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The only meaningful measure for a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails.

Jocko Willink

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.
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Accomplishment Company Leadership Lesson People Team
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.
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Direction Leader Problem Struggle
Repetitive exceptional performance became a habit.
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Performance
The only meaningful measure for a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails.
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Failure Success Team
And the more you build your will by doing hard things, the stronger your will becomes.
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Strong Willing Yourself
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.
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Control Enemy Failure Goodness Important Thinking
Leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities, between one extreme and another.
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Leadership Quality
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.
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Control Discipline Freedom Result Time
When it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate. When setting expectations, no matter what has been said or written, if substandard performance is accepted and no one is held accountable.
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Acceptance Expectation Leadership Tolerance
The most fundamental and important truths at the heart of Extreme Ownership: there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.
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Bad Fundamental Heart Important Leadership Team Truth
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
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Myself Reputation Responsibility Right Time
There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.
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Blame Development Failure Leadership Mistake Oneself Win
Decisively engaged?
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Decision Marriage
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.
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Best Decision Failure Leadership Possible Team
Staying ahead of the curve prevents a leader from being overwhelmed when pressure is applied and enables greater decisiveness.
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Decision Force Greatness Leadership Stay
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.
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Development Leadership Mistake Wrong
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.
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Goodness Importance Leadership Team
Leaders must always operate with the understanding that they are part of something greater than themselves and their own personal interests.
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Greatness Leadership Understand
The focus must always be on how to best accomplish the mission.
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Accomplishment Best Focus
You have to BE VIGILANT. You have to be ON GUARD. You have to HOLD THE LINE on the seemingly insignificant little things— things that shouldn’t matter—but that do.
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Importance Worth Yourself
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.
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Born Fight Force Leadership Tough War
Such concepts are simple, but not easy,
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Easy Simplicity
Calm but not robotic, logical but not devoid of emotions.
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Emotional Logic Technology
Our freedom to operate and maneuver had increased substantially through disciplined procedures. Discipline equals freedom.
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Discipline Equality Freedom Ourselves
Don’t ask your leader what you should do, tell them what you are going to do.
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Future Leadership Yourself
When it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.
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Leadership Philosophy Tolerance
Establishing an effective and repeatable planning process is critical to the success of any team.
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Establishment Planning Success Team

The only meaningful measure for a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails.

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The only meaningful measure for a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails.

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