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Transcript
I was watching some videos by Jocko Willink. I think Leif Babin was in it too. They are the authors of Extreme Ownership, and Jocko has a podcast that he has, and he has videos of it on YouTube. They also have some videos from their business as well that both Leif Babin and Jocko Willink are on.
And I watched some videos that were on ownership because, you know, extreme ownership, that’s one of the big things that really pushes, taking extreme ownership as a leader.
And it was interesting, there’s about three different things from the episodes or videos I watched that I wanted to kind of point out and bring out about ownership on this podcast here.
Ownership requires action
So one, he was answering a question about someone who took ownership but then was fired because of it. And this was kind of Willink’s response, and I kind of liked it.
Beause he said, first, he said, there’s probably a couple of reasons that it could have happened. First is either the leader’s not that great, he never said anything before. And now, boom, you did it. You’ve been doing this a lot, but I never said anything, but I’m firing you. That’s not a good way to do it, but that could have happened.
Another could have been that the person who was fired kept doing the same thing after being told and he kept doing it and doing it and it got to the point where, okay, he was fired. The thing about taking ownership, he said, is that it’s not a get out of jail free card, it’s not, well, I’ll take ownership, and then it’s expected to be no consequences.
Real consequences can still happen from it.
The thing is, if you say that, yes, I take ownership for this, but you don’t do anything different or work to solve it or make things better, then really you’re not really taking ownership, right? Because if you’re really taking ownership, then you would do something to change or get better or work toward it. If you’re not, then you’re probably really not taking ownership.
Ownership – but it’s really someone else’s fault (not)
Another thing he pointed out about ownership was I think someone had asked or said something about that what happens if it’s really somebody else’s fault, like on the team. You know, yeah, we take ownership, but really it’s Bob’s fault he did it.
And one of the things was he talked about what could you have done differently to help your teammates? Like, it’s easy to say that, but really if you’re gonna take ownership of it, what could you have done to help your team member or whoever it was that failed where they wouldn’t have failed? What could you have done that you didn’t do?
And then in the future, do that. Take ownership. Yeah, we should have done this. We didn’t. And then do it differently next time.
Ownership is proactive
Another part was also about being proactive. And it kind of relates to the last one because he says,
you’re going to take ownership of when things happen. Then instead of just waiting for it, and be like, well, I’ll take ownership. Be proactive about it and work to prevent the mistakes.
Like if you know you’re gonna take ownership for the mistake, why wait till the mistake happens? Work to fix the mistake before it happens. Do solutions before it happens. If you know your team member is struggling or teammate struggling, what can you do now to help them to make sure the mistake doesn’t happen and that the failure doesn’t happen?
Even if it’s another department and that they’re working with you on whatever project and you’re working together and you’re afraid they’re going to botch it somehow, what can you do to support them to make sure the thing is a success?
It’s easy to sometimes, well, it’s them, it’s their fault, but really our mentality should be we’re all one team, because we all should be pursuing one goal, the mission, the direction. We are all working together to accomplish it.
So our mentality should not ever be seeing other departments or other people in our team as enemies or people we’re working against, or it’s just them. I’m separating myself. No, we’re working together to accomplish the mission, to accomplish the goal. Whatever it is. It never should be us first them and the organization.
I hope that you do take ownership in what you do and the things around you, especially as a leader for your team. But these are aspects that help you also think about too, and that you work to be proactive, that you work to see how to help those around your team members, even your teammates.
What can you do to help make sure what your goals are, are successful? Something to think about. See you next time.
