In the book Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin outline the dimensions that a leader must balance in order to be effective1:
- confident but not cocky
- courageous but not foolhardy
- competitive but a gracious loser
- attentive to details, but not obsessed by them
- strong but have endurance
- a leader and follower
- humble but not passive
- aggressive not overbearing
- quiet not silent
- calm but not robotic
- logical but not devoid of emotions
- close with the troops but not so close that one becomes more important than another or more important than the good of the team; not so close that they forget who is in charge.
- able to execute Extreme Ownership, while exercising decentralized command
The idea here being that if a leader leans too far on any of the scales they will fall out of balance an not be effective.
1. Willink, J. & Babin, L. Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win. (St. Martinās Press, New York, 2015).