“Leadership isn’t one person leading a team. It is a group of leaders working together, up and down the chain of command, to lead.”

The test for a successful brief is simple: Do the team and the supporting elements understand it?

Staying ahead of the curve prevents a leader from being overwhelmed when pressure is applied and enables greater decisiveness.

A good leader does not get bogged down in the minutia of a tactical problem at the expense of strategic success.

His realistic assessment, acknowledgment of failure, and ownership of the problem were key to developing a plan to improve performance and ultimately win.

There is only hard work, late nights, early mornings, practice, rehearsal, repetition, study, sweat, blood, toil, frustration, and discipline.

Leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities, between one extreme and another.

A mission statement tells your troops what you are doing.

People do not follow robots.

A good leader has nothing to prove, but everything to prove.

If we could execute with a monumental effort just to reach an immediate goal that everyone could see, we could then continue to the next visually.

I can remember many times when my boat crew struggled. It was easy to make excuses for our team’s performance and why it wasn’t what it should have been. But I learned that good leaders don’t make excuses. Instead, they figure out a way to get it done and win.

Repetitive exceptional performance became a habit.

All elements within the greater team are crucial and must work together to accomplish the mission, mutually supporting one another for that singular purpose.

But we can’t ever think we are too good to fail or that our enemies are not capable, deadly, and eager to exploit our weaknesses. We must never get complacent. This is where controlling the ego is most important.

Get after it.

Generally, when a leader struggles, the root cause behind the problem is that the leader has leaned too far in one direction and steered off course. Awareness.

Your leadership is always moving in the direction of your strongest thought.

I am a leader. Leaders always get heat. They’re always going against the grain. Jimi Hendrix got heat; Bob Marley got heat; Miles Davis got heat. Every great artist got heat. Heat means you’re doing something right.

Great businesses come from great leadership, great leadership comes from great flexibility and great flexibility comes from great control. great control will give you a great life. 

A leader, once convinced a particular course of action is the right one, must have the determination to stick with it and be undaunted when the going gets tough.

We need progressive leaders everywhere who will reform our broken and racist criminal justice system.

The only difference between Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders is that Gorbachev is alive.

I believe a good leader brings out the best in people by listening to them, trusting in them, believing in them, respecting them and letting them have a go.

I think I’m a natural-born leader. I know how to bow down to authority if it’s authority that I respect.