“The Dichotomy of Leadership” is a great excerpt from Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. In this segment, Jocko describes the difficult balancing act that all good leaders must maintain for maximum effectiveness. All the leaders I admire check off every item on this list and I’m grateful that Jocko included it in the book. I hope it inspires and guides more current and future leaders in whatever they do. Without further ado, here is “The Dichotomy of Leadership”:
A good leader must be:
– confident but not cocky;
– courageous but not foolhardy;
– competitive but a gracious loser;
– attentive to details but not obsessed by them;
– strong but have endurance;
– a leader and follower
– humble not passive;
– aggressive not overbearing;
– quiet not silent;
– calm but not robotic, logical but not devoid of emotions;
– close with the troops but not so close that one becomes more important than another or more important than the good of the team; not so close that they forget who is in charge.
– able to execute Extreme Ownership, while exercising Decentralized Command.
A good leader has nothing to prove, but everything to prove.