Crystal Cox/Business Insider
Jocko Willink.
- Jocko Willink is a former Navy SEAL commander turned best-selling author, podcast host, and leadership consultant. His new book is "Leadership Strategy and Tactics."
- Willink said that when you are confronting one of your reports about one of their failures, you must not admonish them and give them a demand, or else you will be creating tension that will lead to worse performance.
- Instead, you need to acknowledge your own mistakes in the failed task with your team member, and work with them on a solution that involves both of you.
- This article is part of our series C-Suite Insider, where we collect the best management lessons from executives and their coaches.
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It would be easy to mistake Jocko Willink as the type of executive coach who would bark orders as if he were in the battlefield, and tear down underperforming employees without mercy. He's the retired commander of US Navy SEAL Team 3 Task Unit Bruiser, the most highly decorated special operations unit that served in the Iraq War - and his war experiences still dictate how he sees team dynamics.
But he didn't excel as a leader by constantly making ultimatums and reprimanding his men.
In fact, his approach was quite the opposite. If you need to get a team member back on track, you do so in a way where you recognize your own mistakes in that person's failure, and clearly communicate how they can avoid repeating that setback. Otherwise, you're creating friction that will only lead to worse outcomes.
Willink broke down what these types of conversations should look like in a recent interview with Business Insider about his new book, "Leadership Strategy and Tactics." It's based on his experiences in the SEALs, as well as with the leadership consulting firm, Echelon Front, that he founded in 2010 with Leif Babin, one of the platoon commanders who reported to him. Over the past decade, a representative said, their company has worked with more than 750 businesses and organizations.
Let's say a member on your team missed a deadline for a project, in a hypothetical example Willink gave us that can be easily adapted to your situation.
The wrong approach
You're frustrated that your employee didn't do as they were supposed to. You sit them down and tell them bluntly that they failed to meet a deadline. You explain how it was their fault, and why they failed, before letting them know that if they do it again, they will be written up or otherwise punished accordingly.
"Are we a team now? It's you against me," Willink said. When you pair an admonition and a demand, you're creating conflict out of a setback. Your employee will likely respond to your stern assessment by giving a list of excuses, which only distracts from determining a new path forward. The conversation then leads to resentment, which can in turn lead to even worse performance from your employee.
The right approach
You're frustrated that your employee didn't do as they were supposed to, but you consider what went wrong. You recognize that you may not have clearly communicated the stakes of the project well enough, and that you could have supplied better resources. You sit down with your employee and acknowledge that they missed the project's deadline, but tell them that you're recognizing you could have communicated better with them and provided more support. You ask them what they need from you to avoid making a similar mistake again. The dialogue develops, and you come up with a plan.
"We're moving towards a solution instead of moving towards attacking each other," Willink said.
Taking ownership
The title of Willink and Babin's first book is "Extreme Ownership," and it reflects one of Willink's core principles: Leaders are responsible for everything that happens under their watch. To use the above example, you are as much at fault as your employee when they fail to deliver on a project, and it is on you to determine how to help them avoid making the mistake again.
"People blame other people for problems," Willink said, talking about the basic dynamic at the heart of so much intra-team conflict. "That's an absolute disaster. The minute I start pointing my finger at you and blaming you for something, you point your finger at somebody else. No one's taken ownership of the problems. The problems don't get solved."