Featured on The Jocko Podcast “The finest little handbook on leadership and training ever written.” --Col. David Hackworth, author of the bestseller About Face Guidelines for the Leader and the Commander is an enduring classic. Written by the Army’s premier trainer of the twentieth century, this is a wide-ranging collection of principles and maxims to guide the building, training, and leading of any organization, with a focus on the individuals who make up that organization. Clarke intended the book to enlighten and instruct leaders, and those who aspire to leadership, in every profession and every walk of life. Thoughtful as well as concrete, pithy and often conversational, Clarke’s book resonates today.

In 2008 Major Russell Lewis commanded a company of two hundred soldiers from the British Army's legendary Parachute Regiment on a six-month tour in the most dangerous part of Afghanistan. Company Commander is his story, a riveting first-person account of incredible bravery, telling what it is like to have 200 Paras depending on you constantly, to make decisions which can and do cost lives, to see men under your command killed and injured and being under the most intense pressure imaginable every minute of every day for six long months. Company Commander is a true leader's story – a unique and vivid mix of front-line battles and strategic decision making and an intensely personal and inspiring account of a tour in the most perilous theatre of war on the planet.

It is also worthwhile reading for anyone, from any walk of life, who makes executive decisions."--BOOK JACKET.

An instant national bestseller! Stanley McChrystal, the retired US Army general and bestselling author of Team of Teams, profiles thirteen of history’s great leaders, including Walt Disney, Coco Chanel, and Robert E. Lee, to show that leadership is not what you think it is—and never was. Stan McChrystal served for thirty-four years in the US Army, rising from a second lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division to a four-star general, in command of all American and coalition forces in Afghanistan. During those years he worked with countless leaders and pondered an ancient question: “What makes a leader great?” He came to realize that there is no simple answer. McChrystal profiles thirteen famous leaders from a wide range of eras and fields—from corporate CEOs to politicians and revolutionaries. He uses their stories to explore how leadership works in practice and to challenge the myths that complicate our thinking about this critical topic. With Plutarch’s Lives as his model, McChrystal looks at paired sets of leaders who followed unconventional paths to success. For instance. . . · Walt Disney and Coco Chanel built empires in very different ways. Both had public personas that sharply contrasted with how they lived in private. · Maximilien Robespierre helped shape the French Revolution in the eighteenth century; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi led the jihadist insurgency in Iraq in the twenty-first. We can draw surprising lessons from them about motivation and persuasion. · Both Boss Tweed in nineteenth-century New York and Margaret Thatcher in twentieth-century Britain followed unlikely roads to the top of powerful institutions. · Martin Luther and his future namesake Martin Luther King Jr., both local clergymen, emerged from modest backgrounds to lead world-changing movements. Finally, McChrystal explores how his former hero, General Robert E. Lee, could seemingly do everything right in his military career and yet lead the Confederate Army to a devastating defeat in the service of an immoral cause. Leaders will help you take stock of your own leadership, whether you’re part of a small team or responsible for an entire nation.

An updated edition of the blockbuster bestselling leadership book that took America and the world by storm, two U.S. Navy SEAL officers who led the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War demonstrate how to apply powerful leadership principles from the battlefield to business and life. Sent to the most violent battlefield in Iraq, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s SEAL task unit faced a seemingly impossible mission: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a city deemed “all but lost.” In gripping firsthand accounts of heroism, tragic loss, and hard-won victories in SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, they learned that leadership—at every level—is the most important factor in whether a team succeeds or fails. Willink and Babin returned home from deployment and instituted SEAL leadership training that helped forge the next generation of SEAL leaders. After departing the SEAL Teams, they launched Echelon Front, a company that teaches these same leadership principles to businesses and organizations. From promising startups to Fortune 500 companies, Babin and Willink have helped scores of clients across a broad range of industries build their own high-performance teams and dominate their battlefields. Now, detailing the mind-set and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult missions in combat, Extreme Ownership shows how to apply them to any team, family or organization. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic such as Cover and Move, Decentralized Command, and Leading Up the Chain, explaining what they are, why they are important, and how to implement them in any leadership environment. A compelling narrative with powerful instruction and direct application, Extreme Ownership revolutionizes business management and challenges leaders everywhere to fulfill their ultimate purpose: lead and win.

“An excellent, vividly written” (The Washington Post) account of leadership in wartime that explores how four great democratic statesmen—Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion—worked with the military leaders who served them during warfare. The relationship between military leaders and political leaders has always been a complicated one, especially in times of war. When the chips are down, who should run the show—the politicians or the generals? In Supreme Command, Eliot A. Cohen expertly argues that great statesmen do not turn their wars over to their generals, and then stay out of their way. Great statesmen make better generals of their generals. They question and drive their military men, and at key times they overrule their advice. The generals may think they know how to win, but the statesmen are the ones who see the big picture. Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion led four very different kinds of democracy, under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. They came from four very different backgrounds—backwoods lawyer, dueling French doctor, rogue aristocrat, and impoverished Jewish socialist. Yet they faced similar challenges. Each exhibited mastery of detail and fascination with technology. All four were great learners, who studied war as if it were their own profession, and in many ways mastered it as well as did their generals. All found themselves locked in conflict with military men. All four triumphed. The powerful lessons of this “brilliant” (National Review) book will touch and inspire anyone who faces intense adversity and is the perfect gift for history buffs of all backgrounds.

The instant #1 New York Times, #1 Wall Street Journal, #1 USA Today bestseller answers the world’s most complex question: How do you lead? Leadership is the most challenging of human endeavors. It is often misunderstood. It can bewilder, mystify, and frustrate even the most dedicated practitioners. Leaders at all levels are often forced to use theoretical guesswork to make decisions and lead their troops. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY. There are principles that can be applied and tenets that can be followed. There are skills that can be learned and maneuvers that can be practiced and executed. There are leadership strategies and tactics that have been tested and proven on the battlefield, in business, and in life. Retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer Jocko Willink delivers his powerful and pragmatic leadership methodology, which teaches how to lead any team in any situation to victory. This new expanded edition contains a protocol to develop and hone critical decision-making instincts and make them habitual.

Analyzes the leadership and strategies of three forefront military leaders from the ancient world, offers insight into the purposes behind their conflicts, and shows what today's leaders can glean from their successes and failures.

A new mechanism for first-class leadership forged on board a nuclear submarine.

Why are the best leaders the ones who are most adept at following? What should we expect of those who have the privilege of leading? And what may leaders expect of those who follow them? Drawing upon a military career spanning more than four decades, General Martin Dempsey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, examines the limits of loyalty, the necessity of sensible skepticism, and the value of responsible rebelliousness, and explains why we actually should sweat the small stuff. No Time for Spectators takes readers behind the closed doors of the Situation Room, onto the battlefields of Iraq, and to the East German border at the height of the Cold War. It contends that relationships between leaders and followers--employers and employees, politicians and constituents, coaches and athletes, teachers and students--are most productive when based on certain key mutual expectations. The book begins from the premise that life is not a spectator sport. Especially not today, especially not at a time when issues are so complex, information is so pervasive, scrutiny is so intense, and the stakes are so high. No Time for Spectators may not be the answer to all of our problems, but it is a clarion call for those who are actually interested in solving them.