12 Rules for New Leaders

Fundamental rules to keep in mind in order to succeed as a new leader, by former U.S. Navy Seal Jocko Willink

1. Be humble. It is an honour to be in a leadership position. Your team is counting on your to make the right decisions.
2. Don’t act like you know everything. You don’t. The team knows that. Ask smart questions.
3. Listen. Ask for advice and heed it.
4. Treat people with respect. Regardless of rank, everyone is a human being and plays an important role in the team. Treat them that way. Take care of your people and they will take care of you.
5. Take ownership of failures and mistakes.
6. Pass credit for success up and down the chain.
7. Work hard. As the leader, you should be working harder than anyone else on the team. No job is beneath you.
8. Have integrity. Do what you say; say what you do. Don’t lie up or down the chain of command.
9. Be balanced. Extreme actions and opinions are usually not good.
10. Be decisive. When it is time to make a decision, make one.
11. Build relationships. That is your main goal as a leader. A team is a group of people who have relationships and trust one another. Otherwise, it is just a disconnected, incoherent cluster of people.
12. Get the job done. This is the purpose of a leader — to lead a team in accomplishing a mission. If you don’t accomplish the mission, you fail as a leader. Performance counts.

These are straightforward rules. They make sense on paper, but they can be hard to remember and implement in a leadership environment. Review them often. Look at them in the morning, before meetings, and when you are about to make things happen.

Excerpt from “Leadership, Strategy and Tactics“ by Jocko Willink
retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer and New York Times bestselling author