Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win

Product Information

Principle: cover and move. The most fundamental tactic. It means teamwork. All elements within the greater team are crucial and must work together to accomplish the mission, supporting each other. The team must understand who depends on them.

Bonus: Positioning: When I ran the training for the West Coast SEAL Teams, one of the lessons I regularly taught was that the most important piece of information you could have on the battlefield is the knowledge of where you are. Without that, nothing else matters. The next most important piece of information is where other friendly forces are located. Only then does it matter where the enemy is; without knowing where one’s own unit is and without knowing where other friendly units are, it is nearly impossible to engage the enemy.Instead of a junior leader asking if they can do something, they should just be telling you what they are going to do. He also co-authored the book ‘Extreme Ownership’, which is essentially a manual that teaches people how become incredible and strong leaders.

A very senior and highly respected SEAL officer, who before joining the Navy had been a U.S. Marine Corps platoon commander in Vietnam at the historic Battle of Hue City, came to visit our task unit shortly after the incident. He told me that many of the Marine casualties in Hue were friendly fire, part of the brutal reality of urban combat. He understood what we had experienced and just how easily it could happen. You must brief so that the lowest common denominator can understand. Make sure that people can ask questions when they don’t understand what the key parts of the mission are.I didn’t have a problem with rejection, because when you go into an audition, you’re rejected already. There are hundreds of other actors. You’re behind the eight ball when you go in there.” – Robert De Niro Finally, I took a deep breath and said, ‘There is only one person to blame for this: me. I am the commander. I am responsible for the entire operation. As the senior man, I am responsible for every action that takes place on the battlefield. There is no one to blame but me. And I will tell you this right now: I will make sure that nothing like this ever happens to us again.’” Leadership Principle I don’t get into these long-winded heavy discussions about character – do we do this or that or what. At the end of the day, what you gotta do is just go out there and do it.” – Robert De Niro With Extreme Ownership, junior leaders take charge of their smaller teams and their piece of the mission. Efficiency and effectiveness increase exponentially and a high-performance, winning team is the result. Business Application The Ultimate Dichotomy — a leader must care about the troops, but at the same time the leader must complete the mission, and in doing so there will be risks and sometimes unavoidable consequences to the troops. Failing to balance those two opposing goals would result in his failure to do either.

I don’t feel pressure. I like if anybody has interest in what I have to say, especially if they’re younger. If they like me, respect me, I’m honoured and I’ll give them my opinion.” – Robert De NiroRemember the story of the Iraqi hostage that needed to be rescued. The SEAL team was given intel right after they had departed for the mission that there was known IEDs and bunkered machine guns. They went anyway. They had already planned for this possibility. Remember the story where the platoon was trapped in a building with an IED outside the only door. They breached a separate wall and went out onto a neighboring roof. Once on the roof, someone fell to the ground, and they had the IED ready to detonate. They had to prioritize and execute to make it out safely.