Who Pulled the Trigger on bin Laden
Mark Owen (Not his real name) explained his firsthand view of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound on 60 minutes Sunday night. Scott Pelley interviewed the former Navy SEAL who gave a blow by blow of the operation, even his visit to Taco Bell after he arrived home.
Owen is under fire from the U.S. Pentagon for violating his oath to protect the secrets of SEAL operations. He says, “I’m not talking secrets.”
Regardless of your opinion of Owen’s book, No Easy Day, he said something that triggered my thoughts about teams and teamwork.
Owen explained how President Obama privately asked the SEAL Team who killed Osama bin Laden. Who pulled the trigger? The Navy Seals refused to say. It doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger. Everyone from support staff to helicopter pilots, to indivdual SEALs made it happen. It wouldn’t have happened without the team.
Great teams honor the team.
Some team members have “glory” jobs but that’s not the point. Without the team the job doesn’t get done.
Leaders who mouth the words, “We believe in teamwork,” but who only recognize individual contributors reveal hypocritical inconsistency. They use terms like “team” and “teamwork” to manipulate in order to gain compliance.
It’s foolish to neglect honoring individual acts of achievement. However, team recognition and reward needs more attention. Choose what and who you honor carefully.
You get what you honor.
Recognizing individuals strengthens individuals; it motivates people to become individual contributors. On the other hand, team recognition strengthens teams and teamwork. We need both but in many organizations we need more of the latter, much more.
Who pulled the trigger on bin Laden? A member of the team.
Henry Ford said, “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”
What does honoring, rewarding, and recognizing teams look like?
this post goes deeper than leadership, it really has cultural implications, especially about what we honor.
Absolutely!
Thanks for taking up this discussion. I help veterans get jobs and I see it everyday. Veterans are seeking a culture match between their military service and their private careers. I believe (What we) honor is a key touchstone that keeps veterans from applying from many jobs they are qualified for.
Instead of seeking to match skills we should be matching them on culture.
Great having you drop in Alan. Love the match culture point. Powerful.
Hello, I have to admit that I actually disliked this post: I hoped this blog to be free of political issues and now i
I have to agree. Anything with political spin creates an uneasiness concerning the true goal that is anticipated to be delivered to the reader.
Hello, I have to admit that I actually disliked this post: I hoped this blog to be free of political issues, including trigger-pulling as an event of team-work. I empathhize a lot for all the veterans (from any side!) that after continuous struggling and having seen continuous suffering (in the name of whatever), but it doesn’t justify violence and//or the motives of violence.
There are many opinions / visions about mr Bin Laden death (and/or involvement in whatever activity – or not), but I sincerely hope that this page doesn’t get a character referring to these political matters.
I mostly enjoy all the posts, I even keep them all for reference, however this subject leaves me somehow saddened : this is not about leadership to me; this is about war, needless violence and deaths of innocent people that are either sent forward of victim of other’s greed and political motives. War can never be a solution to a conflict.
I sincerely apologize, but I could not find any other means of letting you (Dan) know that for the first time I strongly (and sadly) disapprove with your choice of subject to clarify a skill that can be learned.
Please understand my point of view, I’m a pacificst, I think it will last longer than any other form, but I would also regret having to unsubscribe because of this.
Many thanks
Thanks ewaumans. No apology necessary. This blog has readers in nearly every country in the world and from diverse religious, political, and philosophical backgrounds. I like it that way.
It’s the conversation I most enjoy. Thanks for joining in.
Dan, as with most things this is learned behavior – for us as leaders and as individuals. Surrounded as we are by a culture of “heroes” usually individuals – the adulation we heap on our “celebrity” leaders in the media and elsewhere, it’s easy to fall into this trap. Also often we’ve been taught, that dressing a team down for an individuals error (or mistake) is not okay. Particularly true in cultures where you don’t want an individual to lose face. So we end up doling credit too individually undermining our stated celebration of teams and team work. Thanks for drawing a good story from something recently in the news.
Thank you Kriskrinshna. I love the conversation around individual cp. team participation.
I hadn’t thought about the negative side this morning. What a rich topic… dressing down a team cp individual.
Dealing with individuals has greater clarity and simplicity than dealing with teams. Teamwork is harder than working alone.
We pay such lip service to team work that I often find it helpful to simply tell a story. This is a great story. In the moment(s) it doesn’t hurt to be focused on your job/role, but there needs to be intimate understanding of how your piece fits the whole. Understanding our value to the team is tied to understanding the importance of the work we are here to do. Whether we are always recognized for our value, we need to be driven by our own sense of worth and how we would grade ourselves in carrying out our role.
As Spock (Nimoy) used to say, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” The essence of teamwork…”It’s not about me.”
Best…Jim
Thanks for your powerful “lip service” comment. I wish I’d thought of that term.
Great teams know how they are fulfilling organizational mission and great team members know how they best contribute. thanks again
Dear Dan,
Team is built on emotional cohesion. Without cohesion it becomes group and group generally lacks synergy. So,the beauty of team is the synergy. The other core component of team is respect. Each member of team respects the effort and feelings of team member. Any sport team is the good example to understand coordination and focus. Any misunderstanding among member can derail the whole focus of the mission.
Provocative Ajay. YOu got me thinking about the ways teams get derailed….I think I’ll post the question on facebook… thanks!
team recognition strengthens teams and teamwork. We need both but in many organizations we need more of the latter, much more. So impactful
Thank you Austinquote.
Dan,
You make an important point in this post. In my experience, many organizations misapply the term “team” to work groups. A true team, whether military, sports, or corporate, is a group of people performing different tasks, all working towards the same goal. However, a work group is a group of individual performers all doing the same task in close proximity to one another. Managers use the term “team” to try and create competition between individual contributors, but this is not teamwork; it is manipulation, and often results in favoritism and an unhealthy work environment. There is nothing wrong with work groups. Let’s just call them that, when that’s what they are.
Thanks!
K1, love your distinction between work groups and teams. 10 people digging a ditch are a work group. Thanks
What does honoring, rewarding, and recognizing teams look like?
I believe that starts with the first team: Mama, Papa, and all the little bears. 🙂
Thanks for joining in Elizabeth. I find leadership principles apply to families. Many leaders learned leadership from their parents.
In 1963 the first American expedition to reach the summit of Mount Everest restricted their radio communications during the climb, to intentionally keep the media in the dark as to what was happening on the mountain. The climbers didn’t want the media reporting that this person or that person was the first American to the top. They wanted it reported that the team had succeeded.
When two of those climbers, Jerstad & Bishop, neared the summit they joined arms and proceeded together the rest of the way to the peak, so that one could not say they had reached the top before the other.
Great story. Thank you Cybuhr.
I can’t believe Pres Obama would actually ask, who pulled the trigger? He is definetly classier than that.
No quotes on the pulled trigger statement. I don’t know the exact words Pres. Obama said.
Dan, there are so many lessons to be learned from this post and story that it would be difficult to keep them to your 300-word limit. The leadership lessons are both good and bad.
Several comments have raised the issue of your post being political. Give me a break. Navy SEAL teams are the essence of teams and teamwork at a life an death level. I dare say, there are no other team professions that depend on a fellow team member for their life, especially when bullets are flying. How many in your audience have served in this capacity? I would venture few, if any.
Was killing Osama bin Laden political? Let’s see, he was not a political figure, he was not the president of a country, etc. Bin Laden was one of the bad guys who needed to be killed. He was a thug. Even though none of us have actually seen photos of his being killed or dumped overboard at sea, the assumption is that he is Dead.
Here is the deal folks, when it comes to making difficult decisions it takes a leader with guts to make those decisions. Unfortunately, our “leadership” in this country were forced into making THE KILL decision.
Once THE decision was made, leadership went into the crapper. These types of operations are TOP SECRET for a reason. By bragging about the kill, whatever advantage gained by the intelligence gathered at the scene is lost. If the intelligence told us where all the al-Gaeda lieutenants were located that advantage is lost. They immediately relocated to new caves.
Now for the author to write about the event is just as bad. Hopefully, he and his family will not have to suffer because of the author’s pen. al-Gaeda has already put out a bounty on employees of the book’s publisher. Again, there is a reason these operations are classified as TOP SECRET.
As far as “ewaumans” and Dennis Thomas getting their underwear in a knot over your post, all I can say is we live in very tough times and when TRUE leadership is demonstrated, Dan Rockwell is failing his readership to not bring it up. Great Job, Dan, keep it up!
Thanks for bringing it up and don’t apologize to these so called “offended” commenters for raising the Navy SEAL Team 6 leadership story. Frankly, if it weren’t for guys like this who are willing to put their lives on the line everyday for our FREEDOM there would be a lot more dead people we would be burying.
Always remember…FREEDOM is NOT FREE!
BTW, how is your physical therapy coming along?
Always a pleasure Jim. I had no intention of politicizing the story…simply learning from it. Thanks for seeing that.
I’m doing great. No more therapy. I still sway a bit when I walk because I favor the right hip…. but I think it’s mostly from habit. Something I’m trying to break. Thanks for asking.
Would this approach have worked had Neil Armstrong taken that view about his “small step” on the moon?
Nader, I may be taking your point incorrectly, but if you have read anything about Neil Armstrong you would know that his Apollo 11 Mission to the Moon was more about the teamwork going on Earth than the flight crew’s ability to land on the Moon. As famous as he was, he was a very shy man who lived by very strong principles. He was overly appreciative of the folks at Ground Control and said so on many occasions.
As Dan wrote, “It’s foolish to neglect honoring individual acts of achievement. However, team recognition and reward needs more attention. Choose what and who you honor carefully.”
I would add, be wise in choosing “Who” you want on the team in the first place. Not everyone gets to go into space or be a member of a SEAL team for a reason.
Never Forget all those we lost today.
TEAM Together Eveyone Achieves More
Hello Dan,
We need to be leery of, “Leaders who mouth the words, ‘We believe in teamwork,’ but who only recognize individual contributors reveal hypocritical inconsistency. They use terms like “team” and “teamwork” to manipulate in order to gain compliance.”
To understand how teams deliver extra performance, we must distinguish between teams and other forms of working groups. That distinction turns on performance results. A working group’s performance is a function of what its members do as individuals. A team’s performance includes both individual results and what we call “collective work products.” A collective work product is what two or more members must work on together, such as interviews, sur-veys, or experiments. Whatever it is, a collective work product reflects the joint, real contribution of team members.