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Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

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Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#11

Post by bitexploder »

thinkfurther wrote: post #4

The real leaders in a war of aggression are those who don't show up or fight on the other side. "Leadership" and "excellence" and all that wank is really just that, wank. It's a compensation price for those who got broken as kid and never mustered any resolve worth a crap later on. > He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for h…

You are falling into a classic fallacy of dismissing the information due to it's source. The fact is the war happened and these SEALs learned what they learned, working as one of the most effective units in the war. What you wrote could be true, while everything Jocko has to teach you can be true and useful too. I was extremely skeptical, but I read his book and there is value in what he teaches. It isn't all trite militaristic BS. Some of it is, of course, he has his world view, but that is easy enough to separate from what made them so good in a chaotic environment. I encourage anyone reading this to put aside their well earned bias against most military figures and dig a little deeper if the topic of leadership and personal responsibility are of interest.

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#12

Post by myth_drannon »

josephcooney wrote: post #2

Jocko's podcast is pretty good. The recent one with Harley Flanagan was a bit of an eye opener. http://jockopodcast2.com/2017/05/10/74-hard-times-violence-d...

I find them boring, too much about himself and how much Navy SEALS are that or this.

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#13

Post by bitexploder »

thinkfurther wrote: post #10
PeanutCurry wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of what you said actually makes sense. "Real leaders in a war of aggression are those who don't show up or fight on the other side", then what about people who command from the field? What about the massive ability of a General's ability to affect the outcome of a war from the planning rooms? Even your final phrase, "lead, follow, or get out of the way" makes no sense because there are literally no other courses…

> what about people who command from the field? What about the massive ability of a General's ability to affect the outcome of a war from the planning rooms? What about it? > Even your final phrase, "lead, follow, or get out of the way" makes no sense because there are literally no other courses of action available and you make no real defense of any of the three beyond preceding that statement with a quote from Eins…

Sure, that quote with no context is reduced to meaningless platitude. The context is that no matter what a leader, the person responsible for making decisions and owning them owns it all and never puts blame on a subordinate for failure. If something goes wrong, the buck stops with the leader. When a team can rely on it's leadership to take responsibility for failure and to share the success broadly and generously amazing things can happen. It really is not so different in philosophy from Adam Grant and his whole take on givers and takers. Takers are basically selfish and focus on themselves. Givers give freely to others and seem much more likely to be good leaders willing to take responsibility and negative consequences onto themselves to spare their team, but also to understand a failure and improve. It also allows teams to share success and is in my book a "proven" leadership style that yields results in the real world.

Edit: Also -- it is a fair practice to be skeptical of any group that gets beatified in the media and by military PR wonks. But I have read his book and listened to his words and directly applied his general principles to my day to day life and it has helped me personally. It did not change my political views or dislike of military culture one bit.

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#14

Post by beaconstudios »

thinkfurther wrote: post #9
arethuza wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eistein apparently wrote that in 1931 - but in 1939 when faced with the appalling prospect of a nuclear armed Nazi Germany he co-authored a letter to FDR with Leo Szilard recommending that the US research atomic weapons. I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment, war is literally hell and the people I know who feel this more strongly are combat veterans, but outright pacifism in the face of a relentless aggressor like…

> he co-authored a letter to FDR with Leo Szilard recommending that the US research atomic weapons. That should clue you in about how this has nothing to do with "pacifism". It would be more pacifistic to not express disgust than to express it, and it would be more pacifistic for me to not comment. Yet here we are. To oppose death and its apprentices, you do NOT have to march in rank and file, and you DON'T need "her…

but leadership doesn't demand obedience, it earns it. A good leader sets an example that others want to follow, they don't shout orders at people with no justification for following them. In fact, one of the traits mentioned in the article is that an effective leader tells their people why they are doing what they are doing, which is much more humanistic than the """leadership""" expressed in most large organisations (which is really just superficial authority, rather than leadership).

> You have to organize, but there is nothing there that cannot spring from strength and cooperation

Even spontaneous militias (and civilian groups) have leaders.

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#15

Post by [deleted] »

thinkfurther wrote: post #10
PeanutCurry wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of what you said actually makes sense. "Real leaders in a war of aggression are those who don't show up or fight on the other side", then what about people who command from the field? What about the massive ability of a General's ability to affect the outcome of a war from the planning rooms? Even your final phrase, "lead, follow, or get out of the way" makes no sense because there are literally no other courses…

> what about people who command from the field? What about the massive ability of a General's ability to affect the outcome of a war from the planning rooms? What about it? > Even your final phrase, "lead, follow, or get out of the way" makes no sense because there are literally no other courses of action available and you make no real defense of any of the three beyond preceding that statement with a quote from Eins…

[deleted]

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#16

Post by grecy »

spodek wrote: post #8

What is it with business media fawning over SEALs? It has nonstop SEAL articles. The articles all suffer from the same problem: they tell you the results, implying that reading about them will get you the results, at least partly. If that were the case, SEALs would just read these articles. They don't because reading the articles doesn't get you results. Training does. It's like expecting to get strong by reading abo…

The US is gearing up for another war (North Korea).

Step one is convincing the citizens it's worthwhile.

They need to up the image of their military, especially their elite who are seen as "the persona" of the military.

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#17

Post by 0xJRS »

josephcooney wrote: post #2

Jocko's podcast is pretty good. The recent one with Harley Flanagan was a bit of an eye opener. http://jockopodcast2.com/2017/05/10/74-hard-times-violence-d...

I really like his channel. Some episodes are boring and the books are kind of long when he reads in the beginning but overall I like them. Love the Q/A episodes though. My favorite episode for anyone who wants to just check it out is 69 - The Real Top Gun.

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#18

Post by thinkfurther »

bitexploder wrote: post #13
thinkfurther wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what about people who command from the field? What about the massive ability of a General's ability to affect the outcome of a war from the planning rooms? What about it? > Even your final phrase, "lead, follow, or get out of the way" makes no sense because there are literally no other courses of action available and you make no real defense of any of the three beyond preceding that statement with a quote from Eins…

Sure, that quote with no context is reduced to meaningless platitude. The context is that no matter what a leader, the person responsible for making decisions and owning them owns it all and never puts blame on a subordinate for failure. If something goes wrong, the buck stops with the leader. When a team can rely on it's leadership to take responsibility for failure and to share the success broadly and generously am…

You cannot "take" responsibility. You can face the responsibility you have, or don't. You cannot shed one iota of it, or take one additional iota. And "subordinates" or also responsible for the orders they follow. Their leader cannot absolve them.

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#19

Post by beaconstudios »

spodek wrote: post #8

What is it with business media fawning over SEALs? It has nonstop SEAL articles. The articles all suffer from the same problem: they tell you the results, implying that reading about them will get you the results, at least partly. If that were the case, SEALs would just read these articles. They don't because reading the articles doesn't get you results. Training does. It's like expecting to get strong by reading abo…

I've always thought that there should be more hand-on bootcamp-style training available to civilians in areas like business. Funnily enough from what I've read it sounds like YC is somewhat like that for the first few months.

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#20

Post by thinkfurther »

beaconstudios wrote: post #14
thinkfurther wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he co-authored a letter to FDR with Leo Szilard recommending that the US research atomic weapons. That should clue you in about how this has nothing to do with "pacifism". It would be more pacifistic to not express disgust than to express it, and it would be more pacifistic for me to not comment. Yet here we are. To oppose death and its apprentices, you do NOT have to march in rank and file, and you DON'T need "her…

but leadership doesn't demand obedience, it earns it. A good leader sets an example that others want to follow, they don't shout orders at people with no justification for following them. In fact, one of the traits mentioned in the article is that an effective leader tells their people why they are doing what they are doing, which is much more humanistic than the """leadership""" expressed in most large organisations…

> A good leader sets an example that others want to follow

So does any random decent person, no leadership or subordination required.

> one of the traits mentioned in the article is that an effective leader tells their people why they are doing what they are doing,

Except they don't. They are repeating the rationalizations and their weak-ass half-truths that were hammered into their head. I doubt this guy told his men that they're there to control oil and whatnot.

> Even spontaneous militias (and civilian groups) have leaders.

Except the second they're unfit, they have nothing to say anymore. Because it arises naturally. Compare to the military where disobeying orders doesn't result in "Oh well, I should have made you want to do this, it's my fault you don't want to do it. Don't worry, we're cool."

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