The following is a conversation with Jocko willing. A retired US Navy. SEAL co-author of extreme ownership dichotomy of leadership, discipline equals freedom, and many other, excellent books and he's the host of Jocko podcast. Jacko spent 20 years in the SEAL Teams, he was the commander of Seal Team threes task unit Bruiser that became the most highly decorated, Special Operations unit of the Iraq War. This conversation was intense and to the point
And we agreed to talk again probably many times. And what I find very interesting aside from the talk of leadership is the conversation about military tactics of specific battles in history, quick mention of our sponsors, linode indeed Simply Safe and ground news. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. Since it's, the fourth of July, a holiday in the United States, let me say a few words about what this country, Mike
Country the United States of America means to me first by way of background, I was born and raised in the Soviet Union, just long enough to get a bit of the Russian soul and appreciation of Soviet history, music culture of resting, and Mathematics of engineering and philosophy. Stoicism in humor, tragedies and triumphs of war and revolutions. All in ways that are uniquely Russian. I do happen to a times mention that I'm Russian. This is
What? I mean that I got a bit of that Russian soul, but of course, Who I Really Am is an American. This country gave me the opportunity, the freedom to become and to be who I am to stand as an individual. This seemingly simple freedom to be a sovereign human being in the face of all the beauty and cruelty of life is why I love this country. Much of life can be unfair unjust, even tragic, but this is the country where if I'm clever enough.
Work hard enough, just get lucky enough. Have a chance to dream, big and make my dream a reality, the United States welcomed me, my family and millions of immigrants throughout its history so that we can make something meaningful of ourselves to love to dream to create to find joy. And meaning, he lets me be the weird kid. I am who wears a suit talks about love and has a fascination with robots. I know some people these days have an aversion to Pride and love.
Or their country. I don't, I love America. I also love Humanity. I believe these two patriotism and humanism are not in Conflict, much like loving your family, and loving your country are not in Conflict. They are all manifestations of the human Spirit Longing To strive for a better world. I was born a Russian but I believe I'll
die. An American, a proud American.
Hopefully not too soon, but life is short.
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Is it tragic or beautiful to you that some of the closest bonds that are formed between people are through
War, often. I think it's both both tragic and beautiful and for the obvious reasons,
What are the obvious reasons why is it so obvious?
Well it's tragic because a lot of people die and it's beautiful because you form bonds with people that are very difficult to break once you've been through them.
What is it about? The trauma of war that makes bonds difficult to break?
Because what you realize when you're in a war is that the people that are next to you, you rely on them and they're relying on you to survive.
And without them, you will not survive. And when you realize that you need to work together as a team to to live, that forms a very strong bond
and there's nothing like that team outside of the realm of War.
I don't know because I've there's a lot of things that I haven't experienced in my life, but I think the pressure and the consequences of War, there could be similar.
Relations in survival scenarios in various atrocities where people need to work together in order to survive. And I think you could probably get something that was similar,
there's a very particular nature to the kind of war that will War 2 was especially for the Soviet Union where it didn't just influence the lives of people that create a culture, the music, The Poetry, the literature is it's in the
It's in the way. People think it's in the way people see the world, that's in the way they talk, even still to this day, and
Of course I was talking about the directly relationship between two soldiers, but there's something about the depth of human connection. That results from this almost like reverberations of warlike Generations later, you're still close to other humans. Your there's a coldness towards other humans that can in Russia.
but, once you open up,
It's depth, you seek depth of connection versus like breath of career. Kind of thinking, how can I make friends with this? I can move into this direction. What can this person benefit me? You instead, you seek a depth of human connection and appreciation that brings a lot and maybe I'm romanticizing War here, but it feels like that's inextricably connected to
World War II for
Russians is there does that resonate at all? Is it?
or if you look at it,
Military training. What they do is they take people in the military from the civilian World. They bring them into the military and they put them through boot camp.
Which is the stereotypical thing that you see on TV, you're going to get yelled at, you're going to get screamed at you're going to get, you're going to get, put in the mud, and you're going to made to be made to do hard things together and
What does that do with those civilians while? It gives them a common background, it gives them a common suffering that they've been through together and they form
Some sort of connection, some sort of bond now to make that Bond A Little Bit Stronger, after you get done with boot camp, they send you to Advanced infantry school and you suffer some more together. And when you suffer more together, now, you're in a smaller group to because now, it's infantry. It's not supplied people anymore, or would load just stations, it's strictly people that are going to fight during fisherman. So they go through school together and now they get a little bit.
Later.
Get down with that and maybe you go to an Airborne Division. So you go to Airborne school and now you overcome this fear of jumping out of an airplane together, and you celebrate surviving that, then maybe you get done with that. Now, you could add an Airborne Division. Now, you're an even tighter group because you've suffered together,
What comes next is special forces training or ranger training and what they do is they put you in these situations where you're going to suffer together and you're going to build these bonds. Because, as I said earlier, you have to rely on each other to survive. And by the way, not everyone does not, everyone makes it through this training. So you sort of have these memories of people that didn't make it. You share that connection as well.
When you can keep going down this road until you go into combat with a military unit and military units that go through combat, haven't even tighter Bond and the harder the combat that they go through the tighter. The bond is going to be. So I think when you talk about what the Soviet Union went through in World War II, there was a shared suffering.
To survive. And so the entire nation has that Common Thread and that's probably the thing that you sense or feel when you refer back to the bond that resonates all the way back to World War Two
Sonya podcast and you're writing your talk about some of the most fascinating things, I listening to talk about in terms of military, conflict is tactics.
Instead of the details of combat.
But allow me to stick on World War II for a second.
There's a particular aspect to that War. I don't know if you can speak to it. We're twice the number of civilians died in military personnel.
so, the Soviet Union, especially
my, my grandfather was a machine gunner on the in Ukraine, as the Germans were marching towards Moscow. There's this main, there's ass important push in 1941 where they were trying to get before the winter to, to Moscow. And what Stalin was doing is he was basically throwing bodies at at this low the attack. And what that meant is everybody understood that you
Job was you have this heavy machine guns? It's very it's almost unreasonable to be able to be mobile any kind of way with them. So you're you're thrown at the front and you're just non-stop shooting. And, you know, 95 plus percent of people are just dead of. The soldiers are just dead. And then you just go back back and you're trying to protect as many civilians as you can throughout this whole process. But you don't. And so you have millions of civilians that died,
Along the way this March is there something you could say about this complete? Perhaps naive of me to say, but
a war that lacks tactics that lacks strategy and is purely about just
no consideration of human life and just throwing bodies and bullets.
Into a mixed together, where Millions died and that in particular, felt much less like conflict and much more like, torture or suffering.
It didn't it didn't come off as torture, only that interestingly enough, as you probably know my grandfather including everybody else.
Volunteered. They were proud to do this, they will proud to march to their death for country for love of country.
But the question on the civilian side, when, when more civilians died, the military personnel, what do you make of
that? It's awful. It's awful when a soldier dies, it's awful when a civilian dies it's awful when ten civilians or ten soldiers and it's even more awful when millions and millions of soldiers and civilians died
I think it's safe to say that the Soviet Union was facing an existential threat to their existence against the Nazis. So, to not fight would be to die as well. Maybe Daya death a few years later, maybe died a different way, but
The choice was die now trying or die later on your knees and I think the choice was pretty clear. As far as the tactics Go, I mean, there is, this is attrition warfare, that's what that is. We are going to keep, you know, you said throwing bodies at the problem. That's attrition Warfare and the Soviet Union had a lot of bodies more than the Germans. And when you fight with attrition Warfare,
Whoever has more men and material will eventually win. It's an awful. It's an awful way,
but
that's the that's that's what the strategy was.
You often talk about leadership?
Let's put the evils of Hitler side.
The boldness of Hitler in making some of the Strategic decisions. You did was considered by many military historians, quite brilliant early in the war or insane and Brilliant Stalin. On the other hand, I think University is seen as somebody, who is terrible military strategists, especially early in the war. He did not see all the possible trajectories that the war could take, is there something?
Abel failure of leadership Stalin. Also the United Kingdom before church. Oh, and also FDR in the United States side who basically was trying to turn a blind eye, to everything that was happening over there with a perspective of, we just want to make, we want to keep America's interest as the primary interest and everything else led to other countries work out.
Are
problems. You know, I think one of the things worth Hitler was in the beginning of the war. He listened to his advisers, he listened to his generals and therefore, they did pretty well with that. I think as the war went on, he believed that he was smarter than he was and made decisions that were bad. That cost him dearly. I mean, case in point as everyone knows going and attacking the Soviet Union, while you're still fighting a war on the other.
Is not not a good move. There's an example of. Yeah, bad leadership. Letting your ego, get in the way believing that you can do things that you that are beyond your capabilities. But, you know, as you mentioned in the beginning with blitzkrieg,
Those will really Dynamic and bold moves and they worked. And that what does that do? That fuels your ego and makes you think that you can win?
Many people consider that war adjust War.
What do you think makes a just
War?
I think you have the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese trying to impose their will on other nations and other people's and when that happens I think on a grand scale people look at that and
Believe it's just to step in and do something about it.
Is there some gray area
here? There's there's nothing but gray area.
The United States has been involved in a lot of military conflict since then how do you draw the line to the gray area? What, what war should we engage in? And not, I know you don't get into politics much, but what? The decision to go
to war, you have to look at the situation that you're going into and
Have to make sure that you have.
The will to go to war and the will, to go to war means that you are willing to kill people. And when I say people, I don't just mean enemy. Because in war, civilians are going to die, women and children are going to die. Every a lot of people are going to die. And so you and you are going to kill them. Doesn't matter what kind of smart Munitions. You have doesn't matter how disciplined your soldiers are. When you go into a war civilians are going to die and you have to
Understand that. And the other thing that you have to understand is that
your troops are also going to die.
And it seems like sometimes we're a little bit naive about the calculation of what that's going to look like. And maybe we think, well, not that many civilians and maybe not that many of our Personnel are going to die and that's where you get into sticky situations. And, you know, another thing when you were talking about the Soviet Union versus the Nazis that's Total War, that's what that is. And we don't engage in that very often. It's total war. It's, we will do absolutely anything.
To win and America doesn't fight like that very often. In fact the last time we fought like that was World War II. We it was Total War. We will do whatever it takes to up to and including the atomic bomb to destroy the enemy.
So those are the kind of things you need to think about before you go to war. And I don't think we think about that very often.
you know, even the United States, the
atomic bomb nuclear weapons is an interesting one because there's a lot of
There's a lot of hesitation on that. There's a lot of critics of that decision as it was happening.
So even America you can imagine other countries like Germany would not be so hesitant to use nuclear weapons.
It's interesting to think about.
In deciding military strategy to inject ethics into it to morality.
It's not just about winning the war, but should we do this and doing the calculation of human life?
Usually those decisions are made by leaders, not by the, the soldier that's going to be implementing.
That the that decision. Do you put some responsibility? I should even say blame on the leaders and not doing that kind of calculation here. You could say that you can say that about the Vietnam War, you can say that about even the war that you were involved with in the rock, is there some criticism here that you could apply to leaders for failing, not to consider the broader moral
questions.
Yes.
Natural like
all leaders will make these mistakes are
should leaders not make these mistakes.
Leaders are going to make mistakes. It's impossible to know what's going to happen in war just like it's impossible. Know what's going to happen in life. You make the, you make decisions based on the information that you have at the time and you will make mistakes. And if you fail to admit that you made a mistake, that's where I have a more significant problem. Then someone that makes a mistake and says, hey, this is the mistake that I made. This is the intelligence that I thought we were.
Realizing and it actually is not what I thought it was going to be. And here's the new direction that we're going and we don't have enough of that type of ownership in in leadership globally.
so saying I made a mistake
that resulted in the loss at scale of human life being able to say that
and when you don't say that you end up with a more loss of human
life,
Can I ask you about the loss of human life?
How does killing a human being change? You
what does it mean to kill a human being? What does it feel like the kill human being?
Well I mean I guess you'd have to look at what circumstances a person's in when this is taking place. If you've got someone that's in a fit of rage that goes and kills somebody.
Yeah, they're going to come out of it and think, wow, I just really messed up. If you've got a someone, that is a
Sociopath right? They're not going to feel anything and that person deserve to die and that's why they died. If you've got a soldier who feels like they're trying to protect their friends,
they'll move through that.
If you've got a soldier that's doing it because they want some kind of personal Glory, they'll probably not feel good about it later. So I think it depends on the situation. I think it depends on the psychology of the individual is
going through.
You said move through
that.
Is there some calculation here that a soldier?
When they kill another Soldier, a realization that is just another human being. I mean, is there some heavy burden to that aspect?
That it's ultimately just human on
human. I think it depends a lot on the scenario. I know that when I was in Iraq, fighting you, we talked a lot about the dehumanization of the enemy and it's something that the government's will do. I mean governments, and we'll do that to each other. I mean, the the Japanese dehumanized, the Americans and the Americans dehumanized, the Japanese and the Americans,
The Nazis and the Nazis dehumanized, the Americans. So that to remove as much of that human on human killing aspect that you're talking about. And what I've said, is that, in when we were in Iraq, we didn't have to dehumanize the enemy because the the enemy dehumanized themselves through their actions, through their behaviors when when we know that they are torturing and raping and murdering
the local populace.
They've been dehumanized and so as far as looking at them and thinking, oh, this is a, you know, a human, another human that's that's on the level of, you know, my my uncle or my brother. I didn't think of them out that way. I thought of them as
As murdering raping evil.
Subhumans. Yeah rock is
different and America's position is different. You're right. That America is not built involved in a war where it's quite like to humans. Fighting like teenage boys fighting against each other and you've
got to remember. I mean we're we're seeing these Iraqi kids that are living under this sadistic sadistic Terror.
The Iraqi women that are being raped and abused by these insurgents. And so on the one side, we become the, the Iraqi populace is very humanized to us because we're talking to them, we've got interpreters, we understand. We're seeing them day after day, the same individuals. And so we form a bond with the local populace, and yet we see what the insurgents are doing. And so,
It's again, not difficult to dehumanize people that behave in that
manner.
Yeah, I suppose I'm I worry about the dehumanization at a much larger scale when it's not the kind of case that you're talking about. Even now,
Hopefully, I'm not fear mongering, but there's a sense in which there's the drums of War slowly starting to build with China.
They're in the best case, it would be a cold war of. There's a dehumanization aspect that's happening with China, currently, which is there the other and they're after stealing, all of your data. There's a cybersecurity it starts with cybersecurity and it worries me because it creates the other out of a very large population that
That may ultimately lead to conflict in the worst case. Hot conflict that would no longer be the situation you are in and Iraq and more similar to the Soviet Union conflict with with Germany that it's kids. And then they're dehumanized to where you're at scale. Slaughtering them or at least hurting their quality of life in a way, that's maybe.
You know, the suffering has many forms. It doesn't have to be through just the hot War. It could be through starvation through camps.
All those kinds of things and I worry a worry about that. We kind of tend to think that these wars are behind us.
And I'm not always so sure that's the case.
And at least in the way that it ultimately starts with hate.
And it again hopefully I'm not being dramatic but I see that there's a kind of Brewing of it starts with dehumanization, then turns to hate of the other. You see that would China, you see it a little bit with Russia.
And you have early podcast with between the ditches where you break down the tactics of the Chechen War, which is Russia, is fascinating. But that's the kind of conflicts I'm referring to and
I don't know. There's a know you're a bit of a musician. I love love Dire. Straits song called Brothers in Arms. I don't know if you know that one.
And there's a line in it. I think they play it quite often in military funerals, which I just recently learned, but it's just powerful song. There's a line were fools to make war on our brothers in arms. Do you think there's some sense in which at the leadership level, but just as human beings were perhaps foolish and engaging.
A military conflict.
As much as we have.
Or is full of very inappropriate word here.
Well, I think the using the term Brothers in Arms means the people that are on my side, right? So it doesn't make sense to
Start wars with people that are on your side so that's that might just be the way the lyrics are written, so that it fit the song or whatever. I think, broadly, what you're asking me is is war foolish.
Yeah, and I would say the answer is yes, and if you can avoid it, you absolutely should.
but if there is a bear or a wolf that is trying to get into your house,
is it foolish to shoot that bear shoot that wolf? I think the answer is pretty obvious. So when you're threatened or your family are starting to, or your way of life is threatened, then you have to do something to try and defend your family, your way of life should be. The last resort should be the last
resort.
You had a conversation with Jordan Peterson.
Where he asked? You a question.
In terms of War being Last Resort, whether you would like your kids to grow up in peace and time of no war.
You said yes but it so happens. Jordan didn't let you finish. Can you can you elaborate what follows the but
well you and I have been talking about the fact that struggle brings people together and brings out the best and and the worst brings out the worst in people War brings out the worst in people. It also brings out the best in people.
So, would you want your kid to go and enter in a wrestling tournament where you paid all the other kids off and your kid one?
Or you enter them in a jiu jitsu tournament where they're Purple belt and you know that everyone that they're going to fight against is a white belt and so they get the they get the Big W, they get the win but they don't really get tested and they don't really struggle. And if you don't struggle, you don't grow. So that's the but write the absolute best times of my life.
War in combat and the worst times of my life were in combat. And so even though I wouldn't want any of my children to suffer through the worst of times at the same time, the but is, I would want them to have the opportunity to feel that bond that you're referring to earlier, and to see human beings that are willing to sacrifice their lives for their friends.
Invention, the
worst.
What are some of the worst aspects of when you were in Iraq? What are the things
that?
The hardest on
you.
Have my guys killed.
Is there a absurd cruelty to it? Was it due to mistakes or natural consequences of fighting? Is there any difference? Is that at the end is just losing, those are
brothers in arms, there's a million different ways to get killed in the war and you can go out on an operation. And you can do everything wrong and you can survive and you can go out an operation and do everything, perfect. And you can get killed
Is there some aspect, which makes it worse when there is mistakes made?
Well, yeah, there's mistakes made. Then you're going to sit there and beat yourself up eternally for mistakes that were made,
but to you the things that hurt is just losing losing people
close to you.
Yes,
are you yourself afraid of
death?
No.
Do you think about it? Does it make sense to you that this thing ends liked you? The stoics contemplated death, it gives flavor to life, it makes you appreciate the something about finiteness of life that makes it, that makes it this.
Jocko discipline. Go drink, sour apple them enjoying, delicious makes it taste better because I'm going to die one day, and I think about that a lot. Do you think about it?
Other than I know that it's going to end I mean but I don't think about it on a daily basis. I think about is the fact I think about I know that I'm lucky to be here. I know that many people sacrificed to give me this opportunity to be here so but I don't dwell on it.
What about when you were in combat?
Nothing. There's there's tactics their strategy. There's the mission. And then
Your immortality is not part of the calculation.
I think you get to a point where you accept the fact that you can die. Like I, you know, like I said, you can do everything, right? You roll out, the gate, you hit an IED, triple stack subsurface IED and you're done, you're done. And there's nothing that's going to stop that. It's going to happen. And I think if you're scared of that or you're thinking about that, it's going to inhibit your ability to do your job properly, and I think it's also going to drive you crazy.
the thing that I thought about more was that happening to my guys and that's the gut-wrenching Terror that you feel when
when operations happened,
can I ask about love of country is its it continues to
just how much I've studied Stalin recently in the past few years. It continues to surprise me, not surprise me. It's just tragic and some kind of way. I'm not sure exactly if I could put words to it, but how many people and still do? But at the time, were willing loved Stalin and willing to die for country for the love of country.
And I to maybe because I was born there, and now I'm a red-blooded
American.
I love nationalism is a bad word but I love the love of country, it gives it somehow gives a meaning Like A brotherhood like we're in this together.
I love that's why I love the Olympics. That's just the the unity of it. It takes a step out of the selfish, Pursuits of of any one particular ant and looks at us as a big ant colony and it's inspiring. It's it's exciting. But at the same time, it seems to get us to do horrible things.
If if manipulated by charismatic leaders, what do you make of this? Love of country? Is it a, is it a bad thing? Is it a thing that gets in the way?
Or is it a good
thing? Well I think like anything else if it's balanced correctly it's great and if it goes to some extreme level then it becomes a negative. And I think it I think it's probably sourced in some sort of
Animalistic tribalism that we all have to be part of a tribe. And this is a real big tribe that you get to be a part of. And all you have to do is kind of show up and so when someone says, hey, we're going to play hockey against the Russians.
Well, we're going to cheer for the American boys.
So, my area of work is artificial intelligence.
It'd be interesting to ask your thoughts about something which is autonomous weapon systems us. Has now officially released a report saying that they're open to not open, they're engaging in adding more and more autonomy in artificial intelligence into its weapon systems. Because China is doing it. So there's these are the first steps in something that AI folks worry about, which is
A race and a i race in the space of autonomous weapons that can run away too quickly. Is that something? I don't know if in general if you have thoughts about weapon systems that make autonomous decisions at the small scale of just targeting where to shoot and the largest scale of military strategy of just being given a mission of destroy this particular Target. This particular
Say, terrorists, human being and then figure out what is the right bombing campaign on your own to accomplish this task. That minimizes civilian death and it just loading that in. And letting the AI system automatically decide that, what are your general thoughts about it? Do you do worry about it? Because as the positive effects that in the best version of that world, you kill fewer civilians.
You kill her fewer of your own human beings but at the negative side of that you might lose. The, the thing we kind of talked about which is the basic Humanity even in the individual soldier of what is right? And what is wrong, and not making huge mistakes that hurt thousands or millions of
people.
I guess what you're asking me as if they could make a machine, that could do more surgical attacks on enemy individuals, what I before it? Yes, I would be for it.
The problem is if you've ever used machines of any kind, their initial design may not be there, there's unintended consequences, there's
There's ways and the the machine actually behaves that you realize there's bugs in this
thing. So do we not put protocols in place to prevent something from going too far outside the boundaries of what we wanted to execute
you do. But the question is, this is the first time in human history, you can create things machines, toaster microwave oven, that's smarter than you in this particular.
Ask mean it's not yet. There it will. You're learning a lot with military. Strategy is humans are actually really damn smart. It's very hard to do to improve on a human. And so, most actual drones that are unmanned, are still piloted by. Humans is very difficult to do every aspect of War, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that
machines will start doing those things better in certain certain things,
certain more precise
targeting of the enemy.
The question is what happens when you start to rely on the machine to do? Some of the tasks is you get lazy. You forget what it is like to do that task or more importantly, you lose the knowledge of the intricacies of that task and you forget the ways and go wrong. So the protocols may not be sufficient to constrain the power of the ways that things go
wrong.
Especially when things are moving really quickly, especially when the ethics of the two sides are perfectly aligned. When people are some certain size, like I'm Chinese side may be more willing to take risks for Dangerous consequences than others. So what happened on the by weapon side is internationally. Maybe you can speak to this more but my sense what I was told, there is a sense.
Globally that buy weapons are not going to be used. There are no, ethical, there's a sense like we're not going to engage in this and with a I currently China and US said, green light.
All go ahead. It's
totally ethical. If it can decrease the loss of human life.
Why Not My worry? Is that it's much more, it's much easier to design weapons, that are effective.
Then design weapons, who have the depth of ethics and morals that humans do.
Which I think we don't as human beings don't acknowledge enough that even like the cold calculated, killing of others, like precise effective execution of a mission. Still has ethics in it at the every level. You know what's right? And what's wrong? And I don't know that. I don't know if you take that away, you're not going to make huge mistakes that you regret.
Is that something you don't
worry about? I don't really worry about it but as you design something like I said, you put protocols in place. And, and from what I am hearing you say, or trying to hear you say there has to be a point where our protocols wouldn't be. Wouldn't be sufficient to stop the machine from doing something that was unethical.
I'm kind of worried that this is something you don't worry about because a lot of people I respect, don't worry about it and I don't know what to do about that. A lot of generals don't worry about it. A lot of people who know much more about war, like you the me, don't worry about it. And that worries me
well that's because you have a vision into the shortfalls of AI. And I don't I don't have a vision of the shortfalls of a, I don't know enough about
Got it. As far as I'm concerned. You put a on off switch somewhere. You put a kill switch on a system and if it starts going awry, you hit the kill switch and that's it. So if you know, when you look at me and say well there's no possible way to put a kill switch, that would be a hundred percent effective and here's you draw those concerns to me and we could talk through it and say, okay well here's where we should draw the line. Yeah,
I mean it's like again from the Soviet Union Church.
Noble meltdown.
There is always the ability, I believe to have a kill switch. The problem is, the more power you give to the machine the more
opportunity, you give to the
The human supervisor that machine to make a mistake and not shut off the switch at the right time. So, yes, the solution. I mean, you're putting the responsibility still in the human hands. That I think that's the correct place to put it. That should be good. Protocols, good leadership, good execution, competency all around your protocol should consider the basic failures of human nature. The human factor of how things go wrong. So there should be multiple people, supervising the system, all those things. But I am just very
Goal of greater and greater power in the machine
that can create war
that can lead to death.
Yeah. And that's why like I said and like you just said, you have protocols in place that that are a kill switch and if you think about the amount of nuclear weapons that we've had on planet Earth for the past however many years and there's been, you know, no Rogue element that said, you know what, I'm going to shoot this thing. There's been no.
Protocol that took place. Where all of a sudden we said oh no. I mean there's been there's been escalations but the protocols worked have worked so far. Now, that's a scary thing to think about that. We rely on these protocols to stop some Rogue element out there from launching a missile that could kill millions of people and trigger a global war. So yeah, the protocol should be strict.
Okay.
Casca Jackal Wonka. Ridiculous question.
If human civilization goes extinct will be the reason you mentioned nuclear war.
Do you worry about this? The reason I bring that up. A lot of people in the AI Community. Worry about artificial general intelligence. So super intelligent AI systems, creating a lot of damage autonomous. Weapon systems is one possibility, a lot of folks recently, especially with this pandemic. If you want to be terrified. Listen, somebody I talked to recently. Sam Harris did a for our podcast on how bioengineering of viruses is.
Click the destroy human civilization. I recommend that highly few if you were too optimistic about the future of the human species. So apparently the in the space of bioengineering, become is becoming easier and easier and easier to engineer, viruses, engineer pathogens.
this is the world's most depressing question, what is do you is there something in particularly worried about like that we should be thinking as a human species about
Yeah, I'm sorry to disappoint you again with my lack of worry for all these problems but I don't worry too much about it.
You know what? We've made it through a bunch of wicked so far as a species and we'll make it through some more or we won't. And if we don't make it through some of these wickets and someone besides that, what they're going to do over the weekend is create some crazy virus that spreads and kills
everybody.
Yeah. You know I'm usually extremely optimistic about the stuff I am now I'm with you except the we won't. Well, there's always a chance, we won't. But I have a sense that human first of all, I believe that most people have much more capacity for good than Evil. All of us are capable of evil, I believe, but most people are much more capable of doing good and want to do good.
And I also believe in the resiliency of the human species that we're in an Innovative bunch and we can respond to tragedy. Especially we respond more to tragedy as the scale of the tragedy grows and our response is much better
so that's why I'm not worried about it, bro.
What makes a great man, let's start at the individual, what makes a great man, what makes a great woman, what makes a great
human being
Somebody that puts others above
themselves.
What makes a great leader, a few
months, same thing, but that sentence does a lot of
work. There's when you're a leader, there's a lot of egos, there's a lot of tension, there's the humans, the human factor, there's people who are timid, there's people who are assholes, there's people who are incredibly competent, but self-obsessed, I don't know there's complexities of human nature. How do you get all those people?
To do to be the best version of themselves and to lift up everyone else
around them, okay? So now that that question is a little bit different now. So now it's getting into a more specific question. About the same time, a more broad. Question of what elements
does it take to make a good leader? Yes.
So, you're right that different people have different personalities, different Tendencies, different levels of ego. And the, the way that I try and explain this,
Like a video game. And I'm not even a video game player, but I've seen this before, where video game characters have various skills, various strengths and weaknesses. So, maybe they're strong, but they're dumb, or maybe they're strong and smart, but they're slow. They're just giving these these ratings. And so, that's where human beings are. And that's the way leaders are and you can have different leaders with different characteristics. And depending on how all those characteristics,
Matchup. You can have somebody that is very introverted, but they're but, but they're still a very good leader because when they do communicate, they do it in a clear, simple manner that everyone understands. So even though they're a little bit introverted people still respect them. And listen to them because they communicate in a clear way, you can have somebody that's extremely charismatic.
Extremely charismatic and everyone looks to them but they're slow and making decisions. And so now we've got someone that can't really make decisions when decisions need to get made. So even though they're charismatic, they're still not a good leader. So, depending on the human being that we're talking about and you just mentioned earlier that human beings, are you? No more complex than anything and do a better job at just about everything, then a robot. So that's the same thing with leadership. You've got all these different
Mystics and you match them or mix them together and depending on where the ratings come out depending on how that thing does in the end.
Can we almost like as a case study look at a few people in the tech area that I'm familiar with that. I know, well,
we can the only caveat being that I may have no familiarisation with them whatsoever. You may have to brief me on them.
Yeah. Because it's so I'll do my best to breathe. I'll do my best to reduce human beings into simple descriptions.
And then you can give me insights of why the hell. They're such effective leaders based on my description, not based on your actual deep knowledge of being. So that caveat of my inability to speak both English language and describe humans. Well, let's talk about first Elon Musk. So he's known as being quite harsh.
In the sense of first of all, a very high bar of Excellence.
And also willing to what he calls the kind of first principles thinking of asking the questions that hurt, which is why the hell are we doing it this way? Why can't it be done a lot but not just better, but
a lot better. So, so let's
I don't want to hear his whole character. I'll go one at at one section at a time. So we got a guy that's harsh. Yeah.
And asking the really hard questions. How can that be good or why is that good? Well, first of all, can be horrible and there's leaders out there that are harsh and they're hated and no one likes them in the loss to work for them and they never do anything. So what is it that Elon Musk? Does that makes gives him the ability to be harsh? So I was, I was hearing a description of me. Yeah. When I would give feedback to Young seals,
That had made mistakes during training operations, and the description was that I was same thing like this harsh. Blunt force trauma, and just totally Direct.
T'. Sledgehammer of truth that I would hit guys with. But it's interesting because I always talk about, you know, building relationships and making sure you're not offending someone. Yeah. So how do these things match up? Well, I can tell you how they match up when I was being harsh. The guys that I was being harsh with new without one shred of doubt that I cared about them more than anything else. And that the reason I was giving them as feedback is because I wanted them to be able to lead their troops. I wanted them to be able to
Accomplish their mission and I wanted them to be able to bring their guys home from war.
So I wasn't being harsh
because it elevated my ego I wasn't
being harsh because I wanted to denigrate them. I was being actually being harsh because I wanted them to accomplish the mission.
So if that's where you on comes from, Hey listen, we got to make this happen. This is for this is for the good of the world to do this and people know that, then it works. I'll bring this point back up with another guy, Steve
Jobs. But let me stay any longer for a second. The
The other thing he does, which is interesting. I'm I see the value of this would be great to hear you speak about it. It's unlike many of the other CEOs, very rich billionaires,
you know,
involved in leading. A lot of people heave
Puts a lot of time into making sure he's on the factory floor. He famously sleeps on the sort of, like, in the middle of things and he puts a lot of effort. He's also very good at it is being a low level engineer. So, like, whatever the task is, he wants to understand the details and he'll talk to the lowest level person in terms of like, you know, somebody who's like working literally on putting Parts together, he wants to understand.
The problem is with the challenges if there's an emergency, he wants to understand the actual details of the problem not like delegating you to a manager but like because a lot of CEOs, a lot of managers will talk about sort of the the the power and the importance of Delegation here. He wants to know if there's a big problem, it wasn't know the exact detail he wants to know the exact problem in wants to. At the fundamental level, understand how to solve that problem, whether it has to do with materials, with their has to do with the actual,
Our manufacturing, the mechanical engineering aspect like we're talking about like engineering. This is a guy who wears a suit is a CEO tweets about Dogecoin but like actual job he's low level engineering and that to me was always inspiring to see somebody who knows.
What the fuck they're doing. That's what it like he gains the respect of Engineers at the lowest level.
I don't know if that's scalable but that's always been inspiring to me and I wonder how many people it's inspiring to maybe you could speak to the value of doing that of, no matter how high your level of leader is to be able to do the low level shit.
Yeah. And that's, that's a common trait that good leaders have and maybe he doesn't necessarily know how to do everything a good leader. But they go down there and talk to the Frontline troops and say hey what is the issue that you're dealing with? Or you know, how
I support you. How can I give you help and one key point that you said is, he said when there is a problem, he gets in there. So, there's things happening at his companies that they're working, and so, he doesn't have to die. I'm not saying he never does, but he doesn't have to spend as much time working on or looking at some subsystem that's functioning. Well, he's got a good leader in there, that's handling it and he checks in with that leader and the leader says yeah, it's working perfectly. He says great.
There, when there's a problem with that's when he might have to get down there and dig into some details so that he fully understands it. So that he when he digs down in the details and this is important. He's coming from an altitude where he has a better bigger perspective not necessarily better, but a bigger perspective. So if you sit there and work on a problem, whatever for eight hours and you're staring at, you know, if you were planning a mission and you were you were planning it for eight hours, you're staring at the
Maps in the charts and you're figuring out where all the troops are going to be located and I come in after eight hours. And I look at your plan, from a, from a distant perspective, there's a good chance. I'll be able to see holes in your plan that you couldn't see, because your perspective was too close. So that's good for me to be able to come in from a higher perspective and have a look at it. But also there's times where I need to get down there and actually look, you know, if you're looking at a problem you say look I can't figure out boss. I can't.
Figure out how to get to this Target and I'm looking at it from a distance and I don't see, I might need to start digging
in and looking and saying, oh,
here's a route that we can take. That actually makes sense. Let's try that. So I think it's a good example of someone going up and down in altitude to look at problems. Understanding what's happening with the Frontline troops and at the same time being able to go back to the Strategic level. And I can, it's probably this way. The reason that he's successful is because he doesn't
It's stuck down there. Yeah. Because if he felt the need to micromanage each and every part on a Tesla, it wouldn't be you. It would be very unlikely that he would have the capacity to do all that. Now, he can hand over some broad chip design and say, hey, this is what the function needs to be, and he gives it to Lex and let's go there with your team and you figured out and you make it happen if he had to actually do it all himself, most likely not possible. So that's what leaders should be doing. They should
go elevate.
And and and and then get down in the weeds when they
have to. And then go back
up the sad thing, this is the part that makes me not want to do is start out is basically his whole life is dealing with emergencies. Just like you said, he's not dealing, this is not shooting the shit about details of engineering is dealing with like in the in the case of the company life and death like something that can just
Completely damaged a production line, right? So he's constantly dealing with emergencies putting out fires and I don't know if there's something to be said about the psychology of that of how, like he's poking himself that he's worried whether his mind can hold up much longer.
So, hopefully in the near future, he will start to form more decentralized, command, where he has some subordinate leadership that he fully trusts and most important that he has properly trained so that they can handle these.
Day-to-day Fires at least 80% of them. So only 20% of the time does he actually need to go in and solve a problem if he's not doing that right now? Then that's going to end up being a problem anytime. I'm so I work with companies all the time and that's what's interesting about this is I going to work with a CEO or with a with the c-suite of a company. It takes a little while to figure out what's going on. I'm kind of going off of the things that you're telling me almost anecdotally, right? Yes, but let's say that what you can do and also
I don't know how familiar you you actually are with the inner workings of his companies, but
If we were to assume that what you're saying is accurate, then my advice would be. Hey listen you need to start putting a little bit more time and effort into training. Up some subordinate leadership that has the trust knowledge and expertise that you will be able to turn over some of these some of these details to, for two reasons, number one, so you can let your brain. You know, you can, you can survive a little longer as he put it, but also all the time that you spend as a leader looking down and into your organization is time,
You're not looking up and out. So when you're not looking up and out, you're not seeing what the competitors doing. You're not seeing where the markets going, there's problems that, that, that can come from that. So, if right now, he's spending too much time, looking down and in, and you mentioned, you know, you said, I don't know if I want to do a start-up. When you do a start-up, you're going to be looking down and in for a while, yeah, it's going to take a while. You're going to have to do all this work yourself. You're not going to have the finances to put people Manpower Behind these things. So that's probably he may be he's in that mindset a little bit because he's done so many startups over.
The years, and so he's in the, he's habitually in the weeds. So my advice would be. All right, let's start looking at formulating some subordinate leadership that has the, like I said, the expertise, the trust that you can. You can start to turn over some of these more minut details to them so you can start looking up and out.
Yeah, I think he's done that more successful in the in some place that another is a SpaceX, a lot of people give the credit to Gwynne. Shotwell
For the CEO of the CEO of SpaceX. As a very successful person, I run shit but in Tesla not as much. So I wonder if you can comment on something a lot of people worry about and this applies to a lot of tech companies which is a lot of people worry about that. If Elon disappears The the
Innovative Spirit the company is as we know them today will collapse will stagnate and will basically fail to do what they've been doing for so many years successfully, is there some aspect to what makes a good leader that if you disappear
It's still the thing still lives on and not just lives on but
thrives. Yes, sir. What we have to do in those situations is we have to establish a strong culture inside that organization. And if you're, there's reasons why this happens, right? If I have a big ego and I form a company, and I love the fact that everyone looks at me and says, oh, Jocko made this company and he's the creative force behind this company. And that fuels my ego and it makes me feel good and, you know, I'm working.
With you Lex and every time you come up with an idea, I say, Lex you you need to stay in your box. Yeah. Right. So I'm not creating a culture that rewards that sort of creativity and eventually, when I die, I won't
have educated my
team on how to maintain that creative aspect. So, again, hopefully inside that organization. He's, he's encouraging and growing that culture.
Where creativity is rewarded. Where where it flourishes even when he's gone, that's what we have to hope for.
He is. But I also seem to notice that there's not many people like him. People become complacent too easily. At this point, I've been disappointed by people little bit like success makes people soft.
Now with you on it seems like success doesn't have any effect.
It's like the reverse effect.
It doesn't. It's like what's the net? It's always like, what's the next biggest thing? All right? He's living that exponential growth, which I think that's the problem that you have to have somebody who's constantly trying to find the 10x solution, like trying to constantly improve things and restlessly that, let me that probably has to
To do with finding the right people not just creating the culture. We're creating a culture with the right set of people.
Speaking of which Steve Jobs.
There's a
two things I want to mention they're wanting once again the harshness, but a very different kind and the second is team building. So on the harshness he is much harsher than he Lon.
In a way, in the following way. And I'm having a sense that you will not like this, but I'd like to defend it, is he loses his shit quite a bit.
He was famously, at least, especially early on being very emotional. His letting passion dominate the discussion, there would be a lot of firings, there would be a lot of mean things said to
people,
I don't know what you make of that. How much is a leader? Are you allowed to just lose your shit in your love for the thing you're doing?
And how effective is that?
As a leader, you shouldn't be doing that very often.
So you can look back at me and say well Jocko, here's the most profitable company that's ever existed and so you're wrong. Well going back to that multiple multitude of characteristics. That human beings can have what the same thing with businesses. It's the same thing with companies.
Steve Jobs was off the charts in some of his traits, his ability to understand design. Yeah, his ability to understand human interface with computer systems. So, so far off the charts, that despite his bad temper emotional Behavior. The company still thrived,
That's that can happen. You can have people that there's you can have people that are horrible leaders, that develop something. That's so universally outstanding that you end up with a, a company that's successful is the reason I mean I get asked that a bunch, you know, people always ask me because I say, look, you shouldn't be, you shouldn't be losing your temples temper. As a leader, what about Steve Jobs? He used to yell and scream all the time. Great. I might, when people
That to me, I say, okay, are you as good as at design as Steve Jobs? Was we are use good. Are you as good at marketing as Steve? Jobs was there's a, he had a certain amount of skills that were off the charts. And so he was able to be successful despite the fact that he would lose his temper treat people horribly. That's not, that's not good. It's not good. And it would have been even more successful If he, if he wouldn't had those characteristics. Now, you might say, well,
He his anger is what pushed things. Well, let me ask you this, what leader wins, the leader whose team is afraid, who the team, who executes executes the mission because they're afraid of their leader, or executes the task, because they're afraid of their leader or the team that loves their leader so much that they don't want to let them down which team wins. You're
implying a confidence that
This is more powerful than fear, but I'm not. So sure this is the Machiavelli question. You're saying, ultimately, it's always better to lead by
inspiration and love. Then by by
putting the fear into the team.
What I'm, what I'm saying is that I've seen countless times, is me leading through my authority leading through my rank leading through. Punitive measures is infinitely worse than me.
Me and you working together as a team to win.
On the second point is Steve Jobs, is he has this idea philosophy of eight players
where you have a group, like the power and the
productivity of a group of what he called a player's
is
invaluable. So you want to get a team of people who are the best at what they do. But the most important aspect to him was that
A single quote, unquote be player on the team destroys the entire productivity of the team.
Is there something that Rings true to that? So he
was exist, could be a temporary thing, but vicious about firing and removing the, what he felt was a toxic be player in a team. So eight players feed off of each other. Unless there's one be player present
depends on the nature of the be player.
Is the player is the player Abby player because he's a little bit lazy. Is he a be player because he doesn't have good vision. Is he a be player because he's got a big ego and always thinks he's right.
And now creates conflict in the team. So there's a bunch of different be players. Look, if you're working for me, and you're kind of a be player, but guess what? You're a grinder and you get stuff done. I want you on the team. You might not be the smartest person I have, but I know that you're committed to the team, and I want you on the team. So, your B player,
But that's okay. Now, if if you're Lex with the giant ego, I'd rather have, I'd rather have Lex. It's not quite as smart cause I got other people that are smart. I got other people that are smart and team, look, you're going to need some smart people on the team, but a team is made of it's a team. And so you take these different components of a team, and if you have complementary components, you'll end up with a superior team.
then just basing, it on the level of and what's an a player sometimes, in the SEAL Teams,
They would get something called the Stacked platoon. And what that would be is someone, you know, some senior person in that platoon would manipulate and, and and maneuver to get the quote Best guys that he could in that petunia. So, you know, the most experienced guys, the person, that a great, great reputations. And sometimes those Tunes would be great, sometimes, they would implode because what you end up with is a bunch of a players and now no,
Wants to follow anyone else. No one wants to agree with her nails. Everyone wants to do it my way, not. It's my way, not Lexus. Way Lexus, stupid. No, you're stupid. We end up with problems. So, can one person derail a team? Absolutely under good leadership? One person should not derail a
team.
This could be a tech thing to there's some multiplying effect of just pure Excellence, no matter the personalities.
I think for Steve Jobs we're he doesn't ego doesn't matter. None of that matters. What matters is the quality of the output? The Genius of the result? And that's somehow multiplies itself and they egos actually like one of the problems with the egos is like what is ego? Usually say it says I'm much better than you. When you have people that are really good together. It's very hard for that. You go to flourish because you're like constantly being shown that you're not as
Good and there's a competition. So like I think there has his idea was that like if you get people that are really good at what they do, it turns, as opposed to you being complacent and not doing much and thinking, you're better than everyone else. In your opinion is better. Is you almost getting in that competitive race, you know that magic that happens when you're at the end of a marathon and you're just like head-to-head, like you're just going full steam with a person that as good as you, there's no place for
you.
Go there, which is great, which is great. Let's use that example, you and I are racing. We're at the end of the marathon. Yeah, we're both highly competitive highly competitive. We have massive Egos and we both want to win. We both want to win so bad, that we give everything we've got.
That's totally positive, right? Yeah, isn't that totally positive? Now, imagine this same thing.
We're in a race. We're in a marathon where in the last hundred meters, it's you against me and, and our egos are huge. And we're pushing to win and you start to pull ahead of me.
And my ego is so big, and I hate losing so much.
That I somehow accidentally push my knee up against your foot on a back stride and throw you onto your face. Yeah. So that's what ego ego is an awesome driver unless you let your ego control you and you let ego drive your decision making process in which case it turns into it, an incredible problem. So you might have someone that is excellent.
You might have someone that's outstanding, you might have some someone that's tens across the board, but their ego is so big that big that they can't work with other people. They can't accept anyone elses ideas. They can't compromise on something because they think their ideas better all the time and that is going to be problematic and I don't want them on the team. Now, as a good leader, guess what I'll do, I'll put them into a situation where I can utilize their best aspects but not have their ego.
Destroy the team. So I might say, hey Lex, you know what? I actually want you to take lead on this part of the project over here and since you're so smart and you're you work so hard, I know you're going to pull ahead of everyone else, so you grind on that. Once you get that result, give it to me, and I'm going to disseminate it to the team. This is so I isolate you from Wrecking yourself and the rest of the team with your giant ego.
so then looking at a completely opposite person was this a fascinating person to me as Sundar pichai, who's the CEO of alphabet, CEO of Google,
I admire the in a romantic sense, the madness that is Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. So to me the opposite of that Sundar pichai, who's a like everybody
loves him
and he's also a great listener. So he always brings people together and so when the the energy of that person in room is like
The Basic Energy if I were to summarize it is like I want to hear all the voices in the room. That's the energy. He brings. And it's almost like he doesn't want to impose a final decision. He wants to hear all the voices and somehow, always the decision just falls out. I don't know what to say about that style of leadership but it's always surprising to me how
That love brought a lot of people together and still, I mean, some of the greatest things Google has done in the over the past several years could be attributed to that continued. Innovation bringing out the best out of people. There's, of course bureaucracy which I could criticize the end of the day, which always happens with big companies. I would argue actually the dictatorial style is Steve Jobs in Elon Musk help fight the bureaucracy, which is one criticism. I would give of being a listener and being kind.
It's sometimes you can't cut through the bullshit as effectively but he he's one of the only people I've ever heard of everybody
loves he's inspirational figure to
Millions especially in the like in India. He's a celebrity in the best kind of way. Is there something you could say about that kind of leadership where you're never, they asshole, you're never the dictator. You're always the listener and the
the compassionate empathetic glue that brings the team together basically would love. Yeah, that's
that's great leadership.
if you had to choose for Google,
For large companies, is there something to be said about what is more effective, the dictator the ruling by love, or ruling by
fear?
First of all, everything is a dichotomy, right? And so to think that all the time, you're always going to be able to just bark orders at people and they're always going to listen to you and you're always going to get the best result. That would not be smart to think that every single time you're going to come to a 100% consensus amongst the troops and that decision is going to reveal itself. Without you nudging, it along that would also be
Short-sighted and naive. So what you what a good leader does is they they stay balanced and as much as they can. They listen to the what the troops have to say, they take that feedback, maybe they quietly nudge things, and I'm sure he does that. I'm sure he does some nudging that maybe no one, even picks up on, you know, I like to say, the best forms of leadership is leadership with minimum force required. So, if I can go into a room as a leader and not say,
Single thing, and the team can come to the right consensus and move in that direction. That's my preferred method. Maybe I have to give them a little bit of a nudge, a 10% nudge in One Direction. Okay. That's better than me. Walking in there and giving them 100 percent dictatorial direction of exactly what I want to have happened. Now, occasionally, if we have an emergency situation, people are starting to be frazzled and they're not sure which direction to go. Then sometimes as a leader you have to walk in and say all right everyone here's where we're going.
And people get on board. Why? Because for many years or months or however long, you've trusted them to come up with a plan. And when you trust when you as a leader, trust your team to come up with a plan, the team starts to trust you
and you get leadership
capital and as you build leadership, Capital occasionally, you need to cash in. Some of that leadership Kaplan need to spend some of it and maybe it is. Hey listen, here's a direction. We're going right now. We'll debrief it later, but we got to make a
Roof and the team who trust you says, Roger that boss. We got it.
And all of them actually do this. Interesting thing, I'd love to hear your opinion on it. Sounder certainly does it to a large degree which is it's in the process of Delegation.
Trusting a person to do a really difficult thing. Like,
Tossing it up
and saying, like I trust you can get this job done.
For some even if your resume does not support that, I'm actually kind of amazed the human beings when they're given the trust.
To get the job done. They step up very often. It's kind of an amazing property of human nature.
People often ask me issues about leadership and I always say that one of the best tools for teaching leadership and for teaching a bunch of other lessons is leadership itself. Yeah, so when it happens all the time, when you elevate, someone into a leadership position, they do step up and they do make things happen, so that's not surprising to me. You do have to
mitigate risk. So
Saying hey you know Lex I know
you're haven't been in the military before. I know you have very limited weapons experience but I want you to run a Target, assault on a real mission in whatever country that would not be good. That would not be a good move on my part. Now, if I said, all right, Lex, you know what, I want you to get some leadership experience, I've got a training Mission and it's going to be using paint ball and I'm going to put you in charge of it. I got no problem doing that.
Some of that is judging
human character is like there's potential there. Something in this person that they are, they have enough demons or whatever the hell it requires to have that fuel. They'll figure it out. They'll hate themselves if they don't and they'll find the right. The, the find the tools of find the PATH, o to achieve the whatever the level of perfection they can, it's been really surprising to me. It's been making me
rethink the whole hiring process
because I often
Now I'm thinking looking so I'm looking for people both for the startup but just for my own life or help and I almost want to see evidence of Excellence but maybe you want to just based on just Judgment of human character without evidence of Excellence. Have people step up like Joe Rogan would Jamie it's a funny side of. I didn't understand how Little Joe knew about Jamie when he hired them and Jamie stuff.
Up and now runs one of the most successful podcast ever. And that's an incredible kind of, he's one of the best producers in the world now not to let it get to his head. And by the way the funny
thing about him and one of the best googlers in the world of high schoolers, the
the funny thing about Jamie this is okay, you might you might not like this but what I, what I like I'm constantly exceptionally self-critical to a point of my self-hating. Sometimes I do.
We appreciate every single moment I'm alive, but everything I've ever done. I feel like a shit and when I talked to Jamie about everything he's done, he's just in every way he carries himself. He's so self-critical. He's so like worried that it's wrong is bad that anxious energy. I love it because that's how you lead
to growth and progress. Like you might
like a therapist might say, that's probably not good for your like well-being, fuck it. It's good.
For the, what's good for your well-being is to create awesome things. That's ultimately what leads to happiness is to create the best thing you can in your life. And so when I see that in somebody like Jamie or anybody, I talk to when you really self-critical that's a good sign to me, is that ridiculous?
It's not ridiculous at all and it goes back. You know you were you were the way you were phrasing. These questions about what makes a good person and what makes a good leader the way you phrase them
Kind of eliminated. The normal answer that I give the normal answer that I give you ask me what makes a good leader. What makes a good person is is being humble. So when you're going to hire someone for your for your startup or whatever company you're creating, that is a key. Characteristic to look for is someone that has the humility like, like young Jamie to say. Yeah, you know, I could have done this better and here's what I can improve. And here's what I need to work on
When you have somebody that thinks they know everything out of the gate, you're you're already got someone that's gonna be hard to deal with. They're gonna be hard to coach. They're going to be hard to Mentor when you have somebody that's truly humble. You barely again, it's minimum force required. Because when you say to Jamie after show, how do you think that when he says, well, you know, I did this wrong and I didn't have this set up in time and you don't barely have to do anything because he's got the humility. If you got someone that's big eagle and you say hey how did that show go? He goes, I
Went awesome on my end now guess what you have to do. Now you have to start with applying Force as a leader, which is expending leadership Capital, which we don't want to do is we always try and conserve our leadership Capital as much as we possibly can. And when we have to expend it just to get Jamie to make some improvements that's bad. So when you go looking for people, look for people that are humble now, does
this mean, you look for people that don't have any
confidence? No, that's not what I'm saying. There's a balance to all these things. That's the dichotomy of leadership you. But people tend
Towards and look I work with a lot of military troops in the past. Now we work with companies. The reason I talk about humility all the time is because for someone to be get into a leadership position in the military, they have to have confidence. So the tendency is that their confidence is going to outweigh their humility at some point. Same thing with with civilian companies if you get to a point of leadership inside of company, you have to have confidence.
To get there, you don't get to a position of leadership inside of company, lacking confidence. So, the tendency is for confidence to to grow a little bit too much, and we have to put that put that confidence in to check. We have to put that ego in a check, really good leaders. They're confident about their humble, that's the balance of the dichotomy.
Here that Jamie don't get
cocky
on occasion. Rarely, you talk about discipline. What is a disciplined life? Look like
doing what you're supposed to do? What
if I want to lay on the couch and eat Cheetos and watch soap? Operas that's, that's not that doesn't feel like discipline.
Do you think you're supposed to do that?
well, you know, you could argue from sort of meaning of life perspective that perhaps happiness is the most important and if it makes me happy,
perhaps, that's
if it's fulfilling of course, eating Cheetos and watch soap, operas is fulfilling for nobody
whatsoever, next question
but there's something about discipline, that's more than that, which is
Like the rigor of
habit. All right. You you wake up early in the morning all the time. What does it Jordan? Pederson talks about make your bed. One place? Where you probably agree with
Jordan. People ask me if I make my bed. I don't
And I don't feel, there's a disagreement, we Jordan, but we go, you know, when I was younger before I was married, I didn't make my bed because I had one sleeping bag on it and I would get out of sleeping bag. There's nothing to make. Yeah. Now, I'm married and I can't make my bed because my wife's in my bed so I don't make my bed.
Okay, so what in your life, maybe we can talk about the one that's most public.
Facing which is you wake up of four clock around four o'clock in the morning, you post?
On social media, a picture of your watch. It being early just to remind people that you're, you are man of your word. What's that about? What's the philosophy of the four
clock?
What role does that play? In a discipline life for you?
Okay, from that perspective, what role it plays is getting a jump on the day and when you wake up early and you get a jump on the day and you've got your workout done and you've got it.
A bit of a little bit of work done. Yeah. By the time normal people are getting up that, that's a win. That's a psychological win and it's not just a psychological and it's an actual win, it's an actual wind. So that feels great, it doesn't feel great. Maybe when your alarm clock goes off but by 8 o'clock in the morning and you've already accomplished some of the major tasks that you have some of the most painful tasks that you have for the day, you're off to a great start and it's going to
to feel great.
Let's break this down then what does then the rest of the day look like what is the perfect?
T' productive discipline day in the life of Jocko willing. Look
like wake up work out. Wake up one for 4:30 or got one. Five, five to six or seven. No eating. No. And then what
is the workout look? Like depends
on the day?
What's the perfect? We're talking about body weight, lifting cardio. Have you bag Jutsu?
Okay. Yeah. When I say work out, I mean no Jiu-Jitsu. So Jiu-Jitsu doesn't. Jiu-Jitsu comes later in the day. This is just you alone. This is me alone. Working out. Yep. And I'm going to be doing of a wide variety of things.
This is the thing that has the pictures of
the aftermath was
This is suffer some
sweat at the. So the goal is to do whatever the hell results in some sweat and that takes an
hour. Sometimes it takes 12 minutes, sometimes it takes 3 hours depending on what kind of mood I'm
in.
You got some demons to work through, or is this just as it's just work. Like are we? So you got the David Goggins who's like, who clearly has demons screaming inside of his head that he's trying to work through? Are you just getting the work done out of the discipline or is this? I think Joe is a little bit with David Goggins is like, there's some ego, there's some bullshit. You trying to get out there, some of the exercise, that's a good way to kind of humble. You is just doing
that exercise. Well, exercises.
Humbling.
I mean, it's but it's physical conditioning, right? It's preparing your body so that you can handle whatever it is you're going to do perfect.
What as what do you do
after
Let's talk about food, hopefully surf, if the waves are good surf for how good of the Waves, let's say they're good. This is a perfect day. This is
a perfect. Perfect waves. Why do you
surf
Devon. Okay, this is fun.
Okay man. Man and nature. It was just like what surfing is the ultimate is the power of the, the infinite power of the ocean versus a little silly looking man on a board.
You could say, it's the infinite power of the ocean versus a silly-looking man on a board. Or you could say it's fun because it's Russian and romances, okay? This is for fun in the morning.
Beautiful. And this is your still haven't
eaten.
No. Okay, so when do you eat? I'll usually start grazing around 11 o'clock and grazing. What's the what's the diet? The support is there a perfect die? Or do graze all how eat some nuts? You know, something like that. I usually start grazing. Maybe I'll have a little piece of meat or something like that. This
work enter any of this. I'm sure you have a lot of people that want your
attention. Yeah, yeah. No work is work is about to happen because, you know, even
If I, if I woke up at 4:00 worked out from five to six surf from six to eight. Now I'm starting to work writing recording reading talking to clients.
Is there parts of the day
where you try to
find moments to think deeply to read deeply, sort of, really focused because this world wants is full of distractions, right? Even talking to like, even
Work stuff that's emails and all those kinds of things they can they can scatter. Your mind is there are times you seek to have that
Focus. Well, I read a lot of books and so usually, when I read, I'll be reading for a chunk of time, maybe an hour at a time, maybe a little bit longer and I might do that twice a day. So I don't know if that counts as what you're describing but and same thing with writing when I when I'm writing something, I mean, I just that's what I do. I write
It usually usually right for about an hour I can get about a thousand words an hour out of me so that's that's sort of what I do.
What is the rest of the day? Look like
just a lot of work but one is the Jiu-Jitsu I want to find out about the Jutsu
so round around 4:30 or 5:00 o'clock at night train. Yep. And how hard you
still? Hi, how are you doing? Body-wise, they still the old met the old man, still got it, or
are you talking to me?
It would be, it would be good for viewership and ratings
if I die before the end of the podcast. So
II try still train with the same guys and I'll train, you know. So I've been very lucky when it comes to getting injured and stuff like that so haven't I've had some injuries but they're they're healed and so yeah, I trained
And food-wise, you mentioned grazing is some Awesomenauts, very like, kind of things. Is there a main meal here? Yeah, at night a night high in protein, or is it anything?
Yeah, I'll have like a steak and salad all usually have for dessert. I have like a protein shake. So
is there a thing where at the end of the at the end of the day you like you have like a samurai sword and you meditate on
Not a death and all those kinds of is this some weird ritual you partake
in? No, just go to bed when I get done with the end of the day. I might read a little bit more.
Just more. Yeah, because the
reader Leon and reading
reading makes me tired usually so I'll read a little bit more.
Is there a key to you to you can speak to? That makes for a productive day just the way you approach it mentally.
Yeah. Write down. What you're supposed to do. Wake up early and start doing it and then get it done. Yeah. I know it's a miraculous trick.
Can I ask you a bunch of
Jutsu?
By all
means. What have you learned from being a practitioner, your black belt? What have you learned from this journey?
Of being a martial artist Jiu-Jitsu for me, was the connective tissue that started a join my mind together with all the F different aspects of my life. And so Jiu-Jitsu for me was, was really important and I don't think I would be doing anything that I'm doing right now if it wasn't for Jiu-Jitsu. So, there's various aspects of my life that were in existence, but I didn't understand how
Were connected until I started training Jiu-Jitsu. The primary things are interacting with other human beings and combat tactics and strategy and Jiu-Jitsu and all those things are connected. They all follow the same guiding principles and I wouldn't have recognized those guiding principles if I didn't do jujitsu.
Can you elaborate because you've trained for many many years? What is it? The hardship, is it? The humbling nature of just being tapped all over, you know non-stop? All right. I actually don't know how many times
more times than
you. Okay, so good. Is it just the hardship of physical training? Like the honesty of the mat in the sense that like, you know, what works, and what doesn't work, which aspects were the most impactful fee, all.
So yes from a humility perspective. When you realize you think when you think you know what you're doing, when you think you have certain skills and you realize that there's always somebody better than you and you realize that, hey maybe I don't have all the answers all the time and you bring that to a leadership perspective and you walk into your platoon and you realize that maybe you don't have all the answers all the time and maybe you should listen to what other people have to say, you bring that to a combat situation. And you realize that you think if you sit there and think that you're smarter than the enemy, you're going to
Complacent. You're going to make mistakes. So there's one aspect out of the gate as far as
You know, if I'm going to try and get your arm, do I attack your arm?
Maybe not directly unless I'm gonna wipe
out exactly what do I do. I attack your neck and when you reach up to defend your neck, that's when I get your arm. Well if I'm out on the battlefield and there's an enemy position, should I attack frontal assault into that position?
No, no, I shouldn't. I should put down some covering fire and I should maneuver around to the flank. The same thing, if I'm dealing with you, and you're my boss and you've got a giant ego and you've come up with a plan and I don't like your plan. Should I walk up to you and say, hey Lex, your plan isn't good. No or should I say? Hey, Lex, can I ask you some questions about how you want us to execute this? Cuz I want to make sure I understand your vision.
So all these things are connected. Yes and I wouldn't have realized that any that we could sit here and do this forever. We could we could I could tell you these comparisons forever. Yeah,
But this all this connective tissue, bringing all these things together. I wouldn't have seen it without gee. I don't think I would have seen it without Jiu-Jitsu so Jiu-Jitsu to me had it had a incredible life impact on me. Not look the physical part. Yes absolutely.
Does it, does
it keep you humble when you know that there's a hundred and forty five pound individual that can tap you out when you're 220 pound.
25 year old guy and there's a hundred thirty five or hundred forty pound you know 46 year old guy that can make you tap out that's humbling and and what do you do with that? Do you run away from it or do you continue to pursue it? Same thing with life, same thing with anything. So Jiu-Jitsu is an incredibly powerful, not just physical aspect, but it's a way to understand. It's a way of
thinking,
You've also competed is there something you can speak to the value of competition? Obviously, you've been through combat, actual military, combat is many, many, many orders of magnitude more high stakes than competition and us in a silly sport like Jutsu nevertheless.
It still has some of the Echoes of the same challenges. Is there something you can speak to the value of competition for you?
Yep competition route. Will reveal weaknesses in your game that you can then go back and train to
rectify.
So that that's very useful to sort of yeah, as a testing ground of course training can be that testing ground as well or
that feedback. Yep. But as you and I both know if you and I trained together all the time, you'll know my game, I'll know your game and even if we have five other people, we all kind of understand each other's games and you're not doing something to me that I don't expect. So when I go and compete I'm get your you know this random person is has a game that I've never seen before. I'm and I may or may not know
The deal with that game, if I know how to deal with it. Great I get to Victory, maybe I don't learn as much. If I don't know how to deal with their game, I get the loss and I get the win of learning. What some weakness in my game is?
So you mentioned, I'll find that your friends and you work with Dean Lister and Dean lister's. One of the people that inspired John danaher, who have very much been. I've got a chance to talk to quite a bit recently.
I don't know what you think about this. This is not a therapy session
but
well maybe it isn't going to want is turning into one. I've that he's a fascinating person, John danaher in terms of
Creating almost a science of Jiu-Jitsu to a level that I haven't seen before, which is a systems thinking about, like you can think about military combat as tactics in a particular situation. But when you zoom out and you want to create an entire systems of tactics in all situations, right, he's very kind of wants to keep zooming out and creating giant systems and which I appreciate that. Even though the the task is probably impossible.
To do completely, but there's something that's in terms of competition. They
he kindled the fire in me that I want to get back out there because the particular thing that did it which is very different from my personal Journey just do.
Which was?
To degree that people I worked with cared about competition. It was always about winning.
And or doing well, all those kinds of things for John. It's about winning the. Like, when he's not, is not even a thing that's important. What's most important is winning by submission.
Is or dominance, right? And and not just the, the end is the entire time competing such that. The only thing that matters is that kind of Victory and that's a very different level of competition. That's actually liberating in a certain kind of sense. I remember so much my competition was about kind of fear of not taking risks. You know, you get up on points or you hold a strong position you
Of advanced you get more points, maybe you chase the submission but there's always a fear of risk and for him, you embrace the risk. You're not, you should not be competing out of fear, you know, live and die by the sword versus stay in safety. I don't know if there's something to be said here.
Well, I mean, this is none. You said it's novel to you. It's not novel to me the entire my entire Journey on Jiu-Jitsu in Jiu-Jitsu was only about submission and
You know, as you as you mentioned Dean Lister is my coach in my main trading partner for 20-something years and if you ever watch Dean Treanor fight, that's what he's trying to do is submit as everyone. That's what he's always done. That's what he always will do he, you know, he has the highest I think he has em back. I know he has the highest submission victories in atcc. He, that's what he does. So this is, in fact,
As Jiu-Jitsu got more popular and we started seeing people competing to win by points. That was what was novel to me in the beginning. Now it's the standard, so it's not novel to me. I love the fact that John danaher and all of his troops go out and they try and submit people. I think it's awesome and I think that's what Jiu-Jitsu
is. Let's ask for some advice for white belts as a lot of waybill to listen to this. What advice
Vice, would you give you been into just for many years in terms of?
A successful journey through Jiu-Jitsu. What advice? Would you give them? People just starting out. Just
keep training. Keep your ego in. Check, don't freak out. Try and use the techniques that you learn and all the stuff sound like I'm saying it, you know, notice how I'm saying it. Yeah. Hey Tap Out, keep your ego on the shack and everyone, but the thing is, everyone says, it's all time and white belt still start off by going, completely nuts, for at least, you know, three to six months of, I'm not going to let this guy tapped me out and they're going to, and I'm going to tap this guy out, not by using technique, but
Just using strength and it's just a it's just
inhibiting, your learning. So as much as you can, I know, I know you got to get it out of your system. I know you don't want to tap and I know you want to have somebody, but as soon as you get get that off your chest, then try and try and relax and try and learn the
techniques, it's perhaps counterintuitive, and never was to me, but it's counterintuitive that to start on the Journey of really sort of mastering Jets or whatever or improving.
Saying is you have to relax and that seems to be a very conative less. I learned that early on with that was thanks to the Russian system. I played piano and like music basically. Actually this is true for basically, any sport that includes the human body is like, relaxing is the way you, you start learning stuff, you have to learn. You have to literally. And most people don't seem to understand this is like, you have to learn what it means for the human body to relax.
Like
I guess you have to have enough knowledge of all the muscles involved to know what it means to relax those muscles. So for piano you have to understand what it means to relax your wrists and your fingers in order to learn how to move them. Like if there's tenseness in the fingers, you're not going to like, you have to learn how to try hard while relaxed the I guess the beginner.
If you don't internalize this lesson we'll
try hard by
tensing up hard and like trying hard tensing up more as opposed to relaxing more and that lesson cannot be conveyed through words, I guess I've had the great Fortune of having dictatorial teachers as they do in Russia for for piano and so on we get like hit if if you don't learn to relax which is a kind of intuitive notion but it
works. Yes, brings me.
One of my favorite pieces of coaching advice that I will tell white belts while they're struggling. On the mat, I'll tell them to relax harder. Okay?
That's as beautiful for somebody.
Who studied War, who participate in War? What do you think is the best martial arts
for, let's call it
self-defense.
For hand-to-hand combat outside the constraints of
sport so it's not one answer. The answer to me is jujitsu boxing wrestling more tie.
Judo sambo and on down the list, I definitely start with jiu-jitsu. The reason I start with Jujitsu is because in a self-defense situation, if you are a big monster human and you want to fight me,
And you square off with me, guess what? I'm going to do run away because I don't want, I don't want to get involved the even if I see skinny little Lex out on the street and you start yelling at me and saying you want to fight me, I don't want to fight you, I don't know. It doesn't matter. I don't care if I can beat your not, what if you stab me. What if you sue me after I get done throwing you onto the concrete, there's a million bad things that can happen in. Almost nothing good.
So for self-defense, my first self-defense is my feet to get away from you.
And if you square off to punch me, I can run away from you. If you square off to kick me, I can run away from you. If you push me, I can run away from you, so great. I don't need to know how to box to run away from you where this all changes.
Is when you grabbed me.
And now, I don't have the option, run away
anymore. Now, I actually have to know how
to get away from your grip, and that's where Judas who comes into play. So especially if you get me on the ground, if you, if you grab me and get me on the ground. Now, I need to know how to get you off of me and get up and get away from you, so I can run away.
So that's why I say start with jiu-jitsu and, and from their boxing Wrestling Judo sambo, muy Thai.
Yeah, there's a decision in the standing position. I mean, I'm a judo person as well, and the Judo is very limited in their understanding the full grappling Spectrum, even though they do all the things on the ground as well. But it's so focused on the feet. But nevertheless, it's important to understand.
The thing that Judo has as a sport, it's good to practice that just doesn't, is not just the
grass, the skill of
grappling in the feet, but the skill of explosive aggression that sometimes Jiu-Jitsu is more about in terms of tactics, is more about patience. And to me, it depends how you practice it but because so much is about control and
Nique that sometimes you don't get to practice like, aggression, explosive aggression, and Judo is so much about aggression implemented in such a way that the demonstration of power is effortless, all right? That's the beauty of Jiu-Jitsu.
Yeah. And same thing with rustling rustling. Also has a high level of intensity and aggression as well. Yes. Yeah so did. That's where that's where I agree Judo and wrestling. Absolutely awesome. Get some and
taking boxing Muay Thai. Yeah, you know, like the you should train all these things
are there books and movies in your life long ago recently that had a big impact on
you. Yeah, the main one is about face which is sitting right here. There you go. This is written by Colonel David hackworth. It's the book that really had a massive impact on me from a leadership perspective and I ended up I talked about it.
Off that it started kind of coming back and started selling well and they contacted me and I wrote a foreword for it. So that book had a huge impact on me. And I still when I read it, I still get lessons out of it. Just about every time. This
is he getting on more and Korea and Korea
and he got in towards the end of it at right at the end of World War two. So he was kind of raised by the soldiers that fought in World War Two. And then he went to Korea.
And then he went to Vietnam
and exceptional Warrior a soldier soldier. If you can give a little inkling, what made him? A soldier soldier.
So I he died in 2005. So I never got to meet him and I I had a guy on my podcast who worked for him in Vietnam, a guy named General James mukaiyama and luck.
Lee his son had reached out to me and said, I think you're talking about my dad because I read some passage in there. That that Jim mukaiyama was young. Capped young Captain, Jim mukaiyama company commander in Vietnam. He said I think you're talking about my dad. Would you want to talk to him? And I said, absolutely well, here's the thing that I didn't really understand and you read one quote, but there's all these quotes in that book that talked about how great hackworth was and one incredible leader. He was
was how he was the best combat leader anyone ever seen. And all these just really complementary things that are said by a bunch of different people. And when you read the book, you're reading this guy's account of what he went through.
But I never really knew if that was all true, or did he just cherry-pick his friends quotes about him and cherry-pick the stories that he wanted to tell? And so, it was very interesting for me when I met mukaiyama General mukaiyama, who he became a general eventually. When I met him, I were talking about his life and I was very curious, and I was a little bit nervous going into this interview because I was thinking, maybe my hero, my mentor, this guy that have never met before.
Maybe he's just an arrogant jerk. That talked talked himself up in this book.
So, I'm sitting down with, with General mukaiyama, and I finally got to the part where he's meeting hackworth for the first time, and I said, did you know, did you know, who hackworth was when he showed up? So, he was mookie mooc mooc, they called mooc mooc was the was the, like the adjutant to the, to the general, that, that was going to, that hackworth is gonna be working for. So, when hackworth comes into the office, the first person you meet
Is this guy this guy cap mukaiyama.
And so, hackworth walks in. And I said, when hackworth walked in, did you know who he was? And mukaiyama, says, everybody knew who he was mr. Infantry. And so he ended up explaining that everything that is written in their about hackworth. They just loved him, they adored him.
Up the chain of command, it turned out a little bit different. And you know the title of book is about face and if you're familiar, familiar with military drill about face. When you turn around a hundred eighty degrees and at the end of the Vietnam War,
Towards the end of the Vietnam War. He was so disgusted. With the way that the war was being fought. He was so disgusted with the decisions that were being made by the leadership that he did an interview. He was the first Colonel. First, senior officer to do an interview that spoke out against the war that was happening. And this is while he's in Vietnam, by the way. So he got drummed out of the army and he was forced to retire and that was that
So, there's an element of rebellious to him. And, you know, when you talk to me about, are there times when the leaders making the leadership, this absolute senior leadership, the civilian leadership is doing wrong things? Yes, and there's times when people speak out against it and there's an argument for and against that to even, even with hackworth, you know? Did he when you get when you quit your job or you do something that gets you fired, which is what he did.
You immediately, give up all your influence over. What's happening? So they get another, they get another Battalion Commander to take his place. They get another kernel to step in and takes place, that's what they do.
And now he can't help anymore, he can't help his troops
but at that point in the war he loved his men so much that he was sickened with the situation on the ground and he and he spoke out about it. So that book
A huge impact on me. And, like I said, I still, I still read it all the time. I re-read it all the time and I always take lessons from it.
Let me ask you about love. This is not usually associated with Jocko, but what role does love in terms of friendship terms of family play in a successful life and life in general.
Again, this is putting other people above yourself.
She see that as love, that's all
to me. The implementation of
love, I would say yes,
Jocko, I've been a huge fan of yours. You're somebody who inspires me to get up early to get shit, done to be disciplined about my life and to be the best leader, I can be, it's really truly an honor and thank you for wasting all your to valuable time with me. I don't know what you were thinking, but thank you for doing it.
Well, thanks for having me, your honor.
Guarantee not as cool as you just made me sound. I'm just out here, like I said trying to help people out and I think you're helping a lot of people out with your podcast. So, thanks for having me up here to share some of my experiences
and hopefully I'll see you on the mat one day
for sure. Looking forward to, it could be sooner than you think it sounds like a
threat. I love it. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jaco willing and thank you to linode indeed, Simply Save and ground.
News. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. And now let me leave you with some words from Jocko will link. There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next
time.
