Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2015. “Recently interviewed” refers to a Harvard Business Review piece from May 2015, and Brandon Webb’s role as CEO of Force12 Media is as of 2015.
Brandon Webb is a former Navy SEAL, now CEO of Force12 Media and the author of several books about his experience as a SEAL. He was recently interviewed by Harvard Business Review about his management experience running the Naval Special Warfare (NSW) sniper course, to see how that experience can be applied to business and to life in general.
As a Navy SEAL and sniper, one of the things he learned about was excellence.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re in a SEAL team, a business team, a football team, a family or anything else: excellence should be part of everything we do.
See also: Why an entrepreneur should be as well prepared as a Marine sniper
Your commitment to excellence (or lack of it) defines who you are as an individual. It dictates how things get done when everyone is watching. It is also the standard you set for yourself to do things excellently even when nobody is watching; it is simply the way things are done. You could call it taking pride in what you do. (See also: 5 keys to achieving excellence in whatever you set out to do.)
Another thing about excellence is that it’s contagious. The pursuit of excellence doesn’t just motivate you; it also motivates the people around you. Great players want to be on great teams. That’s why one of the key traits of great leaders is their own individual passion and commitment to excellence.
See also: To be mentally strong and emotionally intelligent, start by working on these 18 things
So how do you achieve excellence? These are five key characteristics of excellence that Brandon Webb learned during his days as a SEAL.
1. Train harder than you expected to have to train
Top performers in sports, the arts, business or any other field have put in huge amounts of training. And when they finish that training, they train a little more, and harder than they expected to. Why? Because sometimes being merely good at something means being mediocre. You have to train and prepare harder than everyone else to rise above the average, whether we are talking about a professional career or running our own business.
If you’re having a bad day, skipping training can be destructive and reinforce bad habits. This applies to groups, teams and almost any kind of training.
2. Focus on the positive. Picture success
Champions of every kind expect to succeed whatever the conditions. When Brandon Webb started telling his future sniper students that he expected a lot from them and was sure they would score highly on their shooting tests, they started shooting perfect scores.
As the saying goes, your thoughts control your life, and if you control your thoughts, you control your life. So picturing success often builds enough confidence for success to come. And the same is true, in reverse, of failure.
See also: How to condition ourselves for success and break through our limits
3. Great leaders are self-confident
Great ideas can come from anyone, anywhere. Leaders are not afraid to surround themselves with people smarter than they are, or to admit that they don’t understand or don’t know something.
As the head of a digital media company, Brandon Webb sees many people in his industry who are afraid to ask technical questions. Saying “I don’t understand this, please explain it to me” is very healthy and helps you move forward.
And remember that the office intern may be in a position to see the answer to a question that the person running the office hasn’t thought of. Great leaders know this and are open to input from everyone, whatever their position in the chain of command.
4. Start seeing adversity and competition as opportunities to challenge yourself
In practice, competitive environments and adversity are where champions are made. Great leaders know that adversity creates life’s greatest opportunities, because it is the biggest filter: many competitors get stuck at the obstacle, while a few manage to overcome it and reap the reward.
Even so, our mindset shouldn’t be about beating others, but about outdoing ourselves every day. That way, momentum alone will carry us past everyone else.
5. Excellence has a price
Success has a price, whether you’re a SEAL, a student or a business professional. Many people aren’t willing to pay that price in the short term to achieve success in the long term.
There will always be a group of insecure people who will try to bring you down. Brandon Webb calls them “dream stealers”.
Watch out for them, because they are quick to push their own insecurity, envy and negative energy onto you.
See also: 5 ways to be mentally tough, according to an FBI agent
Featured image: U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Eric S. Logsdon, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
_students_participate_in_Log_PT_(physical_training)_during_Hell_Week.jpg){kind=link}