10 Marine Corps Leadership Principles [0:00:00]
So, a lot of you guys have asked me, Antonio, what did you learn in the United States Marine
Corps that you apply to your life and business today?
Well, it’s a great question.
And, in today’s video, ten leadership principles I picked up in the United States Marine Corps.
[Music] So, to start things off, I want to thank the
staff NCOs, the officers, and the marines that I had the privilege to lead for teaching
me these principles.
The first and most important leadership principle I learned is by example.
You lead by example, not by telling people what to do, that’s a boss.
A leader is in front showing people what they’re capable of.
For me, it’s about setting a high standard for myself and then meeting that standard
because when you meet that standard, then you have the right to demand from others.
So, when you lead by example you never ask anything of anyone that you wouldn’t do
yourself.
Now, oftentimes you’re not in a position that you can do it, you’ve got a team you’ve
got twenty people, a hundred people, five people working for you and, yes, they need
to do that specific task.
And sometimes they’re going to get their hands dirty, sometimes it’s not fun, but
what you need to show is occasionally get down into the trenches.
Gentlemen, I’m going to be straight, leading by example is not easy.
If it was, everybody would do it.
When you set that high standard, you’ve got to live up to it, but when you do, it’s
an amazing feeling and worth all the work.
Next up, gents, we’ve got honor.
This is the ultimate and ethical and moral behavior.
Honor means you have an uncompromising code of integrity and you respect human dignity,
you give respect to other human beings because you realize we’re all in this together.
Gentlemen, for a man to have honor, he needs to act responsibly, he needs to be held accountable
for his actions and he needs to fulfill his obligations.
The next leadership characteristic is courage.
Now, there’s three types; physical, mental, and moral courage.
Let’s start with physical.
So, this is where you push your body beyond what you think you can actually do.
So, I remember having 70 lbs on my back taking M16 along with some extra rounds for the mortars.
I had to carry this on a forced march of about 25 miles, very brisk pace.
Point is is that you can do more than what you think you can do.
And when you put yourself in that situation, you realize, hey, most of the problems you
face in life they’re actually they’re just made up by our mind and you realize that
you can – you have the strength to be anything you want.
Next up, let’s talk about mental courage.
And that’s when you’ve got to make a decision you’ve got to take action.
You don’t have all the right information, you haven’t slept much, you are under a
lot of stress and guess what?
It looks like failure is imminent, but you still got to make decision you still have
to take responsibility for that decision.
And that’s what I love about the Marine Corps is they put you in all these situations
in which it was very tough and most likely you weren’t actually going to make it, but
you still have to move forward.
You couldn’t fall into analysis paralysis, you had to make a decision the best you could
with the information you had.
Now, this next type of courage is possibly the most important and that is moral courage.
Moral courage is doing what is right when nobody’s watching when nobody’s going
to know.
But, here’s the deal is that it sounds simple, but it’s so difficult especially when you’re
butt is on the line.
I remember we’re on ship, I’m missing one of my marines I’m missing a lance corporal
on the boat, we’ve got all hands on deck formation and I’m missing one of my guys.
Now, I could have said, oh, you know he’s off doing this other duty, I could have covered
for him, but here’s the deal, that’s a mistake because who knows maybe he got knocked
off off the deck.
I mean maybe he’s out in the water.
Who knows what’s going on?
But, the truth is I need to report what I do know.
You’ve got to make sure you do what is right when no one’s watching because guess what?
You’re watching.
This is about your character this is about you doing what you know to be correct.
Next up, we’ve got commitment.
That’s the spirit of dedication, the spirit of determination for you to accomplish mission
because if you’re not committed, then you’re not going to see things through ‘til the
end.
Oftentimes, you’ve got these fair-weather people these fair-weather leaders they’re
willing to lead when everything is going great.
But, you want people that are committed not only to the good times, but to the downtimes
when things are bad.
There’s this great saying on a poster and it says, smooth sailing never made a skilled
sailor.
And that’s the same for leaders.
You’re going to go through the ups and downs and what’s going to get you through is commitment.
Next up, a leader should respect history, should respect tradition.
No, I’m not saying you can’t change anything and I’m not saying be a slave to those things,
but what I am saying is understand why are things done in this way, what’s the history
here, what’s the tradition.
Because the people in the organization that work just day to day, they’ve got the reasoning
they’re smart people, they set things up in a certain way and when you change things,
people lose their identity and this is big.
In the Marine Corps, it was all about history it was all about tradition.
We understand the parts of the uniform, we understand when our birthday was when the
Marine Corps is founded.
1775, my Marine Corps came alive.
And you know what that does?
When you know the history when you understand something, you have respect for it, you should
learn to love it and it’s something you’re willing to fight for.
And that’s what you want when you take over a company, you want people that are willing
to fight for that company.
You want their fighting spirit to help get through what you need to get through.
[0:05:00] So, the next two leadership principles I’m
going to talk about are self-reliance and teamwork.
And I’m going to actually talk about how they actually work with each other because
they seem opposite.
But, with self-reliance, the Marine Corps had what were known as Marine Expeditionary
Unit, 5,000 marines and sailors that could be projected anywhere in the world.
We’re talking air power, they have tanks, they have AVs, they have ground troops.
These guys could go into any place they wanted and make things happen.
It’s pretty impressive.
It was a self-reliant unit.
That’s powerful and you want to make sure when you are leading people that they are
self-reliant that they aren’t so dependent on others that they don’t have somebody
if someone was sick if someone were to quit the company, that you haven’t lost two people.
Now, let’s talk about teamwork.
The thing is you’re more powerful when you work with a team.
So, at the Marine Corps, you work with the army, you start doing special operations with
the navy, with air force.
I mean you guys air force you know I love you air power, but with the coast guard you
start working with joint units, all of a sudden the power level doesn’t just double up,
it actually becomes a multiple of that.
So, self-reliance is great, but whenever you bring in a team of self-reliant individuals,
all of a sudden the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.
The next leadership principle I picked up in the marines is make sure that everyone
understands the commander’s intent.
The commander’s intent is what you want to happen.
Basically, it’s the big picture, it’s why are we doing what we’re doing because
here’s the deal is that oftentimes people get lost in the woods.
They’re doing all these work and they start to go off in this direction other people are
going off in this direction.
Imagine a boat, you’ve got people rowing in different directions, are you going to
go anywhere?
No.
You’ve got to make sure that everyone understands the direction that we’re going and they
row in that direction.
And not only that, they understand that sometimes where you’re going is going to shift is
going to change if the leader in the organization don’t recognize this, if they don’t understand
the goal is not just to sell a lot, it’s actually to make money to make a profit for
the business.
Yeah, you may have sold a lot, but if you sold a lot at a discount, you end up losing
money and that all of a sudden the company goes out of business because the commander’s
intent was not understood that is to create a profitable business just not – not just
the business that sells a lot.
The next leadership principle, good leaders take the initiative.
And not only do they take the initiative, they make sure that everyone around them understands
that it’s good to take the initiative.
I’m never going to be upset with anyone for taking the initiative and doing work that
they thought needed to get done.
If you’re a leader in an organization and people are waiting on you, guess what?
They’re always going to be waiting on you.
They’re not going to find things to actually need get done, but also when you got people
around you, everyone’s looking for something to do, everyone’s looking for a problem
to solve.
Sometimes you’re going to have people go a little bit too far, you give them too much
leash and they go out there and, yeah, they – yeah, you to reel them back in.
But, here’s the deal is that’s a much better problem to have than have people that
are all sitting in the rear waiting for you to actually tell them what to do.
And now, let’s talk about the leadership principle of the right mindset.
You’ve got to have the mindset that you can accomplish anything that obstacles are
there to stop other people, not you.
If you believe you can do something or you believe you can’t, you are probably right.
And here’s the deal is sometimes it really – it’s bad.
I remember one time we had to get into this ice – we got to break the ice on the water
before we jump into that mud and we had to go, it was like a hundred meters under barb
wire.
This was not going to be fun.
It was cold.
We just gotten out of our warm beds and I can tell you this was going to suck.
And there was a guy, [Lavodey?], you know what he said?
Embrace the suck.
And he’s the first one jumping in and he’s singing and having fun and screaming going
in there.
And you know what?
We all followed him.
That is a leader.
When you know you got to do something, it’s not going to be fun, but you just do it anyway.
And you get through it, you realized, okay, I’m not going to – this will be a good
story after we’re through.
You’ve got to approach things with that mindset because work is called work for a
reason.
But, it’s the men and the women that go through this that make things happen that
are actually at the end of the day are going to stand up and are going to be satisfied
with their own accomplishments in life Now, in today’s video, gents, I talked about
the principles of being a good leader, but if you just want to be a gentleman, you just
want to be a modern gent?
Well, guys, I got you covered with this video right here, the art of being a modern gentleman.
Now, some of the things I talked about in today’s video I also talk about on this
video, but I talked about a lot more, so if you’re interested in this type of thing,
go check out this video.
I’m linking to it down in the description.
All right, gentlemen.
Now, it’s your turn.
I want to hear from you down in the comments what do you think of the video how could I
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What did I miss?
Let me know down there on the comments, guys.
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That’s it, gentlemen.
Take care.
I’ll see you in the next video.
[Music] [0:10:19] End of Audio