Implementing Extreme Ownership requires checking your ego and operating with a high degree of humility. Admitting mistakes, taking ownership, and developing a plan to overcome challenges are integral to any successful team. Ego can prevent a leader from conducting an honest, realistic assessment of his or her own performance and the performance of the team.

Implementing Extreme Ownership requires checking your ego and operating with a high degree of humility. Admitting mistakes, taking ownership, and developing a plan to overcome challenges are integral to any successful team.

When leaders who epitomize Extreme Ownership drive their teams to achieve a higher standard of performance, they must recognize that when it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.

It’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate. You have to drive your CTO to exercise Extreme Ownership — to acknowledge mistakes, stop blaming others, and lead his team to success. If you allow the status quo to persist, you can’t expect to improve performance, and you can’t expect to win.

Extreme Ownership. Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame.

Leadership doesn’t just flow down the chain of command, but up as well,” he said. “We have to own everything in our world. That’s what Extreme Ownership is all about.

In Extreme Ownership, chapter 2, “No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders,” we wrote that “when it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.

When a leader takes too much ownership, there is no ownership left for the team or subordinate leaders to take. So the team loses initiative, they lose momentum, they won't make any decision, they just sit around and wait to be told what to do.

the most fundamental and important truths at the heart of Extreme Ownership: there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.

There are no bad units, only bad officers.”3 This captures the essence of what Extreme Ownership is all about.

Of the many exceptional leaders we served alongside throughout our military careers, the consistent attribute that made them great was that they took absolute ownership — Extreme Ownership — not just of those things for which they were responsible, but for everything that impacted their mission. These leaders cast no blame. They made no excuses. Instead of complaining about challenges or setbacks, they developed solutions and solved problems. They leveraged assets, relationships, and resources to get the job done. Their own egos took a back seat to the mission and their troops. These leaders truly led.

With such variation in individuals on the team, the challenge for any leader was to raise the level of every member of the team so that they could perform at their absolute best. In order to do that, a leader must make it his or her personal mission to train, coach, and mentor members of the team so they perform to the highest standards — or at least the minimum standard. But there is a dichotomy in that goal: while a leader must do everything possible to help develop and improve the performance of individuals on the team, a leader must also understand when someone does not have what it takes to get the job done. When all avenues to help an individual get better are exhausted without success, then it is the leader’s responsibility to fire that individual so he or she does not negatively impact the team.

The best platoons and task units embraced those lessons with Extreme Ownership, acknowledged the problems, and figured out ways to solve them. They constantly improved. The worst units rejected the criticism and complained about how training was too hard.

The book derives its title from the underlying principle — the mind-set — that provides the foundation for all the rest: Extreme Ownership. Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame.