The Ben Shapiro Show - October 14, 2018


Jocko Willink | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 23


Episode Stats

Length

54 minutes

Words per Minute

207.06493

Word Count

11,323

Sentence Count

664

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

Jocko Willink is the host of the Jocko Podcast and the author of this fine book, The Dichotomy of Leadership, which is soon to be on the New York Times bestseller list. In this episode, we talk about leadership in the military, how to be a better leader, and why you should care more about yourself than you do about anyone else. You have more control than you think you do, and if you go down that path, you're gonna find you have a lot more control over than you actually do. The only thing I can't control is me, so instead of worrying about who else is causing you problems, worry about what you can do to yourself to improve your station. -J.J. Willink, Author of The Duality of Leadership: How to Lead, Succeed, and Succeed in a World Where Everyone Is Teaming With You is out now and available for pre-order on Amazon Prime and Vimeo worldwide. Thanks to our sponsor, ZipRecruiter, for sponsoring this special episode. Zip Recruiter is rated No. 1 by employers in the U.S. and No. 2 by employer rating sites on Trustpilot with over 1,000 reviews. That rating comes from hiring sites with over 1000 reviews. Right now, my listeners can t help me hire the right person! Ben Guest, - is the way that we actually hire the person I need to hire the best recruiter. . is a guy who can do it better than I can do the job I actually do the best, and I can t do it, and he does it better, too I do it on the job better than he does the best of my job, too he s awesome, he s good at it too I can talk about it, I have a good job, I can go to him on a blog about it on Insta and he s great at it, he also does it on insta , he s cool, he really does it all, I really do it all of it, so I really like it, he s really good, he's cool, really really does all of that thing, really is that s good, really he s not bad, I am really good and I really really really can do that, and I am not just that, really I really am that, I don t have it, etc.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The only thing I can't control is me.
00:00:01.000 Instead of worrying about who else is causing you problems, worry about what you can do to yourself to improve your station, and if you go down that path, you're gonna find you have a lot more control than you think you do.
00:00:20.000 So here we are on the Sunday special with Jocko Willink, who's the host of the Jocko podcast and the author of this fine book, The Dichotomy of Leadership, which is soon to be on the New York Times bestseller list.
00:00:28.000 I'm sure we'll get to everything involving leadership and the military and all that kind of good stuff.
00:00:33.000 But first, let's talk about your job recruitment.
00:00:36.000 So there are job sites that send you tons of the wrong resumes to sort through, and that is not smart.
00:00:40.000 But you know what is smart?
00:00:41.000 Go to ziprecruiter.com slash Ben Guest to hire the right person.
00:00:45.000 ZipRecruiter doesn't depend on candidates finding you.
00:00:47.000 It finds them for you.
00:00:48.000 They have powerful matching technology, scanning thousands of resumes, identifying people with the right skills, education, and experience for your job, and actively inviting them to apply to get qualified candidates fast.
00:00:58.000 And that's why ZipRecruiter is rated number one by employers in the United States.
00:01:02.000 That rating comes from hiring sites on Trustpilot with over a thousand reviews.
00:01:05.000 Right now, my listeners can try ZipRecruiter for free at this exclusive web address.
00:01:09.000 ZipRecruiter.com slash Ben Guest, because I have a guest, at ZipRecruiter.com slash Ben Guest, ZipRecruiter.com slash Ben Guest.
00:01:17.000 And obviously, when we have to hire here, when we have to get rid of some of our producers for just falling asleep on the job and being terrible at their jobs,
00:01:24.000 They all know they're unnoticed.
00:01:25.000 ZipRecruiter.com slash Ben Guest is the way that we actually replace them.
00:01:29.000 So, sorry.
00:01:30.000 Sorry for the notice, guys.
00:01:31.000 But that's how it works.
00:01:32.000 ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.
00:01:34.000 ZipRecruiter.com slash Ben Guest.
00:01:35.000 But Jaco, thanks so much for stopping by.
00:01:37.000 I really appreciate it.
00:01:37.000 Thanks for having me on.
00:01:38.000 I appreciate it, too.
00:01:39.000 We're good to go.
00:01:57.000 Well, first of all, guru is a strong word, so let's put that one in check right out of the gate.
00:02:02.000 Yeah, I was raised in a small New England town, grew up on a dirt road.
00:02:07.000 Both my parents were schoolteachers, and I was a pretty rebellious young kid.
00:02:12.000 And one of the rebellious things that caught my eye pretty early on was joining the military because where I was from, not too many people joined the military.
00:02:20.000 And then when you're going to go and join the military because you want to rebel, you might as well just go and do something even more extreme than just join the military.
00:02:28.000 And I figured out what the SEAL teams were when I was a young kid.
00:02:30.000 And I, like I said, I always wanted to be some kind of commando.
00:02:33.000 And so when I got out of high school, I enlisted in the Navy and I ended up at
00:02:38.000 We're good.
00:02:57.000 Eventually got picked up for a leadership program, became a SEAL officer, and then did deployments until September 11th.
00:03:04.000 Once September 11th came, then I started doing the wartime deployments.
00:03:07.000 I've deployed twice to Iraq, once as a SEAL platoon commander, once as what's called a SEAL task unit commander, which means there's two SEAL platoons working together, and I was in charge of both of them.
00:03:18.000 And when I got done with that deployment, that was a very arduous deployment.
00:03:21.000 We were in the Battle of Ramadi in 2006.
00:03:24.000 It was very hard fighting.
00:03:26.000 The Marines and soldiers that we worked alongside took heavy losses, but did an incredible job.
00:03:32.000 We took casualties in our task unit.
00:03:33.000 It was very hard fighting.
00:03:36.000 And when I came home from that deployment, I got asked basically, OK, Jocko, what do you want to do now?
00:03:42.000 And I ended up taking over the training for the West Coast SEAL teams.
00:03:45.000 And this is in the training where
00:03:47.000 You see people on TV going through SEAL training where you carry the boats around or you do a bunch of push-ups.
00:03:51.000 This isn't that training.
00:03:52.000 That's our basic training.
00:03:54.000 The training that I ran was the training where you learn to shoot, move, and communicate as a SEAL platoon.
00:04:00.000 And where we actually taught combat leadership.
00:04:04.000 And so I took over that training.
00:04:05.000 I ran that for the last few years.
00:04:08.000 And when I was getting ready to retire,
00:04:11.000 A guy that I knew was a friend of mine.
00:04:13.000 He was the CEO of a company.
00:04:15.000 And he said, hey, can you come and talk to my executives, you know, about combat leadership?
00:04:20.000 And I said, you know, sure, I'll do it.
00:04:22.000 He's a friend of mine.
00:04:23.000 So I went and did it.
00:04:24.000 And I don't know what he thought I was going to talk about, but when I got done, he came up to me and said, I want you to do this for every division that I have in my company.
00:04:33.000 And I said,
00:04:34.000 Well, I'm retiring, and I don't know, and he said, I'll give you money.
00:04:38.000 And I said, how much?
00:04:41.000 And we worked it out.
00:04:43.000 And I ended up talking to every division that he had in his company.
00:04:45.000 And at one of those divisional meetings,
00:04:48.000 The CEO of the parent company was there.
00:04:50.000 And when I got done briefing about leadership, that CEO came up to me and said, hey, I want you to talk to the CEOs of all my companies.
00:04:59.000 And he owned 45 or 50 companies.
00:05:01.000 And from there, I went and talked to those CEOs.
00:05:04.000 And the next thing you know, I had a new job.
00:05:07.000 And I didn't get to retire like I had planned.
00:05:10.000 And as I was doing that, I needed some backup, and one of the guys that worked for me in the Battle of Ramadi, a guy by the name of Leif Babin, he was one of the platoon commanders underneath me in those two SEAL platoons.
00:05:19.000 And he was getting out of the Navy, and I talked to him and said, hey man, I need some backup over here.
00:05:24.000 And so we joined forces, and we formed this company, Echelon Front, and that's what we do, leadership consulting.
00:05:30.000 And along the way, as we would talk to these companies,
00:05:34.000 We'd get done talking and they'd say, oh, do you have this stuff written down anywhere?
00:05:37.000 Do you have any, you know, pamphlets you can give us?
00:05:40.000 So the guys that missed the meeting can see what you talked about.
00:05:43.000 And so eventually we looked at each other and said, okay, we need to write this stuff down in a more formal way.
00:05:47.000 We did that.
00:05:48.000 That became a manuscript.
00:05:50.000 That manuscript became a book.
00:05:52.000 And that book was the first book we released.
00:05:54.000 It was called Extreme Ownership.
00:05:55.000 And it ended up
00:05:57.000 I kind of thought I'd be giving it away at the back of, you know, I'd speak to people and give it away in the back and it ended up doing really well and getting a lot of traction and just, it's been well read.
00:06:08.000 So how much of your leadership do you think is just natural to you?
00:06:12.000 Because you're talking about a, what I'm hearing is obviously a guy who has tremendous initiative from a very young age.
00:06:16.000 I mean, to even be from a place where nobody goes in the military and just join the military takes a lot of chutzpah, as my folks would say.
00:06:25.000 Do you think that it really is that leadership is born or is it bred?
00:06:27.000 Yeah, I get asked this question all the time.
00:06:29.000 And so, it's both.
00:06:31.000 It's absolutely both.
00:06:32.000 And you, as a human being, are going to get certain characteristics that are going to make you a good leader and you're going to lack some characteristics that would make you a good leader if you had them.
00:06:41.000 You don't get tens across the board.
00:06:43.000 You know, it's like the little video games you see kids play where you get a nine in strength and a seven in intellect and an eight in dexterity.
00:06:52.000 And you get those, too, as a leader.
00:06:54.000 And you don't get all tense.
00:06:56.000 So, some leadership characteristics that make you a good leader, for instance, obviously it's good to be articulate.
00:07:01.000 If you can express your message clearly to people, that's going to help you from a leadership perspective.
00:07:06.000 If you have some natural charisma, that's going to help you from a leadership perspective.
00:07:10.000 If you can look at complex problems and you can simplify them, that's going to be helpful as a leader, because that's what you're doing.
00:07:17.000 So, if you're persuasive, there's all kinds of things that will help you as a leader, and you're not going to be good at all of them.
00:07:22.000 And so,
00:07:23.000 I don't think so.
00:07:45.000 We're good to go.
00:08:07.000 And those people, they think they're doing everything great, so they're not going to improve as leaders.
00:08:11.000 You can't coach them, you can't convince them.
00:08:12.000 They think they're perfect and they're going to stay where they are from a leadership perspective.
00:08:16.000 So what did you actually learn from the first time you went through SEAL training?
00:08:20.000 Because you joined the military and you decided to go to the hardest, but what everybody widely across America knows is the hardest training program in America.
00:08:26.000 What is that like?
00:08:29.000 The myth about SEAL training, that part of SEAL training, is that you learn anything at all.
00:08:35.000 Because you actually don't.
00:08:37.000 Okay, you learn some things, but it's a screening process.
00:08:40.000 What they're trying to do is get rid of people that don't want to really, really, really do that job.
00:08:46.000 So, it's suffering.
00:08:47.000 You're going to be wet, you're going to be cold, you're going to be tired, and you're going to be that for extended periods of time.
00:08:53.000 And there's an 80% attrition rate.
00:08:56.000 But when you make it through, you get to a SEAL team, and when you get to a SEAL team, that's when you start to actually learn about being a SEAL.
00:09:03.000 That's when you learn the tactics and the leadership perspective.
00:09:07.000 That's when you start to become an actual SEAL.
00:09:10.000 Getting through the basic SEAL training, you know, when you show up at a SEAL team, everyone looks at you, you come out of there thinking, like you just said, oh, I just went through the toughest training in the world.
00:09:19.000 You get to a SEAL team,
00:09:20.000 I literally checked in with the Master Chief and he said, everyone here has been through that training, no one cares.
00:09:26.000 So it's very humbling when you show up.
00:09:28.000 And that's when you start to learn.
00:09:29.000 You start to learn when you get in a SEAL platoon.
00:09:31.000 And when it comes to getting into the SEAL platoon, how do you determine leadership positions even among people who you're initially equals with?
00:09:38.000 Do you think that sort of naturally falls out?
00:09:41.000 There's a rank structure inside the military, there's a rank structure inside the SEAL teams, and you're going to be, where are you for you?
00:09:47.000 When you're a new guy, you're going to be the junior guy.
00:09:49.000 And then the next platoon, you're going to be a little bit more senior, you'll have a couple guys working for you.
00:09:53.000 The platoon chief is going to be, you know, the senior guy, enlisted guy, inside of a SEAL platoon, and then you'll have an officer in charge of the whole thing.
00:10:00.000 And those are pre-designated.
00:10:02.000 Those are pre-designated, which was very counter to my initial thought when I joined the Navy.
00:10:07.000 My dad told me I was going to hate it because I said, why do you think I'm going to hate it?
00:10:11.000 He goes, because you don't like to listen to anybody and you don't like authority.
00:10:14.000 And of course I told him, no dad, it's a team.
00:10:17.000 We don't have to, we don't have to listen to anybody.
00:10:19.000 It's a team.
00:10:19.000 And I was completely wrong because there is a rank structure and you absolutely, you know, there's a, it's the military, even though it's a team and you definitely have,
00:10:27.000 You build relationships throughout that chain of command, and that is more prominent than in some other groups, but you still, there's a chain of command, and you're going to follow that chain of command.
00:10:36.000 There's been a lot of talk about the possibility of mandatory national service.
00:10:39.000 As somebody who's gone through this program, and I've seen so many guys who are military, some of whom I knew back when they were in high school, and were kind of, you know, I can't say the words on air, but they were kind of F-Ups, and then they come out the other end, and they're, you know,
00:10:55.000 I love the idea of it, but at the same time, as an American, I don't like the idea of mandating that people do something that they don't want to do.
00:11:09.000 And I think the volunteer military that we have right now is
00:11:14.000 It might be the best in the history of the world.
00:11:16.000 We have a great military.
00:11:17.000 And I think to mandate it, I think it's problematic.
00:11:21.000 That being said, every single person that I talk to, especially kids that are the age of, you know, 13, 14, 15, if you get the opportunity to join the military, then I would definitely recommend it because, like you said, it teaches you a lot of things.
00:11:35.000 When it comes to the application of leadership principles, how much of what you learned in leadership training at the Seals was applicable and how much of it was, you're just in a situation and now you've got to move, you've got to figure something out?
00:11:46.000 How much of it is seat of your pants kind of stuff?
00:11:48.000 Well, when I came in, we really didn't, and this is shocking, we really didn't have a process of leadership training that the leaders went through.
00:11:56.000 And we would basically, the leaders would learn OJT, on-the-job training.
00:12:00.000 You'd watch the person that was leading you, and then when it was your time to take over, you'd kind of emulate what they were doing.
00:12:05.000 And if you had a great leader, that worked okay.
00:12:06.000 If you had a bad leader, that was a real problem.
00:12:09.000 And so when I came back from that deployment to Ramadi, that's one of the things I focused on is I realized that we really needed to implement leadership training for the guys because you're on the battlefield.
00:12:20.000 Leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield.
00:12:22.000 And if you don't know what you're doing, you're going to get people killed without question.
00:12:25.000 Can you give me a couple of stories to sort of demonstrate that point?
00:12:28.000 I mean, what's a high point of leadership that you've seen on the battlefield as opposed to a low point that you've seen in terms of leadership?
00:12:33.000 Well, one thing that's important to clarify here is when I talk about leadership, I'm not just talking about me because I was in charge of the task unit, or the platoon commander because he was in charge of the platoon, or even the people above me.
00:12:42.000 I'm talking about every level of leadership.
00:12:44.000 Every person taking ownership of their piece of the mission and executing
00:12:49.000 Executing with authority and executing with real passion about what they're doing.
00:12:55.000 And so you've got to have leadership at every level.
00:12:56.000 And when you don't have that, it's very problematic.
00:12:59.000 So what was great for me when I came back and I took over the training for the West Coast SEAL teams, I got to see, we put on the most realistic combat training, extremely stressful.
00:13:11.000 Very realistic.
00:13:13.000 And I would get to see a platoon go through this training.
00:13:15.000 And then the next night, it'd be another platoon going through the same scenarios.
00:13:18.000 And then the next night, it'd be another platoon going through the same scenarios.
00:13:20.000 So I got, it was basically the most incredible leadership laboratory.
00:13:25.000 It might be the most incredible leadership laboratory that's ever existed.
00:13:28.000 It was that awesome to be able to put these platoons through this iterative training.
00:13:34.000 And that was where it became very clear that leadership, if you had a good leader in a SEAL platoon,
00:13:39.000 That's right.
00:14:02.000 Feel like, oh you're stepping on my toes and they try and put them down and that would be problematic.
00:14:06.000 But you'd see a good solid leader anywhere in that SEAL platoon would make those SEAL platoons perform great.
00:14:13.000 And if you had a bad leader in a SEAL platoon, you'd watch the whole platoon fall apart if no one stepped up and took charge and made things happen.
00:14:21.000 This was very evident and that's another thing that just solidified the principles that we
00:14:26.000 The same principles that we teach the businesses are literally the exact same principles that we wrote about in Extreme Ownership are the same principles that we taught to the young CEO leaders coming up.
00:14:35.000 Well, I'm going to ask you in a second what are some of those leadership principles, and we'll actually get into the sort of nitty-gritty from the 30,000-foot level.
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00:15:50.000 Okay, so now, Jaco, let's get down to some of the main lessons of leadership.
00:15:54.000 So what's the number one thing you look for in a leader?
00:15:57.000 Well, the first book was called Extreme Ownership.
00:16:00.000 And what that means is you're not going to make any excuses.
00:16:03.000 You're not going to blame anyone else.
00:16:04.000 You're going to take ownership of whatever happens.
00:16:07.000 And when something goes wrong, instead of pointing fingers and blaming someone else, you're going to take ownership of that problem.
00:16:11.000 You're going to take ownership of figuring out what the solution to that problem is, and you're going to take ownership of implementing that solution.
00:16:17.000 So that is the number one thing that I'm looking for for a leader to do, is to take ownership of the problems.
00:16:22.000 And again, we call that extreme ownership.
00:16:24.000 And it was one of those things that was very easy to see in a SEAL platoon, because
00:16:29.000 When someone doesn't take ownership and starts pointing fingers and blaming, well, like, for instance, right now, if I started pointing my finger and blaming you for something, what's your natural reaction going to be?
00:16:37.000 You get defensive, get upset, I mean, it's not my fault this broadcast isn't what I wanted it to be.
00:16:41.000 Exactly, exactly.
00:16:42.000 And then what happens is we have a team where you're pointing, I'm pointing the finger at you, you're pointing the finger at someone else, and now we have no one taking ownership of the problems, and therefore the problems never get solved.
00:16:51.000 The opposite of that is when you have a good leader that steps up and says, hey,
00:16:55.000 Ben, you know what?
00:16:55.000 This broadcast didn't go the way I wanted it to.
00:16:57.000 I should have done a better job preparing for your questions.
00:16:59.000 I'm sorry.
00:16:59.000 I apologize.
00:17:00.000 And now, instead of you getting defensive, you say, you know what?
00:17:03.000 No, actually, I could have done a better job.
00:17:04.000 And now, both of us are taking ownership of the problems, and we're going to get them solved.
00:17:08.000 So, that's kind of the number one characteristic, is someone has the humility.
00:17:12.000 Because it hurts.
00:17:13.000 It stings.
00:17:14.000 When something goes wrong, and you're a leader, and you say, oh, you know what?
00:17:17.000 All this was a bad situation.
00:17:18.000 It's my fault.
00:17:19.000 I'll take ownership of it.
00:17:20.000 That hurts.
00:17:21.000 That stings the ego.
00:17:21.000 So, you have to be humble in order to do that.
00:17:23.000 How much of leadership is, it sounds like a lot of it is just being good person interpersonally, because it sounds like you can take that same message and apply it to marriage, where it's not really a question of you leading your spouse, but if you start blaming your spouse, the whole thing falls apart nearly immediately, whereas if you have no expectations of your spouse, and it's just you're going to take responsibility for whatever happens, then your marriage goes a lot better.
00:17:43.000 Yeah, no doubt about it.
00:17:45.000 And we definitely, as soon as the first book came out, we got all kinds of feedback from people in every type of scenario.
00:17:50.000 That when they started taking ownership of their relationship with their wives, with their spouses, that it gets better.
00:17:55.000 And obviously, this translates to personal responsibility.
00:17:59.000 Because when you're walking around and you're saying, oh, it's my family, and it's the market, or it's the way I was raised, and these are the things that are holding me back.
00:18:08.000 And all you're doing is blaming everyone else?
00:18:11.000 You don't take ownership of those problems, and that's going to be problematic.
00:18:13.000 The best thing to say is, OK, look, whatever happened, happened.
00:18:16.000 I'm going to take control of what I can.
00:18:17.000 I'm going to go forth and conquer.
00:18:18.000 So with regard to the future of the country, I mean, obviously, my mind jumps politically.
00:18:22.000 And I think that we're living in an era where there's a lot of political capital be gained by politicians, particularly, in telling people that they are victims and that their first move ought to be to blame the system or blame factors outside their control.
00:18:33.000 It seems like you're arguing exactly the opposite.
00:18:35.000 If you actually want to have a happy life,
00:18:36.000 And maybe you first ought to start taking responsibility for the decisions that are within your purview.
00:18:40.000 If you were, if you were speaking to people politically, what would you be telling people along these lines?
00:18:45.000 Yeah, that's 100% right.
00:18:45.000 I mean, if you, if you're blaming everyone else, I can't control you.
00:18:50.000 I can't control these other things outside.
00:18:52.000 I can't, I can't control.
00:18:54.000 The only thing I can control is me.
00:18:55.000 So instead of worrying about who else is causing you problems, worry about what you can do to yourself to improve your station.
00:19:02.000 And if you go down that path, you're going to find you have a lot more control than you think you do.
00:19:06.000 So how do you deal with situations in which it really is the person's fault, right?
00:19:10.000 So you're taking responsibility for everything, but at the same time, you just have somebody who's
00:19:15.000 Screwed up in a serious way.
00:19:16.000 I just read an editorial or an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about a guy who was chewed out at one point by Steve Jobs.
00:19:21.000 He's working at Apple and Steve Jobs approaches him, obviously the quote-unquote ultimate leader in the tech sector, and he just looked at what the guy was doing.
00:19:28.000 He said, this is garbage.
00:19:28.000 And then he just walked away.
00:19:30.000 And the guy said, well, you know, it made me feel bad at the time, but I realized that sometimes it encouraged me to do better.
00:19:36.000 Well, what do you think of that sort of leadership style?
00:19:38.000 Are there times where you just have to chew somebody out?
00:19:41.000 And is that ever useful?
00:19:43.000 There are very few occasions, because I'll tell you, from a leadership perspective, if you're working for me and you screw something up, whose fault is that?
00:19:51.000 I mean, presumably, it's your fault for hiring me.
00:19:53.000 Well, number one, why did I hire you if you can't do the job?
00:19:56.000 But even, let's say I did hire you.
00:19:58.000 Did I give you the right guidance?
00:19:59.000 Did I give you the right support?
00:20:01.000 Did I actually check back in with you and make sure that you had the resources that you needed to get the thing done?
00:20:06.000 Did I make sure that you were trained properly?
00:20:08.000 I mean, there's all these things that I look back at myself and say, if my subordinates, now,
00:20:12.000 If my subordinates aren't doing what I need them to do, that is my fault.
00:20:16.000 Now, to your question, do you occasionally get someone that is either incapable of doing the job for whatever reason, they don't have the cognitive capacity, or they don't have the physical capacity, or they don't have the right attitude to get a job done?
00:20:27.000 Does that happen sometimes?
00:20:29.000 Yes, it absolutely does.
00:20:30.000 You know, we talked about that in the new book.
00:20:31.000 We had, my task unit is called Task Unit Bruiser, and we had two guys inside a Task Unit Bruiser that, when we went through our pre-deployment training,
00:20:40.000 They didn't cut it.
00:20:42.000 And, you know, look, we did everything we could to mentor, to train them, to get them up to speed.
00:20:46.000 But ultimately, you get to a point as a leader where you recognize this person is just not capable of doing the job.
00:20:53.000 And I'm putting all my resources into this one individual.
00:20:57.000 And I'm now starting to shun the rest of the team because I'm focused on one person, so I'm actually hurting the rest of the team.
00:21:02.000 So even though I have loyalty and I take ownership of the subordinates that are working for me, at some point, my loyalty to the team will trump my loyalty to one individual, and I have to make a hard decision to get rid of that person.
00:21:15.000 It's kind of a bizarre question, but my mind is going toward family situations.
00:21:18.000 What do you do with kids?
00:21:21.000 You have several kids.
00:21:22.000 I have four.
00:21:23.000 Okay, so you have four kids.
00:21:23.000 To be exact.
00:21:24.000 And let's say that one of them is a slacker, and it's not a situation where you can just sort of cut him and fire him.
00:21:29.000 The kid's stuck with, you know, you got to do what you got to do.
00:21:31.000 How do you determine where to put your resources, given that one kid very often requires more attention than another kid in this sort of area?
00:21:41.000 The thing with raising kids is, and again, I used to shy away from talking about this because I used to say, you know what, my kids
00:21:48.000 The results aren't in yet, right?
00:21:49.000 And I don't know where they're going to end up.
00:21:51.000 I hear that, yeah.
00:21:51.000 And also it's like, you know, is your kid successful?
00:21:55.000 What does that actually mean?
00:21:56.000 Because my kid could go and make a ton of money but have a horrible family life and be miserable.
00:22:02.000 Be a jerk, yeah.
00:22:02.000 Right, and be a jerk, right?
00:22:03.000 Is that success?
00:22:04.000 No.
00:22:04.000 Or they could be very happy but have no money and be living day to day.
00:22:09.000 So that's not successful either.
00:22:11.000 But my kids are a little bit older now and I can see this trajectory that they are on.
00:22:16.000 Quite frankly, I'm pretty happy with the way my kids have turned out.
00:22:22.000 It's a hard thing to look at because you can't fully control it.
00:22:25.000 And so what are you going to do with your kids?
00:22:27.000 You know, I like to, you've got to give them guidance, right?
00:22:32.000 But you also have to let them brush up against the guardrails of failure, you know?
00:22:37.000 A simple example that I would say, and I probably have taken some flack for this, is I say, if you're helping your kids, you're hurting your kids.
00:22:45.000 And what do I mean by that?
00:22:46.000 Something as simple as tying your shoe, right?
00:22:49.000 If you help your kid, when they're whatever age, two years old, three years old, if you help them tie their shoe, you're actually taking away an opportunity for them to develop their fine motor skills.
00:23:02.000 That's really happening at that moment.
00:23:04.000 So, if you do that, if you cook them every meal, if you don't let them, you know, get their cereal bowl out, now guess what?
00:23:09.000 They're going to spill milk sometimes, and they're going to knock over the cereal, and at the same time, they're developing skills that are going to help them fend for themselves in the world.
00:23:18.000 So, what you have to do is you have to let them brush up against the guardrails of failure from time to time.
00:23:24.000 Now, where it becomes challenging as a parent, and thank God I haven't faced anything like this, sometimes your kids will take turns
00:23:32.000 That will ruin their life, right?
00:23:35.000 That will ruin their life.
00:23:36.000 And, you know, obviously, I'm not going to let one of my kids ruin their lives.
00:23:41.000 That being said, if people take a really hard turn and do things that are completely against the parameters that you believe in, and you continue to support them, they're going to continue to take advantage of you.
00:23:54.000 And so I've seen that happen with parents where kids go down the wrong direction.
00:23:58.000 Like I said, I can't even imagine the catch-22 that you get in that situation where, you know, if your kid becomes a drug addict.
00:24:07.000 And you want nothing more than to help them.
00:24:10.000 But every time you give them the support that you think is going to help them, you're actually just enabling them.
00:24:17.000 And so, again...
00:24:19.000 I'm no expert.
00:24:20.000 What I try and do is put a box around the kids, let them develop, let them grow, and put the guardrails out there, let them know when they disappoint you.
00:24:31.000 But the other part of this is, and this is another hard thing for people to understand, it was definitely hard for me to understand, your kids aren't going to be who you want them to be.
00:24:42.000 They're going to be who they are.
00:24:45.000 And in my opinion, the more you force them to try and be what it is you want them to be, the harder the pushback is going to be, and you can end up with some really horrible situations.
00:24:55.000 Okay, so we talked about taking extreme responsibility.
00:24:57.000 What are some of the other attributes of leaders that you look for?
00:25:00.000 Well, humility is obviously the big one.
00:25:01.000 You've got to be humble.
00:25:02.000 If you're not humble, then that's going to be problematic.
00:25:05.000 Now, what's interesting, a new book that just came out is Dichotomy of Leadership, and what does that mean?
00:25:09.000 That means that as a leader, you have to be balanced, right?
00:25:12.000 You have to be balanced.
00:25:13.000 So, let's just take humility and ego, because we're looking for people that are humble.
00:25:18.000 But at the same time, you can have someone that's so humble that they lack confidence.
00:25:23.000 That's bad.
00:25:24.000 On the other side of that spectrum, you can have someone that's so confident that they're overconfident, their ego's big, and they don't listen to anyone else.
00:25:31.000 Where do you want to be?
00:25:32.000 You want to be balanced, somewhere in the middle.
00:25:35.000 I talked about the fact that you need to be articulate as a leader.
00:25:37.000 That's great.
00:25:38.000 Can you be a leader that talks so much that people stop listening to you?
00:25:42.000 The other end of the spectrum is, you are a leader that doesn't say enough, and now the team doesn't know what direction they're supposed to be going in.
00:25:48.000 So, where do you want to be?
00:25:50.000 You want to be somewhere in the middle.
00:25:51.000 You want to be balanced.
00:25:52.000 And so what we've seen working with, after that book Extreme Ownership came out, we saw leaders, the biggest problem that leaders have, because the last chapter in Extreme Ownership is called the Dichotomy of Leadership.
00:26:01.000 It's talking about these points.
00:26:03.000 But we didn't go deep enough.
00:26:04.000 It was only one chapter.
00:26:05.000 And as we continue to work with leaders, hundreds of leaders,
00:26:09.000 You realize the problem that they suffer the most is they go too far in one direction or the other.
00:26:15.000 So really, the best characteristic to have as a leader is to be balanced.
00:26:20.000 There's a certain amount of that authenticity, because how much can you train into being a leader and move yourself out of where you authentically are?
00:26:27.000 So you tend to be a quiet person, and now you're trying to train yourself into being the guy who can give a rah-rah motivational speech on the floor.
00:26:34.000 Are you better off just perfecting the skills that you already have, or are you better off working on the skills that you lack?
00:26:39.000 You know, it's interesting you talk about this, the fact of just being loud, right?
00:26:43.000 You said a quiet person.
00:26:45.000 Being loud is a characteristic of a good leader.
00:26:47.000 It absolutely is, and especially of being a combat leader.
00:26:50.000 Because if you're in a combat situation, and you need guys to move to that door over there, and there's a machine gun fight going on, the only way you're going to do it is if you're loud enough to make that happen.
00:26:58.000 You're loud enough to yell and let everyone know that.
00:27:01.000 I had a guy coming through my training, really smart guy, Ivy League guy, very cerebral.
00:27:08.000 He was as quiet as a mouse.
00:27:09.000 And I said to him, I said, listen, you're going to need to get loud.
00:27:11.000 Like, your guys cannot hear you.
00:27:13.000 You're going to need to learn to project your voice.
00:27:16.000 He was, for all practical purposes, as far as I could tell, physically incapable of projecting his voice.
00:27:23.000 And so as I was watching him go through these iterations, I kept saying to him, you've got to be louder.
00:27:27.000 You've got to be louder.
00:27:28.000 Your guys can't hear you.
00:27:29.000 And I didn't think he was going to make it.
00:27:32.000 And then one iteration that they're going through, I seem he needs to get guys over to this door over here.
00:27:36.000 And he grabs Billy, who is the biggest loudmouth in the platoon, and he goes, Billy, get everyone to that door over there.
00:27:43.000 And Billy goes, Bill, everyone get to that door!
00:27:45.000 And everyone moved.
00:27:47.000 And I realized that he was smarter than me.
00:27:51.000 What he figured out was he could complement an area of weakness that he had with his team.
00:27:56.000 And so, yes, there's ways that you can increase your capabilities and, like I said, you can become more articulate, you can learn to simplify more.
00:28:04.000 You can become more persuasive if you continue to try and talk to people.
00:28:08.000 But maybe something like being loud.
00:28:10.000 This guy just couldn't do it.
00:28:11.000 But...
00:28:12.000 He was able to take his team and pull the strengths in his team together to become a better leader himself.
00:28:18.000 And that's always something that a good leader will do.
00:28:20.000 You hear it all the time.
00:28:21.000 Surround yourself with good people.
00:28:23.000 I would add to that, surround yourself with good people that complement the areas that you're weak.
00:28:27.000 So how do you get a leader who's, let's say, an 80% leader to a 95% leader?
00:28:31.000 Is this somebody who is just lacking motivation or is it somebody who requires a skill set?
00:28:36.000 Like, you have a guy and you think he's good raw material.
00:28:39.000 Are there actual exercises in which you can engage to become a better leader?
00:28:42.000 Oh yeah, absolutely.
00:28:43.000 I mean, in the SEAL teams, what we would do is we would run guys through these really complicated training scenarios that I'm talking about.
00:28:49.000 In the business world, we do role-playing with people.
00:28:52.000 And I'll put you in a situation as a leader where I say, okay, I'm your worst nightmare employee.
00:28:57.000 Or not even your worst nightmare.
00:28:58.000 Hey, I'm that...
00:29:00.000 I'm that older guy that's been doing this for 25 years, and I don't want to change the way I'm doing anything, and you got to get me to change it.
00:29:07.000 Let's go.
00:29:08.000 Let's figure this out.
00:29:09.000 And what you see is two, three, four iterations of having these hard conversations, people get better at them.
00:29:14.000 That's one aspect of leadership that you can definitely get better at.
00:29:18.000 We run through planning drills so people learn to simplify.
00:29:20.000 We run through communication drills so people learn to simplify their message.
00:29:24.000 There's all kinds of ways to go from that 80% leader to the 9,500% leader.
00:29:28.000 When it comes to, you know, you've been in situations, obviously in warfare situations, how much of the textbook stuff is applicable?
00:29:35.000 I mean, is it just you have to live through it and then a certain natural leadership capacity takes over?
00:29:39.000 Or is it that you can game out all this stuff?
00:29:43.000 I mean, is it possible to really game out crisis scenarios or is it basically do the best that you can and then you're just doing what you do?
00:29:49.000 Here's the answer to that.
00:29:52.000 Combat, and this is very counterintuitive to what people might think, combat is an absolute exercise in creativity.
00:30:00.000 And when you're in these situations you have to have an open mind.
00:30:03.000 You have to know the principles.
00:30:05.000 You have to understand combat.
00:30:07.000 But then you have to be able to take those principles and apply them, and modulate them, and utilize them in ways that they may have never been utilized before, so that you can get the outcome that you desire.
00:30:19.000 It's a very creative-focused job, and people miss that a lot.
00:30:26.000 And that's why the training that I ran, we really focused on forcing the leaders to get creative to solve problems.
00:30:32.000 So let's talk a little about some of the leadership examples that we all have in common.
00:30:36.000 So we have, you know, the movies provide us tons of examples of what they see as good leaders.
00:30:41.000 What are some examples of leaders that you've seen in either everyday life or in politics?
00:30:46.000 Some leaders that you see and you say, that's what a good leader looks like.
00:30:50.000 Because we all have this sort of picture of a leader in our head that it's an Abraham Lincoln figure, tall person who kind of only speaks when necessary.
00:30:58.000 Or the leader that comes to mind for me is
00:31:03.000 What's the name of the actor in Band of Brothers?
00:31:06.000 I don't know the actor's name, but I know that he's trying to portray Dick Winters.
00:31:10.000 Dick Winters, exactly, exactly.
00:31:11.000 So that's the image that a lot of folks have from pop culture.
00:31:14.000 Who would be your leaders that you look to and you say, these are the ones who I see as sort of the heroic leaders?
00:31:20.000 Yeah, I mean, Dick Winters, that's a fantastic example.
00:31:23.000 I've covered his books on my podcast because he's a leader that
00:31:28.000 That does every one of these little nuanced things.
00:31:31.000 You can see him do it.
00:31:32.000 And Band of Brothers is an amazing series that really shows the nuances of his leadership.
00:31:38.000 So I think that's fantastic.
00:31:39.000 One of the leaders that I always tried to emulate was a guy by the name of Colonel David Hackworth, who was one of the most decorated soldiers he served in Korea and in Vietnam.
00:31:51.000 And he wrote a book called About Face, which is about an 800-page book.
00:31:55.000 And it's really not about leadership at all.
00:31:58.000 Overtly, but it's a hundred percent about leadership as you read it and if you're looking for those lessons But he was a guy that again.
00:32:05.000 He balanced all these dichotomies very effectively He was completely revered by the people that worked for him most of the people that he worked for Loved him and loved having having him on their team however, and this is you know part of the dichotomy he's the guy that
00:32:21.000 He's one of the first senior leaders in Vietnam that said, look, if we don't change the way we're fighting this war, we are not going to win.
00:32:28.000 And they drummed him out of the army in a matter of months after that.
00:32:33.000 Because, and to me, it was him speaking the truth as he saw it, which I have great respect for.
00:32:40.000 So when you look at today's politics, obviously it's what I do for a living, and it feels extraordinarily chaotic.
00:32:45.000 It feels like it's a war of all against all.
00:32:47.000 It's sort of this Hobbesian state of nature.
00:32:50.000 Do you see that as a lack of leadership, or is it that there are too many people who think they're leaders fighting with one another?
00:32:56.000 I think it's a little bit of both.
00:32:57.000 I think we're getting accustomed to this new world where you can get reactions on a minute-by-minute basis.
00:33:05.000 And one of the best ways to get reactions from people is to make statements that are extreme.
00:33:11.000 And so, again, this new book, Dichotomy of Leadership, it's about balance.
00:33:16.000 And right now, I would say in politics,
00:33:18.000 We don't find very much balance.
00:33:21.000 We find people on both sides that are leaning towards the extremes all the time, and then that gets greatly amplified by the media.
00:33:29.000 How much of leadership involves actually having a group of people who have the same common goal?
00:33:33.000 Because one of the big problems that I'm seeing in our politics generally, and I think this is true just in a fragmenting society that focuses very much on the individual.
00:33:41.000 I'm an individualist.
00:33:41.000 I really believe that people should have the right to do essentially what they want so long as they're not harming anyone else.
00:33:46.000 But it seems like the success of a team, whether it's a Navy SEAL team or any other team, relies on having the same common goal.
00:33:53.000 How much of that can be instilled by leadership and how much of that is just
00:33:56.000 You know, you joined the team voluntarily.
00:33:58.000 You knew what you were getting into.
00:34:00.000 And can that be restored if there's a lack of goal-orientedness in the society as a whole?
00:34:05.000 You have to have some kind of common goal.
00:34:07.000 You absolutely do.
00:34:08.000 Now, without a common goal, you don't know where you're going.
00:34:11.000 Now, where we run into trouble, in a team or in the political environment we're in right now, is there's different ways to get to that goal.
00:34:19.000 Right?
00:34:19.000 There's different ways to get to that goal.
00:34:21.000 I mean, I don't think there's any one... Okay, maybe there are.
00:34:23.000 But generally, people want
00:34:27.000 We want good for the world, right?
00:34:28.000 There's no one that's thinking, hey, we want a dictatorship in America.
00:34:33.000 No normal people are saying that, right?
00:34:36.000 We all have a common goal.
00:34:38.000 We want families to have good lives.
00:34:39.000 We want people to be taken care of.
00:34:41.000 We want to have opportunity.
00:34:43.000 We want to have a good economy, right?
00:34:44.000 These are all things that
00:34:46.000 I don't think so.
00:35:09.000 There'll be no compromise.
00:35:10.000 We're only going to do it my way.
00:35:11.000 And I would rather not execute the mission, not accomplish the mission, than not do it my way.
00:35:18.000 And so when I see that, that's problematic.
00:35:21.000 How do you solve it?
00:35:22.000 Eventually, if you're going to move forward, you have to solve it.
00:35:25.000 You have to find out what those compromises are going to be.
00:35:27.000 Yeah, and this is where I actually wonder whether that's true.
00:35:31.000 Maybe I have a more pessimistic view of the country than you do actually at this point because I do wonder whether we agree on the endpoints and we're just disagreeing about the means.
00:35:38.000 I think that a lot of folks, like nobody's going to come out and say, I want a dictatorship.
00:35:41.000 There are a lot of folks who will say, I would like to restrict X right for this group of people because I think that that right as exercised is hurting me.
00:35:49.000 No due process rights for particular sets of crime.
00:35:52.000 We need to shut down this particular sort of speech because this sort of speech hurts me.
00:35:56.000 At a certain point, I do wonder whether we lack even the common language of goals in order to arrive at a common destination.
00:36:03.000 Are you pessimistic or optimistic about the future of the country?
00:36:05.000 I'm less pessimistic than you are with that and with those type of examples because I see those as fringe.
00:36:14.000 And again, I don't live in the same world as you do.
00:36:17.000 I'm the worst of the bunch.
00:36:18.000 I do politics all day.
00:36:19.000 It's the worst.
00:36:19.000 You're in a constant firefight with this stuff.
00:36:22.000 In normal American, I work with businesses all over the country.
00:36:25.000 And you know what?
00:36:26.000 I hate to break the news to you.
00:36:28.000 Most people aren't watching news 24 hours a day.
00:36:31.000 Most people aren't listening to those fringe people on either side.
00:36:35.000 Most people are out there working hard, trying to make a living, trying to take care of their family.
00:36:41.000 I mean, it's beyond the vast majority.
00:36:43.000 The absolute vast majority of the people that I work with every day are people that want to improve their station in life.
00:36:49.000 They want to help their team win.
00:36:51.000 They want to do good work.
00:36:52.000 They got pride in what they're doing.
00:36:54.000 That's what most people... I mean, construction, manufacturing, finance.
00:36:59.000 I mean, that's what these people are doing.
00:37:01.000 And so, the fringe people that are out screaming and yelling,
00:37:05.000 They're loud and the media focuses on them.
00:37:07.000 Why?
00:37:07.000 Well, you know, it's because the media wants to get people to click and hear what that crazy person has to say.
00:37:14.000 Most of America, we don't click on that stuff.
00:37:17.000 We don't.
00:37:18.000 What do you think civilians don't understand about the military that you wish they understood more?
00:37:21.000 Very few Americans actually now know somebody who serves in the military or has served in the military.
00:37:27.000 It used to be that a huge percentage of Americans served, now it's like 2% of Americans serve in the military.
00:37:31.000 What do you think that civilians really ought to know about how the military operates and what the military lifestyle is like?
00:37:38.000 Well, number one, I think the most important thing to understand about people in the military is that they're people.
00:37:44.000 Is that they're people.
00:37:45.000 And these are people with husbands and wives.
00:37:48.000 These are people with kids.
00:37:49.000 These are people with goals.
00:37:51.000 And they're people with emotions.
00:37:53.000 And
00:37:54.000 I think sometimes when you see a picture of a soldier, of a sailor, of an airman, of a marine, you think of them as that thing.
00:38:03.000 As a soldier, as a sailor, as an airman, as a marine.
00:38:05.000 And we often forget that that soldier, sailor, airman, marine, that service member, they are a person and they have a life.
00:38:12.000 And so, I think that's what happens when guys come home and they don't have a new mission to focus on.
00:38:21.000 They get a little bit lost, and people don't know how to treat them.
00:38:24.000 So, I say it's real simple and straightforward.
00:38:27.000 They're people.
00:38:28.000 Treat them like people.
00:38:29.000 And give them the respect that they deserve, absolutely, because the sacrifices that they make are not... They're not sacrifices made by a robot.
00:38:39.000 They're sacrifices made by a person, and like, in my case, and the families as well.
00:38:43.000 You know, in my case, when I was on my last deployment to Ramadi, I left my wife at home with three young kids, and...
00:38:52.000 I knew what I was doing.
00:38:53.000 I knew what my day-to-day circumstances were.
00:38:55.000 My wife didn't know.
00:38:56.000 My wife was at home raising kids and, by the way, going to visit my wounded guys in the hospital, going to my guys' funerals.
00:39:04.000 That is an incredible sacrifice on the home front as well.
00:39:07.000 So I think it's important just to remember that these are people, both the service members and their families.
00:39:11.000 That's pretty amazing.
00:39:12.000 How did you meet your wife?
00:39:13.000 I met my wife in, I was overseas and she was overseas and we met in church.
00:39:19.000 Pretty good place to meet.
00:39:19.000 There was beer served at this particular church.
00:39:23.000 Yeah, we met in a bar.
00:39:24.000 She sounds like a pretty amazing person.
00:39:25.000 So how did she deal with all of this, with you being overseas in the middle of a battle area?
00:39:30.000 It was hard.
00:39:31.000 And I think my wife has, is, I think the key component of my wife that made her, you know, we've been married for 20-something years.
00:39:40.000 I always tell her, it seems like forever.
00:39:42.000 But, you know, we've been married for a long time through multiple deployments overseas.
00:39:46.000 And I think for her, what makes her able to cope with this is that she's,
00:39:51.000 Emotionally independent from me.
00:39:53.000 She doesn't need my phone call every day to reassure her that everything's okay and that, you know, I'm coming back or whatever.
00:40:01.000 She's emotionally independent and of course she's independent and she could handle the broken water heater and the flat tire and the whatever other problems, the sick kids, she could handle all that stuff.
00:40:10.000 So she's independent in that way, but she's emotionally independent as well and didn't rely on me every day to give her the boost.
00:40:18.000 She's a confident, you know, squared away woman.
00:40:21.000 Sounds like you're obviously anti-feminist, as a former member of the military.
00:40:28.000 Obviously, that's what we all assume.
00:40:29.000 I have three daughters and one son.
00:40:30.000 I wrote a couple of kids' books called Way to Warrior Kid.
00:40:42.000 It's about kids.
00:40:43.000 Instead of accepting weakness, it's about kids trying to become stronger, which to me seems like a pretty fundamental thought.
00:40:49.000 But if you read a lot of kids' books, and you have kids, you probably see them, there's not a lot of kids' books that actually tell kids that, hey, what you want to do is you want to work hard, and you want to be stronger, and you want to be the best that you can be.
00:41:01.000 So I did that with my kids, and I wrote these kids' books for them.
00:41:04.000 But yeah, my daughters are absolute warrior kids, and now they're warrior adults.
00:41:08.000 So you bring a lot of lessons from the military to the civilian area.
00:41:11.000 Have you learned anything in sort of the business area that you think would be applicable to the military?
00:41:16.000 Well, what have you learned in civilian life that you think added to what you already knew from your service?
00:41:22.000 The biggest and most shocking thing that I learned about the civilian sector was that leadership is leadership.
00:41:27.000 And the same problems that a company with a thousand employees would have are literally the same problems that a SEAL platoon with 16 guys would have.
00:41:39.000 Learning that and beginning to understand, it didn't take me very long at all.
00:41:43.000 As soon as I looked, I was sitting down with the first CEO I ever worked with, and he started telling me the problems they were having, and I just, inside I was just chuckling, saying, you've got to be kidding me, I've seen this over and over again with the SEAL platoon, here's what the issue is, let's address it this way.
00:41:56.000 So that was the biggest lesson learned for me, is leadership is leadership is leadership.
00:41:59.000 So you're a pretty intense dude.
00:42:00.000 You're the only person I've ever had on this podcast who probably speaks as quickly as I do.
00:42:05.000 So have you always been like that, or is that something that's gotten you into trouble?
00:42:08.000 Was this something that you cultivated, or you were always this intensive person?
00:42:12.000 No, if you listen to my podcast, you'll find that I actually talk very slowly generally.
00:42:18.000 But it depends.
00:42:19.000 You know, sometimes you got to get your point across.
00:42:21.000 And, you know, I know your audience is probably pretty quick paced.
00:42:24.000 They don't want to hear my slow talk.
00:42:25.000 And again, you know, on my podcast, I'm usually dealing with very heavy subjects.
00:42:30.000 You know, I talk about war and I talk about atrocities.
00:42:34.000 And really, it's a podcast about human nature through the lens of leadership.
00:42:39.000 And so the subjects are heavy.
00:42:40.000 Sometimes that warrants a little bit more
00:42:44.000 A little bit more nuanced when I'm talking.
00:42:48.000 But yeah, I guess if I'm talking as fast as you, that's a scary thought.
00:42:52.000 So what do you think it is about human nature?
00:42:54.000 So let's talk about that a little bit.
00:42:56.000 What do you see human beings as?
00:42:57.000 What is our fundamental nature?
00:42:58.000 Because this is what all of politics is about.
00:43:00.000 Yeah.
00:43:01.000 Again, one of the most interesting things about human nature is that all human beings are completely different.
00:43:07.000 And yet all human beings are kind of the same.
00:43:10.000 And one thing that you find is that through war and through atrocities is you get to see human nature be revealed.
00:43:19.000 And what I do with the podcast, from my perspective, the better you understand human nature, the better you can lead people.
00:43:28.000 You got it.
00:43:49.000 The better you're going to be able to lead.
00:43:50.000 And one of the things, you know, I was just at West Point, as a matter of fact, and I was talking to the soldiers-to-be up there, and one of the things I was talking about was the fact that I said, listen, you take a platoon, an army, a Marine Corps infantry platoon, a SEAL platoon, inside that platoon, you've got a person in there that's a sadist.
00:44:12.000 They're in there.
00:44:14.000 You've got some people, you've got another person that is one of the most wholesome, good people you could ever imagine.
00:44:21.000 You've got both of them, and you've got every person in between.
00:44:24.000 And if you don't understand that as a leader, if you don't understand what these individuals that work for you are capable of, then that's going to be problematic when you're in a leadership position.
00:44:35.000 So understanding human nature, understanding that there's good and there's evil,
00:44:39.000 Inside of everyone, and everyone's capable of going in those directions.
00:44:43.000 You know, I covered the My Lai Massacre on my podcast, and when I was up at West Point, I was talking, and I got looks from the crowd, from some of the actual current leaders from the crowd.
00:44:52.000 It was kind of like, wait, wait, what do you mean?
00:44:54.000 We don't have a sadist.
00:44:55.000 We don't have a murderer in a platoon.
00:44:57.000 And I said, you know, think about the My Lai Massacre.
00:45:00.000 The My Lai Massacre was a company of normal people, and it's a horrific podcast to listen to.
00:45:06.000 Because normal kids from all over America that you wouldn't think in a million years would commit an atrocity, once they crossed over that line, they were committing horrible rape, mutilation, and murder.
00:45:20.000 And what was really interesting about this, and when I did that podcast and I tried to bring home something good about it,
00:45:27.000 What I brought home, and the point that I took away, was that what happened on that massacre, these guys were in a complete melee of murder, rape, mutilation.
00:45:36.000 It was awful.
00:45:38.000 And a helicopter pilot came in, saw what was happening, went back to base, and he told the commander, hey, these guys are out there committing an atrocity.
00:45:46.000 That commander got on the radio and said, stop killing people right now.
00:45:49.000 And you know what?
00:45:51.000 They all stopped.
00:45:52.000 They all stopped right there.
00:45:52.000 And that was proof, that to me is proof, of the power of leadership.
00:45:57.000 Because it was a bad leader that took them in a bad direction, and they went completely off the rails, and a good leader stepped in and was able to straighten them back out.
00:46:07.000 That's the kind of thing that if you don't understand that element of human nature as a leader,
00:46:12.000 Especially in chaotic and combat situations, but even in a business.
00:46:15.000 If you don't understand those things, it's going to be problematic for you.
00:46:18.000 Obviously, we've seen this from civilized armies all over the world.
00:46:21.000 Situations where things go wrong and suddenly people who are innately civilized, you thought, are suddenly acting uncivilized.
00:46:27.000 As a leader, can you spot that sort of stuff early or you can only stop it once it's begun?
00:46:31.000 I think the way you stop it early is you have to address it early.
00:46:35.000 You have to explain to everyone.
00:46:36.000 Everyone has to understand where you stand as a leader.
00:46:40.000 Where you stand as a leader and where you stand as a nation, right?
00:46:43.000 We can't do this kind of thing.
00:46:46.000 This will hurt our strategic goals.
00:46:48.000 This will impact us in a negative way on this particular battlefield.
00:46:51.000 And most important, I will not let it happen.
00:46:56.000 Again, I mean, in the Battle of Ramadi, it was a hard fight.
00:47:00.000 And you can see, I mean, I could see.
00:47:04.000 You've got, when one of my guys gets killed and his friends have to go on a mission a day later, two days later, three days later.
00:47:12.000 This is awful.
00:47:13.000 And if you don't understand what can take place, I'm not saying it would take place, but if you don't understand what can take place, then it might.
00:47:22.000 And so you have to be aware of it.
00:47:24.000 And that's why I think awareness and understanding of human nature is what will prevent these things from happening.
00:47:29.000 Because you don't know.
00:47:31.000 You don't know.
00:47:32.000 You know what?
00:47:33.000 Maybe you're a good judge of character.
00:47:34.000 Maybe I'm a good judge of character.
00:47:35.000 Maybe I get 80% right.
00:47:37.000 Maybe I could judge, hey, 80%, hey, this guy looks like he might do something bad, and this guy looks like he'll never would.
00:47:42.000 Maybe I'm 80% right.
00:47:44.000 The other 20% is the one that's going to be a problem.
00:47:47.000 The times that you're wrong, because we don't know.
00:47:49.000 You don't know what happens to people under stress.
00:47:50.000 You don't know what happens when people see their friends get wounded or killed.
00:47:54.000 You know, you were talking early about your imminent death, right?
00:47:59.000 It's like a joke, like, hey, we'll talk about a minute about your imminent death.
00:48:03.000 When you're in combat, all of a sudden that's a real thing.
00:48:06.000 And depending on your mindset, your death can be completely imminent in your mind.
00:48:11.000 And so what does that do to a person's psyche?
00:48:13.000 What does that allow them to do that they may never do in a normal circumstance?
00:48:18.000 As a leader you've got to understand those things.
00:48:36.000 Yeah, well, first of all, those situations occur in the military all the time as well.
00:48:39.000 The military does not completely weed out every bad leader, no.
00:48:43.000 There's a bell curve in the military just like any other organization.
00:48:47.000 There's some great guys at the top, there's some okay people in the middle, decent people in the middle, and squared away people in the middle, and there's some real bad leaders at the bottom end, and you don't know who you're going to get.
00:48:57.000 So, this is a question I get asked all the time.
00:48:59.000 What do you do when your leader is not good?
00:49:01.000 Well, it's a really easy answer for me.
00:49:03.000 When my leader isn't good, you know what I do?
00:49:04.000 I lead.
00:49:05.000 I'm going to step up and lead.
00:49:07.000 And it depends on the situation.
00:49:08.000 If I have a weak leader, I can literally step up and lead, because my leader doesn't want to make a decision.
00:49:13.000 Hey boss, we're going to do this.
00:49:14.000 Is that okay?
00:49:15.000 I'm not going to step on his toes, because we've got to be very careful that I'm not stepping on my leader's toes, because we might offend their ego, and that can be problematic.
00:49:20.000 But I'm going to step up and say, hey boss, we want to do this.
00:49:23.000 Does this make sense?
00:49:24.000 Yeah, okay, that makes sense.
00:49:25.000 Do it.
00:49:26.000 If I have a weak leader, I'm going to step up and lead.
00:49:27.000 If I have an egomaniacal leader that is a crazy micromanager, what I'm going to do
00:49:33.000 Again, same thing I'm going to do with every leader.
00:49:34.000 I'm going to form a great relationship with them.
00:49:36.000 I'm going to form a great relationship.
00:49:38.000 If you're micromanaging me, I'm going to say, hey, boss, I know you wanted these 12 things reported to you.
00:49:43.000 Well, I didn't think that was good enough.
00:49:45.000 Here's 16 things you wanted in the report.
00:49:47.000 So I want you to really understand and know what's going on, boss.
00:49:49.000 Here you go.
00:49:50.000 I'm going to give you more information than you could ever possibly even hope for.
00:49:54.000 And eventually you're going to say, hey, OK, Jocko, you know what?
00:49:57.000 Just go and do your thing.
00:49:58.000 We're good to go.
00:50:16.000 Just egomaniacal, tactically horrible leaders, and everyone in between.
00:50:23.000 And my relationship with all those leaders was the same.
00:50:26.000 With all those leaders, I had the same relationship.
00:50:28.000 They trusted me, they gave me what I needed to get the job done, and then they got out of my way and let me do it.
00:50:33.000 How did I go about building those relationships?
00:50:35.000 Well, again, you ask me to do something that's dumb, that doesn't make sense, and I know I would never do this, and I think you're a bad leader for making me do it.
00:50:42.000 Guess what I'm going to do?
00:50:43.000 I'm going to do it.
00:50:45.000 If it's something that's not going to put my men in jeopardy or the mission in jeopardy, I'm going to do it.
00:50:49.000 You want me to wear this certain thing a certain way, I'm going to do it.
00:50:51.000 You want me to do the mission a little bit different than the way I would have done it, but that's your guidance, I'm going to do it.
00:50:56.000 I'm going to make you trust me.
00:50:57.000 I'm going to build up trust with you.
00:50:58.000 So eventually, when you tell me to do something that makes no sense whatsoever, that's going to put my men in jeopardy or the mission in jeopardy, I can look at you and say, hey, you know what, Ben?
00:51:09.000 I see what you want to get done.
00:51:10.000 How about we do it this way?
00:51:11.000 I think it's going to make a little bit more sense.
00:51:12.000 It'll keep everyone safer.
00:51:14.000 Since you and I now have a relationship, we trust each other.
00:51:16.000 You trust me.
00:51:17.000 You go, oh, you know what, Jocko?
00:51:18.000 Good call.
00:51:19.000 Go ahead and do it that way.
00:51:20.000 So these situations, what am I going to do?
00:51:23.000 I'm going to build a relationship.
00:51:24.000 Okay, so what do you do as a, going back to parenting for a second, we're talking about leadership lessons that adults can learn.
00:51:30.000 How do you inculcate leadership in children?
00:51:32.000 Because you see some kids I see with my own kids.
00:51:35.000 One of them happens to be a real natural leader.
00:51:37.000 People tend to follow her.
00:51:39.000 And the other one is, he's two and a half, but he's a wild man.
00:51:41.000 How do you inculcate leadership in kids?
00:51:44.000 How do you teach those lessons from the time that they're young?
00:51:47.000 I don't know.
00:52:02.000 In business, you start them off with something that's not going to cost a bunch of money if they mess it up, or something that you can bring back on the rails if they go off the rails a little bit.
00:52:09.000 In combat, you give them a mission that's not that dangerous, or it's a training mission, and you let them run it.
00:52:13.000 As a kid, hey, you know, I mean, it's something as silly as a lemonade stand, right?
00:52:17.000 That's a real thing.
00:52:18.000 When you're a kid, that's a real thing.
00:52:20.000 When you're a kid, that's Apple, right?
00:52:22.000 That's Google when you're running that lemonade stand.
00:52:25.000 So let them step up, let them take leadership, let them take some hits.
00:52:28.000 Maybe they lose money when you charge them
00:52:31.000 We're good to go.
00:52:51.000 You don't let them die.
00:52:53.000 You don't let them fall flat on their face.
00:52:54.000 In a business, you don't let them cost their company a giant amount of money, but you do let them brush up against failure.
00:53:01.000 As a leader, when is it time to cut somebody loose?
00:53:04.000 First of all, the reason people feel bad, usually, when they fire someone is because they know that they didn't do a good job as a leader.
00:53:10.000 Mentoring, coaching.
00:53:12.000 Teaching, and then finally, explaining to the person, in no uncertain terms, here's what I expect from you, and here's what's going to happen if you don't do it.
00:53:23.000 You're going to get fired.
00:53:24.000 So, the way you know, is first of all, you've gone through those steps, and second of all, you realize that they can't meet the expectations, you've given them fair treatment, and now you say, listen, you aren't capable of this job.
00:53:37.000 And right now, it's negatively impacting the whole team.
00:53:42.000 And I want to take care of you, but it's more important that I take care of the whole team.
00:53:46.000 So I'm going to write you a great resume.
00:53:48.000 I'm going to call anyone back that anyone that wants reference, use me as a reference.
00:53:52.000 I'll take care of you, but this job just isn't for you.
00:53:55.000 So I do want to ask you one final question.
00:53:57.000 I want you to evaluate President Trump's leadership, but if you want to hear Jocko Willink's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
00:54:03.000 To subscribe, go to dailywire.com, click subscribe, and you can hear the end of our conversation there.
00:54:08.000 Well, Jocko Willing, thanks so much for stopping by.
00:54:09.000 Check out the Jocko podcast and go get his new book, The Dichotomy of Leadership.
00:54:13.000 It's a pleasure to have you here.
00:54:14.000 I really appreciate the time.
00:54:15.000 Thanks for having me on.
00:54:15.000 Appreciate it.
00:54:22.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is produced by Jonathan Hay, Executive Producer Jeremy Boring, Associate Producers Mathis Glover and Austin Stevens, edited by Alex Zingaro, audio is mixed by Mike Caromina, hair and makeup is by Jeswa Alvera, and title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.
00:54:36.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
00:54:40.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.