink (23:37):

If I feel like they are not buying into the plan, do I let them come up with a plan? So they get buy-in. If they’re not understanding my communications, how do I make my communications more simple and clear? So all those things are my fault. And all those things are a way to stop what, and that attitude, that resistance is what I think people often refer to as insubordination. Now, like you said, if you’re talking uncontrollable terror inside your team, then you have to take actions to discipline and remove them. This isn’t even really that much of a question, right? If you’ve got someone that is insubordinate, then you need to discipline them, and you need to counsel them, and you need to remove them. Either they fix themselves or you remove, you need to like escalate the escalation of counseling very quickly.

Jocko Willink (24:37):

In the SEAL teams, for example, it is very seldom that someone gets kicked out of the SEAL teams for insubordination. I mean, I can think of maybe one or two examples in my whole career. Bad behavior, yes. But bad behavior that they did something stupid and they would come back and apologize they weren’t insubordinate. They just did something stupid. Very seldom would someone actually have straight up insubordination. But there’s one and more area between resistance insubordination, and I believe that this other area is disrespect. Right now we have another area of disrespect. You got someone that’s throwing comments at you. You got someone that’s undermining you, you got someone that’s making you look bad. And I think that can be mistaken for straight up insubordination, “Who the hell’s Babin think he is, trying to call me out right in front of everyone.”

Jocko Willink (25:39):

SEAL team guys would do dumb things to each other. Like it’s dumb, and sometimes they could be disrespectful. And if someone’s sensitive, that can sting somebody. I’m just thinking of what, for some reason I thought of vehicles, we’re always doing dumb things in vehicles, but let’s say you had one of your guys and they’re going to pick you up, at a restaurant or pick you up in front of the barracks.

Jocko Willink (26:08):

And so they’re sitting there waiting for you walk up and they pull ahead a little bit. You walk up to the door again, they pull, “Right, that could be, they’re joking around cool.” But there could be a level of hostility there that actually makes that disrespectful. So, we can have situations where people are being disrespectful and you, yes, you have to address it. Now, once again, as we just talked about, when we address it, the initial approach shouldn’t be on attack. I mean, to start out with, “You better stop disrespecting me.” Ihat’s where you start, you can win that tactical battle. That person might, Roger That Sir, where do you end up though?

Jocko Willink (26:59):

You end up, when you demand respect, you lose respect. When you demand respect, you lose respect. So, when someone’s being disrespectful to you and you just demand respect from them, their respect for you doesn’t go up. But if you were to say, “Hey, listen, man, obviously I must not be doing something right. Because I respect you and I respect your experience, but I’m not feeling any mutual respect back in my direction and I’m thinking there must be something I’m doing wrong. What do I need to do different that I can earn your respect.” That approach is going to be infinitely better than you better just give me respect.

Jocko Willink (27:43):

And then when they respond to you to the first topic that you brought up today, when you ask them what you can do better, when you ask them for feedback, you better listen to it. You listen to it. Node your head, listen, and then actually make adjustments. Whatever that thing is. “Now, is there a dichotomy here? Can we go too far with this?” “Yeah.” “Am I sitting here saying, ‘Hey, you can just let people walk all over you.'” “No, absolutely not.” You have to listen to them, but you got to be confident. You got to take things on board. And then once you’ve taken these on board, you’ve got to see if you can actually start building a relationship.

Jocko Willink (28:33):

If they start to come in your direction, or do you have an actual bad apple, right? Which you can. You can have a bad apple. And if you have a bad apple, then you start the escalation of counseling and you either win them over or you have to get rid of them.

Jocko Willink (28:50):

And what’s interesting about this, and you’ve referred to me multiple times in this particular topic, we’ll know a guy who was a SEAL who maybe got in trouble, a true troublemaker or a problem causer, and you’ve said to me “Hey, Jocko, if that guy worked for you, this wouldn’t have happened.” And I actually have documented cases where I had guys that actually worked for me, that were freaking awesome guys, would do absolutely anything I asked him to do, were totally professional and training, totally professional in combat.

Jocko Willink (29:31):

And when they worked for me, they were freaking awesome. And then they worked for someone else and they would get in trouble and I had pretty significant punishment administered to these individuals. And that means that that leader, instead of developing a relationship and trying to make adjustments, and trying to get them on board and showing respect, They didn’t do that.

Leif Babin (30:01):

Those particular individuals you’re talking about too, we were talking about very strong-willed people who are default aggressive and they’re not, “I don’t have time for someone that say she is a weak leader, they don’t respect her.” I reacting extremely poorly, and what you’re talking about is just deescalating the situation.

Jocko Willink (30:20):

Totally deescalate.

Leif Babin (30:20):

Whereas if you demand respect, you’re escalating that situation versus actually let’s deescalate. I’m thinking about that as you’re saying it, and we have to correct this misperception all the time. And I think a lot of people when I hear those comments from leaders that we work with which happens a lot, they think that in the military, it’s just a bunch of Terminator robots that are going to just carry out orders and do exactly what you say with no pushback whatsoever. And so they don’t know how to react to that. Like they just need to do what I say rather than, okay, they’re human beings so I need to actually explain it to them. If you can turn that around, I mean, that’s the power of extreme ownership and then recognize, “Okay, I need to do something [inaudible 00:31:08] to actually get that a person on board.”

Leif Babin (31:09):

One of the things I’ve learned from you is when somebody’s complaining, you should actually listen to them. It is amazing how you can either defeat their arguments, if you’re complaining to me and you’re just saying something totally off the wall that makes no sense whatsoever, then I can very easily explain why we shouldn’t do that or maybe I don’t think that’s the right call for the team. I mean, I should be able to make that very obvious if it is that obvious, but also you might be bringing up something that’s, and very often is the case you’re bringing up some very valid points. And even if you just give me three points and one them is valid, at least now you know I’m listening to you. You leave that conversation with well, finally they understand what I bring to the table. So if it feeds your ego, and I can make some little small change, a minuscule thing that could help you.

Jocko Willink (32:00):

It’s crazy. But I’m sure there’s someone thinking, “Yeah. But some times you’ve got to just…” And oddly enough, I’m trying to think through my entire, I was only in for 20 years, I’m trying to think through all those years of the times that I just had to get rid of somebody because they were insubordinate or they were disrespectful or whatever you want to call it, someone that I couldn’t get through to to get them on board, and I can’t think of any, I think the number is zero. So, try a little bit harder. Probably a good place to stop.

Jocko Willink (32:35):

If you want to dig deeper into all aspects of leadership in any arena, you can join Leif and me and the rest of the Echelon Front Team efonline.com, where we solve problems through leadership. If you want leadership guidance inside your organization, come and check out our leadership consultancy at echelon.com.

Jocko Willink (33:00):

We’ve also written some books on the subject of leadership, Extreme Ownership, The Dichotomy of Leadership and Leadership Strategy and Tactics has some other podcasts. One is called the Jocko Unraveling Podcasts, one is called Grounded, and one is called The Warrior Kid Podcast, and also I have another podcast which is simply called Jocko Podcast. And if you want to support any of these podcasts, including this one, you can get some gear from jockostore.com or originmaine.com. Thanks for listening to The Debrief. Now go lead. This is Leif and Jocko out.