We take a look at the best books by Jocko Willink on leadership, ownership and playing to win. Jocko Willink is an author and podcaster, a decorated retired United States Navy SEAL. Jocko spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy SEAL Teams, rising through the ranks to become a SEAL officer. He was awarded the Silver Star and Bronze Star for his service in the Iraq War. In 2010, he retired from the Navy and launched the Echelon Front firm together with Leif Babin, a fellow former SEAL.
Willink also hosts the Jocko podcast together with his friend and Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner, Echo Charles.
Extreme Ownership
In Extreme Ownership (purchase on Amazon), Jocko Willink and Leif Babin share hard-hitting, Navy SEAL combat stories that translate into lessons for business and life.
Jocko and Leif served together in SEAL Task Unit Bruiser, the most highly decorated Special Operations unit from the war in Iraq. Through those difficult months of sustained combat, Jocko, Leif and their SEAL brothers learned that leadership - at every level - is the most important thing on the battlefield. Now they teach these same leadership principles to companies throughout the business world that want to build their own high-performance, winning teams.
Extreme Ownership explains the SEAL leadership concepts crucial to accomplishing the most difficult missions in combat and how to apply them to any group, team, or organization. It provides the reader with Jocko and Leif's formula for success: the mindset and guiding principles that enable SEAL combat units to achieve extraordinary results.
Take Extreme Ownership. Lead and win.
The Dichotomy of Leadership
Every leader must be ready and willing to take charge, to make hard, crucial calls for the good of the team and the mission. Something much more difficult to understand is that, in order to be a good leader, one must also be a good follower.
In The Dichotomy of Leadership (purchase on Amazon), the authors explain the power inherent in the recognition of the fine line that leaders must walk, balancing between two seemingly opposite inclinations. It is with the knowledge and understanding of this balance that a leader can most effectively lead, accomplish the mission and achieve the goal of every leader and every team: Victory.
Using examples from the authors' combat and training experience in the SEAL Teams and then showing how each lesson applies to business and in life, Willink and Babin reveal how the use of seemingly opposite principles require skill, awareness, understanding and dexterity; all attributes that can be honed. This is essential reading for anyone looking to lead and win.
Discipline equals freedom
FIND YOUR WILL, FIND YOUR DISCIPLINE--AND YOU WILL FIND YOUR FREEDOM
In Discipline Equals Freedom (purchase on Amazon), Willink describes how he lives the mantra: Find your will, find your discipline and you will find your freedom.
The disciplines he imposes on himself in order to achieve freedom in all aspects of life. Many books offer advice on how to overcome obstacles and reach your goals—but that advice often misses the most critical ingredient: discipline. Without discipline, there will be no real progress. Including strategies and tactics for conquering weakness, procrastination, and fear, and specific physical training presented in workouts for beginner, intermediate, and advanced athletes, and even the best sleep habits and food intake recommended to optimize performance.
With brand new sections like Do What Makes You Happy, Sugar Coated Lies, and Don't Negotiate with Weakness, readers will discover new ways to become stronger, smarter, and healthier.
LEADERSHIP STRATEGY & TACTICS: Field Manual Hardcover
In the military, a field manual provides instructions in simple, clear, step-by-step language to help soldiers complete their mission. What if you are promoted into a new position leading your former peers? What if you don't get selected for the leadership position you wanted? As a leader, how do you build trust with both your superiors and your subordinates?
These are all questions about leadership--the most complex of all human endeavors. And while there are books out there that provide solid leadership principles, books like Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership, there is no leadership field manual that provides a direct, situational, pragmatic how-to guide that anyone can instantly put to use.
Leadership Strategy and Tactics (purchase on Amazon) explain how to take leadership theory, quickly translate that theory into applicable strategy, and then put leadership into action at a tactical level. This book is the solution that leaders need to understand the leadership game and win it.
