The most successful men and women in the civilian world practice extreme ownership.  The principles of extreme ownership are simple but not easy. Taking ownership of mistakes and failures is hard, but it is key to learning, developing solutions and ultimate success.

Taking ownership to achieve success

Discipline is the pathway to freedom.

A true leader takes ownership of everything in his domain. This includes the outcome and everything that affects it.  A true leader doesn’t find excuses or blame others. Instead, he puts his ego aside, takes full responsibility for the outcome and considers what he should do differently. When you demand extreme ownership of yourself and others, your example will inspire others to follow.

Extreme Ownership

Leaders fundamentally decide their teams’ level of performance.  <ul><li>Effective leaders push the standards in a way that encourages and enables the team to extreme ownership. Great leadership can cause any team to thrive.</li><li>Ineffective leaders don’t accept responsibility for mistakes. Instead, they make excuses and blame others for their failings. Their negative attitude is infectious. If substandard performance is accepted and no one is held accountable, poor performance becomes the new standard.</li></ul>

No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders

You must believe in the mission to convince and inspire others to follow. If leaders do not believe, they will not take risks needed to overcome unavoidable challenges. Always remember that you are part of something greater than yourself and your own personal interests. A great leader should be able to detach from the immediate mission and understand how it fits into strategic goals.

Believe in the Mission

Ego clouds and disrupts everything: the planning process, the ability to take good advice, and the ability to accept constructive criticism. Our egos don’t like to accept blame. Great leaders prioritise the broader mission over their personal ego. They’re willing to learn, accept good ideas from others, and own up to their mistakes.

Check the Ego

Cover and Move is a common military tactic where one team covers while another moves, so they can jointly gain ground.  Different teams should be able to work together towards a common goal and support one another. Each team member is critical to success. Some will contribute to the main effort and others to supporting roles.

Cover and Move

Success is dependent on simple, clear, and concise plans and orders. However, when plans and orders are too complicated, people may not understand them. If your team doesn’t get it, you have not kept things simple, and you have failed. Simple plans can be easily communicated, understood and adjusted.

Keep Things Simple

It can feel overwhelming when faced with multiple time-sensitive, high-stake problems. However, if you try to do everything at once, you will fail. Good leaders will stay calm, identify top priorities, and then address them one by one.

Prioritize and execute

We are generally not capable of managing more than 6-10 people. Ensure that leaders at all levels understand the overall mission and immediate goals. Every team leader should understand what the team must do and why. Junior leaders must know what is within their decision-making authority and pass critical information up the chain.

Decentralized command

Leaders must identify clear directives for the team. A broad and ambiguous mission results in a lack of focus, ineffective execution, and mission creep. Every mission should have clarity, evaluation of options and risks, engagement of all levels, post-action debriefs, and systematization of the planning process.

Sound planning

Great leaders lead upward by offering information and updates to help their leaders understand their work. They lead downward by helping junior leaders and frontline staff to see the bigger picture.

Leading up and down the chain of command

Leaders cannot be paralyzed by fear. They must be prepared to make the best possible decisions based on available information.

Decisiveness amid uncertainty

Discipline is essential for freedom and results. A good leader is confident but not cocky, courageous but not foolhardy;  competitive, yet a gracious loser, a leader and a follower, quiet but not silent, logical but not without emotions.

Discipline equals freedom

Extreme Ownership includes practical leadership advice from two Navy SEALs on staying strong, disciplined, and level-headed in high-stake situations.

An updated edition of the blockbuster bestselling leadership book that took America and the world by storm, two U.S. Navy SEAL officers who led the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War demonstrate how to apply powerful leadership principles from the battlefield to business and life. Sent to the most violent battlefield in Iraq, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s SEAL task unit faced a seemingly impossible mission: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a city deemed “all but lost.” In gripping firsthand accounts of heroism, tragic loss, and hard-won victories in SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, they learned that leadership—at every level—is the most important factor in whether a team succeeds or fails. Willink and Babin returned home from deployment and instituted SEAL leadership training that helped forge the next generation of SEAL leaders. After departing the SEAL Teams, they launched Echelon Front, a company that teaches these same leadership principles to businesses and organizations. From promising startups to Fortune 500 companies, Babin and Willink have helped scores of clients across a broad range of industries build their own high-performance teams and dominate their battlefields. Now, detailing the mind-set and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult missions in combat, Extreme Ownership shows how to apply them to any team, family or organization. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic such as Cover and Move, Decentralized Command, and Leading Up the Chain, explaining what they are, why they are important, and how to implement them in any leadership environment. A compelling narrative with powerful instruction and direct application, Extreme Ownership revolutionizes business management and challenges leaders everywhere to fulfill their ultimate purpose: lead and win.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

books

Books

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Impostor syndrome doesn't go away just because you achieve certain goals or you have a certain resume or you went to a certain school or you worked at a prestigious place.Even when you're experiencing all these places, imposter syndrome makes you quite anxious about whether or not you are doing enough. And you can imagine when you're surrounded by people who do a lot of great work, it only feeds your impostor syndrome in a way 'cause you're like, do I belong here?

The Impostor Phenomenon

There are people who tend to overestimate their abilities and some people who tend to underestimate their abilities.People who feel like impostors tend to underestimate their abilities. Because the impostor phenomenon makes high-achieving feel like they're not as intelligent, as bright, as creative, as able as other people think they are. And they live in a constant fear that somebody's going to find that out.

How We Perceive Our Abilities

Awareness is a key factor in helping yourself with the impostor phenomenon.Before you can work through any of this, you have to be able to identify it and understand it. Naming reality helps you find your way through it. Naming it also means recognizing other people feel like this, too. It's a shared experience.

Stop Feeling Like a Fraud: Bring Awareness To The Situation

Be self-soothing. Try affirmations like: "I'm going to do OK, because I did OK last time. I know enough about this. I don't have to be perfect." It's essential to have grace for yourself. No one is perfect. We're all trying the best we can.

Being Self-Compassionate

We must acknowledge the societal impact that influences this feeling.Different racial and even gender groups are messaged with various things about their place in society. What we see, hear, and read can intensify this phenomenon.

Social Causes of The Impostor Syndrome

<ul><li>Look to people who you are hoping to learn from and accept that you don't have to be an expert. It won't make you look weak.</li><li>Create community and build up your support system.</li><li>Ask your friends not to say, "you're going to do great; don't worry about it". Tell them about the kind of support that you need is related to understanding your anxiety, your fear, your feelings and say, I'll be here for you.</li></ul>

Ask For Help

Take a break when the pressure is high and be curious about how you're feeling.Don't judge yourself. Take some deep breaths. Get a good night's sleep when you can, or take a nap if that helps. If exercise is your thing, you can do that, too - whatever healthy choice you think may help reset your mind.

Less Judgment, More Curiosity

Impostor syndrome: it's the voice in the back of your mind telling you that you're a fraud, and that your peers are all smarter and more creative than you. In this episode, host Diana Opong speaks with experts about how to squash that voice.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

career

Career

podcasts

Podcasts

Shake The Feeling That You're A Fraud

It’s possible to be a great manager and not a great leader, or vice versa. Rarely, individuals are both at the same time. The minute a process needs to be changed, either because of internal or external forces, the manager who lacks leadership ability often struggles to “rally the troops” to a new normal. Similarly, a great leader who has little managerial skills can pull a team in several directions with too much vision, creating a lot of noise but little in the way of results. It’s critical that great managers either learn leadership skills or align themselves with good leaders.

Myth: Management and Leadership are the Same Things

The title “manager” implies exactly this. The Oxford Dictionary defines “manage” as to “be in charge of (a company, establishment, or undertaking).” Surely that means, as a manager, you command and people jump? If only it were that simple. No matter the title, you don’t inspire people by pointing at something and saying, “Do that!” Rather, you bring them along by giving them a reason to “do that.” What sort of reason? It just needs to make sense; it needs to tie the work to some end objective.

Myth: Managers Can Make People Do Things

This myth may be a bit surprising. You’ve likely known or read about someone who seems to have the golden touch when it comes to management. The reason for such success is often misunderstood. Usually, it’s attributed to the manager’s ability to organize people, institute processes, and adapt as new information becomes available. There’s little doubt that these skills matter. But the other, less discussed aspect of a successful manager’s behavior is this: They hire and nurture the right people and get rid of those who don’t perform.

Myth: Good Managers Can Manage Anything

Harvard Business School Online Executive Director Patrick Mullane debunks three myths about management he's heard throughout his career.

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

business

Business

3 Common Myths About Management | HBS Online

Smiling makes you seem friendly and approachable. It’s good to keep this in mind when you’re face-to-face with someone you’re trying to keep on your side. If there’s any drawback to using this magic spell, it’s that you can rely on it a bit too much.

The smile of the public-relations sorcerer

A trick for planting a memory, or at least a shadow of what might be a memory, in reporters’ brains — to create an illusion of familiarity.You only have to use two letters and a punctuation mark at the beginning of an email subject line to cast this spell: "Re:". It makes it seem like it’s a continuation of an existing conversation.

Plant a memory to help get your media pitch

You may need yo reach out to a reporter maybe three or four times (more than that, you may need to change strategies). Email and social media are usually the preferred mediums. However, this persistence can turn into annoyance very quickly. What can you do? Joke about it — laughter always alleviates tension.

Getting a reporter to smirk helps your pitch work

Looking to get earned media coverage for your company? A public-relations wizard shares the secret spells and charms that can zap some sizzle into a PR campaign.

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

Magic Spells for Instant PR Results

A recent analysis of close to 4 million jobs posted on LinkedIn since late 2017 showed that 35% of postings for “entry-level” positions asked for years of prior relevant work experience. That requirement was even more common in certain industries. More than 60% of listings for entry-level software and IT Services jobs, for instance, required three or more years of experience. In short, it seems entry-level jobs aren’t for people just entering the workforce at all.&nbsp;

Experience prior to an entry-level position

Internships are now the entry-level. An ever-growing internship market means more young people are fleshing out their resumes before they even leave university.This fact impacts the entry-level job market on multiple fronts.&nbsp;<ul><li>First, companies can save money by using interns to do that work without having to pay junior employees; the more interns a company has, the fewer entry-level jobs it’s likely to open.</li><li>Second, because applicants with one or more internships on their resume aren’t tough to come by, those who don’t have internship experience are left out in the cold.</li></ul>

The rise of the internship 

It’s not only internships that have replaced the entry-level job. Many of them have been eliminated over recent decades as tools and technologies are introduced to do the same work – without the paycheck.What’s left at the “entry-level”, then, are often jobs that require more interpersonal communication, higher-level responsibilities or consumer-facing roles, which many companies are reluctant to trust to a newly-minted graduate.

The automated office

'Entry-level' jobs used to be the way for new graduates to enter the workforce. But many are now requiring prior experience.

Why inexperienced workers can't get entry-level jobs

When you're nervous, your body tends to tighten up, leading to short stiff movements or fidgeting. By contrast, bigger hand movements while speaking convey confidence (they make you look and even feel more confident.)An easy way to start exercising hand movements is using the voice rule: simply move your hand in rhythm with your voice.

Adjusting your body language

Showing your palms reveals that you have nothing to hide. This will also make you feel more confident, by overriding our natural tendency to shrink and close off when nervous.

Showing your palms

Echoing a question gives you time to catch up when you are feeling nervous. It's also an easy form of mirroring, which helps you connect with the other person. Because when you repeat someone's words back to them, it can help build feelings of likeability, trust and rapport.When your mind goes blank during conversations, all your normal wit and charm disappear. The echo technique really helps to buy yourself a few seconds of time to think (in a way that seems unforced).

The echo technique

This is the first step of overcoming your fear of being judged by others. Being able to laugh at yourself is a great marker of confidence. And it makes you more fun to be around.You can start practicing laughing at yourself by sharing embarrassing stories from your distant past. You still get to practice, but without highlighting any flaws you may have in the present.

Learning to laugh at yourself

<ul><li>If you are in a situation where you can't stop thinking about how nervous you are that you cannot perform or connect, it can be better to share how you are feeling with a smile, rather than try to hide it.</li><li>This can even make you more likable and make other people more comfortable with their own nervousness.</li><li>Revealing your insecurities with a smile can also help you overcome your fear of being judged because it emphasizes the idea that you are not ashamed of who you are.</li></ul>

Revealing your insecurities with a smile

<ol><li>Take the situation you want to stop feeling nervous in</li><li>Find a low stakes way to mimic it</li><li>Get some repetitions in.</li></ol>Social courage is a muscle that is transferable. So if you push your comfort zone even in one area, it will bleed out in all the others.

Gradual exposure therapy

Reframe success and failure. Reframe success as doing anything that improves you. So even when you are rejected, as long as you reflect on what went wrong and how you can do better when you're in that situation again, that's a win.

How to soften the blow of rejection

Join Over 8000+ Members At Charisma University: https://bit.ly/3jITKx0 Subscribe to Charisma On Command’s YouTube Account: http://bit.ly/COC-Subscribe Like it or not, we have all felt insecure. It’s something even world famous celebrities have to deal with. Because worrying about what other people think of us is such a universal experience, in today’s video we’ll go over some easy ways you can look more confident, AND some techniques you can use to actually build more confidence. We’ll do this by breaking down clips of Scarlett Johansson. She does a great job of coming off as confident and likable, even when she’s expressing feelings of insecurity. ⏰TIMESTAMPS⏰ 0:00 - Intro 0:30 - #1: Adjust your body language 1:18 - #2: Show your palms 2:22 - #3: Use the echo technique 3:41 - #4: Learn to laugh at yourself 7:19 - #5: Use gradual exposure therapy 8:20 - #6: Reframe success and failure -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #ScarlettJohansson #CharismaOnCommand -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with us further: Website: http://www.charismaoncommand.com Facebook: http://facebook.com/charismaoncommand Instagram: @CharismaOnCommand Or if you want to see our personal stuff: Instagram: @CharlieHoupert Instagram: @IamBenAltman

communication

Communication

How To Turn Insecurity Into Confidence

The Silver Age of comics, during the 60s, produced many gems like the Amazing Spider-Man, the uncanny X-Men and Captain America. 
Most of these were from the Marvel factory, where Stan Lee, born Stanley Martin Lieber in 1922, started weaving his magic with the help of other creative and marketing geniuses who sustained his vision.

A Marvel Named Stan Lee

While DC had Superman, the White God Superhero with no flaws, or the angel-like Wonder Woman, Marvel came up with characters who had inner conflicts about their identity (X-Men) or were simply teenagers (Spiderman) dealing with angst, regret and bad luck.
Marvel hoped that these new stories with emotional depth and relatability would hook readers in a crowded comic book space. His readers responded much more than he could ever imagine.

DC Vs Marvel

Stan Lee, known to those who knew him well as a grand self-mythologizer, had an ability to impress strangers. He himself had superpowers, like great storytelling abilities, or the way he coaxed talent from others. Many compared him to an orchestra conductor, who acts as a human catalyst.
When he left the day-to-day operations at Marvel Comics in 1972 and became President and Publisher, his company became disorganized, and had five different editor-in-chiefs in five years. The sixth one, Jim Shooter, who was a ‘normal’ manager despised by many, stabilized a rocking ship.

The Superpowers Of Stan Lee

After many attempts to get Marvel into Hollywood, Stan Lee retired from the executive activities as President of the company and opted for some retirement money and a cut of film/TV productions. 
As soon as he was gone, Marvel’s movie business lit up with X-Men (2000) and the Marvel Rocket Ship went into the galaxy with Iron Man (2008) kicking off the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). The back-to-back blockbusters had Stan Lee’s cameo appearances, much to the delight of Marvel fans.

The Retirement Of Stan Lee

Stan Lee presided over a world of superheroes, but his collaborators and readers sustained his vision—and his characters outlasted it.

movies

Movies & Shows

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

Who Really Created the Marvel Universe?

Leaders spend many hours trying to shape and influence external factors such as processes, people, and targets.
Surprisingly, leaders would see better results if they spent more time focusing on self-leadership. Self-leadership consists of four elements: self-discovery, self-acceptance, self-management, and self-growth.

Focusing On Self-Leadership

When we get busy, we often overlook the subtle shifts in ourselves. Or we become so focused on the work that we don't realise when we move away from what we truly value.
Being the best leaders we can be require us to identify our values and then live and lead according to them. When you understand what is important to you, what energizes you, what you believe in, and where you want to be, you can make decisions confidently.

Leadership And Self-Discovery

Self-acceptance is not about accepting your failures and carrying on exactly as before. It is about taking responsibility for your actions, accepting what is and isn't possible to change, then developing a plan to improve things.
Self-acceptance is also about accepting your strengths. When you can identify your strengths, you can leverage that to get better results.

Self-Acceptance And Persona Responsibility

Self-management is about holding yourself accountable and ensuring you manage your time and resources effectively. Poor self-management leads to stress and burnout.
<ul>
<li>Make time for self-development as part of good self-management. It ensures that you focus on the important tasks without distraction.</li>
<li>Self-awareness. You need to know what habits you have so you can replace unhelpful habits with more desirable ones.</li>
<li>Controlling your impulses - when you want to react instead of respond.</li>
<li>Reflection is essential to keep you in tune with your priorities and values and identify opportunities for growth.</li>
</ul>

Self-Management And Personal Accountability

Self-growth is about striving to improve yourself and develop a sense of accountability and responsibility for the right things.
Self-growth requires passion and a sense of curiosity, always asking questions, and learning about your industry and yourself. Another essential part of self-growth is learning how to embrace failure and seeing it as a learning opportunity.

Leadership And Self-Growth

What is Self-Leadership? Leaders spend a lot of time focusing on external factors. Processes, people, targets. We’re constantly trying to shape and influence these external factors to bring us closer to our goals and objectives. But how often do you spend time focusing on&nbsp;you? Would it surprise you if I said that you would see [&hellip;]

habits

Habits

The 4 Pillars of Self-Leadership: Time to Focus on You

<ul><li>Be aware of the business landscape to recognize that a need for change exists. </li><li>Impeccable timing - having the ability to seamlessly sell change while minimizing disruption. </li><li>Sell an ability to sustain long-term bottom line impact that comes from the change you are selling.</li><li>Selling change requires a level of desire that makes it mandatory for you to get your hands dirty throughout the selling cycle. </li><li>To withstand the obstacles and resistance by those affected by the change you are selling demands mental toughness.</li></ul>

Effective Ways to Sell Change

Change can scare a lot of people, but in today's workplace - managing change is what keeps people relevant. Being held accountable for managing change and making things better in your work is the new normal. Knowing how to innovate and manage change will soon become a requirement in one's job description and performance review.

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

startup

Startups

5 Most Effective Ways to Sell Change

Specific vocational skills are essential - coders should be able to code, salespeople should be able to sell. But, we also need soft skills. By only focusing on the seemingly essential skills, we've reduced the value of the skills that actually matter.  What separates thriving organizations from struggling ones is the "soft" skills. These skills are not negotiable.

Making a business thrive

Organizations know how to measure vocational skills. They know how to measure typing skills for example. However, they are less able to measure passion or commitment.Organizations hire and fire based on vocational skill output. But, getting rid of a negative thinker or a bully is much more difficult. An employee that demoralizes an entire team is hampering productivity.

Ignoring soft skills

If you've got the vocational skills, you're of little help without the human skills. The soft skills, or rather real skills, can't replace vocational skills, but amplify the things you've already been measuring.For instance, a team member with all the traditional vocational skills is the baseline. Add to that perceptive, charismatic, driven, focused, goal-setting, inspiring, motivated, deep listener, and you have a team member that will benefit the organization in exponential ways.

Soft skills 

69% of managers are uncomfortable communicating with their employees.How does one build organizations that are people-focused, while acknowledging that nearly 70% of managers find communication with their employees uncomfortable?

Being people-focused

<ul><li>Self Control: Persisting in doing things for the long run that you might not feel like doing in the short term.</li><li>Productivity: The ability to use insights, and the commitment to move things forward. </li><li>Wisdom: Learning things that are difficult to glean from a manual.</li><li>Perception: Having the experience and the practice to see the world clearly.</li><li>Influence: Develop the skills you need to persuade others to take action.</li></ul>

Categories of Real Skills

<ul><li>Adaptability to changing requirements</li><li>Authenticity and consistent behavior </li><li>Bouncing back from failure</li><li>Coach-ability</li><li>Collaborative mindset</li><li>Compassion for those in need</li><li>Competitiveness</li><li>Emotional intelligence</li><li>Motivation to take on new challenges</li><li>Risk-taking </li><li>Stress management </li></ul>

Self-control skills

<ul><li>Crisis management skills</li><li>Decision making with effectiveness</li><li>Delegation for productivity</li><li>Diligence and attention to detail</li><li>Facilitation of discussion</li><li>Goal-setting skills</li><li>Innovative problem-solving techniques</li><li>Lateral thinking</li><li>Meeting hygiene</li><li>Planning for projects.</li></ul>

Productivity

<ul><li>Artistic sense and good taste</li><li>Conflict resolution instincts</li><li>Creativity in the face of challenges</li><li>Critical thinking instead of mere compliance</li><li>Dealing with difficult people</li><li>Diplomacy in difficult situations</li><li>Empathy for customers, co-workers and vendors</li><li>Intercultural competence</li><li>Mentoring</li><li>Social skills</li><li>Supervising with confidence</li></ul>

Wisdom

<ul><li>Design thinking</li><li>Fashion instinct</li><li>Map making</li><li>Judging people and situations</li><li>Strategic thinking</li></ul>

Perception

<ul><li>Ability to deliver clear and useful criticism</li><li>Assertiveness on behalf of ideas that matter</li><li>Body language (reading and delivering)</li><li>Dispute resolution skills </li><li>Inspiring to others </li><li>Interpersonal skills</li><li>Leadership</li><li>Negotiation and sales skills</li><li>Networking and presentation skills</li><li>Reframing</li><li>Talent management and team building.</li></ul>

Influence

They might be skills, but they're not soft Are you good at your job? Different, easier question: Was Ty Cobb good at baseball? The apocryphal story is that Ty Cobb was a jerk. His teammates didn't like him very much. But he's still in the Hall of Fame.

Extreme Ownership

Shake The Feeling That You're A Fraud

3 Common Myths About Management | HBS Online

Magic Spells for Instant PR Results

Why inexperienced workers can't get entry-level jobs

Liliana A.