Leadership and Extreme Ownership

“Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.  You’ll avoid the tough decisions and you’ll avoid confronting people who need to be confronted” – Colin Powell (Ferris 2016 pp 536)

Leadership in education – Extreme Ownership

‘Extreme Ownership’ is a concept developed by former US Navy SEAL commander and CEO of Echelon Front, Jocko Willink to describe a state in which leaders take complete ownership of their responsibilities and detach themselves from ego and emotion to get the results they want.

In an interview with the author and angel investor Tim Ferris, Jocko gave this example of what ‘Extreme Ownership’ looked like in his military career (Ferris 2016 pp 414):

His commanding officer asks the SEAL leaders what they need.  The first leader says his troops need new boots, the second leader says they need helicopter training, and when he gets to Jocko he replies "we’re good, sir".  He explains that the implicit answer given to the commander is that if something is needed, as a leader Jocko has already taken care of it.  And if he does ever have to ask for something, the commander will sort it for him immediately – the reasoning being that it must be vital if Jocko hasn’t been able to take care of it, and must ask for support.

He also described colleagues that would make good leaders as those who would ask ‘what did I do wrong’ and when they were told, they would pull out their notebooks and write it down – “that right there, that’s a guy that’s going to make it, who’s going to get it right”.  

To Willink, leadership seems to be:

1.       Take ownership of things within your control (similar to Stephen Covey’s spheres of influence)

2.       In taking ownership, identify that you have to own it all.  All the successes and all the mistakes you and your team make – that’s down to you

I’ve presented this idea of personal agency to staff in my faculty as an opportunity for them to make decisions by themselves without the fear that they have follow a hierarchy for everything.  For example, after the meeting where I discussed this a subject leader took it upon himself to conduct an audit of how certain data was used by different staff in the faculty.  He recognised that as a leader he could not pass on questions from his own teachers straight up all the time, and instead would take ownership of everything he could.  When I later asked him if he needed me to get any information for him he said he had already liaised with the data manager himself, and would present me with the report at the next meeting.  He took complete ownership.  It wasn’t always about the positive either.  Later in the term when there were some issues I did not have to worry about my subject leaders seeing my constructive criticism as a personal affront, they detached their ego and took ownership for the problems, and afterward did everything they could to ensure it didn’t happen again.  I also did the same for them, when senior leadership had questions or suggestions, I told them ‘we’re on it’ – and because I took ownership for all the issues related to my staff as MY issues, instead of passing blame, I was trusted to sort it out.  My staff saw I supported them, so they supported me.

So, do you practice extreme ownership?  Or have you occasionally passed blame onto someone else?  If you do try it out, let me know how it went!

The podcast of this post can be found anchor.fm/ healthwealthself