PDF Summary:Leadership Strategy and Tactics, by Jocko Willink

If you want to be a good leader, you have to put your team before yourself. Jocko Willink explains exactly how to do this in Leadership Strategy and Tactics. By learning to practice humility, build good relationships, and take responsibility for your team’s mistakes, you’ll elevate your team to success and empower them to become leaders themselves.

Willink is an author, speaker, and podcaster who served for 20 years as a US Navy SEAL. Through his military and leadership experience, he’s acquired a series of leadership principles and advice that he shares in this field manual. We’ll examine Willink’s leadership principles, comparing them to Principles: Life and Work, The Obstacle Is the Way, and more. We’ll also explore Willink’s advice through the lens of other leadership experts and psychologists to add nuances and actionable tips that will help you implement his ideas into your daily life.

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• In urgent and consequential cases, or when your team is indecisive about something, you may have to make a more immediate decision. According to Willink, if you normally allow your team the freedom to shape plans as they see fit, they’ll respect and follow you in the rare moments when you make executive decisions.

Empower Your Children to Make Decisions

Willink’s advice on extending responsibility to your team may be just as applicable to leading your children as it is to leading the adults on your team. As with your team, encouraging your children to make decisions helps them develop critical thinking skills, form trusting relationships, determine their values, and build resilience.

It can be tempting to make decisions for your children, especially when they’re indecisive or you think they lack the experience or knowledge to make the right choice. However, they’ll only become better decision makers through practice. You can help a child of any age make decisions by teaching them the following:

• Making a wrong decision isn’t the end of the world. Mistakes happen and can be fixed together, so it’s okay if you don’t choose the best option at first.

• Thinking longer and harder won’t make the decision any easier. Sometimes you have to go with your gut because over-analyzing causes more problems.

• It’s okay to have mixed feelings about your decision. With every choice you make, you have to give something else up, and that can feel bad. It doesn’t mean you’re making the wrong choice.

As you expand your child’s range of freedom according to their maturity, they’ll probably make a lot of bad decisions. However, they’ll learn that their decisions have consequences and a bit of sting will help them steer clear of similarly poor choices in the future. When your child’s decision-making skills are eventually challenged by self-doubt or the influence of trouble-making peers, encourage them by letting them know you trust in their ability to make good choices. Similar to Willink’s strategy, extending trust will motivate your child to trust you in return.

A Note About Empowering Your Team to Cultivate Self-Discipline

Just as it’s useful to encourage your team to take on responsibility, it’s also beneficial to get your team members to develop self-discipline. External discipline (i.e. delivering a command) may get your team to do the bare minimum of what’s required to achieve a task, but it won’t inspire maximal effort. On the other hand, self-discipline is an internal force that drives your behavior and gives you a sense of personal control over what you’re doing. This sense of ownership inspires more commitment and effort to succeed.

To cultivate self-discipline in your team, explain why your request matters for their own success and the success of the team’s mission. If this doesn’t work, you may have to apply external discipline by ordering your team to complete necessary tasks. Ideally, your team will eventually realize the benefits of the forced discipline for themselves (such as pride in their results) and adopt the practice voluntarily.

The Relationship Between Motivation, Habits, and Self-Discipline

Which is more important for self-discipline: motivation or good habits? According to psychologists, the two may actually go hand-in-hand. Research shows that intrinsic motivations are more effective than external motivations for developing successful habits, and having successful habits may drive self-discipline

Extrinsic motivation is similar to the external discipline that Willink describes: a drive based on external reward or punishment. For example, a monthly bonus you’re trying to earn or your fear of disappointing your boss after she gives you a project to do. In contrast, intrinsic motivation is your drive to do what you innately enjoy or are interested in.

In a study observing the effects of different motivation sources on long-term weight loss habits, external motivation was shown to be short-lived and ineffective, while intrinsic motivation was long-lasting and effective. Based on this research, a clinical nutritionist makes the case that intrinsic motivation and discipline are required to reach your goals and achieve long-lasting health. In this view, discipline is essential to perform the daily habits that lead you to accomplish your goals.

Similar to Willink’s theory, the clinical nutritionist’s view is that intrinsic motivation may form after you perform a habit over time and discover something about it you enjoy. The difference is that Willink says someone’s internal drive to do something will develop once they recognize its benefits or develop pride, whereas the nutritionist’s view is that you’ll develop self-sustaining behavior once you find something in it you enjoy.

Communicate Regularly With Your Team

In addition to empowerment, good relationships are also fostered by effective communication. If communication is poor or lacking altogether, teams don’t understand the big picture or how their individual roles relate to the team’s mission. As a result, your team’s morale drops and the group risks falling apart. So, regular, quality communication is necessary to keep a team synced, healthy, and strong.

Have Conversations With Your Team

It sounds simple but is often overlooked: By regularly talking to your team members, you’ll get to know their perspectives better. Understanding each other’s points of view will further strengthen trust among your team. Here are a few tips for connecting with people on your team through conversation:

Get to know your team’s roles and responsibilities. Have them take you through their tasks. Ask them what does and doesn’t work for them so you can understand their daily life and improve any flaws in your team’s operation.

(Shortform note: It can also be beneficial to have your team members teach you something unrelated to their professional role. Connecting over a more casual subject can be a great way to bond. Additionally, you could arrange occasional workshops (in-person or virtual) where someone on your team hosts a meeting to teach something they’re passionate about. This way, you not only bond with that one team individual, but your whole team gets to know each other better.)

Validate other team members’ emotions and opinions. If you’re talking with someone who’s emotional about something, match their emotion first, then bring the intensity down as you ask questions and try to solve the problem. Matching their emotion will make the other person feel like you’re on their side. When people have opinions that don’t align with the team’s mission, empathize with their idea, then ask questions to understand the reason for their opinion. By understanding their ideas, Willink claims you’ll be able to counter and convince them to support your team’s goals more effectively.

(Shortform note: If someone’s negative thoughts or emotions are wearing on you or taking a lot of your time, experts say it’s important to set boundaries. This could mean establishing times during the day when you’re available to talk or limiting the majority of your interactions to email exchanges.)

Make Your Instructions Simple and Clear

Use simple language that everyone on the team can understand. Willink says that a good way to ensure your message was clearly understood is to ask your team members to explain to you in their own words what you told them. Finally, communicate to your team in more than one format because different people absorb information best in different ways. For example, if you deliver news or instructions in person, follow up with an email that summarizes your message.

(Shortform note: Miscommunications can be sussed out and cleared up if you give your team many opportunities to discuss the plan and ask questions. As we mentioned earlier, Willink promotes the idea of welcoming criticism and suggestions from your team, but you can encourage any questions that people might be hesitant to ask by hosting open forums or arranging anonymous surveys. You can also optimize the variety of communication channels you use by asking the people on your team which mediums they prefer.)

Tell Your Team the Truth

Another way to maintain good relationships with your team is to always tell the truth. While it’s easy to deliver positive truths to your team, if you don’t communicate harsh truths, problems that might be easily solved with the support of your team will be harder to correct. If your team’s not aware of a problem, they can’t help you overcome it.

(Shortform note: Telling the truth isn’t just beneficial for the success of your team; it also supports good health. One study found that when participants consciously tried not to lie for 10 weeks, they reported significantly fewer negative mental and physical health symptoms than those who didn’t avoid lying.)

Additionally, if you try to hide the negative side of a situation, your team will eventually find out on their own, which can cause them to lose their trust in you or even spread harmful rumors about why it’s happening. When people aren’t told what’s going on, they speculate about why bad things are occurring. Willink says that speculations made in the dark are always worse than the reality. These negative ideas are harmful because they can turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. For example, if your team believes your company is going to fail, they might start working carelessly because they believe the company is going under anyway. As a result, the company suffers even more and eventually fails.

(Shortform note: Although transparency can prevent many problems, there are certain cases where transparency could do more harm than good. In Principles, Ray Dalio argues that information is best kept quiet when it involves personal issues, when it could put the long-term interests of your team or your clients at risk, or when sharing information is likely to be more distracting than beneficial to their performance.)

Willink says when a problem occurs, address it with your team as soon as possible. The longer you wait to break bad news, the harder it will be to tell your team and the more time there is for problems and rumors to develop. Rip off the Band-Aid and tell your team what’s going on.

Organize Your Problems, Then Address Them

Willink recommends breaking bad news to your team as soon as you can, but what do you do if the issue isn’t extremely severe or urgent? In Traction, Gino Wickman argues that problems should be categorized into three different lists depending on their severity:

• A list of issues for quarterly meetings: These issues aren’t time-pressing and can wait to be dealt with when it’s convenient. For example, if a company-wide norm is being changed by HR.

• A list of issues for weekly meetings: These are strategic issues that need to be addressed with more urgency. For example, the company’s priorities need to be discussed.

• A list of urgent, departmental issues: This list contains issues that should be brought to the attention of the department head at a weekly departmental meeting. For example, this could be a meeting to address an unexpected drop in sales or an upcoming presentation that was scheduled last minute.

Good Leaders Take Responsibility for Their Team’s Problems

According to Willink, as a leader, you’re responsible for any problems that occur on your team. Casting blame when something goes wrong wastes time and causes your team to stagnate. Instead, embrace the responsibility you have for your team's problems and focus on creating solutions.

In this section, we’ll explain how adopting a sense of radical responsibility for your team prevents future problems and encourages your team members to take more responsibility for themselves. We’ll then discuss Willink’s advice for how to make effective decisions that lead to solutions.

Benefits of Radical Responsibility

Willink coined the phrase “extreme ownership” and even titled a book after it. In this section, we’ll explore what this means, referring to it as “radical responsibility.” Radical responsibility means taking responsibility for all of the problems related to your team and mission. A mindset of radical responsibility not only puts you in a position to solve whatever problems are at hand, but it also helps prevent future issues. If you know that you’ll bear the weight of responsibility for any of your team’s potential missteps, you’ll take preemptive actions to avoid mistakes.

Can Radical Responsibility Lead to Burnout?

In The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck agrees with Willink that taking responsibility for problems leads to active solutions. However, he explains that an excessive sense of responsibility—believing everything is your fault—is an expression of neurotic behavior. This can lead to anxiety, fear of commitment, and a lower quality of life.

To maintain a positive, action-oriented mindset, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck says to distinguish fault from responsibility. Fault concerns the uncontrollable past, but responsibility concerns the present—which you have the power to influence. For example, you’re not at fault for a critical mistake your team member made yesterday, but you’re responsible for your reaction to that problem today.

Another benefit of taking responsibility is that it’s contagious. By taking responsibility for a problem, you’ll inspire other people to take responsibility, too.

(Shortform note: Although taking responsibility sets an inspiring example for your team to follow, you might not always be around to set the tone. The authors of Built to Last argue that you should encourage your team to align themselves not with you as a leader, but with the values of your culture—in this case, the cultural value would be radical responsibility. The most important leadership quality that sets long-lasting companies apart is a long-term vision and concern for organizational culture.)

Make Effective Decisions

Once you’ve taken responsibility for a problem, the next step is to make a decision that will solve it. This begins with detaching and prioritizing.

Detach From the Situation

First, when you’re faced with a problem, don’t react impulsively. This can lead to rash decisions and ineffective solutions. Instead, Willink suggests you detach physically and mentally from the situation before you decide what to do. Willink claims that by learning to detach, you’ll manage your emotions better, read other people more effectively, and gain more perspective on how to appropriately handle a situation.

When you notice you’re getting emotional about a situation (breathing hard, clenching your fists, and so on) perform these physical steps to relax and think more clearly:

• Take a step back.
• Lift your chin.
• Take a deep breath.
• Look around.

(Shortform note: As a modification of Willink’s detachment protocol, when you take a deep breath, try prolonging your exhale. This slows your heart rate and helps you calm down. For example, inhale for four seconds and exhale for eight.)

Maintain awareness of the “big picture.” Don’t focus too much on the small details of a problem because you’ll blind yourself from seeing what really matters. For example, if you’re trying to type a critical letter of apology to a coworker, don’t fixate on which font to use or what time of day to send it to them. Instead, focus on what matters, like owning up to your mistake and acknowledging that you’ll do what it takes to repair your relationship.

(Shortform note: In Stoicism, focusing on the big picture means remembering that life is finite. By remembering that you only have a limited time to live, you can overlook petty problems and focus on the purpose of life (in Stoicism, the purpose of life is to live virtuously). As a leader, remembering that life is temporary may help you avoid spending valuable time on meaningless tasks and focus on actions that make a real difference for your team’s success.)

If you feel like you’re too detached from the problem to solve it, temporarily immerse yourself in the details until you understand what’s going on. For example, if a sales strategy isn’t working, go down to the floor and talk with customers, cashiers, and anyone else you encounter until you get to the root of the problem.

(Shortform note: To get to the root cause(s) of an issue, consider using the “five whys” technique, which involves gathering a group of people related to the issue at hand, agreeing on what the problem is, and then asking “why” roughly fives times, or until you get to the root cause of your issue.)

Prioritize Your Problems

After you’ve detached, the next step is to address the problems you face in the order of their importance. To prioritize your problems and determine whether or not you should step in, ask yourself if the problem can cause you and your team to fail your mission, if the problem is worth your time, and how bad the problem will get if you leave it alone. By default, Willink says to let your team handle all of the problems they’re capable of handling without you by order of priority. This will allow you to focus on big-picture problems and tackle issues that go beyond their power or scope.

(Shortform note: In Extreme Ownership, Willink and Leif Babin include another key tip for prioritizing your problems: Focus on the issue that the other issues depend on. For example, if an angry client calls your office wanting to access information from their online account but your office’s Wi-Fi has also crashed, prioritize the Wi-Fi issue because you won’t be able to access the customer account on your computer system without it. When it seems like a problem can be handled by your team, avoid stepping in to take charge and instead ask how you can support them. This will slow down your instinct to take control and you’ll show your colleague that you trust their ability to handle it.)

Carry Out Difficult Decisions Gradually

In situations where you don’t have enough information to make a confident decision about how to handle a problem, take small, incremental actions which slowly carry out your “best guess” solution. This prevents you from overinvesting in an incorrect decision that wastes a lot of your team’s time and energy. Instead, executing your decision slowly will allow you to adjust your plan if necessary. For example, let’s say a retail manager has noticed that inventory is going missing. He suspects employee theft, but he doesn't want to alienate his team by making accusations. He can start addressing the problem with the small step of asking his employees to keep a closer watch on their sections and double count their drawers. It's possible that this would solve the problem by itself. If it doesn't, he can move to more extreme measures.

(Shortform note: Incremental plans have a variety of benefits. Besides allowing you to adapt over time, a plan with defined steps keeps you and your team focused on individual goals along the way. Additionally, The 12 Week Year explains that crafting a shorter plan increases its predictability. For example, you’ll likely have a better idea of what your team’s resources and capability will be in one month compared to one year from now. Thus, you’re equipped to make a more realistic and effective plan for a shorter time range. This advice could apply to a leader’s gradual plan for an uncertain situation: plan steps within a predictable range of time.)

Good Leaders Are Balanced

Willink argues that leaders must remain balanced to operate effectively. He claims that the extreme ends of any strategy or behavior can be harmful. In this section, we’ll discuss a couple key areas of leadership where striking a balance helps you lead your team well.

Balance Between Optimism and Realism

When your team is facing difficulty and morale is low, maintain a balanced attitude. Your attitude as a leader influences the attitudes of the people on your team. If you succumb to negativity, your team will follow suit. On the opposite end, if you’re blinded by optimism and put an unrealistically positive spin on everything, your team will think you’re oblivious to the problems at hand. As a result, you’ll lose credibility with your team. Instead, acknowledge the reality of the situation but focus your effort on the solution.

(Shortform note: In The Obstacle Is the Way, Ryan Holiday explains that according to Stoicism, no situation is inherently good or bad. Rather, your perspective determines whether something is good or bad. So, in the face of adversity, Stoic philosophy says you should view challenging situations as opportunities for some kind of good. Holiday argues that this perspective will prime you to discover hidden solutions in your problems and overcome them.)

Balance Between Praise and Criticism

When you give feedback to your team, be complimentary, but give them a goal to strive for. If you give purely complimentary praise, you might make your team arrogant and complacent. And if your team gets complacent, they won’t perform as well as they could. On the other hand, if you dish out nothing but criticism, your team might lose motivation. Constant criticism without praise can lead your team to think they don’t need to perform at their best because their efforts aren’t appreciated anyway. So, give your team praise, but encourage continuous improvement.

(Shortform note: In Principles: Life and Work, Ray Dalio lists several ways to keep feedback fair and effective. When you’re delivering negative feedback, you should be honest and specific about how they can improve. Support your points with data and don’t sugarcoat what you have to say. To prevent the recipient of your feedback from worrying unnecessarily about small, negative points, cushion your criticisms by putting them in the context of their total performance. Another way to balance your approach to feedback is to adapt your review to the individual you’re speaking to. One person might be sensitive, while another person is combative. Adjust accordingly.)