What Jocko Willink Can Teach You About Training For Any Battle

He can scoop me up in the palm of his hand and crush me like a little bug. 

When you see him, you imagine Jocko as an aggressive leader. 

They one who screams in cadets ear — spit flying faster than the words coming out a drill sergeants mouth. 

" Get down and give me twenty you lower than life piece of shiiittttt!"

Although a dominant stature, Jocko doesn't appear to be the stereotype you play in your mind based on his physical demeanor. 

He's incredible to listen to --- smart, witty, and funny.

He's seen tough shit that most of us will never have to experience. He's trained the world's toughest soldiers.

He knows what it takes to train for high-stress environments. The keep your life type of situations. 

Are there any higher stress-environments than that?

After reading his books, listening to him on podcasts, and being an all-around internet stalker of Jock Willink — the not so creepy stalker I might add — he has a few fundamental training principles. 

He likely has an arsenal of principles, but these will do for now. 

Being complacent is the enemy of growth. You must always seek to improve. 

There's a theme in SEAL Team culture Jocko says in his book Leadership Strategy & Tactics, it's "you can never rest on what you have achieved in the past. You always have to improve."

Improvement is infinite.

Stagnation is when complacency infects its victims. 

Jocko explains that we must try to see everything through the lens of what we're learning. 

He applies it to leadership since that's his "thing," but it can be used for just about anything. 

"Pay attention…Observe what works and what doesn't."

Watch others he says and "note the successful and unsuccessful techniques leaders use—how they talk, words they use, interactions they carry out." 

As you pay attention, note how you can apply these techniques. 

Learning without execution is a waste of mental space.

He recommends to "apply the leadership lens to things you read." Notice the nuances of leadership. 

Pay attention. How do they act? How do they overcome obstacles? 

It's not only for leadership. You can apply this to many different skills. Notice how someone negotiates. Watch for the nuances that a negotiation expert executes on. 

Is someone an incredible sales professional? Pay attention to them. Learn from them. 

Steve Jobs embodied this principle. 

In the book Pitch Perfect, Bill McGowan writes, "Steve Jobs practiced dozens of times before a big presentation, staging and rehearsing so that nothing was left to chance."

Job's perfectionism came from his childhood. 

As a young boy, he helped his father build a fence around their backyard. His father instructed him that they'll use just as much care on the front of the fence as the back. 

As a typical boy would think, Jobs replied: "nobody will ever know." His father looked down at him and replied, "but you will know." 

His father believed, a true craftsman uses a good piece of wood even for the back of the cabinet, that's up against the wall. 

Great professionals never get complacent. 

To grow, in life, or with any skill, you must always seek to improve. 

Talk to others.

It's one of the most sought after skills in the business world, communication. 

You don't need to be an expert in everything. If you have a question, ask. 

In my business, I teach my team to prioritize effective communication — the importance of written versus verbal. 

We hire based on superior written and verbal communication skills. 

As Jocko puts it, "a platoon commander does not know as much about shooting as his snipers do." 

Or when it comes to a manufacturing business, "a plant manager might not able to run each machine or handle every task on the line. But in all these cases, the leader must at least be familiar with what goes on below him in the chain of command."

Jocko poses a great question when we don't know something, 

"What should someone do if he doesn't know or understand a skill or a job that plays a role in the accomplishment of the mission?

ASK! Go and ask someone to explain it to you. 

I've seen team members struggle with a part of a business process that has them call vendors for specific aircraft material we need.

They keep making the same mistakes, or it's unclear to them why we're doing it. 

My Director of Operations and I talked, and concluded that we have to get better at training them on the why.

We need to articulate why it's important they focus on this part of our standard operating procedure and how it plays a role in the mission.

When's something is unclear to you, don't just as for an explanation. Ask to learn it. Then go practice and execute it. 

Seek a high standard by training hard.

If you want to be the best salesperson, do you follow the top salesperson or the bottom third? 

If your goals are set on being the best, you must seek the highest sales standard. 

This inevitably means you have to train hard. 

There's a reason "banners of past victories are hung in stadiums and adorn hallways. Trophies are put on display in glass cases. In businesses, positive articles are framed and hung up. Awards are displayed on bookshelves and desktops, and good reviews are posted on walls," Jocko writes. 

But why? 

He says, "to have the team members strive for that high standard individually—to have them hold themselves and one another to that level of excellence."

We must have pride in what we're training for, "you have to push them in training to the point where they are truly tested, and in that they will develop pride in what they have accomplished."

You don't have to be training to become a Navy Seal, or for a six-month deployment. Training hard applies to everything. 

It's the basis of the book, Chop Wood, Carry Water. Train hard and love the process. 

Learn fundamental sales, negotiating, or leadership skills. 

Practice ruthlessly in your daily life. Every situation is a scenario to practice.

Execute what you've learned and practiced. Get bloody. Fail. Get back up and repeat. 

Take fire - but don't risk it all. 

Failure is the master teacher of life. 

I've created a training method that's helped me and my team train in different risk level environments.

Learning is the lowest risk environment. You're reading a book, watching a lecture, or doing some form of visual and auditory learning.

Practice is when you start to bruise your ego. It's still low risk, but there's more at stake for you. An example of this is a sales professional who is learning a new sales script. Now she must role-play various scenarios with her team. 

Execute is when you begin to train in real-world situations. Jocko gives excellent advice; you don't want to toss a new salesperson into a million-dollar deal negotiation. 

They'll execute in lower-risk environments depending on their skill level. If it's a new salesperson, it can be on an account that doesn't meet your ideal target client profile.

They take fire, fail, make mistakes, and then learn from it. 

Training is never stagnant. If you want to be the best soldier in your respective fields, you must train like it.

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