Category: Uncategorized

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The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

danmolgan

The book Extreme Ownership was an effective publication written by two Navy SEAL commanders that promoted a very tough approach to leadership with an emphasis on control, domination, and discipline. However, many readers faced with serious problems in their personal and professional lives trying to be so called “extreme”. 

In the book the Dichotomy of Leadership the authors promote a more balanced approach to leadership simply because a good leader is almost never an extremist and the very art of leadership is about finding the sweet spot in between two extremes, a trait possessed only by top leaders since going to extremes is always easy but having a balance requires not only mental strength and emotional intelligence but also intelligence and wisdom. 
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A good leader is as strong as a rock while as soft as a leather, he or she is paradoxical in nature and knows there are times to enforce the rules and there are times to bend them. Also a good leader is aware that in order to realize the final objectives sometimes he or she has to cut off ties with team members or associates who despite coaching, mentoring, and warnings do not change their behaviors. 
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Extreme ownership doesn’t mean doing everything yourself, nor does it mean being at the leading role all the time. Rather good leadership is about dividing responsibilities among the team and telling them why it is important for them to do what they ought to do so that they themselves feel a sense of responsibility to do their tasks. Also being a leader means that you need to be a follower in an area when someone in your team has superior skills, talents, or experience in that particular area. After all, all leaders have only so much leadership capital to spare and by trying to take charge for things that are not very important or the things that they are not qualified for, they run the risk of losing credibility among their followers. 
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Being aggressive has been associated with winning in life and business and all leaders possess that sense of aggression and initiative but being overly aggressive itself can lead to major problems whereby the leader acts to maintain his or her ego instead of doing the right thing.
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Ultimately training and mentoring the subordinates is a big component of leadership and all leaders should aspire to push their teams out of their comfort zone but at the same time burning out the team won’t yield good results either which means that, like all other dichotomies mentioned in the book, finding the middle ground is extremely imporant in good leadership.
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Dan’s Action Plans:

  • To be alpha you need master the art of balance since that is something that most individuals cannot do. Being overly kind is as bad as being overly cruel, being overly selfless is as bad as being overly selfish, being overly dominant is as bad as being overly submissive. Master the art of balance and you will master leadership itself.
  • If you want to please everyone then sell ice creams instead of being a leader. Leaders have polarities meaning they make some really love them and make the others really hate them. If you are not okay with cutting ties or firing bad associates or subordinates you are not strong enough to be a good leader.
  • Doing the right thing does not always feel good and doing what feels good is not always the right thing!
  • Learn to hold contradictory thoughts and qualities to remain a top leader.
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The Formula: the universal laws of success by Albert Laszlo Barabasio

danmolgan

When we think about success we not only think about success itself but also the performance that leads to it. Performance is about how well you do something but success is about whether the people around you acknowledge and reward your performance. So the more positively others react to your performance the more successful you are. While performance certainly matters, research has proven that there is no absolute link between how well you do something and how successful you are.

The issue with linking performance to success is that firstly performance is bounded meaning that there is a limit on how well you can do something and the difference in performance among the most successful individuals in any field is often very insignificant and almost indistinguishable. Secondly, judging performance has proven to be biased when comparing the performance of top players and are subject to many irrelevant things including whether you are the first to be judged or the last.
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Success on the other hand is not necessarily about the objective value of what you do but how your network reacts to it and since we are living in a world with billions of people it means that unlike performance, success is unbounded and limitless. Also it has been observed yet and again that success leads to more success and getting acknowledged for your performance by a few people can actually make room for more people to acknowledge your performance even if your performance is not necessarily that good! This crowd effect is due to human nature in that people tend to align in opinion with the majority when the criteria are more subjective be it the success of a music track, an internet personality, or a stock, having said all of that, quality matters and when combined with previous success it does predict future success.
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Ultimately success is amplified by time but getting older won’t insure more success, rather, getting older only contributes to more success only if you keep pursuing your goals with the same zest and enthusiasm as people in their 20’s and early 30’s. The people who don’t slow down with age actually will accumulate more success than their younger counterparts. 
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Dan’s Action Plans:

  • Focusing only on developing your skill or abilities or simply working harder won’t insure your success because success is not a solo affair but a social one. This means that to be successful you need to develop your social skill with a focus on self-promotion, salesmanship, as well as a touch of showmanship to be able to get more people to take notice of your performance and reward you for it.
  • If you are introverted or shy you cannot attain much success unless you develop your social skills and start building relationships and alliances, not to mention putting yourself in the spotlight for others to see.
  • So long as you don’t slow down with age and remain motivated by continuing to set bigger goals your success will only be amplified through time and aging. This means that success has no age limit and for as long as you remain productive you will become successful.