Kyle Lamb's Leadership in the Shadows
Jocko's Extreme Ownership
have really impacted my leadership style. Honestly, they helped articulate and understand the leadership principles I learned through the military.
Of the two, Extreme Ownership has had the greatest impact and is required reading for my younger leadership. There are just some super basic but important principles that help guide a lot of leadership decision making, such as :
Extreme Ownership - when you're the leader, take responsibility for EVERYTHING. Take none of the credit and all of the blame. If something goes wrong, always step back and think about what you could have done differently to make sure that didn't happen. In the future, think about that ahead of time and prevent that stuff from happening. One of your guys screwed up? You should have trained him better, communicated better, or made sure he had the tools he needed to perform better. The weather screwed things up? you should have had contingency plans for bad weather. etc
The real standard isn't what you say, it's what you accept. - you can preach all you want what the standards of performance, behavior, safety, etc are all day but if your guys don't meet them, and you let it go, then they learn that is the real standard.
Keep it simple. - keep plans and orders simple or they simply won't be easily understood or implemented by your subordinates and can cause more problems than they solve.
No bad teams, only bad leaders. - poorly performing teams can be turned around completely with a good leader. Teams that have been trained by a good leader can thrive despite a poor leader. Keep an eye on your subordinate managers/leaders and how they handle their guys.
Prioritize and execute - when you're overwhelmed and stressed out, take a step back, look around, decide what the next priority should be, and deal with it. Then the next one, and the next.
A leader should spend most of his time looking up and out - if you get bogged down in the minutia, you won't be able to make strategic calls. Stay close enough to the front that you know what's going on, but far enough back that you don't get sucked into pulling security on a hallway and no one is making calls. Do take some time to look down and in, but most of your time should be looking up and out.
Kyle Lamb's book is honestly almost just as great in terms of the guidance and insights he brings to the table. A lot of his advice is actually directed to law enforcement application.