Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

by Jocko Willink

If your boss isn’t making a decision in a timely manner or providing necessary support for you and your team, don’t blame the boss. First, blame yourself.

One of the most important jobs of any leader is to support your own boss

As a leader, if you don’t understand why decisions are being made, requests denied, or support allocated elsewhere, you must ask those questions up the chain. Then, once understood, you can pass that understanding down to your team. Leaders in any chain of command will not always agree. But at the end of the day, once the debate on a particular course of action is over and the boss has made a decision—even if that decision is one you argued against—you must execute the plan as if it were your own.

Take responsibility for leading everyone in your world, subordinates and superiors alike.

If someone isn’t doing what you want or need them to do, look in the mirror first and determine what you can do to better enable this.

Don’t ask your leader what you should do, tell them what y...

Our freedom to operate and maneuver had increased substantially through disciplined procedures. Discipline equals freedom.

Waking up early was the first example I noticed in the SEAL Teams in which discipline was really the difference between being good and being exceptional.

The best SEALs I worked with were invariably the most disciplined. They woke up early. They worked out every day. They studied tactics and technology. They practiced their craft. Some of them even went out on the town, drank, and stayed out until the early hours of the morning. But they still woke up early and maintained discipline at every level.

So the balance between discipline and freedom must be found and carefully maintained. In that, lies the dichotomy: discipline—strict order, regimen, and control—might appear to be the opposite of total freedom—the power to act, speak, or think without any restrictions. But, in fact, discipline is the pathway to freedom.

A good leader has nothing to prove, but everything to prove.