MM#295--The Leadership Loop Checklist

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser.

Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute. Last week we shared a great children's book from one of our favorite authors here at the Mojo Academy, jaco Willink, and the title of that book was the Way of the Warrior Kid Fantastic children's book, and you can check out our quick plot review of that story at Mojo Minute number 293. So today I thought we would go back to Jaco for some more wisdom, but this time some adult wisdom. You see, jaco has written some great leadership books in the past which we have covered here from this microphone books like Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership. Be sure to check out those Mojo Minutes and those books in our past archives at the website. Or, if you want the real deal, if you want to dig deep into these nuggets of wisdom from these best books, be sure to check out our Mojo Academy membership. We have two in-depth reviews, one for each of these books, over 45 and 50 minutes respectively, and that's where we get the real nuggets and we dig deep to share that wisdom. But today I wanted to share with you some new stuff from Mr Wellink. Just a couple months ago relatively about three months ago, actually October of 2023, jaco wrote an expanded edition to an original book he had written back in January of 2022. I'm sorry, january of 2020. And back then he wrote a book titled Leadership Strategy and Tactics and that book was a good summary with some slight add-ons to the current stuff he shared in both books. We mentioned Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership, but, but now we have some new stuff, some real good new stuff. And with that let's dive into our first poll quote. Shortly after the first release of Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, I was at the Council, an exclusive event where several members of the instructor staff of Echelon Front, my leadership consulting company, were joined by about 20 successful leaders from around the world who work in a broad spectrum of industries. We do these events one or two times a year, spending three days at a remote site in the mountains, discussing leadership issues, challenges and solutions. Because the group is small, we were able to drill down, get very granular and spend time on aspects of leadership we may not have previously explored in depth. The conversations are generally based around stories From our collective experiences. We explain specific situations we've been in and the problems we faced and how we work through them. On the second day, during an afternoon session, leif Babin, my co-author on Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership, told a combat story from our time together at SEAL Team 3, where I had made a decision that kept our troops from getting into potential crisis. Soon after, andrew Paul, another former SEAL Team 3 officer, who is now a leadership instructor at Echelon Front, told a story where my decision allowed our SEALs to get out of a bad situation unscathed. Finally, jamie Cochran, our chief operating officer at Echelon Front, recalled a decision I had made that saved us a significant amount of money and simultaneously helped our client. To me, these stories reinforced the fact that everyone on the team knew that decision making was the crucial function of leadership and that, just as we teach at Echelon Front, leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield, in business and in life. But after this session, two of the attendees pulled me aside. They wanted to talk to me or, more accurately, they wanted to compliment me. They retold stories that they had just heard and emphasized the decisions I had made. They flattered me, noting my decisiveness in each situation, commending the inherent leadership ability they thought I was clearly born with. I was a bit taken aback at first, but as they continued to commend my leadership acumen. I simply nodded and thanked them for their kind words. My ego couldn't have been more delighted at. As I walked back to my cabin, it smiled with satisfaction and whispered kind words into my brain you are such an incredible leader. Your leadership skills are unmatched. You truly are a great natural leader. This is what it is like to be born a leader. I almost started to believe it, as my ego, like most egos, is very persuasive, but this didn't last long. I know my ego is a liar, so I push back. Let's stop here real quick, because Jaco doesn't point this out in the book, but I noticed it right away when he was describing this story. This is a critical juncture point in developing a good mindset, this part where you can detach and notice that your ego is filling yourself with pride and you're losing any amount of humility. For me, I call this self-reflection to ask the question can you step outside of yourself and view how you are seeing or being seen from another's point of view? Or can you detach from the situation and what your mind is feeding you and heaping praise on you that you don't lose any realistic notion of the actual state of reality? This is a quite difficult thing to do and it usually takes a great deal of maturity to stop and listen to your mind and actually listen to what you're telling yourself. Is it true, or is it your ego? There is, I believe, an art to this, but it takes practice. I found no books that walk us through how this art of self-reflection takes place. What's the process? What are the stages? How can we get into a self-reflective mode more quickly? How can we detach ourselves so that we see ourselves accurately and realistically, so we can uncover any blind spots about our true nature? I haven't found out the book to help us on that yet. Yet. I will keep looking, though, but I just want to point this out, because Jaco doesn't instinctively tell this part in his story, but I didn't want us to miss it because it's crucial and he just kind of skips over that. But it is a very important part in the juncture that he was able to catch that. Know that his ego is lying to him. Have the detachment away from that so that he can identify that his ego is lying to him. Going back to the book and actually let's go back a paragraph just so we capture the context of what he was talking about this is him whispering to himself all the accolades that the people have just heaped on him you are such an incredible leader. Your leadership skills are unmatched. You truly are a great natural leader. This is what it is like to be a born leader. I'd almost started to believe it, as my ego, like most egos, is very persuasive, but this didn't last long. I know my ego is a liar, so I pushed back. I knew that I had not always been decisive. I knew that I had made many bad decisions as a leader and I knew that I was absolutely not born with the ability to make consequential decisions. It was something that I had learned through trial and error. Decision making was a process. I had developed a mental checklist that, over time, had become so automatic that I was barely cognizant of it anymore. So I pulled out my notebook and reviewed the exact steps I worked through when I needed to make a decision. After a few minutes I had written down my methodology in a checklist format and then I ran through it over and over again as I think through a decision. So the checklist is not a static one-time process, but it is actually a loop that I repeat over and over. An hour later, we reconvened the group and I explained this thought process. I used to make decisions, which is the backbone of how I lead. Making decisions and then steering, as subtly as the situation allows, those decisions into execution is what leadership consists of. I call this process the extreme ownership leadership loop. While most components of this checklist should certainly be familiar from my books and podcasts, assembling them together into a checklist protocol that guides decision making is something people have found very useful. It forces leaders to continually analyze the decisions they are making, constantly considering if their decision makes sense in a comprehensive way that is in keeping with the principles of extreme ownership. Here are the components of the loop Time, the laws of combat, leadership, cover and move. Simple, prioritize and execute, decentralize, command, then ego, humility, emotions, perspective, mission, tactical and strategic Relationships, and repeat, these are the primary considerations when making a leadership decision. Now, how cool is that? The extreme ownership leadership loop, the extreme ownership leadership loop. That is a very cool checklist, isn't it? I'm sure we will be covering and going more in depth on each of these components and parts at a much later date, but for now, as a leader yourself and for leading others, do you have your own leadership decision making process checklist? If not, why not? So in today's module minute, let's begin to think through and develop our own leadership loop checklist. Perhaps some processes, some systems and, yes, we could steal from Jaco and just use his, but I don't want to do that, not just yet. Let's stretch ourselves and think through ourselves, think through our vocation in life, our responsibilities, our commitments and, just like Jaco, put pen to paper. Let us sit down and put pen to paper and come up with our own checklist, our own processes, our own systems. Let's put theory and action in, execute this simple exercise by doing the hard work upfront, with some originality. It will certainly help us in the long run to become better leaders ourselves and therefore better leaders of our family and our teams.

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at team mojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.