551: Relationships Over Rank. Trust Over Authority

Summary

Jocko Podcast 551: Relationships Over Rank. Trust Over Authority

Date: July 29, 2026
Host: Jocko Willink
Co-host: Echo Charles

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode explores core leadership lessons from the United States Marine Corps’ Company Commander’s Handbook, focusing on the dynamic between relationships and the chain of command. Jocko and Echo unpack how trust, communication, discipline, and morale trump rigid authority both in the military and every aspect of life. They break down practical leadership principles applicable to business, family, teams, and personal development.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Chain of Command vs. Relationships

• The Chain of Command is essential for order, especially in groups larger than one.
  • "If there's two Marines in a room, one of them is the senior man. ...but, relationships are stronger than the chain of command." – Jocko (00:50)
• Chain of command rarely needs to be invoked if relationships are strong.
  • Jocko rarely, if ever, "pulled rank" on his teams, emphasizing relationship and mutual respect over authority (01:50).
  • Effective organizations are built so authority is only a fallback, not a daily tool.

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2. Trust, Respect, and Mission-Focus

• Mutual understanding allows decisions to flow naturally.
  • In examples from Echelon Front events, when Jocko did give a direct order, it was out of operational necessity—never ego (05:00–07:55).
  • "What takes priority is the mission… Everyone's trying to achieve the mission." – Jocko (07:26)
• Sometimes subordinates instruct the leader, and trust allows everyone to fit into the right role for the task (06:55).

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3. Communication Up and Down the Chain

• Communication isn’t just downstream.
  • “People don’t think as much about communicating up the chain of command ... that’s why the chain of command is so important.” – Jocko (09:24)
• Clarity prevents the rumor mill and negative gaps.
  • “By the time the arguments are finished ... there’s no energy left to get the job done. ...if you don’t let people know what’s happening, they’re gonna fill in the blanks ... not gonna be good.” – Jocko (11:11)

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4. Extreme Ownership is Not a ‘Get Out of Jail Free Card’

• Taking responsibility doesn't guarantee forgiveness.
  • “Extreme ownership is not a get out of jail free card.” – Jocko (15:58)
  • You can admit failure, own it, and still be fired or demoted—and that’s fair.
• Prior genuine relationships (and patterns of ownership) make it more likely you’ll be trusted again (16:00–17:00).
• Anecdote: Echo shares a bouncer story illustrating how honest ownership over a mistake preserved his job (17:00–20:31).

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5. Leading Individuals: Four Types of People

• The Company Commander’s Handbook breaks Marines into four categories:
  1. Able & Willing – Ideal performers, should be groomed for leadership.
  2. Unable & Willing – New, motivated, require patient instruction.
  3. Able but Unwilling – Challenge; root out causes (confidence, personal issues, or misalignment).
  4. Unable & Unwilling – The toughest; requires clarity, supervision, and may ultimately need to be removed (34:28–44:25).
• People’s behaviors and attitudes are context-dependent and can shift with time/task/leadership.

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6. Discipline, Morale, and Identity

• Discipline is proactive – about daily habits and consistent modeling from leaders.

  • “Discipline is absolutely one of those universally appreciated virtues.” – Jocko (67:15)

• Morale is built on:

  • Efficient operations, clear communication, realistic training, opportunities for advancement, and confidence in leadership and equipment.

• Identity and Reputation as Motivation

  • “When the team wins, the individuals win.” – Jocko (60:39)
  • Building a strong reputation creates expectations and internalized standards. Identity ("I don’t drink," "We work hard") is far more robust than fear of punishment. (83:00–85:53)

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7. Training & Team Cohesion

• Give people ‘reps’ in low-stakes settings.
  • “Everything that you do...is training. So don’t get this idea in your head… you have time to train people.” – Jocko (33:26)
• Keep team units intact when possible; fireteam integrity promotes strength and performance.
• Practice decentralized command: leaders as conductors, setting tempo, making small adjustments but trusting teams (54:47–59:59).
  • “The conductor shouldn’t be...you’re not going to blow your trumpet until I point at you...he’s giving a little bit of sauce.” – Jocko (56:00)

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8. Counseling and Feedback

• Performance counseling is crucial for developing people’s skills, awareness, and motivation.
  • Counsel privately, reward publicly.
  • “The best counseling session is usually the one in which the leader talks the least.” – Jocko (105:11)
• Listening is emphasized; “Help them solve their own problems.” (106:00+)

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9. Parenting & Leadership Parallels

• Parenting stories deepen lessons:
  • Making chores fun, raising kids who act from identity not fear (38:09, 83:00).
  • Punishment is mostly a failure of leadership to preempt—frequent course corrections prevent big ones (75:23, 79:52).
  • Echo: “I’ve never punished any of my kids except for one time, and I didn’t feel good about it.” (75:27)

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10. Time Management & Meetings

• Work smarter, not harder.
  • “You are judged by results achieved, not by time spent or energy expended.” – Jocko (94:33)
  • Use calendars, prioritization, and make room for unscheduled time to handle the unexpected.

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Memorable Quotes & Notable Moments

• “Relationships are stronger than the chain of command.” – Jocko (04:31)
• “Extreme Ownership is not a get out of jail free card.” – Jocko (15:58)
• “If I don’t respect the mission, I got a problem. If I don’t respect you, we got a problem.” – Jocko (44:26)
• “Punishment, when we have to punish people, is a down check in your own leadership book.” – Jocko (74:59)
• “Morale and esprit de corps… you have to work for them. You can’t just buy morale.” – Jocko (66:54)
• On trust and team identity:
  • “Making sure people understand when the team wins, the individual wins.” – Jocko (60:39)
  • “When you elevate people, you make the relationship stronger.” – Jocko (41:00)
• On parenting and values:
  • “…if your kids, you’re not going to be there when they get peer pressured…you have to send them into the field...with the identity in place.” – Jocko (83:00)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:50 – Chain of command’s role vs. real power of relationships
• 05:00–07:55 – Anecdotes of rare cases for explicit authority; trusting team’s judgement
• 09:24 – Communication up and down the chain
• 11:11 – Dangers of unclear information; rumor mill
• 15:58 – “Extreme Ownership” and consequences
• 17:00–20:31 – Echo’s bouncer anecdote on ownership/trust
• 33:26 – Training as a continual process
• 34:28–44:25 – Categories of team members & challenges of each
• 54:47–59:59 – Conductors, decentralized command, leading teams
• 60:39 – Team orientation: When the team wins, everyone wins
• 67:15 – Discipline and morale as core virtues
• 74:59 – Discipline as proactive, not just punishment
• 83:00 – Establishing identity in kids & subordinates
• 94:33 – Efficient leadership & smarter time management
• 105:11 – Counseling, feedback, and listening as core leadership skills

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Summary Table

| Topic | Jocko’s Key Point | Timestamp | |----------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------| | Relationships & Rank | Relationships above authority—trust and respect drive performance | 00:50–04:31 | | Extreme Ownership | Admitting mistakes doesn’t shield from real consequences—responsibility is more than words | 15:58–17:00 | | Types of Team Members | Four categories: Able & Willing, Unable & Willing, Able but Unwilling, Unable & Unwilling | 34:28–44:25 | | Discipline & Morale | Maintain through leadership example, clear standards, and meaningful training | 67:15+ | | Identity & Reputation | Strong team & individual identity are more powerful motivators than punishment | 60:39, 83:00 | | Training & Delegation | Give people responsibility, train constantly, let teams work together & grow | 33:26, 54:47 | | Performance Counseling | Listen actively, help team members solve issues instead of dictating solutions | 105:11+ | | Time Management | Plan smart, prioritize, and create fudge time in schedules | 94:33+ |

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Final Takeaways

• Great leadership is rooted in trust, clarity, and respect, not positional authority.
• Teams win when relationships, communication, and a shared sense of identity flourish.
• Discipline, both personal and organizational, builds confidence, effectiveness, and morale.
• Leadership is an everyday practice—at work, in families, and within yourself.
• Show that you care. That’s the mark of a true leader. (105:09+)

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This episode offers a masterclass in practical, principle-based leadership—delivered with Jocko’s signature blend of humility, real talk, and direct action.

Transcript

[Jocko Willink]

This is Jocko, podcast number 551 with Echo, Charles, and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. So, Last podcast, episode 550, we introduced a book called the Company Commander's Handbook. It's from the United States Marine Corps. And obviously, the Marine Corps executes all kinds of missions, all kinds of tasks, all kinds of projects. And, and we gotta remember this goes from basic administrative stuff like paperwork, all the way up to the most complex and dangerous combat operations. And all of that they do through leadership. And they've learned a lot of lessons along the way, 250 years worth of lessons. You know what I'm saying? That's a lot of lessons in some pretty tough environments, the toughest environments. So they've captured a lot of these lessons learned about leadership in this handbook. And so if you want to go back and listen to episode 550 and then come back here, and we're going to cover down on some of the other lessons from the Company Commander Handbook, United States Marine Corps. This next section is leading the company, and this particular one is chain of command. And it starts off by saying the chain of command is the most basic and important organizational leadership technique used in the core. It is essential for getting any task done in an organized manner when the efforts of more than one person are required. The. Just saying, hey, if there's two of you, and this is something you hear from day one about the Marine Corps, if there's two Marines in a. In a room, one of them is the senior man. They are, they are. They are on that stuff. Now, I will say this, and I've. I've been saying this for a very long time. It's in the book, Extreme ownership relationships are stronger than the chain of command. So as much as we got to understand and we got to support the chain of command, but we got to remember that relationships are stronger than the chain of command when it comes right down to it. And these things are going to play, you know, when you're watching a race between two real close competitors, and one will pull ahead a little bit, and then the other one will pull ahead a little bit, and then the other one, they kind of go back and forth. That this. Most of the time, 99% of the time, if you're doing things right, the relationship should be out front. And occasionally, rare occasion and. But occasionally that. That chain of command has to. Has to come out front. But if you're. The better you're doing as a leader, the less that's going to happen. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I just have not pulled rank on people, you know what I mean? I, I, we, you know, we talk about like working with Leif for I don't know how long, a long time. 20, 20 something years. JP for 20 something years, you know, Dave, for 20 something years working with these guys. The amount of times that I was like, hey, no, actually I'm the boss. This is what we're doing. The amount of times that is zero. Even with your dumb ass.

[Echo Charles]

Literally, my son, we're working out. And he was like, he's like, you have the best job in the world. I was like, I was like, okay. I was like, why do you think that? Because it was a long story that brought him to, he was, he was, he was working out and he's thinking of cool sayings, you know, he's nine, by the way. That's awesome. And he was like, hey, we should make a shirt of that. I was like, oh, yeah, maybe we could do that. So we're just going over what was the saying?

[Jocko Willink]

I'm in support.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, yeah. He had two of them. One is pain is just a feeling. Okay. He's nine.

[Jocko Willink]

All right.

[Echo Charles]

And then the other one was, it's supposed to be hard check. So I'm like, okay, okay.

[Jocko Willink]

Cairo coming up with the, the real deal.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. So he's fired up and he's, and then so he's all happy and stuff.

[Jocko Willink]

Can we do two birds with one stone and put like one on the front, one on the back maybe?

[Echo Charles]

Well, yeah, well, we'll workshop it.

[Jocko Willink]

But a nine year old kid with a, with a T shirt that says pain is just a feeling. Props.

[Echo Charles]

You know, you're right.

[Jocko Willink]

Props.

[Echo Charles]

So he's like. I was like, hey, you have the best job in the world. I was like, I was like, okay, why? He's like, because you can just make a shirt. He's like, you don't have a boss. Like, you know, it's not like you have to say, jocko, we have to make this shirt. You just can make the shirt. And then I was like, oh yeah. And you know, maybe I'll, maybe I'll give Jocko shirt if he's, you know, if he's lucky. He's like, yeah. It's like, yeah, that's the best. And I'm thinking, and which is exactly what you're saying, you know, like, you don't, like, what are you going to pull rank? You know, it's like, but when you kind of think about that part of it, in which of course it did make me think, like, where? Yeah, like this. It's not just like that at any given moment. And that's it. It's because of, like, this past, of course, you know, behavior, like dynamic, its

[Jocko Willink]

relationships are stronger than the chain of command.

[Echo Charles]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

It's funny because that Echelon front, I. Because you gotta have examples when you're talking to people. And there's so few examples of me being like, all right, I'll stop. This is what we're doing. And we have to go to the first muster. When we're at the muster. And I walked into the. The setup in the morning and everything's all set up. Like it's 6 o' clock in the morning, doors open at 7 or something like that. And I say, I look in there and the lighting is blue and. And the doors are opening pretty soon, you know, in like an hour.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And I look at it and it looks. This is not what I had in mind. And I look at Jamie and I go, hey, make all these lights red. And she was like, cool. Got it. You know, it's one of. That's. That's how far and deep I gotta go to go like, oh, this is a time where I. I made a call. Another time was JP and Leif had come up with some other PT plan for the muster. We hadn't really rehearsed it, and I. I came. I was like, all right, what are we doing? And they started briefing me the plan. And there's now 700 people on their way. 12 in whatever, in a half an hour that are going to be here. 700 people. You cannot be not squared away with a PT program with 700 people. It's got to be simple, clear, concise. It's got to be straightforward. There's no room for confusion. And we're at a leadership event.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And Echelon Front is putting on a leadership event, and we are in charge of the pt. So if the PT is not squared away, I mean, that's just not a good look at all. So we're sitting there, they start briefing me a little bit. And 40 seconds into the brief, I say, we're doing. We're doing what we normally do. Boom. Like. And they were. They said, roger, I think JP might have said, like, no, it'll. And I was like, nope. I looked at my watch, I was like, nope, not doing it.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And they were like, roger. And I said, you know, afterwards, because we didn't have time, you know, we had to do. Because what we do is we do the PT first, and then people show up. So we only have a half an hour to get it done. And I said, hey, if we want to try this, we got to run through it when we have time to run through it and square it away and hone it and make it good. But we can't just, you know, out of the hip pocket, just throw a new PT with 700 people that are coming over here. Yeah, that's not a good time to try it out. So there are times where, where you have to. That now. I'll tell you, there's other times where, you know, JP's like, hey, I got to do this now, or we need to do this. And like, yep, cool. Got you.

[Echo Charles]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

So it goes in both directions. There's times where Jamie's been like, do this right now. And I've been got it. You know that that's the way it works. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. So, you know, normally the relationships are in lead. Occasionally the. The chain of command will come into play. But even, even, like I said, you know, most of the time, even then, it's like I said, if Jamie's telling me what to do, or Leif's telling me what to do, or JP's telling me what to do, or Dave's telling me what to do, hey, we need this right now. Like, cool. Got it.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Because the mission, what takes priority is the mission, you know, the mission that we're trying to achieve. Everyone's trying to achieve the mission. This is what we're doing.

[Echo Charles]

Cool.

[Jocko Willink]

God, yeah.

[Echo Charles]

That you and I'll actually do you one better. As far as, like, the relationship is that one. And I've heard that story before, the one about the blue lights and switch it to the red. That actually, to me doesn't count as pulling rank. Because you, like, it wasn't like, Jamie was like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, blue is better.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, yeah.

[Echo Charles]

And you were like, well, no, I think red is better. It's like, well, well, you know, don't forget I'm your boss. You know, it wasn't that. I'm saying, it was like, hey, it was red. Jamie was like, well, obviously he sees something, you know, that I don't. Or what. Whatever the thought process it was to me, that wasn't. Was not pulling rank. JP's one. Maybe if JP thought that his way was like, no, no, this is the way. And then Jock was, you know, not that he would contend your way or nothing like this, but more like, you know, that little bit might Be.

[Jocko Willink]

And everybody. Like, all. All those people that you just mentioned, you, jp, Jamie, they know if I say something like that, there's a reason why I'm saying it. I'm not just like, hey, this is what we're doing. And I don't. I haven't thought through it. There's no reason behind it. They know there's something going on.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. I'm the boss. So they're. Yeah. Like, pull, like, actually pulling rank, what that means. I don't think I've even come close to witnessing that. Yeah. Even like with other people or whatever.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. And it. You're right about it being that kind of level of, like, trust where it's like, oh, he sees something that I don't. Or like, you know, And a lot of times, a lot of us, we're just trying to do, like, the best we can kind of a thing. Like, I want. And we. And I think most of us, I think all of us really, we want. We want the. Just the best for the group, what we're doing. You know, we don't want the, like, to be the guy who did it first and then, you know, whatever. I think it's a. But then even that comes from, like, just from the beginning, that's how we were all interacting. See what I'm saying? It wasn't like, I don't know, like, someone would have to be the front runner, you know, and that would get them ahead, you know?

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. Yeah. And as you do grow an organization, the reason that the chain of command is so important is because what the chain of command allows you to do is communicate up and down the chain of command. Up and down the chain of command. Everyone thinks about communicating down the chain of command. People don't think as much about communicating up the chain of command and how important that is. But that's. To me, that's what. From that perspective, that's why the chain of command is so important. You can't just abandon it, because people got to be able to pass the word effectively. Up and down the chain of command. And really, everyone says up and down the chain of command, it's really down and up the chain of command. So going back to the book here, a simple and direct chain of command helps to send orders from the highest to the lowest levels in a minimum of time with the least chance of misinterpretation. The chain of command must be open the other way as well, so that the commander can receive official communications and informal feedback from subordinates.

[Echo Charles]

There you go.

[Jocko Willink]

That's What I just said, that is. That is the part of the chain of command that really matters. Actually, they both matter, but it's the one that gets ignored more. More often. Fast forward a little. A ground combat force fights in small units and depends on the initiative of junior leaders, the toughness of individual Marines and the chain of command, the bottom links of the chain. In particular, forging a strong, reliable chain in peacetime Marine Corps with a high rate of personal turbulence remains a challenge. So when it's peacetime and you got, you know, personal turbulence, it can be. It can be hard. It's got a. Some. Some guidelines to help you with that. Spend a lot of time explaining standards and clarifying goals, priorities, and policies. The chain of command can't grow strong amid confusion. By the time the arguments are finished regarding what should be done and by whom, there's no energy left to get the job done. Man, it's weird how much the rumor mill takes hold of things, and if you don't let people know what's happening, they're gonna. They're gonna fill in the blanks, and the blanks that they've. The words that they used to fill in the blanks with are not gonna be good. Yeah, yeah, everyone likes that negativity. That's just the way it is.

[Echo Charles]

That is.

[Jocko Willink]

And. And the chain of command, the next echelon of chain of command is always stupid. They always don't know what's going on. Specify who works for whom. Again, important. But, you know, again, going back to the military examples, you know, when. When I was working for General McFarland, Colonel McFarland at the time, you know, he never gave me any orders. I never, you know, had to push back against what he was saying because he was like, no, you're gonna. Like, no, it was a relationship. And all these different battalion commanders that we work with, there was no. Because the interesting thing is, and we heard about this from Ben Milligan in his book By Water Beneath the Walls, there's been a lot of times in the past where conventional units, conventional commanders had control over special Operations, and it didn't work out well. And so Special operations can be horrified of that. Like, oh, if you get put in charge of these Rangers, you're going to send them in to do a infantry assault on this thing. And that's not the job that they're. That all that kind of thing. Right. So people are paranoid about it. And it just was no factor for us in Ramadi. No factor at all. And the reason is because we had just Good relationships and the chain of command was, was a distant second, you know what I mean? It was a very distant second when,

[Echo Charles]

when you say in, in. In Ramadi. So was it that like you guys understood both your guys unique positions so. Well, because of the relationship, whatever. So they knew not to send you into certain situations because you guys would communicate all this stuff and it was totally. Just understood.

[Jocko Willink]

Totally. It was, you know, if General McFarland said, hey, I need you to do this. And I looked at him and said, oh, that's, that's not a good, that's not a good use of us right now. He'd go, oh, okay, well do you have any other recommendations? I'd say, well, yeah, maybe we could do this. And sometimes I would say, hey, sort of like, I can't. We don't have the forces to make this happen. And he'd say oh, don't worry, I do. I got tanks. I got, you know, a company or what. So very cooperative, very open minded and just, just awesome.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, it's, that's funny because in football a good quarterback will do that same. Like he'll be, he'll, he won't be like, hey, you got a xyz? He'll be like, hey, what are you seeing over there? So you. It's like a, it's kind, it's a real back and forth, you know, so it's like, oh, if he's like.

[Jocko Willink]

So you can be like, heck, I can outrun this guy.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, exactly. Or exactly right? Or like, bro, this guy is fast. So it's like, hey, let's, you know, let's keep that in mind when. Because you know, a lot of times quarterback have. It's not just one play in one. It's like throughout the play you have different options, you know, so it's like a good quarterback is going to know all those options and then, you know, you know, when you say, when you consider a quarterback good at reading defense, so it's like, oh, he can read. But like, okay, our a, our initial plan is here and here's the secondary and the tertiary, a good quarterback will be like against these guys, that first plan is very unlikely. So he'll keep that in mind.

[Jocko Willink]

You mean in the moment?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, like when the play starts, you know, like let's say they have a corn, like a DB who's like super fast or they're freaking MVP or something like this. It's like, you know, he makes those adjustments and a lot of times, and even, you know, even if you don't have that particular situation. He knows because he's constant, constantly communicating with the line.

[Jocko Willink]

So you were coming back in the huddle time saying, sometimes saying like, oh, I. Hey, I can ice this dude. I got it.

[Echo Charles]

Exactly.

[Jocko Willink]

Or sometimes you'd be like, bro, I did. I'll do my best to drag him out of the play.

[Echo Charles]

Exactly right. He'll. And. And it won't even be that specific. It'll be more like the quarterback saying, like, hey, what are you seeing out there? Like, oh, is he. If a guy's crowding you and he's really good at crowding you, and certain receivers, like, they don't do good with that kind of crowding. If he's bumping you off the line or whatever, it's like, you'll communicate that. He'll be like, yeah, cool. He won't be like, well, what the hell's wrong? You know, practice more or. So. It's not that.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep.

[Echo Charles]

See what I'm saying? He'll be like, okay, yep, that's our strength. That's our weakness.

[Jocko Willink]

I was about to say everyone is identifying the strength and weaknesses and the capabilities. And it's nothing. Like, there's nothing wrong when. When tasking a bruiser's like, hey, I don't know if that's a great mission for us. General McFarlane wouldn't be like, well, why

[Echo Charles]

can't you do it right?

[Jocko Willink]

No, it's like, well, hey, we don't have this type of weapon system, or we don't have this type of. We don't have enough people, or I don't have enough people to send out for that amount of time, or whatever the case may be. He's like, okay, cool. Got it.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

What can you do? Oh, we can do this, though. Okay, let's do that then. So, yeah, check. Next, explain that there is only one chain of command and it is responsible for everything. I. I said something at an event the other day. I don't know if I said it before. I think I have said it before, but I haven't said it for a while. Extreme ownership is not a get out of jail free card.

[Echo Charles]

Oh, yeah. Hell yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You know, like, oh, hey, this was my fault. Okay, great, now you can carry on. No, no, no. And the weird thing is, you can get fired if you make a grievous mistake that was your fault and you take ownership. There's a decent chance that your boss looks and you says, okay, you're fired now, or I'm demoting you, or I'm moving you off the project. That can happen.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

That's why we have to have preemptive ownership. We have to be looking at it like, hey, if something goes wrong, I'm the one that's going to pay for it. So I need to make sure that stuff is done right. But sometimes people think, well, you know, what if I take ownership and they still move me out of that position? Yeah, that can happen. Yep, that can happen. In the book, Extreme Ownership, when I was like, hey, this is my fault. There was a chance my boss would have said, okay, yeah, you're fired.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep, that could have happened. And he would have been well within his means to be able to do that. Hey, you know, you're fired. I don't trust you anymore. Luckily, I had a good relationship prior to I was taking ownership, which indicates that, hey, when someone's taking ownership and they're not blaming other people, there's a much better chance that it's not going to happen again.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, that. That happened to me. And I think I told you this for Back when I was a bouncer, I got caught up in one of those, you know, what do you call, secret shoppers? You know, these people. Anyway, so I took money, blah, blah, blah. I took money at the front door to let people cut the line.

[Jocko Willink]

Moral breakdown.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, yeah, it was. It wasn't really morally wrong. 20 bucks. I forget. I mean, I'm assuming it was 20. I don't even remember the incident, even though I remember doing that.

[Jocko Willink]

I used to go to a bar in downtown San Diego when I was a young guy, and I would. I would walk right to the front and I had this little relationship with a bouncer, and I'd shake his hand and have a 20 in there, as if a 20 was just big time, bro. Trust me, this was in the 90s.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. Keep in mind, like, 20 and a 20, when it's not on the normal schedule of payment is big, it's cool. And then, not to mention what makes it, I would say, by my estimation, doubly as. As cool is the gesture. See, I'm saying, like, this guy is like, you know, I'm. Because keep in mind, everyone that's coming in has. It has an element of risk in there. Are they going to get drunk? Are they going to act up? Are they going to have drama with this person or the staff, whatever. Everyone in a bar, in a nightclub, they have an element of risk. Now, a guy coming in with that gesture, he just kind of got on your good side. That means a lot.

[Jocko Willink]

It's huge.

[Echo Charles]

So so, yeah, I get caught up in this thing or whatever, and then I get rolled up, right? Me and another guy.

[Jocko Willink]

There was another bar used to go to and I would. The first drink I would get, I would pay 20 bucks and I would just leave it. I'd be like this. And then this dude would just feed me all night.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Let me do whatever I wanted.

[Echo Charles]

That makes sense, you know? Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

It's crap one of those things, isn't it?

[Echo Charles]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

But, man, in the 90s, holding up, I mean, handing over a 20, it was like I was freaking a billionaire. I was an Elon Musk rolling just cash.

[Echo Charles]

It's true. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Ridiculous.

[Echo Charles]

But when we all got caught, I took responsibility. This would be to support extreme ownership, obviously, but I did take responsibility. Like, what else I'm gonna do? Like, I don't know, it just wasn't. It didn't feel like a good thing to be. For whatever reason, I took full responsibility. Like, I'm sorry, whatever. And then. And there was this kind of period of maybe a week or two that they were like, okay, what are we gonna do? We're fire these guys or whatever. Because it's a fireable offense, straight up, like, fine. Um, so they're like, what are we going to do? You know, Blah, blah, blah. And I was just saying, like, sorry, I just didn't want to get fired. Like, it was such a fun job to me and like some cool free money sometimes, you know, like all this stuff. And I would even talk to the manager, like, hey, like, privately, you know, not when they were talking to me, like, privately. Be like, I'm so sorry for putting you in this position. Whatever's my fault. He's like, yeah, well, you know, it's a bad position to be in, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, scared for a few days, like, oh, they're going to fire me today. You know, Freaking not happy. Like, you know, 23 years old, I don't know. And finally the manager, I guess he like, found out I was scared or whatever, and he like pulled me and he was like, hey, you know, the kind where he wants to tell you something but he can't say it, you know, so he was like, you know, I. It makes sense for someone in your position to be really worried about your job, you know, and all that stuff. Just understand that you specifically, you don't have to worry about that, you know? And then.

[Jocko Willink]

Did they fire some of the other guys?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, well, they were gonna, but then the. The other guy. There was one other guy. He. He like Quit. He resigned, you know, before they fired him. But yeah, it's that situation. Yeah. Every time from being about. But he was like, hey, no, but he said it was for that reason, though. He's like, your attitude and the way you've handled yourself throughout this situation, like, you. Like, we don't look at you as a bad person. That creates problems. Like you're, you're. You're an asset to this, blah, blah, blah. I was like, okay, that makes sense. Because it was like, way after the fact, bro.

[Jocko Willink]

You could have written extreme ownership all those years ago.

[Echo Charles]

Maybe I should have

[Jocko Willink]

check. Hold leaders accountable for their. For their performance, good and bad of their subordinates. Makes sense. Of course leaders are going to give credit when it's the good stuff. We're going to own it when it's the bad stuff. Demand that leaders give orders in their own names. It's a solid one. Because if I come down and say, well, you know, the boss said, we have to do this. No, no, we're not doing that. Yeah, we're not doing that. It's mine. This is what we're doing. Correct. And train leaders in private, Reward them in public. Jack. Give awards for small group successes and publicize both the groups and their leaders. Really good, good. Fire team leader. Hey, who's the fire team leader? Fire team that. That set up that flank over there. Hey, good job, Fred. Way to work. You know, that's what we're doing.

[Echo Charles]

So there's this little technique that. It looks super dope, but I feel like. And tell me what you think about this. Is this kind of defeating the purpose? And that's the one of criticizing public. Or. Sorry, the other one. The criticize in private. Yeah, right. Critique. Okay, so there's this. The. An example of it is on the movie called A Few Good Men where he was like, you know, jess up or whatever, right? The main Marine guy, Colonel. And then his. One of his subordinates, this guy was like. He disagreed with him, like in front of some other people. He was like, I think that's a bad idea. And he was like. He didn't like, yell at him or nothing. He was like. He was like, oh, you know, just totally played it off. And it's like, oh, you know what? I think I will have that word with you in private. You know, and he's like, all right. But you could tell it was like, oh, you know, a little something. Other people couldn't tell. And then when everyone left or whatever, they had the word in private. Then he got freaking scolded or whatever. But. Okay, so here's my question. So you know how. How he said that, right? Where it's kind of like. Like, everyone in that public setting kind of knows, like, oh, he might get scolded right now, you know, Like, I don't know. You know, consider you if in a alternate universe where you were talking to, I don't know, freaking JP or something like this, and JP said something maybe that you thought was out of line, and then, like, in a meeting, like, let's say a group meeting, and you told everyone. Can you guys excuse us? I got to talk to JP real quick. You know. You know how. You know JP's about to get scolded. You see what I'm saying? But you still technically didn't do it in. In public. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Everybody knows.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

That's the same thing, right?

[Echo Charles]

Same thing, right? Yeah. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Well, it's. It's a really. That's a situation where you cannot be defensive. You can't get defensive about your ideas, and you don't want people to not ask you questions and disagree with you. That's just wrong. It's bad leadership. So if someone's like, hey, I don't like this idea. She's like, hey, well, okay, let me know. What. What don't you like about it? Now, listen, there can be somebody that can get a, you know, a hair in their ass about some, like, particular thing, you know, like, okay, you know what?

[Echo Charles]

Let's.

[Jocko Willink]

Let's talk about this offline because, you know, if. You know, if you. If you and I are in a meeting, and I'm like, hey, once we get the lights set up for the video shoot, and you're like, hey, we should. We should put the lights over here. And I'm like, yeah, we can put them over there. And you're like, no, no, no, like, over here. And I go, yeah, yeah, that's the. You know, well, let's. Let's take a look at what they look like once they're set up. You're like, well, I already did their thing. And I go, hey, you know what? Let's just. Let's talk about it offline, because we got everyone here.

[Echo Charles]

That's. That's.

[Jocko Willink]

That's understandable. But most of the time, it's. It's. You know, when someone asks a question, if you're getting defensive, it actually doesn't look good. I mean, like, all the other subordinates go, oh, okay, so we're not allowed that question. Ask questions now. And by the way, a few of those people are agreeing with that person that asked the question. They're like, yeah, good question. I don't, I wasn't asking it. But a good question. Right? So, yeah, definitely, you, you want to have an environment where people are asking you questions and when they ask you a question, you give them a good, solid answer. Keep small groups and their leaders together in every possible situation. This is a good one. And this is something that when you're, when you're going, when you're in a SEAL task unit or SEAL platoon, you got fire teams and there's a, there's a, there's a draw, there's a, there's a, a pull to break up the fire team sometimes because, you know, well, we want to put more machine gunners over in this position, so we're going to switch these guys out and we also want a corpsman on this. So we're going to switch those guys out. And you end up scrambling up your fire teams. Now listen, fire teams are going to get scrambled up in a gunfight. Like they're going to get scrambled up. And that's why you got to train so that they can be scrambled up. But if you don't have to scramble them up, don't. Anytime you can keep that fire team intact, man, it's going to be so much easier. And this is something I learned from the NOM guys. And it was like, oh, well, there's two reasons if you have a base and a assault element. So the base elements going to put down the COVID fire on target and then the assault elements going to go through it. And the, you know, we would get these young new guy SEAL officers and chiefs that would be like, well, you know, we're going to put more of the machine guns up in the base. And so now all of a sudden you broke fireteam integrity. So that's not good. And then they'd say, and then the Vietnam guys would say, hey, not only do you mess up your fire teams, but now what happens if the assault team gets compromised and they have no machine guns? It's such an obvious thing. But we like to, we think like, oh, well, we like to over plan like, hey, well we're going to put more machine guns up here and put a rocket team up there. And it's like you scrambled up all the fire teams. No one's used to working with that person. And you have an element that can defense defend itself well in a big gunfight. Yeah, it's not a good move. So those are the kind of things keep that fireteam integrity and, and listen, in training you have to scramble them up. Just like at work. There's times we want to cross pollinate people and take a guy from the sea. Of course, of course. But when you have like, oh, we got an emergency scenario. Hey, we got to go. Do we got to go pitch to a client tomorrow? Don't put it together, an ad hoc team right there and put the people that have been working together. So that's what we're doing, keeping those, keeping those fire teams together as much as we can. Next section is called developing individual Marines. The foundation of your company's performance is the performance of your individual Marines. Your objective is to develop individual Marines who are confident that, that they can fight and win in combat. When properly developed, your Marines should have confidence in their own ability. Confidence in the ability of the other Marines in the fireteam crew squad, confidence in their weapons and equipment, and confidence in their leadership. Confidence in the company's leadership, particularly in you as their commander, will depend upon how well you meet their expectations. Your Marines expect the following from their leader. Get out your notebook. That he knows his job. That he knows a great deal about the jobs of his Marines. That he keeps them informed about what is going on and what is going to happen in the future. That he is well organized and keeps the efforts of the company organized. That he knows his Marines and takes care of their needs. That he shares all the risks and hardship with his Marines and that he rewards his excellent Marines and takes action to discipline or eliminate his problem Marines. So there's a nice little list to keep in mind. Know your job, know, know your team's jobs. Keep them informed not only about what's happening right now, but what's happening in the future. We had a question yesterday about. I was on the academy, the extreme ownership academy online, and a guy was saying he's in a situation where his company is downsizing a little bit, he's got a go getter that he's the go getters kind of asking like, what, what are my opportunities here? And they're really, at this particular moment in time, not great future opportunities. What should I tell this guy? And I was like, tell him the truth. Hey, this is what's going on. Here's where we're at. This is where we are. This is where you are. Here's. There's a little bit of a, there's a, there's a bottleneck right now. You're not going to have any opportunities for at least this amount of time. Now I can give you more experience, I can give you more leadership. There's another department. We might be able to help you out over there, but here's where for what we're doing right now, and that's. We have to keep people informed about not just what's going on right now, but the future. We have to tell them the truth about it. Make sure you're organized, dude. Don't be a. Don't. Don't show up with your gear all messed up. And by gear, I mean your computer. You know, if you're a business person, your computer's all messed up. You forgot the pointer. You don't have your, you know, whatever. Don't, don't do that. If you're in the military of obviously show up with your gear squared away, you know, have a squared away office, don't look like a disaster. And listen, Einstein was a real mess. Cool. That's Einstein. You're not Einstein. I'm not Einstein. Right. Einstein can get away with that. You can't. I can't be squared away. Take care of your means, all that stuff. It's great Little. Great little excerpt of what, what Your marines or your people. Marines are not your people. This is what they need from you as a leader. Next, you build the skills of your Marines through training. You are responsible for identifying the many individual and collective tasks that they must perform in combat for and for developing a plan to train them and evaluate them for the minimum standard period. So what's cool about this is roles and responsibilities. You know, we, we are. I was going to ask you, was there a clearly stated role or rule when you were a bouncer that you were not allowed to take money at the door to let someone cut?

[Echo Charles]

No. I don't know.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, because that does change the game, you know, and a lot of times people just assume. Well, no, obviously that's, that's. Obviously you can't do that, but it was also, obviously people are doing it all the time. Yeah, I know. I did it a lot. Not as a bouncer, but as a what, a consumer, an attendee, a patron.

[Echo Charles]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

So if you're not clear about what the rules are, you can't. If you're not clear about the expectations, you can't hold people to those expectations.

[Echo Charles]

Oh, yeah, it was a rule. But yeah, that makes sense to me completely.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Oh, now you remember it was a rule.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay, well, then you screwed up.

[Echo Charles]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

And there's also rules that, that everyone kind of goes, well, yeah. And if it's that kind of rule, we have to Take that into account. We have to take that into account. There's rules that are. There's a precedent for breaking. And unless you clearly didn't delineate, like, hey, I know this has been slack in the past, we cannot do this. Yeah, that's what you need to do. If there's some rule that. That kind of gets broken sometimes, and now all of a sudden, we're going to enforce it. You got to make it very, very clear. You can't just wait until someone.

[Echo Charles]

Oh, the.

[Jocko Willink]

The. The one guy that got caught, and now we're going to make an example out of him. When people have been doing this all the time, it's like, no, no, no, that's not cool.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Nope. Not cool. You can use that as a. A moment to say, hey, listen, next person that this happened to is getting crushed. I know that there's been a precedent of this behavior. It's not happening anymore. Does anyone have any questions about it? Boom. Here's a. Here's a paragraph. Fast forward a little bit about will, which I like the topic. Will is the confidence, commitment, and motivation to accomplish a specific task or activity. To build will, you must build skill. The more your company and your Marines train, the problems will disappear, and the stronger their confidence, commitment, and motivation will be. Your Marines want to train, and they want to perform their duties well. Why? Because that is why they joined the Marine Corps. They want to train so that they feel ready to fight and to win if they're called to do so. They want to be ready because that is what the American people expect from Marines. So good, hard, realistic training develops skill and builds. Well, now, in business, what does this look like in business? First of all, when you're in business, you have the best training opportunity for all the people that are in your business with you. Every day is training. Everything that you do, every task, every project, every. Every product that you build, everything that you do is training. It's. Everything is training. So don't get this idea in your head that because in the military, there's a training cycle to that everyone gets to have the luxury of being able to train before they go on deployment. That's a luxury. It doesn't happen. Well, that's not. The business world isn't like that. Well, in the business world, you don't die if you don't do well at, you know, a presentation. And so you can take a little bit more risk. I can say, hey, Echo, I got to give this presentation to a client today. Can you cover this part of the Presentation. Give me a, you know, prepare for it tonight. It's going to be a three minute presentation. Prepare for it tonight. You can brief me in the morning. If it looks good, you can take that. It's a two hour presentation. Can you do these three minutes? You're like, absolutely. You come in the next morning and I'm like, oh, you prepared. You did a good job. You've talked through it great. Or you come in the next morning. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna keep those three minutes, but next time we're gonna rehearse a little bit more and get you ready. So that's what we're doing. We're just training all the time. Everything is training. And if you don't keep that in mind, you, you always feel like, well, I don't get the time to train my people. You have time to train people.

[Echo Charles]

So you're that three minute speed or part that's essentially saying, like, kind of open up a little opportunity to train somebody, the guy next to you, where it's like, hey, I can basically like break off a small piece of this, you know, task or whatever, just to give them some reps, give them some ribs. Yeah, yeah. That's good to remember too, because. Yeah, yeah. Kind of training my kids with some stuff.

[Jocko Willink]

I was about to say, you have these opportunities all day long with your kids.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You know, whether it's. Whether it's balancing the checkbook, whether it's, you know, you got to do some maintenance on the vehicle. We. Whether you got to change out some. Fix some lighting fixture, like, get your kids engaged in that stuff so that they go, oh, cool, I know how to do that.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Next. This is a very interesting section. This is kind of one of the things that made me want to keep going a little bit more with this book. The four. It talks. It's talking about what types of Marines you have. The four general categories of Marines are as follows. Able and willing. And this individual has performed the task to standard before. Does many other tasks without being told. Is not satisfying until an assignment is done right. Accepts the need to put in the hours necessary to get the job done right. Looks for and works out ways to get the job done better. Recent performance has been satisfactory at a minimum. So there you go. That's what we, you know, that's what we all hope for. That's the, the top end of the bell curve.

[Echo Charles]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

Able and willing. Next one. Unable and willing. Okay, so we got like a little bit of a New guy with a good attitude. Has never performed a task standard before. Has had recent enthusiastic performance, particularly on tasks similar to those you want him to do now. Pays close attention to your instructions. Watches others doing the same tasks. Asks good questions. Spend some time of his own learning and practicing. There you go. That's unable to and willing. We can, we can have that person all day. Next one. Able but unwilling. Has had recent hot and cold performance, sometimes at standard, sometimes below the standard. Has done the task to standard before but keeps asking for guidance and assistance. Doesn't appear to be concentrating. Work is sporadic and poorly planned. Takes every, and they underlined every. Takes every opportunity to be absent from training. Lacks confidence in himself and his duties. So we got that able and unwilling person. And then finally we have the worst case scenario. Unable and unwilling. Has never performed the task to standard before. Has recently had substandard performance even when he has received a lot of assistance and instruction. Works only when closely supervised. Seems satisfied with below standard results. Pays little attention to instructions. And so you know, this is laying out some Marines for you. But obviously in any organization you're going to have these types of people, those four types of people that they break down here. The descriptions of each of the four categories above are only rough indicators. Any Marine may shift from category to category depending on the task, the level of training, the time of day, the level of leadership, and many other factors. The key thing is to remember that each Marine is different. And isn't it interesting? And you see this with kids is, and actually I see this with Echo Charles. When someone wants, when someone's into something, they're, they're into it, they're all over it. No guidance needed, no follow up needed. It's just happening. But when they're not into it, this is like when, you know, you get the kid that gets an A in history class, but you know, whatever, an F in some other class that they're not because they're into history. Yeah, right. It's the exact thing that's going down. So remember that that's with your kids and that's where you have the opportunity to teach them about discipline. Right. Because look, it's easy to do stuff that we want to do. Yeah, it's easy to do stuff that we want to do, but it's the stuff that we don't want to do. That's where you have to, you have to crank on the discipline and go do some stuff that you don't want to do right now.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And that stuff that you don't Want to do and listen, obviously, continue to pursue the stuff you want to do, and hopefully you can build a life for yourself where what you do do what you do is what you want to do. That's the goal in order to get there. Generally speaking, you're doing a lot of stuff along the way that you don't really want to do until you can set things up properly.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, that's so true. And I. I call them the chores of life. So it's basically the things that are required to do, you know, to do the things that you want to do, but the parts that you don't want to do. It's like the chores. And I feel like every once in a while, jump, I'll find myself in a little pocket of success with influencing the kids to do stuff they don't want to do. If you try to make it fun or you do it with them or, you know, especially when you praise them a lot, like, probably you should be proud of yourself. You did that, you know, kind of a thing. But I think that's a good tactic to make it at least somewhat fun rather than just force it and just tell them how important it is, you know, which I, you know, I understand that part too, but I feel like it's way more seamless and way smoother when you try to make it fun a little bit.

[Jocko Willink]

Hey, fun always wins. Yeah, making something fun always wins. There's no doubt about that. That being said, there's some stuff that just ain't fun.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, right.

[Jocko Willink]

And so, and, and I think maybe the technique is to teach kids how to make it fun, right? Not just say, hey, you got to clean your room. I bet I can pick up more clothes than you can. Faster. Boom, let's go. And you kind of have a little fun race doing it, but actually teaching them, hey, you know what made that fun? We had fun with it. We turned it into a game. That's what we're doing. So definitely what we want to do there. Now, it breaks these down a little bit. A Marine who is able and willing is a great example for developing Marines. He does the right thing and does not need close supervision. This kind of Marine you want to groom for higher leadership responsibilities. The willing and able Marine. The willing and unable Marine is the one who usually joins entry level. Like, this is a new guy. Basically. He needs patient instruction and lots of feedback. The able and unwilling Marine is your biggest challenge. His unwillingness may be due to a lack of confidence or he may have a real or perceived personal problem. Possibly the Able but unwilling Marine may be trying to get over on you. In either case, if the Marine has a problem or is a shirker, you must insist that he complete the task and do it to standard. The Marine with a problem will have done something worthwhile and the shirker will realize that you will not allow him to shirk. There's a great story that Jason Gardner tells about his. You know, he was just having like wild dumb haircuts. You know, Jason was like long hair or whatever, bleach, like just crazy. And, and his platoon chief was like, dude, you should just get your haircut. He's like, whoa, not you. And he's like, bro, life is so much easier if you have a squared away haircut. And he was like. And he tried it and sure enough, life got that much easier. That's kind of like freaking. Jason Gardner was able but unwilling at that point. And he got turned into able and willing. And then the last one. The unable and unwilling Marine should not be in your company while he remains in your company. He must be very closely supervised. Make him complete all tasks of standards. He may get a sense of satisfaction from his accomplishment and eventually be salvaged. However, if, however, the time and effort you spend becomes more than the possible return of your investment to you, to your company and the core. If he's a disciplinary problem, he should be separated from the core as soon as possible. Don't pass this Marine to another company or let him get by. There's no place for that in combat, which, that's a real simple, straightforward. I guarantee you it's not that easy to get away, get, get rid of, it's not easy to get rid of a seal. It's definitely not going to be easy to get rid of a Marine. So we gotta, we gotta make some effort here to get this person on board. And I've talked about some of those techniques, you know, putting someone in charge, elevating them. Look, can you have a complete person that's just a dirtbag? Yeah, you can. And that person needs to go. But a lot of times they just need some challenge. They don't feel like they're being respected. Because giving someone responsibility is a sign of respect. Yeah, giving someone responsibility is a sign of trust. Giving someone responsibility is, is, is a sign that you care about them. So when you get, when you elevate people like that, you, you make the relationship stronger and you're more likely to bring them on board when and what happens? What's. Unfortunately it's a little bit of a downward Spiral. Because what happens is Ekko does. He's supposed to do something, he doesn't do it. So I punish you by, you're not going to be in charge of that. I'm putting, you know, Fred's in charge of you now, and now you're pissed, and now you make less effort. And now when you do less effort, and now, not only is Fred in charge of you, but Fred's putting you in, you know, taking away more responsibility and putting you in charge of some more menial tasks. And next thing you know, you just have a bad attitude right out of the gate. If I said, hey, it looked like you did, you know, why didn't you put forth the effort you needed to get that done? Whoa, blah, blah. And I say, I tell you what I think you're capable of more. I actually want you to do it again. And I'm actually going to give you this additional responsibility as well. Most cases, Most cases, people step up their game. Now, some of the advice that they give on dealing with these type of people, Able and willing person to pretty straightforward, you know, supervise them easy. Let him work. Give them your trust. Tell them what you want done. Don't waste time telling him how he already knows. Tell him when to get started and when to be finished. That's it. You know, always tell this kind of Marine how you, well, he met your standards. Challenge him with a little more responsibility each time. That's all good. I agree with that. The unable but willing, obviously, you got to provide more instruction. Encourage him to ask questions, show them the right standard. Demonstrate it. Let him see what it looks like. Supervise him closely. Check him frequently. Help him correct his mistakes. Give him time. Reward him. Heavy discipline, easy. Reward, heavy discipline, easy. Able but unwilling. Determine why the Marine is unwilling. Probably one of two reasons. Lack of confidence or personal problem. I would be willing to bet. Well, I would say there's a lot. There's other issues here, right? If, you know, we've talked about the primal order, chain of command. If I don't respect you, we got a problem. And now you're telling me what to do. All of a sudden it's a big problem. That's real, by the way. If I don't respect the mission, meaning like you're telling me to do something stupid, I got a problem.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, fully.

[Jocko Willink]

And so you really, you, you got to keep those things in mind, too. And some of the things that they talk about here, developing confidence. Get him to tell you how, how you would do the task. Encouraging him and getting him started. Handling him as able and willing, it's not a bad idea. Handle the guy like he's good to go. That's. I like that, that concept. Determine whether he has personal problems. Yeah, obviously. Arrange for him to talk about it later. Give him a specific time. Help him solve his problem. Tell him what you want, what you want done, when to start and when to finish. Spell out clearly what the standards are. Spell out clearly what the reward or punishment will be. Supervise him closely. Check. Check task completion against standard. Always follow through with this kind of reward or punishment as you. As you promised. So that's, that's all good. I would venture to say what I talked about as far as elevating the way you're treating them is going to be a better outcome the more you micromanage. Now listen, if the person has a personal problem, obviously that doesn't apply. Or the person. But when they have a bad attitude, what's the root of the bad attitude? He thinks what we're doing is stupid. Or he thinks you're stupid. You can get mad at that. But you know what? Getting mad at is stupid. You're being stupid. You're, you're, you're fulfilling his prophecy by being mad and taking it out on him. You're actually acting the way he thinks you're going to act. So when you act in an elevated way, in an enlightened way, and you go, hey, Fred, you know, I noticed that you don't really seem like to do this job. It seems a little beneath you. I'll tell you what, I got a different job for you. Can you help with this over here? Let's elevate this dude, the last one. Unable and unwilling. Explain carefully what you want him to do and how you want him to do it. You question him to ensure he knows exactly what to do. Spell out the standards. Clearly spell out the reward or punishment. Clearly supervise him heavily. This Marine will need frequent correction. Often quit working if he thinks he's not being watched. Check task completed against standards. Follow through with promised reward or punishment. If repeated efforts to help this Marine to become able or willing have failed, initiate action for unsuitability. Discharge Marines in this category require detailed instruction and concert supervision, absorb enormous amount of leadership, time and effort, and are of little benefit to your company preparing for combat. I get it. In my opinion, there's less people like this in the world than we think. And you know, in any, you know, when you hire someone in a company and look, are you going to get slugs? Of course. Of course you are. You get what is that name for someone that's shirker. They call it a shirker skater. We call it like someone that's just trying to skate. You're going to get people like that. But generally speaking, you know, people want to, like you said, they want to do a good job most of the time. So just keep that in mind. And remember, leadership is a tool that you can use. And the more you, the more you treat people with respect, the more you elevate your treatment of them, generally speaking, the more they will elevate themselves. Not everybody. You get some freaking animals out there they're just going to try and take advantage of. I get it. But that's not common. It's less common. There's a whole section in here about, you know, bringing people on board and having a unit sponsorship and orientating people and making sure that they're getting taken care of and making sure that the orientation includes the company values and the standards and the missions and the goals and all this kind of stuff. So good, good. Make sure when someone comes on board, you take time to orient them properly. I think that's pretty obvious. Make sure they understand what the values are. Make sure they understand what the standards are. Make sure they understand what the mission, the goal, what the standard operating procedures are, what the history is. Get that starting, getting that culture embedded and let them know what's going on in the future. But shocking how many people get hired and actually don't get any of that information that will set them up for success and set the company for up for success. So do good orientation with your people. Fast forward. Developing leaders. Developing leaders. Whether we are talking about a new leader or maturing the ones who have already had some experience means training leaders. The best strategy for developing leaders is the same one that we discussed for developing individual Marines. Assess each leader's leadership skills. See how he stands on the able and willing scale. Just because he has stripes or rockers doesn't automatically mean that he is, he has the skills or is motivated. Facts. Just as with individual skills, the development of individual leadership skills goes on all the time. Often it won't appear on the training schedule. As a company commander, you must have a plan for developing your leaders. So that's what I was just talking about. Especially leadership. Especially leadership is always leadership Training is always happening. It's always happening. And anytime that you are stepping in and taking the leadership role yourself, you're just remember you're taking that role from somebody else. So as much as you can let other people on Your team lead, Let them lead during peace time. Permit freedom, freedom of action. Meaning like you want to give them a little bit of leeway. Like I'll give you some leeway. Echo of while we're not in front of a client, but once we're in front of a client, be a little bit tightened up. Honest errors must be expected and corrected. Of course. Do not tolerate indifference or abuse of authority. Meaning you put someone in charge of something, they start yelling and screaming, they start treating people without respect, it's a problem. Don't you can't stand for that kind of thing. Issue mission type orders rather than detailed orders. Tell the NCO what to do and let him do it. Let him decide how to best accomplish the task. Support the leader in his decisions. If a decision is based upon poor judgment or false information and you are going and you are able to give him guidance before any action is taken, do so. But once he starts out to do something with a group of men, do not halt the operation unless serious or injurious result appear imminent. So they're like, let people do their thing. Man, this is hard to do sometimes. And you know, in the business world that means we're not going to let someone blow a big deal or wreck some construction site by doing a bad concrete pour. Like, we're not letting that happen. But if they're going to, oh, it's going to take an extra 20 minutes to get this done. Cool, get it. We'll talk to them afterwards. We'll see what they learn from it. Counsel the leader privately concerning his mistakes after the job is finished. You already talked about that. Compliment or praise the leader who does the assignment. Well, the officer must must correct errors, but fundamentally he must be builder upper. Make sharp distinction, however, between backing up a subordinate leader and granting him undue liberties. Primarily this support is to increase operating efficiency. Never permit abuse of authority or disregard for directives straight up. Adhere to the chain of command. Do not officially deal with individual Marines as a regular practice. Talk to them and listen to them, but hold the leader responsible for his Marines and issue your instructions through him. And it says as a regular practice. Because there are certainly times where you want to put the word out to everybody yourself as the senior leader, as often as you can, you go through your subordinates. Assign the leader responsibility for the state of discipline with his squad, section or platoon. Let the junior leader take charge whenever appropriate. That's what I just said. You got to let those subordinate leaders lead. Let them lead. Permit the squad leader to train his squad and the section chief to train his section. Use the platoon sergeant to train the platoon. So as much as we're training our subordinates, we want to empower them to train their subordinates. That's what we're looking to do. That's how we're building that strong team. Developing. Develop the following guides for NCO stature in your company. So nco, this is a non commissioned officer. This is like your frontline leaders. And they're gonna about to use the word NCO a bunch. So think frontline leaders when you hear this. Do not promote undeserving men to NCO grade just to fill a promotion quota. Keep the NCO core elite. That's legit. Grant ncos a greater voice in matters relative to Marine welfare. So you want to listen to the troops on the front line and the leaders on the front line. Let the men know that the NCO's advice and counsel is used by the commander in arriving at decisions. There's nothing better than saying, oh yeah, hey jp, thought of this is what we're doing. That's nothing better than that. This is what we want to do. Obtain Recommendations from the NCOs concerning enlisted Marines within their units to be considered for promotion. Demand NCO commitment to raise their own professional competence. Got to hold that standard. Keep them informed. Obviously show approval of jobs undertaken without suggestion. We want them to go out and get after it. So when someone goes out and gets after it and shows initiative, let everybody know, that's what we're looking for. That's what we want. Quickly compliment the NCO on a job well done. Do not cheapen praise by extending it when it is not deserved. But do not withhold it from the man who has earned it. Place a high value on dependability. Hell yeah. Actively sell the NCOs to the men by holding them in obvious high regard. Case in point. That's why it's hey guys, JP came up with a plan. Here's what we're doing. Like that kind of thing right there is so, so important to building the crew. Next section. Building teamwork. What wins in combat is the skill and will of individual Marines molded into a cohesive, spirited team. With combat and weapon systems becoming more and more complex, teamwork has become the deciding factor on the battlefield. This is why you, the company commander, should build skill, will and teamwork in your company. Teamwork is essentially the business of putting things together. This putting things together is the responsibility of leaders in your company. It is that idea they have that they have the words, putting things Together in quotes. Because really, that's what a leader is doing. Putting all these different pieces together.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Whether it's in a business where we have. We have a production arm, we have an operations arm, we have a logistics arm, we got a sales arm, we got a marketing arm, we got a media arm. All those things are going on. How do we put all those things together? Combat. Same thing. You got your clearance team, you got your external cord. Cordon team, you got your mobility team, you got your search team. Like, all these different teams, you've got to put them together. So that's what we're doing as leaders, and the team has to work together. And you shouldn't have to be. You ever watch a compose or when a classical music. Who's that guy? Conductor. But then you see someone that, like, paid $10,000 to be the conductor for a little while, and they just go up there and it doesn't really matter what they do, and the orchestra still pulls it off. You never seen that before?

[Echo Charles]

I don't know.

[Jocko Willink]

So, like, basically it's saying that the. The conductor, he's not really like the

[Echo Charles]

maestro, like, like the.

[Jocko Willink]

The conductor of the orchestra. They're all reading sheet music now. He's given the signals. I'm sure there's some. I'm sure I'm gonna catch hell for this. And there's people gonna tell me how important it is. But I've seen videos where, like, the conductor just, like, is a kid.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And the band still. Or the orchestra still kicks ass.

[Echo Charles]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

And I'm sure this put little accents on stuff and kind of like little tiny micro adjustments. But the band is gonna do what it's gonna do. So that's what I think a leader should be doing. I'm actually giving props to the conductor.

[Echo Charles]

Okay.

[Jocko Willink]

Because the conductor shouldn't be like, it's not like, you're not going to blow your trumpet until I point at you and tell you, no, the guy's going to blow it. Now you could maybe give him a little thing like.

[Echo Charles]

Like.

[Jocko Willink]

Like a little. Give it a little bit of sauce right now, you know, maybe give him that look. Yeah, but that dude's blowing the trumpet. Right. So I have my breach team. They're going over the wall. They're blowing the wall.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Now I might have to be like, you know, all right, now, like. Like just a little micro adjustments. That's what we should be trying to do. That's what the idea to me of, like, of putting things together is, more of a conductor. Because the team should be executing kind of on their own.

[Echo Charles]

Right?

[Jocko Willink]

By their own.

[Echo Charles]

By their own.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. That. Actually, that analogy kind of is starting to really make sense. The conductor. Because I want, you know, when you first kind of see the conductor, you're like, oh, like, what's he doing? You know, like, everyone knows how to play their music. I'm sure they've rehearsed that actually. You know, so it's like, what are we even doing? Then you're like, oh, wait a second. He's kind of keeping the. The train on the tracks, even though there's tracks.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

So, you know, some conduct. I don't know, I look at them on the Internet or whatever, but some. Some of them go just hard, you know, like, they're just going to. You know, and then some of them are pretty mellow or whatever, but it kind of seems like. And I don't know, I'm not a conductor. You know, this about me, and I don't play in an orchestra. You know that about me as well. But it's.

[Jocko Willink]

We have an opinion. Completely unqualified, observational standpoint.

[Echo Charles]

You go, it seems like it would work like, okay, you got your. What, your. Your wood wins, and you get your brass and you get your percussion. Where he'll. Like. His energy can kind of flow to the different. You know, so the conductor's style will be reflected a little bit in the performance, you see, I'm saying. But at the same time, everyone leads as well. It's like the same thing. It's like decentralized command where, you know, when the. When the percussion kicks in, they're, you know, their specific attitude and their specific, like, feeling given. Like, the piece that they're performing is going to dictate how hard they go at that particular moment. You see what I'm saying? So it's like a. It's like a collective reflection of everybody, including the conductor, by the way. So he's over here, you know, he's hitting the brass, he's hitting the freaking woodwinds, all this stuff with his personal style, maybe, but the. You see what I'm saying, though? So it's like it is a collective creative endeavor. Yeah, see, I'm saying. So, like, a different conductor might. And it might be subtle, it might be not so subtle, but a different conductor might have a different, like, expression with the same orchestra. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, but it's fun. It's interesting because it's like. I mean, in my opinion, it's interesting because the conductor. Yeah, he's the leader. But meanwhile, everyone else is kind of leading their own little part of the mission as well. I'm saying it all just fits together,

[Jocko Willink]

and he might be able to give a little bit more stank on the section or pick it up or whatever, but, I mean, he's not even really keeping time, you know, he's not even really keeping time, I don't think. Maybe when the whole thing comes, like, to a stop and then he can hit it. Right, but even that, like, they know what they're doing.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, exactly. Right.

[Jocko Willink]

And if he was to not do that, they would probably just kick in pretty close.

[Echo Charles]

Right? That's what it feels like. And then. Yeah, that'd be like a little hypothetical example of, like, a conduct. I don't know. The conductors out there probably like, yeah,

[Jocko Willink]

these guys are like one of those idiots. Or. Sorry, conductors.

[Echo Charles]

Or they're like, damn, you're spot on with this stuff. I don't know. But it kind of feels like a conductor, you know? You know, the. What do you call the crescendo, right where you.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

And then boom. Like, some conductors, they might, like, drag it out just for a split second more just for that extra.

[Jocko Willink]

And even on an assault, let's say we're assaulting a building. Like, once you say once. Once the assault starts, like, as the ground force commander, who's the conductor there? Like, you could stop it, but it would take you. You can just, like, you know, flick your wand or whatever they have the conductor has, and, like, it immediately stops. No, just like, if you were a conductor, you wouldn't be able to just end the song when you like. It would be too shocking. People like, no, no, we didn't rehearse that. Now you could. You know, you can get. You can probably make it happen as a conductor, as an assault, as a ground force commander, you can certainly, like, you can put an end to the. And we put pro words in place. That way, if we have to stop it, we can pass a pro word and it'll happen. But, yeah, that's what we're doing. We're putting things together.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, that's cool.

[Jocko Willink]

As the leader of the team, your challenge is to coordinate and control the actions of your platoon so that all the actions, or platoons, so that all the actions of your company fit together. You must, on a daily basis, do things and say things that will convince each team member that the other team members and the team as a whole depend on him to get the work done. You also must do and say things daily to convince Individual Marines that their wants, needs, hopes and goals are tied to the team's performance and success. This is something I talked about in leadership, strategy and tactics. Making sure that people understand that when the team wins, the individuals win. When the team wins, the individuals win. If, if the team wins and the individuals lose, that's, that's we're out of alignment. There's something wrong, it's not correct. When the team wins, the individual should win as well. That should be in business, could be in the Marine Corps. Should be everywhere. Training as stated, the best way to conduct to develop teamwork is through training. Always critique drills. We must discuss team performance and how each team member contributed or failed to contribute to the team's performance. We should also specify places where the coordination of individual and individuals and teams worked and didn't work. So again we're doing training. This, we're debriefing is what we're doing. That's when they say critique, we're debriefing. Working by teams. Do assign tasks by teams rather than by details. Again, this is just going back to the fireteam thing. Don't put together some new element to do a task. Let the teams work together as much as you can. And again, in the business world and even in combat, you want to do cross pollinization of people. You want to do it to some extent. Sometimes you want to do it a lot to make sure people can handle it. Make sure that the standard operating procedures are solid. But man, when a team works together, they get good. They just get good. That's what we need to do. Stress, high stress and heavy pressures applied to the team as a whole during training will build teamwork. The key is to do it right. Events, exercises and activities that are extreme challenges and that demand an all out effort by the team and each team member will build teamwork. Check. That's what again, when I as I'm training you to give briefs, I may be like hey, you got to give a brief in 15 minutes, go get ready. And it's like stressful. And I bring a bunch of people that, that are part of our company in the room to watch you do it and we critique you really hard with trying to create stress and eventually after a month of that you're like not stressful anymore.

[Echo Charles]

Easy money. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Reward or punish the team. Whenever you supervise a task or a mission that requires a high degree of teamwork, you should try and gear your supervision criteria. Critique, reward and punishment to what the team does more than to what the individual Marines do. Do In a way so that each Marine can clearly see what that what he wants most depends more on what the team does than what he does. Talk team language. Use we us an hour instead of I, me and my check. Build team reputation. This is a good one. Any Marine worth a damn will work hard to live up to his reputation. So will a team. Whenever a team does something that is both unusual and good, and when the members do it as a team, all the leadership of the unit should know about it. When this happens three or four times, a word will get back to the team. At that point, they'll find out they do have a reputation to live up to. This is freaking legit. This is where, you know, with your kids, with your family, start setting that, hey, this is who we are. We don't do that kind of thing. We don't do that. We don't get bad grades. We get A's. We, we don't quit. We work hard. We keep our mouth shut during practice. We get it done. That's what we're doing. We're not missing. Like, that's what we do. That's that. And you have that reputation. Once you have that reputation, it's like becomes your identity. Your identity is what's driving you to do the right things at the right time. And you know, there's, There would be platoons. It's weird how this psychologically impacts people. There was a platoon one time that was not at Seal Team 3, but it was another team I was at. And their, their, their nickname was Good Time Charlie. And, and like that just had such an impact. Good Time, like who, who are you gonna send? You know what I mean? Like whatever the other Platoon, Delta Platoon or Foxtrot Platoon or Good Time Charlie and their reputation. When that's your reputation, how do you behave? You know, how do you behave? You know, kind of good looking for the good times, not the, not the hardcore. So we learned this from Hackworth, right? Your reputation, the brand, you know, the, the term. I never like that term. Brand. Building the brand. Because to me that sounds fake. Right, right.

[Echo Charles]

Manufacture.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, it's like a. Manufacturing. I'm gonna say this about my company or I'm gonna say this about my team because I want every. I'm building, I'm not built. I'm not building a team. I'm building a brand.

[Echo Charles]

Like contriving it or something.

[Jocko Willink]

It's contrived. It sounds contrived. But I was out at Battlefield a little while ago and I was talking about the brand of some of the Civil War leaders. And one of them, one of the easiest ones to call out is. Is Stonewall Jackson. Like, look, what kind of brand is that? You know what I mean? When you're in. When you're part of Stonewall Jackson's crew, your whole. Your attitude is going to shift. And same thing with Hackworth. You know, they were the hard luck battalion. Change that to hardcore. That's what we're doing. That's your, Your attitude changes. So what, how are you going to identify yourself? What kind of reputation are you going to build? And there's a real easy. There's a real defensive mechanism. I got to do a podcast about this because everyone has different defense mechanisms, right? Defense mechanisms. They have. Oh, you know, like Echo. Charles's defense mechanism is like, he's kind of chill, right? I'm not gonna, you know, it's not really no big deal. No factor. That's your defense mechanism. You don't, you don't. You're not going to dig in on something because you don't have to. You've created a reputation where it's like, oh, that's just what you're going to do. Seth Stone had the reputation of like, I'm a knucklehead, right? This guy went to Princeton, went to the Naval Academy, you know, brilliant guy. But his, his defense mechanism would be like, oh, no, no, no. Actually, you do know. It took me, like, it took me like four days where I was like, oh, this guy's wicked smart and he's acting. You know, he, he. That's his defense mechanism. I wouldn't even say he's acting. It's just a natural defense mechanism would be like, you know, so people have their defense mechanism. Mechanism, and that can very easily become your reputation. And then you've got. You're in a good. It's a bad spot. But for you, you think you're in a good spot because now I have this reputation, and if my reputation is I'm a joker, I don't have to be serious anymore, right? By the way, super serious can be a reputation, too. And that can also be a defense mechanism. Like, oh, hey, don't say anything to John, right? He's over here being all, you know, that's a defense mechanism, too. Everyone's afraid to say anything to the boss because he. So. So we all have these little defense mechanisms, but we, we turn our defense mechanism, like, next level is when it becomes our reputation. And that's. I'm not saying this is a good thing. Well, it can be a bad Thing. It can be a great thing if your reputation is. We're gonna get done. That's the reputation that we have. That's what we want, and that's what we're gonna try and live up to. So if you can get your platoon, your team, your troop, your people to have a reputation of excellence, you're gonna be in a good spot. So keep that in mind. Next section here is called morale. Morale is a state of mind. It is that intangible force that will move a Marine to give his last ounce of effort to achieve something without regard to the cost to himself. If this is the in, it is the quality which makes Marines endure and be courageous in times of fatigue and danger. Although morale is a complex and intangible quality, it must have a solid basis in leadership, discipline and. And comradeship. Morale is based on leadership. Good morale is impossible without good leaders. They provide Marines with a feeling of confidence, trust, well being and accomplishment. Good discipline conquers fear and unites Marines into a cohesive unit. This discipline creates a body strong enough to carry its members through dangers and difficulties which they would be unable to face alone. In this way, good discipline promotes comradeship, which is the next factor of good morale. Comradeship is vital to high morale because it surrounds a Marine with a feeling of confidence and strength at the very moments when he's feeling uncertain and weak. This is just a strong team. The state of mind. Right. Here's the contributing factors for a Marine. A first for morale, efficient operations. This is out of the gate because think about it. If you're doing dumb stuff all the time and you're inefficient, that's not good for morale. Good communication, clearly. Realistic training. Absolutely. Opportunities for promotion. Yes. Good physical condition. Good physical condition goes hand in hand with good mental condition. These two elements are basic to achieving good moral morale. And by the way, they're not, you know, physical fitness. Good physical condition isn't given to. You got to earn it. All the things that build good morale, you have to work for them. You can't just. You can't buy morale. I can't give everyone free T shirts and be like, hey, guys, this is good morale. Pickup. Nope. Doesn't mean anything. If you got to earn that T shirt, big deal. Now all of a sudden we mean something like at the J. Rob wrestling camp, the guys, kids trying to earn that T shirt. That's what they're trying to do. It's not for free. If it was for free, didn't care. Not good for morale. If it's Free. Good administration. Confidence in their weapons and equipment. Confidence in leaders. Men expect their leaders to know their jobs, to share hardships with them and to take personal interest in their problems. The men like to see their leaders where things are going on. When the weather is bad or when the night is dark and wet. Comfortable quarters, good chow, good mail service, good medical attention. Post exchange and facilities leave and liberty. Religious services awards. High standards. Marines like to be in a sharp unit. They appreciate the achievement of high standards and discipline, personal appearance, Police clean, cleaning things up, maintenance, training and athletics. The lift in morale that comes from impressive military ceremonies is also an important factor. It's so strange, isn't it? Even as a special operations guy, when I see the Marine Corps silent drill team, I give a solemn silent salute to myself, to them, because it's squared away. There's something, you know, when we talked about all the different virtues and the universally appreciated virtues, discipline is absolutely one of them. Here's some indicators of morale. Saluting appearance, good housekeeping, pride, personal conduct, care of equipment, Unauthorized absences. These are bad signs. Reenlistment rates. Are they good? Sick call rate. How many often are people going to sick call? Njp Non judicial punishment. How often are people getting in trouble? Request a transfer. How often are. So this is what you got to keep track of. You got to keep track of your morale. What's going on with your troops, how's that morale looking? And then, you know. Speaking of the. The lift in morale that comes from discipline, there's a section here on discipline. Discipline is the individual or group attitude that ensures prompt obedience to orders and initiation of appropriate action in the absence of orders. It is an attitude that keeps your Marines doing what they are supposed to do when they are supposed to do it through strong inner conviction. Good discipline is constant and functions, whether or not outside pressure or supervision. Supervision is present is the result of good training and intelligent leadership. We have to have discipline indicators. Discipline, attention to detail. And these are good things to remember that your troops are watching you. Troops are looking at you. Good relations between company members. Devotion to duty. Proper senior subordinate relationships. Proper conduct on and off duty. Adherence to standard cleanliness, dress, military courtesy. Promptness and responding to orders. Adherence to the chain of command. Ability and willingness to perform effectively with little or no supervision. So those are the things we're looking for. Here's some ways to improve discipline. Set the example. Be self disciplined and consistent. That's you as a leader. If you're not. If you're not holding that line, forget about it. Your word Means nothing. I'll say that again. Your word means nothing. Strive for competent, confident leadership throughout your company. Ensure that principles of leadership are practiced by all leaders. Institute a fair and impartial system of rewards and punishments. Resort to punitive measures only when necessary to protect the rights of individuals, the government, and the standard of the Marine Corps. That's a good one to remember, because a lot of times people think that discipline means we're just punishing everyone. We're not. We're actually trying not to. When we have to punish people, that is a down check in your own leadership book. You know when I got it, when I got to take someone to Captain's Masks where I gotta write them up, man, I screwed something up. I know I did. I know I did. What did I do wrong?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, I've always thought that to some degree. I mean, obviously I didn't like, you know, I wasn't like super, like ultimately 100 convinced, but I. I always had that feeling that, yeah, punishment, like you can all in. I mean, at any given moment, if you find yourself punishing somebody. I feel like there is or there was a better way to handle it.

[Jocko Willink]

No doubt. I mean, think about when's the last time you had to punish one of your kids?

[Echo Charles]

So this might come off as kind of controversial. I've never punished any of my kids except for one time, and I didn't feel good about it.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. And when you had to punish one one time, looking back, are you like, yeah, there's some mistakes I made right

[Echo Charles]

in the middle of the punishment, I realize it and I. It really, like, it affected me bad. Like, it was that moment where I was like. It hit me so hard that I was like, this doesn't bad dad. Exactly right. Exactly right. And it wasn't even really. It wasn't really that bad. It was just like, you know how you kind of have a moment of clarity, you know, sometimes and it. And then the idea behind everything hits you is like one of those things. But I've never. Yeah, I've never punished any of my kids that I can think of that technically it's a punishment only because, I mean, I think. I think my kids have pretty good, like, just personalities, you know, they're just like, you know, and I've here. This is the closest thing I've ever done to punish if I be more serious. But it's not. That's not punishment, is it? I just be more serious for better influence. And I probably did that probably like five times in my entire life, by the way. And they'll be like. They get super scared for whatever reason, I think just because they're not used to it, that's all. Because I'm not scary, let's face it. But, yeah, no, I know only that one time that I can remember.

[Jocko Willink]

And when. And when you punish your kids or you punish your employees or you punish someone in your platoon, you should definitely be feeling, look, look, can someone do some stuff that's totally just off the. Off the reservation? Yep, they can. But most of the time, it's like, man, they're doing something that 99% of the time, it's like, oh, man, I could. I could have done a better job as a leader.

[Echo Charles]

So I will say this. So every once in a while, I will tell my daughter, get off your phone for like an hour or two hours or something like this. And I truly don't regard it as punishment. Like, hey, you did something wrong. And therefore, the. The pain that you have to feel for that is getting off her. It's not that. It's. If I feel like, oh, wait a second. Like, you know, let's say I'm talking to you, or let's say you're my daughter and I'm, like, talking to you. And then she's like. She'll be, like, looking at her phone while I'm talking to her. And it's not that I'm, like, mad at that, because I know how that feels. I'll be looking at my phone sometimes. Yo, you know, like, it happens sometimes. You know, I don't know what she's doing on that phone, so I can't just make a call. So. But I. I will think, oh, wait a second. There's a very good possibility that the draw from that phone is more powerful than her attention to me. What I'm saying exactly, right? Look, I. I'm. I'm a benefit of the doubt kind of freaking parent or whatever, so I'm not gonna freaking hold it against her if I don't know the facts, you know? But what I do. See, that's what it looks like. So at an attempt to alleviate that issue, it's not punishment. It's like, oh, well, you're distracted by that. I'm, you know, I'm telling you something important that I think it's in the benefit of you. So you're distracted. So then I'll say, hey, we'll take a break from the phone. Therefore, you'll be less distracted. See what I'm saying? But it's never punishment. So even, like, video Games, for example, like my son slash nephew, where we'll say, hey, like, I feel like you're distracted by this video game and you're taking your eye off of XYZ that we all agreed we, you know, was kind of the goal. So we'll be like, hey, you can't play video games until the weekend. Just so you can focus on this other stuff.

[Jocko Willink]

It's like standard.

[Echo Charles]

Exactly. Right. But some people, it's very subtle, but like my parents, they'll do it for punishment. You know, like, hey, you acted wrong. Take away the video games as punishment. See, I'm saying the video game didn't make me act wrong. It never did. Super Mario Brothers Brother, you know, act wrong from Super Mario Brothers. But I mean, you know, act wrong for other reasons. Probably because of what I was taught or not taught, but whatever. It's not the video games. But taking away the video games inflicts pain. So hopefully, you know, the dynamics of punishment is kind of like, hey, I don't want to feel that pain, therefore I'll comply to this other thing. You see what I'm saying? That's different.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah. No, and I mean I punished my kids through the years for various things. Not a ton. And yeah, sometimes, you know, your kid with kids, they need a course correction. Right? And, but the, the reason that they need a course correction is because of you. Because of me.

[Echo Charles]

Right, the course.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. You know, and, and by the way, if you let something go until they need a big course correction, well then you made a lot of mistakes instead of little ones, you know, like little. Oh, a little bit off course. How can I make a small adjustment? So definitely, you should definitely feel that with your people.

[Echo Charles]

I, I will say this though. I'm not, by no means am I saying like punishing is bad. I'm not. Yeah, I'm not saying that either at all. I'm saying this is straight up. Straight up. And I mean this literally. This is from an ideal standpoint, like ideally, like for example, one that would come up back when my son slash nephew was a teenager, that taking out the trash thing, right? You take out the trash after dinner, whatever. And sometimes he'd forget price. Fifteen years old, you think he's gonna prioritize just in and of his, you know, his personal interests and you know, whatever. He's gonna prioritize taking out the trash. Yeah, you know, authoritarian person would be like, he better, you know, but in the real world, bro, 15 year old is gonna be into his girlfriend if he has one, probably communicating with his friends and all this other tech. Yeah, like, other. Not trash is not the priority. He'll do it. He don't want to get in trouble. He'll do it. Maybe because he finds a sense of, like, obligation or, you know, whatever. But for him to forget about that sometimes is very realistic. In fact, I don't know if there's a world where my particular son, you know, where it wouldn't be realistic for him to forget about that. Right. So what I thought, just even from the beginning, it's not that he needs to be punished. Therefore, now he's scared of punishment, and that's motivating him to take out the trash. And now he can go into his adult life being scared of some punishment that's gonna, you know, like, it's effective. And from what I understand from this outfit, short term, long term is, hey, if I can, as the quote unquote, leader, parent, you know, whatever of the household or whatever, if we can provide an environment for success. Like, the criteria for success of him, which all the. All it looks like is a reminder, like, bro, if he has to take out trash, like, every night after dinner, freaking, just remind them two, three times, you know? And plus, with my whole, I think, personality, if I remind my kids to do something, they'll be like, oh, like, shoot. I had to get reminded, you know, kind of a thing. So I know that that would. I mean, I knew at the time that that would be affecting. And it was.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

And I didn't have to punch nobody. I don't have to scold nobody. I didn't have to give up with leadership capital, with that, you know, that kind of stuff.

[Jocko Willink]

So I got asked a question the other day. Like, you know, it's kind of a question I've heard some version of before, but along the lines of, like, oh, you know, I. Because I got three daughters and one son. Like, I can't imagine, you know, what you'd be doing to some guy that wants to date your daughter.

[Echo Charles]

Right. Right.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. How would you treat them? And I was like, well, my daughters can handle themselves.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You know, like, my daughters don't need, you know, me to filter out and just, you know, discern who's good and who's like, no, they are gonna. They'll handle it. They'll handle it.

[Echo Charles]

You don't got to bury the potties.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. I don't got to do all that. They'll. Yeah. Trust me.

[Echo Charles]

Makes sense.

[Jocko Willink]

But. But the thing is, you know, that's like a very specific thing, but that's the way life is. And if your kids, you're not going to be there when they get peer pressured, you're not going to be there. When there's a dumb decision to make, you're not going to be there. So you have to send them into the field with the. The values in place, with the reputation in place, with the identity in place that they're making the right decisions, not based on. Not based on you and your presence, but based on them and who they are. That's what the goal is. And, you know, I was talking about that the other day. It was like the difference between, well, if I drink, my dad will kill me, or if I drink, I'll get in a lot of trouble. Which a kid can say when they're 12, 13, 14, but when they say, no, I don't drink, that's infinite exponential more powerful.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Because now that's not. This is who they are. It's not their dad. This is who they are as a human being. No, I don't. I don't drink. I don't do drugs. I. You know, I'm not gonna do this stupid activity that could result in some kind of a criminal record. Right. Those are all. And believe me, like, when you're a kid, it's like that peer pressure can be strong, but that peer pressure can overcome your dad or your mom who's not there in that moment, but it's not going to overcome who you identify as. As a human.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You know, like, I don't do that.

[Echo Charles]

The.

[Jocko Willink]

So that attitude and. And adopting the attitude and having an identity that's strong and raising your kids, that they are who they are, that's where. That's what we're trying to do. And, you know, that does apply to our marines or our sailors or our soldiers. What is their identity and what's their reputation? Because if the reputation is like, hey, this is a dude that you don't want to mess with. He's, like, squared away. They're always trying to uphold that reputation. If their identity is like, oh, kind of a slacker doesn't really care. Cool. It's really easy to, you know, get wild and do dumb stuff.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So keep that in mind. What we're doing is we're helping people build their identities where we're strengthening their identities. Sometimes we got to correct their identities. Sometimes people get identities imposed upon them, or they have to be careful that their identities don't get imposed upon them because, oh, that person's stupid. Or, you know, she's. She's dumb or she's whatever or he's, he does like all those identities are getting post. No, they build it. You need to help them build it so they know who they are so that they make the right decisions when they're in the field.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. And I will, I will say that like raising kids and there's a lot of hot button topics like this. We're raising kids, there's many different ways of success. But I do feel like fundamentally there are these things and these are some of them that are like fundamentally in principle are universally beneficial.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

Because there's like, you know, like different environments, different people, different like family environments, different, you know, so there's many ways to success. So I'm not saying, you know, if you punish your kids, you're wrong. I'm not actually saying that at all. But yes, I do think that that fundamentally these, these principles are solid.

[Jocko Willink]

No, and, and you know, I didn't apply this stuff as well when my kids were little. I was, you know, didn't really know, hadn't really made the connection yet. Part of it I definitely instinctively felt and, and, but because that's why I don't think I did, I didn't, I think I didn't get too far outside the bounds. Right. You know, like I definitely imposed some hardcore punishments on my kids, but it was only a number of, small number of times where I felt like they did something that I didn't approve of. And again, even in those situations, I look back, I'm like, well yeah, you're. Didn't need, didn't, didn't need to be all that. But, but you know, now as I look back it's like, oh yeah. One of the reasons they got, well, the reason they got punished is because of my failure. My failure to really do, you know, put instill the right stuff in them at a certain time and, and be like, oh, a lot of times when someone makes a mistake and this is very often in the seal teams when someone makes a mistake, you don't have to punish them at all. Their self punishment is worse than anything you're going to do to them. And a matter of fact the, the best slash worst punishment you can give them is like nothing. You know what I mean? That's like the worst, best punishment. And as I, you know, as my kids got older and I started to kind of put connections together more, it was like, oh like you've, you've heard my kids talking about me shunning them, which is just awful. They freaking hated it. I like wouldn't talk to him, wouldn't look at him, and they would hate it. But it was like, oh, yeah. Oh, you want to act like that.

[Echo Charles]

Okay. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

I heard that from my son the other day. Is. I have a. If someone is going to do something that I do not agree with, I'll say, okay. And I asked Leif, I was like, hey, Thor said, I do this. And he was like, oh, yeah, 100%. He goes, I've heard that plenty of times. I'm like, okay. Like, hey, you know, I recommend you do this. Oh, I'm not going to do it that way.

[Echo Charles]

Okay. Yeah. And I've. Bro, I said it before. I'll say it again. It's like that. That. It's that torment. It's like a. It's like a deep torment. And it goes for anyone. Like when anyone where you have any kind of, like, if you care about the person at all, like. Yeah, it's like a deep torment because, like, when you put signals out to the world, like, you need feedback. If you don't, that's all. You know how, like, you ever heard of that? That room that's like the most quiet room in the world or something, and people go crazy.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep.

[Echo Charles]

It's basically that. So, like, even us in this room, which is, you know, pretty much soundproof, if you close your eyes and you talk, you. Even to the subconscious, you can get a feeling of, okay, where I'm at this table, you can kind of pick it up a little bit. Right. With the sensory, like, because you got feedback. If I say something, if I knock on this, I hear it or whatever. What if I knocked on this and I couldn't hear it? I'd be like, oh, all baffled and confused and maybe even, like, kind of scared in a weird way. You see what I'm saying? This confusion, you know?

[Jocko Willink]

Sensory deprivation.

[Echo Charles]

Exactly. Right, bruh.

[Jocko Willink]

So now emotional deprivation.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. On a relationship level. To someone that you care. So it's like, if you're mad at me, bro, just tell me you're mad at me. You know what I'm saying?

[Jocko Willink]

Or.

[Echo Charles]

Or if, you know, if I say a joke, like, bro, give me a little fake laugh. Give me something, bro. Don't act like you didn't hear, bro. I'm gonna be all, yeah, discombobulated. Seems so. Oh, yeah, bro, you get someone who, like, actually love someone in your family. Yeah. Like, that's some torment I'm not ready for, bro.

[Jocko Willink]

It's rough. It's rough. I do not recommend. I do not recommend. But you Know, hey, we live and learn. We live and learn. Next one. Again. This is ways to improve discipline. Develop mutual trust and confidence through tough stressful training. Challenge subordinates to according to their capabilities. Encourage and foster the development of success. Self discipline. Be aware of conditions conducive to breaches of discipline and eliminate them where possible. Donuts. Eliminate or reduce meaningless tasks and assignments. Oh man, that's such a good one. Please remember that those of you in the military and anywhere such a leadership win when you go. Hey, you know what? This is dumb. We shouldn't do it. Rotate personal personnel assigned to menial tasks. Yep. Don't have one person doing all the crap work all the time. Provide guidance and assistance, but don't over supervise. Set high performance standards. Encourage innovation and support your subordinates. It's weird because people don't think of that. When you think of discipline, you don't think of encourage innovation. Right? That doesn't sound like the. But this is how you improve discipline. Got a section here called Esprit de Corps. Whereas morale refers to a Marine's attitude, Esprit de Corps is the unit spirit is the common spirit reflected by all members of a unit and provides group solidarity. And it implies devotion, loyalty to the unit and all for which it stands and a deep regard for the unit's history, traditions and honor. Spree de Corps and things. You can look for expressions from the Marines that show enthusiasm for four and pride in the company. A good reputation among other companies. Again, this reputation thing is a big deal. A strong competitive spirit willing to protect. Willing participation by members in company activities. Pride in the history and traditions of the company. Those are things you're looking for. Ways to improve Esprit de Corps. Be the symbol of fighting spirit you want to develop. Start new people off right by ensuring they're welcome into and reception by the unit. Include an explanation of the unit's history, traditions and its present mission, mission and activity. Train your Marines as a team. Develop the feeling that the company as a team must succeed. Instruct them in history and traditions. Develop your Marines to the very finest physical condition and train them to perfection in all military skills. Recognize and publish the achievements of the company and members. Reinforce all successes. Use appropriate and proper ceremonies, slogans and symbols. Use competition wisely to develop a team concept. Try to win in every competition. Employ your company according to its capabilities. Use decorations and awards properly. Make your Marines feel that they are invincible, that no power can defeat them, and that the success of the Corps and country depends on them and the victory of their Unit Jack. Esprit de corps stuff's important. You know, the. The feeling. I think it's a primal feeling that we want to be. And you hear this all the time. Why'd you join the military? I want to be part of something bigger than myself. That's kind of a trite saying, but it's a real thing, wanting to be a part of a team. That's why gangs exist. That's why teams exist. You know, gang's a better example because, like, why are you in a gang? You just. You're. You're doing criminal stuff. Why would you. Why do you need to be in a gang?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You want to be something bigger yourself.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. Yeah. It almost has this weird feeling of like, a. You know, like a. It's like driving a car, you know, that, like. You know why people get road rage? It's almost like their. Their feeling of power that now becomes this standard gets compromised. So, like, someone cuts them off. Someone's driving too fast or too slow. Like, you ever been driving in a regular lane, like, not in the fast lane, necessarily. And then you see someone speed past you, like, going 100 miles per hour in, like, a slower lane, it kind of is like, hey, what are you doing? You know, like, can kind of bother you.

[Jocko Willink]

That fire you up?

[Echo Charles]

No, not really. I was. I was thinking of more of, like, a mild example of something that doesn't really affect you, but on the street it does. Just because I feel like your power gets elevated, and then all of a sudden, it gets compromised in some way, and then it elicits this weird road rage. That's. I think that how it works, you know? So anyway, that car and that being behind the wheel or whatever is like, this, I don't know, for lack of better term, force multiplier kind of scenario. Right. So that's why we like gangs or, like, being part of, like, this clan or this group or this whatever, because it's like I have the power of the group, and the group has. And I contribute to that group. See what I'm saying? So, like, now this group and me are, like, kind of one, and we can make freaking huge moves.

[Jocko Willink]

That's a primal thing.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jocko Willink]

If I want to survive in the jungle, I need to have a gang.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. That.

[Jocko Willink]

I got their back and they got mine.

[Echo Charles]

Hell, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

That's what we're doing. So how can you utilize that? That's esprit de corps. Next section. Cohesion. Cohesion is the product of bonding that Marines have with each other, with their leaders, and with their company Combat. Studies and research have demonstrated that members of cohesive units are more resistant to psychological breakdown due to battlefield stress. How do you build unit cohesion? Positive, competent leadership Stability. Focus on the mission response. Leaders who lead cohesive units fundamentally respect their Marines. And that leads us right into leadership skills. Hear me talk about leadership being a skill. Here's some leadership skills. Planning. Planning is a leadership skill. Yes, it is. If time permits, Involve others in your planning. I would say you better involve others in your planning. It takes longer to plan by yourself than it does to. Than it does to have the team help you plan. So I don't even say if time permits. No. Involve all this in your planning. It'll make it better. Identify the alternatives that you think might help accomplish the mission. For each alternative, develop a plan to cover things that could go wrong. Expect them to remark go wrong. Remember, winners make things happen. Losers let things happen. Here's a section I have to cover. It's called time management. Time management as a leadership skill. I actually have not talked about this in depth before. Time is a critical resource to a company commander and every human being there is. It can never be replaced. Therefore, plan and manage time carefully. Some of the most important decisions you will make as a company commander will be on the use of your time and that of your subordinates. One myth about time management is that the harder you work, the more you get done. Unfortunately, there is not necessarily a direct relationship, but between hard work and positive accomplishments. Therefore, it is much better to work smarter than harder. Another miss is that the person who is apparently very active or works long hours accomplishes a lot. However, as a company commander, you are judged by results achieved, not by time spent or energy expended. Therefore, to have successful results manage your time and people effectively. So my youngest daughter, who's in high school, she. So my oldest daughter worked, was doing homework every night, like all night, just homework, just dug in at the table. I would go to bed at 11, she'd be doing homework. I'd wake up at 4:30, she'd be doing homework. Rana Coach Hannah she did a lot of homework. Not as much as my oldest, but she did a lot of homework. Like excessive homework. My son, not so much homework. Also Covid. So not so much homework was going on. My youngest daughter, I don't know how she's doing it. So I asked her, I said, hey, do you remember your sister? She's kind of, you know, because she's quite a bit younger. I said, I said, you know, they would be doing Homework all night long, like every night and on the weekends. I said, well, how come you don't. I said, how come you don't have to do, you know, that much homework? I know what she said. I'm more efficient. So there you go. She said, I'm more efficient. Okay, check. So the following are some guidelines for proper time management. Obtain from the supply system a month in sight calendar and a calendar that allows you to record scheduled events on a daily basis. Keep your calendar up to date at all times. Record new events as soon as possible on the calendar. Carry a things to do notebook in your pocket. Identify the task and write it in your book. After the task is complete, cross it out and record a date and time when you accomplish it. Early every day. Review your monthly calendar and your things to do notebook. When you have a lot of do to do in a day, write out a list of things to do today and list them by priority. Try to do them in that order. Set aside specific time each day to spend with your Marines. Regardless of your other commitments. Set aside time during the day to do paperwork. Always try to do your paperwork during this period except when an emergency prevents it. Try not to spend more than four hours per day in your office. Establish time limits for your meetings. Don't let them run over this limit. And I would say make your meeting shorter. You don't need an hour meeting, you need a half an hour, sometimes 15 minutes when there's a time conflict. Establish your priorities based on your missions. High priority activities must come first. And I would say I've been trying to put this word out for quite some time. Do your strategic things first. Do the long term projects first every day. The first long term project we all have is our health. Do that first every day. Then the next term, long term thing that you're trying to get done, whatever it is, do that thing next and then start doing the stuff that's due tomorrow or do this afternoon. Remember, time wasted is time lost. Plan to use every minute of every day to the fullest. There are just too many things that you must do to prepare your Marines to fight and wind. You must take control and effectively plan to use all of your time to maximum advantage. And I'll tell you this, in that schedule, you gotta plan. You gotta put scheduled time to do where you don't have anything scheduled. You know, like maybe it's before lunch, maybe it's after lunch, maybe it's mid morning. You take an, you take 40 minutes or 45 minutes where you got nothing. So you can because it's gonna be adjustments, man. You gotta make little, little adjustments. If you're trying to lock in too tight of a schedule, things start to slip. So give it, plan yourself some fudge time. Fudge factor we used to call it conducting a meeting. Schedule the meeting, establish an agenda, determine the purpose. This is kind of basic stuff here. One thing it says is record the results to inform those who could not attend. And another thing is when you have things that you come out with in a meeting, give, someone has to take ownership of those things. If there's a change that's taking place, if there's something that needs to get done, someone has to have ownership of that. Call company meetings only when they are absolutely necessary. Good call communications, you know, information must flow quickly, must be accurate, and must be get to all parts of the unit. If the flow up, down and laterally is not continuous, accurate and timely, the company cannot be coordinated. It will lurch along awkwardly. Union of the various parts of a unit results only through a union of information and action. And this is the part I like about this. A person's beliefs, values, character, needs, experience, education and goals combine to form a frame of reference. This frame of reference acts as a filter through which he sees and hears. Since we all have unique combinations of these factors, our filters cause us to see and hear the same situation differently. With this awareness of each person's unique frame of reference, let us discuss several factors that may cause a breakdown. And he goes, so it's just important to remember that everybody, what you say, the words that come out of your mouth are not the same, are not heard the same way in other people's ears. And when they respond to you, what they say to you isn't what they, Isn't what you hear necessarily. So you got to keep checking back with those things and make sure that you don't let them get out of hand. Also understand how stress affects communication. You need to understand clearly the human tendencies under stress that create communication problems. Be aware that different people do not see the same reality when they look at a situation or read a message. What each of us sees at a given moment is influenced by our. Our psychological frames of reference, our beliefs, values, characters, knowledge and past experience. Goals, fears, like all those things we just talked about. People do not always see reality. People do not always see reality. You know who's included in that group of people? You. They see what they're, what they perceive to be reality. Unfortunately, people's perceptions, especially under stress, are often far from reality. Under stressed, people tend to see the situation as worse than it is in battle, Marines tend to use the words like heavy shelling, intense fire, or strong resistance. But these terms mean different things to different people. Marines at all, all levels need to be clear and concise in their communication. Prepare your Marines to deal with stress and its effect on communication through tough realistic training. I used to hit that voice recorder when I was at trade at. You hear guys, we need every run off right now. I'd be like, dude, you were kind of freaking out. No, I wasn't. Oh cool. Press play. Yeah, you were completely freaking out. Teach and demand accurate reporting. You have to be aware of the human tendencies that distort reality. You must cut through them and get, get correct information. What's correspond with reality. If something is not a known fact, do not report it as such. Report it as whatever it is. A perception, a belief, an opinion or assumption. Teacher means Marines to report matters exactly as they know them based on what they see in here. So there you go. And you got to remember, you got to keep that in mind that people are going to exaggerate, they're going to be emotional. So you gotta, you gotta. Everything's a data point and data gets skewed. So you, you gotta just use caution with that goes into performance counseling. Performance counseling is a necessary leadership activity. It clarifies unit goals, enhances subordinate motivation, is essential to the development of individual potential and increases unit effectiveness. Performance counseling provides Marines with information about their current job performance and assistance to improve their future job. So you got to give feedback to people. They have to be subordinates have to be informed of the responsibilities and the standards. They have to be provided feedback. They have to be reviewed on a periodic basis. It says every six months in here at least. Got to develop them. And the subordinates know how their jobs, jobs and work contributes to the overall objectives of their unit and the Marine Corps. And then it gets into personal counseling, meaning you got some personal problems. Be available. Develop the ability to listen. Resist any tendencies to sit in judgment. It's a pretty good, pretty important one, man. It's easy to judge.

[Echo Charles]

Yes, it is.

[Jocko Willink]

Ensure that your subordinates know that raising a problem will not affect his or her career except when specified by orders and regulations. Maintain strict confidentiality except where orders and regulations or best interests of the individual or service specify otherwise. And it gets into some, some counseling techniques. Encourage Marines to talk. Counseling is a form of communication which is most effective when it's two way. It is not enough for you to understand your Marine. You must also give him the feeling that you are sincerely trying to help him. The best way to find out what the other person wants to say is to listen. And the best counseling session is usually the one in which the leader talks the least. Listening is more important than just not talking. It requires an active effort to convey that you understand and are interested in what the person is saying. A friendly expression and an attentive but relaxed attitude are important. Make use of phrases like can you give me an example? Or can you tell me more? Give some other stuff in here. The leader must be careful not to place himself in the position of appearing going to be the all knowing judge and end up treating the Marine like a child. It's give some good advice here. Avoid responses like you really blew that one or that sure was stupid. That's one of those ones where I was like, who wrote that part of the book? Most leaders tend to correct a subordinate when he says something that is obviously wrong to set the Marine straight on what he may say. If you yield to this temptation, he may just clam up and not discuss the promenade important one with your kids. Kids tell you about something that's going wrong and you immediately jump down their throat. Bad move. They're not. You're not gonna hear anything, not just in that conversation. You're not gonna hear anything from them again. So you got to keep them. Keep them in the game. One of the most frequent errors made by inexperienced counselors is transforming the counseling session into a game of 20 questions. Avoid questions that are yes or no direct questions. This gets in a little bit of the indirect approach. Direct questions, unless necessary for seeking information as frequently used in interview techniques, can also tend to pin a person down, make him uncomfortable, and even result in his not revealing fully the root of the problem. Consequently, only partial assistance can be given and the basic problem often remains unresolved. Neither the Marine nor the counselor confronts the real problem. A more subtle approach is needed with gently gentle probing indirect applied by such questions as would you care to clarify that for me? What would you you said your wife hates you. Question mark like okay, cool. A leader might ask, how can I solve someone else's problems when I can't even solve my own? He can't. The purpose of counseling is not to solve a person's problems, but to help him solve his own problems. Too often, the concerned leader unknowingly causes harm by telling the follower what to do instead of helping him work out of the problem for himself. Again, this is great parenting advice. Work out of the problem himself and reach his own decisions. Develop a sense of responsibility among your subordinates. Be careful not to become overly involved in the helping process. Your subordinates must learn to stand on their own two feet and take responsibility for their own personal problems. Don't always expect to know what to do in every situation. Don't feel embarrassed if you don't know how to handle the case. Don't be too proud to ask someone else. Make referrals. The most important thing is to help the Marine know your limitations. If the decision is made to seek expert help, you should become involved in the referral to the next. To the extent that you ensure contact between your subordinate and the next and the helping expert or agency. So you got to know. It's like, hey, this is not my, this is not my thing. It's not my area of expertise. And I'll close this book out with this. The counseling session does not end when the Marine leaves your presence. More important responsibility remains for you and that is to follow up. Inform him of the results of your efforts. If you fail to do this, he may believe you just don't care about his problems and you will be reluctant to seek help. The problem is passed down on someone else. It's forgotten. What impression of you and your company is drawn from this, not only by the Marine, but the other members of the unit also. How will this affect him in doing his job? He might say, to heck with it. Morale and spirit do not grow from such examples. They breed further problems requiring more leader time, with Marines often being blamed for creating them when they may have been caused by an ineffective display of leadership. Show that you care. And that's the closer right there. Show that you care. Really, truly mark of a good leader. And I was up at Council with Echelon Front. I was talking about the, the most common thread when you. When I think about the leaders that I had, there's one common thread that was I cared about. They cared about the voice, cared about me, and I knew they cared about me. So showing that you care, that's the truly unifying mark of a good leader. And you know, just from look, these are. I don't know, it doesn't seem like you Echo Charles see these as super abstract leadership examples just because they're in the Marine Corps and you were never in the military. And they apply to everything. Leadership. These leadership things apply to everything. How, how you interact with your family, how you interact with your kids, how you interact with your friends, your co workers, your subordinates, your peers, your boss. It's. It's Everything. And by the way, it's also you. You are in a. You're in a leadership position. With you, you're the. You're the general. You're the soldiers, too, but you're the general. And every decision that you make is. It has impact. And learning the skills of leadership, they. They look. Do they apply to your family? Yes. Do they apply to your. Your co workers and your boss? Yeah, they applied all those things. But, but really, if you're paying attention, the leadership skills that we talk about, they have to be applied to you as an individual. You have to apply them to yourself. And if you're not applying these leadership skills to yourself and applying these leadership principles and living these leadership principles, everyone else can see that, and it's a problem. So apply as always. Make yourself always start by making yourself the aim of these leadership principles. And that does include being disciplined. It includes living disciplined and the cornerstone of discipline. Echo Charles. Health and fitness means we're working out, we're lifting, we're training, we're sprinting, we're training Jiu Jitsu, and by the way, training Jiu Jitsu. Are you training Jiu Jitsu? Echo Charles.

[Echo Charles]

You know, here and there. Yeah, for sure.

[Jocko Willink]

There's a. Something called the Origin USA immersion camp. Yeah, it's freaking awesome. It is August 23rd through the 28th. It's up in Maine on a lake, a beautiful lake in a beautiful setting, and it's Jiu Jitsu. How many Jiu Jitsu classes are there a day?

[Echo Charles]

Three. Three days or. Sorry, three sessions.

[Jocko Willink]

Three sessions a day of Jiu Jitsu. Some of it's rolling, some of it's, you know, technique, some of it's both, some of it's ecological training. The whole nine yards, you're gonna get it all.

[Echo Charles]

I would say this about the training. It's anything you want. So it's like this big buffet of like, literally everything which is kind of is guided, you know, you got to, you know, Gi. No. Gi Ye. But you don't necessarily have to, right. Roll in the gi. Roll in the no gear.

[Jocko Willink]

You can do one you could do. You could do 20 minutes of Jiu Jitsu a day. You could do zero technically do zero Jiu Jitsu a day. Or you could do probably. You could probably do seven hours of Jiu Jitsu a day.

[Echo Charles]

Yep. However much you want, any day you want.

[Jocko Willink]

And it could be white belts, it could be blue belts, it could be purple belts, it could be brown belts, it could be black belts.

[Echo Charles]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

You got all kinds of people to train with. And there's freaking epic food. I don't know. The food is awesome. It's a camp food, but it's awesome.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Like, good camp barbecues. Everyone's hanging out, stories. Like, it's just. It's just a good time. It's an awesome time. Hang out with a bunch of people. And that is August 23rd through the 28th up in Maine. You can fly into Portland or you can fly into Boston. It's like two and a half hours from Boston. It's probably, what, from Portland? Hour, hour 10, hour 10, maybe hour 15 from Portland, Maine. But if you want to come up there, we'll be up there. I'll be up there. You'll be up there. Echo Charles. We teach up there. It's one of the few times you got mad at me.

[Echo Charles]

No, it's one of the few times that you freaking committed a violation.

[Jocko Willink]

I committed. I. I went. I stepped across the line.

[Echo Charles]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

As much smack as I talked to Echo Charles. What was the other time? I. I went across the line because you always. I only remember that one.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, there's one time you didn't cross the line with me. On the other time, you. You, like, lost your temper or you, like, got annoyed overtly.

[Jocko Willink]

What was it about?

[Echo Charles]

We're talking about working out, and I think you didn't understand what I was saying, because, you know, my. My knowledge is very vast, and it becomes very complex, and you didn't understand it. And then you were like, what the hell are you talking about?

[Jocko Willink]

What were you saying?

[Echo Charles]

Remember the. The. The. What. It was the expression moving your body through space. We're talking about doing legs, and you're like, blah, blah, blah, and there's categories of whatever. And I was explaining it to you, and you just. You kind of got lost in the woods, you know, mentally couldn't understand what I'm saying, and then you got all knots. This is.

[Jocko Willink]

It was on the podcast too, wasn't it?

[Echo Charles]

While we're recording.

[Jocko Willink]

So if anybody wants to hear me lose my mind. Because. Because Echo Charles was talking about moving your body through space. I remember. I didn't know that that was actually, like, an expression. It was a thing. Yeah, it's a thing. Like I've seen in other places now.

[Echo Charles]

Correct. So you. And all, truth be told, in. In all fairness, did you lose your temper? No. But you went from. You colored outside the lines as far as, you know, like, being, you know, keeping it playful, but, like, there was genuine irritation in your behavior. Kind.

[Jocko Willink]

I can. I can see how that would just hit me wrong. You know what I mean? Especially with the. With the. With the. Let's say, the tone that you would have, which. The tone that you have sometimes, by the way, when you start exploring your vast knowledge about working out, a lot of confidence that comes in. A lot of confidence. You know what I'm saying? You know, we could say it's borderline arrogant. So probably that struck me a little bit.

[Echo Charles]

Well, okay. Yeah. And. Yeah, okay, I understand.

[Jocko Willink]

But the other time that I crossed the line was you were teaching a move. You're teaching some kind of a choke. And as you showed the example to the class, and you're like, oh, and then you just put the pressure here, and then. And then you can get him to tap. But I didn't tap.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And then I purposely didn't tap, and then I just wouldn't tap. And then you just got annoyed.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, it looked like, I don't know what I'm doing.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

So it's like my whole credibility is just completely gone, by the way. Yeah. Thank you.

[Jocko Willink]

Which, by the way, the funny thing about that is it's the. The. The bro cool way to show a move is like, yeah. And then I put the pressure here on Echo, and I don't squeeze at all. And you tap, and it's like, you don't need any extra tension on your arm or on your. Your neck. So everyone's just being cool. It's like, oh, yeah. And here you go. Put the pressure, and then they tap, and I tap, and you didn't put me any pressure at all. Literally. Did not hurt one bit. Didn't feel any choke, and you just tap. So maybe. Maybe when you started to squeeze a little bit, I was kind of like, oh, now you want to see?

[Echo Charles]

Oh, okay, okay. It's my fault.

[Jocko Willink]

No, no, it's my fault.

[Echo Charles]

So I caused it, though.

[Jocko Willink]

But I'm saying I didn't get the vibe that it was one of those moments where you were just like, oh, yeah. And then you put the pressure into. Then they tap. You're just like, oh. And then you started putting pressure.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, you're right, though. No, I mean, I didn't mean to. You're actually. I think you're right because I didn't mean to, but I think you know how, like. Because when you demonstrate a move on certain partners, I am used to actually doing the move until my partner kind of taps, because it's usually with, you know, you or some. Another black belt or something like this. And it. But so maybe I was Just doing it out of habit. But you're right, though, because when you demonstrate on me, like at the muster or whatever, like, you don't do it until I tap. You don't put the pressure.

[Jocko Willink]

I just do this right here.

[Echo Charles]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

I change my voice.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Put a little squeeze and then they tap. And then I didn't squeeze you at all.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. And sometimes I don't even have to tap because it's like, oh, you didn't even put the. Oh. I didn't even realize that. Oh, miscommunication, Miscommunication. Maybe I had it coming to me,

[Jocko Willink]

showing off, like, oh, make a jock with that. Hey, that's. We're all crazy. Hey, but if you want to see me torment Echo Charles and not tap to his display moves, you can come. There's so many great Jiu Jitsu people going to be there, too. I mean, obviously you got the deck Dean list a bunch of great. All the black belts is crazy. It's a crazy number of awesome black belts.

[Echo Charles]

It's a jujitsu vacation.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, it's a Jiu Jitsu vacation. That's exactly what it is. Immersion camp. So it's August 23rd through the 20th. Come out, come out, check it out. Go to. Go to originusa.com to get there. And by the way, when you're there, you get all kinds of Jiu Jitsu, all kinds of origin stuff. We have like a camp store. We just sell everything there. It's all like, discount. You can just get. You're bring an extra bag.

[Echo Charles]

Oh, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Because you'll buy a lot of stuff. You'll just walk away with so much cool stuff. So check it out. OriginUSA.com come to the Jiu Jitsu immersion camp in Maine, August 23rd through the 28th. Hey, by the way, when you're there, also, we got very, very good supply of something called Jocko fuel. Because when you're training Jiu jitsu, either for 20 minutes or seven hours, you're going to need some fuel. We recommend jockey fuel. We got hydrate. We got protein. We got energy drinks. We got joint warfare, super krill oil. We got everything that you need that's going to help you. We got muscle drive. I'm on muscle drive right now, like, currently. That's what's in my stomach. That's one. Yeah, it's actually one Hydrate, one muscle drive scoop. That muscle drive is good to go. We got everything that you need. So go to jockofuel.com, get what you need. Also check out your local store. Whatever it is, we got Jocko Fuel in so many stores across the country. If they don't have it, if they have it, get it. Much appreciated by the way. Clear the shelves, all that stuff. But if they don't have it, just ask them, say hey, we want Jocko fuel here. We want the clean option. That's what we're doing. Jockofuel.com Go get some.

[Echo Charles]

Also don't forget about Jocko store. We can represent on the path. We got shirts, shirts is kind of the main thing. But we got hoodies on there as well, some hats on there. A lot of people like those hats, some hoodies on there, shorts on there. Actually a lot of merch. Cuz we do an all over kind of thing anyway. Discipline equals freedom.

[Jocko Willink]

Good.

[Echo Charles]

Stand by to get some, get after it. And some other stuff, you know, some new stuff.

[Jocko Willink]

Do you have any subscription scenarios?

[Echo Charles]

We do have a subscription scenario if you're interested. It's. We call it the Shirt locker. You know. You know, every month you get a new design. You know, people seem to like that one. That one. We get kind of creative. Every once in a great while we'll release one of the shirts from the shirt locker to the general public for a limited time sometimes. Just keep that in mind. But good news is if you're part of the short locker, no matter when you join, you have access to all the past shirts. See, I'm saying you get a little login and stuff, you can go back, you can shop the whole thing. It's cool. So you know, if you see a past design somewhere and you're like, oh, I missed it. You didn't miss it. See, I'm saying you can just go back and buy it. So it's good anyway. Yes, it's all on jockostore.com check.

[Jocko Willink]

So go get some. We got a bunch of books. Put your. Put your legs on by Rob Jones. Need to lead by Dave Burke. I've written a bunch of books about leadership. I've written a bunch of kids books. Way the Warrior Kid, by the way, coming out November 25th. Be on Apple November 20th. Have I said that yet on this podcast?

[Echo Charles]

I don't know.

[Jocko Willink]

November 25th. Global release of the movie Way of the Warrior Kid starring Chris Pratt as Uncle Jake. So be ready for that. And in the meantime, get the books. Also, Colorado craft beef if you need some steak. Check that out. Echelonfront.com we teach these leadership principles in all types of different environments to all different types of organizations. So check out echelonfront.com we also have an online training academy, Extreme Ownership.com. we can learn these skills online. And furthermore, if you want to help families and service members, families active and retired, you want to help their gold star families as well. Check out Mama Lee's amazing charity organization. It is called America's Mighty Warriors. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org also check out heroes and horses.org and then you got Jimmy May's organization, Beyond the Brotherhood. There's a swim happening in August. Check out BeyondtheBrotherhood.org org to get involved in that. It's in New York City. You can participate, you can swim, you can do some pull ups and some push ups out in the, the, out in the Hudson river right there. So check that out. Check out warriors in need.org as well. Helping aviation folks from the military get involved in the civilian sector. Get jobs in the civilian sector. If you want to connect with us, check out jocko.com on and then on social media I'm at Jocko Willink Echoes at Echo Charles. Just, just don't spend too much time on there because it's a waste of your life and don't do it. Thanks to all of our uniform personnel around the world right now. And it's a new world right now. We got these drones, we got these AI, we got this. All the, all the chaos that the these technologies bring to the battlefield, it's a totally different battlefield. So thank you all for stepping up and taking on these challenges to protect us and to protect our way of life. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for stepping up and protecting us here on the home front and everyone else out there. Some good lessons, lessons to review, lessons to reiterate, and the lessons to live by. And if you can live by these lessons, everything's gonna get better. Set a good example, be competent at your job. Get rid of meaningless tasks and assignments. Get rid of those things. Set high standards, maintain a high level of physical conditioning. Of course, remember that discipline conquers fear. And that means you have to build your discipline every day. And the way you do that is by going out there than getting after it. And that's all we've got for tonight. And until next time, the Zeko and Jocko out.