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A Navy SEAL's powerful leadership lesson
This changed my life (and may change yours)
Teddy Mitrosilis
February 05, 2023
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Now, onto Issue 21.
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Today’s Issue
My friend was a Navy SEAL for 12 years.
Today, I’m going to share a powerful leadership lesson I’ve learned from him that has impacted my life.
I hope it impacts yours, too.
A powerful leadership lesson from a Navy SEAL
Last month, I wrote about a training mission I went on with a former Navy SEAL and a small team.
We spent three days deep in the Smoky Mountains and learned a lot about leadership, teamwork, communication and ourselves.
On that trip, my friend (the SEAL) shared a powerful leadership lesson that greatly impacted me.
I want to share that lesson with you today in hopes that it also makes you a better person and strong leader.
Here it is:
My friend was a Navy SEAL for 12 years.
He was a breacher.
In layman’s terms, a breacher’s job is to make entry into things.
That usually means making entry into a target building where bad guys are hiding.
They use tools to pick locks.
They use saws to cut through fences.
They use bombs to blow down doors or blast holes in concrete walls.
There’s no structure a Breacher can’t penetrate.
Being a breacher is a humble job.
They aren’t a sniper, who get glorified in movies and books.
They usually aren’t the guy who rushes inside and takes the shot on the enemy.
But it’s an incredibly important job.
The breacher enables the rest of the team to do their jobs.
There’s no successful mission without the breacher.
In 12 years of service, my friend participated in hundreds of missions.
Here’s how a standard one would go:
His SEAL unit would head out at night on a mission.
They’d arrive in the general vicinity of their target and begin their patrol.
He would lead the patrol up to the target building.
He’d pull out the bomb he made back at base, set the bomb on the building and wait.
Lined up behind him was his SEAL platoon.
He’d look back, in the dark of night, and see a line of green eyes through his night vision, staring at him.
He’d see weapons cocked and ready.
His team was waiting on him.
My friend would wait to hear three words over radio.
“Execute. Execute. Execute.”
On the third “execute,” he’d detonate the bomb.
A hole would be blasted into the building, and all hell would break loose.
Instantly, his team would enter the target and reign fire on the enemy.
The years of training.
The hours of preparation.
The thousands of repetitions.
All of it culminated in those three words and the swift execution of duty that followed.
They did this night after night.
There are two powerful lessons in this story:
1) Life comes down to execution
How many times have you heard someone say, “I had that idea?”
Or maybe, “I’ve been saying that for years?”
How many people do you think thought of the idea of Uber before the company was invented?
Probably countless.
But none of it matters, because those people didn’t execute.
This is a harsh truth.
You can have the best ideas.
You can have the most talent.
You can have the most resources.
You can have the greatest strategies.
And none of it matters if you don’t execute.
If my friend didn’t execute his job as a breacher, his SEAL team could not do theirs. They would have failed the mission and, in many cases, probably died.
Thankfully, most of us do not face life-and-death consequences in our daily lives.
But that doesn’t mean the execution of our duties is not important.
Which leads to the second lesson in this story…
2) Someone is lined up behind you
Most of us will not be Navy SEALs.
We will not be breachers, with a team of operators waiting on us to blow a hole in a building to go destroy an enemy.
But we all have people lined up behind us in our lives.
As parents, we have people lined up behind us.
As leaders, we have people lined up behind us.
As coaches, we have people lined up behind us.
As teammates, colleagues, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, church members, community members.
Whoever we are and whatever roles we fulfill in our lives, we have people lined up behind us.
And those people are waiting on us to execute.
Summary
So, here’s a call-to-action:
Think about the role(s) you play in your life
Identify who is lined up behind you
Assess what they need you to do
Commit to executing those things every day
Execute. Execute. Execute.
Teddy’s Recommendations
(1) My friend Sahil Bloom is a wonderful writer, and he recently wrote about how his mom hired a professional writer to sit down with his 94-year-old grandmother and capture her life stories. They’re going to turn her stories into a book that will bring the family joy long after she is gone. An amazing idea and something everyone should consider doing with their loved ones.
(2) With all the layoffs happening right now, it’s a stressful time for many folks. I found this piece on 18 effective stress relief strategies to be insightful. Hope it helps some people navigating a difficult time.
(3) If you want to become a better writer, check out my newsletter The Daily Creator. Simple tips to make you a better writer, every week. Join 1,900+ creators, entrepreneurs and leaders (FREE):
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Thank you!
I’d love to hear from you
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Thanks for reading.
See you next Sunday.