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Oct. 14, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

54:40

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

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	The only thing I can't control is me.
	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 going to find you have a lot more control than you think you do.
	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.
	I'm sure we'll get to everything involving leadership and the military and all that kind of good stuff.
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	But Jaco, thanks so much for stopping by.
	I really appreciate it.
	Thanks for having me on.
	So for folks who don't know what you do, you are a leadership guru.
	You're a leadership guru in the area of business and in the area of just general leadership.
	And all that started with your military background.
	So can you kind of get me the story from how you went from a kid to a guy who's speaking for large sums of money before leadership groups?
	Well, first of all, guru is a strong word.
	So let's put that one in check right out of the gate today.
	Yeah, I was raised in a small New England town, grew up on a dirt road.
	Both my parents were schoolteachers, and I was a pretty rebellious young kid.
	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.
	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.
	And I figured out what the SEAL teams were when I was a young kid.
	And I, like I said, I always wanted to be some kind of commando.
	And so when I got out of high school, I enlisted in the Navy.
	I ended up at SEAL Team 1, went through the SEAL Team training, and then ended up at SEAL Team 1.
	And that was before the first Gulf War.
	I actually missed the first Gulf War because I was going through the SEAL training and got to a SEAL team.
	And once I was there, I did what SEALs do, which is train all the time.
	Eventually got picked up for a leadership program, became a SEAL officer, and then did deployments until September 11th, 1st.
	Once September 11th came, then I started doing the wartime deployments.
	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.
	And when I got done with that deployment, that was a very arduous deployment.
	We were in the Battle of Ramadi in 2006.
	It was very hard fighting.
	The Marines and soldiers that we worked alongside took heavy losses, but did an incredible job.
	We took casualties in our task unit.
	It was very hard fighting.
	And when I came home from that deployment, I got asked basically, OK, Jocko, what do you want to do now?
	And I ended up taking over the training for the West Coast SEAL teams.
	And this is in the training where You see people on TV going through SEAL training where you carry the boats around or you do a bunch of push-ups.
	This isn't that training.
	That's our basic training.
	The training that I ran was the training where you learn to shoot, move, and communicate as a SEAL platoon.
	And where we actually taught combat leadership.
	And so I took over that training.
	I ran that for the last few years.
	And when I was getting ready to retire, A guy that I knew was a friend of mine.
	He was the CEO of a company.
	And he said, hey, can you come and talk to my executives, you know, about combat leadership?
	And I said, you know, sure, I'll do it.
	He's a friend of mine.
	So I went and did it.
	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.
	And I said, Well, I'm retiring, and I don't know, and he said, I'll give you money.
	And I said, how much?
	And we worked it out.
	And I ended up talking to every division that he had in his company.
	And at one of those divisional meetings, The CEO of the parent company was there.
	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.
	And he owned 45 or 50 companies.
	And from there, I went and talked to those CEOs.
	And the next thing you know, I had a new job.
	And I didn't get to retire like I had planned.
	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.
	And he was getting out of the Navy, and I talked to him and said, hey man, I need some backup over here.
	And so we joined forces, and we formed this company, Echelon Front, and that's what we do, leadership consulting.
	And along the way, as we would talk to these companies, We'd get done talking and they'd say, oh, do you have this stuff written down anywhere?
	Do you have any, you know, pamphlets you can give us?
	So the guys that missed the meeting can see what you talked about.
	And so eventually we looked at each other and said, okay, we need to write this stuff down in a more formal way.
	We did that.
	That became a manuscript.
	That manuscript became a book.
	And that book was the first book we released.
	It was called Extreme Ownership.
	And it ended up 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.
	So how much of your leadership do you think is just natural to you?
	Because you're talking about a, what I'm hearing is obviously a guy who has tremendous initiative from a very young age.
	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.
	Do you think that it really is that leadership is born or is it bred?
	Yeah, I get asked this question all the time.
	And so, it's both.
	It's absolutely both.
	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.
	You don't get tens across the board.
	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.
	And you get those, too, as a leader.
	And you don't get all tense.
	So, some leadership characteristics that make you a good leader, for instance, obviously it's good to be articulate.
	If you can express your message clearly to people, that's going to help you from a leadership perspective.
	If you have some natural charisma, that's going to help you from a leadership perspective.
	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.
	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.
	And so, As a leader, if you look at the ones that you're weak at, you can improve them.
	That's what's beneficial.
	So you can't take someone that's just a horrible leader and make them into an amazing leader, but you can take someone that's a decent leader and you can make them into a very good or even an exceptional leader because you can definitely get more articulate.
	You can definitely get more comfortable speaking to people.
	You can definitely get more precise at taking very complex problems and simplifying them so that your team can understand what it is that needs to get done.
	So these are all things that you can improve upon.
	And I always have to close this out by saying that there are some people that cannot become better leaders.
	And the people that cannot become better leaders are the people that can't put their ego in check.
	They lack humility.
	And those people, they think they're doing everything great.
	So they're not going to improve as leaders.
	You can't coach them, you can't convince them.
	They think they're perfect and they're going to stay where they are from a leadership perspective.
	So what did you actually learn from the first time you went through SEAL training?
	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.
	What is that like?
	The myth about SEAL training, that part of SEAL training, is that you learn anything at all.
	Because you actually don't.
	Okay, you learn some things, but it's a screening process.
	What they're trying to do is get rid of people that don't want to really, really, really do that job.
	So, it's suffering.
	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.
	And there's an 80% attrition rate.
	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.
	That's when you learn the tactics and the leadership perspective.
	That's when you start to become an actual SEAL.
	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.
	You get to a SEAL team, I literally checked in with the Master Chief and he said, everyone here has been through that training, no one cares.
	So it's very humbling when you show up.
	And that's when you start to learn.
	You start to learn when you get in a SEAL platoon.
	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?
	Do you think that sort of naturally falls out?
	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?
	When you're a new guy, you're going to be the junior guy.
	And then the next platoon, you're going to be a little bit more senior, you'll have a couple guys working for you.
	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.
	And those are pre-designated.
	Those are pre-designated, which was very counter to my initial thought when I joined the Navy.
	My dad told me I was going to hate it because I said, why do you think I'm going to hate it?
	He goes, because you don't like to listen to anybody and you don't like authority.
	And of course I told him, no dad, it's a team.
	We don't have to, we don't have to listen to anybody.
	It's a team.
	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, 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.
	There's been a lot of talk about the possibility of mandatory national service.
	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, 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.
	And I think the volunteer military that we have right now is It might be the best in the history of the world.
	We have a great military.
	And I think to mandate it, I think it's problematic.
	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.
	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?
	How much of it is seat of your pants kind of stuff?
	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.
	And we would basically, the leaders would learn OJT, on-the-job training.
	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.
	And if you had a great leader, that worked okay.
	If you had a bad leader, that was a real problem.
	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.
	Leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield.
	And if you don't know what you're doing, you're going to get people killed without question.
	Can you give me a couple of stories to sort of demonstrate that point?
	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?
	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.
	I'm talking about every level of leadership.
	Every person taking ownership of their piece of the mission and executing Executing with authority and executing with real passion about what they're doing.
	And so you've got to have leadership at every level.
	And when you don't have that, it's very problematic.
	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.
	Very realistic.
	And I would get to see a platoon go through this training.
	And then the next night, it'd be another platoon going through the same scenarios.
	And then the next night, it'd be another platoon going through the same scenarios.
	So I got, it was basically the most incredible leadership laboratory.
	It might be the most incredible leadership laboratory that's ever existed.
	It was that awesome to be able to put these platoons through this iterative training.
	And that was where it became very clear that leadership, if you had a good leader in a SEAL platoon, that SEAL platoon would do a good job.
	And by the way, that leader didn't need to be the senior guy.
	It could have been a guy that was two or three rungs down, but when things started happening, he would step up and take command and make things happen.
	And as long as the other leaders, maybe that were senior to them, had the wherewithal to say, you know what, this guy seems to have a grip on the situation.
	I'm going to let him run with it.
	Then it'd be okay.
	Occasionally, you'd get an egotistical leader that would feel like, oh, you're stepping on my toes, and they'd try and put him down, and that would be problematic.
	Right?
	But you'd see a good solid leader anywhere in that SEAL platoon would make those SEAL platoons perform great.
	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.
	This was very evident and that's another thing that just solidified the principles that we 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.
	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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	Okay, so now, Jaco, let's get down to some of the main lessons of leadership.
	So what's the number one thing you look for in a leader?
	Well, the first book was called Extreme Ownership.
	And what that means is you're not going to make any excuses.
	You're not going to blame anyone else.
	You're going to take ownership of whatever happens.
	And when something goes wrong, instead of pointing fingers and blaming someone else, you're going to take ownership of that problem.
	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.
	So that is the number one thing that I'm looking for for a leader to do, is to take ownership of the problems.
	And again, we call that extreme ownership.
	And it was one of those things that was very easy to see in a SEAL platoon, because 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?
	You get defensive, get upset, I mean, it's not my fault this broadcast isn't what I wanted it to be.
	Exactly, exactly.
	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.
	The opposite of that is when you have a good leader that steps up and says, hey, Ben, you know what?
	This broadcast didn't go the way I wanted it to.
	I should have done a better job preparing for your questions.
	I'm sorry.
	I apologize.
	And now, instead of you getting defensive, you say, you know what?
	No, actually, I could have done a better job.
	And now, both of us are taking ownership of the problems, and we're going to get them solved.
	So, that's kind of the number one characteristic, is someone has the humility.
	Because it hurts.
	It stings.
	When something goes wrong, and you're a leader, and you say, oh, you know what?
	All this was a bad situation.
	It's my fault.
	I'll take ownership of it.
	That hurts.
	That stings the ego.
	So, you have to be humble in order to do that.
	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.
	Yeah, no doubt about it.
	And we definitely, as soon as the first book came out, we got all kinds of feedback from people in every type of scenario.
	That when they started taking ownership of their relationship with their wives, with their spouses, that it gets better.
	And obviously, this translates to personal responsibility.
	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.
	And all you're doing is blaming everyone else?
	You don't take ownership of those problems, and that's going to be problematic.
	The best thing to say is, OK, look, whatever happened, happened.
	I'm going to take control of what I can.
	I'm going to go forth and conquer.
	So with regard to the future of the country, I mean, obviously, my mind jumps politically.
	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.
	It seems like you're arguing exactly the opposite.
	If you actually want to have a happy life, And maybe you first ought to start taking responsibility for the decisions that are within your purview.
	If you were, if you were speaking to people politically, what would you be telling people along these lines?
	Yeah, that's 100% right.
	I mean, if you, if you're blaming everyone else, I can't control you.
	I can't control these other things outside.
	I can't, I can't control.
	The only thing I can 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.
	And if you go down that path, you're going to find you have a lot more control than you think you do.
	So how do you deal with situations in which it really is the person's fault, right?
	So you're taking responsibility for everything, but at the same time, you just have somebody who's Screwed up in a serious way.
	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.
	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.
	He said, this is garbage.
	And then he just walked away.
	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.
	Well, what do you think of that sort of leadership style?
	Are there times where you just have to chew somebody out?
	And is that ever useful?
	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?
	I mean, presumably, it's your fault for hiring me.
	Well, number one, why did I hire you if you can't do the job?
	But even, let's say I did hire you.
	Did I give you the right guidance?
	Did I give you the right support?
	Did I actually check back in with you and make sure that you had the resources that you needed to get the thing done?
	Did I make sure that you were trained properly?
	I mean, there's all these things that I look back at myself and say, if my subordinates, now, If my subordinates aren't doing what I need them to do, that is my fault.
	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?
	Does that happen sometimes?
	Yes, it absolutely does.
	You know, we talked about that in the new book.
	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, They didn't cut it.
	And, you know, look, we did everything we could to mentor, to train them, to get them up to speed.
	But ultimately, you get to a point as a leader where you recognize this person is just not capable of doing the job.
	And I'm putting all my resources into this one individual.
	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.
	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.
	It's kind of a bizarre question, but my mind is going toward family situations.
	What do you do with kids?
	You have several kids.
	I have four.
	Okay, so you have four kids.
	To be exact.
	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.
	The kid's stuck with, you know, you got to do what you got to do.
	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?
	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 The results aren't in yet, right?
	And I don't know where they're going to end up.
	I hear that, yeah.
	And also it's like, you know, is your kid successful?
	What does that actually mean?
	Because my kid could go and make a ton of money but have a horrible family life and be miserable.
	Be a jerk, yeah.
	Right, and be a jerk, right?
	Is that success?
	No.
	Or they could be very happy but have no money and be living day to day.
	So that's not successful either.
	But my kids are a little bit older now and I can see this trajectory that they are on.
	Quite frankly, I'm pretty happy with the way my kids have turned out.
	It's a hard thing to look at because you can't fully control it.
	And so what are you going to do with your kids?
	You know, I like to, you've got to give them guidance, right?
	But you also have to let them brush up against the guardrails of failure, you know?
	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.
	And what do I mean by that?
	Something as simple as tying your shoe, right?
	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.
	That's really happening at that moment.
	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?
	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.
	So, what you have to do is you have to let them brush up against the guardrails of failure from time to time.
	Now, where it becomes challenging as a parent, and thank God I haven't faced anything like this, sometimes your kids will take turns That will ruin their life, right?
	That will ruin their life.
	And, you know, obviously, I'm not going to let one of my kids ruin their lives.
	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.
	And so I've seen that happen with parents where kids go down the wrong direction.
	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.
	And you want nothing more than to help them.
	But every time you give them the support that you think is going to help them, you're actually just enabling them.
	And so, again...
	I'm no expert.
	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.
	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.
	They're going to be who they are.
	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.
	Okay, so we talked about taking extreme responsibility.
	What are some of the other attributes of leaders that you look for?
	Well, humility is obviously the big one.
	You've got to be humble.
	If you're not humble, then that's going to be problematic.
	Now, what's interesting, a new book that just came out is Dichotomy of Leadership, and what does that mean?
	That means that as a leader, you have to be balanced, right?
	You have to be balanced.
	So, let's just take humility and ego, because we're looking for people that are humble.
	But at the same time, you can have someone that's so humble that they lack confidence.
	That's bad.
	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.
	Where do you want to be?
	You want to be balanced, somewhere in the middle.
	I talked about the fact that you need to be articulate as a leader.
	That's great.
	Can you be a leader that talks so much that people stop listening to you?
	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.
	So, where do you want to be?
	You want to be somewhere in the middle.
	You want to be balanced.
	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.
	It's talking about these points.
	But we didn't go deep enough.
	It was only one chapter.
	And as we continue to work with leaders, hundreds of leaders, You realize the problem that they suffer the most is they go too far in one direction or the other.
	So really, the best characteristic to have as a leader is to be balanced.
	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?
	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.
	Are you better off just perfecting the skills that you already have, or are you better off working on the skills that you lack?
	You know, it's interesting you talk about this, the fact of just being loud, right?
	You said a quiet person.
	Being loud is a characteristic of a good leader.
	It absolutely is, and especially of being a combat leader.
	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.
	You're loud enough to yell and let everyone know that.
	I had a guy coming through my training, really smart guy, Ivy League guy, very cerebral.
	He was as quiet as a mouse.
	And I said to him, I said, listen, you're going to need to get loud.
	Like, your guys cannot hear you.
	You're going to need to learn to project your voice.
	He was, for all practical purposes, as far as I could tell, physically incapable of projecting his voice.
	And so as I was watching him go through these iterations, I kept saying to him, you've got to be louder.
	You've got to be louder.
	Your guys can't hear you.
	And I didn't think he was going to make it.
	And then one iteration that they're going through, I seem he needs to get guys over to this door over here.
	And he grabs Billy, who is the biggest loudmouth in the platoon, and he goes, Billy, get everyone to that door over there.
	And Billy goes, Bill, everyone get to that door!
	And everyone moved.
	And I realized that he was smarter than me.
	What he figured out was he could complement an area of weakness that he had with his team.
	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.
	You can become more persuasive if you continue to try and talk to people.
	But maybe something like being loud.
	This guy just couldn't do it.
	But...
	He was able to take his team and pull the strengths in his team together to become a better leader himself.
	And that's always something that a good leader will do.
	You hear it all the time.
	Surround yourself with good people.
	I would add to that, surround yourself with good people that complement the areas that you're weak.
	So how do you get a leader who's, let's say, an 80% leader to a 95% leader?
	Is this somebody who is just lacking motivation or is it somebody who requires a skill set?
	Like, you have a guy and you think he's good raw material.
	Are there actual exercises in which you can engage to become a better leader?
	Oh yeah, absolutely.
	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.
	In the business world, we do role-playing with people.
	And I'll put you in a situation as a leader where I say, okay, I'm your worst nightmare employee.
	Or not even your worst nightmare.
	Hey, I'm that...
	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.
	Let's go.
	Let's figure this out.
	And what you see is two, three, four iterations of having these hard conversations, people get better at them.
	That's one aspect of leadership that you can definitely get better at.
	We run through planning drills so people learn to simplify.
	We run through communication drills so people learn to simplify their message.
	There's all kinds of ways to go from that 80% leader to the 9,500% leader.
	When it comes to, you know, you've been in situations, obviously in warfare situations, how much of the textbook stuff is applicable?
	I mean, is it just you have to live through it and then a certain natural leadership capacity takes over?
	Or is it that you can game out all this stuff?
	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?
	Here's the answer to that.
	Combat, and this is very counterintuitive to what people might think, combat is an absolute exercise in creativity.
	And when you're in these situations you have to have an open mind.
	You have to know the principles.
	You have to understand combat.
	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.
	It's a very creative-focused job, and people miss that a lot.
	And that's why the training that I ran, we really focused on forcing the leaders to get creative to solve problems.
	So let's talk a little about some of the leadership examples that we all have in common.
	So we have, you know, the movies provide us tons of examples of what they see as good leaders.
	What are some examples of leaders that you've seen in either everyday life or in politics?
	Some leaders that you see and you say, that's what a good leader looks like.
	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.
	Or the leader that comes to mind for me is What's the name of the actor in Band of Brothers?
	I don't know the actor's name, but I know that he's trying to portray Dick Winters.
	Dick Winters, exactly, exactly.
	So that's the image that a lot of folks have from pop culture.
	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?
	Yeah, I mean, Dick Winters, that's a fantastic example.
	I've covered his books on my podcast because he's a leader that That does every one of these little nuanced things.
	You can see him do it.
	And Band of Brothers is an amazing series that really shows the nuances of his leadership.
	So I think that's fantastic.
	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.
	And he wrote a book called About Face, which is about an 800-page book.
	And it's really not about leadership at all.
	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.
	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 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.
	And they drummed him out of the army in a matter of months after that.
	Because, and to me, it was him speaking the truth as he saw it, which I have great respect for.
	So when you look at today's politics, obviously it's what I do for a living, and it feels extraordinarily chaotic.
	It feels like it's a war of all against all.
	It's sort of this Hobbesian state of nature.
	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?
	I think it's a little bit of both.
	I think we're getting accustomed to this new world where you can get reactions on a minute-by-minute basis.
	And one of the best ways to get reactions from people is to make statements that are extreme.
	And so, again, this new book, Dichotomy of Leadership, it's about balance.
	And right now, I would say in politics, We don't find very much balance.
	We find people on both sides that are leaning towards the extremes all the time, and then that gets greatly amplified by the media.
	How much of leadership involves actually having a group of people who have the same common goal?
	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.
	I'm an individualist.
	I really believe that people should have the right to do essentially what they want so long as they're not harming anyone else.
	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.
	How much of that can be instilled by leadership and how much of that is just You know, you joined the team voluntarily.
	You knew what you were getting into.
	And can that be restored if there's a lack of goal-orientedness in the society as a whole?
	You have to have some kind of common goal.
	You absolutely do.
	Now, without a common goal, you don't know where you're going.
	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.
	Right?
	There's different ways to get to that goal.
	I mean, I don't think there's any one... Okay, maybe there are.
	But generally, people want We want good for the world, right?
	There's no one that's thinking, hey, we want a dictatorship in America.
	No normal people are saying that, right?
	We all have a common goal.
	We want families to have good lives.
	We want people to be taken care of.
	We want to have opportunity.
	We want to have a good economy, right?
	These are all things that are pretty standard.
	I don't think we're going to get fighting against that.
	Where we get fighting is how we're going to get there and disagreements on how we're going to get there.
	And then what we see is we see people that put a stake in the ground on their idea and don't want to listen to anyone else.
	And in a team environment, that's problematic.
	It boils down to ego, right?
	Hey, I'm not going to listen to your idea.
	I want to go with my idea.
	And you know what?
	There'll be no We're only going to do it my way.
	And I would rather not execute the mission, not accomplish the mission, than not do it my way.
	And so when I see that, that's problematic.
	How do you solve it?
	Eventually, if you're going to move forward, you have to solve it.
	You have to find out what those compromises are going to be.
	Yeah, and this is where I actually wonder whether that's true.
	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.
	I think that a lot of folks, like nobody's going to come out and say, I want a dictatorship.
	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.
	No due process rights for particular sets of crime.
	We need to shut down this particular sort of speech because this sort of speech hurts me.
	At a certain point, I do wonder whether we lack even the common language of goals in order to arrive at a common destination.
	Are you pessimistic or optimistic about the future of the country?
	I'm less pessimistic than you are with that and with those type of examples because I see those as fringe.
	And again, I don't live in the same world as you do.
	I'm the worst of the bunch.
	I do politics all day.
	It's the worst.
	You're in a constant firefight with this stuff.
	In normal American, I work with businesses all over the country.
	And you know what?
	I hate to break the news to you.
	Most people aren't watching news 24 hours a day.
	Most people aren't listening to those fringe people on either side.
	Most people are out there working hard, trying to make a living, trying to take care of their family.
	I mean, it's beyond the vast majority.
	The absolute vast majority of the people that I work with every day are people that want to improve their station in life.
	They want to help their team win.
	They want to do good work.
	They got pride in what they're doing.
	That's what most people... I mean, construction, manufacturing, finance.
	I mean, that's what these people are doing.
	And so, the fringe people that are out screaming and yelling, They're loud and the media focuses on them.
	Why?
	Well, you know, it's because the media wants to get people to click and hear what that crazy person has to say.
	Most of America, we don't click on that stuff.
	We don't.
	What do you think civilians don't understand about the military that you wish they understood more?
	Very few Americans actually now know somebody who serves in the military or has served in the military.
	It used to be that a huge percentage of Americans served, now it's like 2% of Americans serve in the military.
	What do you think that civilians really ought to know about how the military operates and what the military lifestyle is like?
	Well, number one, I think the most important thing to understand about people in the military is that they're people.
	Is that they're people.
	And these are people with husbands and wives.
	These are people with kids.
	These are people with goals.
	And they're people with emotions.
	And 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.
	As a soldier, as a sailor, as an airman, as a marine.
	And we often forget that that soldier, sailor, airman, marine, that service member, they are a person and they have a life.
	And so, I think that's what happens when guys come home and they don't have a new mission to focus on.
	They get a little bit lost, and people don't know how to treat them.
	So, I say it's real simple and straightforward.
	They're people.
	Treat them like people.
	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.
	They're sacrifices made by a person, and like, in my case, and the families as well.
	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...
	I knew what I was doing.
	I knew what my day-to-day circumstances were.
	My wife didn't know.
	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.
	That is an incredible sacrifice on the home front as well.
	So I think it's important just to remember that these are people, both the service members and their families.
	That's pretty amazing.
	How did you meet your wife?
	I met my wife in, I was overseas and she was overseas and we met in church.
	Pretty good place to meet.
	There was beer served at this particular church.
	Yeah, we met in a bar.
	She sounds like a pretty amazing person.
	So how did she deal with all of this, with you being overseas in the middle of a battle area?
	It was hard.
	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.
	I always tell her, it seems like forever.
	But, you know, we've been married for a long time through multiple deployments overseas.
	And I think for her, what makes her able to cope with this is that she's, Emotionally independent from me.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	She's a confident, you know, squared away woman.
	Sounds like you're obviously anti-feminist, as a former member of the military.
	Obviously, that's what we all assume.
	I have three daughters and one son.
	- Yeah, well I have three daughters and one son.
	And my daughters are, I wrote a couple books about kids, kids books called Warrior Kid, Way of the Warrior Kid.
	And it's about kids.
	Instead of accepting weakness, it's about kids trying to become stronger, which to me seems like a pretty fundamental thought.
	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.
	So I did that with my kids, and I wrote these kids' books for them.
	But yeah, my daughters are absolute warrior kids, and now they're warrior adults.
	So you bring a lot of lessons from the military to the civilian area.
	Have you learned anything in sort of the business area that you think would be applicable to the military?
	Well, what have you learned in civilian life that you think added to what you already knew from your service?
	The biggest and most shocking thing that I learned about the civilian sector was that leadership is leadership.
	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.
	Learning that and beginning to understand, it didn't take me very long at all.
	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.
	So that was the biggest lesson learned for me, is leadership is leadership is leadership.
	So you're a pretty intense dude.
	You're the only person I've ever had on this podcast who probably speaks as quickly as I do.
	So have you always been like that, or is that something that's gotten you into trouble?
	Was this something that you cultivated, or you were always this intensive person?
	No, if you listen to my podcast, you'll find that I actually talk very slowly generally.
	But it depends.
	You know, sometimes you got to get your point across.
	And, you know, I know your audience is probably pretty quick paced.
	They don't want to hear my slow talk.
	And again, you know, on my podcast, I'm usually dealing with very heavy subjects.
	You know, I talk about war and I talk about atrocities.
	And really, it's a podcast about human nature through the lens of leadership.
	And so the subjects are heavy.
	Sometimes that warrants a little bit more A little bit more nuanced when I'm talking.
	But yeah, I guess if I'm talking as fast as you, that's a scary thought.
	So what do you think it is about human nature?
	So let's talk about that a little bit.
	What do you see human beings as?
	What is our fundamental nature?
	Because this is what all of politics is about.
	Yeah.
	Again, one of the most interesting things about human nature is that all human beings are completely different.
	And yet all human beings are kind of the same.
	And one thing that you find is that through war and through atrocities is you get to see human nature be revealed.
	And what I do with the podcast, from my perspective, the better you understand human nature, the better you can lead people.
	You've got to understand where they're coming from.
	You've got to understand how their ego is going to react to things.
	You've got to understand, like you said earlier, when people get defensive, how do you get around that?
	You've got to understand what people don't like to expose.
	You've got to understand how they're going to interact with other people, how they're going to come across when you get aggressive or not aggressive enough.
	So the better you understand human nature, the better you're going to be able to lead.
	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.
	They're in there.
	You've got some people, you've got another person that is one of the most wholesome, good people you could ever imagine.
	You've got both of them, and you've got every person in between.
	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.
	So understanding human nature, understanding that there's good and there's evil, Inside of everyone, and everyone's capable of going in those directions.
	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.
	It was kind of like, wait, wait, what do you mean?
	We don't have a sadist.
	We don't have a murderer in a platoon.
	And I said, you know, think about the My Lai Massacre.
	The My Lai Massacre was a company of normal people, and it's a horrific podcast to listen to.
	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.
	And what was really interesting about this, and when I did that podcast and I tried to bring home something good about it, 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.
	It was awful.
	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.
	That commander got on the radio and said, stop killing people right now.
	And you know what?
	They all stopped.
	They all stopped right there.
	And that was proof, that to me is proof, of the power of leadership.
	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.
	That's the kind of thing that if you don't understand that element of human nature as a leader, Especially in chaotic and combat situations, but even in a business.
	If you don't understand those things, it's going to be problematic for you.
	Obviously, we've seen this from civilized armies all over the world.
	Situations where things go wrong and suddenly people who are innately civilized, you thought, are suddenly acting uncivilized.
	As a leader, can you spot that sort of stuff early or you can only stop it once it's begun?
	I think the way you stop it early is you have to address it early.
	You have to explain to everyone.
	Everyone has to understand where you stand as a leader.
	Where you stand as a leader and where you stand as a nation, right?
	We can't do this kind of thing.
	This will hurt our strategic goals.
	This will impact us in a negative way on this particular battlefield.
	And most important, I will not let it happen.
	Again, I mean, in the Battle of Ramadi, it was a hard fight.
	And you can see, I mean, I could see.
	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.
	This is awful.
	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.
	And so you have to be aware of it.
	And that's why I think awareness and understanding of human nature is what will prevent these things from happening.
	Because you don't know.
	You don't know.
	You know what?
	Maybe you're a good judge of character.
	Maybe I'm a good judge of character.
	Maybe I get 80% right.
	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.
	Maybe I'm 80% right.
	The other 20% is the one that's going to be a problem.
	The times that you're wrong, because we don't know.
	You don't know what happens to people under stress.
	You don't know what happens when people see their friends get wounded or killed.
	You know, you were talking early about your imminent death, right?
	It's like a joke, like, hey, we'll talk about a minute about your imminent death.
	When you're in combat, all of a sudden that's a real thing.
	And depending on your mindset, your death can be completely imminent in your mind.
	And so what does that do to a person's psyche?
	What does that allow them to do that they may never do in a normal circumstance?
	As a leader, you've got to understand those things.
	What do you do if you're not a leader?
	You're just not a natural leader, but you're being led by somebody who you think is just not doing the job.
	What should you do?
	There are too many situations in certainly civilian life where your boss is an idiot.
	What should you do if your boss is an idiot?
	Yeah, well, first of all, those situations occur in the military all the time as well.
	The military does not completely weed out every bad leader, no.
	There's a bell curve in the military just like any other organization.
	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.
	So, this is a question I get asked all the time.
	What do you do when your leader is not good?
	Well, it's a really easy answer for me.
	When my leader isn't good, you know what I do?
	I lead.
	I'm going to step up and lead.
	And it depends on the situation.
	If I have a weak leader, I can literally step up and lead, because my leader doesn't want to make a decision.
	Hey boss, we're going to do this.
	Is that okay?
	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.
	But I'm going to step up and say, hey boss, we want to do this.
	Does this make sense?
	Yeah, okay, that makes sense.
	Do it.
	If I have a weak leader, I'm going to step up and lead.
	If I have an egomaniacal leader that is a crazy micromanager, what I'm going to do Again, same thing I'm going to do with every leader.
	I'm going to form a great relationship with them.
	I'm going to form a great relationship.
	If you're micromanaging me, I'm going to say, hey, boss, I know you wanted these 12 things reported to you.
	Well, I didn't think that was good enough.
	Here's 16 things you wanted in the report.
	So I want you to really understand and know what's going on, boss.
	Here you go.
	I'm going to give you more information than you could ever possibly even hope for.
	And eventually you're going to say, hey, OK, Jocko, you know what?
	Just go and do your thing.
	But you're gonna build, I'm gonna build a relationship with you, I'm gonna build trust with you.
	Whether, and this is another thing that shocks people.
	I worked for, on that bell curve of great leaders and horrible leaders, I worked for all of them.
	I worked for incredible, strategic, tactical masters that were inspiring leaders, and I worked for just egomaniacal, tactically horrible leaders, and everyone in between.
	And my relationship with all those leaders was the same.
	With all those leaders, I had the same relationship.
	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.
	How did I go about building those relationships?
	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.
	Guess what I'm going to do?
	I'm going to do it.
	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.
	You want me to wear this certain thing a certain way, I'm going to do it.
	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.
	I'm going to make you trust me.
	I'm going to build up trust with you.
	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?
	I see what you want to get done.
	How about we do it this way?
	I think it's going to make a little bit more sense.
	It'll keep everyone safer.
	Since you and I now have a relationship, we trust each other.
	You trust me.
	You go, oh, you know what, Jocko?
	Good call.
	Go ahead and do it that way.
	So these situations, what am I going to do?
	I'm going to build a relationship.
	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.
	How do you inculcate leadership in children?
	Because you see some kids I see with my own kids.
	One of them happens to be a real natural leader.
	People tend to follow her.
	And the other one is, he's two and a half, but he's a wild man.
	How do you inculcate leadership in kids?
	How do you teach those lessons from the time that they're young?
	And it's the same answer for what you do with your kids.
	It's the same answer you do with a young SEAL that you want to step up and become a better leader.
	How do you do it?
	You put them in charge of things.
	You put them in charge of things.
	You let them step up and lead.
	Whether it's something big, whether it's something small, you start them off small.
	In a 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.
	In combat, you give them a mission that's not that dangerous, or it's a training mission, and you let them run it.
	As a kid, hey, you know, I mean, it's something as silly as a lemonade stand, right?
	That's a real thing.
	When you're a kid, that's a real thing.
	When you're a kid, that's Apple, right?
	That's Google when you're running that lemonade stand.
	So let them step up, let them take leadership, let them take some hits.
	Maybe they lose money when you charge them the money that it costs for the lemonade mix.
	And it costs whatever, $4.99 for the lemonade mix.
	And you take it from them.
	And then they don't make that money back on the street.
	Let them learn that lesson.
	Let them figure out how they're going to make it happen.
	So again, you put out the guardrails.
	But most important to try and develop leaders, you put people in leadership positions.
	You don't let them die.
	You don't let them fall flat on their face.
	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.
	As a leader, when is it time to cut somebody loose?
	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.
	Mentoring, coaching.
	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.
	You're going to get fired.
	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.
	And right now, it's negatively impacting the whole team.
	And I want to take care of you, but it's more important that I take care of the whole team.
	So I'm going to write you a great resume.
	I'm going to call anyone back that anyone that wants reference, use me as a reference.
	I'll take care of you, but this job just isn't for you.
	So I do want to ask you one final question.
	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.
	To subscribe, go to dailywire.com, click subscribe, and you can hear the end of our conversation there.
	Well, Jocko Willing, thanks so much for stopping by.
	Check out the Jocko podcast and go get his new book, The Dichotomy of Leadership.
	It's a pleasure to have you here.
	I really appreciate the time.
	Thanks for having me on.
	y'all appreciate it 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 jesua alvera and title graphics by cynthia The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

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