Jocko Willink Quotes

remember: the enemy gets a vote.

The dichotomy with the Default: Aggressive mind-set is that sometimes hesitation allows a leader to further understand a situation so that he or she can react properly to it. Rather than immediately respond to enemy fire, sometimes the prudent decision is to wait and see how it develops.

As a leader, it is up to you to explain the bigger picture to him — and to all your front line leaders. That is a critical component of leadership,” I

Besides death, all failure is psychological.

Every moment you are alive is made of choices you get to make.
Little, tiny choices that alone mean nothing, but when combined together, mean everything.
You have to make the right choices. The hard choices.
You have to deny immediate gratification and pushback against weakness.
You must impose Unmitigated Daily Discipline in all things.

Leaders must always operate with the understanding that they are part of something greater than themselves and their own personal interests.

The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win — you pass the test.

So how can a leader become great if they lack the natural characteristics necessary to lead? The answer is simple: a good leader builds a great team that counterbalances their weaknesses.

Although discipline demands control and asceticism, it actually results in freedom. When you have the discipline to get up early, you are rewarded with more free time.

Some may wonder how Navy SEAL combat leadership principles translate outside the military realm to leading any team in any capacity. But combat is reflective of life, only amplified and intensified. Decisions have immediate consequences, and everything — absolutely everything — is at stake. The right decision, even when all seems lost, can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The wrong decision, even when a victorious outcome seems all but certain, can result in deadly, catastrophic failure. In that regard, a combat leader can acquire a lifetime of leadership lessons learned in only a few deployments.

People are not who you want them to be. Kill your idols. Sure there are things we can learn from people — but people aren’t going to be what you think they are — what they should be. People, even those people you have put up on a pedestal, are going to be faulted, weak, egomaniacal, condescending. They are going to be lazy, entitled, shortsighted. They will not be perfect. Far from it. That’s fine. Learn from their weaknesses. Of course: Learn from their strengths and mimic and copy them in what they do well. But equally as important: Learn from their faults.

don’t try to plan for every contingency. Doing so will only overburden you and weigh you down so that you cannot quickly maneuver.

when it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.

But without a team — a group of individuals working to accomplish a mission — there can be no leadership. The only meaningful measure for a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails. For all the definitions, descriptions, and characterizations of leaders, there are only two that matter: effective and ineffective. Effective leaders lead successful teams that accomplish their mission and win. Ineffective leaders do not. The

When a leader takes too much ownership, there is no ownership left for the team or subordinate leaders to take. So the team loses initiative, they lose momentum, they won't make any decision, they just sit around and wait to be told what to do.