Beginner Mistakes That Make You Look Like A Weak Leader | Jocko Willink | Sean Glass

0:00 most of the people that ever worked for me they'd be like oh freaking joo's like he'll let me do whatever I want there's a few people that were not squared away and if you said oh how is it working for Joo they'd be oh he's a complete micromanager if I'm micromanaging you there's a reason why I'm micromanaging you two biggest takeaways from a leadership perspective one is if you came in there with a big ego from a leadership perspective you your people were going to suffer your people were going to suffer for six months if you couldn't freaking uh change that and that I'm not saying I'm also not not saying this but I'm not saying that was because my guys would hone in on you and Crush you I'm saying that because you would fail to take on the lessons learn and if you're a platoon Commander or a platoon Chief that's not accepting those Lessons

0:45 Learned you're making the same mistakes which means every night is a rough night for your platoon and we saw plenty of platoon you feel bad for these guys where every night is a rough night for that platoon and it's 100 % on that on that leader and one of my favorite experiments to run and I'm sure you did something similar was uh sometime in a scenario I would eventually not every night but every platoon Commander that came through got this at least once when I was there uh I'd kill them in a scenario we'd be doing one of these big ftxs and i' put him down and I wanted to see what was going to happen and typically one of three things would happen one everything would just grind

1:31 to a halt everything would grind to a halt no one would make a call no one would want to make the next decision everybody would just kind of freeze and what that tells me that I need to talk to that platoon Commander about is just he's micromanaging the same thing I was doing as a platoon Commander he's micromanaging and his people are afraid to make that call the second thing that happened is hey everything went great guys picked up the slack they covered they you know covered and move for each other they got the job done and what that told me was the guy did a great job of decentralized command that his people knew what was up and they were not afraid to make decisions the one that was always my favorite to watch is we would remove the platoon commander and everything would just get so much better just so much better uh and that tells me

2:17 that person was just a freaking egomaniac just a hurdle just get that person out of the way and let the platoon do what they know is right yeah yeah it's crazy to watch and you could do the same thing like uh you might have a super strong platoon Chief and it'd be the same thing you kill him and everything grinds to a halt or you kill him and people people start stepping up you know it's just you got to do those things and you definitely learn and the ego thing most vast majority of the time guys would they would get they they would take the lessons on board they'd be like yeah we suck last night God that was horrible I'm embarrassed you know I can't believe we did that and over you know five ftxs by the fifth one the land Warfare Cadre can't beat the T the task unit

3:04 anymore they can't beat the troop anymore they're too good they maneuver too quick they're covering for each other they're keeping things simple they prioritize like they're just executing and you can't there's nothing you can do about it which is great that's what we always wanted to see some it was weird sometimes you'd get a platoon or a troop that would think you wanted them to fail which is the craziest thing in the world like bro you're my friend like I grew up with you I want you to win dude but you can't do this dumb you can't do that you got to stop doing that um but vast majority of the time they were learning and it was great I one thing that I'll never forget is seeing guys like have an Enlightenment right seeing like a troop Commander or a platoon Commander or a platoon Chief or just seeing them have like an Enlightenment and they would go from literally being a

3:50 bad leader and they'd figure it out and then they become a good leader like almost instantaneously that was always awesome to see uh but man the experience that you get from a leadership perspective at at that in that trade at position I was so lucky because when I was an E5 I was at Seal Team 1 and I was in training cell and I was teaching this is before there was sqt so I was teaching like new guy officers we were taking them out with the new guy enlisted guys and we'd go out and I would be doing iads with them and like I'd be detached and I would see what it looked like and I would see what work and what didn't work so by the time I was an officer like I had already done like what with the equivalent of a trade at tour it's freaking so lucky so lucky the the word that you just used that attachment piece was the second big lesson learn which is

4:37 the second usually that's the light bulb moment for most people is when they realize hey I I have to detach from what's going on right here from a leadership perspective I can't be the person that's patching up the wounded people uh all of the sudden things would get a lot better for that entire entire platoon entire troop and usually it would take a pretty rough night before you could convince them like you got to step back some people are harder than others and they wouldn't learn quite as quick but hey when you kill them yeah and all of a sudden they're alive and they're just sitting there listening to what's happening they're watching and the all of a sudden the answers become very clear but they're not allowed to do anything about it and I remember so many guys be like this is what you should be doing you see how you know what's going on you see how you're monitoring this you see you see how you see what they should be doing right he's like y you

5:23 didn't know that 3 minutes ago yeah because you were freaking clearing rooms like an idiot you shouldn't be clearing rooms you shouldn't be working on W guy you shouldn't be handling these prisoners all that stuff that you're doing like how many rounds do you have how many mags do you have left I have two mags left out of nine wrong dude what are you doing bro stop you're a leader yeah I was fortunate enough to learn that lesson uh early on the ability to detach and that was one of the things that I would always try to impart on leaders people in leadership positions as quickly as I could so when I was running third phase and we were exposing these young officers to tactics for the first time we'd run these immediate action drills and they would just be nightmares I mean one because they're just learning but two because they would shoot seven out of nine mags

6:09 and then the next round that we would go I would talk to him uh in between runs and I would just say hey look man your job is not to do that your job is to maneuver the platoon you have a platoon that's your weapon system your weapon system as a seal platoon Commander is your platoon it's not your rifle and get comfortable with that and then we'd let him go again some guys got it some guys didn't and if they didn't the next run I would take their gun and guess guess what would happen the second I would take their gun all of the sudden they're making good calls because they're not worried about seeing the world through a rifle scope uh anymore and it was the same thing at trade at as soon as you can get people to understand they had to remove themsel from those scenarios the better off that it was going to be for every single person that was inside of that Trooper inside of that platoon yeah

6:56 I want to make a quick note you you're talk you've been talking about your career most the vast majority of your career you've had a lot of autonomy and been able to do a lot of things and that was very similar to my career um but I would say cuz I was kind of you know tracking your career you know first of all when I was putting you through training and and then you know through just guys that I would talk to and what what team they're at what platoon how they doing you were squared away and when you're squared away things are a lot easier when you're squared away you get a lot more leeway when you're squared away when you do a good job when you're professional when people can trust you when your when your boss trust you when the Ops Master Chief when the Ops officer when the EXO when the co when people trust you you can do you can

7:43 do a lot more and it it's all those little things that you mentioned it's you know making sure that everyone's professional but it's also like hey doing a good job during operations and when you screw things up saying hey this is my fault here's when we do to fix it like all these things are what lead to Freedom and and having this autonomy there's I always say if you talk to most of the people that ever worked for me they'd be like oh freaking jao's like he'll let me do whatever I want like he was just he let me do anything anything I want to do he let me do it there's a few people that were not squared away and if you said oh how was it working for Joo they'd be oh he's a complete micromanager there's a reason I'm micromanaging if I'm micromanaging you there's a reason why I'm micromanaging you and I just wanted to point that out you know you had a great reputation

8:29 of being sared away of being professional of getting the job done of making good decisions and that gives you a ton of leeway and look can you get a micromanager that's like doesn't matter what you do they're going to micromanage you yep can you be in a situation where like you're talking about the beginning of that deployment the first month where look even the you know we talked about a platoon Commander never being a platoon Commander before and uh and a platoon Chief never be in well whoever is in charge during the initial assault of missou they' probably never been in that hey were going to go assault do a Siege assault on a city they probably never been in that position either so they're doing the best they can they didn't quite figure it out so the only thing they know to do is just like control kind of like when you were at at land Warfare as a troop commander and you're like or as a platoon Commander I think you said and you're going to

9:15 control everything there was probably a leader there thinking I'm going to control everything I got to make sure that we don't make any mistakes I don't want to have any this I don't want to have any that so they get very in the micromanagement mode and something happens to happen where they can readjust their mindset in this case two star flies out looks at what's going on on the ground and says this is not right and then put some trust back in the troops on the ground but I just wanted to point that out if you as a person listening to this are feel like you're getting like man oh I heard Sean glass he got to do whatever he want I'm going to tell you Shan glass earned the right to do whatever he wanted he earned that freedom and if you're feeling like you're micro getting micromanaged it's not the responsibility of your boss to figure out that you need more fre it's your job to prove to your boss that

10:03 you're going to make good decisions that you're going to be professional that you're going to when something goes wrong you're going to take ownership like all these are important lessons and you've kind of you kind of spelled out almost like a fantasy career of I got to do what I want I got a lot of leeway I got this I got that I mean getting you had you already got three platoon as a troop Commander then they gave you five platoon as a troop Commander that's not normal they had a huge amount of trust in you as a leader to step up and be able to do that so I just wanted to point that out if people if you're listening to this and you're thinking man that guy had great bosses he didn't get micromanaged I'm going to tell you Shawn earned that right to not be micromanaged and I think that's an important thing to point out