if you're if you're a young leader right now listening to this conversation
and thinking about how you can build a relationship and the power of the
relationship with your people actually those individual how you
interact with that individual person isn't the biggest thing because what
those people on your team are doing is watching you
so maybe jacob comes down and wants to build a relationship with me and oh okay
i'm trying to figure out is he authentic or genuine
what i actually get to do is watch jocko with the other 10 dudes on the team
and over time if jocko is just how he is and he believes in that and that
actually he's going to treat everybody the same
way and it's not going to be what he does or says to me
that gets me to buy off that he's on board this is i'm going to see him
in all the other and everything else that he does
i'm going to come to the conclusion like dude this is legit that guy
that guy that guy cares about everybody else being successful and then
those opportu look your people are going to need you at times
and there you will have opportunities to build relationships but the authenticity
isn't just what do i say to echo to get echo to
like me or curry favorite with echo because actually what you're doing to to
your leader is you're watching everything they're doing
and the reason being fake about it doesn't work isn't
because i just see it with me is i see you do with
everybody else that's why it's so obvious
because you're out there trying to figure out how to play the game with all
these 10 different people and if you're if you're faking it it it's going
to it's going to be completely obvious not because of how you and i how
interact so the thing that actually has to start with if you've now
put put in charge of a team or a leader go back and read that second platoon
commander from jocko second platoon he didn't walk in and go i'm honored to
lead you to count you as people that work for me
on my team he just said i'm happy to be part of this and i'm
happy to help make this team win that's it
you don't need to elevate the stature everybody knows who the boss is the
chain of command is understood everybody's got that hierarchy
what you actually need to do is look for ways to break down those barriers and
just have them recognize all this guy cares about is us winning
that's all he cares about and by behavior after behavior after behavior
eventually you're either doing it or you're not and
if you're doing it people are going to get on board if you're not you're going
to fail no matter what you do and people are
going to see that a mile away oh yeah they smell it on you
this continues on it is obvious that building a trustworthy relationship with
your superiors is important but how do you do that one of the
simplest ways is obvious but often gets overlooked
that is performance your boss expects you to complete
certain tasks so complete them do them on time on budget and with
little as little drama as possible get the mission done
this includes doing things you might not be 100
in agreement with i did this throughout my career and it always served me well
boss wants me to fill out some extra paperwork cool i'll do it
boss needs me to cover a shift for someone else on the team i've got it
boss needs me to help clean up some administrative mess that got spilled
i'm on it boss has a nasty low reward mission that needs executing
i'm all over it with each one of those problems i am the solution with each
problem i solve the level of trust with the boss goes up
and i will continue on that path i won't complain or try and shift
bad jobs onto someone else or even look for some kind of praise i will simply
put my head down and do the work over time my boss will know that i am
the person who can make things happen and more important
i gain clout with the boss this is the opposite of the subordinate
who complains and objects or always thinks he has a better way to do things
he loses influence with the boss every time he opens his mouth
any objection from that subordinate is seen by the boss as another typical
excuse the more you talk the less people listen
on the other hand when i do what needs to be done the boss
trusts that i can make things happen the boss also knows that if i do raise
an objection it is likely to be founded on solid
facts that should be considered since i get things done and don't
constantly voice my objections the boss actually listens
i always utilize this strategy with my senior leadership and it worked well
i would simply make things happen as often as i could now
here's where this is gonna i'm gonna preemptively
shut down your next comment echo charles okay because i know i can already see
from this conversation where your head's at
so listen to this
and this is this is where i kind of feel like i make my money sure
right here latest next level okay but how does that appear from the
perspectives of of your subordinates right because now
everyone's looking to you go just do whatever the process for
instance if i recognize that there are some flaws in my boss's plan
then my subordinates certainly recognize the same thing
what do i tell them how do i preserve their respect if they think i can't see
the errors the boss is making the answer is simple i tell them
the truth i say hey team i know there might be some
better ways to skin this cat but at this point the effort to change the plan
would take almost the same effort that it will to just get this job done
so we are just going to do it and let me tell you what else we're doing by
getting this done we are building trust with the boss
every one of these little tasks from him that we crush allows him to trust us
more and more and that gives us the ability to get
listened to so when something comes up that really
doesn't make sense he will listen that is why we are going
to execute this plan to the absolute best of our ability
there you go excellent charlie your next question just got preemptively answered
no more questions you're welcome that's the part see
that's the part where people get worried and that's the answer
people get worried what are the guys going to think yeah oh yeah
yeah and especially when you and then when you say like we're going to build
trust with the boss it's like man that's like
bro i have no argument to that like what i'm saying i don't want to build trust
with the boss you know unless you're just some like
anti-team member you know and no one's no one's
that really and well we don't want to be that but yeah that's
um yeah that's good thank you you're welcome