The 12 Principles

Winning the War Within: Principles to develop the building blocks and mind-set necessary to be a great leader and win.

1. Extreme Ownership
2. No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders
3. Believe
4. Check the Ego

Laws of Combat: Critical principles a leader must instill in their team for it to perform at the highest level and dominate.

1. Cover and Move
2. Simple
3. Prioritize and Execute
4. Decentralized Command

Sustaining Victory: Principles addressing some of the important nuances of maintaining an effective team.

1. Plan
2. Leading Up and Down the Chain of Command
3. Decisiveness amid Uncertainty
4. Discipline Equals Freedom – The Dichotomy of Leadership

Winning the War Within

Principles to develop the building blocks and mind-set necessary to be a great leader and win.

Extreme Ownership

• The leader must own everything and there is no one else to blame.
• “All responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader”
• Extreme ownership requires extraordinary humility and courage
• Acknowledge mistakes and failures, and take ownership of them
• Stay objective and in reality. Don’t have emotional attachments to agendas or plans
• Leaders must set aside their ego
• Leaders must consistently work to build a better and more effective team
• Leaders should not take credit for the team’s success. Instead they should give credit to their subordinates/team

No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders

• The only reason a team is “bad” is because there is a bad leader.
• “It’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate”
  • Do not tolerate substandard performance
  • Leaders must enforce standards
• Leaders must unite the team by pulling different elements to support each other
  • Get the different members working together to accomplish the mission
• “Leaders should never be satisfied” – always striving to improve by identifying weaknesses and determining how to strengthen them
  • They must build this mind-set into the team

Believe

• A leader must be a true believer in the cause by understanding that they are part of something greater than themselves and putting aside their personal interests
• If a leader shows any doubt in the mission, the team’s confidence in the mission will break
• Leaders must analyze the strategic picture and determine “why?”. If they cannot, they must ask questions up the chain of command
• Leaders must take time to ensure the team and subordinates understand the “why”
• This also aids in Decentralized Command
• A leader and the team must understand the “why” of the mission and a leader must show unshakable confidence in it

Check the Ego

• Ego clouds judgment and prevents a leader from conducting honest, realistic assessment of his or her own performance and the performance of the team.
• Don’t let personal agendas become more important than the team and the overarching mission’s success
• Admit mistakes, take ownership, and develop a plan to overcome challenges
• Be confident in your skills and eager to take on tasks that others cannot, but do not ever think you are too good to fail or that your enemies are not capable of defeating you
• Ego can prevent a leader from conducting honest performance analysis of himself and the team and make you cocky
• Never think you are too good to fail

Laws of Combat

Critical principles a leader must instill in their team for it to perform at the highest level and dominate.

Cover and Move

• Teamwork – everyone must work together and support each other to accomplish the mission
• A leader must continually keep focused on the strategic mission (big picture) and remind the team that they are part of a greater team/strategy
• Remind the team that if one persona fails, then they all could fail
• Remind the team that if they all succeed, then all individuals succeed
• A leader must clearly identify how one team can support another

Simple

• Plans and orders must be simplified as much as possible to ensure it is understood by the team.
• If your team doens’t get it, you have not kept things simple and you have failed
• Keep it simple, clear, and concise
• Leaders must encourage subordinates and team members to communicate when things are not understood. Make it easy for them to ask questions and get them answered.
• Leaders must take the time to explain and make sure everyone understands
• When things go wrong (and they will) you don’t want the additional complexity of unclear goals/tasks

Prioritize and Execute

• When overwhelmed, remain calm and make the best decision possible
  • “Relax, look around, make a call”
• Stay focused on the top priority
  • Identify a top priority → Direct all efforts to resolving it → Repeat
  • Keep things simple
  • If priorities change then leaders must communicate them to the team
• Careful contingency planning can help you stay ahead of problems and will help prevent you from becoming overwhelmed
  • If the team understands the planning too, they can adapt when problems arise (decentralized command)
• It’s crucial for leaders to step back and maintain the strategic big picture in order to determine the highest priorities
  • Priorities can rapidly change
  • Prevent target fixation by passing awareness up and down the chain – When a leader gets focused on one goal instead of maintaining sight of the strategic big picture
  • Teams must maintain the ability to quickly reprioritize efforts

Decentralized Command

• Teams must be given enough support and understand the commanders intent enough to independently take action that’s in alignment with the mission.
  • They must understand the “why”
• Teams must be broken down into manageable sizes and have a clearly designated leader
• Every team leader and member needs to understand not just what to do but why
• Leaders must push “situational awareness” to their subordinate leaders and team members so people have the information they need
• Junior leaders must understand what is within their decision making authority and communicate information up the chain when it’s not
• Leaders must be able to be proactive in their decisions rather than reactive
• Leaders must know that superiors will support them so that they can execute with confidence
• Leaders should position themselves in the middle
  • Not too far back so they don’t know what’s going on
  • Not too up front so they can no longer provide effective command and control
• Leaders must be free to move to where they are needed most (they are not stuck to one position)

Sustaining Victory

Principles addressing some of the important nuances of maintaining an effective team.

Plan

• A leader must use all assets on the team to help create a plan for the mission and ensure that the entire team understands it
• The mission plan
  • Must describe the desired result
  • Must describe the purpose (the why)
  • Must be simple, clear, and concise
  • The plan must mitigate as much risk as possible (contingency planning)
• Creating the plan
  • Different courses of action must be explored
  • The plan should be continuously reevaluated and simplified
  • Contingency plans must be thought of
  • Leaders should delegate the planning process so they can retain their understanding of the overview and big picture
• A leader must ensure everyone understands the plan
  • They must encourage people to ask questions and clarify
• Post Operational Debrief
  • After every mission one must make the time to analyze their tactics so they can adapt their methods and implement lessons learned

Leading Down the Chain

• A leader must make the time to ensure subordinates understand their role in the overall mission
• Leaders must push “situational awareness” to their team so they know what’s going on
• Subordinates can get lost in their own planning and lose sight of the bigger picture
• This supports subordinates feel empowered to make decisions (Decentralized Command)
• As a leader is your team isn’t doing what you need them to, you first have to look at yourself rather than blaming them

Leading Up the Chain

• Taking the responsibility to ensure your superiors have the situational awareness they need by using any means necessary (even manipulation).
• The Major Factors
  • Take responsibility for leading everyone in your world, subordinates and superiors alike
  • If someone isn’t doing what you need/want, look in the mirror first and determine what you can better do to enable this
  • Don’t ask your leader what you should do, tell them what you’re going to do
• A leader must support their boss
  • You must use influence, experience, knowledge, communication, and professionalism to push situational awareness up the chain of command
  • After understanding, even if you disagree you must execute missions as if they are your own – public displays of discontent/disagreement are detrimental (Believe)

Decisiveness Amid Uncertainty

• A leader will almost never have the complete picture but they must still make the best decision and take action
• Leaders must be comfortable making an educated guess
• Leaders must not be paralyzed by fear
• Swift decision making is critical
• Leaders must be ready to adapt and change tactics when new information is gathered

Discipline Equals Freedom: The Dichotomy of Leadership

• Like discipline and freedom, a leader must find a balance between many contradictory qualities, between one extreme and the other
• The Dichotomy of Leadership
  • “Confident but not cocky
  • Courageous but not foolhardy
  • Competitive but a gracious loser
  • Attentive to details but not obsessed by them
  • Strong but have endurance
  • A leader and follower
  • Humble not passive
  • Aggressive not overbearing
  • Quiet not silent
  • Calm but not robotic – logical but not devoid of emotion
  • Close with troops but not so close that they forget who is in charge
  • Able to execute Extreme Ownership, while exercising Decentralized Command”