1: Dwight Eisenhower was furious.  

D-Day was only weeks away. As the Supreme Commander of the Allied invasion of Europe, Ike was under tremendous pressure. Daily, he confronted leadership questions of the utmost complexity, write Raymond Kethledge and Michael Erwin in Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude.

And, General George S. Patton had stepped in it. Again.

In a speech to a British social club, Patton had said: … continue reading

1: Five days after Pearl Harbor, Dwight D. Eisenhower received orders to report immediately to the War Department in Washington, D.C. Stationed in San Antonio at the time, Ike was a one-star general and had no idea why he had been summoned. He took the next plane to Washington, write Raymond Kethledge and Michael Erwin in Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude.

Upon arriving, Ike was ushered immediately into … continue reading

1: “Some may wonder how Navy SEAL combat leadership principles translate outside the military realm to leading any team in any capacity,” Jocko Willink and Leif Babin write in their terrific book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win. 

“But combat is reflective of life, only amplified and intensified,” they write.  “The leadership and teamwork concepts contained in this book are not abstract theories, but practical and … continue reading

1: In the spring of 2006, when Navy SEAL Task Unit Bruiser arrived in Ramadi, it was the deadly epicenter of the Iraqi insurgency.  A U.S. leaked intelligence report said the city was “all but lost.” 

“Virtually no one thought it possible that U.S. forces could turn the situation around there and win,” write Jocko Willink and Leif Babin in Extreme Ownership.

But win is what happened.  Enemy … continue reading

1: Yesterday, we analyzed a “blue-on-blue” or friendly fire incident that happened in 2006 in Ramadi, the deadly epicenter of the Iraqi insurgency, involving Navy SEAL Task Force Bruiser and its commander Jocko Willink.

Today, we look at the principle Jocko demonstrated in the wake of what had happened.

Extreme Ownership.

This principle is the title of the book Jocko wrote with fellow SEAL Leif Babin.  It is also … continue reading

1: “Pushing open the heavy armored door of my vehicle, I stepped out onto the street.  I had a gut feeling that something was wrong,” writes Jocko Willink in Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead and Win, which he co-wrote with Leif Babin.

Jocko’s mind was racing.  A veteran Navy SEAL, he had risen through the ranks to become commander of Task Force Bruiser.  It was his unit’s first major … continue reading

We don’t stay the same.

People and organizations are either getting better or getting worse.  

“We tend to think of an organization as a machine-like object,” Robert E. Quinn writes in his terrific book The Deep Change Field Guide.  “Yet it is often more fruitful to think of an organization as a living system that has a trajectory: it is either gaining energy or losing energy.”

The second … continue reading

Each week we are doing a deep dive into a different topic and this week we’ve been looking at some of the key takeaways from Shawn Achor’s The Happiness Advantage.  We’ll wrap it up this week by looking at the implications of boosting happiness on workplace culture.
 
Question:  Is it surprising that leaders who cultivate happiness in the workplace also drive overall productivity and success?  
 
Shawn shares the research … continue reading