Extreme Ownership

The best leaders are not driven by ego or personal agendas. They are simply focused on the mission and how best to accomplish it.

there can be no leadership where there is no team.

advised many officers that the right amount of involvement—the proper position for them—was somewhere in the middle, generally with the bulk of their force: not so far forward that they get sucked into every room clearance, but not so far back that they don’t know what is going on up front.

They are simply focused on the mission and how best to accomplish it.

“As a leader, it is up to you to explain the bigger picture to him—and to all your front line leaders. That is a critical component of leadership,” I replied.

vernacular,

I discovered that it was far more effective to focus their efforts not on the days to come or the far-distant finish line they couldn’t yet see, but instead on a physical goal immediately in front of them—

The mission must explain the overall purpose and desired result, or “end state,” of the operation.

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