The study and promotion of leadership skills is a relatively new discipline, yet it would take a zigabyte hard drive just to list all the books, seminars, and papers already written on the subject. Any list of new books includes self-help, leadership titles promising sure-fire, amazing results, and while I still remain alert for new information, my eyes scan them more quickly than I did, say, thirty years ago. A friend from way back is currently serving his country as a U.S. Congressman, but it’s one of his amazing sons, Leif Babin, that recently slapped me up’side the head with a book he’d co-written with another equally powerful, head slapper, Jocko Willink. Let’s just say that a demure Chuck Norris would curtsy while serving iced sun tea to these two brilliant warriors. I’m certain Secretary of Defense, “Mad Dog” Mattis chokes up and dabs his eyes when he thinks of the work this pair has done. While part of the title employs the word, “Extreme” it was the second word of the title, “Ownership” that put the hook in me. Truth be known, I figured since Leif was one of Roxanne’s boys, the book was probably going ring as true as a liberty bell. Little did I imagine, “Extreme Ownership”, would provide me with one of those experiences that causes me to not only recognize the truth but prevents me from ever “unknowing” it again. Not often seen after nearly 70 decades on God’s green earth, the kind of truth in “Extreme Ownership” is the sticking kind of truth. You just know it in your knower.
Since becoming involved in the Mankind Project in the 1990’s, I’ve thrown in with the principle of personal accountability or “ownership” and think of myself as a fairly accountable guy (the hubris alarm bells should already be ringing). I rate accountability right up there with God, Family, and Country, you know, the Big List. But I have to tell you, Babin and Willink have taken accountability to a stratospheric level. While my purpose here is not to write a book review, I’ll share just a couple of the foundational principles these guys put forth. They contend the phrase “individual leadership” is a contradiction of terms. And that’s just their starting point. When I first read that it slapped me hard enough that I stopped to let it sink in. Some refer to this as “pondering deep things”. Oh, I was pondering alright, but the truth really wasn’t deep. It was right there staring me in the face, and had the truth been a snake I would’ve been perforated. Leif writes, “But without a team – a group of individuals working to accomplish a mission – there can be no leadership”. BAM! Right up’side my head. No team – no leadership. Now, I believe self-improvement to be a lifelong work. But Leif explains that “leadership” and “team” have an inseparable, symbiotic relationship. One can’t actually call themselves a leader until they’re part of a team and a team with a mission. After delivering that truth jab to the nose, he countered it with a right hook to my jaw: “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 or ineffective. Effective leaders lead successful teams that accomplish their mission and win. Ineffective leaders do not.” In spite of my dancing, and bobbing and weaving to avoid it, the cold, hard, liberating truth put me on the canvas seeing stars. I hate it when that happens. Regardless of how much effort I may put into being a “good leader” or how much leadership/mission knowledge I’ve accumulated, if there is no team or if my team can’t accomplish its mission, I’m not an effective leader, period, no wiggle room. Team mission failure means leadership ineffectiveness. Still dazed but beating the ten count, I struggled to my feet thinking “that was some tough truth, but I think I can hold on until the bell saves me”. How wrong I was.
Think for a minute of all the leadership information to which you’ve been exposed. I’ll bet you a dollar the vast majority of it has been focused on “individual practices and personal character traits”, the time honored focus of leadership training. Babin and Willink turn that idea on its head, yet they still effectively address the individual’s inevitable failures, mistakes, and lack of success. Just as others before them have proposed, the coauthors acknowledge that mistakes can be opportunities to teach us good lessons, humble us, and make us better, all true and valuable information. What sets these guys apart besides having been Navy SEALS and victorious in life-or-death combat leadership roles, they are brutally relentless in demanding that everyone from the top dog to the last wagged tail cast no blame and accept NO EXCUSES for having failed, none, no, not one. Yikes! That’s not going to play well in a blaming culture where finger pointing has been honed to a fine art worthy of Carnegie Hall. Their “no blame, no excuses” proposition is still reverberating in my head. You mean to tell me that I can’t curl up with even one excuse, not even a good one that everyone else has been reinforcing all these years? Nope, not that one either. There is just no wiggle room, no shucking and jiving if one aspires to be a leader on a winning team. No effective leader can hang his failure hat on someone else’s peg. If the team fails to accomplish its mission, a leader takes personal ownership, blames no one else, studies and learns from the failure, grows, and moves forward. By this time, I wasn’t sure how much more of this “extreme” truth I could take, and I wasn’t even through the first part of the book! Trying to catch my breath, I though I’d read on just a little further hoping somewhere in the next few pages they would cut me a little slack, dust me off, and give me a hug. You already know where this is going, right? Another truth punch to the gut: “not just leadership but everyone on the team must perform as an effective leader and accept no excuses for mission failure”. At that point I had to just close the book and put it down. I can only take my truth medicine in small doses.
Originally published in Beaumont Business Journal, Heat And Humanity Column
