Extreme Ownership – Leadership lessons from SEALS

Hey guys what is up welcome back to my blog I’m so thankful that you guys took the time out of your day to read my blog post. Hope you all are safe from the COVID-19 and having a great day. I found out about this book from Jay Shetty’s podcast and I just had to check it out so let’s get into it.

There’s no better way to explain leadership than for a soldier to explain it. Leaders in the army need to make decisions that can lead to the life or death of themselves and their comrades. This is the sole reason why I picked up the book and it was a very good decision. By talking about how using the most uncomfortable thing for any person ‘ownership’ one can become a great leader, Jocko and Leif set the standards for leaders up high and also give us the tools to reach those standards.

The book is told from switching perspectives between Jocko and Leif with them giving accounts of their missions as SEALS in Ramadi. While they give many exciting accounts of their missions the main theme is always to provide us with an idea of how a principle works and how it should be implemented. By discussing how a principle works both on the battlefield and in the buisness world, a clear picture is set about the principles that are required for a leader.

Now for the two tactis that I loved the most from the book. The first is to ‘Keep it simple’. Sounds really really anti-climactic right ? This is supposed to be one of my favourite principles and yet it sounds so simple. Well it’s my favourite because unknowingly I have been implementing this in my life. I haven’t always been in a great leadership position in my life but for the time that I have been, I knew that I liked to keep it simple. I wasn’t the type to call in a meeting with everyone and have everyone go through an entire list of what needs to be done in a very formal manner. I would simple say what was needed and move towards the execution phase and the reason it helped was because by keeping it simple everyone understood what they needed to do and was able to work much much more efficiently than if we had devised 1000 clauses of rules instead of setting basic rules.

Another thing that the book talks about which I liked was the prioritise and execute move. I have to admit, I always multitask and have tons of things to do which I try to finish at the same time and I always messed up in the end. What’s so great about this tactic is that it can be used both for a team as a leader and for an idividial as well. For a leader, he can choose the most important project that needs to be worked on and for an individual he can select what part of the project assigned to him is most important for him to finish and start working on it creating an efficient work flow.

The book with its many accounts of exciting SEAL adventures and principles which are explaiend in a very simple method is a must read for every leader in the world not only for themselves to lead more efficiently but for their team to work more efficiently and be more satisfied instead of stressed with their work. While Extreme Ownership may seem tough at first, please know that by executing it you will be able to break through the initial discomfort and become a much better leader. Do check out the book and tell me what you think.

So that is it for this post guys hope you got some value from this.  Thank you guys for reading to the end hit me up on Instagram and Twitter with your thoughts and if you have any ideas on what I should write about. Stay safe from the COVID-19. Thank you again and I’ll see you all next week.