The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win

by Jocko Willink

  Man down, I thought. He must have taken a round to the chest or head.

  I darted over, expecting to find him a bloody mess. I was surprised to see him lying there, smiling back up at me.

  “Are you alright?” I yelled over the sound of the gunfire. Bullets were still whizzing past us, kicking up dirt just a few feet away and ricocheting off the nearby walls.

  “I’m good,” he replied. “I tripped.”

  I smiled back in relief, thankful that he wasn’t gravely wounded or dead.

  “Bro!” I yelled over the noise of the firefight. “I thought you got your head shot off!” We both chuckled.

  Quickly, I grabbed his hand and helped him to his feet. We sprinted the rest of the way back to the gate. As the SEAL ducked into the gate, I ran forward and slapped Marc on the back.

  “Last man!” I yelled, letting him know we had everyone accounted for. I covered for Marc as he pulled back, pointed his big gun, barrel smoking, to the sky, and we ducked inside the gate together. Finally, everybody was off the street, out of the enemy line of fire, and inside the compound behind the cover of concrete walls. Thanks to Marc and our other machine gunners, supported by SEAL shooters with their M4 rifles, despite the vicious enemy attack with substantial firepower, none of us had been hit.

  I made my way to the rooftop, where SEAL shooters had taken up firing positions. As the enemy fighters moved from building to building and continued their attack, we engaged them. The AOIC was there on the roof, with our Charlie Platoon radioman, assessing the situation.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked him.

  “Let’s call in the tanks for fire support,” he said calmly. The AOIC was cool under fire—a great quality that every leader should work toward.

  “Roger that,” I said. It was exactly the right call. We had the high ground on the rooftop. We had good security behind the concrete walls. The SEAL radioman contacted the U.S. Army company Team Bulldog (Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment of the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division) and got the M1A2 Abrams tanks rolling our way with their massive firepower. We loved those Soldiers, under the command of Captain “Main Gun” Mike Bajema. Despite the deadly threat of IEDs2 that destroyed a number of tanks in this South-Central Ramadi neighborhood, every single time we called for help, Main Gun Mike personally loaded up in his tank and fearlessly came to our aid, accompanied by another Bulldog tank. We could take great risk and patrol deep into dangerous enemy territory only because we knew that when we got into trouble, Team Bulldog had us covered. Mike and his Soldiers were outstanding, aggressive warriors. They would do everything in their power to get to us, no matter how dangerous or difficult. And when they arrived in their tanks, they brought the thunder.

  It took several minutes for the tank crews to mount up and drive out to our location. We continued to take enemy fire from several directions. One SEAL operator peeked his head above the roof wall to determine where the bad guys were. As he did so, his head snapped back violently and he fell backward. He sat up, unharmed, wondering what the hell had just happened. When the SEAL took off his helmet to examine it, he found a deep gash where an enemy bullet had ricocheted off the night-vision mount on the front of his helmet. Just an inch or two lower and that round would have taken his head off.

  “What happened?” a SEAL next to him asked.

  “I got shot,” he said with a smile, pointing to his helmet.

  It was a close call, but thankfully one we could laugh about.

  As we waited on the rooftop, I switched my radio over to monitor Bulldog’s company communications net. I heard Main Gun Mike ask if we could mark the buildings from where the enemy fighters were still shooting at us.

  “Do you have any red smoke grenades?” the radioman asked. I didn’t have any.

  “We’ve got tracers,” I suggested. The SEAL radioman had a full magazine of tracer rounds, which emitted a visible orange glow along the bullet path as they zipped through the air. Marc Lee also had tracers every fifth round in his ammunition belt. We relayed to Main Gun Mike and his tankers the plan. As the heavy Abrams tanks approached, tank tracks clattering on the concrete city street, I heard the word over the radio to mark the target and relayed the order via verbal command.

  “Mark the target!” I yelled. Marc and the SEAL radioman lit up the enemy position with tracer fire.

  Stand by to get some, I thought as Mike’s Abrams tank rotated its huge turret and trained the mighty 120mm cannon at the building from where we had been receiving fire. The tank unleashed its thunderous fury into the building and ended the enemy attack. The insurgent fighters who hadn’t been obliterated beat a hasty retreat. We received no more fire from the enemy that day, thanks to Mike and his Team Bulldog Soldiers. Once again the tanks had been our deliverance. The combined team of SEALs and U.S. Army Soldiers had given the insurgents more than they could handle. And my AOIC had proven once again that he was a solid leader, competent and coolheaded, even under the stress of close combat.

  But just as my assistant platoon commander had to be ready to lead, in this situation I had to be ready to follow. The goal of all leaders should be to work themselves out of a job. You never quite get there, but by putting junior leaders and frontline troops in charge, our SEAL platoon and task unit were far more effective. It created a culture of leaders at every level of the team. Trying to navigate between leadership and followership was an example of the Dichotomy of Leadership, the balance that every leader must find between two opposing forces in leadership. Ready to lead, but also knowing when to follow. Taking Extreme Ownership of everything that impacts the mission, but also empowering others to lead with Decentralized Command. The recognition of the many dichotomies and the ability to balance these opposing forces provide a powerful tool that enables leaders at every level to lead and win.

  The Dichotomy: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership

  Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

  Our first book, Extreme Ownership, struck a chord with many readers. The idea that leaders must take ownership—Extreme Ownership—of everything in their world, everything that impacts their mission, has changed the way people view leadership. If mistakes happen, effective leaders don’t place blame on others. They take ownership of the mistakes, determine what went wrong, develop solutions to correct those mistakes and prevent them from happening again as they move forward.

  Even the best teams and the best leaders never deliver flawless performances. No one can achieve perfection. What makes the best leaders and best teams great is that when they make mistakes, they acknowledge them, take ownership, and make corrections to upgrade their performance. With each iteration, the team and its leaders enhance their effectiveness. Over time, that team runs circles around its competition, particularly against other teams with a culture of excuses and blame casting, where problems never get solved and thus performance never improves.

  Our four Laws of Combat have helped radically improve the performance of teams and organizations—large and small—across the United States and internationally, in nearly every industry in the business world, as well as military units, police and fire departments, charity organizations, school administrations, and sports teams.

  * * *

  The first Law of Combat: Cover and Move. This is teamwork—every individual and team within the team, mutually supporting one another to accomplish the mission. Departments and groups within the team, and even those outside the immediate team that are nevertheless crucial to success, must break down silos and work together to win. It doesn’t matter if one element within the group does its job: if the team fails, everybody fails. But when the overall team wins, everybody wins. Everyone gets to share in that success.

  The second Law of Combat: Simple. Complexity breeds chaos and disaster, especially when things go wrong. And things always go wrong. When plans and orders get too complex, the people charged with executing those plans and orders do not understand them. When team members don’t understan
d, they can’t execute. Therefore, plans must be simplified so that everyone on the team recognizes the overall “commander’s intent”—the greater purpose behind the mission—and understands their role in achieving mission success. Orders must be communicated in a manner that is “simple, clear, and concise.” The true test for whether plans and orders have been communicated effectively is this: The team gets it. When the people on the team understand, then they can execute.

  The third Law of Combat: Prioritize and Execute. When multiple problems occur simultaneously (which happens often), taking on too many problems at once results in failure. It is imperative that leaders detach themselves—pull back from the details—and assess to determine the highest priority to the strategic mission. Then, once that highest-priority task has been determined, leaders must clearly communicate that priority to the team and ensure the team executes. Then the leaders and the team can move on to the next priority. Then the next. Training and proper contingency planning assist greatly to better prepare teams and leaders to most effectively Prioritize and Execute under pressure, in real time.

  The fourth Law of Combat: Decentralized Command. No one leader can manage it all or make every decision. Instead, leadership must be decentralized, with leaders at every level empowered to make decisions, right down to the frontline troopers in charge of no one but themselves and their small piece of the mission. With Decentralized Command, everyone leads. To empower everyone on the team to lead, team members must understand not just what to do but why they are doing it. This requires clear and frequent communication up and down the chain of command—and most importantly: trust. Junior leaders must have confidence that they clearly understand the strategic mission, the commander’s intent of their boss, and the parameters within which they can make decisions. Senior leaders must trust that their junior leaders will make the right decisions and encourage them to do so. This requires training and frequent communication to implement with maximum effectiveness.

  * * *

  There was one big problem with the book Extreme Ownership: the title. While it drove home the most important leadership foundation in the book, it was also slightly misleading. Extreme Ownership is the foundation of good leadership. But leadership seldom requires extreme ideas or attitudes. In fact, quite the opposite is true: leadership requires balance. We addressed that concept in chapter 12 of Extreme Ownership, “Discipline Equals Freedom—The Dichotomy of Leadership.” But as we assessed legions of leaders in companies, teams, and organizations as they implemented the principles we taught in the book, many struggled to find that balance. This struggle represents the biggest challenge we observed as we trained and advised hundreds of companies and thousands of leaders over the past few years with our leadership consulting company, Echelon Front.

  In the final chapter of Extreme Ownership, we wrote:

  Every leader must walk a fine line.… Leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities, between one extreme and another. The simple recognition of this is one of the most powerful tools a leader has. With this in mind, a leader can more easily balance the opposing forces and lead with maximum effectiveness.

  Every behavior or characteristic carried out by a leader can be taken too far. Leaders can become too extreme and upset the balance required to effectively lead a team. When balance is lost, leadership suffers and the team’s performance rapidly declines.

  Even the fundamental principles of combat leadership in Extreme Ownership can get out of balance. A leader can Cover and Move too much and step on the toes of other leaders, departments, or divisions. A plan can be too Simple and fail to cover likely contingencies. A team can go too far with Prioritize and Execute, resulting in target fixation and loss of situational awareness on newly emerging problems and threats. Decentralized Command can also be taken too far, when too much autonomy is given to subordinate leaders who then don’t fully understand strategic goals and how to execute in support of those goals.

  And this idea continues on with just about everything a leader does. Leaders must be close with their people, but not so close that it becomes a problem. They must hold the line with discipline but not become tyrannical. A leader can even become too extreme with Extreme Ownership, when a leader takes so much ownership of everything in his or her world that members of the team feel there is nothing left for which they can take ownership. When this happens, team members will execute only at the boss’s specific direction without any root ownership or buy-in themselves, resulting in a team far less capable of overcoming obstacles and accomplishing the mission.

  Therefore, balance in leadership is crucial to victory. It must be monitored at all times and it must be modulated to specific situations as they arise. If a team member fails to perform adequately, for example, a leader must get down in the weeds and micromanage that member until he or she executes correctly. But once the team member gets back on track and resumes effective performance, the leader must maintain the ability to back off and give that team member room to take greater ownership and manage tasks on his or her own.

  It is not easy to maintain the constant shift, continual modulation, and frequent adjustment necessary to balance all the dichotomies across every spectrum of leadership characteristics. Yet this skill is essential for effective leadership.

  We have observed these struggles continuously in good leaders striving to be better. That is what drove us to go deeper into the concept of the Dichotomy of Leadership. The goal of this book is to help leaders overcome that struggle through examples of how to find the right balance in leadership—to moderate the idea of leading from the extremes and focus on maintaining balance—within teams, among peers, and both up and down the chain of command. Every good leader must develop the ability to recognize, understand, and adjust that balance. While it isn’t easy, through knowledge, disciplined practice, and sustained effort, anyone can master finding the equilibrium in the Dichotomy of Leadership. Those who do will dominate their battlefield and lead their teams to victory.

  PART I

  BALANCING PEOPLE

  Marc Lee’s combat gear—helmet, boots, and his carefully painted Mark 48 machine gun—staged to honor him on the roof of the tactical operations center at Sharkbase, Task Unit Bruiser’s camp, which was renamed Camp Marc Lee in his honor. While it was technically against regulations to fly the American flag in Iraq, Task Unit Bruiser marked its headquarters with Old Glory. Marc fought for the flag and his brothers-in-arms and was the first SEAL killed in action in Iraq. Task Unit Bruiser also lost Michael Monsoor and, eventually, Ryan Job, who died from medical complications following a surgery to repair his combat wounds.

  (Photo courtesy of the authors)

  CHAPTER 1

  The Ultimate Dichotomy

  Jocko Willink

  CHARLIE MEDICAL FACILITY, CAMP RAMADI, IRAQ: 2006

  “Sir,” the young SEAL whispered in a faint voice, “come here.” Our hands were clasped in a handshake. Not a formal handshake like two businessmen, but palm to palm with thumbs wrapped around the back of the hand like an arm-wrestling contest—a handshake of brotherhood. The young SEAL was feeling the morphine. I saw it in his eyes, but he was still there, still conscious and aware. He was everything a young man should be: smart, brave, athletic, funny, loyal, and tough. He had been shot in the leg about half an hour before. I found out later that Mikey Monsoor, a young SEAL machine gunner, had run out into heavy enemy gunfire and dragged this SEAL out of a war-torn street in the Malaab District in the city of Ramadi, the violent heart of the insurgency in Iraq.

  The wounded SEAL now lay on a gurney in Charlie Med, the Camp Ramadi field hospital where U.S. military surgical teams worked furiously to save the lives of gravely wounded troops almost every day. The bullet, a mammoth armor-piercing 7.62 × 54 millimeter round with a steel core, had entered his leg at the lower thigh, ripped apart flesh and bone inside his leg, and exited in his upper thigh, close to the groin. It was hard to say if he
would keep his leg. From the looks of the wound, my guess was no, he would lose it.

  The wounded SEAL’s grip on my hand tightened and he pulled me in, drawing me just inches from his face. I could tell he wanted to say something to me, so I turned my head and put my ear next to his mouth. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Was he scared or angry or depressed that he might lose his leg? Was he nervous about what might happen next? Was he confused?

  He took a breath and then whispered, “Sir. Let me stay. Let me stay. Please. Don’t make me go home. I’ll do anything. I’ll sweep up around the camp. I can heal here. Please, please, please just let me stay with the task unit.”

  There you go. Not scared. Not angry. Not depressed that he might lose his leg. Only concerned that he might have to leave our task unit.

  Task Unit Bruiser. Our task unit. Our lives. This SEAL was our first significant casualty. We had had guys catch some frag on previous operations. We had had some very close calls. But this was the first wounded SEAL from Task Unit Bruiser whose life would be forever changed by a grave combat injury. Even if he kept his leg, the damage was so substantial that it didn’t seem possible he would ever fully regain the extraordinary athleticism he had displayed previously. And yet this SEAL was only concerned that he would let me down, let the task unit down, let his platoon—his team—down.

  This was a man. This was a true friend—a brother. This was a hero: young, brave, and without question more concerned for his friends than for his own life.

  I was moved. I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I fought them back and swallowed the lump in my throat. This was no time to break down. I was “the Leader.” He needed me to be strong.

  “It’s alright, brother. We’ve got to get you healed up first,” I whispered. “As soon as you heal up, we’ll get you back over here. But you have to get healed up first.”

  “I’ll be okay,” the wounded SEAL replied. “Just let me stay … let me stay.”