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

players—might follow.
The senior engineers were highly competitive. Rather than
collaborate and support one another as the company expanded, some
tried to outdo each other, hoping to position themselves for promotion
ahead of their peers.
Two senior engineers, Eduardo and Nigel, had built up particular
animosity for each other and had become quite cutthroat. The two
engineers constantly bickered and butted heads. They blamed each other
when their own projects hit delays or ran over budget. Each criticized the
other’s work and passed that criticism to their CEO, Darla, to try to
undermine each other.
For months Darla had done her best to quell their issues and
animosity. She held conference calls and face-to-face meetings with
them. Darla had even taken Eduardo and Nigel to dinner several times to
help them try to bury the hatchet. But nothing seemed to work. Now their
relationship had deteriorated to a point that it had become dysfunctional
and destructive to the rest of the team.
Jocko and I joined an off-site meeting with the senior executives
from the parent company and the subsidiary companies to deliver a
presentation on leadership and teamwork. During the off-site, Darla’s
two senior engineers’ head butting reached crisis mode. She received an
e-mail from Eduardo that stated he could no longer work with Nigel and
insisted that Nigel be fired. Eduardo also mentioned a rumor that Nigel
had met with a recruiter from another company and was considering
leaving. Shortly thereafter, Darla received an e-mail from Nigel saying
that he had caught wind that Eduardo had discussed a possible move to
another company with some of his team. Not to be outdone, Nigel
insisted that he could no longer work with Eduardo and that Eduardo