What's on Your Bookshelf?

002 - What's On Your Bookshelf (Exclusive Series): Extreme Ownership

• Denise Russo and Zach Elliott • Season 1 • Episode 2

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We explore the transformative concept of Extreme Ownership from Jocko Willink and Leif Babin's book on Navy SEAL leadership principles applied to business and life. Through powerful military examples and business parallels, we unpack how taking complete responsibility as a leader creates a culture of accountability and success.

• Leaders own everything in their world—there are no bad teams, only bad leaders
• Taking responsibility for both successes and failures builds trust and team discipline
• "Blue on blue" incidents (friendly fire) in business occur when internal teams work against each other
• Leaders must clearly explain strategic missions, develop tactics, and secure proper training and resources
• Setting aside ego is essential for effective leadership and problem-solving
• Emotional intelligence and self-awareness are foundational leadership qualities
• Conducting a "responsibility audit" helps identify leadership improvement opportunities
• You can't force people to excel—true leadership inspires voluntary commitment

If you're interested in developing your leadership skills through professional coaching, reach out through the links in our show notes. Next week, we'll dive deeper into leadership principles with Leif Babin.


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Denise:

Welcome to the exclusive series of what's on your Bookshelf, a life and leadership podcast where we live out loud the pages of the books that are on our shelves, with your host, denise Russo and Zach Elliott.

Zach:

Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of what's on your Bookshelf. This is a life and leadership podcast where we are living out loud the pages of the books on our bookshelves. This is our exclusive edition series. My name is Denise Russo. I'm here with my co-, host, zach Elliott, and we are exploring the book Extreme Ownership how the US Navy Seals Lead and Win. Zach, it's so great to see you today. How are you doing?

Denise:

I'm doing well. Thank you for having me back. I'm excited to dive into this first chapter and tell you a little bit about the lessons I've learned from it.

Zach:

Awesome, so this chapter is the first chapter of the book. Last week if you're just new to joining the episode, we talked about the intro of the book, and so now we're going to get into the meat and potatoes of the book. The name of the book is Extreme Ownership. This chapter is called Extreme Ownership and really the key takeaway that I took from this chapter, Zach, is that leaders own everything in their world, that there's no bad teams, there's really just bad leaders, and that the leaders are truly and ultimately responsible for everything 100%.

Denise:

That is probably one of the biggest lessons you can take out of this first chapter. I also think one of the things is to hit on for chapter one is they take ownership of everything, in success and in failure, because a good leader will come up and say, hey, I know you messed up, that's on me because I didn't explain the process. Now, bad leaders will only celebrate the successes. Hey, you sold X amount of last quarter, I'm so excited. And that leadership is taking things. They didn't talk about the processes of getting there. They didn't go in and say, hey, let's see if we can get that number a little higher. Here's some goals and visions that I want to share with you. But if they failed, the leadership could, in a bad leadership situation, point the finger and say, hey, why did you fail?

Zach:

Yeah, yeah, bad leadership situation point the finger and say, hey, why did you fail? Yeah, yeah, well, and in this case, in this chapter, for bad leader fails, people die.

Denise:

Oh yes, they do Very good.

Zach:

This is the real life examples they give you. If the leadership fails, it happens, yeah, so let's talk a little bit about that, zach. So this chapter really starts out with a story that is extreme.

Denise:

Starts out with a story that is extreme, not something that we deal with in corporate comfy chairs, no. So the book starts out in Iraq where they have a blue on blue or a friendly fire incident and there was a lot of contributing factors to the incident that happened within the book. But the person on the ground, who was Jocko, the author of the book, took full responsibility of this mistake and by doing so, what he did is he set that standard for the accountability and it reinforced the trust and discipline within his team standard for the accountability and it reinforced the trust and discipline within his team.

Zach:

Let me help our listeners understand what this is from somebody who is not a military person. Blue on blue was a new philosophy for me to hear, but it's very relevant in business. It basically says blue on blue, friendly fire, fratricide is the worst thing that can happen. To be killed or wounded by the enemy in battle was bad enough, but to be accidentally killed or wounded by friendly fire because someone had screwed up was the most horrible fate. But it was also a reality. So when I read that, I started to think about how sometimes in big businesses there's sort of this idea that if you pit teams against each other, that it's going to drive productivity. And what I think as a leader and I am one leader of millions, but as a leader myself I think that when you do that that friendly fire, that blue on blue, where you are working against your internal teams it only makes it easier for the opponent, which is your competitors and the companies that are selling the same thing you are, but with a different wrapper.

Denise:

A hundred percent. I couldn't agree more. There were incidents in my military career where we had in training what we call the friendly fire thing. Thank gosh it was in training. But you know you learn a lot from those mistakes and as a leader at that time of the certain teams that were going through there, you have to own up to those right. We turned wrong here. We did X Y Z incorrectly. This is why this resulted Now in the example that Jocko tells us in the book. This wasn't a training environment, this was a very hostile environment. And now if we relate that to a corporate type of hostile environment where friendly fire your interpretation was hey, helping out people, but people could come in and do X Y Z.

Denise:

I am a big believer in a corporate world of don't hoard information. Why, why, why are you hoarding all this information? What are you gaining out of this kind of thing? Now, when you work in big corporations, that that makes no sense to me. That makes zero sense. It makes zero sense at a small corporation. I think of the ma and pa. Uh, maybe we're looking at a dryer or refrigerator repair shop If the owner of that never shares his knowledge to somebody else, that little mom-pop refrigerator repair shop is going to close down because he's not able to keep going all the time and, at the end of the day, a leader needs to start leading and stop doing to start leading and stop doing.

Zach:

Well. And you make a really interesting point here, because in that case of a mom and pop shop, the owner of that store is responsible for every single piece of that store. And when we get into bigger companies, sometimes you get detached from what's happening on your teams and in this case it wasn't that Jocko shot the guy.

Denise:

No.

Zach:

But extreme ownership is about the fact that he was still responsible.

Zach:

And so he talks about how he really felt sick to his stomach because, thank God, the guy didn't die, he got wounded.

Zach:

But the point was that he took that very personally and he says in the book that he was kind of dreading the fact that he knew he was going to get back to the office.

Zach:

He was going to be facing a whole bunch of emails of people saying what the heck happened and how could you let this happen and what did you do to make this fail. And he ended up, I think, coming out of this with such confidence I don't know what the right adjective is I'm going to say grace gracefulness, I suppose, because he took extreme ownership over the situation, of which he really didn't have direct and personal control for. So if you're somebody who's in a C-suite or an executive level role, you may not always know what people are doing on the front line your call center people or your frontline engineers or maybe your administrative assistants but those are the people that are facing your customers every day. Those are the people that are making decisions that impact your business every day, whether they're retained or whether they're at high productivity levels or they're stressed out or burnt out. It still flows upstream to the leader.

Denise:

It always does, and how many times have you heard in a corporate environment oh, it's the leadership. They're doing it wrong. They're not giving us the information we need. What I really enjoyed about this chapter is whenever he went in and he started asking hey, who's responsible for this? And did you notice that the extreme ownership on his team where everybody was saying it's my fault, this is why? And he said no. Then he'd ask the next guy who's responsible for this? And the next guy raised his head. The whole team was trying to take accountability of what happened. Now, that is the magic of what extreme ownership is. If you have a leader who has extreme ownership, that information, as you say, trickles down sometimes. That's going to go into your team and they're going to start taking ownership and accountability even though they don't have anything to do with it.

Denise:

Yeah, so in the corporate world that's, that's easily, that happens a lot right In a corporate world where if I don't hit my number. I'm blaming my leadership.

Zach:

Yeah, there was a movie that came out, zach, and I can't. I can't think of the movie, right this second. Maybe it'll spark your mind, but it was a similar example where this person was um, this person was, I think, being convicted of something, maybe a crime. I wish I could think of the movie, because it's right on the tip of my tongue and I can't think of it. But so he was in the court, I believe, and was basically getting ready to be convicted of something. And so somebody in the courtroom stood up and said I'm the one that did it. And then another person stood up and said, no, I'm the one that did it. And then another person stood up and said, no, I'm the one that did it. And then another person stood up and said, no, I'm the one that did it. And what they were doing was saying they all had a part in protecting that person, but also in taking responsibility for what ultimately happened in whatever that situation is.

Denise:

I don't know what that movie is, but now I want to watch it.

Zach:

I'm going to have to think of what it was If any of you out there listening know what I'm talking about. That I'm not crazy. Let us know what the movie is, because it's right on the tip of my tongue.

Denise:

It is.

Zach:

And if you're a movie producer, it's probably a good idea to make another one, because it's kind of a good concept.

Denise:

I love it and I I appreciate that part of the um what Jocko was talking about when the rest of the team come on, because that solidifies what he is going after. When he wrote this book is taking extreme accountability and he instilled that in his team.

Zach:

Zach. He says something in here that struck me that I put not only highlighter marks, but I wrote about a whole bunch of leaders that I've worked with. Let me not let. They must first look in the mirror at themselves. The leader bears full responsibility for explaining the strategic mission, developing the tactics, securing the training and resources to enable the team to properly and successfully execute.

Zach:

Now, for years, zach, my role in corporate America, corporate global, was leading learning and development and leadership, development and coaching teams, and what I can tell you is what often took the back burner was funding for quality, enablement, better quality engagement and certainly more focused empowerment of people. And yet we knew that if people were enabled, engaged and empowered, that they would be able to maximize their potential and their purpose in that business. But for leaders that don't take that responsibility to share, what is the strategic mission of this company and how do the things that you do in your daily job tie to that strategic mission, when I, as a leader, am not telling you what the tactics are that are required? In other words, what are the things that you're going to be measured on for your success, so that we know if we're getting closer to that mission, and not to tell someone what to do or how to do it. But we want to be able, as leaders, to explain what's the bigger picture here and then to work collaboratively with the people to pull out their strengths and the opportunity areas that we have to develop the tactics to get that strategic mission successfully achieved.

Zach:

But then again he says, secure the training and the resources necessary. So when companies first lay off learning and development people, they don't invest in quality, certified business coaches for anybody at any level, whether you're a college student just coming into the business or you're the senior, most executive in that business. Resources are needed to help people to get from where they are today to where they are tomorrow. So this part really struck me that the success of any business certainly does rise and fall on leadership. But the success of any business also entails that leader explaining the mission, developing the tactics, securing training and resources for their people and then allowing them, once they're enabled, to be engaged and empowered to do the work.

Denise:

A few weeks ago, I heard a general by the name of retired General Keith Thurgood and he talked about WASasta W-A-S-T-A. Wasta is Arabic for guts, and he stated that good leaders have to have Wasta. And I think that that, right there, applies to what you are talking about, because you have got to have a leader with the guts to go in and say we need resources, we need this. Now I'm not saying that they need to go out and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on this kind of stuff, and a good leader is typically very resourceful. So, getting the resources for training and and enablement and things like that, especially after you have big cuts I understand that it is hard.

Denise:

Given the role that I currently have, it is hard sometimes to get that kind of stuff, but a good leader has to have that wasta to go in and ask for it, Cause there are a lot of people who will not go ask for things that they need. They don't know if no, what's. That's the worst thing that can happen as they say no. So we've got to get resourceful, we got to find new ways around these types of training. Maybe I have enough in my head that I can put down on a quick deck or I can do a quick video. You know there are a lot of different ways to get that training out there video. You know there are a lot of different ways to get that training out there, but I firmly believe in echoing what that retired general said, is that good leaders got to have WASDA, which is good.

Zach:

Man. I wrote that word down and I'm going to keep it on my desk because I'll tell you why. So in the book, the author says that it this is what he's talking about is this concept? He said it mandates that a leader set their ego aside, accept responsibility for failures, attack weaknesses and consistently work to build a better and more effective team. One time in my career, zach, I went through five reorgs in 18 months and in every part of those changes there was no WOSTA.

Denise:

No WOSTA.

Zach:

There wasn't, and I can recall in one situation. In one situation there was a leader who, at the end of one part of the reorgs, sent a note to some people who were going to be shifted and basically the note didn't say anything like here's the mission, here's what's going to happen, here's when it's going to happen, here's why it's happening, here's what you should focus on and here's how I'm supporting you. It didn't say any of that. The note said I can laugh only now because I wanted to cry. But it said I just want you all to know that I'm going to be okay. Thanks, thank you.

Denise:

Yeah.

Zach:

Now, that note also interestingly arrived right at the beginning of a holiday. Most of the people that got the note either were not going to see it until they came back from their holiday, or for people that became so chained to their computers and their cell phones and their desks were going to see it, just as they were getting ready to be out of the office for several days with no information, no wasta.

Denise:

No wasta whatsoever. So you mentioned something Ego. Ego is the enemy of leadership, right? True, leaders are going to set aside their ego. They're going to accept that responsibility and focus on finding those solutions. Now going back to where the training and needing the resources to do things you leaders also have. What? Another back reference back to general thoroughgood, where he said leaders have capacity. I think what capacity means doing more with less. Right, he said and listen to your team, but don't listen with your ears, listen with your eyes.

Zach:

I'm going to say listen with your heart too, though, because more is less, but there's at some point where the threshold of less is too little.

Denise:

I agree 100%.

Zach:

Companies are always wanting to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. Make you do more with less, do more with less, but not look at the reality of what is best. Sometimes, to get the best, you have to have more.

Denise:

I 100% agree with you on that. Now let me ask you this Do you believe a good strong is chocked, full of emotional intelligence?

Zach:

100,000%. Yes.

Denise:

Okay, okay.

Zach:

I think it's a very, very key and important thing, because you're looking holistically at a human being, not a human doing.

Zach:

You're looking at a human being and so if you don't know how to look at the human behavioral styles of your team to be able to understand not only what their head is thinking, but what their heart is thinking and what their actions are showing, but what their heart is thinking and what their actions are showing Like? There's this one part in the book I really love here, zach, in chapter one, where it talks about how a leader is directly responsible for getting their people to listen, support and execute plans. But he also says you can't make people listen to you. You can't make them execute.

Zach:

I remember when I was a little girl I don't know I was probably in trouble for something and my mom was telling me something about whatever it was that I had done, and I remember her telling me this story later in life where she said I told her, if I told you to jump off a bridge, would you make somebody do it? I think it probably got spanked after I did that, said that to her, but I remember that story and the reality is that you can't make. You can probably force somebody to do something, but what good is that going to do? You're going to get the minimum out of that. That's sort of like. This concept we heard about last year when the economy started to go down and people were getting laid off, and so people were afraid, if they were still at work, how they were going to keep their jobs, and so that concept was called silent quitting, which is where people were coming to work but doing like the minimum just to get to Friday.

Zach:

They were doing whatever their job description required of them to get the paycheck, because they couldn't be made to do the work, because they weren't inspired by the leadership.

Denise:

Right, right, and, and you know being an inspiring leader is is hard, right, it's, it's. It takes a lot of work, and we can go back to our last episode where we talked about being a self-aware leader, and you know that's, that's huge in today's society, and there you'd be surprised of how many leaders are not. So, yeah, and, and I I talked to a lot of different people throughout, um, different companies, different corporations, different lines of business. I talked to a lot of military people and, going back to that emotional intelligence question that I asked you, almost every single person I talked to has emotional intelligence. And I'm sitting here thinking, is that something that the military is putting into their leadership philosophies? Because it took me a long time to even know what emotional intelligence was. So I sit back and I'm like, well, now that I'm aware of my emotional intelligence, I know where I need to work and I know the kind of people I need to reach out to to help me fix these things.

Denise:

At one point in time, I was really weak on my empathy. At one point in time I was really weak on my empathy. I went and I asked around and somebody put me in touch with somebody who was very, very good at empathy and he's like this is this is kind of how you do it. You just sit back and you listen and you react while listening, because a lot of times people want to jump in too early and not get the full effect of what's going on, with that person Going through Maxwell and sitting back and just listening, like they say as a coach should do. That's really helped me a lot in listening with my ears and all my senses, you know, except for my mouth.

Zach:

So good, so good. Okay, so I know we're almost out of time again Almost. These episodes are going so quickly, so I'm going to give the summary here. So, again, this chapter was about extreme ownership owning everything in your world as a leader. There's no bad teams, only bad leaders, according to the authors.

Zach:

And so one of the last parts of the chapter that I'll leave with and I'm curious what you think the actions should be, zach is that the author says and this is specific to what you were talking about self-awareness and emotional intelligence he says look at your career. You may have accomplished amazing things, but you certainly aren't perfect. None of us are perfect. You are still learning and growing. Us are perfect. You are still learning and growing. We all are and this is a lesson for you. If you re-engage on this task, if you do a stern self-assessment of how you lead and what you can do better, the outcome will be different, and it starts here, it starts today. So I hope that you'll be able to take away friends today how you can take a self-assessment of your own leadership. When we come back next week, we're going to be talking even deeper around this idea of leadership through the second author, leif Babin. So Zach your takeaways and actions for today.

Denise:

Well, I'm going to piggyback a little bit. That mindset applies universally, whether you're in combat, whether you're in business or any of your even personal endeavors. I think having that leadership mindset, that extreme ownership gives you in the first chapter, where you own, everything within your sphere is everywhere around you as a leader, everything within your sphere is everywhere around you as a leader. As far as actionability, let's do a responsibility audit right. Let's talk about that. Let's review recent challenges or failures that we've had in our leadership journeys. Or, if you're an individual contributor looking to make that jump, let's look at the recent challenges and failures and what was the outcome of those. Let's identify what our actual role is. What could I have done differently to prevent or address any of these issues? And, lastly, let's communicate ownership. I recognize that I have provided a clear direction on this task and, moving forward, I'll ensure we align on goals and expectations before we even start. Those are my actionable items for this.

Zach:

Awesome. So it sounds like we need to look back in order to move forward. And if you're someone just listening and you're not sure how to do this on your own, zach and I are certified and qualified executive and business coaches are certified and qualified executive and business coaches. Scott has ways for you to reach out to us in the show notes If we can't help you. I am on the global board of directors for the international coaching federation, which is the governing body of coaches worldwide. I know hundreds, if not more than hundreds, of coaches, so we could find somebody for you that can help walk this through with you.

Zach:

If you're interested in diving deeper on the things we talked about today because we didn't go into detail in the stories in the book you can get a copy of the book. Scott will have a link for how you can get this book in our show notes as well. And if you just want to reach out and let us know what you're thinking, there will be ways for you to engage with us through the podcast as well as on our LinkedIn channels. But for today, on behalf of my friend Zach Elliott, my name is Denise Russo and this has been another episode of what's On your Page. I'm out.