“A leader must lead but also be ready to follow. Sometimes, another member of the team—perhaps a subordinate or direct report—might be in a better position to develop a plan, make a decision, or lead through a specific situation.”

Extreme Ownership. Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame.

When it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.

After all, there can be no leadership where there is no team.

Good leaders don’t make excuses.

As a leader, you have to balance the dichotomy, to be resolute where it matters but never inflexible and uncompromising on matters of little importance to the overall good of the team and the strategic mission.

Leaders must accept total responsibility, own problems that inhibit performance, and develop solutions to those problems.

leadership is the single greatest factor in any team’s performance.

Once people stop making excuses, stop blaming others, and take ownership of everything in their lives, they are compelled to take action to solve their problems.

There are no bad units, only bad officers. This captures the essence of what Extreme Ownership is all about.

Although discipline demands control and asceticism, it actually results in freedom. When you have the discipline to get up early, you are rewarded with more free time.

More than a decade of continuous war and tough combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan gave birth to a new generation of leaders in the ranks of America’s fighting forces.

Whether on the battlefield or in the business world, leaders must be comfortable accepting some level of risk.

Most important of all, he believed winning was possible.

I had to take ownership of everything that went wrong. Despite the tremendous blow to my reputation and to my ego, it was the right thing to do—the only thing to do. I

The infamous they.

To not move around, observe, and analyze, in order to make the best decisions possible, was to fail as a leader and fail the team.