Excerpts from the book of the same name by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin , US Navy SEAL
On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failures rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win. The best leaders take extreme ownership of everything that impacts the mission. This fundamental core concept enables SEAL leaders to lead high-performing teams in extraordinary circumstances and win. Application of extreme ownership is fully relevant in business team in any industry.
When subordinates aren't doing what they should, leaders that exercise Extreme Ownership cannot blame them. The leader bears full responsibility for explaining the strategic mission, developing the tactics, and securing the training and resources to enable the team to properly and successfully execute. If an individual on the team is not performing at the level required for the team to succeed, the leader must train and mentor that underperformer. But if the underperformer continually fails to meet the standards, then the leader must be loyal to the team and the mission above any individual. The leader must make tough call to terminate the underperformer and hire others who can get the job done.
Total responsibility for failure is a difficult thing to accept, and taking ownership when things go wrong requires extraordinary humility and courage. But doing just that is an absolute necessity to learning, growing as a leader, and improving a team's performance.
Extreme Ownership requires leaders to look at an organization's problems through the objective lens of reality, without emotional attachments to agendas and plans. It mandates that a leader set ego aside, accept responsibility for failures, attack weakness and consistently work to build a better and more effective team. Such a leader, however, does not take credit for his or her team's success but bestows that honor upon his subordinate leaders and team members. When a leader sets such an example and expects this from junior leaders within the team, the mindset develops into the team's culture at every level. As a group they try to figure out how to fix their problem - instead of trying to figure out who or what to blame. As a leader in our mind we think we are doing everything right. So when things go wrong, instead of looking at ourselves, we blame others. But no one of infallible. With extreme ownership, one should remove individual ego and personal agenda. It's all about the mission. How can you best get your team to most effectively execute the plan in order to accomplish the mission? “That is the question you have to ask yourself. That is what Extreme Ownership is all about.”
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