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

that affects strategic decision making.
With SEAL Teams—just as with any team in the business world—
there are leaders who try to take on too much themselves. When this
occurs, operations can quickly dissolve into chaos. The fix is to empower
frontline leaders through Decentralized Command and ensure they are
running their teams to support the overall mission, without
micromanagement from the top.
There are, likewise, other senior leaders who are so far removed from
the troops executing on the frontline that they become ineffective. These
leaders might give the appearance of control, but they actually have no
idea what their troops are doing and cannot effectively direct their
teams. We call this trait “battlefield aloofness.” This attitude creates a
significant disconnect between leadership and the troops, and such a
leader’s team will struggle to effectively accomplish their mission.
Determining how much leaders should be involved and where leaders
can best position themselves to command and control the team is key.
When SEAL task units train in assaults—in what we call close-quarters
battle, or CQB—we practice this in a “kill house.” A kill house is a
multiroom facility with ballistic walls, which SEALs, other military, and
police units use to rehearse their CQB skills. For young SEAL officers
learning the ropes of leadership, running through the kill house with the
platoon provides a great training opportunity to determine how much
they should be involved and where to position themselves. Sometimes,
the officer gets so far forward that he gets sucked into every room
clearance, meaning he is continually entering rooms and engaging
targets. When that happens, he gets focused on the minutia of what’s
going on in the immediate room and loses situational awareness of what
is happening with the rest of the team and can no longer provide