“As a leader, it is up to you to explain the bigger picture to him—and to all your front line leaders. That is a critical component of leadership”

Is this what I want to be? This? Is this all I’ve got—is this everything I can give? Is this going to be my life? Do I accept that?

The most fundamental and important truths at the heart of Extreme Ownership: there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.

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.

Departments and groups within the team must break down silos, depend on each other and understand who depends on them.

We wrote this so that the leadership lessons can continue to impact teams beyond the battlefield in all leadership situations—any company, team, or organization in which a group of people strives to achieve a goal and accomplish a mission.

We learned that leadership requires belief in the mission and unyielding perseverance to achieve victory, particularly when doubters question whether victory is even possible.

If mistakes happen, effective leaders don’t place blame on others. They take ownership of the mistakes, determine what went wrong, develop solutions to correct those mistakes and prevent them from happening again as they move forward.

The U.S. Navy SEAL Teams were at the forefront of this leadership transformation, emerging from the triumphs and tragedies of war with a crystallized understanding of what it takes to succeed in the most challenging environments that combat presents.

Cover and Move, Simple, Prioritize and Execute, and Decentralized Command.

The most impressive thing about this improvement in performance was that it did not come from a major process change or an advance in technology. Instead, it came through a leadership principle that has been around for ages: Simple.

Establishing an effective and repeatable planning process is critical to the success of any team.

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.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

Make it so good and so clear that it doesn’t need any further explanation.

If you win, you need not have to explain. If you lose, you should not be there to explain!

We stand at the end of the Age of Reason. A new era of the magical explanation of the world is rising.

Feelings you could never explain. That’s what poetry is.

How can I possibly explain that I was just too afraid to love you how can I possibly explain that I still do?

I don’t know how to explain it – the world feels possible again.

Love exists in the small moments of understanding when a person gets you without you needing to explain yourself to them.