Key Principles

  • Great leaders own everything in their world. They check their ego, admit mistakes, and take full responsibility for failures.
  • Often, an imperfect decision is better than no decision at all. Indecisiveness can lead to procrastination, overthinking, sudden impulsive actions, and of course, missed opportunities.
  • There are no bad teams, only bad leaders. Your team’s performance and results ultimately fall on your shoulders.
  • As a leader you want to enjoy the process of improving and pushing the standards higher. And then inspire your team to do the same.
  • As a leader you must always operate with the understanding that you are part of something greater than yourself and your own personal interest. Great leaders keep their ego in check.
  • As a result of the previous point, great leaders put their team ahead of their own self-interest, and their mission ahead of their own comfort.
  • Tackling every problem at once is ineffective. Instead, good leaders prioritize problems/goals and execute them one at a time. Executing everything at once leaves you and your resources spread very thin.
  • You can’t make people listen to you and make them execute. You have to lead them.  You must explain not just what to do, but why you are doing it.
  • Great leaders avoid blaming. When you blame or deny, you are less likely to learn and grow from it.


  • Leadership requires finding equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities, between one extreme and another. A great leader is someone who is... 
  • confident but not cocky;
  • courageous but not foolhardy;
  • competitive but a gracious loser;
  • attentive to details but not obsessed with them; 
  • strong but has endurance; 
  • a leader and also a follower; 
  • humble but not passive; 
  • aggressive but not overbearing; 
  • quiet but not silent; 
  • calm but not robotic; 
  • logical but not devoid of emotions. 


  • As a leader, you will inevitably face failure. How you adapt and respond to it is essential to becoming successful in the long term.
  • Avoid taking credit for your team’s successes — great leaders share the limelight.
  • If you think you are always right, you are less likely to listen. Furthermore, if something goes wrong, your tendency will be to blame and not be accountable.
  • Great leaders refuse to tolerate poor performance or compromise their long-term mission for short-term gains. They use consequences whenever necessary.
  • Great leaders have high conviction about the purpose of their mission, their goals, and their plans. They know they must first believe in their mission before they communicate it to others.
  • Great leaders collaborate with other leaders on common objectives, ones that support and help everyone elevate.
  • Knowing how to balance and minimize risk can spell the difference between a failed investment of resources and a successful one.
  • Extreme Ownership, although simple, is not easy to adopt. It requires a real commitment.

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The above is inspired from the bestselling book "Extreme Ownership" by Jocko Willink.

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