Ready for the Ivy League Challenge?

Transcript

SPEAKER A

Hello, and welcome to Ivy League Prep Academy podcasts, where we explore ideas for living a better life and preparing for the university of your choice. We're your hosts, Nathaniel and Steve. Welcome back, everyone. We're excited to discuss extreme ownership today. A book by Jocko Willink. This is a book that takes lessons learned in combat and in real life situations and applies them back to business and to life skills success. Nathaniel, you've recently read the book. Tell us about it.

SPEAKER B

Absolutely. This book was kind of an interesting read. Most of the books that we've been discussing are driven by data or driven by some kind of scientific study, and this one is not that way. This is an anecdotal book about Jocko's experience fighting in Iraq and his command of Seal Team Three. And he draws many parallels in military experience and military leadership, to life leadership, life skills, business experience, et cetera, and draws some parallels between the two. He makes some really compelling points and has some really important life lessons in the book that I think are important to share, and I'm very excited to dig into it.

SPEAKER A

Yeah. So tell us just a little bit about the book. Is it an easy read? Is it more stories? Is it going to take an hour, or is it going to take a month?

SPEAKER B

This is probably a week or two read for most people, but it is kind of action packed, which is interesting. It's a nonfiction book. This is strictly about military combat experiences, combat, conflict, and leadership in the most dramatic, traumatic, life threatening situations. And obviously, there's no more important leadership than in combat. And so Jocko, in the book, shares the experiences that he's had with both poor leaders and with the very best leaders in the United States military. And he has experience in all kinds of these situations that he compares to business and compares to real life and helps us see some of the parallels that we can bring into our own leadership when we're obviously not in that extreme of a situation. We can still draw those lessons out of it without having to put ourselves in that kind of situation.

SPEAKER A

Yeah, absolutely. I can think about just recently I've heard a presentation from a Seal team leader, and this was someone who had led a platoon and talked about how important trust is and how important caring about your platoon is if they don't know that you care, how dangerous that is when you actually go out in the field. And a lot of those life lessons are real, right? They're very real for these people who your team is necessary to keep you alive. And so I guess some of the leadership principles are learned in a little bit deeper way than perhaps for the rest of us.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, I think we obviously don't have lives hanging in the balance if we make a poor leadership decision, but these guys did. And so their leadership experience was so important. The way that they handled themselves, the way that they made decisions, and the way that they reacted to new information or new circumstances affected people's lives. And so their leadership was much more critical than, let's say, your average school project or your average business project that you're trying to accomplish. The leadership is much lower stakes in these situations. You would much rather learn these experiences secondhand than have to live through them as these Seal teams and these members of the military have had to go through to learn these same lessons.

SPEAKER A

Yeah. So that reminds me of a phrase that I really like, that wise people learn from their mistakes, but super wise people learn from other people's mistakes.

SPEAKER B

Yeah, and that's important here because obviously we don't want to be in those life threatening situations, but we should take the lessons from those who have.

SPEAKER A

Yeah, and certainly there's a lot for us to learn. So tell us about the book. What did Jacob point out?

SPEAKER B
Okay, so the overarching theme is ownership. Extreme, extreme ownership. And what that means is in every situation, in every circumstance, as a leader, you have to take ownership of every part of the outcome. So true leaders don't shift blame to others for their failures. They don't point out the mistakes and failures of those on their teams. They take ownership, they take responsibility, and they take control over everything that happens within the scope of their leadership. For instance, if a member of their team is not performing well, a leader is going to explore their options. They're going to train that person, that individual, to improve. They're not going to blame them for the failure of the team. They're going to take control of every aspect of the team and find ways to use their influence to improve the outcomes. And so much of the book is about how leadership is contagious, leadership attitude is contagious. And the lesson of it is you can take ownership of every aspect of your life. So if something bad happens to you, if you lose your job or you receive a poor grade in school, or you have some familial issues or conflicts, you have to take ownership of every aspect of those circumstances and situations. And I'll be honest with you, this was a concept that I sort of pushed back on several times as I was reading the book. And Jocko, the author, actually, he actually digs his heels in and stands his ground on this concept that you are in control of every aspect of your life. And to me, that sounded sort of extreme. How is that possible? Right now we're going through the COVID-19 pandemic. Obviously, we can't take control of that situation. But I have to say, by the end of the book, I was persuaded to completely agree with the author in that we do have the ability to take control and ownership of every aspect of the outcomes in our lives.

SPEAKER A

So let me push back on something first, and then we'll get to this total control idea, taking total ownership and total responsibility of the team. There's a fine line between taking ownership of everything and micromanaging everything. Did he differentiate at all between those two things? We know that micromanagers are very ineffective leaders.

SPEAKER B

Yes. So he talks about decentralizing command, breaking down teams into groups and then assigning a leader for each group. So he talks about delegating in the circumstance that you're describing, where, let's say a leader wants to micromanage because he wants to be controlling of every aspect of the process. That's not really what the book is about. The book is more your leadership is going to influence those under your command. And so in some cases, you need to keep things very simple so that your team has the ability to respond to changes they understand. Clearly they're being communicated with well. It may be that you need to manage your ego a little better as a leader so that you can prioritize the mission over your ego. He describes all these ways to be a good leader and take ownership of everything that's happening under your command without becoming this very micromanaging sort of leader.

SPEAKER A

Can we say that the difference between total ownership as a great leader and micromanaging is that maybe you assign someone or you give someone the task or responsibility, but then you trust them to go and do it the best way that they know how, and you just trust them to take care of it? Yeah.

SPEAKER B

And that's a big part of it. I think the overarching message here is you don't have to be a perfect leader, meaning it's okay to make mistakes, but you have to take ownership of those mistakes in order to improve in the future. So a leader who is taking extreme ownership of things is not going to blame people under his command for outcomes that he doesn't like he or she doesn't like. What they are going to do is accept responsibility for those mistakes, even if they didn't make them, and take those mistakes as a lesson for what they need to improve about their teams in the future. An example of this is when he shares a battle experience where his Seal Team Three was in the field of battle. They were fighting Iraqi insurgents, and suddenly there was a lot of smoke and a lot of people couldn't see what was happening around them, and there was a whole bunch of friendly fire. So Seal Team Three was actually in combat with another Seal team, not Iraqi insurgents, but they didn't know this. And so the battle was a terrible battle. People were injured, people were killed. And Jocko, as the commander of Seal Team Three, knew that his career was on the line because friendly fire is such a terrible, terrible thing to happen in any military. And so he knew that he had a choice. He could either blame the people under his command for engaging in this friendly fire, or he could take complete ownership of it, say it was his fault, and identify ways to make sure it never happened again. And he expressed that this was an important lesson for him because he did take that ownership of it and ensured that it never happened again, took steps, took precautions, created a process, created procedures so that that kind of situation would not repeat itself.

SPEAKER A

Okay. What a story. Yeah. So if things are kind of falling apart around me, I want to be a strong leader. I want to take ownership. What do you recommend I do? How do I know that I'm approaching things correctly?

SPEAKER B

Well, this is a mindset shift. Most of us, I think, by nature, want to blame other people or outside circumstances, outside effects, for anything going wrong in our lives. And what the book does is it encourages us to avoid that kind of mindset and to take ownership of it. The way to do that, I think, is a mental habit. It's a mental path, and it's something you sort of have to train yourself to do. My recommendation and kind of my challenge for those that are listening today is take a look at something in your life that you blame on others and rethink how you can take steps to control the outcome of that situation. And if you can't control the outcome better, then keep thinking about it. You're not thinking far enough into it. Take ownership of it. Jocko actually describes someone who was experiencing cancer, and she came up to him after one of his lectures about taking ownership of everything that happens around you, and she said, how do I take ownership of this cancer? I mean, I have cancer. How do I own the outcome here?

SPEAKER A

Right?

SPEAKER B

And he actually said, you may not be able to control what cancer does to you, but you can control how you react and act, and you can own how you react to this very negative thing happening in your life.

SPEAKER A

We all have a sphere of influence, and for some people, that sphere is very small, especially if you're a junior high student, right? Your brain hasn't even fully developed. And so parents and teachers are correct in limiting your sphere of influence. But if you spend all of your time thinking about things that are outside of your sphere of influence, then pretty soon you feel like you're a victim in life, that everyone's acting on you. And if you shift that mindset to, okay, what do I have control over? Even if that sphere of influence is small, then when you shift your mindset to that sphere of influence and the things that you have control over, and you begin to think about how you can make that element of your life better, whatever it is, then inevitably, that sphere of influence begins to grow. And people around you who rightly. So understanding your age and development level and everything else might restrict your choices when they see you. Shift that mindset from I'm a victim to what everyone else says about me, to I have some control over some parts of my life, I'm going to exercise the best judgment possible around those things. People see that and they begin to trust you more. And so maybe the very people who originally felt like your sphere of influence should be smaller, they begin to give you more flexibility, more trust, give you more responsibility, and your sphere of influence grows. And certainly in business and as you grow into adulthood, that is absolutely true. If you look at people who get promotions, who switch jobs because they become too qualified for the job that they're in, and so they keep advancing and growing, or they're starting their own companies solving problems. These are people who make things happen, who have a genuine impact in the world. And it starts by observing what's within your sphere of influence and taking ownership over that exactly.

SPEAKER B

And that's precisely what Jocko Willink expresses in the book. That if you want to go places, then you have to be able to take ownership of your actions and your reactions and the outcomes of whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. And it's okay to fail, it's okay to make mistakes, and it's okay to be imperfect. You just have to be willing to own up to those things and make improvements along the way. The harm comes if you make a mistake and then you blame it on somebody else, then there's no progress in your life. You're just going to play the victim and react like a victim and be unable to fix it because you weren't taking ownership of that outcome.

SPEAKER A

And and even if you didn't make the mistake right, if of course, if you make a mistake and blame others, that goes beyond just being a victim and having a victim mindset. If you're blaming others for your mistakes, there's a level of dishonesty there as well. But even if it's not your mistake and you just are restricted by life circumstances, you're restricted by your cancer or by your parents or by some other element. If you allow your mind to shift outside of the things that are within your control and focus on those things that you don't have any influence over, then you're going to feel like a victim versus saying, okay, what do I have control over? What can I influence? And maybe the only thing you can influence, like Victor Frankel. Victor Frankel, of course, was in a Nazi internment camp, and he realized there's very little he had control over. He couldn't control his day, what he ate, when he slept, anything about his circumstances, but he could control what he thought about those circumstances and whether or not he had meaning in life. Whether or not he was committed to finishing his research so that he could help the world understand ourselves better, he decided to take control over that very, very small sphere of influence, and that allowed him to stay alive. So that his influence. He's one of the most influential people in the history of the world now. And so all of us, we can focus on our own sphere of influence, the things we do have control over. Take ownership there, and then that sphere naturally grows and expands because we've shown that we can take good care of a smaller sphere of influence. And that's where the change agents in the world really come from.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. Take a look at something in your life that you've recently shifted the blame onto and rethink how you can take ownership of that circumstance or that outcome, because you can take ownership, you can control aspects of it, and you can improve the outcome in the future of all kinds of things that your sphere of influence touches.

SPEAKER A

I love it. I wonder if we can add a bonus takeaway today and just have a challenge for today. And for some of you overachievers out there, maybe make it the whole week, but just for today, start with today and do a no complaining day, and you just have no space in your life for complaints. Instead, anytime you're tempted to complain about anything, you stop yourself. And instead of complaining, you say in your mind, what do I have control over? I know this is a really crummy situation. I feel like a victim. I feel like someone is hurting me or something else. But what do I have control over? What can I do about this? And re channel my energy away from complaining towards action steps that are inside of my sphere of influence so I can make a difference.

SPEAKER B

That's perfect. So those two challenges, then.