The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke #5: How to Announce Your Presence as The New Boss

This is the Jocko Debrief podcast, episode five with Dave Burke and me, Jocko Willink. Dave, let's debrief. What do you got?

We've got someone that just got promoted into a key position in a big company. She's now running operations. First female ever to hold this position on this company. East coast company, long been around for a long time. And everybody in this position for her has been a man, been kind of a male dominated organization a little bit. And she's stepped up into this role. She's awesome.

She is totally ready for this job.

And she's getting some feedback from folks kind of helping her prep her, how she's going to introduce herself, how she's going to announce herself to the team. Hey, I'm the new head of operations. This is who I am. And a lot of the advice she's been getting is, hey, you got to go in there hard. You kind of got to come in there. And I think the phrase that they're using is you got to announce your presence with authority. You can't come in all timid and meager. You got to come in strong and let them know that you're here to run this department and that you're going to make this happen.

So she calls me, she's like, hey, I've got this thing coming up. This is the advice that I'm getting. And she's aware. She's like, I don't. I understand what they're saying, but I'm not sure if that's right. And of course my perspective is like, hey, actually, I think your instincts are on the mark. I don't think this is necessarily good advice. Now, look, the advice that she's getting, it's coming from a good place. They're trying to get her, they're trying to set her up to be successful. And they understand that and they're right. She can't come in meager and meek and frail and like, oh, I'm not sure this is right for me, but here I am. I said, but.

You don't need to announce your presence with authority. I said, as a matter of fact, listen, if you don't want to, you don't need to announce yourself at all. There's a literal announcement that went out to this company in the form of a memo that said, announcement, new head of operations is this person. So if you don't want to announce yourself at all, you don't need to because it's already happened. I said, but what you really should think about is.

What Are your expectations for this role, for you in this role? So what are the things that you think that you need to do in this role? I said, so why don't you tell me? What are your expectations? What are the things you're thinking about? Well, I want the team to do well.

I want to give them the things that they need. I want to help them and give them the resources and the tools and the training they need so they can be successful. And we kind of went down this list of all the things that she felt was her job. And as you can probably tell from this list, she's a trooper. She's in the game. She understands it. And of course, like, with 83.9% of every question that it gets asked, it's right in leadership, strategy and taxes versus, hey, what do you do on day one? You don't need to walk in and say, listen up, I'm in charge now. Here are my expectations for you. Here's what I want you to do. Just walk in, tell them, hey, listen, I am honored to be in this role. I am thrilled to have this opportunity. I care about this team, and I want to help this team be successful. My expectation is that I will do whatever it takes for us to be successful. So when we did the role play, we said, hey, if you just come in and your opening speech is 30 seconds long and that's all you say, how do you think they're going to react? She's like, well, they'll probably be fine with it. I said, good, then why don't you just do what you think you should do? And it's not that that advice was bad in the sense of, like, they're trying to set you up to fail, but how do you think it's gonna come across if you walk and go, hey, listen up.

I may not be the person you thought was gonna be in this job, but I am. You might have had some ideas of how things used to be or who should be in here, but I'm in charge now, and this is how. And it's so. When you're on that detach per second, it's so obvious when you see that.

Again, you do not want to go in there to be a pushover. I said, but the opportunity for you to show who you are as a leader, your opportunity to really reveal what kind of leader you are and what they can expect from you, isn't going to come from this speech. As a matter of fact, the speech probably isn't even all that memorable. You don't need to make it a big deal. You, in enough time, are going to get challenged with leadership issues that you're going to have to get engaged in and get involved in, and that's. We're going to see what kind of leader you are.

So open up the book, refresh that a little bit. Do not announce his presence with authority. Come in and let them know what you expect. And the expectation is that you're here to help the team win.

I'm. Clearly, when you get into a situation like this and you knew what's going on with the company, but just for someone that's not that, someone that doesn't understand the whole concept, we work with companies, so you have an understanding of what the situation is on the ground that she's going into, which means that you know that she's going into.

A functional team. Right. Not a bad team. Not a team where they're firing the leader because everything's all jacked up. Those are different scenarios. And those are also scenarios that I talk about leadership strategy and tactics. And even in those scenarios, does that mean that you roll in there and you come off the top ropes? Not usually. Not off the top ropes. Unless. Unless you've got some catastrophic morale or catastrophic ethical issues, then it might call for, you know, some, Some heavy hitting coming out of the gate. So, so there's that and there's. But you have a team, a functional team. Well, how do you take over a functional team? Yeah, you, you go to, you go to page 157 of Leadership Strategy Tactics, and you follow those, those guidelines.

When it comes to. Here's an issue where it makes me a little nervous, and probably. This is probably making her nervous, too. Hey, here's what you better do. Like, if someone, if I was getting ready to go meet my team for the first time and someone says, hey, listen, here's what's going on. You better do this. That would start to make me question, like, wait, wait a second. If you're needing to tell me how to introduce myself to the team, this, this. You must not have a lot of confidence in what's going on here, and you must be worried. And, and you must see me as weak. And so, so that I'm sure that starts to creep into someone's head. I was doing my first interviews for the Officer Candidate Program that I went into in the Navy. And so, you know, I was talking to the executive officer at the time at Seal Team 1, and, you know, he was heading up this officer review board. I think that's. Yeah. Officer Review board where I would go in and meet with these three or four officers and they would ask me a bunch of questions and they would give me a recommendation based on how I responded. And I wasn't really nervous or anything, but, you know, he just, as a good leader, he said, hey, let's talk about the thing that you're about to go to. He's like, are you nervous? I'm like, not really. And he goes, okay, well, good. He goes, check this out.

When you go in there, there's no reason to be nervous because you're in there for a reason. You're in there because you've been recommended to get this position. And so you're in there because you're professional and you are smart and you come up with good answers and you've shown leadership potential. That's why you're going in there. So when you go in there, essentially what he said was, and this is really good advice with a little caveat, when you go in there, he said, be yourself, right? Which is essentially what you said to this woman, hey, what would you, you know, what do you think you should do? And she said it, and you're like, yeah, so you should be yourself. So you have to be yourself. And the caveat is, listen, you're going into an environment.

You are going to be professional. This is why I say there's a little caveat. Because being yourself, you have to use at least some level of caution because you might be a very nice person.

You can err on the side of being too nice. You can err on the side of being too hard. What I recommend is you err on the side of being a little bit too hard. Does this mean come off the top ropes? No, but it is much easier to. To start with a tight leash and give it and give slack as people earn trust and whatnot, than it is to go in there with a bunch of slack and then all of a sudden you've got to jerk the chain. And. And, and now that's a problem. So air on this. I mean, you know, we joke about it all the time. Leif jokes about it all the time. Because when, you know, when he came into tasking a bruiser, I didn't smile at anyone for six weeks. And, and Colonel Hackworth didn't smile at anyone for the first month. And so why is that? It's erring on the side of being professional. It's er.

Of being.

Was that the right word? Hard?

I guess being professional. Err on the side of being professional. Not Overly friendly. Because overly friendly is hard to judge the way people are going to respond to that. People might go, oh, cool, she wants to be our friend. And she, you know, that's, that's the way it's going to be. Cool. I don't really have to listen to her. So err on the side of being professional.

The last thing I had was.

And now this is the counter to being too hard. The counter to being too hard is why would you need to come in there and be all authoritative? Well, it's because you're insecure about people thinking that you're a good leader, which when you go in and you act all authoritative, everyone thinks, they don't think, wow, that person's really authoritative. What they think is they're not very confident in their leadership skills, and that's why they're trying to browbeat us with their rank. So you think you're coming across one way by being hyper authoritative, but what you really do, what you're really doing is putting yourself on, being on report for being insecure about your leadership. So we want to be balanced, right? We want to air towards being professional. We want to err with enough confidence and authority that people go, okay, we get it. But we don't want to go to a point where people go, oh, insecure, got it.

And don't underestimate, especially if they know you, how easy it is for them to see what you're doing. You walk in like, whoa, Jocko, man, this is. It's so easy for them to see if you're overshooting them or kind of by design. So just like you said, I mean, you need to be yourself and be authentic. I totally. What you said about that and using the examples of, hey, I'm going to come and I'm going to, I'm going to make clear, like, I'm going to hold the line. And those things, these are the things that are important. And this is the way we're going to be. And I can throttle back. That's much easier than trying to tighten up the slack at the beginning. But if you overshoot the mark, they're going to see it a mile away. And it's, it's, it's. That thing we talked about before is perspective, is what are they going to see versus what you're seeing. And if you're detached enough and it's very obvious how clear it's going to be that you are hyper insecure if you walk in and out of the blue, like, whoa, that was a really aggressive Introduction speech. We've been working together for four years. Where did that come from?

And here's the problem with everything that we're saying right now. Everything that we're saying right now is going to edge someone towards completely overthinking this. Which is why, you know, look, you, you're in this position, you're being promoted. You're being put in that position of leadership because people have seen the way you perform. They trust you. So be yourself, be yourself, and then add 6% of professionalism, extra professionalism, and you'll dial it right in there.

What's funny is that the conversation that we had took about like 90 seconds. You know, when we talked on the phone, she's like, oh, that's great. I just wanted to get your take on it. It was just like you said, we have talked way more longer than we did because it was, hey, don't overthink this. Be yourself, think about what's important to you, announce that, you know, come in, let them know what's going on, and then move on from there. And that was kind of the entire thing.

Did you debrief with her? Oh, totally. And I mean, all good.

It was, well, two things. One, yes, it was all good. And to the beauty of that is she was like. It was. She said it was a non event.

Yeah, it was.

Of course it was. And that's what we talked about. Hey, this is not this thing. If people. Your introduction speech don't. If you're taking command of a battalion or a brigade, or if you're taking command as a sea. Those speeches, those things, they're not important. What matters is what you are, who you are during that entire time. And we create these things in our mind. Like, I gotta hit this speech out of the park. Yeah. You know, like it's some big thing. Ask me how many CEO introduction speeches I remember in my 23 year career.

If you feel the need to go in there and make a big statement, what part of your brain do you think is feeling that deed? It's a little something called your ego.

Totally.

So heads up for that. All right, I have a my debrief term. I think this is my first debrief and I'll do. Look, we did something called EF Battlefield as a pilot course where we are taking people to battlefields across the country and at some point across the world. And the first one that we did was the battle of Gettysburg, the Civil War. And I'm going to actually do a podcast to go into some of, to go into more detail on that battle, lessons learned, leadership, etc. But when I got done with it, I had my notebook. And so, you know, there was, you know, I was there, Leif was there, Mike Shirley was there, Steve Ward was there, Jason Garner was there, Jamie was there, and then a bunch of clients. So it was. It was a pilot. So we were all kind of checking out, seeing what the deal was. But as I went through it and I got done, I just took my notebook and I sent you a bunch of words basically to say, hey, here's some stuff to debrief you on. So.

Because. And the reason is, look, there was a bunch of things that were kind of, look, extreme ownership laws of combat leadership, strategy and tactics, stuff that there's no reason for me to send you a text and say, hey, here's. Here's something. Here's something. Here's. Here's. Here's an anomaly that I may not have thought through or. And most of this boiled down to me thinking, you know what? I just re. Explained this to everyone, and people said, oh, yeah, okay, got it. So here's a couple things. The first thing that I sent you was implied intent. Implied intent. So we've all heard of commander's intent. We all know what that is. Commander's intent is, hey, this is what we're doing, and this is why we're doing it. And again, I'll go into some of the details about why this came up in the battle of Gettysburg between the various generals that were there from, you know, Robert E. Lee and his subordinate generals. And so. So I will absolutely get into that stuff. But so this idea of implied intent, it's this, look, if I tell you, hey, Dave, the intent of this operation is for you to secure this mountaintop so that we can then push forward with COVID from the high ground. So if I tell you all that, right, it's very obvious that's the commander's intent. What I. What I realized, and it's something that I realized that I've never.

Put into words before until I was talking through this and explaining that when you're in charge.

You have not just your commander's intent that you give verbally, but you also have an implied intent that is the nature of your very being.

And I realized that so much of my commander's intent throughout my entire career was based on implied intent. By knowing me, you knew that this is what I would want.

I knew what you expected, yes.

This actually happened at Echelon Front, and it was Jamie and Jen and Lynn and the rest of the team during a muster.

And they were going.

Incredibly psycho to test everything and make sure that the line was going to be through as quickly as possible, make sure that registrations would go through, and make sure people weren't waiting in line, and make sure that the. The things that needed to be handed out were in the right place at the right time, and that the. Everything was going to be perfect.

And I never pulled them aside. I actually did it. After I did it during the debrief, I said, you know what, Jamie? You and your team realized you never. I never said to them, but here's the deal. I said to him after the fact, I said, listen, if this event is disorganized and people have to wait in line and people are confused about where they're going and there's no one to check them in, and if all those things happen and people are coming and paying money to a leadership event and we can't even execute the leadership event smoothly, I want my money back immediately. Jamie never had to ask me, hey, should we.

Should we.

Should I hire an extra two people to make sure that the line. She didn't ask me that. The implied intent was, this better be the best thing ever on the battlefield. Hey. When it came time for Leif to either close with and destroy the enemy or, you know, maybe leave a situation to avoid contact.

He knew, Seth knew, the guys knew what the implied intent was. Look, if there's bad guys and we have an opportunity to take the fight, then that's what we do. So there's an important part about implied intent. So do you see where I'm coming from? Do you have any commentary on that?

Yeah. What I was writing down, I was thinking is it lets me know what I should do without you ever telling me what to do, because I know you well enough as my leader, as my boss, whatever. I know what you want, so I know what to do when you're not around to tell me. And I also don't need to go. Hang on, let me call Jocko and see what he's thinking here. I don't have to do that when there's no time to do that.

Yep. Another good example was we were at desert warfare training in the beginning of our workup and tasking a bruiser. And guys, we had a night off. And normally guys, when they have a night off, they go drinking in town and have a good time and they come back and no one even asked me because the implied intent was, we're here to train. That's the Most important thing in the world. So. So that's part one of implied intent. Here's part two.

If I am sending you on an operation or on a mission and my implied intent is not valid for this situation, I better be damn sure to explicitly tell you that my implied intent, or I better make it perfectly clear what is happening. So if I'm always telling you, hey, you know what, Dave? If my implied intent is always, look, you know me, you know I'm aggressive, you know, if we get in a firefight on the battlefield, we better take the fight to the enemy, take them out, destroy. That's what we do. What we train like that, we go on, work up. You've done 20, 25, 30 missions like that with that attitude. Now all of a sudden we get put into a different aoe and we have a very sensitive.

Politician that's there, and they've started to assemble some coalition supporting troops. And the last thing we want to do is cause collateral damage or have any kind of civilian casualties when we're going out. Before you go, I say, hey, Dave, here's what's going on. I know normally we are default aggressive. Tonight, I actually want you to be default passive. I want the security and safety of the populace and the infrastructure to be the number one thing that you think about that is infinitely more important tonight than closing with and destroying the enemy. So that's it. We have implied intent. And we better know what that implied intent is. And if you're going to go against that implied intent, you better be. You better make it explicitly clear.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I think of how I have always been as a subordinate when I have worked for other people throughout my career. One of the things I tried to discover very early on about my leadership is what that implied tent was intent was. And that can be really, really strong.

If I'm working for you, I am working for you. I know what your implied 10 is. That is the strongest thing in my mind to guide my decisions for decentralized command. So if we're going to go out and do anything that's going to be different than implied intent, you gotta almost go out of her and say, listen, I know what you would do in this situation, and I'm telling you why you're not gonna do what you're not gonna do and why. Because that implied intent is for me, like, that is the most powerful force that I had as a subordinate leader is what would my boss want me to do here is making sure I understood that. So you saying you gotta Go out of your way to make it clear. That rings very true with me because as a subordinate, my leadership intent was something I sought to understood early on and really understand because that allowed me to go do what I was supposed to do when they weren't around and do a good job.

Yeah, it's interesting. This has had no name before. I'm naming it now implied intent. Now, this links very closely to the next point I want to bring up, which is, and I've been talking about this, but I just want to. I just want to tie these two things together. It's decentralized command and culture. So decentralized command and culture. Look, this is a very easy connection to make, and it's very similar to what we just said. You have implied intent, and then we have from that implied intent, you start to develop a culture as an organization. And if our culture as an organization is default aggressive, then I know that you can make decisions based on that culture. So culture inside of an organization is like the highest form of decentralized command. And then you can marry that up with another word, culture and values. So if your culture and your values are strong, then people in your chain of command should be able to make 99% of decisions just knowing the culture and the values. You add some implied intent to that, and it's 99.9%. You tell them why they're doing what they're doing and what the parameters are. They can make interview. You don't never need to talk to them again. So just recognize that values and culture is the highest form of decentralized command. And if you haven't instilled values and culture into your team and your team doesn't know what your implied intent is. And the thing is, this is the thing. Like, I've never, never used that word. But we've all seen it, right? But now, hopefully people can become conscious about what? Imagine if you were working for freaking Chesty Polar. Like, you don't need to hear anything else. You don't need to be told anything. There needs to be no briefs. He doesn't need to say a word. The implied intent is there. We are going on General Patton. Same thing. What's the implied intent? Implied intent is we are not digging in. We are going forward. Yeah, that's what we're doing. So if you're not going to do that, you need to pull them back. But also, as a leader, think about what your implied intent is and then take that implied intent, capture it, write it down, simplify it, and then distribute It. And guess what? You have. You've got a culture. You've got values that are that. That create your culture, which then become the backbone of the decentralized command inside your organization.

The connection between culture and decentralized command. And as simple as you made that sound, and as I hear it, it's so clear what the connection is. The first time you said it, when we were talking about it, I had not thought of any of those terms, though. So if you're listening, you're thinking about, hey, why am I creating values for my organization? Why am I describing what these things are?

Decentralized command is what all the leaders want. Leaders want decentralized command. They know that's the end state they want to get to with their team because they can't be everywhere. There's a million reasons why decentralized command is a goal. But if you don't really think about the connection from culture that it's part of decentralized command, you can miss that in your mind. And when you're doing these exercises where you try to capture a company's vision and writing down the things that define the culture, if you're not making the connection to decentralized command, meaning you're not realizing that those things are what is going to allow your people to do what they should do when you're not around, you're going to miss something. And when you made the connection, it was still, even for me, a light bulb. Like, wow, that's. It's important to say that, like, why I'm doing this. As an organization, we're creating these things because I want you all to know why, what to do that is in the best interest of this team. When I'm not there and make that connection for your people, you want me.

To take it one step for you, one step further for you. Dave Burke.

Yes.

Check this out. When someone on your team.

Does something that was wrong, that didn't make sense, that you can't understand why, all you have to do is start to deconstruct that decision, and you're going to get to a place where. Where there's no guidance, where there's no values, where there's no. There's no understanding of the why. So when you see people in your organization that are doing the wrong thing, it pull, pull, pull the string on that.

Yeah.

You're going to find out why it's your fault because you haven't given them the implied intent. You haven't given them the commander's intent. You haven't given Them, the values and the culture that will drive them to make the right decisions. So how do you fix it? You start to put those things in place. Yeah. That's what you do.

Yeah.

All right.

I guess we'll do one more of these.

There is disagreements amongst the leadership at the Battle of Gettysburg, and there are often disagreements in the way that we get things done.

We hear a lot. And I've. This is a quote, actually, Leif quoted me during one of these debriefs that one of the things that I used to say was, look, if. Look, Dave, if you and I. And I'm the boss or. No, you're the boss, and we're in there having an argument about how to do an operation and finally say, listen, Jocko, we're doing it my way, so get on board and go start, you know, start planning your execution. This is what I used to tell the young seals. When you walk out of that room.

You execute that mission as if it was your own. Okay? And Leif quoted me on that, which is a legitimate quote.

Here's the thing. And. And. And again, this is all from leadership strategy and tactics. So it's not even like it's that big of a deal, but. So they talk about. There's two generals, General Lee and General Longstreet. General Lee was, you know, General Lee, and General Longstreet was his. One of his immediate subordinates, who he called his war horse, meaning they had a good relationship. General Longstreet did not want to execute what General Lee's plan was. And so what Leif said was, listen, when you. And so what he did was when he walked out of the tent with the plan, you know, General Lee said, this is what we're doing. General Longstreet walked out of the plan. Walked out of the tent. And then he waited and hesitated and wait four or five hours and didn't execute. And they had to send a bunch of people like, hey, what's going on? Are you gonna do this? And finally, he did it, dragging his feet the whole time. And Leif was like, hey, this is why when you leave, you execute it as your own. Right? And then I forget who asked a question, or we had, you know, one of the clients, but. And as I stood there and was thinking through this, they were talking and talking, and I said, let me say something here.

If you don't agree with that plan, don't leave the tent.

You don't leave the tent until. Look, Dave, if you have a plan that's so good and you can't convince me of it. We got a problem, bro. Especially once I've removed my ego once. Or, you know, once I've removed my ego, once I've detached from my emotions, once I've seen your perspective. I've done the right things over here to try, and you still can't get me there. We got a real freaking problem. And that means I'm not leaving the tent. I am not leaving the tent. Now, that's the goal. Now, look, once you get beyond that, there's a bunch of different ways we can go there. You know, we can go to leadership strategy and tactics, where, hey, you know, if you say, hey, jocko, shut up and do it now, what is. What do I do? I can say, you can fire me. I give up all my influence, you'll bring in a yes man. Look, these are all spelled out. Leadership, strategy, tactics. I can say, okay, boss, I got it. I'll do the best I can. I go out, I do the best I can, and I mitigate risk as much as possible, try and take care of my team, try and execute the plan. But maybe, like I said, mitigate risk. Stories in Vietnam were SEALs a few times got ordered to do things that they did not think was good missions. And so they said, you know what? Yeah, okay, cool. We don't want to do that, boss. And then boss says, no, shut up and do it. The guys go, okay, cool. They walk outside the wire. They go 100 meters into the jungle. They set up a perimeter. They sit there for the night. They come back, hey, we didn't run in anything. Same thing with Dick Winters in Band of Brothers. Oh, you want us to do another one of those reconnaissances where we just lost a guy last night and the war is going to be over in any day now? Yep. Okay, got it. I don't think it's a good idea. No, shut up and do it. Okay, Got it, boss. Go down the cellar and drink wine.

So that's a whole nother thing. But all those. All those.

All those subsequent decisions are based on the primary thing, which is don't leave the tent until you've got to a point where, you know, you've completely exercised all the demons of the conversation. Because the chances that you and I on the same team, working for the same company with the same goals, which we want to make money, we want to support our clients, we want all these things, or we're at war. We want to kill the bad guys. We want to take our objectives. You and I are aligned at some level. We have to be aligned. And if we can't come to a conclusion about what is the right thing to do, I'm not going to leave the tent. That's the first part of it. If you leave the tent, you better figure out which one of those courses of actions you're going to take. I'm going to do this thing to the best of my ability. I'm going to mitigate the risk as much as I can. Like, there's a bunch of things that happen, but it starts with, if we don't agree, I'm not leaving the tent.

I wrote down, as you started this, I just wrote down, in my little margin, I wrote down ego, because I'm thinking I'm putting myself in that situation. So I'm Longstreet, you're Lee. We're in the tent, we're doing this thing. And we've been doing this thing. Actually, you and I have been doing this thing at Echelon Front for about as long as they probably were. You know, I got three or four years under my belt here. So now I'm in a situation. Jocko gives me the big picture brief. I'm sitting here, I'm like that. Actually, that seems wrong. So already, right away, that's a very low probability. I'm not saying it's not possible, but, like, that's immediate red flag. When I wrote down ego, I was thinking to myself, as before I leave the tent, this isn't about me trying to convince you that your plan is wrong. It's like, for me, it's the opposite of, hey, Jocko, I'm still missing something. I'm not understanding this.

And it's not always. There's always that caveat. But the likely issue isn't that your plan is bad. It's that I'm missing something about what you want. And when I wrote down ego, it's. I'm not there to try to change your mind. I'm there to really figure out what am I doing wrong. So I can't leave the tent until I actually get past what I don't understand. Now, there may be some times that I got to. I have to come up with a way to maneuver around what you're doing, too. But the likelihood, if we are this aligned, and you kind of covered a lot of what I was going to say, which was, I mean, think about the situation here. This is you and I after three and a half years with all the same goals, objectives, and all of a sudden, I can't get past what you're asking me to do. Okay, what's really going on here? And more than likely what's going on is I've created an answer in my mind that's different than yours, and I want to dig in and get. And get you to see it my way. I can't leave the tent until I actually understand what you're saying. And that to me is much more likely of a problem, that it's me instead of you. And actually, if I take that approach and you see me take that approach, you're actually more likely to go, oh, hang on, hang on. You keep pushing back. Let me see if I really understand this myself.

Anyway, that's just what I wrote down is thinking of what's going to be the biggest problem for me in that tent. It's going to be me.

I have this goal when I'm in a disagreement with somebody and this shocks people all the time. But when I disagree with Dave, my goal is to understand why Dave is right and I'm wrong.

It's not to win the argument.

It's not even not to win the argument. It's like, how am I wrong right now? And how can Dave be right? My goal is to have Dave be right.

Yeah.

And if you go with that approach, it disarms your ego. My ego is factually disarmed because I'm trying to prove that you're right and what that allows, it allows the actual problems that we're facing to rise to the surface so we can come up with a good solution.

Well, we always try and allegedly keep this podcast a little shorter. So let's try and do that tonight. It's a good place to stop if you want to dig deeper into all these aspects of leadership in any arena, you want to hear us and the rest of the Echelon front team talking about these things, answering questions. By the way, if you want to ask a question, go to efonline.com join one of our live webinars that are happening all the time. We'll sit there and talk to you about it. That's what we do. We solve problems through leadership. If you want leadership guidance inside your organization, come and check out our leadership consultancy@echelonfront.com I've also written a bunch of books on the subject of leadership, Extreme Ownership, Dichotomy of Leadership, Leadership strategy and Tactics. Got some other podcasts. Jocko Podcast, Jocko Unraveling, Grounded, and the Warrior Kid Podcast. And if you want to support any of these podcasts, including this one, you can get some gear from jocko store.com or from origin main.com.

That'S it for tonight. Thanks for listening to the debrief. Now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko out.