Planning and executing a military mission requires rock-solid team-building, the ability to make swift decisions, and unshakable trust. The same principles for building teams that can navigate life-or-death scenarios and accomplish critical missions can help you build teams that rise to any challenge in your organization. 

That’s the premise behind Echelon Front’s Extreme Ownership Academy, a leadership training group cofounded by former Navy SEAL officer Jocko Willink. The academy works with leaders from organizations across the globe, building on foundational leadership principles Willink developed during his time commanding a highly decorated Navy SEAL Special Operations Unit. Willink’s leadership training helps to address an ongoing and increasing skills gap highlighted in one of the world’s most expansive leadership research projects, DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast.

According to the 2023 forecast, confidence in leadership quality has dropped dramatically—from 48 percent of leaders rating their organization’s leadership quality as “very good or excellent” in 2020 to just 40 percent today. That marks the biggest decrease in confidence in the past decade of DDI’s reporting. In the same report, leaders who responded highlighted the skills that leaders need to help shape a better future. Many of those skills—strategic thinking, decision-making, and prioritization—align directly with Willink’s battle-tested leadership principles.

Who is Jocko Willink?

Jocko Willink is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer and coauthor of No. 1 New York Times bestseller Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win. He’s also the recipient of the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and other awards for his military service. Willink spent 20 years working with SEAL teams, including commanding SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, which became the most highly decorated Special Operations Unit of the Iraq War. 

He also served as officer-in-charge of training for all West Coast SEAL teams, where he helped to develop leadership training for the next generation of SEAL leaders. Today, he’s an influential podcaster and the CEO and leadership instructor for Echelon Front. In the first-ever critical leadership training on MasterClass, Willink teaches his battle-tested techniques for building teams that can take ownership and tackle any challenge. In under an hour, you can learn how to step into your leadership potential—no matter where you rank in your organization—and help build empowered teams. 

 

4 Laws of Leadership from Jocko Willink 

Cover and move.

This battle-tested principle refers to a combat tactic in which one team member moves and the other provides cover. Both roles are critical for keeping the entire team safe, because if one part of the team falters, the entire mission is put in jeopardy, including every other person involved. Building strong relationships is the bedrock of successful missions for any team. Everyone’s role is mission critical, and everyone needs to be supported, appreciated, and empowered.

Keep things simple.

Most companies are working with complex projects and objectives, sometimes with thousands of moving pieces. If you can take complex projects and break them down into simple tasks, you’ll be able to get much more accomplished. The harder this becomes, the more important it is, according to Willink.

“When things are very complex and very complicated, you should really redouble your effort to simplify things into something that can be managed,” Willink said.

Prioritize and execute.

Trying to solve all of your problems at once is a losing game, especially when you’re under pressure. When your plans go offtrack and multiple problems arise, take a step back and identify the most pressing issue. Tackle that first. Then you can task out other objectives simultaneously, depending on your team’s capacity. Pay attention to the feedback and results you get from your new trajectory, be willing to shift directions if you’ve made a mistake, and keep moving forward. 

Decentralize command.

This law of leadership is difficult to achieve but also the most transformative, according to Willink. The idea is to empower every person on your team to lead and make decisions. This approach can work well on the battlefield or in the business world, where each team understands the organization’s overall mission and can act independently. In a scenario with decentralized command, individual teams and individual team members have the tools, training, and authority to make decisions.

Learn more about building strong teams with battle-proven leadership principles in Jocko Willink’s new Critical Leadership Training on MasterClass. In this one-hour training, Willink walks you through his laws of leadership and teaches you how to build mutual respect, cultivate collaboration and accountability, and lead from any level. Build trust up, down, and across the chain of command so that you can create your own opportunities and invest in other people’s success at the same time. 

- The MasterClass at Work team