Jocko Willink Quotes

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.
JOCKO WILLINK

Accomplishment Company Leadership Lesson People Team
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.
JOCKO WILLINK

Challenge Leadership Present Success Team Tragedy Transformation Understand War Win
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.
JOCKO WILLINK

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

Achievement Belief Leadership Learning Perseverance Possible Victory
Cover and Move, Simple, Prioritize and Execute, and Decentralized Command.
JOCKO WILLINK

Act Simplicity
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.
JOCKO WILLINK

Age Change Improvement Leadership Simplicity Technology
The test for a successful brief is simple: Do the team and the supporting elements understand it?
JOCKO WILLINK

Success Team Understand
Establishing an effective and repeatable planning process is critical to the success of any team.
JOCKO WILLINK

Establishment Planning Success Team
Staying ahead of the curve prevents a leader from being overwhelmed when pressure is applied and enables greater decisiveness.
JOCKO WILLINK

Decision Force Greatness Leadership Stay
A good leader does not get bogged down in the minutia of a tactical problem at the expense of strategic success.
JOCKO WILLINK

Goodness Leadership Problem Success
His realistic assessment, acknowledgment of failure, and ownership of the problem were key to developing a plan to improve performance and ultimately win.
JOCKO WILLINK

Development Failure Himself Improvement Problem Win
There is only hard work, late nights, early mornings, practice, rehearsal, repetition, study, sweat, blood, toil, frustration, and discipline.
JOCKO WILLINK

Discipline Inspirational Morning Night Practice Success
Leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities, between one extreme and another.
JOCKO WILLINK

Leadership Quality
A mission statement tells your troops what you are doing.
JOCKO WILLINK

Team Yourself
People do not follow robots.
JOCKO WILLINK

People Technology
A good leader has nothing to prove, but everything to prove.
JOCKO WILLINK

Deep Goodness Leadership
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.
JOCKO WILLINK

Effort Goal See
Repetitive exceptional performance became a habit.
JOCKO WILLINK

Performance
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.
JOCKO WILLINK

Goodness Leadership Learning Myself Remember Struggle Time Win
All elements within the greater team are crucial and must work together to accomplish the mission, mutually supporting one another for that singular purpose.
JOCKO WILLINK

Accomplishment Greatness Support Team Togetherness
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.
JOCKO WILLINK

Control Enemy Failure Goodness Important Thinking
Get after it.
JOCKO WILLINK

Inspirational One Liner
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.
JOCKO WILLINK

Direction Leader Problem Struggle
So how can a leader become great if they lack the natural characteristics necessary to lead? The answer is simple: a good leader builds a great team that counterbalances their weaknesses.
JOCKO WILLINK

Greatness Leadership Necessary Simplicity Team Weakness
There is no easy way.
JOCKO WILLINK

Easy Hard Time Inspirational
Instead of letting the situation dictate our decisions, we must dictate the situation.
JOCKO WILLINK

Control Decision Ourselves
Faster. Stronger. Smarter. More humble. Less ego.
JOCKO WILLINK

Humble Instagram Captions Strong

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