Sublime

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

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.

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—

when it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.

for a team’s new operational needs from others is likely to be the individual who

Once people stop making excuses, stop blaming others, and take ownership of everything in their lives, they are compelled to take action to solve their problems.

When personal agendas become more important than the team and the overarching mission’s success, performance suffers and failure ensues.

And most significant, he chose to face the ultimate dichotomy: to train, work with, and develop a team of friends and brothers, to care about those men more than anything in the world and then lead those men on missions that could get them killed. That is the burden. That is the challenge. That is the dichotomy. That is leadership.