Trust. Listen. Respect. Influence. Care. These are the components for strong relationships—not just in the military, but for all of us.

You know, what a leader's doing is fostering relationships, fostering trust. It doesn't mean we have to like each other. Preferable, but not 100% necessary. And this is one of the things I find wonderful about military, which is the trust is so deep that I'll risk my life for somebody I don't necessarily even like, which I find fascinating. But when the team dynamics work and you get the relationships working, then it works. If you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them. If you want people to trust you, you've got to give them trust. If you want people to respect you, you've got to treat them with respect. If you want to have influence over people, you've got to actually allow them to influence you. And the biggest obstacle to all those things is my ego. So if we can get our ego under control and we can be humble, then we can build good relationships with people. And by the way, not all SEAL platoons are good. There are SEAL platoons that are disasters. There are SEAL platoons that get disbanded where they take an entire group of these high-performing top tier guys and they disband them. Why? It's not because the people on the team aren't in good physical condition. It's not because the people on the team don't know how to shoot their weapons. The reason that they get disbanded is because they have bad relationships. It's a disaster. And you see that in any organization.