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Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

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Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#21

Post by thinkfurther »

bitexploder wrote: post #11
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 m…

No, I'm dismissing it based on content. And the war didn't "happen", it was all actions of people. One element of it was Colin Powell sweating as he made his bullshit WMD presentation in front of the UN. Anyone with half a brain and half a gut would have seen all that crap for what it is.

It's great he's such a great guy within the larger context of being a shitty guy, but that's like being a very good doctor on the Titanic -- you'd save more lives by telling people to not go on that ship.

> It isn't all trite militaristic BS.

Wait, so I'm supposed to judge the article based on a book? Gift it to me and I'll read it. Otherwise, nah.

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#22

Post by bitexploder »

thinkfurther wrote: post #18
bitexploder wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This seems like digging at meaningless pedantry now. We are arguing over phrasing and not intent. In almost any corporate or military environment it is extremely common for leaders to blame some external circumstance for the failure of a given project or mission, instead of looking at themselves as the root cause of failure. I think it is "understood" that this is the common definition of "taking" responsibility vs. displacing it to some external entity (a subordinate). This is not about absolution for mistakes but how a leader is the ultimate responsible party for leadership decisions that put subordinates and projects into a box that can define the ultimate success or failure of goals.

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#23

Post by beaconstudios »

thinkfurther wrote: post #20
beaconstudios wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 me…

I think your hostility towards the military is getting in the way of discussing these ideas as they would apply outside the military. Just because the failure mode of a military leader isn't the same as a civilian leader, doesn't mean that advice for actually-beneficial leadership in the military doesn't apply to civilian life.

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#25

Post by throwaway2016a »

One piece is probably relevant in war but not as much in tech companies:

> Good leaders don't make excuses, they find a way to win

In war, if you lose a battle people on your team die. In tech, if you lose you hopefully learned a valuable lesson you can take into the next battle. All you lost was money (and runway probably).

Granted, the industry's obsession with "failure is good" may be taken a little bit too far sometimes. You have to win at least part of the time or you go out of business.

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#26

Post by [deleted] »

grecy wrote: post #16
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.

[deleted]

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#27

Post by damnfine »

thinkfurther wrote: post #21
bitexploder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

No, I'm dismissing it based on content. And the war didn't "happen", it was all actions of people. One element of it was Colin Powell sweating as he made his bullshit WMD presentation in front of the UN. Anyone with half a brain and half a gut would have seen all that crap for what it is. It's great he's such a great guy within the larger context of being a shitty guy, but that's like being a very good doctor on the…

If we wrote off every great thinker who also thought or did 'bad stuff', we would be quite poor technologically and philisophically.

Think further man.

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#29

Post by ryanx435 »

Jocko has a wonderful podcast where he reads exerts from various historical military auto/biographies. He really focuses on the extreme realities and hardships of war, and how good leadership is often the key ingredient that can keep a unit operating and keep their soldiers alive.

it is most definitely worth a listen or three

Re: Leadership Lessons from a Former Navy SEAL

#30

Post by ryanx435 »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #25

One piece is probably relevant in war but not as much in tech companies: > Good leaders don't make excuses, they find a way to win In war, if you lose a battle people on your team die. In tech, if you lose you hopefully learned a valuable lesson you can take into the next battle. All you lost was money (and runway probably). Granted, the industry's obsession with "failure is good" may be taken a little bit too far so…

In war, often if you win a battle people on your team die.

and yet both war and tech leadership is the same: driving a group of humans to work together towards a common goal.

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