The goal of all leaders should be to work themselves out of a job. You never quite get there, but by putting junior leaders and frontline troops in charge, our SEAL platoon and task unit were far more effective. It created a culture of leaders at every level of the team.
The Laws of Combat:
Cover and move.
Simple.
Prioritize and execute.
Decentralized command.
When a leader takes so much ownership of everything in his or her world that members of the team feel there is nothing left for which they can take ownership, team members will execute only at the boss's specific direction without any root ownership or buy-in themselves -- resulting in a team far less capable of overcoming obstacles and accomplishing the mission.
Micromanagement fails because no one person can control multiple people executing a vast number of actions in a dynamic environment, where changes in the situation occur rapidly and with unpredictability. It also inhibits the growth of subordinates: when people become accustomed to being told what to do, they begin to await direction. Initiative fades and eventually dies. Creativity and bold thought and action soon die as well. The team becomes a bunch of simple and thoughtless automatons, following orders without understanding, more forward only when told to do so. A team like that will never achieve greatness.
Here are the common symptoms that result from micromanagement:
The team shows a lack of initiative. Members will not take action unless directed.
The team does not seek solutions to problems; instead, its members sit and wait to be told about a solution.
Even in an emergency, a team that is being micromanaged will not mobilize and take action.
Bold and aggressive action becomes rare.
Creativity grinds to a halt.
The team tends to stay inside their own silo; not stepping out to coordinate efforts with other departments or divisions for fear of overstepping their bounds.
An overall sense of passivity and failure to react.
Here are common symptoms that indicate when a leader is too hands-off with his team:
Lack of vision in what the team is trying to do and how to do it.
Lack of coordination between individuals on the team and efforts that often compete or interfere with each other.
Initiative oversteps the bounds of authority, and both individuals and teams carry out actions that are beyond what they have the authorization to do.
Failure to coordinate.
The team is focused on the wrong priority mission or pursuit of solutions that are not in keeping with the strategic direction of the team or the commander's intent.
There are too many people trying to lead.
With Decentralized Command, it was crucial that leaders at every level be fully self-reliant, ready to step up and execute to accomplish the mission.
Leadership capital is the recognition that there is a finite amount of power that any leader possesses.
People want to keep doing what they have always done. It's up to you to help them understand why they need to change -- why they need to implement standardized procedures. If they understand how it will benefit them personally, how it will benefit their team, and benefit the overall mission, they are far more likely to embrace the change.
The challenge for any leader was to raise the level of every member of the team so that they could perform at their absolute best. In order to do that, a leader must make it his or her personal mission to train, coach, and mentor members of the team so they perform to the highest standards -- or at least the minimum standard.
Most underperformers don't need to be fired, they need to be led. But once every effort has been made to help an underperformer improve and all efforts have failed, a leader has to make the tough call to let that person go. This is the duty and responsibility of every leader.
There is no growth in the comfort zone.
The strategic goal of training must always be to build capable leaders at every level of the team. For this, hard training is essential. But if training is too hard, it will break the team and minimize learning and growth. So there must be balance: train hard, but train smart.
Advanced tactics are worthless if a team can't do the basics well.
As a leader, you must make it part of your job to see what is coming next, to observe. By observing, leaders can understand the surroundings and the terrain, they can identify enemy positions and observe the locations of their own troops. Once leaders observe all this, they can then make a call.
On top of the Laws of Combat, we used stealth, surprise, and violence of action to ensure we had the upper hand on the enemy whenever possible. It was never our intent to have a fair fight. It was our job to maximize our advantages over the enemy and we did everything in our power to make this happen.
Instead of using accountability as the primary tool of leadership, leaders should implement it as just one of many leadership tools. Instead of holding people accountable, the leader has to lead. The leader must make sure the team understands why. Make sure its members have ownership of their tasks and the ability to make adjustments as needed. Make sure they know how their task supports the overall strategic success of the mission. Make sure they know how important their specific task is to the team and what the consequences are for failure.
It is the weakest form of leadership to win an argument through rank or position.
One of the most important jobs of any leader is to support your own boss. When the debate on a particular course of action ends and the boss makes a decision -- even if you disagree with the decision -- you must execute the plan as if it were your own. Only if the orders coming down from senior leadership are illegal, immoral, unethical, or significantly risky to lives, limbs, or the strategic success of the organization should a subordinate leader hold fast against directives from superiors. Those cases should be rare.
The most effective teams build flexible plans.
Leaders cannot be so immersed in the details that they lose track of the larger strategic situation and are unable to provide command and control for the entire team.
The following are my favorites notes and quotes from Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist.
The heat lasted until nightfall, and all that time he had to carry his jacket. But when he thought to complain about the burden of its weight, he remembered that, because he had the jacket, he had withstood the cold of the dawn.
That was what made traveling appeal to him -- he always made new friends, and he didn't need to spend all of his time with them. When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
The Soul of the World is nourished by people's happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one's Personal Legend is a person's only real obligation. All things are one.
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.
If you start out by promising what you don't even have yet, you'll lose your desire to work toward getting it.
When each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.
That wind had brought the Moors, yes, but it had also brought the smell of the desert and of veiled women. It had brought with it the sweat and the dreams of men who once left to search for the unknown, and for gold and adventure -- and for the Pyramids. The boy felt jealous of the freedom of the wind, and saw that he could have the same freedom. There was nothing to hold him back except himself.
In order to find the treasure, you will have to follow the omens. God has prepared a path for everyone to follow. You just have to read the omens that he left for you.
Don't forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else. And don't forget the language of omens. And, above all, don't forget to follow your Personal Legend through to its conclusion.
He had become used to learning which path he should take by observing the ground and the sky. He had discovered that the presence of a certain bird meant that a snake was nearby, and that a certain shrub was a sign that there was water in the area. The sheep had taught him that.
I'm like everyone else -- I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does.
He had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure. "I'm an adventurer, looking for treasure," he said to himself.
He walked slowly through the market. The merchants were assembling their stalls, and the boy helped a candy seller do this. The candy seller had a smile on his face: he was happy, aware of what his life was about, and ready to begin a day's work. His smile reminded the boy of the old man -- the mysterious old king he had met. "This candy merchant isn't making candy so that later he can travel or marry a shopkeeper's daughter. He's doing it because it's what he wants to do," thought the boy. He realized that he could do the same thing the old man had done -- sense whether a person was near to or far from his Personal Legend. Just by looking at them. It's easy, and yet I've never done it before, he thought.
Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.
There was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired.
The hills of Andalusia were only two hours away, but there was an entire desert between him and the Pyramids. Yet the boy felt that there was another way to regard his situation: he was actually two hours closer to his treasure... the fact that the two hours had stretched into an entire year didn't matter.
The closer one gets to realizing his Personal Legend, the more that Personal Legend becomes his true reason for being.
Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it's all written there.
When I'm eating, that's all I think about. If I'm on the march, I just concentrate on marching. If I have to fight, it will be just as good a day to die as any other.
I must have no fear of failure. It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the Master Work. Now, I'm beginning what I could have started ten years ago. But I'm happy at least that I didn't wait twenty years.
The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better. Forget about the future, and live each day according to the teachings, confident that God loves his children. Each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity.
Courage is the quality most essential to understanding the Language of the World.
"It's not what enters men's mouths that's evil," said the alchemist. "It's what comes out of their mouths that is."
You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend. If he abandons that pursuit, it's because it wasn't true love... the love that speaks the Language of the World.
Every second of the search is an encounter with God.
Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.
Every search begins with beginner's luck. And every search ends with the victor's being severely tested.
When you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.
Your eyes show the strength of your soul.
When something evolves, everything around that thing evolves as well.
There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.
When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.
"This is for you," he said, holding one of the parts out to the monk. "It's for your generosity to the pilgrims." "But this payment goes well beyond my generosity," the monk responded. "Don't say that again. Life might be listening, and give you less the next time."
No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.
Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth. They are looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love, while they have a treasure within that not only includes all those things but is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.
Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationships. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God.
The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity -- the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated.
When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream -- a gap of "no-mind." At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer.
One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.
This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction. What characterizes an addiction? Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the choice to stop. It seems stronger than you. It also gives you a false sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain.
Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.
A strong unconscious emotional pattern may even manifest as an external event that appears to just happen to you. For example, I have observed that people who carry a lot of anger inside without being aware of it and without expressing it are more likely to be attacked, verbally or even physically, by other angry people, and often for no apparent reason. They have a strong emanation of anger that certain people pick up subliminally and that triggers their own latent anger.
Love, joy, and peace are deep states of Being, or rather three aspects of the state of inner connectedness with Being. As such, they have no opposite. This is because they arise from beyond the mind.
Real love doesn't make you suffer.
Accept -- then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.
Ultimately all fear is the ego's fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner.
Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.
An aspect of the emotional pain that is an intrinsic part of the egoic mind is a deep-seated sense of lack or incompleteness, of not being whole. In some people, this is conscious, in others unconscious. If it is conscious, it manifests as the unsettling and constant feeling of not being worthy or good enough. If it is unconscious, it will only be felt indirectly as an intense craving, wanting and needing.
The secret of life is to "die before you die" -- and find that there is no death.
Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.
Identification with the mind gives it more energy; observation of the mind withdraws energy from it.
Belief in a future heaven creates a present hell.
The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future -- which, of course, can only be experiences as the Now.
Focus your attention on the Now and tell me what problem you have at this moment.
Completely accept what is, because you cannot give your full attention to something and at the same time resist it.
Do not be concerned with the fruit of your action -- just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord.
Everything is honored, but nothing matters. Forms are born and die, yet you are aware of the eternal underneath the forms. You know that "nothing real can be threatened."
To be free of time is to be free of the psychological need of past for your identity and future for your fulfillment. It represents the most profound transformation of consciousness that you can imagine.
Many people use alcohol, drugs, sex, food, work, television, or even shopping as anesthetics in an unconscious attempt to remove the basic unease. When this happens, an activity that might be very enjoyable if used in moderation becomes imbued with a compulsive or addictive quality, and all that is ever achieved through it is extremely short-lived symptom relief.
Physical violence would be impossible without deep unconsciousness.
You can use a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you into even deeper sleep.
Either stop doing what you are doing, speak to the person concerned and express fully what you feel, or drop the negativity that your mind has created around the situation and that serves no purpose whatsoever except to strengthen a false sense of self.
When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
As long as you are run by the egoic mind, you are part of the collective insanity.
All spiritual teachings originate from the same Source. In that sense, there is and always has been only one master, who manifests in many different forms. I am that master, and so are you, once you are able to access the Source within. And the way to it is through the inner body.
Forgiveness is to relinquish your grievance and so to let go of grief. It happens naturally once you realize that your grievance serves no purpose except to strengthen a false sense of self.
Nothing that is real is ever lost.
Death is an illusion, just as your identification with form was an illusion. The end of illusion -- that's all that death is. It is painful only as long as you cling to illusion.
You "get" there by realizing that you are there already. You find God the moment you realize that you don't need to seek God.
There is nothing you can ever do or attain that will get you closer to salvation than it is at this moment.
The reason why the romantic love relationship is such an intense and universally sought-after experience is that it seems to offer liberation from a deep-seated state of fear, need, lack, and incompleteness that is part of the human condition in its unredeemed and unenlightened state.
You cannot love your partner one moment and attack him or her the next. True love has no opposite. If your "love" has an opposite, then it is not love but a strong ego-need for a more complete and deeper sense of self, a need that the other person temporarily meets.
If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world.
If you are consistently or at least predominately present in your relationship, this will be the greatest challenge for your partner. They will not be able to tolerate your presence for very long and stay unconscious. If they are ready, they will walk through the door that you opened for them and join you in that state. If they are not, you will separate like oil and water. The light is too painful for someone who wants to remain in the darkness.
As long as part of your sense of self is invested in your emotional pain, you will unconsciously resist or sabotage every attempt that you make to heal that pain. Why? Quite simply because you want to keep yourself intact, and the pain has become an essential part of you. This is an unconscious process, and the only way to overcome it is to make it conscious.
Acute unhappiness can be a great awakener.
When you are enlightened, there is one relationship that you no longer have: the relationship with yourself. Once you have given that up, all your other relationships will be love relationships.
Do you truly know what is positive and what is negative? Do you have the total picture? There have been many people for whom limitation, failure, loss, illness, or pain in whatever form turned out to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires. It gave them depth, humility, and compassion. It made them more real.
Forgiveness of the present is even more important than forgiveness of the past. If you forgive every moment -- allow it to be as it is -- then there will be no accumulation of resentment that needs to be forgiven at some later time.
You cannot have an argument with a fully conscious person. An argument implies identification with your mind and a mental position, as well as resistance and reaction to the other person's position. The result is that the polar opposites become mutually energized. These are the mechanics of unconsciousness. You can still make your point clearly and firmly, but there will be no reactive force behind it, no defense or attack. So it won't turn into drama. When you are fully conscious, you cease to be in conflict.
Failure lies concealed in every success, and success in every failure.
The whole advertising industry and consumer society would collapse if people became enlightened and no longer sought to find their identity through things.
Many people never realize that there can be no "salvation" in anything they do, possess, or attain. Those who do realize it often become world-weary and depressed: If nothing can give you true fulfillment, what is there left to strive for, what is the point in anything? The Old Testament prophet must have arrived at such a realization when he wrote: "I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind." When you reach this point, you one step away from despair -- and one step away from enlightenment.
Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now. Let it teach you Being. Let it teach you integrity -- which means to be one, to be yourself, to be real. Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how not to make living and dying into a problem.
You teach through being, through demonstrating the peace of God.
Who you are is always a more vital teaching and a more powerful transformer of the world than what you say, and more essential even than what you do.
Remember: Just as you cannot fight the darkness, so you cannot fight unconsciousness. If you try to do so, the polar opposites will become strengthened and more deeply entrenched. You will become identified with one of the polarities, you will create an "enemy," and so be drawn into unconsciousness yourself. Raise awareness by disseminating information, or at the most, practice passive resistance. But make sure that you carry no resistance within, no hatred, no negativity. "Love your enemies," said Jesus, which of course, means "have no enemies."
The causal level needs to remain your primary focus, the teaching of enlightenment your main purpose, and peace your most precious gift to the world.
Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life. The only place where you can experience the flow of life is the Now, so to surrender is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation. It is to relinquish inner resistance to what is.
It is true that only an unconscious person will try to use or manipulate others, but it is equally true that only an unconscious person can be used and manipulated.
Whenever any kind of disaster strikes, or something goes seriously "wrong" -- illness, disability, loss of home or fortune or of a socially defined identity, breakup of a close relationship, death or suffering of a loved one, or your own impending death -- know that there is another side to it, that you are just one step away from something incredible: a complete alchemical transmutation of the base metal of pain and suffering into gold. That one step is called surrender.
When there is no way out, there is still always a way through. So don't turn away from the pain. Face it. Feel it fully. Feel it -- don't think about it!
Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. They happen because there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past, not enough light to dispel the darkness. You are not fully here. You have not quite woken up yet. In the meantime, the conditioned mind is running your life.
