Extreme Ownership

“If you aren’t winning,” I responded, “then you aren’t making the right decisions.”

Instead, junior leaders must fully understand what is within their decision-making authority—the “left and right limits” of their responsibility.

That way, there is no excuse for not getting out of bed, especially with all that rests on that decisive moment. The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you ha

“Proper Decentralized Command requires simple, clear, concise orders that can be understood easily by everyone in the chain of command.

“There are no negative repercussions to Extreme Ownership,” I said. “There are only two types of leaders: effective and ineffective. Effective leaders that lead successful, high-performance teams exhibit Extreme Ownership. Anything else is simply ineffective. Anything else is bad leadership.”

One of the most important jobs of any leader is to support your own boss—your immediate leadership. In any chain of command, the leadership must always present a united front to the troops. A public display of discontent or disagreement with the chain of command undermines the authority of leaders at all levels. This is catastrophic to the performa

“Early in my career as a SEAL officer, there was a time when I felt that military mission planning was needless and burdensome,” I told them. “But I was wrong. Establishing an effective and repeatable planning process is critical to the success of any team.”

The test for a successful brief is simple: Do the team and the supporting elements understand it?

When leaders receive an order that they themselves question and do not understand, they must ask the question: why? Why are we being asked to do this? Those leaders must take a step back, deconstruct the situation, analyze the strategic picture, and then come to a conclusion. If they cannot determine a satisfactory answer themselves, they must ask