My Favorite Lines: Extreme Ownership By Jocko Willink And Leif Babin

The following are a few of my favorite lines from Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin:

Introduction
"The only meaningful measure for a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails."

"Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame."

Chapter 1: Extreme Ownership
"On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win."

"When subordinates aren't doing what they should, leaders that exercise extreme ownership cannot
blame the subordinates. They must first look in the mirror at themselves. The leader bears full responsibility for explaining the strategic mission, developing the tactics, and securing training and resources to enable the team to properly and successfully execute. If an individual on the team is not performing at the level required for the team to succeed, the leader must train and mentor that underperformer. But if the underperformer continually fails to meet standards, then a leader who exercises extreme ownership must be loyal to the team and the mission above any individual. If underperformers cannot improve, the leader must make the tough call to terminate them and hire others who can get the job done. It is all on the leader."

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To be continued ... 

Hope

From Grit by Angela Duckworth:

What is hope? 

One kind of hope is the expectation that tomorrow will be better than today. It's the kind of hope that has us yearning for sunnier weather, or a smoother path ahead. It comes without the burden of responsibility. The onus is on the universe to make things better. 

Grit depends on a on a different kind of hope. It rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future. I have a feeling tomorrow will be better is different from I resolve to make tomorrow better. The hope that gritty people have has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting up again. 

IX. We Take Personal Accountability For Our Actions And The Actions Of Our Teammates

A few years back, I read QBQ: The Question Behind The Question by John Miller after hearing it was mandatory reading for employees working at Dave Ramsey's company. The book is about personal accountability. It's about asking what you can do to improve the situation rather than assigning blame. The opposite of taking personal accountability is playing the victim. A good line from the book:

We always have a choice. Always. Realizing this and taking responsibility for our choices is a big step toward making great things happen in our lives.

On high performance teams, it's not enough to take accountability for your actions alone. You must also take accountability for the actions of your teammates. If your teammate fails, the team fails. You fail. The verse on our crest at Messiah was Proverbs 27:17:

As iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

It's interesting: after including 'we take personal accountability for our actions and the actions of our teammates' in the Starting XI, I came across the Navy SEAL's SEAL Code. One of their values is very similar (almost identical):

Take personal responsibility for your actions and the actions of your teammates.

Here's more on the SEAL Code.