Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 16 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Believe
— From Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
The U.S. Navy SEALs are back, yay! In their fabulous book, Extreme Ownership, SEALs Jocko Willink and Leif Babin state that knowing the reasons why, understanding and, most importantly, believing in the ultimate goal, is the absolute basis for a team to work well together.
It begins with the leadership, but it must permeate to all levels of the team or organization. “In order to convince and inspire others to follow and accomplish a mission, a leader must be a true believer in the mission.” This resolute belief, the authors state, “is far more important than training or equipment. […] Actions and words reflect belief with a clear confidence and self-assuredness that is not possible when belief is in doubt.”
But what to do when belief is in doubt? It all boils down to one simple question: WHY? “Leaders must take a step back, deconstruct the situation, analyze the strategic picture and then come to a conclusion. If they cannot determine a satisfactory answer themselves, they must ask questions up the chain of command until they understand why.” When you don’t understand why your company established that new sales policy, ask why. When your client is giving you a particular instruction or a change in scope and path, ask why. When your favorite non-profit asks you to change your volunteer tasks, ask why. Leadership in this instance is wide and varied, and has nothing to do with rank.
At the same time, it is also important for you as a leader “to take the time to explain and answer the questions of [your] junior leaders so that they too can understand and believe… [you must] explain not just what to do, but why.” And also, goes without saying, but you must continually emphasize that you are open and accessible for your team members to further ask questions on their quest to understanding why and believing.
The authors share a case where many managers did not understand a new policy implemented by the CEO, and didn’t ask for clarification for fear of looking stupid (despite them all agreeing that the CEO was smart, experienced and not unreasonable). “People talk about leadership requiring courage. This is exactly one of those situations. It takes courage to go to the CEO’s office, knock on the door, and explain that you don’t understand the strategy behind the decisions. You might feel stupid. But you will feel far worse trying to explain to your team a mission or strategy that you don’t understand or believe in yourself. […] If you don’t ask these questions, you are failing as a leader and you are failing your team.”
And it goes both ways. It is the responsibility of the leaders to ensure that the team understands and believes; yet since leaders are not mind readers, the team members are also responsible for asking for clarification until they fully understand and believe too.
ACTION
TODAY: Where are you unclear about a directive? Who do you need to ask in order to understand and believe in the project or mission? Go ask why today, you’ll be glad you did! Conversely, if you recently started a project, who do you need to make sure is on board with you? Ask them if they need further clarification to fully believe in what you are doing.
FUTURE: I’ve found that Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions at the beginning and end of a project—as well as throughout—are a wonderful source of information (above and beyond one-on-one sessions with team members). How can you make use of such sessions, that you can run in any scenario (from your family on the living room couch, to your teammates at work, to a group of volunteers at your favorite nonprofit, to your company’s Board members at the quarterly meeting) to make sure that everyone fully understands why, and thus is truly on board and believing in the mission?
Know someone who needs to believe? Please share this post with that person via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!