Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

situation here,” I continued. “Your people don’t need to be fired. They
need to be led.”
“So what am I doing wrong as a leader?” asked the VP. “How can I
lead them?”
“It all starts right here with you,” I said. “You must assume total
ownership of the failure to implement your new plan. You are to blame.
And that is exactly what you need to tell the board.”
“Tell the board that? Are you serious?” the VP asked in disbelief. “I
don’t mind taking a little blame, but this is not all my fault.” Though
beginning to see the light, he still resisted the idea of taking total
responsibility.
“In order to execute this plan, in order to truly become an effective
leader, you have to realize and accept total responsibility,” I said. “You
have to own it.”
The VP was not yet convinced.
“If one of your manufacturing managers came to you and said, ‘My
team is failing,’ what would your response be? Would you blame their
team?” I asked.
“No,” the VP admitted.
I explained that as the officer in charge of training for the West Coast
SEAL Teams, we put SEAL units through highly demanding scenarios to
get them ready for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. When SEAL leaders
were placed in worst-case-scenario training situations, it was almost
always the leaders’ attitudes that determined whether their SEAL units
would ultimately succeed or fail. We knew how hard the training
missions were because we had designed them.
In virtually every case, the SEAL troops and platoons that didn’t
perform well had leaders who blamed everyone and everything else—