[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Jamie Cochran.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Life Babin.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mead Win.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Extreme Watership Podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if we are great topic today for the podcast, how to lead up the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my experience with this topic is, it's one of our core beliefs at echelon front, lead in every direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we know that we have to lead our teams, and we know that we have to lead and influence at times our peers as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: But my experience with this question, whenever I talk to different leaders at companies about the need to lead up the chain of command,
[SPEAKER_00]: They're completely taken back by the fact that they need to be influencing and actively leading up the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not even that they're not trying to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't even realize that they need to be doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when we tell people that you have to actively be leading up the chain of command, what do we mean by that?
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that look like and why is it so important?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's one of the greatest leadership challenges possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think when people say that, like lead up the Chinese command, what do you mean lead up the Chinese command?
[SPEAKER_01]: My leader's supposed to lead me.
[SPEAKER_01]: That doesn't make any sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you absolutely have to lead up the Chinese command.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can't do that through rank, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't sit because you're not in charge of your boss or your boss's boss.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to build relationships, you have to push information, you have to build their trust in you and it's a very critical thing to do and I think you're right people don't realize they need to do that and that's exactly what we're talking about when we say the lead of the chain of command what does that mean it means that you have to influence your chain of command not not for your own benefit this is a manipulation for your own benefit of your team this is for the good of the mission.
[SPEAKER_01]: that you're trying to accomplish.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if your boss is telling you to do something that maybe your boss doesn't quite realize the impact that that's gonna have a negative impact and pull you and your team or resource away from a critical effort that you're already on.
[SPEAKER_01]: then you need to lead it to the chain command to pass the information of the chain commander say hey boss that sounds great uh love this new you need on this new uh project is that more important is other thing that I'm working on because if I have to pull the team off you know that's what that's what's going to happen that is what we're talking about by leading up the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_01]: and you're doing that in a professional way, you're doing that in not a, know it all way, not like, hey boss, that doesn't make any sense to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't know what you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's stupid boss, we shouldn't do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And people take that approach all the time, young, life, babbin, took that approach, many, many times that was for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It did not work.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't work out well, and so this is something I learned from Jaco.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to have a good relationship with your Cheney command.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your boss, your boss's boss, and on up the chain, because if you don't, it hurts you, it hurts your team, and it certainly hurts your mission.
[SPEAKER_01]: It hurts the overall team as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what's interesting about this is you have a good relationship up the Cheney command, and it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you think your Cheney command is amazing, if you don't think your Cheney command is that great, or if you think your Cheney command is just okay, but you wish to be better, it really doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to have the same relationship with your boss and your boss is bossing your Cheney command.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whether they're awesome, whether they're terrible, or whether they're somewhere in between.
[SPEAKER_01]: and you want them to trust you, you want them to give you what you need to be successful and you want them to get out of your way and let you do your job, that's what you want to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's a kind of relationship that you're building with your boss and with your Cheney command.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that you hit on there was the specifically used the word influence.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we talk about,
[SPEAKER_00]: the definition of leadership all we're talking about is influence.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we say, hey, you've got to have the ability to lead up the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we're really saying is, you have to have the ability to influence the decision making that's going on up the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's pivotal for the success of the organization.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're a leader that somewhere in the middle of the organization, which most people are, most people are not the CEO.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people are not the founder of the president.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people are leaders somewhere in the middle of the organization.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have the most difficult job at that organization because you are responsible for the transfer
[SPEAKER_00]: of information, up and down the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you don't have a good relationship and influence up the chain of command, then you're not able to give the ground truth of what's actually happening to the people that need that information the most so they can make good decisions.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if I'm sitting here thinking to myself, I've got a leader who is constantly making bad decisions.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of a reflection on me because what that saying is I'm not influencing my leader.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have the ability to give them the reality of what's going on on the ground in a manner that they're going to take on board when they need to make decisions because leaders are paid to make decisions.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have to make good decisions to push the organization forward and it's vital for them to have the ground truth of what's going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: with their organization in order to make the best decisions possible, and that's my responsibility as a leader to make sure that I have enough influence to pass that up the chain of commands.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not even, we're not asking people to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's vital that you do this for the success of your organization, whether it's in the military, whether it's a first responder,
[SPEAKER_00]: whether it's at a company like you have to have and maintain that good relationship up the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you find yourself in a position where you're constantly saying things like, well, my boss never listens to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, my boss is a micromanaging me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first place you really need to look is at yourself and ask yourself some tough questions of, well, what have I done to damage that relationship or what could I do better to help build that relationship so that I can lead an influence up the chain of command?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a great topic to talk about right this this idea of influence because I think when people hear leadership I think this is why it makes it hard to understand leading up a chain what they're thinking is You know if you're my boss and I work for you There what their thing is like what do you mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't lead up the chain like I can't walk in the office I'm like, hey Sean You're an idiot.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't know what's going on here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what we're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna do this this this and this We're gonna make it happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not what we're talking about here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously you can't do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't do that to your boss
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's actually not what good leadership looks like anyway, because if Sean works for me, and I'm your boss, and I walk in, and that's when I'm saying you, hey, Sean, shut up and do it my way, we're going to do this, this and this, that's not good leadership.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's the same thing down or up the channel command.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's a real misperception of leadership, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do we think about when we think of a leader?
[SPEAKER_01]: We think about the person that stands up in front of the room that barks orders or tells people what to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Has all the answers of things and directs every aspect of a plan, dictates that to people, and that's actually not what good leadership looks like.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, good leadership looks like is having influence.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we saw it over and over again about what the best leaders look like.
[SPEAKER_01]: You look at a guy like Jaco Willink who has this axe murderer face and you think that guy's just going to bark orders at people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And people really, there's kind of a running joke amongst the people that listen to the Jocquipod Cass and of Radik Shreem ownership and kind of been in our circle about what would Jocco do.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to play off of what would Jesus do idea and what's interesting to me about that is most of the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: When people say, what would chocolate do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, chocolate would go in there and just smash people and say, do it my way, and I have more experience or make this happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: When people are guessing what chocolate do, they are guessing wrong most of the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that's actually the opposite of what chocolate do.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got to work for Jocco and immediately, Jocco who has way more experience than me says, hey, here's the goal, Dave, why don't you come up with a plan and tell me how you wanna execute?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's actually what good leadership looks like.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when we're talking about influencing, influencing me, and I'd come up with a plan, I'd take that plan back to Jaco and say, hey, Jaco, here's the plan we put my team put together.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what we want to do, and then, instead of saying that's stupid, that doesn't work, he would say, hey, you know, have we thought about maybe a better way to infiltrate the target, what it makes more sense of coming from this direction, instead of that direction.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would ask us some earnest questions
[SPEAKER_01]: And if we didn't have answers to those questions, that would point out some holes in our plan.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'd go back, we correct our plan.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's leading down the chain.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the influence you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was leading down the chain, influencing me, but giving me ownership of the plan.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the same thing when we're leading up the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's influence.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you come up with an idea, it's like, here's a new strategy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go execute on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if I'm looking at that, and I might realize that we don't have the resources to execute that strategy, I can be like, yeah, that doesn't make any sense boss.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not going to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not going to work.
[SPEAKER_01]: I could try that and you're going to be like, oh, excuse me, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, now all of a sudden, it's a clash of egos, we have a major problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, what I should do is say, oh, you know, that sounds like a great plan, love the strategy, let me go look into this and run the numbers and see what kind of resource we want you to execute on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a totally different scenario.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I go look at, I'm on board, you're thinking, life understands the genius of my strategy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm giving you a little ego massage.
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, it might be a great idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe the boss doesn't fully understand the resource that might be required to execute that, or the lift on the team, and pulling the team away from other things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if the boss doesn't understand that, who's fault is that?
[SPEAKER_01]: 100% is my fault.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was working with a very successful defense contracting company in my role at Ashland Fund as an instructor two weeks ago and we were having like an open form Q&A and one of the leaders there asked me about the all these priorities that kept coming down from the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got too much stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they're always adding stuff on our plate and I just started asking him some questions and I said, okay, well, you know, when these priorities come down,
[SPEAKER_00]: like talk me through the conversation that you're having with your boss.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, well, there is no conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, well, why isn't there a conversation?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, well, he's the boss.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, he's telling me to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, okay, well, if you ever, you know, try to build alignment with him, or ask him about where these priorities are coming from, or talk to him about how these different priorities when they get changed, how they have second and third order effects to your team, and how it slows down your workflow.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, well, no, and I said, okay, well, why don't you have those conversations with him?
[SPEAKER_00]: And after pulling the thread for a long time, it basically came down to, he didn't have a relationship with his boss.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there wasn't this avenue for him to actually ask those good questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the thing that I left with him was, the first step to that issue that problem is, he's got to start building that relationship out with his boss so that he can gain that trust and he can gain that influence, because we know that doesn't happen overnight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does someone in charge just give all the trust in the world and all the room to maneuver, to someone on their team, like right off the bat.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's usually this process of where they get more comfortable with their decision-making, they get more comfortable with a relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now you come to me with an idea and I'm like, cool, let's go execute, let's do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that takes a while to build that influence out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if I'm sitting here thinking to myself, well, I've got this new boss.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I build that influence with them?
[SPEAKER_00]: What are some tactical things that I can do as a young leader to start building out that trust and influence with my chain of command?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think you have to recognize, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Relationships are based on trust, listen, respect, influence, and care.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is what relationships, all right, the relationships are not, I can't say I have a good relationship with Sean because because we get along well, are we say high to each other or, you know, we know each other's kids or we invite each other to barbecues on the weekends, that's actually not what we're talking about, we talk about a relationship, it is the five pillars of relationship, trust, listen, respect, influence, and care.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if we don't have those things,
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we don't have a good relationship.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have an effective relationship.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the trospiece is huge because it's one of the most difficult areas to apply extreme ownership is leading up the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is, I would make a thousand excuses about it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: They're a micromanager.
[SPEAKER_00]: They like to control everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have a huge ego.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can see that I can make all these excuses totally.
[SPEAKER_00]: But how it's not my fault.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing ignites an emotional response for people like frustrations with the boss.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when you talk about micromanagement, people will read the booky stream ownership.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're so excited about this concept and they love extreme ownership.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they start talking about their boss.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're boss sucks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their boss doesn't know what's going on down on the trenches.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their boss doesn't give them what they need.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their boss is a micro.
[SPEAKER_01]: and your needs are just get off my back and just let me do my job and it's it's actually very almost comical from that perspective and by the way I know that because that was me and that is young Lieutenant Lave Babin you know who's who's frustrated with the Cheney command and you know the chief hate or a drinker
[SPEAKER_01]: In the SEAL days, we used to term hate array, which indicates disparaging the Cheney command.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was the chief hate array drinker and task unit bruiser.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's so easy to blame your boss.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are your Cheney command for them not understanding what's actually happening?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it took work from a Jocco for me to realize that if the Cheney command who's actually not collocated with us, but was 30 miles down the road from us, they weren't with us.
[SPEAKER_01]: If they don't know what's going on, down here on the front lines, who's fault is it?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my fault.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to push that information up the changing command.
[SPEAKER_01]: If they're not giving us the resources that we need, who's fault is it?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my fault for not actually explaining why those resources are critical and how they're gonna help us achieve our mission.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wrote an article that was published online to a wide audience, and it was about how to deal with the micro-managing boss.
[SPEAKER_01]: And of all the things that I've written over the last decade, I don't think anything has elicited such a crazy emotional response from people.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like, how dare you suggest it to your fault?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the boss that's fault.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you should just quit if you have a micro-managing boss.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, look, obviously, we don't live in a world where you're forced to work at a place, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
[SPEAKER_01]: If you work for a boss, that's terrible, that's doing things that are legal, unethical, or immoral, you should quit.
[SPEAKER_01]: You should look for a different job.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's actually what you should do.
[SPEAKER_01]: But most of the time, people are disparaging the boss, and that's actually not the case.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a pretty rare thing that we see.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what was interesting about that response is these are people that said that they liked the concept of an extreme ownership, but they couldn't apply it up the Cheney command.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if your boss doesn't trust you,
[SPEAKER_01]: If your boss doesn't trust you to do your job, it's not on the boss to give you trust.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's on you to earn the boss's trust.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things you said was a great metrics, kind of finger on the pulse for how you're doing with that relationship is if your boss is asking you a bunch of questions, you're probably not doing a very good job communicating with your leadership and giving them the information that they needed.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I was a troop commander, I had a awesome CEO and every Friday I would send him an update every single Friday Whether we were in Garrison, whether we were training, whether we were deployed and we were co-located together on deployment But I still sent him this weekly update on Friday and it was basically Things that we accomplished that week
[SPEAKER_00]: things that we had going on next week, issues that I was working on, and then anything that I needed his help or guidance on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sounds like a lot, I always kept it to a couple of paragraphs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And how many times do you think he reached down into my truth and asked me for an information?
[SPEAKER_00]: He never did, he never did, because I was giving him that information in conjunction with spending time with them in his office and doing these other things to help build that trust and that relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're in a spot, we like, man, I got this Michael Managing Boss, they ask me a bunch of questions, they're never satisfied.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably a good indicator that you need to change some behaviors as step one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's some other things that we can do that are important to keep in mind here as far as, how do I start to build that relationship and gain that influence up the
[SPEAKER_00]: I think personally, the number one thing that you can do is perform and just be good at your job.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are good at your job and you get things done all the time and you're a great performer, you're really hard to ignore.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you have a suggestion, if you're the rock star in the group, it's really hard to not listen to your suggestion, if you're just crushing it at everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another pitfall that I've seen that helps people lose influence real quick is
[SPEAKER_00]: that they push back against every single thing that the boss says.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had this discussion with this young lady, she's a frontline worker, very large, successful gas and oil company that we work for.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was talking about her supervisor.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, well, you know, he doesn't ever let me do anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't trust my ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I try to push for these initiatives.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he never listens.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just asked her this question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, hey, well, let me ask you something.
[SPEAKER_00]: When your boss comes down to you and says, hey, I need you to get this done.
[SPEAKER_00]: How often are you pushing back?
[SPEAKER_00]: And before I could even finish this sentence, she goes all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as soon as she said it, I think she saw where it was going.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, okay, well, if you were the boss, and you had an employee that every single time you went to them and asked them to do something, they pushed back against you, how much influence would that person have with you?
[SPEAKER_00]: And she saw it, and she said, none.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we got to be careful what we choose to make a battle.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are certain things that are definitely worth planting the flag in and saying, I think this is the right thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: My experience, those are pretty few and far between.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're very few and far between.
[SPEAKER_01]: You and I were working with an energy company and had a very similar situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this was that was for a safety issue.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you remember, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They got us like, I'm telling them that this is unsafe and, you know, we need to fix this issue and someone's going to get hurt and they just won't listen to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was we started digging into it and it was the same thing how often you push back on stuff How often you complain about things and it was every day So so then we asked a question like hey, does your does your leadership want you to get people injured?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do they want to get somebody killed?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do they want to cause them?
[SPEAKER_01]: major safety issue.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, that is not the case.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if that is the case, that's not a government you want to work at.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that is almost certainly not going to be the case when we started digging into that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But here's a guy who couldn't even get his chain of command to listen to him about what could be a major safety issue because he pushed back on stuff all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's simply just not prioritizing the effort.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's one of the other things I learned
[SPEAKER_01]: Pretty much nothing, pretty much nothing unless it absolutely matters.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would try to push back on the fact that, you know, my Cheney command wanted to ask questions about paperwork and they wanted to, you know, some clarification about why we are doing certain things and they wanted some details about how we were mitigating risk and I would get all frustrated with this and Joc was like, cool, we're going to give it all to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to do all those things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, looking back on this, I thought that was my permanece, but
[SPEAKER_01]: It's actually just good leadership.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were asking our Chandy Command to approve operations where we're doing some very dangerous things and what was the most dangerous battlefield in Iraq at that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, they're gonna have some questions about what we're doing, why we're doing it, and what steps we're taking to mitigate risk.
[SPEAKER_01]: If they didn't, they wouldn't be good leaders, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and it's on me to actually give them that information.
[SPEAKER_01]: And once I did, the questions had scrutiny, once it almost nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, it is, you have to see the world from your chain of commands perspective.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not bad people, they're trying to do their job, they want you to be successful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if they're asking you, you want your questions because you haven't given them that information.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the influence piece, I think, is one of the hardest parts about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's so easy to push back on stuff and say, it doesn't actually matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you should not, if you're my boss and you're telling me to do something.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it makes me slightly less efficient to do it that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: What should I do?
[SPEAKER_01]: I should do it the way you're telling me to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It maybe it means that we have to work a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to put an extra 30 minutes to get it done that way this week.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's more important?
[SPEAKER_01]: My relationship with you are an extra 30 minutes of doing something that's maybe less efficient.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I allow myself to be influenced, I take the bosses plan on board, it was slightly less efficient.
[SPEAKER_01]: We go and make an effort to do that, and I go back to bosses and say, hey boss, here's that information, we did it the way you wanted it done, here's the way I think we could do it that might be a little bit more efficient and get it to you faster.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now what does the boss say?
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a little more open, you're more open to my ideas as a result of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's actually, it's very counterintuitive, but this is the fastest way to develop influence of the chain is to allow yourself to be influenced.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I look back in my own life, professional and personal, and I'm trying to analyze, you know, where did I have the ability to do a lot of things the way I wanted to do and where did I feel like I had the most freedom?
[SPEAKER_00]: It came from the times when I had the best relationship of the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was only one tour for me in the military where I felt like I didn't have a lot of space to do things the way that I thought they should be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I'm being brutally honest, it was the one tour where I did not have a good relationship up the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't frictional.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just didn't really take the time to build that out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because of that, my reward for that was,
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have the ability to do things the way that I want to do them all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I look at other tours, I have great relationships with my leadership, and I almost never got pushed back for things that I wanted to try or things that I wanted to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in my personal life, too, when I look at the most important relationship in my life is with my wife, and any time that there's been even a little bit
[SPEAKER_00]: friction.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always because I failed to keep her informed about something, failed to communicate something, failed to, you know, influence or get her opinion on something and when we're talking about up the chain of command, who owns a household?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when you talk about the day-to-day operations and functions of the house, my wife runs all of those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: In any time that there's been, you know, Mrs. and schedules or little things like that, it's always come for me, just not keeping her informed and not
[SPEAKER_00]: Getting her opinion on things and maybe just making a move and I'm like this is the right move I'm gonna do this, you know, I don't need to ask Marade and then all of the sudden She has this great plan laid out and I just threw a wrench in it because I didn't take the time to communicate with her Or try to build that influence with her.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just made a decision.
[SPEAKER_00]: I heard that about you Sean.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's true
[SPEAKER_01]: But we all have struggled with that, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's hardest to apply extreme ownership on the home front with the people that were closest emotionally too.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have those same struggles, you know, with my wife as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I take ownership, we start, we get that problem solved.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a dichotomy, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a dichotomy, because if you're my boss and you're telling me to do stuff, it may be the site in the left of vision, I should do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I should prioritize my relationship with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if I trust you, if I listen to you, I allow myself to be influenced by you, you're going to be able to give me those things, you're a lot more likely to give me those things in return.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's what I should do.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there are times when you do get to push back on stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: you got to be humble but not passive and joccon I wrote about this in the economy leadership.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a whole chapter in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a place where leader struggle.
[SPEAKER_01]: You just gave an example of a few minutes ago of a leader that's like, when my boss has told me to do it, I should just do it.
[UNKNOWN]: And
[SPEAKER_01]: If your boss is telling you to do something that you know is going to be catastrophic to the success of your team, it's going to impact the strategic mission, you know, it's going to damage relationships with customers, clients, whatever it is that you do, it's going to greatly degrade the quality of a product or service that you're putting out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then you should push back on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you do push back on it, it should be in the most professional manner possible, and you have to have a good relationship.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in a way, so if you're telling me to do something, I shouldn't be like, that makes no sense boss, we shouldn't do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not the way to push back on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It should be like, hey boss.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me understand where you're coming from here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems like a great idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have we thought about how this might actually impact the team and then maybe raise some of those concerns.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a way to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you focus on building a relationship, and if you don't push back on things very often, when you finally do push back on the things when it really truly matters, and as you said, those are very few things.
[SPEAKER_01]: When it really truly matters, you push back on things you're gonna be a lot more likely to be successful in that effort.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you've got to have the leadership capital built up with that individual to be able to push back.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not something that you can create right there in the moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't done all the things that we've talked about so far,
[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't built a good relationship, if you haven't communicated effectively with your boss, if you haven't showed them respect and try to go with their plan and execute their plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't done those things to build up that leadership capital, then at the time when you need to push back, they're probably not going to listen to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you've done all of those things that you need to do to build that relationship up the chain of command, when you need to burn that leadership capital and influence and lead up the chain of command to get them to go with maybe a different decision, they're probably going to listen to you because there's a whole lot of trust that you've built up over time.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the greatest excuses that we give ourselves is I don't like my boss or I don't have a good boss and don't give yourself that excuse because good bosses are rare, good bosses are rare and if you can only perform when you have an awesome boss that you love and admire and respect then that's going to limit you and your performance tremendously because there's only a handful of times in my entire career that I've worked for bosses like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: that I loved and admired and respected.
[SPEAKER_01]: So don't give yourself that excuse.
[SPEAKER_01]: Take extreme ownership and lead up the chain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the eye out for this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want you to get a brutally honest self-assessment of your relationship up the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do they trust you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do they value your opinion?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have the ability to influence them?
[SPEAKER_00]: And if the answer to that is no, then you need to identify what you can do to fix that and build a better relationship up the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_01]: So put your emotions in check, put your ego in check, put those frustrations in check, stop blaming the ball, stop blaming the chain of command, take extreme ownership and lead, lead up the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you do that, you will be far more effective at leading your team to victory.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is how you lead and win.