Retired U.S. Navy SEAL trainer Kyle Buckett originally wanted to title his new book Kill the Leader.
That’s because the name of an exercise Buckett used to run with SEAL teams where they had to react to the simulated battlefield death of their commanding officer. “You get to watch how the unit reacts when the guy in charge is done,” Buckett tells b.
Mainly, you get to see if the leader equipped his or her team to adapt, which is the major theme of Leadership Is Overrated: How the Navy SEALs (and Successful Businesses) Create Self-Leading Teams That Win. Buckett co-wrote the book with leadership expert Chris Mefford.
“[Managers] don’t want to train someone else to replace them because they are so worried about making themselves irrelevant,” Buckett says.
That’s why Buckett and Mefford decided to “pick a fight” with the $166 billion leadership industry. In the book, Mefford and Buckett argue that the long-standing tradition of top-heavy businesses is a broken system. “We think the future is in self-led teams that you empower,” Buckett says.
Give Your Team More Trust and Authority
Part of the problem with top-heavy leadership, according to the authors, is that it gives employees responsibility without authority. But when leaders give their team that trust, they’re often pleasantly surprised.
One notable example that Buckett and Mefford cite: Waterstones bookstore in the U.K. When James Daunt came onboard as CEO in 2011, he empowered store managers to run their own franchises and hire their own teams of book lovers who could give customers personalized recommendations. This helped return the business to profitability after struggling with competition from Amazon. (Barnes & Noble was so impressed, they hired Daunt as its CEO in 2019 for another successful turnaround story.)
The Mission Determines the Leader
Civilians might assume that the Navy SEAL chain of command is top-heavy, but Buckett says a “leadership-at-all-levels” mentality prevails, meaning that SEALs are trained to understand that “leadership might shift depending on the dynamics of the mission.”
The leader should be the person who is best-suited for a particular mission, not necessarily the person with the top rank. That’s a lesson for business managers as well.
Top Leaders Should Focus on Top Strategy
Micromanagement stems from insecurity, which is the opposite of good leadership, according to Buckett and Mefford. If a team is demotivated from too much oversight, leaders “need to take a hard look at themselves and say, ‘Maybe I’m the problem,’” Mefford says.
By letting teams take charge of the (relatively) small stuff, leaders can focus on innovation and expansion, making themselves indispensable. That kind of leader is true Navy SEAL material.
