Jocko Willink - Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual

When I reported to SEAL Team One after completing Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL Training (BUD/S), there was no leadership course. New SEALs were issued no books or materials of any kind on the subject. We were expected to learn to lead the way SEALs had learned for our entire existencethrough OJT, or on-the-job training.

Of course, there are some advantages to OJT. It is helpful to be coached and mentored by a solid leader who trains you as you go through the real challenges of your actual job. In the SEAL Teams, that means a leader telling you exactly what to do in various scenarios as you go through them. If your leader happens to be a good leader, is willing to invest in you, and if you are smart enough to pay attention, you will eventually learn something about leadership.

But there are some major shortfalls to this method of teaching leadership. First of all, not all leaders are good leaders, and the SEAL Teams are no exception. When I got into the SEAL Teams, it was 1991. There was no war going on. The first Gulf War had just been fought, but the ground war was over in just seventy-two hours. SEALs only conducted a small number of operations, and they were relatively easy. Almost all other deployments before that, for the better part of twenty years, had been peacetime deployments. SEALs primary task had been training other countries militaries. Actually engaging in combat seemed a far-off dream to me and to most of us in the military. The reality was, the SEAL Teamsand the rest of the U.S. militaryhad been in a peacetime mode since the end of the Vietnam War. That meant leaders werent really tested. A great leader in the SEAL Teams got pretty much the same assignments and advanced just as quickly as a bad leader.

There was no guarantee that the leader in a platoon who was supposed to be mentoring young SEALs was the type of leader who should be emulated. On top of that, not all leaders are looking to mentor their subordinates. Furthermore, even the best leaders can only truly invest their time and knowledge in a handful of their people. Even during peacetime, there is a ton of administrative work to be done, and there is a good chance that leadership coaching and mentorship will slide off the schedule.

For the junior SEALs, it was incumbent upon them to pay attention. But there were also plenty of distractions. Sometimes it was difficult for a junior member of the team to understand he would not always be a new guythat one day he would be a leader in a SEAL platoon, and he needed to learn everything he could so he would be ready.

I was lucky. I had some truly great leaders who invested in me. They took the time to explain things to me. They talked me through strategies and tactics. Some of the Vietnam SEALs told stories that held important tactical leadership lessons. I listened. Those stories and lessons sank in. Eventually, I was able to put the leadership theories I had learned to the ultimate testin combat. I then codified those lessons and passed them to the young SEALs entering the ranks. I tried to teach them how to lead.

The goal of leadership seems simple: to get people to do what they need to do to support the mission and the team. But the practice of leadership is different for everyone. There are nuances to leadership that everyone has to uncover for themselves. Leaders are different. Followers are different. Peers are different. Everyone has their own individual characteristics, personalities, and perspectives. I often tell leaders that what makes leadership so hard is dealing with people, and people are crazy. And the craziest person a leader has to deal with is themselves. That being said, even crazy has a pattern; there are patterns to human behavior. If you can recognize the patterns, you can predict the way things are likely to unfold and influence them.

When I retired from the military, I started teaching civilian leaders the same principles of combat leadership. Eventually, I partnered with my former SEAL teammate Leif Babin and started a leadership consultancy called Echelon Front. The principles from the battlefield applied to any leadership situation. We wrote about the tenets we had learned in combat in two books about our experience as combat leaders and how the principles of combat leadership apply to business and life. The books, Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership, explain the principles in clear language and showcase the principles in stories from combat and the business world. The feedback from leaders around the world has been incredibly powerful as they apply the principles from the books to their worlds.

But applying the principles can be more challenging than it might seem. While garnering an understanding of the concepts is fairly simple, sometimes it takes more. A leader must understand the strategies and tactics needed to actually implement these principleshow to pragmatically put the principles to work. He or she must understand the strategic foundations on which the principles are built and the core tenets that comprise those principles. Then the leader must understand the tactical skills, strategic maneuvers, and communication techniques used to employ the principles of leadership. That is what this book is about.

Like other books Ive written, the experiences I describe are based on my memory, which isnt perfect; the quotes are not verbatim, but approximations meant to convey the ideas that were spoken. Some details have been altered to protect the identities of the people involved or sensitive information.

This book does not need to be read only sequentially from cover to cover. It is written and organized to be used as a reference so that any leader can quickly understand and implement the strategies and tactics relevant to the situation he or she is facing. Leadership Strategy and Tactics is meant as a field companion to help leaders do what they are supposed to do: lead.

Who am I to try to teach leaders how to lead? Where did I learn leadership? Much of my leadership education was luck. I say it was luck because there were a few fortunate coincidences that gave me the right frame of mind, the right teachers, and the right opportunities to learn.

One of the ways I was lucky and that made me focus on leadership was the fact that I wasnt really that naturally talented at anything in particular. As a little kid, I wasnt the fastest or strongest or smartest. I was never great at shooting a basketball, kicking a soccer ball, or throwing a baseball. I didnt win any races or have a shelf of trophies and ribbons from sports. My report card was never exceptional either. I might have done well in a class if I was interested, but I usually wasnt, and my grades reflected that. I was average across the board.