Planning. Verticality. Decisiveness. Discipline. These final four principles can help you maintain the leader’s edge - on the battlefield or in life.

Talking Points:

  • The planning principle: Organizations need to create a standardized and repeatable planning process that is geared toward the “frontline troops”. The more simple and actionable the planning process, the better.
  • The verticality principle: Communicating down, as well as up, the chain of command is an important aspect of leading well. Senior leaders need to clearly make their intents known down to their junior leaders. Junior leaders, in turn, need to send their situational awareness back up to their senior leaders, so they can make better planning decisions.
  • The decisiveness principle: Good leaders will make the “best call amidst uncertainty”, Bad leaders will only paralyze themselves and make their team ineffective if they wait for 100% certainty to make a decision.
  • The discipline principle: The most important quality for an individual or a team to have is self-control and disciplined habits. When it comes to working within the framework of well established procedures, everyone must find the balance between freedom and discipline.
Discussion:
  1. Initial reactions to this topic? What jumped out at you?
  2. Which of these four principles is your team’s strongest point? Which is the weakest? Explain.
  3. Are there plans in place for your organization to be more standardized or more ambiguous? Explain.
  4. How can you make your planning process simpler, more actionable, or repeatable for your team?
  5. As a leader, how clear are your intentions to your team? When have you listened and used feedback from your team?
  6. When have you made a good decision with the best information you had at the time? When have you waited too long to make a decision? What happened?
  7. How can you find the balance between working within established procedures and having freedom to be creative?
  8. As a leader, how can you be aggressive without being overbearing?
  9. Is there a step you need to take based on today’s topic?

Adapted from the book Extreme Ownership by Jakko Willink and Leif Babin.