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

struggled to perform, until I figured out that I had to put myself in the
most difficult position at the front of the boat and lead. That required
driving the boat crew members hard, harder than they thought they could
go. I discovered that it was far more effective to focus their efforts not
on the days to come or the far-distant finish line they couldn’t yet see,
but instead on a physical goal immediately in front of them—the beach
marker, landmark, or road sign a hundred yards ahead. If we could
execute with a monumental effort just to reach an immediate goal that
everyone could see, we could then continue to the next visually
attainable goal and then the next. When pieced together, it meant our
performance over time increased substantially and eventually we crossed
the finish line at the head of the pack.
Looking back, I could have yelled a lot less and encouraged more. As
a boat crew leader, I protected my boat crew from the instructor staff as
much as I could. It was “us versus them,” as I saw it. In protecting my
boat crew, I actually sheltered a couple of perpetual underperformers
who dragged the rest of the boat crew down. When Hell Week was over,
talking to some of the other members of our boat crew, we realized we
had carried along these mentally weak performers. They almost certainly
would not have met the standards otherwise. That loyalty was misguided.
If we wouldn’t want to serve alongside our boat crew’s weakest
performers once we were all assigned to SEAL platoons in various SEAL
Teams, we had no right to force other SEALs to do so. The instructors
were tasked with weeding out those without the determination and will
to meet the high standards of performance. We had hindered that.
Ultimately, how my boat crew performed was entirely on me. The
concept that there were no bad teams, only bad leaders was a difficult
one to accept but nevertheless a crucial concept that leaders must fully