Transcription
[Music] Before I even retired from the Navy, I went and talked to an executive team about leadership. When they started to ask me questions about the problems they were having, I gave them the solutions that I had been teaching SEALs, which was the laws of combat in any organization.
What leaders are trying to do is get people to work together in order to accomplish a goal, and that applies in business, in life. We have an instinct since we're little kids to blame other people, to point fingers. And when this attitude changes, everything changes.
When people start taking ownership of what's going on in the world, they realize that the problems that they're facing are things that they can actually solve. Instead of pointing fingers, instead of casting blame, they say, "Let me take ownership of it. Let me get it fixed." So it impacts everything that they do.
There's a complete perspective shift when people start taking ownership. They might have felt they're in a bad situation, they have no control over their boss, they have no control over their future. When they start to take ownership, they do have control. They can build a relationship with their boss, they can improve the way they communicate, they can improve their station of where they are inside the company.
Look inside our organization, there's all kinds of different problems that can come to the surface. It doesn't matter what the problem is. What we know is that those solutions to those problems are all leadership. Extreme leadership becomes the culture of the organization. You have a team where leaders at every level of the team, from the senior people in charge, to the mid-level managers, to the front-line individual contributors, are taking ownership, getting problems solved. That is a team that is absolutely unstoppable.
[Applause] [Music]