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

bad officers.”^3 This captures the essence of what Extreme Ownership is
all about. This is a difficult and humbling concept for any leader to
accept. But it is an essential mind-set to building a high-performance,
winning team.
When leaders who epitomize Extreme Ownership drive their teams to
achieve a higher standard of performance, they must recognize that when
it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you
tolerate. When setting expectations, no matter what has been said or
written, if substandard performance is accepted and no one is held
accountable—if there are no consequences—that poor performance
becomes the new standard. Therefore, leaders must enforce standards.
Consequences for failing need not be immediately severe, but leaders
must ensure that tasks are repeated until the higher expected standard is
achieved. Leaders must push the standards in a way that encourages and
enables the team to utilize Extreme Ownership.
The leader must pull the different elements within the team together
to support one another, with all focused exclusively on how to best
accomplish the mission. One lesson from the BUD/S boat crew leader
example above is that most people, like Boat Crew VI, want to be part of
a winning team. Yet, they often don’t know how, or simply need
motivation and encouragement. Teams need a forcing function to get the
different members working together to accomplish the mission and that
is what leadership is all about.
Once a culture of Extreme Ownership is built into the team at every
level, the entire team performs well, and performance continues to
improve, even when a strong leader is temporarily removed from the
team. On the battlefield, preparation for potential casualties plays a
critical role in a team’s success, if a key leader should go down. But life