What is Leadership Capital?

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When you think of military-style leadership, what do you think of? Barking orders? treating others like robots? Maybe even a guy in a tall stiff hat, red in the face from screaming his lungs out?

Maybe that works in the short term. But do you really want to work for someone constantly yelling at you?

Maybe you’ve heard of him, maybe you haven’t, Jocko Wilink is an Ex-Navy SEAL who teaches leadership through his books, podcasts, Ted Talk, YouTube, and various in-person trainings.

He thinks the leadership through fear strategy is an awful way to lead a team and doesn’t actually work.

Most of Jocko Wilink’s philosophy is about taking accountability for everything. But one thing I heard him talk about that stood out to me recently was the idea of Leadership Capital.

Leadership Capital is the goodwill you build with your team that you sometimes have to spend to accomplish something or give direction.

Sometimes you do have to give orders or direction to your team but if you are constantly or only spending Leadership Capital you can go into “debt”.

How do you build Leadership Capital?

1. To have more influence with your team let your team influence you. When making decisions on the direction your team is going listen to and use your team’s ideas. When you value your team's input and actually take action on it your team feels heard. This also helps build buy-in into the vision and direction of the team.

2. Build Trust. Give your team opportunities to trust you and opportunities to earn your trust. Keeping your word on the small things goes a long way. Over time these little trust builders compound. When there is trust among your team you have a solid foundation for fostering teamwork.

3. Care about your team. This may sound like an obvious thing but it is easy to take your team for granted if you are not diligent about taking care of them. Small things like bringing in bagels for breakfast for the team or asking if everything is ok if an employee shows up late show that you care.

Be careful about overspending Leadership Capital. Jocko suggests building and spending Leadership Capital as if you’re constantly running low on it.

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