The leader bears full responsibility for explaining the strategic mission, developing the tactics, and securing the training and resources to enable the team to properly and successfully execute (p. 31).

Such a leader, however, does not take credit for his or her team’s success but bestows that honor on his or her subordinate leaders and team members (p.31).

Leadership is the single greatest factor in any team’s performance (p. 49).

There are no bad teams, only bad leaders (p. 49)

Leaders should never be satisfied. They must always strive to improve and they must build that mind-set into the team (p. 55).

Teams need a forcing function to get the different members working together to accomplish the mission and that is what leadership is all about (p. 55).

Good leaders don’t make excuses. Instead, they figure out a way to get it done and win (p. 57).

Ego clouds and disrupts everything: the planning process, the ability to take good advice, and the ability to accept constructive criticism (p. 100).

If the overall team fails, everyone fails, even if a specific member or an element within the team did their job successfully (p. 122).

Willink, J., & Babin, L. (2017). Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win (1st ed.). St. Martin’s Press.

It is not the role of the people we lead to make us look good. It is our role as leaders to make them look good. That is, it is our role as leaders to provide every resource and opportunity our team needs to succeed in its tasks.

No one in any position of rule, insofar as he is a ruler, seeks or orders what is advantageous to himself, but what is advantageous to his subjects. It is to his subjects and what is advantageous and proper to them that he looks, and everything he says and does he says and does for them. (Plato, as cited in Ciulla, 2003)¹

We would do well in education to understand this.