hey listen Jocko I know that keeping theego in check is an important principle I read about it extreme ownership you talkabout it all the time got to be humble but at my company ego is a huge problemhow do I get my company to start promoting the ideal of
humility and howdo I get them to recognize that ego is such a big problem now this is a reallygood question once again because you can imagine what this individual's rightlike you know you're at a company where there's a lot of egos going on and allof a sudden you
have a little moment of enlightenment you realize that ego iscausing you a lot of problems so you start putting your own ego in check andthen you go how this is working I'm doing better I'm coordinating better I'mworking in my interpersonal relationships with the other people onthe team are
better my relationships with people on other teams are betterwe're getting more done because our relationships are betterI'm putting the team and the mission above myself that means the team in themission are doing better that's great so you realize all this stuff and then yousay okay well how do
I start to spread the word how do I get other people to dothis and this is a tricky question right it's a tricky thing because if some iflike let's say your team has you see that ego is a problem and you sit himdown and go listen guys you're
you're all you all got big egos and that's theproblem I mean you're gonna run into level 9defensiveness you're actually gonna it's actually go beyond offensiveness they'regonna start attacking you now just gonna happen you got all these crazy egosthey're gonna gang up there likes unites they'll put their egos
aside for a splitsecond so that can unite against you so you can't confront them and and onceagain are there certain relationships that youcan have with someone where I go and if let's say you and me and you had a egoand put you and I were really tighten I
said hey man you're letting your ego getin the way of this sure that kid that that is a possibility that is a veryrare occurrence most of the people that you work with on a regular basis youdon't have that type of a relationship the other thing is when someone
has abig ego that's not the type of person that's open to those kind of criticismsanyways so it's like there's two two hurdles that you have to overcome numberone your relationship isn't usually that good at number two they have a big egowhich is part of the problem and that's
what makes the problem hard to attackmm-hmm so what are you gonna do in in what I gotta throw this one more littlething when people talk about the you know have someone say put put wouldn'tit be better if you could just talk to him wouldn't it be better if
you justyou know put down on some bullet eyes list and said hey here's the things thatyour ego there's the problems that you guys are problem causing look I get itand isn't it great to have direct conversation isn't it great if I canjust sit you down if echo if
you and I have this mind meld where you just knowone hundred-percent looking out for you and you're open to great like if we havethat that's in an ideal world that's great mmm-hmm that's great golf clapsit's great the problem is it doesn't exist very often and confronting someonethat has
an ego about the Ricoh can often just exacerbate the problem yeahso here's what you do instead of self identifying the problem and pointing thefingers at other people which by the way is placing blame which is a problem soinstead of doing that what we're gonna do is start pulling
the thread on someof the problems that we're having on the team so for instance this group overhere needs some help on their part of the project but no one's helping themwhat's going on if you start to pull the thread on that you'll find at the end ofthat thread
they'll be hanging some egos whether it's the ego of the person thatdoesn't want to ask for help or whether it's the ego of the other person thatdoesn't want to give help because they think they need to do their own jobthat's oh I'm not gay I'm not doing that
mmm so you pull the thread and at theend you'll find these little egos hanging and then what you do is you justexpose and you say what do you think the root of theproblem isn't you start pulling that thread and you get to a point wheresomeone says you can
finally have an open conversation where you say wheresomeone finally says we no I I guess I I guess I could use some help you justdiscovered it so that's like a cover and move situation right if the cover andmove isn't happening and it isn't happening because of egos if
you pullthe thread you'll get to the end of the thread and it will be attached tosomeone ego in most cases is there a possibility that it's like hey thisgroup doesn't know what the other groups don't yeah absolutelythose are but those are easy problems to solve cuz we can
just pull the thread wefind at the end oh we need to we need better coordination between these twoteams cool there it is when you pull the friend it comes out the the little egosdangling on the end of it then you go okay let's expose these and let's tryand
ask questions to figure out and get people to realize what they're lookingat hmm you want them to come to that conclusion that's the trickthat's the maneuver is to get them to come to a conclusion and they mightnever verbalize it but they go you know in their mind they're
like I guess Ididn't want to ask for help in the way so there's one you know if you gotpeople that are taking aren't keeping things simple just go through the lawscombat simple make people are making the plans too complex and yet they keepdoing it and they're when it
when you go and say you know these plans seem likethey're really complex and of course they say something like hey that I don'tthink everyone understood the plan seemed to be it seemed kind of complexand the person says people need to pay more attention went on briefing and youpull
on that right the frontline troops they need more detail because theyotherwise they're gonna screw up that's why it's so complex it's like okay let'slook at what's really happening what's really happening is I've created a planthat I won't give up because my ego is too big right when you
pull that threadand you go listen – hey the the frontline troops don't understand whatto do it's like that could be a real problem mm-hmmand and maybe and there's nothing you give them a little out you give me alittle out like you know maybe we just need to back
it off a little bit so thatthey can understand it maybe they're not as smart as yeah little Eagle massagebecause it's fine you don't want fine I'll simplify it boom and in themeantime you've given them a little indication look if you confront themthat's what I'm saying it's hard for
people who want to play the long gamehere because the short game is it you're you're you think you're so smart yourplants do complex and you're sticking with them because you've got a big egohow's that gonna work out he's not gonna work out good can it work out 4%
of thetime yes the other the other 96% of the time you get a defensive person that'snow accusing other people it's take the indirect and play the long game take theindirect attack and play the longer prioritize and execute right why is thatfailing because again this question is egos a
problem so where does egomanifest as a problem it can manifest as a problem in in prioritize and executebecause if someone's got a big ego and they're not getting things done and theygo I can get it done because their ego thinks they can do anything right orprioritize connects execute
ego can be a problem if you have a project and I havea project and you need help and your project is actually more important and Ishould give you resources but instead of like my initiative just as important asEcho's is yeah which is just my ego I should look
at it and say okay you knowwhat you should be the priority and another good one is yeah well it's justwhat I just said like hey I'm not gonna give up why should I have to give myresources to echo those are mine no actually what's the what's the biggestpriority
okay put my ego aside Echo's priority is actually bigger thanmine I'm gonna give him four of my people so that he can get the job doneso when you pull the thread on this and you say well hey hey why is it jakka whyis it you don't want to
give people to echo and I'm like well you know what ifsomething else comes up else comes up you can get back well youknow that they gotta learn to respect the chain of command well there's stillwork for you they'll just be loaned over to echo whoa you see them
saying yesit's just ego ego ego ego so these are the kind of problems that manifeststhemselves inside of a company wrapped around ego mm-hmm and decentralizedcommand you can have the same thing happen with decentralized commandhow does he go cause a problem with decentralized command it's like this heyI noticed
that um you know you seem to be making all the decisions and thefolks out in the field don't really have the opportunity to kind of make callswhy is that I'm the only one that has the experience to do this they don'thave the skill that I have right so
there's all these reasons that that'sone of those are ego problems right and and by the way if it's if it's not anego problem then then then I say oh you know what because I haven't reallytrained that guys well enough and I'm gonna you know what you're right I'vebeen
making way too many detailed decisions for the guys out in the fieldI need to get down there make sure they know what's going on train them betterso that I can back off cool that's a person that's got their ego check theperson that's like I'm the only one that
can do this like no you can't you knowyou're not and if you are you're wrong because right now you got three peopleworking for you what happens when you have eight you're gonna go around thefield in all these different locations to make every single decision no youcan't mm-hm so
get your ego under control realize that you're not the onlyone that can do this job and train your people properly again that's a directassault probably going to cause problems instead if we just pull the thread on ithey what's going on well it seems like your folks down the
field don't have alot of authority well you know they don't experience oh okay you it's kindof cumbersome though like them reaching back to you all the time to make thesedecisions it is but you know I'm the one that really knows how to do it huh Imean what happens
if you know you're sick or you know you someone's gotta youknow have communications with them do you think it would be a good idea youknow since you have so much knowledge and experience to maybe pass that on tosome of the other people oh yeah okay cool let's make
that happenand then obviously ego can absolutely manifest itself when it comes to takingownership I mean all day long right what other that project failed whathappened would my subordinates don't know don't want to step up okay sotherefore why what why are your subordinates taking ownership cuz theydon't even know
what ownership is didn't want to take ownership okay so it's notyour fault no okay well what can we do to help them mm-hmm pull the string andyou at the bottom the person will see it's the rego they might not admit itbut they'll see it and then they can
start to make adjustments now look canany of these situations escalate in a point where in direct indirect in directindirect doesn't work and eventually you say you know what well I gotta go Igotta sit echo down and say listen here's what I think is the root of theproblem the
root of the problem is you think you're the only one that knows howto do this and in thinking that you're not training to be like I might have toget that direct it does happen we prefer to use the minimum force requiredrequired when it comes to leadership just like
being a bouncer yes sir rightit's not hey the guy's a little out of linehit him in the head with a blackjack no it's like hey hey sir you know I thinkyou've had enough for tonight okay can you come with me that's minimum forceRicard if the guy says okay
cool it's problem solved if he's if he sees youI'm not going anywhere okay well we have to escalate it's thesame thing here but don't start with the direct attack mm-hmm just like you don'tClub the person out of the gate I think it's a slapjack I'm not sureyeah okay
that's what you're talking about that young as their thing yeahyeah a blackjack yeah blackjack yeah did you guys not use those that's silly Ithink those are illegal to that legal yeah yeah the slapjack one guy had onebut yeah very illegal so we don't want toescalate straight to the
blackjack or even a slapjack even if anyone's using aslapjack I think it's called a slap yeah okay I'm not sure point remains I dig itfairly confident you're wrong but not 100% yeah I'm like I'm like you know insomeone you know when you're pretty confident about something that somebodywho
just throws a little randomness into the soup and it makes you question yeahyeah that's how I feel right now yeah that's real confident with a little bitof questions it makes you feel any better that's my everyday life so that'sthe answer to this question is really pulling the thread
on the problem toreveal the root of the problem which you're gonna see is ego and then it'sthere for the people hopefully to see it to recognize it – possibly admit itmaybe not give them an out where they can actually make an adjustment withouttaking the ownership the Eagle because
that's okay yeah we're trying to winright we're trying to let the team win we're not trying to we're not yet whatmy goal is not to make you admit it cuz you know what that is that's my ego ohyeah sure yeah it's got a big yeah get him to
a minute that's not my goals mygoal is to make you make better decisions as a leader so that we win asa team yeah so that's what we're that's what we're trying to do here it's reallyinteresting that how you laid that out cuz used to do that to me
no probablystill do but it was less about the ego I think anyway and maybe it's all the samemaybe at the end of the it's all the same because skating you're trying todancer right so explain to me how I would do this – you do with the excusesokay so
like if something didn't get done or can't get done or I think it'stoo hard and really most of the time if I'm remembering correctly it was at theend of the a this is what it was it was like I'm too lazy or whatever you knowso it always be
like this excuse like well you know that's this or that's thatand then you'd have all these just like how you're saying and I and it it mademe remember this because of your tone how you're like kind of saying thoselittle that's the same things with me like nosimple just
like pull just here here's the solution to that problem right herebecause there's all these little excuses that you make you know like oh I didn'treally have time because I had to do this and you'd be like okay then youjust do this you know and that'll solve that particular
problem you didn't havethis big comprehensive plan to solve in my life problem you're like okay forevery excuse oh and make you just have the little solve you know the problem orthe solution to it and I'd be like man and meanwhile you're getting backed intothis corner or the string
is just getting pulled like every with everypool is lazy oh yeah like I just was too lazy or I'm just like stuck in thisroutine or whatever and then it so it could in a way be like okay that's justmy ego just thinking that the way that's not the
way I do things kind of thingand and think if I were to use the different tone well think if I wouldhave just said that's good you're lazy oh yeah yeah you just being lazy Aikoyeah you've been like do you even know what it takes to make one of
thesethings oh you don't know me and then all of a sudden we and what does that do toour relationship yeah and what does that do to to to the final productyeah yeah right now you're doing something against your will stainlessstain on it yeah fully in the if you
would have just been like hey you'relazy this is what my mind would have went to this belief this actually and ina way it's true but it doesn't like get anyone anywhere where if you would belike you're lazy I would have thought and maybe even said that it's not
thatI'm lazy it's just you're just this crazy hard worker who have thesestandards that are unreasonable for a normal person and I'm just a normalperson excuse me you know kind of an attitude that's what I would go torather than if you like the way how you always do it
is like you pull the stringor you just sort of you don't say no it's interesting to us when I'm doingthat I'm not doing that like okay I got here's my next move onthat go yeah actually what I'm doing is like well you know you say well we can'tI
can't make a video because it's gonna take me too long to get through the theraw edits and I go you know I said like what you know if you want just get youyou know hire someone to do those raw edits for youwould that work yeah you know what
I mean oh I'm asking you a legitimatequestion oh yeah maybe I kind of know the answer I mean I suspect I know theanswer but it's not it's not just hey I I'm setting you up I'm legitimatelypulling the thread yeah and the answer might be it is impossible to
get thisproject done but when I say well you could hire someone to do those rightthat's and then you go okay well even if I hire someone how am I going totransfer all this data and I go well if you want what couldn't you get anexternal hard drive and
and just physically give it to him yeah and you'dsay well these are actual situations no no no I don't know the realm of videowell the main the one that I remember the easiest is like with training likeyou'll be hey we're training at 4:30 but I trained during the
day most eveningoh not in the evening then you'll be like oh yeah train at 4:30 I'm like wellyou know and I have all these reasons and then you like you kind of just chipaway at all these reasons like oh here's the solution to that is a solution asolution
that's like man I just that's just like my routine I just gotta admitit you know like I and but I don't get to train with you guys as often you knowkind of thing but it's like yeah you expose you pull the string to exposejust like the little the
little excuses Chuck so pull the thread reveal theproblem don't confront if you can help it and people will start to recognizewhat the problem is I mean this is assuming you're working with this welldoesn't want this one problem with this and that is if the person has a giantego
that this is the hardest thing for them to admit right so they might notadmit it but they'll see it they'll behave differently and by the way one ofthe good ways to to use someone's ego against themselves is when you saysomething along the lines of you know man it's
gonna look good if this getsdone right you know what I'm saying and they thinkoh cool I'm gonna do this I'm gonna make this adjustment just so it gets donejust so my ego can get just so I can win yeah that doesn't say that use the wordwin because every
time like use the word win and any time what I'd be thinkinglike okay if I didn't win whatever you know what's left you lostyeah no matter what excuse you make you lost so if you put if you put the shedlight on like use that word and be like
hey this will make you win and you'relike hell yeah but at the same time the vacuum mind like basically if we don'tsolve these problems or whatever I lose I don't want that so it's like extramotivate the it's the winning at all cost thing and so the winning at
allcosts I wrote like a little section and it was a part of a one of the specialreleases on Barnes and Nobles version of dichotomy a leadership was this thingwinning at all costs and it's and then someone posted and I had I had said itbefore right and someone posted
a clip of me saying this idea of winning at allcosts and it's the way that I talk about it it's kind of a trick anyways becauseI go through this thing about what is leadership and AG leadership as thisleadership to that and I said what leadership is to me
is winning at allcosts and somebody put that probably you put a clip up of me saying that andsomebody said of course someone's like that's the kind of person that will runpeople over and like it was like gave a negative things right but what theydon't realize is what the
rest of that clip says and what the rest of thatwhole idea of winning at all costs is what I'll do it want to win it all costsis totally subordinate my ego help other people support them give them what theyneed and put my foot put the team and the
mission above myself cuz the moatthat's how I'm gonna win at all costs so winning at all cost doesn't mean I'mstepping on other people it means of actually lifting otherpeople up that's what it means so if you can use that you know if I sayhey echo man look we
need to win and you if we're gonna win the only way to winis if you can learn how to work with Jim otherwise we lose and you're like youknow what because I'm a winner I'll work with Jim cool it's a first stepyeah yeah
